Justice for Rent
During a recent campaign for a seat on a local Ohio Domestic Relations Court, a lawyer from a small firm ran up against a political, ethical, and financial dilemma. His predicament began innocently enough when he was solicited for a campaign contribution by supporters of the Democratic incumbent. The lawyer, a longtime Democrat, willingly put…
Stalled in Paradise
A quiet but profound revolution is taking place in suburban America, affecting the way people there think about government, taxes, property rights, the free market, and the idea of community itself, and it is being sparked by that most mundane of phenomena: the traffic jam. From New York, where 80,000 more cars a day enter…
Private Suburbs, Public Cities
The traditional explanation of the power of cities now seems as grand and outdated as an old movie palace. “The dominance of the city, especially of the great city,” wrote sociologist Louis Wirth in 1938, “may be regarded as a consequence of the concentration in cities of industrial, commercial, financial, and administrative facilities and activities,…
Fix It or or Nix It
In the past, the great post-World War II institutions of international economics–the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the enforcement bodies of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)–have operated under the cover of bureaucratic darkness. Some lobbyists in Washington knew about them, but few voters knew what the Kennedy Round was…
The Moral Minority
The last quarter of the twentieth century will surely be remembered for its religious conservatism. The Moral Majority, led by fundamentalist Jerry Falwell, dominated headlines during the 1980s. Support from conservative political operatives like Paul Weyrich and Richard Viguerie helped it to mobilize millions of Christians for causes as different as championing parochial schools and…
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
Shouldn’t it be enough of a task in life to find meaningful work and love, those north and south poles of happiness? No: The human animal, like so many of its two- and four- and many-legged kin, also has an enduring need to establish social hierarchies. And that job–figuring out your rank and edging it…
Comment: Why Liberals Need Radicals
The demonstrations last November in Seattle and last month in Washington have made some liberals uneasy. For many, the street activity suggests both a rowdiness and a know-nothing attitude toward global commerce. A recent New Republic cover, caricaturing a protester, asks, “Does the New New Left Have a Brain?” I’ve noticed that my liberal friends…
World-Class Tax Evasion
The current age of globalization can be distinguished from the previous one (1870-1914) by the much higher mobility of capital than labor. In the previous age, before immigration restrictions, labor was at least as mobile as capital. Today’s increased capital mobility reflects both technological changes (the ability to move funds electronically) and policy changes (the…
The Taxonomist
Bush’s “Progressive” Tax Plan “The Bush tax cuts benefit all Americans, but reserve the greatest percentage reduction for the lowest income families.” (12/1/99) “Our tax code, in the end, will be more progressive.” (4/11/00) These Bush claims are real whoppers. In fact, more than a quarter of all Americans would get nothing at all from…
Campaign Finance Emissions
Thirty years after the first Earth Day in 1970, environmentalists have much to celebrate. Just 25 years ago, for example, the majority of the nation’s water was polluted. Today, two-thirds of that precious resource is considered safe, thanks largely to the Clean Water Act. But despite the broad public support for further efforts to cut…
The Datsun and the Shoe Tree
I was changing planes at the new airport in Jakarta the other day, on the way to Stockholm from Vladivostok. Three young Bangladeshi boys sat in the passenger lounge, watching The Power Rangers on satellite TV. Their mother–garbed in the traditional sari–talked to her cousin, a migrant worker who sold German-designed Walkman knockoffs in Hong…
Vilify This
When Big Tobacco agreed to pay out hundreds of billions of dollars in a settlement two years ago, it looked like the public interest finally had the upper hand. More than 99 percent of the $206 billion settlement went to 46 states to spend however they saw fit (some on antismoking efforts and much more…
Operation Dessert Storm
When big conglomerates began circling Ben & Jerry’s Homemade earlier this year, there was general alarm among ice cream progressives. Wavy Gravy spoke at a rally. Supporters flocked to savebenandjerrys.com to bear witness. “May Ben and Jerry find the strength to fight. Good people, who own good companies, are too rare. Keep the faith!” Angel…
Up from Reparations
Self-invention has always been an American ideal. We’re supposed to enjoy opportunities to make our own fortunes and control our own fates, in this world and the next. The Calvinism of seventeenthcentury colonials proved less quintessentially American than did the notion that you can choose to be born again in Christ. This is not a…
The Invisible Hand as Schoolmaster
Some of the most widely discussed and controversial proposals for reforming American schools focus on the twin themes of giving local schools more operational autonomy and forcing them to compete for students. Proponents of charter schools and voucher plans argue that schools must be liberated from the controlling hands of educational bureaucrats. If such operational…
Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War
In 1984 I traveled to Berlin. Walking past Checkpoint Charlie, the famous American outpost on the border between East and West, made the Cold War tangible. Yet at the same time, having seen so many pictures and movies that focused on Berlin made me feel that I was playing the role of extra on the…
Neuro-Narratives
Reflecting their status in society at large, neurology and neuroscience have in recent years become major forces in American arts and media, charting new narrative pathways. If noted at all, this development has been written off as only another example of our culture’s hunger for varieties of victimhood. But such a judgment trivializes the change.…
The Talking Cure
You probably haven’t heard of him, but Rob Nelson is working hard to change that. Nelson, the thirty-something host of the FOX News Channel’s fledgling Saturday night talk show The Full Nelson, wants to run for political office (he doesn’t say which office, but the show’s audience coordinator cheerfully told me that she believes Nelson…
Women on the Verge
Erin Brockovich is the quintessential star vehicle–for nearly two hours, Julia Roberts is almost never out of camera range–but it’s also the kind of message movie we haven’t seen for a while. It’s the latest and biggest of the “feisty woman” movies, eponymously titled and mostly true tales of working women who, against impossibly long…
In the City
ACROSS: 1 SEA + R; 3 WORTHIES (anag.-e); 8 NIL + E; 9 RE(BELLE)D; 11 EX(ONE + RAT)ES; 14 MO + ROSE (OM = interior of tOMb); 15 SPA + RED; 17 CORPUSCLES (anag.); 20 REBUTTAL (anag.); 21 LAKE (2 defs.); 22 W + ATERBED (debater anag.); 23 (b)AS IS DOWN: 1 SUNBEAMS (anag.); 2…
Rationing Compassion
“I had begun to feel that we were part of some psychology experiment whose design was to see how quickly we could abandon our humanity.” –Dr. Linda Peeno, an ex-medical director and claims reviewer for HMOs, confessing why she quit, in U.S. News and World Report, March 9, 1998. Back in the twentieth century, the…
Trade: A Third Way
As we reach the climax of the great battle over trade with China, it’s worth taking a closer look at the main sticking point of this and every other major global agreement likely to arise in future years. There’s widespread acceptance of the need for “global labor standards” and “global environmental standards.” But apart from…
Chipping Away at the Uninsured
With Bill Bradley out of the presidential race, Vice President Gore’s proposal to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) remains the one comprehensive proposal on the table in the presidential election to address the plight of the 44 million Americans who lack health insurance. But CHIP is far from an ideal foundation for expanding…
