The Open Market Blog

• By: Doug Bandow
• 11/01/2007

The time for wimpy, squishy, liberal environmentalism is past. The crisis is so deep that it’s time to take more, shall we say, “serious” steps.

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/30/2007

How you can profit from the coming nuclear holocaust will likely be the next publication by the conservative site Newsmax. After all, it just sent…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/30/2007

It appears that the Communist Party of China occasionally makes a mistake. Too bad millions of people already have paid a price and millions more…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/30/2007

The health care mess is complicated. It's a strange mix of government and private, with perverse tax incentives skewing the entire system. Handing the whole…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/29/2007

The problems of the health care system are many and complex--burdensome state regulation, massive federal programs, counterproductive tax incentives, and the popular presumption that health…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/29/2007

It's time to pull out the world's smallest violin for The Nation magazine. They are lefties, but at a time when the conservative establishment is…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/29/2007

Trade sanctions are a favorite foreign policy tool, but they don't have a very good record. It's hard to find a case where sanctions forced…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/26/2007

It may be a forlorn hope that politicians of either party will ever be truly fiscally responsible, opposing spending programs that either are not authorized…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/26/2007

There's nothing new about partisans playing hardball when it comes to politics. But it is unusual when partisans attempt to jail their opponents. That apparently…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/16/2007

Government finances are suffering, spending on the Iraq war continues to escalate while Social Security and Medicare continue to head over the financial cliff. Yet…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/08/2007

The common claim that America is the “land of the free” continues to look ever more hollow.  The latest of many targets of the authoritarian…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/08/2007

You've got to love the state of Oklahoma. To "protect" its citizens from organizing against the established political order, Oklahoma bars out-of-state residents from gathering…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 10/01/2007

The most important treaty that most people have never heard of is moving closer to ratification. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held its first hearing…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 09/24/2007

The government wants you to go deer-hunting. Go ahead. Take a day off. It’s on your employer. Well, Uncle Sam doesn’t quite put it that…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 09/24/2007

Government is a lot like a second marriage, the triumph of hope over experience. We create a program. Thieves loot it. Special interests manipulate it.

• By: Doug Bandow
• 09/18/2007

What’s a paternalist to do? The American people are getting fatter, but they ignore warning labels, as well as increasingly shrill advice from their nutritional…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 09/18/2007

Markets are wonderful. If there is a demand, markets will arise to fill it. Including the desire to feel good about oneself. How else should…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 09/04/2007

Government social engineering doesn't work. It's rarely just. It is even less likely to be effective. That is the lesson of just about every government…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 09/03/2007

There is much that occurs in Washington that irritates — and irritates mightily. One of my pet peeves is how welfare statists greedy for extra…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/29/2007

Washington, D.C. is a wonderful place. Perhaps its hallmark is the lack of shame. A qualification for high office is being able to engage in…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/29/2007

There's been quite a buzz recently on the second anniversary of Hurricane Kartrina's destruction of New Orleans. Presidential contender Barack Obama even offered a…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/26/2007

For some people government is a means to an end, a tool to achieve certain ends. With them real debate is possible. While one can,…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/23/2007

The food fascists are every where. It’s one thing for New York City to ban trans fats from city restaurants. But for the Great Indiana…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/23/2007

Is nothing sacred? Congress passes an energy bill in the name of fighting global warming, and what it best accomplishes is passing pork off to…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/13/2007

During the 2006 congressional campaign Democrats denounced the Republican majority for its wastrel ways. It was a fair criticism: the GOP lavished money on pork…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 08/06/2007

It's an axiom of faith for the usual redistributionists that capitalists are biased against women and discriminate against them when it comes to pay and…