Walter Williams's blog

The Census and the Constitution

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:41:29 -0500

The Census Bureau estimates that the life cycle cost of the 2010 Census will be from $13.7 billion to $14.5 billion, making it the costliest census in the nation’s history.

Black opportunity destruction

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:37:56 -0500

“Do you mean he is taller than me am?” sarcastically barked Dr. Martin Rosenberg, my high school English teacher, to one of the students in our class.

Global warming update

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:20:10 -0500

John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel, in an hour-long television documentary titled “Global Warming: The Other Side,” presents evidence that our National Climatic Data Center has been manipulating weather data just as the now disgraced and under investigation British University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit.

We need diversity

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:07:49 -0500

It’s not at all uncommon to watch a college basketball game and see that 90 to 100 percent of the players are black. According to the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport report titled “The 2008 Racial and Gender Report Card,” the percentage of black male basketball players in Division I was an all-time high at 60.4 percent. It was 45.9 percent in football and 6.0 percent in baseball.

Haiti’s avoidable death toll

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:46:44 -0500

Some expect Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake death toll to reach over 200,000 lives. Why the high death toll? Northern California’s 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was more violent, measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, resulting in 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake measured 7.8 on the Richter scale, about eight times more violent than Haiti’s, and cost 3,000 lives.

Global warming is a religion

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:43:51 -0500

Manmade global warming, for many, is an Earth-worshipping religion.

The essential feature of any religion is that its pronouncements are to be accepted on the basis of faith as opposed to hard evidence. Questioning those pronouncements makes one a sinner.

Untrue Beliefs

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:16:56 -0500

Here’s a sample of last week’s news reporting: “A new decade is about to start ...”, “What better way to start a new year and decade ...”, and “ABC ‘World News’ Decade Look-Back.” One would think that the first decade of the third millennium came to an end midnight Dec. 31 and the new decade began a minute after midnight.

Black education

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 12:21:26 -0500

Detroit’s (predominantly black) public schools are the worst in the nation and it takes some doing to be worse than Washington, D.C.

Collusion against our youth

Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:51:31 -0500

I’ve grown somewhat weary writing about the devastating effects of minimum wage laws but The Wall Street Journal’s “Black Youths Miss Out on Good Job News,” (Dec. 4, 2009) warrants another try.

We’ve been had

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:54:02 -0500

Last year, my column “Global Warming Rope-A-Dope” (12/24/08) started out: “Americans have been rope-a-doped into believing that global warming is going to destroy the planet. Scientists who have been skeptical about manmade global warming have been called traitors or handmaidens of big oil.”

The pretense of knowledge

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 16:54:00 -0500

The ultimate constraint that we all face is knowledge — what we know and don’t know. The knowledge problem is pervasive and by no means trivial, as hinted at by just a few examples.

Voluntarism or self-interest?

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:55:21 -0500

How many things in our lives would we like to depend upon the generosity and selflessness of our fellow man, and do you think we would like the outcome?

Constitutional contempt

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:56:20 -0500

At Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Oct. 29 press conference, a CNS News reporter asked, “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”

Economic myths and irrelevancy

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:03:01 -0500

Steve H. Hanke is a professor of Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., and writes frequently for Globe Asia and Forbes magazine. Professor Hanke starts off his “Hu versus Sarkozy” article (Globe Asia, November 2009) with a warning.

Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:33:24 -0400

According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize should be awarded to the person who: “during the preceding year, shall have done ... the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”