Washington's sudden fixation on campaign finance won't bring about honesty in government, and it won't increase anyone's liberty. But it does give the public a real-world civics lesson. For it shows that government is no neutral arbiter of justice, but a corrupt scheme by which the politically powerful enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
The welfare state keeps being reinvented under new labels. In 1993, the Clinton administration renewed the Bush program (dreamed up by then HUD secretary Jack Kemp) called "Moving to Opportunity" (MTO). It gave welfare recipients housing vouchers worth as much as $1,677 per month for rental housing in middle-class neighborhoods.
In October, former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros spent $716 million to demolish decrepit housing projects. Before you cheer, consider this. The units won't be replaced with a market system. More money will be spent on yet another socialistic program, this time to pay welfare recipients to move into private housing in suburbia and elsewhere.
Which is a greater cause of cultural and moral decline: the private sector or the government? Asked another way, which is doing more to promote a return to civilized social norms: the market or the central state? The answer highlights a dividing line between left and right.
At times in this strange book, Mr. Pinkerton sounds like an advocate of the free market; fortunately, he really is not. "Fortunately," because our author has an anti-Midas Touch.
Shutting down the government was this Congress's most noble act. Though the freshmen, who forced the closing against the leadership's wishes, didn't properly prepare for the inevitable response from the media and the bureaucracy, they were on the right track. It may have been the only principled act in two years of political compromise.
The excuses given for big government take many forms. But NASA has surely come up with something unique in world history. They are trying to convince us that there is life on Mars, that we'd better speed our way there to find out more, and that's why they need more of your money.
As usual, my reviews have been too generous. Although Lind's earlier work, The Next American Nation, struck me as fundamentally med to me possessed of an interesting historical imagination.
Pizza deliverers have been robbed, assaulted, and killed. To protect their employees, and hold down liability losses, pizza chains like Domino's won't deliver pizzas in the highest crime areas. The company has cleverly developed computer software that allows its franchises to "flag" addresses that are unsafe. Some are noted as green (deliver), others as yellow (curbside only), and still others as red (no way).
Shannon Faulkner's two-and-a-half year fight to become the first woman in The Citadel's corps of cadets went out with an embarrassing whimper. She couldn't handle the physical and psychological demands of Hell Week, landed in the infirmary, and dropped out.
