Opinion

Partisan politics—A fool’s game for the masses

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14 October 2009 Robert Higgs Print Email

Because I despise politics in general, and the two major parties in this country in particular, I go through life constantly bemused by all the weight that people put on partisan political loyalties and on adherence to the normative demarcations the parties promote. Henry Adams observed that “politics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.” This marshalling of hatreds is not the whole of politics, to

Obama goes postal

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10 October 2009 William F. Shughart II Print Email

The problem with the president's health care/mail analogy: The Postal Service founders because it has no bottom line.

When President Obama told the people attending a town hall meeting on health care that “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? . . . It’s the post office that’s always having problems,” he was right on the facts, but drew the wrong conclusion from them.

As his whirlwind schedule of Sunday talk show appearances indicates, he still doesn’t get it.

Eating junk food could fatten your tax bill

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26 September 2009 William F. Shughart II Print Email

Alarmed by a tripling of obesity rates among U.S. children over the past 30 years, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council issued a report recommending policy initiatives to trim the fat from America’s youth.

Saying the child obesity problem cannot be solved at the federal level, the two groups counsel state and local officials to impose their own soft drink taxes, tax “junk food,” limit access to television and video games in after-school programs, replace public school vending machines with water fountains, open school playgrounds to the general public, build more sidewalks and bicycle paths, and require restaurants to list calorie counts on their menus.

Las cuentas de atención médica que todos evitan

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26 September 2009 Visión Hispana Print Email

En 20 años el país tendrá muchas más personas jubiladas en proporción a la población. Por tanto, la población sufrirá de altas tasas de enfermedades crónicas como la diabetes y cáncer. Si existiera una opción pública de seguro médico, el costo que implicaría pagar estas cuentas sería una carga intolerable impuesta al grupo cada vez más reducido de contribuyentes estadounidenses económicamente activos.

Los costos del tratamiento de enfermedades crónicas