Month: July 2009

July 03, 2009

Health Care Roundtable

The Heartland Institute and Consumers for Health Care Choices are sponsoring Health Care Roundtables across the country. Earlier this week, Acton development associate Charles Roelofs attended a roundtable and offers this report: The event was co-sponsored by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and Americans for Prosperity – Michigan. Continue Reading...
July 02, 2009

Venezuela’s New Man Has No Old Rights

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says that “the world needs a new moral architecture.” He also has a clear idea of what that morality ought to look like. Speaking at a conference on socialism in May of this year, he said that “every factory must… produce not only briquettes, steel, and aluminum, but also, above all, the new man and woman, the new society, the socialist society.” Continue Reading...
July 02, 2009

International Aid Closes, Effective Immediately

In a blow to international relief work, the Spring Lake-based International Aid has announced that it is ceasing operation, effective immediately. CEO Dr. Gordon Loux cited a “perfect storm” of fiscal hardship: “We have tried to turn it around and we’ve sent out a number of appeals,” he said. Continue Reading...
July 02, 2009

U.S. Doctoral Degree Prestige in Science, Engineering, Economics

A recent NBER working paper, “Internationalization of U.S. Doctorate Education,” takes a look at trends in doctoral degrees awarded by American institutions in the physical sciences, engineering, and economics. From the abstract, “The representation of a large number of students born outside the United States among the ranks of doctorate recipients from U.S. Continue Reading...
July 01, 2009

Acton Commentary: The paradox of liberty

Liberty is something we have valued for years in the United States, and the recent events that have occurred in Iran and Honduras demonstrate there are many people throughout the world who wish they were blessed to live in a country that protects and values liberty.  Continue Reading...
July 01, 2009

Preview: Pope Benedict XVI on the Market Economy and Ethics

Pope Benedict XVI’s much anticipated economics encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, is scheduled to be released early next week, according reports. For a good sense of this pope’s thinking on economics, we offer an article the then-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger presented in 1985 at a symposium in Rome.  Continue Reading...