The American Enterprise articles from June 2004

The American Enterprise archives from June 2004

Don't be afraid of competition.(Bird's Eye)
June 1, 2004... An English princess, with Egyptian boyfriend, riding in a German car powered by a Dutch engine driven by a Belgian tippling on Scottish whiskey, is chased by Italian paparazzi on Japanese motorcycles and crashes in a French...

Sidelights.
June 1, 2004... Hamed Abderrahrnan Ahmad, a prisoner released from the U.S. jail at Guantanamo Bay, complained to an Australian paper that he was tortured while in American custody. His torture consisted of being forced to listen to Bruce Springsteen's "Born...

9/11 Hypocrisy.(Scan)
June 1, 2004... The public postmortem conducted by the national 9/11 commission has been full of ironic twists. Take the commission's finding that U.S. intelligence assets had Osama bin Laden in their sights on at least three separate occasions during the...

Fair-weather friends of federalism.(Scan)
June 1, 2004... When President Bush endorsed a proposed Constitutional amendment that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman, some on the Left began singing a somber tune. "We are losing our precious federalism!" they lamented. The New...

The tax bill.(Scan)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... More than 130 million Americans filed individual tax returns last year, and they collectively handed the government $1.038 trillion. It is a very small number of high-earners, though, who mostly pull the national wagon. Fully 53.3 percent of...

Noblesse obese.(Scan)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... For two years, Carmen Bowen, 44, has been fighting the officials providing her with public housing in Cleveland. She has now filed a federal discrimination complaint against the city. Her beef (so to speak): They didn't do enough to accommodate...

Wanted: law enforcement.(Scan)
June 1, 2004... The Immigration and Naturalization Service went out of existence on March 1, 2003, when Congress officially split the INS into two separate entities: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS),...

Whose side are they on?(Scan)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... "It is more than 'the power of America' that would he defeated" if the fight against extremists in Iraq is not pursued to a successful end, argued British Prime Minister Tony Blair in mid April. A terrorist victory "would defeat civilization...

Democrats for defeat?(Scan)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... The fashion that quickly describes almost every serious U.S. military engagement as "another Vietnam" has gained renewed popularity. Prominent Democrats like Ted Kennedy, not to mention enemies of America like Moktada al-Sadr, have recently...

Super veteran?(Scan)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Things John Kerry voted to kill as a U.S. Senator: --the Bradley Fighting Vehicle --the Tomahawk cruise missile --the Apache helicopter --military pay raises (12 different times) --increased intelligence budgets (numerous...

A rebel in the people's republic.(Scan)
June 1, 2004... If absolute power corrupts absolutely, the Massachusetts Democrats are in trouble. For more than four decades, the Democratic Party has held control of the state legislature, much of that time with veto-proof majorities. And though the...

Drunken school spending.(Scan)
June 1, 2004... Democrats vehemently accuse George W. Bush of not spending enough money on education. Presidential hopeful John Kerry declares in his book A Call to Service that the Bush administration has "undermined education funding as part of a larger...

Little old Europe.(Scan)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Germany's Federal Statistics Office announced in April that the number of deaths in the country exceeded the number of births again last year. The figures for 2003: German deaths 858,000 German births 715,000 Natural decline...

Second class citizens?(Scan)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... In February, the Supreme Court decreed that states can withhold taxpayer-funded scholarships from theology students. The 7-2 decision in Locke v. Davey concerned college student Joshua Davey, who was awarded a Washington state Promise...

Charting the 9/11 recovery.(Indicators)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... The federal government's transportation services index (which measures for-hire transportation such as freight shipping and airline travel) took a sharp dip after the 9/11 terror attacks, as air traffic collapsed, and the attack-related...

Spam bam.(Indicators)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Despite technology that prevents about 80 percent of all such dispatches from being delivered, spam, or unsolicited commercial e-mail, has become a major problem for many Internet users. Reflecting the rising frustration, three large Internet...

Dead wrong.(Indicators)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Conventional wisdom on the Left holds that the death penalty is a) racist, and b) applied with particular zeal in the state of Texas. A new study in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies disproves both pieces of conventional wisdom. Three...

"Live" with TAE.
June 1, 2004... He founded one of America's iconic companies: FedEx. He's also a kind of Forrest Gump figure of American politics--wounded in Vietnam after spending his college years as a pal of both George W. Bush and John Kerry. A voracious reader, he's a...

Three cheers for global capitalism.(Cover Story)
June 1, 2004... Under what is rather barrenly termed "globalization"--the process by which people, information, trade, investments, democracy, and the market economy tend more and more to cross national borders--our options and opportunities have multiplied....

Do multinational corporations hurt poor countries?
June 1, 2004... There is a fierce debate today between those who consider globalization to be a malign influence on poor nations and those who find it a positive force. This debate focuses not just on trade, but also on multinational corporations. The hard...

Does international trade kill good American jobs?
June 1, 2004... In 1824 the great British historian Thomas Macaulay remarked that "free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular" The popularity of free trade has not changed much...

Why the economy must remain job one: botching economic policy is no way to win the war on terror.
June 1, 2004... Wartime can be bad times for economic policy. It's not just that military mobilization imposes heavy burdens on the private economy. The larger problem is that the political demands of war can cause government to grow across the board. This...

Anti-globalism = anti-Americanism.
June 1, 2004... How to understand this war against globalization, which has grown in scope and virulence over the past five years? First, we must realize that it is a war in the real, not the figurative, sense of the word. It is a physical struggle being...

Minority report: a young pro-capitalist heroine shows that not all Europeans oppose economic liberty.
June 1, 2004... Last year, a crowd of 80,000 Parisians gathered to say they had had enough of a strike by transportation unions which was paralyzing their city. This counter-demonstration was organized by a tiny, cheeky free-enterprise think tank and lobby...

The free-trade movement's Achilles heel: humanity's oldest industry--farming--may be the last to be liberated.
June 1, 2004... The World Trade Organization negotiations in Cancun broke down last year as the delegates clashed over agriculture. The leaders of the developing world have realized they can't compete with the treasuries of the European Union, Japan, and the...

A message from Iraqis.(Transcript: words worth repeating)
June 1, 2004... Rend Rahim, the representative of the Iraqi Governing Council to the U.S. government, was a founding member of the Iraq Foundation, which promotes democracy and human rights in Iraq. On March 17 she delivered the following words at the American...

Model fathers, trophy sons.(In real life: first-person America)
June 1, 2004... OAKFIELD, NEW YORK -- The Pinewood Derby, in which Cub Scouts make and then race small wooden cars, is a rite of passage for many American boys--and a terror for plenty of fathers. Pinewood Derby families fall into two categories. There are...

The melodious veep.(Flashback)
June 1, 2004... The only U.S. Vice President to have written a tune covered by Van Morrison and the Four Tops knew something of the fickleness of fame. Charles G. Dawes, the Chicago banker who served under Calvin Coolidge, had a great-great-grandfather who...

Whine, the beloved country!(Forward Observer)
June 1, 2004... George (Jack Nicholson): You know, this used to be a helluva good country. I can't understand what's gone wrong with it. Billy (Dennis Hopper): Man, everybody got chicken. That's what happened, man. --Easy Rider Actually, it's still a...

Kerry the un-electable.(Politico)
June 1, 2004... When John Kerry won the Iowa caucuses on January 19, Democrats bravely told themselves they were voting for electability. All the other challengers had nailed their colors to particular Democratic party special interests. Howard Dean was the...

Not so great Dane.(Now Playing)(Movie Review)
June 1, 2004... Ears von Trier's Dogville is a movie so hermetic, so muddled, so ignorantly invective toward the United States that it has done the impossible: turn off even the most politically biased of American movie critics, just the sort of intellectual...

In media disgrace.(Beat the Press)
June 1, 2004... The New York Times and its supporters insist that the newspaper blurs news and opinion only occasionally. Its critics insist this happens frequently, and could be avoided. So who's right? One useful indicator is the Times' "Corrections"...

Compete or wither.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future By Michael Barone Crown Forum, 178 pages, $22 Somehow, observes Michael Barone, America produces "incompetent 18-year-olds but remarkably competent...

Man of letters.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... The Norman Podhoretz Reader: A Selection of His Writings from the 1950s through the 1990s Edited by Thomas Jeffers Free Press, $35, 496 pages New York City writer, polemicist, and man of letters Norman Podhoretz is consistently consigned...

Southern manifesto.(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat By Senator Zell Miller Stroud & Hall, 256 pages, $26 In his latest book, Democratic Senator Zell Miller takes his party out behind the woodshed and applies the willow...

A tax cut by any other name.(Politics)(Book Review)
June 1, 2004... John Snow et al., "Tax-Free Savings and Retirement Security Opportunities for All Americans," U.S. Department of the Treasury, February 2004 (ustreas.gov) Hamstrung by a growing deficit, President George W. Bush is unlikely to propose any...

Law of the jungle.(Economics And Regulation)
June 1, 2004... Marco Iansiti and Roy Levien, "Strategy as Ecology," Harvard Business Review, March 2004 (hbr.org) Microsoft and Wal-Mart, both great avatars of American capitalism, appear to utterly dominate their respective industries. Marco Iansiti, a...

A Case for a bigger army.(National Security)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Lawrence Korb, "How to Update the Army's Reserves," Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004 (foreignaffairs.org) Are America's reserve armed forces overstretched? Lawrence Korb, an assistant secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan who now works...

Before Columbus?(Science And Environment)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Jacqueline Olin, "Evidence That the Vinland Map Is Medieval," Analytical Chemistry, November 2003 (pubs.acs.org) Ever since the 1930s, the Vinland map has intrigued scholars and scientists alike. The map, written on what everyone agrees is...

The prescription drug mess.(Science And Environment)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2004... Joseph Antos, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," A El Health Policy Outlook, March/April 2004 (aei.org) No matter how one looks at it, the drug benefit Congress and President Bush added to Medicare last year will cost a great deal of money....

Northern rights.(Other Countries)
June 1, 2004... Conservative Party of Canada, "Draft Policy Statement," February 4, 2004 (conservative.ca) After almost a decade and a half in power in the 1980s and early 1990s, Canada's Progressive Conservative Party suffered a disastrous defeat in the...

Russia withers.(Other Countries)
June 1, 2004... Nicholas Eberstadt, "The Emptying of Russia," AEI On the Issues, February 2004 (aei.org) Russian birth rates had tumbled even before the Soviet Union began to fall apart. Coupled with a death rate matched only in the Third World, this has...

A Cautious go-ahead for globalization.(Opinion Pulse)
June 1, 2004... Americans believe that globalization is mostly good for the U.S., but they are divided about whether it will help them and their families. Only about 10 percent want to try to stop or reverse it. The largest number, 40 percent, are content to...

The mail.(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2004... Kudos to Don Feder on "John Kerry's Judgment" (SCAN, April/May). Unfortunately he did not go quite deep enough. In his 1971 testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry not only accused his fellow servicemen of doing all the...

Last gasp.(Comic)
June 1, 2004... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Caption: "I don't care if you were a jury sequestered for seven months, break it up!" "I'm calling for an immediate investigation to find out what I did in the '60s!" "My art's too important to show to...