Public health officials in Portland, Oregon, shut down a 7-year-old's lemonade stand. I do not mean merely to sneer at the absurdity of this incident. Public health is a valid field of government activity when it is directed at combatting existing agents of harm, such as infectious diseases and posion sold as food. Government's right to act pre-emptively, however, needs to pass some standard of probable cause. But in the minds of Oregon's public health officials, it seems, the damning characteristic of little Julie Murphy's lemonade stand was that she sought to make a money from it: "When you go to a public event and set up shop, you're suddenly engaging in commerce," Eric Pippert, the food-borne illness prevention program manager for the Oregon public health department, told [The Oregonian]. "The fact that you're small-scale I don't think is relevant." Ah, "engaging in commerce"! Very suspicious, indeed. I hope they don't charge her mother with corrupting a youth.
Why Has the Financial Crisis Produced Few Criminal Cases? That is what the New York Times wants to know. And the answer it comes up with is: The financial crisis was a product of Wall Street greed, not criminality. This answer serves four purposes. First, for the notoriously leftist NYT, it strikes a note of moderation and fairness. "See, we don't think all economic problems result from criminal businessmen." Secondly, it nonetheless manages to blame businessmen for the economic crisis. "It was just a product of Wall Street greed, and Wall Street is always greedy. It's the nature of the beast." Thirdly, it obviates the suggestion that perhaps the villains were in Washington rather than New York. And fourthly, it implies that the ultimate solution to such crises must be an economic system that has no place for greed, such as, oh, an economy run by public servants. Update: Apparently, the question began with the New York Observer , so it seems that this thesis is a trial balloon that is already being floated by the leftist intelligentsia. The capitalist response must be to discover and publicize the simple and coherent story about how government regulators undermined the free-market system. Call it a first rough draft of history.
"Better the US government should violate the rule of law in 87 ways than that one kosher butcher should violate securities law in 87 ways"?
Cara Ellison is one of the very few bloggers who defends fallen businessmen. She is particularly passionate about Enron, where she worked...
July/August 2003 -- While collecting entries for this issue's "Cultural Calendar," my thoughts returned to David Kelley's article "For a
April 2004 -- The controversy last year over whether to withdraw a feeding tube from a 39-year-old Florida woman with severe brain damage has thrust questions regarding end-of-life decisions into the limelight once again. That debate has been intensified by divergent opinions about the woman's possibility of rehabilitation and by doubts raised about her husband's motivation in wishing not to prolong her life. The complexities of that case, however, should not be allowed to bias public response to a somewhat different but no less urgent ethical question: What is the most humane way to treat individuals who, at the end of a long life, express a clear-minded wish to die? As a society with an increasingly aged population, we need to confront this question head on.
Before the federal government starts handing out multimillion-dollar awards to corporate wives who turn in their husbands for violating one of the SEC’s 10,000 commandments, we need to get rid of this self-congratulatory term “whistleblower.” I am not one who opposes naming names where there are real crimes or real threats. I believe with Thomas Jefferson that: “A prejudice prevails too extensively among the young that it is dishonorable to bear witness against one another.” But the metaphor of “whistleblower” as currently used by business journalists is offensive to anyone who respects English.
Jeff Skilling seeks bail. The document is here .
April 2004 -- Editor's Note: Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute in Washi..
NYT, August 4, 2010: U.S. Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk . It's a shame we can't have dramatic film of the intellectual blowout that sent millions of gallons of anti-capitalist hysteria into the cultural environment. But I do hope some think tank has assigned a staffer to assemble a permanent record of the statements and actions that followed the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
During the fourth century B.C.—we don't know exactly when—a man, a resident of Athens, a student and teacher of philosophy, changed the worl
It seems that SMARTS Software , developed in part by Professor Mike Aitken , has now been sold to 150 brokers worldwide who use “its...
The Nationalization of Insider Trading. Reuters reports that the SEC is “investigating whether people may have illegally profited from trading on nonpublic information at BP Plc in the weeks and months following” the Deepwater Horzion oil spill.” Interestingly, the same story reports: “The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating whether BP properly disclosed information on risks related to its deepwater oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico.” So, the U.S. wants business employees to disclose all information relating to corporate risks. Indeed, it has shown a willingness to use multimillion-dollar payoffs to so-called whistleblowers . But the greatest collator of knowledge ever devised, the free market, is to be crippled by strict rules that prevent people who have secret information from profiting by it. Think of it as the nationalization of insider trading.
June 12, 2010 -- June is a big month for sports fans. Tennis fans have the French Open, basketball fans have the NBA Finals, and hockey fans
Defaming Frank Quattrone--Again. Someday, I should like to assemble a book comprising nothing but the libels and slanders against capitalists that have become a permanent feature of our history books. Among them would be: that J.P. Morgan sold flawed rifles to the Union Army, that John D. Rockefeller cheated the Widow Backus--and that Frank Quattrone ordered his subordinates to "clean up those files." The latest instance of this last falsehood comes in a book review, published in the Summer 2010 Exeter Bulletin, of Phillips Exeter Academy. It is a review of the biography of Frank Quattrone , The Prince of Silicon Valley, written by Randall Smith (Exeter '68), and it is penned by Phillips Exeter grad Stephen Wolfe (Class of '99).
Reporters like to quote Washington Post publisher Donald Graham as saying that journalism is the first rough draft of history. But that is nothing to celebrate. For as everyone knows who has ever been involved in a newsworthy event: Journalists always get it wrong. The truth of that cynical sentiment came home to me yesterday, when I ran across a book review of Randall Smith’s The Prince of Silicon Valley, a biography of Frank Quattrone. As I noted in my blog posting concerning the review, the author (Stephen Wolfe) misstated the one absolutely central fact about the prosecution of Quattrone: It was not Quattrone who sent out the email suggesting that people “clean up those files.” Thus, it is absolutely impossible that Quattrone could have written the email in question so that colleagues would purge documents incriminating to him. When reading Wolfe’s review, I thought his error especially surprising, because the matter is accurately portrayed in the book and because Wolfe says that he attended the summation of Quattrone’s trial.
The Wyly Insider Case. Peter J. Henning of the NYT (and Wayne State University Law School) explains at greater length why the insider-trading accusation against Sam and Charles Wyly looks so dubious to legal experts.
SEC Sues Sam and Charles Wyly. Fishing: A Paleolithic "Industry." The SEC has launched another headline-grabbing suit . All the right catch phrases are in the mix, bound to be repeated by harried journalists trying to pump up anti-business government press releases:: "Dallas billionaires," "six-year investigation," "Congressional hearings," "cloak of secrecy," "complex web" "sham system of trusts" "tax havens." Really, the SEC should construct one of those automatic phrase generators. When the rhetoric is stripped away, the accusations seem to be two: (1) The Wylys failed to announce that they hald more than 5 percent of the stock in certain companies. (2) They arranged to profit from the forthcoming sale of a company of which they were Chairman and Vice-Chairman.
What Are the Wylys Up Against? Peter J. Henning. though a former SEC enforcement lawyer, writes reasonably objective analyses of business law for the NYT. Here is his analysis of the Wyly case. Notice how completely false are many media reports on this story. For example, the headline at NPR is "SEC Cites Brothers In $550 Million Insider Scheme." Well, it's actually a charge of $31.7 million, but who's counting?
I am always surprised to find a report more sympathetic than I am to businessmen facing legal persecution--and when the report comes from
Public health officials in Portland, Oregon, shut down a 7-year-old's lemonade stand. I do not mean merely to sneer at the absurdity of this incident. Public health is a valid field of government activity when it is directed at combatting existing agents of harm, such as infectious diseases and posion sold as food. Government's right to act pre-emptively, however, needs to pass some standard of probable cause. But in the minds of Oregon's public health officials, it seems, the damning characteristic of little Julie Murphy's lemonade stand was that she sought to make a money from it: "When you go to a public event and set up shop, you're suddenly engaging in commerce," Eric Pippert, the food-borne illness prevention program manager for the Oregon public health department, told [The Oregonian]. "The fact that you're small-scale I don't think is relevant." Ah, "engaging in commerce"! Very suspicious, indeed. I hope they don't charge her mother with corrupting a youth.
Why Has the Financial Crisis Produced Few Criminal Cases? That is what the New York Times wants to know. And the answer it comes up with is: The financial crisis was a product of Wall Street greed, not criminality. This answer serves four purposes. First, for the notoriously leftist NYT, it strikes a note of moderation and fairness. "See, we don't think all economic problems result from criminal businessmen." Secondly, it nonetheless manages to blame businessmen for the economic crisis. "It was just a product of Wall Street greed, and Wall Street is always greedy. It's the nature of the beast." Thirdly, it obviates the suggestion that perhaps the villains were in Washington rather than New York. And fourthly, it implies that the ultimate solution to such crises must be an economic system that has no place for greed, such as, oh, an economy run by public servants. Update: Apparently, the question began with the New York Observer , so it seems that this thesis is a trial balloon that is already being floated by the leftist intelligentsia. The capitalist response must be to discover and publicize the simple and coherent story about how government regulators undermined the free-market system. Call it a first rough draft of history.
"Better the US government should violate the rule of law in 87 ways than that one kosher butcher should violate securities law in 87 ways"?
Cara Ellison is one of the very few bloggers who defends fallen businessmen. She is particularly passionate about Enron, where she worked...
July/August 2003 -- While collecting entries for this issue's "Cultural Calendar," my thoughts returned to David Kelley's article "For a
April 2004 -- The controversy last year over whether to withdraw a feeding tube from a 39-year-old Florida woman with severe brain damage has thrust questions regarding end-of-life decisions into the limelight once again. That debate has been intensified by divergent opinions about the woman's possibility of rehabilitation and by doubts raised about her husband's motivation in wishing not to prolong her life. The complexities of that case, however, should not be allowed to bias public response to a somewhat different but no less urgent ethical question: What is the most humane way to treat individuals who, at the end of a long life, express a clear-minded wish to die? As a society with an increasingly aged population, we need to confront this question head on.
Before the federal government starts handing out multimillion-dollar awards to corporate wives who turn in their husbands for violating one of the SEC’s 10,000 commandments, we need to get rid of this self-congratulatory term “whistleblower.” I am not one who opposes naming names where there are real crimes or real threats. I believe with Thomas Jefferson that: “A prejudice prevails too extensively among the young that it is dishonorable to bear witness against one another.” But the metaphor of “whistleblower” as currently used by business journalists is offensive to anyone who respects English.
Jeff Skilling seeks bail. The document is here .
April 2004 -- Editor's Note: Charles Murray is the W.H. Brady Scholar in Culture and Freedom at the American Enterprise Institute in Washi..
NYT, August 4, 2010: U.S. Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk . It's a shame we can't have dramatic film of the intellectual blowout that sent millions of gallons of anti-capitalist hysteria into the cultural environment. But I do hope some think tank has assigned a staffer to assemble a permanent record of the statements and actions that followed the Deepwater Horizon explosion.
During the fourth century B.C.—we don't know exactly when—a man, a resident of Athens, a student and teacher of philosophy, changed the worl
It seems that SMARTS Software , developed in part by Professor Mike Aitken , has now been sold to 150 brokers worldwide who use “its...
The Nationalization of Insider Trading. Reuters reports that the SEC is “investigating whether people may have illegally profited from trading on nonpublic information at BP Plc in the weeks and months following” the Deepwater Horzion oil spill.” Interestingly, the same story reports: “The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating whether BP properly disclosed information on risks related to its deepwater oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico.” So, the U.S. wants business employees to disclose all information relating to corporate risks. Indeed, it has shown a willingness to use multimillion-dollar payoffs to so-called whistleblowers . But the greatest collator of knowledge ever devised, the free market, is to be crippled by strict rules that prevent people who have secret information from profiting by it. Think of it as the nationalization of insider trading.
June 12, 2010 -- June is a big month for sports fans. Tennis fans have the French Open, basketball fans have the NBA Finals, and hockey fans
Defaming Frank Quattrone--Again. Someday, I should like to assemble a book comprising nothing but the libels and slanders against capitalists that have become a permanent feature of our history books. Among them would be: that J.P. Morgan sold flawed rifles to the Union Army, that John D. Rockefeller cheated the Widow Backus--and that Frank Quattrone ordered his subordinates to "clean up those files." The latest instance of this last falsehood comes in a book review, published in the Summer 2010 Exeter Bulletin, of Phillips Exeter Academy. It is a review of the biography of Frank Quattrone , The Prince of Silicon Valley, written by Randall Smith (Exeter '68), and it is penned by Phillips Exeter grad Stephen Wolfe (Class of '99).
Reporters like to quote Washington Post publisher Donald Graham as saying that journalism is the first rough draft of history. But that is nothing to celebrate. For as everyone knows who has ever been involved in a newsworthy event: Journalists always get it wrong. The truth of that cynical sentiment came home to me yesterday, when I ran across a book review of Randall Smith’s The Prince of Silicon Valley, a biography of Frank Quattrone. As I noted in my blog posting concerning the review, the author (Stephen Wolfe) misstated the one absolutely central fact about the prosecution of Quattrone: It was not Quattrone who sent out the email suggesting that people “clean up those files.” Thus, it is absolutely impossible that Quattrone could have written the email in question so that colleagues would purge documents incriminating to him. When reading Wolfe’s review, I thought his error especially surprising, because the matter is accurately portrayed in the book and because Wolfe says that he attended the summation of Quattrone’s trial.
The Wyly Insider Case. Peter J. Henning of the NYT (and Wayne State University Law School) explains at greater length why the insider-trading accusation against Sam and Charles Wyly looks so dubious to legal experts.
SEC Sues Sam and Charles Wyly. Fishing: A Paleolithic "Industry." The SEC has launched another headline-grabbing suit . All the right catch phrases are in the mix, bound to be repeated by harried journalists trying to pump up anti-business government press releases:: "Dallas billionaires," "six-year investigation," "Congressional hearings," "cloak of secrecy," "complex web" "sham system of trusts" "tax havens." Really, the SEC should construct one of those automatic phrase generators. When the rhetoric is stripped away, the accusations seem to be two: (1) The Wylys failed to announce that they hald more than 5 percent of the stock in certain companies. (2) They arranged to profit from the forthcoming sale of a company of which they were Chairman and Vice-Chairman.
What Are the Wylys Up Against? Peter J. Henning. though a former SEC enforcement lawyer, writes reasonably objective analyses of business law for the NYT. Here is his analysis of the Wyly case. Notice how completely false are many media reports on this story. For example, the headline at NPR is "SEC Cites Brothers In $550 Million Insider Scheme." Well, it's actually a charge of $31.7 million, but who's counting?
I am always surprised to find a report more sympathetic than I am to businessmen facing legal persecution--and when the report comes from