The American Enterprise articles from July 2002

The American Enterprise archives from July 2002

Incremental innovation improves patient health; a world of ideas on public policy. (pfizer forum).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... The process of repeated incremental improvement is the predominant mechanism of innovation and product development within most manufacturing and high-technology companies, including pharmaceutical companies. In fact, the history of clinical...

Who's afraid of investing? (Bird's Eye).
July 1, 2002... You can love or loathe Wall Street and the whole machinery of investment capitalism. Both passions have deep American roots. But the reality is, every person living in the U.S. is heavily indebted to the traders, bankers, and brokers who fund...

Sidelights.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... The Federal Bureau of Prisons is seeking a "dance instructor" to teach beginning and advanced classes to the Texas inmate population. At Harvard University, transvestite and self-proclaimed "queen" William L. Adams won the title of "Miss...

Indian bullying. (Scan).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... More than three years ago, TAE published a powerful article about the sad condition of many American Indians under the influence of welfare-state liberalism (see www.taemag.com/taend98d.htm). Our author, school teacher Hendrik Mills, moved to...

Rigged justice. (Scan).(affirmative action)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... What the American people most need to understand, future Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once advised President Franklin Roosevelt, is that Constitutional law often has little to do with the Constitution and much to do with the views of...

Brisk in Berlin. (Scan).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... President George W. Bush finally visited Germany. On May 23, he addressed members of the German parliament in Berlin. Unfazed by the thousands of grungy demonstrators protesting his visit outside the Reichstag, Mr. Bush was calm, steady, and...

What, me, responsible? (Scan).(lawsuits)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... In 1998, Edward Brewer visited an acquaintance suffering from cerebral palsy in an Ohio hospital. Brewer raped the 44-year-old woman, who was receiving chemotherapy and unable to defend herself, in her sick bed. After getting a sentence of ten...

Tortuous choice. (Scan).(law enforcement)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... In his latest book, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz suggested police and prosecutors might need "torture warrants" to elicit lifesaving information in an age of terrorism. In cases where a "ticking bomb" or other emergency existed,...

Guantanamo daydream. (Scan).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... This little spoof came to us from a police officer friend: The White House Dear Concerned Citizen, Thank you for your recent letter roundly criticizing our treatment of the Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees being held at Guantanamo...

Sweet justice. (Scan).(college professor sued by students)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Suit-happy Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz was recently sued by students who didn't like the way he taught sexual harassment law. He now says he will no longer teach a class without a tape recorder running.

Public sees media bias. (Scan).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... CBS correspondent Bernie Goldberg's book that showcases liberal bias in the media (see TAE's interview with Goldberg in our March issue) has had no discernible impact on establishment journalists. Nor should any have been expected. Bias is...

Catholics need truth. (Scan).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... "It is a struggle to make sure the Catholic priesthood is not dominated by homosexual men." So says Bishop Wilton Gregory, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Estimates vary, but it appears that from one quarter to half of...

Killing buffalo? (Scan).(Indian owned casinos)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... How do you revitalize a city's downtown area? Easy--declare it Indian land and open a casino. At least that's New York Governor George Pataki's plan. Pataki has negotiated a deal with the Seneca Indian tribe for casino construction in...

Union for electioneers. (Scan).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Meeting in New York at the end of May, AFL-CIO chieftains voted to increase union dues on all their members, from now through 2005, in order to fill their war chest with $33 million to be spent during the next election cycle. For recent...

Economist vouches for vouchers. (Scan).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Fresh research by Duke University professor Thomas Nechyba demonstrated that providing school vouchers to poor families would produce great benefits for children, without harming public schools. At a conference hosted by the American Enterprise...

What's a nice firearm like you doing in a place like this?(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Michael S. Brown, a member of Doctors for Sensible Gun Laws, recently informed us that college gun clubs are enjoying a mild renaissance, even in the unlikeliest of places. Mount Holyoke, a Massachusetts women's college, now has a club for...

Reaganizing the Republicans. (Politico).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... When Ronald Reagan took the oath of office in 1981, there were very few Reaganites in Washington. Even congressional Republican leaders were not active supporters of Reagan's drive for a less intrusive government and freer markets. Senate...

A Russia to love. (Forward Observer).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... There's a saying about new technology: that it is overestimated in the short run, but underestimated in the long run. The same may be true of countries like Russia. The red flag went down over the Kremlin on Christmas Day 1991, and by the...

Laura Schlessinger: she's a national sounding board, a fierce defender of traditional virtues, a dear Abby who still believes in spanking wayward advice seekers. Here is America's common-sense disciplinarian for the twenty-first century. ("Live" with TAE).(Interview)
July 1, 2002... Every day of the week, Laura Schlessinger burns up the airwaves on close to 500 radio stations across America--reaching approximately 20 million people, at last count, with a message of personal responsibility. To her listeners, this daughter...

An American Parthenon? Our own Pantheon? Searching history for the best way to commemorate: September 11.
July 1, 2002... "The time is upon us to build our own Parthenon," prominent art historian Joan Breton Connelly recently suggested in a Wall Street Journal commentary. She referred to the great temple of Athena erected as a monument to the triumphant recovery...

Wimps whiners weenies: men in movies today.
July 1, 2002... Run your eyes over this list and tell me what these men have in common: Mel Gibson, Russell Crowe, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, Paul Hogan, Jet Li, Chow Yun-Fat, Sean Connery. That's right,...

The new investor politics. (Capitalism saves: how becoming an investor can transform a person--and a nation).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... The New Investor Politics New "investor politics" is growing in America. Its fundamental insight is simple: Policies encouraging personal saving and investment may help return America to its limited-government roots. Widespread...

Investors, investors everywhere. (Capitalism saves: how becoming an investor can transform a person--and a nation).(Brief Article)(Polling Data)
July 1, 2002... Before World War II, only about a fifth of Americans owned stocks or bonds. Today, half of America's adults do. And even this number understates the size and impact of the nation's Investor Class, since many current non-investors expect to...

Investing's rich fringe benefits. (Capitalism saves: how becoming an investor can transform a person--and a nation).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Policies aimed at turning more Americans into savers are primarily sold on economic merits. But the financial advantages of accumulating wealth may actually be less important to people than some of the non-economic effects. Academic research...

Modernizing Social Security: bring this Great Depression relic into the age of investing, or watch it collapse.(includes related articles)
July 1, 2002... A monumental demographic shift is taking place in the United States: The number of workers per retiree in this country will fall from 3.3 to just 2.1 over the next generation. This puts tremendous pressure on our Social Security system. Within...

Real world investing.
July 1, 2002... The best qualities for investors are the ones Aristotle admired: moderation, common sense, restraint, modesty, and integrity. It's rare to find a successful wealth accumulator who isn't a solid citizen in the classical sense. Contrary to...

Nerds on Wall Street.
July 1, 2002... Success in America's thriving, often cut-throat, finance industry has always required finding individuals and building organizations with a wide range of skills. Persuasive sales people, statistical gurus, and instinctual risk takers have all...

Man versus mountain. (In real life: first-person America).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... CONWAY, WASHINGTON--Our journey began in earnest on the well-maintained switchbacks that carve their way through dense forest at the base of Mount Baker, in Washington's North Cascades Range. Two hours later, laboring under the weight of our...

Loco for liberty: to know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain ever a child--Cicero. (Flashback).(Loco Focos, libertarian group)(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... "Walk through Wall Street," commanded a radical journalist of the 1830s, and you will "see a street of palaces." But if the tourist "investigates the sources of their prodigious wealth, he will discover that it is extorted, under various...

Public library, private management. (Enterprising: business as an act of creation).(Library Systems and Services Inc.)
July 1, 2002... A fresh blow in the battle for privatization of inefficient public institutions has recently been struck by an obscure little private company based in Germantown, Maryland. In five short years, the successes of Library Systems and Services...

Art imitates life. (Now Playing).(The Sum of All Fears)
July 1, 2002... Tom Clancy's geopolitical page-turners have always been the stuff of fantasy, but the actual geopolitics of today make The Sum of All Fears--the fourth big-screen adaptation of a Clancy novel--look particularly out of this world. It's a what-if...

Stealing from shareholders.(The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy)
July 1, 2002... The Divine Right of Capital: Dethroning the Corporate Aristocracy By Marjorie Kelly Berrett-Koehler, 200 pages, $24.95 The Divine Right of Capital accepts supply and demand, competition, profit, self-interest, and the market. The arguments...

Farewell, small merchant.(Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences)
July 1, 2002... Going Shopping: Consumer Choices and Community Consequences By Ann Satterthwaite Yale University Press, 384 pages, $39.95 When my parents, my brother, and I moved to Wesleyville, Pennsylvania in 1959, a rambling clapboard store called...

The feminist lie.(The Feminist Dilemma: When Success Is Not Enough)
July 1, 2002... The Feminist Dilemma: When Success Is Not Enough Diana Furchtgott-Roth & Christine Stolba AEI Press, 228 pages, $25 Is your head swirling from claims about the wage gap and glass ceiling? Do you wonder whether women need the federal...

The moral goodness of free trade. (Economics And Business).(A Globalist Manifesto for Public Policy)
July 1, 2002... Charles Calomiris, A Globalist Manifesto for Public Policy, Institute of Economic Affairs, 2 Lord North Street, London, SW1P 3LB, England Lord Macaulay, the great British historian, once observed that "Free trade, one of the greatest...

Choice helps public schools. (Society).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Caroline Hoxby, "School Choice and School Productivity," National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138 Opponents of school choice contend that allowing parents to select their children's...

Fake degrees of separation. (Society).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Judith Kleinfeld, "The Small World Problem," in Society (January/February 2002), 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854 In a 1967 article in Psychology Today, psychologist Stanley Milgram announced he had conducted research showing...

Male-female mismatch. (Society).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... James Q. Wilson, "Sex and the Marriage Market" in Commentary (March 2002), 165 East 56th Street, New York, New York 10022 There are many reasons for the increase in single-parent households and illegitimate children. In this article,...

Washing machine menace. (Science And Environment).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Michael Heberling, "Washing Your Clothes Washington's Way," in Ideas on Liberty (January 2002), 30 South Broadway, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York 10533 In the early 1990s, the federal government outlawed traditional toilets in favor of...

Recovering from communism. (Other Countries).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Anders Aslund, Building Capitalism: The Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc, Cambridge University Press, 40 West 20th Street, New York, New York 10011 It has now been over a decade since the Soviet Union collapsed and the former...

Learning from the European union. (Other Countries).(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... Michael Greve, "New Insights from the Old Continent," in Federalist Outlook (January/February 2002), American Enterprise Institute, 1150 17th Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036 As the member states of the European Union slowly meld into a...

Mixed views of Wall Street. (Opinion Pulse).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... Far more Americans believe Wall Street benefits the country than think it harms us. Still, Americans are of two minds. Seventy-two percent say that Wall Street is absolutely essential because it provides the money business needs for investment....

Interest in reforming social security endures. (Opinion Pulse).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... Americans are less confident than in the past that they can count on Social Security in their retirement years. That is one reason they are receptive to the idea of personal accounts. Around 60 percent favor allowing people to invest a portion...

What do you think of the rich? (Opinion Pulse).(Brief Article)(Statistical Data Included)
July 1, 2002... Americans don't resent the rich nor do they particularly admire them. They believe the country benefits from having a class of rich people. Fifty percent say we have about the right number of them, 25 percent, too many, and 20 percent, too few....

The mail.(Brief Article)
July 1, 2002... While I couldn't agree more with Karl Zinsmeister's comments about the hypocrisy of New York City's Upper East Side elitists (BIRD'S EYE, June), he is wrong to make broad statements about the city's lack of patriotism. A group of neo-Nazi...

Last gasp.
July 1, 2002... HE PROGRAMMED THE VCR AND FIXED THE COMPUTER. MAYBE HE CAN BALANCE THE CHECKBOOK. "Grilled Black Angus rib steak a la Fiorentina, potato and celery root gratin, sauteed sweet peas and morel mushroom. Can I bring you anything else?" ...