Opponents of the market say we have to stop another Enron from happening again. Yet all the government’s watchdog agencies completely missed Enron. The system of cronyism in Washington, D.C., made the debacle possible and made it harder for the public to find out what was going on. Existing laws will put Enron executives behind bars, but they won’t touch any of Enron’s accomplices in Washington.
Is it any wonder that under the leadership of a supposed conservative administration, the alleged nemesis of the tax-and-spend liberal democrats in government, we are now seeing increases in all varieties of bureaucratic budgets and the creation of new federal projects and even of federal agencies? If there is money to be gotten for cheap, public officials will go for it, never mind their alleged commitment to public service or their oath of office or what have you!
On November 1, 1999, at the age of 45, Chicago Bears football great Walter Payton died while waiting for a new liver to replace the one in his body that had been ravaged by a rare disease. Living in Chicago, I saw many people grieve and express sorrow for the fallen hero, who was truly one of the most stand-up athletes in professional sports.
If we are to take one lesson from the current state of the world economy--and the geopolitical stresses and ideological divides which reflect this--we should alter the (oft-misquoted) phrase from the second book of Timothy. Rather than holding that “the love of money is the root of all evil,” we should all fervently avow that “the existence of dishonest money is the root of all evil.”
In commenting on the ongoing Japanese slump, President Bush made the worst gaffe of his presidency. Bush relayed to a news conference that he and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had discussed the “devaluation issue” in their talks. As the yen sank, the White House quickly clarified that Bush had meant the “deflation issue.”
Government rail buffs, bureaucrats, and the friends of big government are resting easy these days. The big bad Amtrak Reform Council, which was charged with cleaning up the mess created by almost 32 years of government passenger railroad system, turned out to be nothing more than a cute little poodle. The council offered no radical privatization conclusions.
New York City is in trouble. Rainfall has been far below its historical level, raising the specter of water shortages. Fortunately, the government has a plan. A three-phase Drought Management Plan, to be specific. According to the City of New York’s Department of Environmental Protection:
