Month: October 2001

The Supreme Court has agreed to review the Cleveland school choice program. If the court rejects all uses of public money to help children attend religious schools, other school choice programs around the country will be in jeopardy.

I'm Pete du Pont with the National Center for Policy Analysis, and as of today, my job will be infinitely harder and my life considerably more disarranged. If I wind up in the wrong city, write the wrong column, give the wrong speech, or just forget what my name is, there'll be a reason.

become commonplace to suggest the Bush Presidency will be defined by the long term response to September 11. So far, I think he's headed for a good spot in the history books.

With all the grim realities we've had to deal with since September 11, it's been nice to have an escape. As Frank Deford noted in an essay on NPR, while certain songs were taken off the radio, and movies held back, nobody had to apologize for sports, and nowhere was it better than this year's baseball season.

There's more proof that privatizing social security works, and it comes in the latest numbers from Texas.

Historically, economists favored public spending on new programs for short-term stimulus. But it takes a long time to set up, and rarely is implemented in the same places where unemployment is high.

The leaders of the world are beginning to find out that President Bush means what he says. The first indication of this came when he announced that the Kyoto Protocol for the control of greenhouse gas emissions was "fundamentally flawed," and thus unacceptable to the United States.

The peace protests which followed U.S. and British air strikes in Afghanistan, were, alas, preditable. Muslim protests I'll set aside for, out of ignorance, even non-fanatics believe the offensive is an attack on their religion. One hopes they'll come to see otherwise.

With the terrorist war now escalated to a real war on both sides, we need to think about the possibility of our Middle Eastern oil supply being disrupted. One estimate, from Raymond James and Associates, put the chances at 80 percent in the next two years – and 20 to 30 percent in the short term.

I'm just now getting to a splendid piece of history and biography by Herbert Bix, "Hirohito and the Making Of Modern Japan."

A number of news reports have noted the sorriness of politics as usual when it comes to squeezing money out of the government. The squeeze being companies who don't need it, but figure they can grab some anyway.

There's a good chance the number of uninsured is going to grow because of layoffs and employers who are hard-pressed to continue offering medical insurance.

The world's been turned upside down since September 11, some for the good, some not.

I won't debate terminology. Our public discourse has deemed the September 11th terrorists cowards. The act — unprovoked, malicious — against innocent people has the flavor of cowardice. Then again, if you give your life for a cause, however demented, are you a coward? I'll let others sift through the fine points in the rubble.

There's a notion that war is good for an economy, and that since we're headed into one — of what type is yet to be determined — increased spending will be good for the economy and we'll pull out of our economic slide. This mind set is partly informed by the belief that World War 2 pulled us out of the depression. It did, but it's not that simple.

Amazingly, the head of the Taliban government said the U.S. didn't have the guts to attack his country. First, we aren't going to attack his country — we're going to attack terrorists in his country.