Free Republic

Prospective Arizona homebuyers face a double-whammy: escalating prices compounded by skyrocketing fees imposed by voracious local governments. Chandler recently raised its development impact fees nearly 50 percent, adding nearly $6,000 to the price of a home. Avondale’s fees nearly doubled with an $8,000 increase, bringing the total burden to a whopping $18,000 per home. Impact fees are a politically attractive way for cities to raise taxes, because those who bear the burden---future homebuyers---are not yet voters. But the net effect is to make the American Dream unaffordable for people of modest means. Arizona law limits impact fees to the costs...

If you don’t pay much attention to baseball until the World Series or if you’ve just started tuning in to Sun’s games over the last week, now is the time to keep an eye on your state legislature. The budget is always “the show,” even more so this year because of our $1 billion tax overpayment. Gov. Napolitano is calling for a 22 percent spending increase, a clear case of spending because it’s there. Legislative leaders are offering their own budget, which amounts to a 19 percent increase. If Arizona had a spending limit in place, spenders would be restricted...

Resounding Silence The only thing “overwhelming” about the vote was the silence of 900,000 Phoenicians who did not vote. by Damon Chetson, Goldwater Institute Today's News, March 16, 2006 60,000 of a total adult population of about one million voted in favor of Phoenix’s seven bond issues this week. And yet, the Arizona Republic and Phoenix leaders called the vote a “resounding” and “overwhelming” victory for Mayor Phil Gordon, who now has now gotten the approval to spend some $2 billion of taxpayer money on a series of projects and the debt to pay for them. The only thing “resounding”...

Robert Fogel was awarded, along with Douglass North, the Nobel Prize in economics in 1993 for their pioneering work using statistical analysis to study economic history. Professor Fogel recently published a book based on years of his research: The Escape From Hunger and Premature Death: 1700 to 2100 tells a remarkable story of human, scientific and technological change. He recently sat for an interview with TCS editor Nick Schulz. http://www.techcentralstation.com/120105B.html

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Another World AIDS Day has arrived (Dec. 1) and with it more HIV cases than ever before -- over 40 million. The World Health Organization's target of treating three million people by the end of this month has failed by about two thirds. Until very recently we heard little remorse, and still haven't had a proper assessment of whether the original target made any sense. But in true Stalinist Plan mode, a five year target -- of access for all by 2010 -- is the new mantra. In the urgency of scaling up much needed treatment...

The most recent AP-Ipsos poll, released on November 11, brought bad news for President Bush. The headline told the story: "Poll: Most Americans Say Bush Not Honest". Coming just after the indictment of vice presidential aide "Scooter" Libby for perjury in the so-called CIA leak affair, the implication was clear: the majority of Americans were beginning to get what Democrats and Frenchmen had understood all along (or almost): "Bush lied!" But this was not the first time that an AP-Ipsos poll had been the bringer of bad tidings for the President. Back in September, it was an AP-Ipsos poll that...

I've been writing about Internet free speech for a long time in Internet years. I've written about the new communications media's effect on old media, the challenge it poses to dictators, and its effect on U.S. elections. But the truest thing I've ever written on the subject was this: "You want to keep this media revolution going? Be ready to fight for it." That's been brought home by events both abroad, and in the United States. Abroad, we've seen the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunisia, which many observers feared would lead to a dictator-inspired U.N. takeover...

The Democrats lost the election of 2004 not because millions of bigoted red necks stormed the polls to protest gay marriage, as the self-serving liberal mythology would have it. The Democrats lost because on the crucial issue of national security, their party was tested and found wanting. In the wake of this defeat, a few voices in the wilderness, like The New Republic's Peter Beinart, argued for a realignment of the Democratic Party to reflect the country's more hawkish stance on national security. In charging the Bush administration with deceiving the United States into a war with Iraq, it would...

"The well-government and regulating of Printers and Printing Presses is matter of Publique care and of great concernment especially considering that by the general licentiousnes of the late times many evil disposed persons have been encouraged to print and sell heretical schismatical blasphemous seditious and treasonable Bookes Pamphlets and Papers … For prevention whereof no surer meanes can be advised then by reducing and limiting the number of Printing Presses." --An Act for Preventing the Frequent Abuses in Printing Seditious Treasonable and Unlicensed Books and Pamphlets and for Regulating Printing and Printing Presses, 1662 The last few weeks have seen...

The frenzy of the week in the blogosphere concerns the use of White Phosphorus as an anti-personnel weapon at Fallujah. After initial State Department denials that did little for the American PR cause, the Pentagon has now made a matter-of-fact statement that it was indeed so used, but only against combatants, and therefore legally. The blogospheric firestorm -- just now hitting the MSM in a significant way -- was sparked by an Italian broadcast film, purporting to be a documentary, in which the claims were first widely aired. The film consisted of interviews with participants limited to a Communist reporter,...

It has been widely noted that the Jordanian terror attacks masterminded by al-Zarqawi signal a new low in al Qaeda's worldwide engagement. Again al Qaeda has been reduced to the killing of Muslims, in the name of Islam, and to the mounting ire of the Muslim world. This has been a bad summer for al Qaeda, with disappointing results in the 7/7 London bombings, which failed to generate any tangible jolt in the British conversation about the war on terror, and the recent Bali bombings, which killed "only" three Australians and instead victimized mainly Indonesian Muslims. Meanwhile, the world is...

Welcome to the next installment of the continuing saga: Mary Mapes vs. the Blogs, in which, for good measure, she takes on reality, too. And at the same time, we can consider the rise, fall -- and possible comeback -- of Mapes as part of the ongoing power-struggle between the MSM (Main Stream Media) and the New Media (NM). If you don't know that Mapes is the former CBS News producer who was the driving force behind the September 8, 2004 broadcast on "60 Minutes II," attacking George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard -- which was...

President Bush came out swinging on Veterans Day in a speech accusing his Democratic war critics of re-writing history. Some war critics have mounted a campaign against him by boiling the entire pre-war history and post-invasion violence down to a two-word phrase: "Bush Lied". They say he lied us into war by distorting intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to convince Americans to fight an unnecessary war. The "Bush Lied" accusation is, if true, an indictment of the entire war itself, and one could reasonably argue we should cut our losses and get out of it. The president could have...

Privatize Fannie and Freddie Government reformers need to look toward the markets. By Mallory Factor Two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson argued that private property was the touchstone of American democracy. If he were alive today I am sure he would still be making that argument, because the idea is just as valuable now as it was then. And so I don’t hesitate to argue, in the spirit of Jefferson, that Congress today is jeopardizing the American Dream. What are they doing to contravene the wishes of our third president? Confronted by a real problem related to the semi-governmental status of...

LIGONIER, PA. - I'll be at the corner of Market and Fairfield this morning with my orange reflective vest and radio, directing traffic away from the Diamond (our town square) while a small group of people gather for the ceremonies at the flag pole next to the band stand. Every Veterans Day, the volunteer firemen provide traffic control at the four approaches to the Diamond during the brief ceremonies. At 11 o'clock the high school band will play the National Anthem. Prayers of remembrance will be offered, a moment of silence will be observed and a few words will be...

In December 1979, at 31, I first went to Europe. I was then an anti-Stalinist, revolutionary communist. I flew to London and after a boat-train trip to Paris, was met by comrades in the small movement to which I belonged, centered in France and Spain. The young people who greeted me took me to an Arab café where elderly men sat on the floor at long tables, eating Moroccan couscous while smoking waterpipes and listening to North African music. My leftist associates included some who were Arab themselves. One, Saleh, was an Algerian immigrant who worked as a night watchman....

The Financial Times recently carried an op-ed by Harvard professor John Quelch that gushed over corporations electing the "green" business model (or at least green rhetoric). This paean to the erstwhile "British Petroleum" -- now "BP: Beyond Petroleum" -- epitomizes the disconnect between academic idealizing and real-world truths. Quelch writes "not even the mighty Exxon-Mobil with its army of hired-gun lawyers and lobbyists unilaterally achieve everything it needs to maximise shareholder value -- not least the goodwill of a justifiably sceptical public. By contrast, John Browne, BP's quiet leader, has embraced the company's responsibilities to address global warming and invest...

One of the great fears generated by global warming is that the ocean is about to rise and swallow our coasts. These concerns have been heightened by the substantial uptick in Atlantic hurricane activity that began in 1995. The frequency of really strong storms striking the U.S now resembles what it was in the 1940s and 50s, which few people (aging climatologists excepted) remember. Those arguing that global warming is an overblown issue have been claiming for years that "consensus" forecasts of sea-level are equally overwrought. The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a global average rise of...

"The junk-food industry is peddling junk science." -- Bill Lockyer, California Attorney General Apparently stung by the criticisms about his junk science crusade against acrylamide, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer has come out swinging as only a trial lawyer turned politician can do -- by coupling a refusal to talk about the real scientific issue with a host of outright misrepresentations. Writing in the San Francisco Chronicle (October 17, 2005) Lockyer made the following claims: 1) "Acrylamide is a potent cancer-causing chemical" ; 2) "Acrylamide is found in certain kinds of potato chips and French fries at levels 80 times...

Here we go again. Gasoline prices are dropping as usual with the end of the summer driving season. But oil companies are announcing huge quarterly profits, so the inevitable reaction has begun -- howls on Capitol Hill. Self-proclaimed friends of consumers want the profits refunded to "ease consumers' pain." They propose to do that through a "windfall profits tax," arguing that the government would make better use of the money than would the oil companies. They point out breathlessly that one company's last quarter earnings were $9 billion, and then multiply it to reach $36 billion for a full year....