Year: 2007
HEALTHCARE DEPT.
Fibbing to Organ Donors
Given all that they ask of other people, the venality of the organ transplant business amazes me. I’ve already complained about their willingness to pay everyone involved in a transplant operation except the person who actually has the organ to be transplanted. To the surprise of nobody who understands economics, there’s an organ shortage. Here… Read more
UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT DEPT.
People May Be Reading This
Lindsay Beyerstein links to an Ad Council ad that’s apparently trying to encourage kids to be careful what they post online. You can see it for yourself here, but to save you time, Lindsay’s description will do: The ad shows a girl called Sarah silently enduring public harassment from a series of progressively older and… Read more
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT DEPT.
Outlawing Terrifying Hate Crimes
We libertarians usually dislike hate-crime laws. These laws increase the sentence for crimes motivated by bigotry, and that just sounds an awful lot like a thought-crime to me. Kip Esquire doesn’t see much of a problem with this. He points out that we already have “therapy courts” that treat people more leniently for crimes committed… Read more
WAR ON DRUGS DEPT.
The Murder of Kathryn Johnston
Lately I’ve been blogging about some scandalous behavior by Chicago Cops. There’s been some bad stuff in the news, with more to come, but the Windy City has nothing going on that remotely compares to what happened in Atlanta last November. That’s when Atlanta cops shot and killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston during a drug raid.… Read more
ECONOMICS DEPT.
Lies, Damn Lies, and Lou Dobbs
Lou Dobbs testified before Congress last month about the supposed perils of free trade: Since the beginning of this new century, the United States has lost more than three million manufacturing jobs. Three million more jobs have been lost to cheap overseas labor markets… That’s 6 million jobs. Donald Luskin points out that there are… Read more