When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last January that drug overdoses in 2018 declined by 4.1 percent–from 70,237 in 2017 to 67,367 in 2018–many in the press took that as a sign of possible progress in America’s longest war, the war on drugs. However, a deeper look at the data painted a very different picture. The CDC report stated: The age‐adjusted rate … Continue reading As the War on Drugs Relentlessly Grinds On, Overdose Deaths Relentlessly Mount
President Trump banned nearly all permanent immigration and temporary workers last month for the remainder of the year. His order will affect as many as half a million workers and immigrants if consulates reopen, other COVID-19 travel restrictions are lifted, and migration resumes to last year’s levels. It will also affect about 20,000 U.S. employers seeking to hire … Continue reading About 20,000 U.S. Employers Are Affected by Trump’s Travel Bans This Year
For years labor scholars, many sympathetic to the goals of organized labor, shied away from the question of the extent to which unionization of police forces tends to insulate misbehaving police from accountability. More recently this reluctance has been set aside, and various new studies have confirmed what some of us had guessed all along: … Continue reading For Police Accountability, Tackle The Laws That Empower Police Unions
As the Supreme Court continued its decadelong silence in protecting the Second Amendment, Americans last month nevertheless proved that they understand the importance of the right to keep and bear arms. The FBI conducted a record-high 3.9 million background checks for firearms sales and transfers in June. The previous record of 3.7 million was set just this past March. … Continue reading 11 Incidents in Which Lawful Gun Owners Made a Difference
The recent surge in anti-Semitic outbursts from entertainment figures—most recently Nick Cannon—is troubling to people of goodwill. As a Hollywood actor and entertainer who has starred in more than two dozen films and scores of television shows, Cannon is a high-profile cultural influencer. On a podcast released June 30, he chose to use his wide-reaching … Continue reading Nick Cannon’s Anti-Semitism Symptomatic of a Deeper Problem
While the pandemic itself is generating much uncertainty, the battle over back-to-school is causing downright whiplash. Last month, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended that schools work to reopen for in-person learning this fall. The physician group stated that it “strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with … Continue reading What Betsy DeVos Gets Wrong (and Homeschoolers Get Right) about Reopening Schools
The ever‐fading hope that a Biden administration would look fondly on free trade is becoming more of a free trader’s dying wish than a realistic expectation. The problem with this narrative, of course, was the Trump administration’s embrace of a laundry list of ideas long held by Congressional Democrats, which made them more likely to agree with him than to … Continue reading Five Issues with Biden’s Supply Chain Plan
The Constitution guarantees the right to engage in commerce within the United States free from interstate trade wars through what’s known as the “dormant” Commerce Clause, which stops protectionist state regulations. Last year, the Supreme Court’s groundbreaking opinion in Tennessee Wine & Spirits Retailers Association v. Thomas reaffirmed this principle, holding Tennessee’s durational residency requirements for retail liquor … Continue reading Texas Beer Should Be Sold as Freely as Tennessee Whiskey
The city of Seattle is already struggling. With a new tax on jobs, its city council seems determined to make things even worse. The COVID-19 pandemic and local government lockdowns economically decimated Washington state in March, with Seattle hit especially hard in the early days of the virus’s spread. In the immediate aftermath of the … Continue reading Seattle Just Passed a New Tax on Jobs in the Middle of an Economic Crisis—But Exempted Government Workers
A year ago in March 2019, protests broke out in Hong Kong over concerns that a Beijing-backed piece of legislation would allow Hongkongers to be extradited to mainland China. The fear was that the law would be used to target pro-democracy advocates and anyone critical of the CPC regime, exposing them to the notorious injustice … Continue reading Why Free Countries Should Welcome Freedom-Lovers from Hong Kong
DonnyFerguson.com 