The latest from D.C. on how to deal with gas prices:

Several years ago, perhaps during the mad cow scare, it became something of a trial to get beef at a restaurant that was properly cooked. To get anything less than well done, you had to order rare, and do so clearly and emphatically. I always suspected that this problem—which seems to have abatted—had something to do with health inspectors, or regulators, or some government warning of some such.

But even so, it is a shock to learn the extent to which health inspectors are increasingly regulating what is served at restaurants.

I don’t know how much of this is due to genuine disapproval of his policies, and how much is due to, “We really like The Police.” In any event, click on “Every Breath You Take” to see business geeks being surprisingly clever.

The reaction to my article on the United Automobile Workers and GM , confirms how many people—namely, “liberals,” “moderates,” socialists, communists, syndicalists, “mutualists” and others—believe that businessmen and capitalists are the enemy, and labor unions and labor legislation, the friend, of wage earners. This is an enormous error, with devastating consequences.

Jane Jacobs (born 1916), author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, died today. Obituaries will invariably describe her views in a way that suggest she made a case against market economics.

Here is an article on Monopoly, the game by Parker Brothers, written by Ben Powell, now of San Jose State, back in February 2004. It was posted before we had a blog that permitted reader reaction.

Out of the blue this morning, this email arrived to our offices, and the writer challenged us to post it. So I’m posting it.