Archive for Ted Roberts
I Never Dream of Nicotine
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama. Such is the intensity of tobacco litigation that every day somewhere in this great nation there’s a judge, lawyer, or juror pondering the evils of the weed. The sun never sets on tobacco litigation. Tobacco is addictive, say the trial lawyers. All I know is that [...]
1May2003 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedGoing Postal
I like my mailman because in a drowsy occupational environment where dismissal for sleeping in the mail truck is unheard of and battlefield promotions are rare, John delivers the goods. He’s the real McCoy. He could have been a dust-crusted, hard-riding pony express rider. Big John would have lugged his horse — mail satchels strapped [...]
17Apr2003 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedTake Your Bike Helmet to the Safety Museum
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama. I like to bike down to our neighborhood park. The wind sings along with the spinning bike wheels, an easy, five-minute downhill ride. On the way down, you coast like a hockey puck on buttered ice. Of course, going home is a chore that would daunt [...]
1Feb2003 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedEbenezer Scrooge: In His Own Defense
Scrooge speaks: To hell with writers. They’re all the same. They carry a simple formula in their empty minds; mix one small fact with a headful of dreams, and Eureka! A best seller. Give a writer a drop of truth and he’ll make a Thames, thereby providing him a monthly royalty check, good roast beef, [...]
1Dec2002 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedLibrary Story
The universe is full of mysteries; like when does the phone company collect the coins in pay telephones? (Have you ever seen a guy in a phone company uniform lugging a satchel full of quarters out of the airport phone booths?) Why is it that your driver’s-side windshield wiper is always the faulty one? and [...]
1Oct2002 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedThe Bard Never Said "Click It or Ticket"
I’m cruising down one of the imperial four-lane highways; paved, drained, and bridged by the tax dollars I pay to the federal government and the Great State of Alabama. I’m buoyant because He who wrapped the earth, the United States, and the great State of Alabama with its climatic environment has done an especially fine [...]
1Sep2002 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedIf Alan Greenspan Lived In Huntsville, Alabama!
I wish Alan Greenspan lived here. That way he’d know that there’s a Huntsville, Alabama, grocery chain selling chicken leg quarters for 29 cents a pound. That ain’t exactly a sign of inflation. Consequently, the next time the Federal Reserve Board met: Mr. Greenspan and his pals wouldn’t touch the button marked “mash to raise [...]
1Aug2002 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedLady Godiva, Where Are You?
Taxation was the theme as my good friend Herb and I hoisted a few at the neighborhood pub the other night. It was his civic duty, he noted, to suck up the suds. Did not our federal government benefit from a healthy tax on alcohol—at the brewery? And did not the state squeeze another 8 [...]
1Jul2002 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedBarefoot in the Park
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama, who often writes on public-policy issues. There’s an old story about two young brothers who loved to play in the woods around their house. In their games the clearings became the buffalo prairies of the west and the trees, on windy days, were galleons that sailed [...]
1Jan2002 | Ted Roberts | 1 comment | ContinuedBeware the Ides of April (Plus Two)
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama, who often writes on public-policy issues. April 15, two days after the Ides of April. A day of infamy that causes the sour-hearted taxpayer to shudder and wish a warp of time would wash over him and carry him to seventh-century Notaxylvania, an idyllic kingdom where [...]
1Apr2001 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedOh, What a Piece of Work Is a Man
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama, who often writes on public-policy issues. Will, the manager of the new Globe Theater in London, was frustrated. Tickets were priced alluringly cheap, but he made a nice profit on ale at 2 shillings a mug. However, the customers insisted on smuggling in their own ale, [...]
1Mar2001 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | ContinuedHow the Theory of Comparative Advantage Saved My Marriage
Ted Roberts is a freelance writer in Huntsville, Alabama, who often writes on public-policy issues. My neighbor is a kindly man with the pink and white complexion of a healthy turnip—and the generosity of a squash plant in dark loam. He has two green thumbs and big hands with long fingers obviously designed to pluck [...]
1Nov2000 | Ted Roberts | 0 comments | Continued-
The Latest
Contraception: Insuring the Uninsurable
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The Snow Plowers’ Petition
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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
