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As Congress grapples with the challenge of downsizing or eliminating bureaucracies that haven't been critically reexamined for many decades, its Members would do well to consider some of the lessons learned by the businessmen and -women who made their

As humanity enters the twenty-first century, you might think we would have outgrown our fascination with doomsday prophecies. Yet the end-of-the world con game -- nearly as old as the world itself -- goes on.

The Senate recently voted to repeal the federally mandated 55 mph speed limit. If the House approves the measure and the president signs it--both of which are likely--then a national speed limit will be a thing of the past.

In offering his health care reform plan last year, President Clinton said that one of his primary goals, in addition to universal coverage, was to control rapidly rising health costs.

Former House Speaker Tom Foley convened a press conference to announce his vindication after the Supreme Court's ruling that state-imposed term limits were unconstitutional.

The nation's biggest environmental groups are stuffing the nation's mailboxes (and its landfills) with fundraising letters claiming that "greedy special interest groups" are out to "repeal twenty years of environmental protection regulation.

The April 19th terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City dramatically changed the debate over limiting the size and power of the federal government.

Advocates of welfare reform and affirmative action ought to take a long look at the current state of interracial adoption in the United States.

The Sierra Club, one of the nation's largest environmental organizations, not long ago ran a full- page ad in The New York Times deploring "the growing distance between the politicians on Capitol Hill and the rest of us.

The Clinton administration has set its civil rights policies on a radical course permeated by race-consciousness, brazenly breaking candidate Bill Clinton's "new Democrat" assurances that he would pursue a politics of moderation and healing.

Balzac called the bureaucracy "a gigantic force driven by dwarfs." In our generation, his definition aptly describes public education in America. Don't get me wrong.

Recycling is popular. Across the country, Americans willingly separate their trash into "regular" and "recyclable" containers. New York City alone collects over 2,000 tons of recyclables per day. But there's a catch.

More than twenty years ago, I was one of a dozen or so activists who founded Greenpeace in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Vancouver. The Vietnam war was raging and nuclear holocaust seemed closer every day.

Could the recent Republican landslide lead to major reform of environmental policy? Will we see a dismantling of bureaucratically controlled ecological central planning in favor of local initiative and private environmental stewardship?

The National Endowment for the Arts is fighting for its life, as newly empowered Republicans in Washington have targeted the NEA for extinction. Many artists are angry about this possibility and believe that only ignorance or malevolence can explain it.

On October 31, 1994, in a muddy northern Indiana soybean field, American Eagle Flight 4184 from Indianapolis to Chicago went down, killing all 68 passengers.

It was Halloween. Children were already at the door collecting candy. Then we heard the news that American Eagle flight 4184 had just plowed into a Northern Indiana cornfield.

No terrorist could have devised a better plan to jeopardize biomedical research and deny modern medical treatments to Americans who desperately need them.

Government-run health care stood trial twice in 1994, once in Washington D.C. and again in California. It was a two-time loser. Health care in America must be reformed. There is ample evidence of waste and fraud in the current system.

Contrary to the official "spin" coming out of Jefferson City, Missouri, special interest groups, lobbyists, and big bucks did not cause the legislative defeat of that state's far-reaching health care reform proposal.

When Congress repealed the 55-mile-per-hour speed limit law in December 1995, the safety experts at the U.S. Department of Transportation predicted that up to 6,400 more people would die every year.

The popular press has given extensive coverage to the latest report from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on dioxin.

New electronic systems for trading stocks could end the financial abuse suffered by investors when buying and selling small, over-the-counter (OTC) stocks. Such systems can spur economic growth, benefiting investors, business firms, and employees.

The 1989 oil spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound was a terrible accident. It should never happen again. The damage awards now coming out of Alaska jury rooms will encourage oil companies to make sure it doesn't.