Monday, September 09, 2013

The Post Office Is Broke: It's Time to End Washington's Postal Monopoly | Cato Institute

The Post Office Is Broke: It's Time to End Washington's Postal Monopoly | Cato Institute: "The system reflects the typical government attitude: customers are to be captured by coercive laws, not attracted by innovative goods and services."

"USPS is exempt from taxes, regulations, and even parking tickets."

"complain that the post office is forced to prefund its employees’ retirement. Although the practice is common in the commercial world"

Where Are Protests against Murders of Christians? | Cato Institute

Where Are Protests against Murders of Christians? | Cato Institute: "“For the first time in 1,600 years, they didn’t pray this past Sunday at the Virgin Mary and Anba Abraam monastery in a village in southern Egypt.

“Islamists firebombed and looted the monastery, which dates back to the fifth century. For good measure, they destroyed a church inside. They then announced that they would be converting the monastery into a mosque”"

Another Failed Gun Control Experiment | Cato Institute

Another Failed Gun Control Experiment | Cato Institute: "…why didn’t the gun-control lobby warn legislators in 1998 that adopting the toughest gun law in America would do Massachusetts no good unless every surrounding state did the same thing? Far from explaining why the new law would do nothing to curb violent crime, they were positive it would make Massachusetts even safer. …But crime in Massachusetts didn’t just continue, it began climbing. As in the rest of the country, violent crime had been declining in Massachusetts since the early 1990s. Beginning in 1998, that decline reversed — unlike in the rest of the country. …Guns-across-borders might have explained homicide levels in Massachusetts continuing unchanged. But how can other states’ policies be responsible for an increase in Massachusetts homicides? Relative to the rest of the country, or to just the states on its borders, Massachusetts since 1998 has become a more dangerous state. "

Marijuana, Sex and Amsterdam | Cato Institute

Marijuana, Sex and Amsterdam | Cato Institute: "In 2009, the past year marijuana use rate was 11.3 percent in the United States but only 7.0 percent in the Netherlands. This does not prove that legalization lowers drug use; many other factors are at play. But these data hardly support the claim that prohibition has a material impact in reducing use."