Check out this exchange, involving Tony Blankley from The Washington Times, Pat Buchanan of MSNBC, and Eleanor Clift of Newsweek, from last week’s McLaughlin Group about President Bush’s call for people to conserve gasoline in their daily activities: MR. BLANKLEY: Let me make a quick point. Free-market prices maintain equilibrium of supply and demand. Let the price go up. People will make individual decisions. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Right. MR. BLANKLEY: And they will cut back. They did when the prices went...

Also from last week’s McLaughlin Group, Mort Zuckerman from U.S. News & World Report makes the important point that rising costs of gasoline greatly impact the poorest and most vulnerable populations. MR. ZUCKERMAN: …It is very difficult in America to really cut back on gasoline consumption, because people go to work and go shopping in their cars. We do not have public transportation in the way that Europe does. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Well, we need that for the macroeconomy and the...

Eric Schansberg ponders the lessons that we can learn from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One of Schansberg’s biggest questions in light of the government’s failure to effectively manage the disaster is this: if the government, both local and federal, failed at all levels to deal with Katrina before, during, and after it made landfall, shouldn’t we be looking for other options rather than trying to depend more on a system that obviously failed? Schansberg suggests that while the government...

The Samaritan Guide is NOW Accepting Applications — for the 2005 online Guide. The Samaritan Survey is the entry point for the October 1 — November 30 application to the 2005 Samaritan Guide. Note: 2005 Samaritan Award applicants need NOT re-apply. Application deadline is November 30, 2005 at 11:59pm ...

This interview with Charles Sandmel, a veteran of the municipal bond market, gives us some insights into current trends in the ethical investing movement. Some key points: The leading market sectors over the last few years are in areas that “most of them [ethical investors] avoid, such as energy.”Ethical investors don’t buy “Big Oil because of the pollution problems.”Examples of ethical investments: wind turbine farms and facilities.Examples of unethical investments: government bonds for nations with standing armies.Sandmel likes bond funds...

In between dire warnings from the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC) about the evil neo-liberal economic order and calls for more money from its member denominations, this gem arrived today via Ecumenical News International: Church bank says its loans are at forefront of anti-poverty fight Utrecht (ENI). Thirty years after its launch, a church-backed international development bank says it has e a world leader in providing resources for small loans for poor people to set up in business. The...

Rosa Parks Cicle is a small park in the middle of downtown Grand Rapids. It is often used as a public music venue in the summertime, and an ice skating rink in the winter. Unfortunately, this year it was scheduled to remain closed (like so many parks facilities and pools in the area) due to a citywide budget crunch. Here is where businesses and private individuals step up and take the baton where the local government fails. Two businesses (LaSalle...

A man’s home is his castle, unless of course government officials need his property for a new strip mall or a hotel. Since June, when the U.S. Supreme Court dramatically expanded government’s eminent domain powers, some three dozen states have formulated measures to protect property owners from the Kelo v. New London ruling. Sam Gregg looks at the potential Kelo has to “violate basic norms of justice concerning property.” Read the mentary here. ...

Acton President Rev. Robert A. Sirico appeared yesterday on Your World with Neil Cavuto on the Fox News Channel and discussed the president’s nomination of Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O’Connor as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. If you didn’t have a chance to catch the interview live, you can watch it below. ...

Any predictions on how this will turn out? All eyes should be watching Japan, whose legislature just approved the privatization of their postal service. (It is important to note that the Japanese postal service is markedly different from ours here in the States.) It is also a state-owned savings bank with more than $3 trillion (਱.7 trillion) in assets, making it by some measures the largest financial institution in the world, and the largest provider of life insurance in the...

For a succinct article on governmental processes versus private processes, see this nice little report by Bill Steigerwald. It focuses on responses to Hurricane Katrina by panies and by the city, state, and federal governments. Stories like these need to be circulated more widely. ...

An article appeared in Wired News today on the unintended consequences of wind farms. One of these consequences — among many others, I’m sure — is “an astronomical level of bird kills.” Thousands of aging turbines stud the brown rolling hills of the Altamont Pass on I-580 east of San Francisco Bay, a testament to one of the nation’s oldest and best-known experiments in green energy. Next month, hundreds of those blades will spin to a stop, in what appears...