Sep 22, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Andrew Wolf describes the latest nonsense as school starts in New York City:A fetish was made about the delivery of books and materials for the first day of classes. "For too many years," said the mayor, "we heard stories about books not being in classrooms in time for the first day of school. I am proud to say that we made good on our promise in January, and here they are, ready for Monday's classes." Yes, most books and materials were delivered on time. But most of these were books for classroom libraries to encourage independent reading--nice to have in place the first day of school, but hardly the centerpiece of the first couple of week's classroom activity.
The cost of this new efficiency, however, was that scores of back-office people who normally processed new employees were dispatched to the schools to count the books and make sure they were distributed to classrooms. Because of this diversion of resources, 5,000 new teachers didn't get their first regular paychecks this past Monday, 10 times the number than were similarly inconvenienced last year. New teacher retention is one of the key problems in schools across the nation, particularly here in New York City; one quarter of this year's crop can be expected to leave by next September.This won't help. [NY Sun]
Sep 21, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses, Dollars & Crosses 2
Here's Andrew Sullivan on BBC dishonesty:This week was the week in which the BBC essentially capitulated in its war against the Blair government. Under cross-examination, the BBC's reporter, Andrew Gilligan, admitted a series of what might politely be called "errors" in his claim that the British government had inserted fabricated intelligence findings in its now-famous Iraq dossier, compiled before the Iraq war. The whole notion that the government had lied was revealed as invention: "The allegation I intended to make was a spin. I do regret those words--and I shouldn't have used them." Isn't that a big difference? A government putting the best spin on facts to make a case in a democratic society (that's called politics) and outright deception? Mr. Gilligan also admitted that he wrongly "outed" the late scientist, David Kelly, as the source of some of the material, to members of Parliament. Being pushed into the public realm was the main reason Kelly committed suicide earlier this year.
Related Reading: Saddam Hussein's Real Ministers of Disinformation Come Out of the ClosetSep 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
I love the New York Sun:[Sen.] Kerry also claimed, "We are at risk of being the first generation in history to pass this place off in worse shape than we were handed it by our parents." That's at odds with the claims of many environmental experts and historians. "The long-term trend of declining air pollution has continued under the first year of the Bush administration, according to preliminary EPA data, and is certain to continue for the rest of this decade and beyond," wrote the American Enterprise Institute's Steven Hayward in a recent article warning of "Eco-Hysteria."
"It would be virtually impossible for anyone, no matter how tenacious or determined, to prevent continued and substantial reductions in air pollution," wrote another AEI fellow, Joel Schwartz, in a recent study.
Sep 18, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
The cartoon was inspried by the second photograph in this story: Clinton praises Democratic candidates in Iowa. And the Iraqi tyrant happens to be in the news this morning: 'Saddam' Tape Urges Iraqis to Fight Americans.
Sep 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
NEWPORT BEACH, CALIFORNIA -- Expansion of Medicare through prescription drug subsidies, currently in a Congressional conference committee, will deal a serious blow to pharmaceutical research. That's the claim of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine (AFCM), a non-profit organization which favors capitalism in medicine."In addition to discovering and testing drugs, pharmaceutical companies also face enormous administrative costs to obtain FDA approval to put drugs on the market," Richard E. Ralston, AFCM's executive director, explained in an op-ed. "If drug firms know that a drug's price is established by the state--not by patients--there is no interest in discovering, testing and creating new drugs."
While Ralston said he welcomes the latest effort by some House Republicans, led by Pennsylvania Rep. Patrick Toomey, to block the worst ideas in the recently approved Medicare drug bills, Ralston insisted that preserving the world's highest quality drugs means total opposition to any expansion of Medicare.
"A free market in pharmaceuticals is the only way to insure the flow of new, breakthrough drugs and competitive pricing," Ralston contended. "Controls on drugs, doctors, and cost will distort the drug market from the science stage to the pricing stage."
Ralston urged seniors who treasure their independence, including those covered for prescription drugs through employer-based plans, to tell
Congress: "Leave my drugs--which means those who produce them--alone!"
Americans for Free Choice in Medicine, (AFCM), founded in 1993, is the nation's only educational organization based on individual rights, personal responsibility and free market ideas in medicine.
Sep 16, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Stephen Pollard, in the Sunday Telegraph, is wrong that "national self-determination" has any legitimacy as a cause. That said, he still has a point when he shows that Hamas is so much worse than that:Most coverage of Hamas in the Western media betrays a quite astonishing misunderstanding of its role and its aims. The received wisdom is that, although its tactics may be repellent, Hamas is a group of freedom fighters battling against the Israelis for their rights--something akin to nationalist terrorist groups such as the IRA or ETA, which, however foul their methods, have an aim--national self-determination--that can be shared by perfectly decent, non-violent supporters.
It follows logically that any Israeli response to Hamas is reported as merely tit for tat and, in its own way, equally destructive to the chances of a negotiated settlement. Both sides are as bad as each other [...]
That view, however widely it may be propagated, is so warped that it can only raise suspicions about the agenda of those who peddle it. The comparison with the IRA is entirely specious. If the IRA had espoused not merely the separation of Northern Ireland from the UK but also the murder of every Unionist and every Anglican in Great Britain, the abolition of the United Kingdom and its replacement with a Catholic state, run by the IRA and dedicated to converting the rest of the world to Catholicism by force, then there might be some merit in the comparison.
[...] Talk of "negotiation" with Hamas is meaningless--as meaningless as the idea that you can negotiate with Osama bin Laden. You cannot negotiate with the man who intends only your murder and the destruction of your country and who is prepared to die--and kill you in the process--rather than settle for less.
