Category: Pete du Pont

I'm Pete du Pont with the National Center for Policy Analysis, and today I have a modest proposal for political ads on television.

Normally, I'm a tub thumper when it comes to privatizing education: tuition tax credits, vouchers, charters, whatever works. Today, I'll just report the facts, and you decide where you stand.

We can be sure of one thing, no matter who wins the presidency, no matter which party or parties control the House and the Senate: health care will be rationed. For that matter, it's being rationed now.

I've picked on the Canadian National Health System before, but it isn't gratuitous.

Now that January's winding up, I'm still awaiting the return of the chicken littles. I'd like to think Y2K shut them up, but I doubt it. Not when there's still recession, debt, trade disaster and evil globalism to rant against. But just as with the Y2K non-disaster, the evidence, as Dallas fed economist Richard Alm recently pointed out, is on the side of the optimists.

I will now demonstrate the difference between people who understand the meaning of free trade, and those who don't.

Critics of government lawsuits against tobacco companies and gunmakers have picked up a surprising ally: former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich. He says his former boss is making — his words — blatant end runs around the democratic process.

always said I'd be equally happy with a flat tax or a sales tax if it meant ditching the current IRS income tax. But some numbers have made me rethink my sales tax comfort level.

Our unemployment insurance system needs to be reformed. Although most employers pay a payroll tax on all their workers for the purpose, only 38% of the unemployed get benefits. Furthermore, the system is subject to abuse, and economists agree that the benefits encourage the jobless to stay unemployed longer.

The Clinton administration wants an increase in corporate taxes to crack down on corporate tax shelters that reduce tax revenues.

Now that the Social Security Administration has begun distributing taxpayers benefit estimations, the NCPA has unveiled the most personal and accurate Internet Social Security Benefits Calculator available.

Late last year I suggested that if republicans want to pass tax cuts this session, they should hold off on a huge package that Bill Clinton and congressional liberals can demagogue to death and cherry pick instead. In other words, go with the most attractive, easiest-to-sell cuts.

I had to read the wall street journal story twice to believe it. The department of health and human services investigated a new jersey hospital which treated any patient, rich or poor, for free. And now, the Deborah Heart and Lung Center faces civil and criminal charges, prosecution and fines — for dispensing charity.

I have to acknowledge a queasy sense of DEJA VU when governor George W. Bush promised no new taxes — indeed, promised a tax cut — during a recent debate. At least he didn't say "read my lips."

It's official. Jesse Jackson has finally gone over the edge. It was bad enough that Jackson railed against punishing kids who started a riot in the stands at a football game.

Yet another tax-funded school voucher case is wending its way through the courts, this time from Cleveland.

Just how I wanted to start the New Year: reading that government was just as wasteful as I said it was last year.

Last year, when Congress rejected the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, you'd have thought they voted down mom, apple pie and the flag. But their sense of History was working just fine.

Some entrepreneurs have struck a one-two blow for capitalism and the Internet.

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration, OSHA, floated a plan last week that makes companies with people who work at home responsible for their workplaces. The nanny state just took a big step forward.

If at first you don't succeed, take smaller steps and people won't realize where you're going. This is the new motto of the liberal movement, now at the tail end of the Clinton presidency. Learning from him, incrementalism is now seen as their key to victory.

With his domestic policies stalled and his personal reputation tarnished by Zippergate, Bill Clinton's last hope for a legacy lies in foreign you should pardon the expression — affairs.

I have bad news for the trial lawyers and Clinton administration officials are pursuing constitutionally and legally dubious lawsuits against gun manufacturers. They're trying to recover public costs of what they call criminal and negligent gun misuse. The bad news? The public isn't with them.

Sometimes ideas are so breathtaking they can't be summed up a couple of hundred words. In this case, it's a piece in the December second issue of Intellectual Capital dot com by Alex Lightman. It's an interesting plan to take the United States public.

Yesterday we considered al gore's flawed health care proposals. What about his rival's?