Archive for Steven Greenhut
Steven Greenhut is a columnist for the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif.
Free-Speech Clarity by California Courts
When kids get into complex arguments about who did what to whom, parents can usually sort through the miasma by focusing on a few key points. Whose toy is it? Which one of you threw the first punch? And likewise, almost every major debate in the political arena these days can be sorted out by [...]
24Nov2010 | Steven Greenhut | 3 comments | ContinuedLand-Use Controllers Never Quit
I have more than a small suspicion that those who promote urbanization will do so no matter what it does for the climate. The answer for them is always the same: more urbanization. Don’t worry about the exact question.
21May2009 | Steven Greenhut | 0 comments | ContinuedGas Prices: The Latest Excuse to Reengineer Society
As someone who commutes 16 miles each way to work in a gas-guzzling sports car along the LA-area freeways, I’ve been less-than-amused by the nearly $5 a gallon I must pay for the premium fuel that keeps my mid-life-crisis-mobile running. Yet despite the misery of high prices, I’ve taken a certain joy in watching the [...]
1Nov2008 | Steven Greenhut | 0 comments | ContinuedGovernment Workers Are America’s New Elite
As a child, I would ask my mother on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day: “Why isn’t there a Children’s Day?” After she stopped laughing, Mom explained: “Every day is Children’s Day.” I didn’t understand the joke then, but now that I’m the father of three children, her answer makes perfect sense. I recalled that exchange [...]
1Jul2008 | Steven Greenhut | 22 comments | ContinuedCourt Holds California’s Homeschoolers in Suspense
Anyone interested in the nearly criminal mismanagement of the nation’s government-run schools need only do research on the acronym LAUSD. In March 2006 Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraiogosa gave a speech blasting the LAUSD—Los Angeles Unified School District—for its “culture of complacency” and described the dropout problem in the district as “the new civil rights [...]
1May2008 | Steven Greenhut | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Militarization of American Police
In the summer of 2006 a frail, troubled 18-year-old girl named Ashley MacDonald ran through a nearly empty Huntington Beach, California, city park in the early morning holding a small knife. An onlooker called the police and soon two large male officers showed up. They shot the girl to death with 18 bullets, claiming she [...]
1Mar2008 | Steven Greenhut | 38 comments | ContinuedWildfires and State-Worship
Whenever wars or other tragedies rage, so too rage those who worship at the altar of government. In his World War I-era essay, “War Is the Health of the State,” writer Randolph Bourne argued that during peaceful times people concern themselves mostly with their own business, but that during war everything changes. “To most Americans [...]
1Jan2008 | Steven Greenhut | 1 comment | ContinuedCentral Planning Comes to Main Street
Steven Greenhut (sgreenhut@ocregister.com) is senior editorial writer and columnist at the Orange County Register in Santa Ana, Calif. He is author of Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain. A casual reader could be forgiven for skimming through a front-page Los Angeles Times article from February 12 and thinking that the story was [...]
1Aug2006 | Steven Greenhut | 1 comment | ContinuedNew Urbanism: Same Old Social Engineering
What should libertarians think of an increasingly influential land-use and planning movement known as the New Urbanism,
which seeks a broad change in the way cities and suburbs
develop?
Protecting Property in a Post-Kelo World
Two years ago, when I began writing a book,
peoples eyes would glaze over when I told them
the subject was eminent domain, the power of
the government to take property by force on just
compensation to the owner. Rarely could I mention the
subject without having to explain it in detail, and
incredulity was a typical response to the realization that
government now takes property for private uses rather
than for the public uses allowed by the
Constitution.
Unjust Compensation
When discussing eminent-domain horror stories with government officials and other defenders of the practice, one will often hear a refrain of this sort: “None of this is any big deal, really, because the victims of eminent domain must be made financially whole, under the law.” But, just as the Constitution’s clear requirement that government only [...]
1Mar2005 | Steven Greenhut | 1 comment | ContinuedHow Government Destroys Medical Care
News in August that Northridge Hospital Medical Center’s Sherman Way Campus, the San Fernando Valley’s oldest hospital, would be shutting its doors, was greeted by Los Angeles County residents with the same sense of resignation that has greeted other recently announced hospital closures. Another hospital or emergency room closing? What else is new? Earlier in [...]
1Feb2005 | Steven Greenhut | 0 comments | ContinuedHow Unions Are Bankrupting California
If you asked any southern Californian about the biggest union-related news story in recent years, the likely answer would be this year’s four-month-long labor dispute between cashiers (and other workers) and three of the region’s largest supermarket chains. The strike/lockout was widely covered for some obvious reasons. It disrupted most people’s lives. Store hours at [...]
1Sep2004 | Steven Greenhut | 7 comments | ContinuedStrangling the Golden State’s Golden Goose
The older industrial park just south of downtown Los Angeles wasn’t the typical spot for a California Chamber of Commerce press conference. There were no ribbons to cut, only a handful of moving boxes decorated with various bill numbers—SB 888, AB 274, SB 515. Instead of hand-shaking and excitement about a newly opened business, a [...]
1Oct2003 | Steven Greenhut | 0 comments | ContinuedProject Labor Agreements: Economic Illiteracy 101
Perhaps it’s the result of a dumbing-down of the American citizenry, but these days economic debates are waged with the most illogical premises. For instance, in recent weeks news stories have discussed plans by some California cities to use tax dollars to build power plants, rather than to keep buying power from the quasi-private utility [...]
1Jun2003 | Steven Greenhut | 1 comment | ContinuedHow California’s Consumer Laws Legalize Extortion
Barry Zanck, owner of a small mortgage company in Newport Beach, California, says he had never had a complaint lodged against his business. So he was shocked when he was named, along with a dozen other mortgage-related companies, in lawsuits filed last year by a prominent southern California law firm. “The unlawful, unfair and fraudulent [...]
1May2003 | Steven Greenhut | 2 comments | ContinuedDecommissioning California’s Coastal Tyranny
A California Superior Court ruling a year ago was an incredible bombshell that should have had defenders of private property rights rejoicing and California environmentalists gnashing their teeth. Yet the decision, declaring unconstitutional the California Coastal Commission, received surprisingly little media coverage and sparked only muted celebration and outrage at the time. The decision was [...]
19Apr2003 | Steven Greenhut | 0 comments | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
Update below. Controversy rages over the Obama administration’s mandate that all employers – including... Read More
The Snow Plowers’ Petition
The following might have happened in a small college town in upstate New York… In a cold and snowy... Read More
Super Bowl versus Education?
In the spirit of Super Bowl weekend I’d like to deconstruct a Facebook status update that a friend... Read More
Capitalism, Corporatism, and the Freed Market
When a front-running presidential contender tells the country that thanks to Barack Obama, “[w]e are... Read More
Creating Jobs versus Creating Value
Picking on New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is one of the largest participation sports on the Internet.... Read More
