Big Government

The Social Security Commissioner sent out a letter revealing what the system will eventually pay. Gregory Bresiger is not pleased.

You've heard that government policies can cause unanticipated bad effects? This view is confirmed many times over when you consider the current forest-fire fiasco. Government is the cause of the fires that raged out of control across the West this summer, just as surely as if the Forest Service had spread the fuel and lit the match.

For decades, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been renowned as one of Washington's biggest boondoggles. HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros admitted to Congress in June 1993: "HUD has in many cases exacerbated the declining quality of life in America." Vice President Al Gore denounced public housing projects in 1996: "These crime-infested monuments to a failed policy are killing the neighborhoods around them."

Officials of the state are storming into the backyards of thousands of homeowners and cutting down their trees, writes Gregory Bresiger.
 

The secret of the state's rise was the separation of the ruler from the organization, says Martin van Creveld, who also predicts the state's demise. 

What the Gore's central plans would do to whole sectors of the economy, as explained by Thomas DiLorenzo.

At last, the chief executive must deal with regulations that daily vex the private sector. 

Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal is excited. The leftist columnist believes that he has found a wonderful "Third Way" example of using government to help poor people without the whole thing becoming yet another socialist giveaway. However, as with most government schemes that Hunt and his statist media colleagues like to tout, the latest example of "social entrepreneurship" is simply another fraud at worst and a misuse of resources at best.

Fifty years ago, the court broke the movie industry into two parts. The result was disastrous for consumers.

Some recent court decisions strengthen private property rights. But they do not go far enough.