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Air Board’s Greenhouse Rule: Raw Deal for Dealers
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> On September 24, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />California’s Air…
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Telecom Reform, Consensus Needed
In the Washington, D.C. policy world, regulatory change requires consensus building. With rapid market changes since the Telecommunications Act of 1996, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission are…
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Cooling Blair’s Climate Crusade
Tony Blair is, in a way, as polarizing a figure in the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />United Kingdom as President…
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Energy Policy or Anti-Energy Policy?
There was a lot a campaign talk about our nation's energy policy, and Bush and Kerry offered their own competing energy plans. With…
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Stock Option Expense Jousting
After hearing constant tirades about <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />U.S. foreign policy offending “the world,” a majority of American voters…
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Russia Takes “Final” Step, Again, But Not Really
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> For the third time in a month and fifth time in just…
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Science Loses Some Friends
The scientific world lost three important figures in recent weeks, as Francis Crick, Thomas Gold and Philip Abelson have all passed away. In…
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Ford Motor Plans for Energy-Poor Future
According to The New York Times (Oct. 4), “Ford's goal, according to its own internal projections, would require an improvement of about 80…
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The One Percent Solution
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Many of the scientific papers that have contributed to global warming alarmism over…
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Demonize – Then Pulverize
Ten years ago last May, a new type of lawsuit was filed against the tobacco industry. That industry was no stranger to lawsuits; since the…
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No to Kyoto Treaty
<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />USA TODAY's editorial fails to make an economic case for U.S. ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (“Global…
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Too Smart For Our Own Good
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A Green Light for More Broadband
The Federal Communications Commission—the traffic cop of the communications industry—just raised the speed limits on broadband. Its ruling on Thursday protects many of…
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Missing in Action
In a <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />US election campaign that has seen the presidential candidates attack each other with great…
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EU Adopts ‘Imperial Preference’
Commissioner Pascal Lamy’s announcement on 20 October that lesser developed countries that implement the European agenda of the Kyoto protocol and other international treaties on…
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Ebell Responds to Editorial “The Choice on the Environment”
Thursday, October 21, 2004; Page A28 <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> The Sept. 27 editorial “The Choice on the Environment”…
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Flights of Fancy
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> The current British hysteria over global warming, which has seen party leaders…
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Health, Wealth and Happiness
How do we know when we’re happy? Strange as it may seem, this philosophical question could come back to haunt you one April 15. Psychologists…
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Hockey Stick Reduced to Sawdust
Von Storch et al (ScienceExpress, Sept. 30) first looked at the likelihood of being able to get an accurate climate signal from historical…
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Vaccine Development Needs a Booster Shot
Every year in this country influenza kills tens of thousands and hospitalizes about a quarter-million. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” />…
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Tyndall Center Proposes Energy Rationing
Dr Kevin Anderson and Richard Starkey are developing a system called Domestic Tradable Quotas (DTQs). Under this system, every <?xml:namespace prefix = st1…
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The Toxic Politics of Biotech
How far does grass pollen travel? Ask someone who has hay fever, and the response is likely to be “much too far.” But…
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Medicine Could Reach For Stars, FDA Willing
When Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in 1975, they shot for the stars and succeeded. More recently, Allen shot for the stars again.
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Carbon dioxide is your friend
Jeffrey Sparshott’s otherwise excellent article “Putin Cabinet approves signing of Kyoto protocol” (Business, Friday) unwittingly promotes the alarmist view that carbon dioxide emissions…
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More Crop for the Drop
Your morning espresso at Starbucks will soon be more expensive. Unless, that is, they find a way to make it without water or coffee, both…
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Greenpeace Seeks Greener Pastures
Recent reportage in one of Europe’s greenest publications, “The Ecologist”, cites internal admissions by the pressure group Greenpeace that it needs a face-saving exit strategy…
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A Green Push to Keep Projects Safe for Vermin
The next time you see rats roaming around public housing units in New York City, think of Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. He and a handful…
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Global Warming not a Cost-effective Target
There’s a scientific consensus, we’re often told, that global warming is a problem—despite the opinion of qualified experts ranging from the <?xml:namespace prefix…
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Fuel Economy Restrictions a Deadly Proposition (Letter to Editor)
In defending California’s new CO2 emission standard, Joan Claybrook claims that “size and design, not weight, are the critical factors” in auto safety (Letters, Sept.
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Mr. Rifkin’s Pipe Dream
Professional worrier Jeremy Rifkin's pronouncements always remind me of the characterization by one-time Speaker of the House of Representatives Thomas B. Reed of…
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Rolling in the Greenpeace: How to succeed in charity work without really trying
The IRS has announced that it will investigate the executive-compensation packages paid at 2,000 nonprofit organizations and charities. It could do worse than turning…
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Back to School for Pests
As students return to school this fall, parents will again worry about new illnesses as kids come in contact with more cold and…
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Kyotonomics Debunked
Pincas Jawetz’s argument that the United States economy would benefit by following the path of the Kyoto Protocol’s few adherents (Letters, Tuesday) is logically and…
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The Internet as Medical Adviser?
While the future of health care is heatedly debated in this presidential election year, something less obvious, but possibly much more important, is occurring behind…
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Journalistic Balancing Act?
A new study published in the journal Global Environmental Change (see here for a press report) argues that, by adhering to the…
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Taking the Scare Out of Biotech Crops
In the late 1990s, political scientist Gregory Conko had been studying food and pharmaceutical regulation as a fellow of the Competitive Enterprise Institute,…
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New York Summer Without New York Smog?
Summer is over, and it was a very good one for air quality in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />New York…
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New York’s Smog Free Summer
Summer is over, and it was a very good one for air quality. in. New York City. In fact, 2004 ranks as perhaps the cleanest…
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Global Jockeying over Global Warming
British Prime Minister Tony Blair's call for America to ratify the Kyoto Protocol this week tacitly acknowledges that Russian ratification, thought by then-Commissioner…
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Eco-Fascism Going Global
Full text available as pdf<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> We can say this for environmental…
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Antitrust: Sherman’s March Across the Globe
President Bush’s bipartisan Antitrust Modernization Commission held its first meeting in July. But after 114 years, America’s antitrust regulatory regime is overdue for burial, not…
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Lessons from the Gas Price Spike
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Labor Day weekend marked the end of summer and its high seasonal demand…
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Soso Whaley Interviewed in Brazil
Soso Whaley interview in O Estado de Sao Paulo, August 20, 2004 Soso Whaley followed the same…
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Biz-War and the Out-Of-Power Elites: The Progressive-Left Attack on the Corporation
Biz-War and the Out-Of-Power Elites: The Progressive-Left Attack on the Corporation by Prof. Jarol B. Manheim, George Washington University (Lawrence…
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Ratification Without Representation: Making a Joke out of the Constitution
“Why don't we just give them ours?” Jay Leno asked last summer as the Bush administration was helping <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns =…
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Nauseating Cases of Product Liability
Morning sickness –the nausea and vomiting that afflict more than half of pregnant women –can be debilitating. There once was…
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July Was Coldest Month in Four Years
The data show that the global temperature was 0.21°C (about 0.38°F) below the 20-year average for July. This followed on from a June…
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International Atomic Agency Regrets Lack of Progress on Kyoto
The relevant section reads, “From the viewpoint of the IAEA, ‘no progress was made in 2003 on the Kyoto Protocol, which would help…
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State Attorneys General Sue Utilities over Global Warming
The attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Wisconsin, and the corporation counsel of New York City, filed…
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The Truth About Marcia Angell
I never knew my maternal grandparents. During the nineteen-teens, my maternal grandmother died of a wound infection following a routine gall-bladder operation. A…
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Conflicting with Reality
Former New England Journal of Medicine editor Jerome Kassirer, in an August 1 Washington Post op-ed, argues that conflicts of interest in medical…
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Fear Factor
Environmental activists seeking to halt the worldwide spread of the advanced technologies they fear see <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />China…
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Obesity: a Sign We’re Doing Things Right
Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson recently designated obesity a disease, with all the negative implications that entails. Our society, crippled, it seems,…
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Gaming the World’s Poor
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Upon returning from a United Nations-sponsored conclave in 1954, philanthropist Preston Hotchkis warned…
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Bookshelf: Fighting Disease Is Only Half the Battle
As a fresh-faced medical intern, a colleague of mine once greeted a new patient with a breezy, “So what’s your problem?” “Oh, just a touch…
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Global Taxation
Your article “U.N. development goals fall short” (World, yesterday) explores the United Nations' “millennium development goals,” another in a series of efforts to…
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Spitzer’s ‘Obligations’
Darren Dopp claims that his boss, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, was right to sue Dick Grasso for collecting $190 million in pay during…
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Hot Flash: Japan vs. the NGOs
If environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were to keep a list of their “most favored nations,” one would expect <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns…
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California Wine vs. Two-Legged Pests
<?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />California is under attack by parasites, of both the six-legged and two-legged variety. The former are…
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INDUCING Bad Law
Computer users know some downloads are more trouble than they are worth. The proposed INDUCE Act (S. 2560), currently in the Senate Judiciary…
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There’s a Cure for Frivolous Drug Lawsuits
Morning sickness—the nausea and vomiting that afflicts more than half of all pregnant women—can be debilitating. There used to be an excellent prescription medication to…
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We’re Lucky to Have Clean Air, but it’s not all Due to Luck
Summer is more than half over, and, thus far, it has been a very good one for air quality in the Chicago metropolitan area. By…
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Are Specialized Gasoline Blends Obsolete
As recently as the early 1990s, the nation's gasoline supply was fungible. The same regular, mid-grade, and premium fuel was…
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Climate Consensus: Scarce resources should be spent where they’ll do the most good.
There's a scientific consensus, we're often told, that global warming is a problem—despite the opinion of qualified experts ranging from the <?xml:namespace prefix =…
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Finding the Truth about Kyoto in a Lie by Bill Clinton
The old joke goes, “How can you tell a politician is lying?” to which the answer is, “His lips are moving.” At this…
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Tort Law ‘to Make Law’
A recent little-noticed New York Times story says a great deal about <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />America's current legal climate:…
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Smog Shrinkage
Summer is more than half over, and thus far it has been a very good one for air quality in theWashington, D.C. metropolitan area. By…
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Tort Law ‘to Make Law’
A recent little-noticed New York Times story says a great deal about <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />America's current legal climate:…
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No-Second-Thoughts “Science”: A Noticeable Difference
Two recent findings, one right next to <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Washington, D.C., the other as far away as is possible…
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New Kids on the (Tax-Exempt) Block: The Rise of the “527”s
History will remember the 2004 election for many things, most notably for its effect on the political futures of George W. Bush and Iraq. But…
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For Unions, Protecting Jobs Means Protectionism
On June 7, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that Mexican trucks can enter the U.S. without a government agency review of their impact on…
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DEBUNK THE JUNK – July 26, 2004
“Statements of alarm by newscasters and glorification of wannabe experts are two telltale tricks of the fear mongers trade………..others [include]: the use of…
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RFID Tags and Privacy
Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology promises many consumer benefits. With RFID, goods on trucks, in trains, and in warehouses can be inventoried without unloading…
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Visions of “Ecodemics”
In Six modern plagues, veterinarian and journalist Mark Jerome Walters, like many modern-day greens, deems humankind the source of many of the world’s problems. He…
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Celluloid Bolshies
Actor Charles Grodin, in his book “I Like It Better When You're Funny,” recalls a particularly devastating put-down from a critic: “If you…
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Calculating Kyoto’s Costs
Your Sunday edition cites politicians on both sides of the Atlantic weighing in on the U.S. presidential election by complaining of President Bush's…
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Wave of Regulations Will Follow Tsunami of Federal Spending
On top of the $2 trillion in tax revenues the government now collects, agencies issue more than 4,000 yearly regulations. Costing some $800 billion annually, regulations…
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`Businesses Don’t Have Social Responsibilities; People Do’
Calvin Coolidge once said that the business of America is business. He might have added that the business of business everywhere is to pursue profits. …
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Trade Wars and the Silver Screen
Op-ed pages, political Web sites, and call-in radio shows were abuzz last spring with rants against the “outsourcing” of “U.S. jobs.” Most of those critiques…
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Green Grow the Pressies
In 1995 they told us that Yucca Mountain was going to explode in a nuclear firestorm. It won’t. In 1998 they told us that nuclear-weapons…
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DEBUNK THE JUNK – July 25, 2004
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> “What we did in making nutrition labeling mandatory did not help obesity.
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Game of Show and Don’t Tell
In case you missed it, Morgan Spurlock brought his “Super Size Me” sideshow to Capitol Hill yesterday. Sharing the stage was the animal rights-supported Physicians…
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Canada and China Versus America
Riots, vandalism, raucous protests we’re all familiar with hard-edged displays of anti-Americanism abroad these days. But this pernicious envy also takes other forms. Not all…
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Reformers Are too Willing to Turn a Blind Eye to Liberal Fixes for our Economic Problems
<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office” /> Sirs, Your edition of July 6 features two distinct columns that demonstrate…
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Reformers are too Willing to Turn a Blind Eye to Liberal Fixes for our Economic Problems
Sirs, Your edition of July 6 features two distinct columns that demonstrate a persistent neglect of economic liberalisation as a way of resolving societal…
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Guess Your Liability
In these days of corporate scandal, who can argue against full disclosure on financial statements? But now comes one cockeyed movement that pushes the concept…
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Can You Overhear Me Now?
The Justice Department has asked the Senate for help in extending hidebound, phone-company style wiretap capability into new Internet-based phone calls (called “VoIP” for…
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Greens’ New Menace: Shrimp
H.L. Mencken famously defined puritanism as “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” Yesterday’s puritans worried about their neighbors enjoying alcohol or gambling…
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Split Decision at the SEC
Nobel Prize economist Ronald Coase long ago warned of a political risk—that of wishing to be an “economic statesman,” which he defined as a person…
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More Regulations Do Not Inspire More Trust (Letter to the Editor)
It is not surprising for regulators to seize upon business failures to argue for more regulation, touting regulations alleged benefits while minimizing its downside. But…
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Energy-saving Light Bulbs Initially Dim Enthusiasm
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The FDA Poses Threat to Our Health, Liberty
An unusual and powerful coalition of special interests is lobbying Congress for a new tobacco deal: Put the Food and DrugAdministration in charge of…
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Energy Saving Light Bulbs Initially Dim Enthusiasm
I recently bought my first energy-saving compact fluorescent bulb. According to the federal Environmental Protection Agency, if every household in America used one of these…
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A Sign of Things to Come
There’s a war raging across the world. Not the war on terror—but a war against corporations, waged by anti-globalization activists and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
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Junk Law: The CO2 Litigation of the State Attorneys General
On October 23, 2003, 12 states, three cities, and 14 advocacy groups sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for rejecting an…
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No Growthers’ ‘Green Line’ Shouldn’t Deter Bank Loans
America’s top banks are routinely asked to support all sorts of charitable causes. Yet not all causes deserve support. One such unworthy cause is the tax-exempt…
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They’re Coming for Your Shrimp
H.L. Mencken famously defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." Yesterday’s puritans worried about their neighbors enjoying alcohol or gambling…
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Should the Government Fund Nanotechnology Research?
Full article available as pdf. …
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The Progressive Era’s Derailment of Classical-Liberal Evolution
It is true that where a considerable part of the costs incurred are external costs from the point of view of the acting individuals…
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If You Really Want to Reduce Gas Prices, Here’s How
Despite claims to the contrary, there is not much the federal government can do about high oil and gasoline prices in the short-term. Indeed, given…