RIGHT TO PROPERTY

GENERAL

PROPERTY MATTERS: How Property Rights Are Under Assault -- And Why You Should Care
(Book published by the Free Press, 1997)
A look at the current legal and political battles over the human right to own and use property. Topics include environmentalism, western lands, urban planning, and intellectual property. Written, says one reviewer, "with both a fine pen and disciplined outrage."

THE PUBLIC LANDS

Escalating the War Over Escalante
(From The Salt Lake Tribune, the Las Vegas Journal, and other papers, Spring 1997)
Easterners regard the federal government as a baronial landlord over the public lands of the West, entitled to act by whim. But the history of the West made the public domain into a National Commons to which all citizens should have a right of reasonable access. This ancient bargain is being broken. As a result, Westerners are getting mad, and they are right.

HERITAGE RIVERS PROGRAM

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy
(Unpublished, September 1997)
The Administration's Heritage Rivers program is a repeat of now-too-familiar pattern whereby actions that are presented as limited and voluntary are only the opening wedge for intrusive regulation. Sometimes paranoia is the only rational response.

URBAN PLANNING

Whine Cooler
(From Reason, August 1998)
It is past time to stop using urban planning's long history of failure as an excuse for yet more planning and to try an alternative -- respect for individual rights, reliance on the amazing ability of markets to produce a rich variety of urban environments, and the genius of an inventive people.

Myths of Light-Rail Transit
(From Reason Foundation Policy Study No. 244, October 1998).
An old adage says "It isn't what you don't know that ruins you; it's all the things you do know that turn out to be wrong." So it is with current hype about the virtues of urban rail, almost all of which turn out to be imaginary. See also Reason Foundation's companion study by Randal O'Toole of the Thoreau Institute, entitled "10 Transit Myths," at http://www.reason.org/ps245.html.

MEDICAL TRANSPLANTS OF VITAL ORGANS

Organ Grinders
(From Reason, November 1998)
Government officials and members of the medical establishment disagree over many issues surrounding organ transplants. But they all agree that the donor of an organ (or his family) should have no say in who receives it. Why not? Why shouldn't such a precious gift reflect the preferences of the donor?

Organs, Ethics, and HHS
(Distributed by Bridge News & Knight-Ridder/Tribune, October 14, 1998).
An OpEd spin-off from "Organ Grinders" that appeared in several newspapers throughout the country.