The Bush administration may turn out to be what Bill Clinton promised: "the most ethical administration in the history of the Republic." Or at least people seem to think so, judging by the results of the May 1 USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll. A full 84% of Americans believe President Bush is showing good moral leadership, and 77% think he is both honest and trustworthy and a strong and decisive leader.
Ten years ago last week, the first charter school opened its doors in Minnesota. Over the past decade, a single school with just 20 students has blossomed into a full-fledged movement of more than 2,400 schools and more than half a million students. And the numbers continue to grow.
Most Americans have never celebrated May Day, the working-class holiday, but the superiority of our free-market system has not always been self-evident. For most of the last century, from 1917 through 1981, socialism was in ascendancy, dominating the thinking of intellectuals and the governments of the world. Its failure became undeniably clear only in the final two decades of the 20th century.
The Czech Republic survived four decades of communism. Now it's facing a different kind of centralizing power, the European Union.
Ever since Israel's military incursion into the West Bank to root out those responsible for the recent spate of bombings and to possibly prevent future attacks, the international community has demanded that Israel withdraw its forces and renew peace negotiations with Yasser Arafat.
The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times foresaw "intolerable deterioration and possible extinction" for the human race as the result of pollution. We were "in an environmental crisis," according to biologist Barry Commoner. "Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years" unless we take immediate action, Harvard biologist George Wald predicted.
Tax time again, and Americans who pay income taxes are sharing a couple of familiar complaints: We are paying too much in taxes, and the tax code is infuriatingly complex.
The major elements of the tax system, from the personal income tax law to the payroll taxes that are deducted every month, were put into place during an era when most women, certainly most mothers, were not in the workforce. That is no longer the case. Today, 70 percent of all married women, and 60 percent of mothers with children under the age of 6, work for wages. Yet the tax laws are biased toward single-earner households in which only one spouse works.
When America's best symphony orchestras evaluate potential musicians, the candidates audition "blind"; they play their instruments behind a screen so the auditioning committee does not know the musicians' race, sex or appearance but only hears the quality of their performance. Auditions are thus an honest meritocracy, and better symphonies are the result.
Over the past decade, self-appointed health care advocates have talked a lot about health care reform in America, ranging from issues such as a patients' bill of rights to reign in HMOs to the plight of the uninsured.
It turns out that many women — and that obviously includes plenty of mothers – are not faring too well in their retirement years. The good news is that many are living longer. The bad news is that they are increasingly likely to be subsisting at or near poverty in their old age.
So many federal agencies have been exposed falsifying environmental data that you have to wonder how many other frauds remain undetected. First came the December revelation that employees of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Forest Service had planted fake wild lynx hair in states where there were no lynx, so that the areas could be labeled critical habitat, and thus off limits to human use.
The professional welfare class — not the people on welfare, but politicians, academics and activists with a vested interest in perpetuating dependency on government — are preparing to undo one of the most successful public policy reforms of the 1990s.
Yesterday French "human rights" groups said they had received assurances from Paris's justice minister that she would limit her cooperation with the investigation of suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui because America is seeking the death penalty in his case. And indeed, hardly a day goes by without a fresh European derision of the simplistic Americans and their war against terrorism.
The lack of qualified workers seriously threatens sustained economic growth, especially in the manufacturing sector. To address this dilemma, the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) and the Enterprise Prison Institute (EPI) held a Congressional briefing in Washington, D.C. to learn ways to address this critical shortage. Surprisingly, one of the best answers will also make America safer: putting inmates to work.
In the light of events of the last year – rolling blackouts in California, ongoing electricity deregulation in numerous states, volatile price fluctuations for electricity and gasoline and the continuing war against terrorism – the debate over America's future energy needs has taken on heightened importance.
At the dawn of the 21st century our income tax system is 90 years old; Social Security and employer-provided health care and pension systems are over 60. These systems worked well in the thrilling days of yesteryear, but over the past half century families and the workforce have changed. Two-career families are common, and 70% of all married women are in the work force. Part-time work, especially by women, is commonplace, people change jobs frequently, and most single mothers work.
President Bush should continue advocating his proposal to allow younger workers to divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into a personal retirement account (PRA) that would be invested in the market.
Should state governments be allowed to give scholarships funded by tax dollars to low-income students to attend community (charter) schools or private schools (including religious private schools) in order to assist children in getting a better education? Liberal doctrine holds that such scholarships are too threatening to the public schools and their teachers.
Despite the war, President Bush hasn't forgotten about domestic policy. Indeed, he's been working the war against terrorism into his discussions of many domestic-policy areas. Because the war has affected the economy, the president has tied it to his calls for permanent tax cuts to more rapidly grow the economy, create the jobs people need to prosper, and generate the increased revenues government needs to fight the war.
On February 20, the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments in a landmark case that may well set the course for future school choice efforts. The high court is asked to determine whether a Cleveland school choice program that lets children use taxpayer-funded scholarships to attend private religious schools is constitutional.
The anti-First Amendment crowd is at work in Washington this week, attempting to limit political speech during election campaigns. Their vehicle is the Shays-Meehan campaign-finance bill, and their goal is to drive the money out of politics–even if it requires driving free speech out of political campaigns.
It's unfortunate that it took something like the Enron debacle to focus attention on improving 401(k) retirement plans.