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February 10, 2012
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David G. Savage: Why activists may not be in a hurry to have High Court rule on alternative marriage
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Kimberly Palmer: How to actually enjoy -- relaxing, financially -- your vacation
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Warren Richey: Why momentous Prop. 8 ruling might not satisfy gay-rights groups
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The Kosher Gourmet byDana Velden: Going to the bother of making soup? You know it better be good. This CREAM OF TOMATO SOUP certainly is! And it's a cinch to make, too (Includes techinques and serving secrets)
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Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
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Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
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January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
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Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
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Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
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Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
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Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
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Jordan Rau: In quest to grow, Catholic hospital system will announce this morning its break from church
Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
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Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
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Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
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January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
Sept. 21, 2005
/ 17 Elul, 5765
Dammable pork
By
John Stossel
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
When your TV column is titled "Give Me a Break," it's hard to
know where to begin after Katrina.
First I thought I'd say, "give me a break" to the looters. Then
to Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, since National Guard
troops were available, but she wouldn't let them help. Then came the
Internet scams. Some people who thought they gave for hurricane relief
actually gave money to crooks in Brazil.
The government's responsibility, though, dwarfs anything done by
criminals. To start, the federal government invited disaster by offering
cheap insurance. That encourages people to build on the coasts. I'm
embarrassed to admit I once built a house on a beach in Westhampton, N.Y.,
because government insurance guaranteed I couldn't lose. When a storm washed
my house away, government paid me for my loss. It would have covered me
again and again had I rebuilt. (I sold the land.) Government insurance is
truly an insane policy.
Then came the bureaucratic obstacles. While New Orleans
hospitals had no electricity, the U.S.S. Bataan sat just off the coast,
equipped with six unused operating rooms and hundreds of hospital beds. Its
commander said she could do nothing because she hadn't received a signed
authorization. It's reasonable to worry about getting the armed forces
involved in law enforcement, but where's the threat to the Constitution if,
in the middle of a disaster, a Navy doctor saves your life?
In other cases, private enterprise tried to help, but government
got in the way. Wal-Mart offered truckloads of water, but was turned away by
federal bureaucrats.
Dr. Jeffrey Guy, a Nashville trauma surgeon, recruited 400
doctors, nurses and first responders to help the people in New Orleans. Then
FEMA gave them something to do: fill out 60-page applications that demanded
photographs and tax forms.
Guy received an e-mail from an emergency room doctor in
Mississippi who needed bandages, splints and medicine, and coloring books
for children. Guy had them he'd been collecting corporate donations
but FEMA said they needed two state permits to transport these items from
Tennessee to Mississippi. The supplies were only sent when two guys showed
up with a church van and volunteered to take them as rogue responders
without FEMA's permission.
The deadliest government mistake was made by Congress. The Army
Corps of Engineers had said it wanted $27 million to strengthen the levees
protecting New Orleans. Congress said no, though our
can't-spend-your-money-fast-enough representatives did appropriate more than
that for an indoor rain forest in Iowa.
Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, blamed the president.
"The president could have funded it," she said.
Someday, she should read the Constitution. Only Congress can
appropriate federal money.
Former Louisiana senator John Breaux also told me the state
never got what it asked for. "I'm part of the effort to try and get more
money, and many times we were not successful," he complained.
But, surprise! It turns out Louisiana got lots of money for
Corps of Engineers projects hundreds of millions of dollars more than any
other state. Congress just spent it on pork projects instead of on the
levees.
I confronted Breaux about his own state's pork, such as
subsidies for ship builders and the sugar industry.
"I object to you using words like squander and pork," he said.
"What is pork in one part of the country is an essential project in another
part."
It's a reason Americans shouldn't filter so much money through
Washington. Louisianans don't need Iowa rain forests, and Iowans don't need
levees in Louisiana. Maybe the people who want to live in New Orleans should
have to pay (through private enterprise or local taxes) the special costs of
its exposed location or live elsewhere. If all local projects, essential
and whimsical, were paid for with local taxes, competition among states and
cities would force them to become more efficient.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
STOSSEL'S LATEST
Give Me a Break
Stossel explains how ambitious bureaucrats, intellectually lazy reporters, and greedy lawyers make your life worse even as they claim to protect your interests. Taking on such sacred cows as the FDA, the War on Drugs, and scaremongering environmental activists -- and backing up his trademark irreverence with careful reasoning and research -- he shows how the problems that government tries and fails to fix can be solved better by the extraordinary power of the free market. Sales help fund JWR.
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JWR contributor John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20." To comment, please click here.
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