Month: January 2016

January 06, 2016

North Korea’s H-bomb of ‘justice’

North Koreans might not have food to eat this year, but their government has announced that it has successfully tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb. The Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) released the following statement earlier today in Vienna: “Our monitoring stations picked up an unusual seismic event in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) today at 01:30:00 (UTC). Continue Reading...
January 06, 2016

Religious Activists Wage War on Oreos, Triscuits, and Ritz Crackers

Every so often your writer is reduced to scratching his head bemusedly at what leftist religious shareholder activists deem worthy of prioritization. Whether based on religious faith or not, it always seemed to me shareholders’ concerns should be maximization of return on investments rather than reshaping the world into a progressive utopia. Continue Reading...
January 06, 2016

Cultural Stewardship and Institutional Scrutiny

In today’s Acton Commentary, I have some further reflections on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The basic thrust of the piece is to encourage institutional thinking. We should expect that humans are going to institutionalize their goals because humans are natural institution builders, or culture makers. Continue Reading...
January 06, 2016

Letter from Rome: The end of fusionism?

The American political writer Frank S. Meyer is known as the father of “fusionism,” which is usually defined as the synthesis between traditionalist and libertarian thought in modern conservatism. In practical political terms, it brought together social conservatives, free-market advocates, and proponents of a strong national defense to fight against Communism abroad and the welfare state at home and formed the basis of Ronald Reagan’s governing coalition, as well as of think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute and the Acton Institute. Continue Reading...
January 05, 2016

How Can We End Hunger in America?

What does it mean to be hungry in America? And how do we solve the issue of domestic hunger? To answer those questions, Congress created the bipartisan National Commission on Hunger, a group tasked with providing “policy recommendations to Congress and the USDA Secretary to more effectively use existing programs and funds of the Department of Agriculture to combat domestic hunger and food insecurity.” Continue Reading...
January 04, 2016

Why Minimum Wages Increases Don’t Target Poverty

If you ask most people why they support raising the minimum wage they’ll says it’s because it helps the poor. But as David Neumark, a scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco notes, numerous studies have shown that there is no statistically significant relationship between raising the minimum wage and reducing poverty. Continue Reading...