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Today turns out to be Institute for Justice Day.
IJ has been mentioned from time to time in Pickings. We have just learned a charity rating service continues to give IJ its highest award.
Next is an example of the types of clients assisted by the Institute.
DANNY GLOVER’S recent difficulty hailing a cab in New York City highlighted one transportation problem faced by minorities. But there is another problem that is perpetuated by the government of the city of New York — lack of alternatives to the public transportation system.Like other cities, New York throws barriers in the path of entrepreneurs who attempt to launch van or jitney services. When Hector Ricketts, a Jamaican immigrant and father of three children, lost his job at a hospital, he decided to start a van service. He had seen the difficulties his fellow Queens residents had in obtaining cheap, convenient transportation. People were often faced with a walk to the bus plus a transfer to the subway to get to work. Those who live in high-crime neighborhoods and must return home after dark are frightened of even a two or three block walk — particularly women. Vans pick people up at the subway station and take them directly to their doors. And they do it for $1.00, considerably less than the public system charges.
One would suppose that in this era of welfare reform, obstacles to obtaining jobs would be cast aside with brisk efficiency. Not so. …
One of the Institute’s main efforts is litigation against abuse of eminent domain. There has been a recent victory in Riviera Beach, FL.
If you’re interested, check out their web site. www.ij.org They are lucky folks; they get to spend their days suing governments.
David Brooks – Anglophile.
Der Spiegel has a long look at the IPCC, the UN climate panel. This looks to be a reasonably balanced portrayal of the debate.
Yesterday marked the end of WWII in Europe. Historian Richard Overy writes on the war.
May Month has a posting on Eric Hoffer, the philosopher longshoreman from California.
… The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power. How naive the cliché that money is the root of evil! The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind. …
There’s still a war. Max Boot has a good post in Contentions.
Tony Blankley thinks September May Be the Cruelest Month.
Claudia Rosett comments on World Bank.