The Rising Tide

To Supporters of Health Care Bill: Don’t Drag Us Into Your Disaster

At this writing a substantial minority of Americans support the Democrats’ existing health-care bills. Most of us agree that the American healthcare system needs change but we have a wide variety of ideas about the specifics of the changes that are needed. Some make the case that only a single payer system can reduce transaction […]

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A Kidney in Every Pot

As of today, 83,904 Americans are waiting for a kidney transplant, the oldest and most cost-effective organ transplant surgery, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing, which comprises data from all transplant programs in the country.  In 2006, there were 18,052 kidney transplant operations performed, and while that figure has been trending up from

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Pardonnez-moi, Monsieur Bastiat

The Free Agent has been mulling over the elegant parable offered by M. Frederic Bastiat in “That Which is Seen and That which is Not Seen” in opposition to pointless destruction (and brilliantly, to trade barriers, “nothing else than a partial destruction”).  The story is this: A shopkeeper’s son carelessly breaks a pane of glass,

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Is Gay Marriage About Homosexuality?

Do you support gay marriage?  The knee-jerk libertarian answer, “why do we authorize the state to recognize or withhold recognition for personal relationships?” while true, doesn’t really advance the conversation.  A more thoughtful response is to ask what is this “marriage” fuss is about anyway?  After all, anyone can call themselves married, you can call

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Gather ‘Round, Young’uns

Throughout The Free Agent’s career, she has fascinated youthful admirers with her stories about the olden days, i.e., the 1970s.  (Extremely precocious, she was able to absorb and analyze current events even as she changed her own diapers.)  She is reminded of that unfortunate era by recent events like increased money supply beyond economic growth

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Curse You, Ed Begley, Jr!

The infamous Christopher Guest-produced ad for this year’s census, featuring a stable of his favorite actors, debuted during the Super Bowl at a cost of $2.5 million, and packages the 2010 census as kind of a big national family reunion.  A census for the Facebook age. Fortunately, it’s also a census for the twitter age,

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Bipartisan Health Care Plan: More misdirection from President Obama

In his weekly address this week President Obama announced his plans for bipartisan meetings to work on bipartisan health care legislation. He started with some stories about 25% health insurance increases those nasty insurance companies are about to force on us. He then suggested that the Republicans really need to get on board and act

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Manhattan Libertarian Party