Check out this piece by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, an Acton senior fellow, in which she argues “that marriage is the cornerstone of civil society. And the images of Katrina demonstrate this, if we are willing to see.”

Read more on Rebuilding Civil Society in New Orleans…

It’s one thing to have a great government policy put in place with intention of seeking justice. It’s quite another to continue to promote policies whose unintended consequences hurt the most vulnerable populations.

Read more on Gas Rationing Hurts the Poor…

Following the devastation in New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, bands of looters are running rampant throughout the city. Things have gotten so bad that New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin “ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and stop thieves who were becoming increasingly hostile.”

Read more on Lootin’ in Louisiana…

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the formation of Poland’s Solidarity movement. Samuel Gregg says that Solidary gives us a view of a labor union whose “stand for the truth about the human person and against the lie of Marxism contributed immeasurably to the collapse of one of the two great totalitarian evils that disfigured the twentieth-century.”

Read more on For Our Freedom and Yours: Remembering Solidarity…

Rev. Robert Sirico responds to Pat Robertson’s highly-publicized call for the assassination of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. “What is needed here, I believe, is a time of reflection. Christianity is not a national religion. It is does not regard every enemy of the nation-state as worthy of execution. It prefers peace to war. It chooses diplomacy over threat. It respects the right to life of everyone, even those who have objectionable political views,” he writes.

Read more on Robertson’s Fatwa…

Hurricane Katrina passed over New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf coast earlier today, and reports of “price gouging” are already coming in.

In Alabama, when the governor declares a state of emergency, it triggers a legal barrier to “unconscionable pricing.” That is (arbitrarily?) determined by the government to be a raise of 25% or more above the “normal” price.

Read more on The Ethics of ‘Price Gouging’…

Aah, the good old days!

In case you haven’t noticed, the price of gasoline has been going up lately. And, with all the predictability of the swallows returning to Capistrano, the cry has gone up from certain quarters of society for the government to do something about the situation. Unfortunately for consumers in paradise, the State of Hawaii has decided to respond to that demand by instituting price caps on gasoline.

The price caps, which will be instituted on September 1, are the result of a process that began with the passage of Act 77, which was enacted in June of 2002. Implementation of the act was delayed, however, in order for enough time to pass for a more comprehensive study of Hawaii’s gasoline market to be undertaken. One might ask whether it might have been better to do that before passing price control legislation, but I suppose we should be thankful that the legislature required this inquiry at all.
Read more on The Magic of Price Controls!…

A commentary from the Tax Foundation looks at government subsidies for the construction of a new stadium for MLB’s Washington Nationals. Analyst Eric A. Miller writes, “Funding a new stadium in the District may be good politics, but it is bad public policy. Major League Baseball will be laughing all the way to the bank while D.C. residents will find that they get much less than they were promised — and paid for.”

Read more on Good Politics, Bad Policy…

I was wondering how long it would take for this to happen. The acceptability of Google’s politics and public persona could only insulate it from the requisite corporate suspicion for only so long.

Read more on Et tu, Brute?…

Remember that the next time you hear someone sing the praises of single-payer, government run health care programs. Canada’s system is often cited as an ideal model for the United States to emulate. The problem with that, however, is simple: if the US adopts a Canadian style system, where will Canadians go for their health care?

Canada’s National Health Service: The Sick Man of the Great White North

Recognizing their failure to provide timely treatment through the national system, some provincial governments are sending backlogged patients to the United States rather than encouraging Canada’s private sector to pick up the slack.

Demand exceeded supply in 1999 and 2000 for 1,200 Ontario cancer patients who were forced to wait an unacceptably long time for treatment. Providers on both sides of the border acted. Cancer Care Ontario (CCO) and Princess Margaret Hospital in Ontario offered patients the option of receiving radiation therapy at Roswell Park Cancer Institute of Buffalo. “This short-term measure is helping us to ensure that everyone receives treatment within a medically acceptable period,” Ken Shumak, CCO’s president, said at the time.

Pamela Germain, vice president for managed care and outreach at Roswell Park, notes that some patients had waited 14 weeks postsurgery, with eight weeks being the satisfactory outer limit. “We negotiated case rates for breast cancer and prostate cancer and cleared up a backlog of 1,110 patients in two years,” says Germain. Hospitals in Detroit and Cleveland also picked up the slack until provinces purchased new equipment and hired health care professionals to run it.

Canada’s system may be the gold standard for government-run health care, but only if you’re looking for a system that can’t provide essential medical services in a timely manner.
Read more on You Get What You Pay For…