Freedom Index
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5 years ago
May 2021
“Without Roe [v. Wade], political battles over abortion will continue, but they will mainly involve state-by-state legislative debates rather than arguments about constitutional law and the composition of the Supreme Court. While neither side will be happy with that situation, it will reduce the stakes of any given legislative or judicial decision and turn down the heat of a controversy that has frequently dominated national politics.”
Jacob Sullum
“The Right to an Abortion Isn’t Going Away”
10 years ago
May 2016
“After seven years of economic realities smacking Democratic promises in the face, [Sen.] Bernie Sanders has arrived to say that the problem with all the spending, the centralizing, and the stimulusing, is that it did not go nearly far enough. It would be more comforting to those who share Sanders’ broad critiques about U.S. foreign policy and domestic criminal justice if those were the issues most animating his infectiously enthusiastic fan base. But outside of a memorable February debate exchange over Henry Kissinger, they are not. Those most ardently Feeling the Bern so far this campaign season are the ones embracing his economic ideas. And sadly, many of those ideas are terrible.”
Matt Welch
“Bernie’s Bad Ideas”
“Even if he loses, Sanders has still shown he can attract around 40 percent of Democratic voters across the country. That’s an amazing performance for somebody who keeps a plaque on the office wall honoring Eugene V. Debs, who ran his 1920 Socialist Party presidential campaign from the prison cell where he was serving a sentence for sedition. Sanders is a guy who throws around words like oligarchy like penny candy, promises to stop virtually all U.S. trade with countries not run by someone named Castro, and thinks the federal government should set up ‘worker-owned businesses.’ He wants you to be able to borrow money from the government at the Post Office. And his contempt for the marketplace borders on the paranoid.”
Glenn Garvin
“The Sanders Surprise”
35 years ago
May 1991
“While a number of peripheral causes may help explain why postal prices are rising astronomically, most mailers see one fundamental reason: Labor costs at the Postal Service have spun out of control….Facing no competition and no bottom line, the Postal Service operates much like a private club, existing primarily to serve itself, contends economist Douglas Adie of Ohio University. Says Lee Epstein, president of Mailmen Inc. of Long Island, a volume mailing service: ‘There’s no competition, so they feel free to do whatever they want.'”
Carolyn Lochhead
“The Superior Mail”
45 years ago
May 1981
“In 1970, when Congress and the Nixon administration agreed to continue passenger rail travel in the face of growing public preference for auto, bus, and plane, a modest $40 million was put up to get Amtrak rolling. In 1981 Amtrak is still rolling, and the taxpayers now are laying down nearly $900 million a year for it. Amtrak officials enthusiastically predict that the system will soon achieve ‘a permanent and ever more crucial role in our national transportation system.’ More realistically, the Interstate Commerce Commission notes that ‘Amtrak seems to have stabilized into a position of permanently subsidized operations.'”
Jeffrey Shedd
“Amtrak: Congress’s Toy Trains”
“The popular wisdom is that businesses would like nothing better than to be left alone by government and that this prompts their increasingly vociferous denunciations of environmental, energy, safety, and consumer regulations. OSHA and EPA, it would seem, are agents of the devil. In fact, however, much government interference in the marketplace is inspired by business requests. Producers frequently seek tariffs, subsidies, licensing requirements, and so on to shore up their markets, boost their prices, or enhance their finances.”
Russell Shannon
“Are Businesses Really Opposed to Big Government?”
50 years ago
May 1976
“Freedom for the prostitute means not just freedom for those who ply the profession, who choose the life style; it means more freedom for all the members of society: freedom from hypocrisy; freedom for individuals to join the profession they choose, to spend their time as they choose; sexual freedom for all, and perhaps most important, freedom from yet another set of irrational and hypocritical laws criminalizing an act without victims.”
Timothy Condon
“What To Do About Prostitution”
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