Bruce Chapman | Page 8 | Discovery Institute

^{Bruce Chapman
June 27, 1994
Citizen Leadership, Technology

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Fast Track To a Fiasco

_{Bruce Chapman
June 27, 1994
Citizen Leadership, Technology

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The House of Representatives, unable t o admit that it cannot get its mind around the vast complexity of the cybersphere, is about to give up and wave through the biggest restructuring of the communications field in 60 years—without floor debate or amendments. The consequences for the nation’s economy and future technological dominance are at least as consequential as the Read More ›

Sincere devotion to faith or donorship and charity concept

^{Bruce Chapman
May 24, 1993
Citizen Leadership

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Pass National Service, Cripple Charity

_{Bruce Chapman
May 24, 1993
Citizen Leadership

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Drawing on a moral tradition going back to the Bible, and wending through the American founding and the young republic described by Alexis de Tocqueville, this ideal has created what some call a "mediating" institution between the profit sector and the government. Now the government proposes not only to compete with this sector (as in the Vista program), but to invade it directly. Under President Clinton's national service bill, politically appointed boards chosen by state governors would funnel federal funds for service jobs to selected private and civic groups. Imagine you run a private charity. If it is chosen to participate in the national service program, you've hit the jackpot financially. But if your charity, like the great majority, is not chosen, your cause will find itself trying to compete with the federal treasury. Americans familiar with the notorious Comprehensive Employment and Training Act of the 1970s should find the prospects for unabashed political patronage, and even corruption, obvious. Incapacitating the nongovernment charitable sector further, the national service bill allows (read, "encourages") the programs it backs to raise additional funds from private sources. Imagine trying to raise money for a private charity when the government's endorsed charities, blessed by your state's governor, can offer donors federal "matching money," prestige and public recognition as incentives to fund them instead. Read More ›

^{John Hamer and Bruce Chapman
May 2, 1993
Discovery Institute

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Six Solutions for Seattle – Global City or Just Another Town?

_{John Hamer and Bruce Chapman
May 2, 1993
Discovery Institute

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METROPOLITAN Seattle - from Everett to Tacoma and from Puget Sound to the Cascade foothills - in the past decade has become a true international "Citistate," to use the term coined by syndicated columnist Neal R. Peirce. A Discovery Institute project, "International Seattle: Creating a Globally Competitive Community," is aimed at helping the region define a new strategy for increasing its international competitiveness. With the help of a 24-member advisory board and a host of volunteers, we have conducted interviews throughout the region and studied a dozen other cities' international programs. It was a breakthrough in 1990 when community-wide response to international concerns led to the creation of the Trade Development Alliance of Greater Seattle. The "TDA" pulled together resources from the city of Seattle, King County, the Port of Seattle, the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce and organized labor, with a stated goal of making this region "one of North America's premier international gateways and commercial centers." Read More ›

Saving money coin with banking investment, finance education concept. Planning student loan for studying abroad for college or university degree. Future children's education fund cash. Growing saving

^{Bruce Chapman
March 7, 1993
Citizen Leadership

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‘Let’s Draft Everybody’ – National service vs. real service

_{Bruce Chapman
March 7, 1993
Citizen Leadership

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THERE she is, a sweet, but emotionally overcome young woman from the New Jersey Youth Corps, being consoled with a hug from the president of the United States. Onlookers in a flag-decked classroom beam at this latest exciting moment in the new political production, "The Selling of National Service." It is the kind of scene repeated in photo-opportunities nationally as the White House hustles its plan to have college loan recipients pay off Uncle Sam with government-approved service. The consequence is a distinctly American tradition of committed, creative and effective community service. As figures from the Gallup Poll and the respected group Independent Sector show, in recent years Americans actually are giving more money and time to charities. And because they give it as they wish - not as they are directed by government - the voluntary service sector is more popular than either the profit sector of society or the government sector. Read More ›

Graduation hat on coins money in the glass bottle on natural green background, Saving money for education concept

^{Bruce Chapman
January 18, 1993
Citizen Leadership

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National Service: It’s Just Too Expensive

_{Bruce Chapman
January 18, 1993
Citizen Leadership

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The idea, whose father was military conscription and whose mother was the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, was incubated in the Progressive Policy Institute in the '80s, placed in the foster care of the Democratic Leadership Council and then adopted by the [President] Clinton campaign. "Maintain the Pell Grant program but scrap the existing student-loan program and establish a National Service Trust Fund to guarantee every American who wants a college education the means to obtain one. Those who borrow from the fund will pay it back either as a small percentage of their income over time, or through community service as teachers, law-enforcement officers, health-care workers or peer counselors helping kids stay off drugs and in school." Would taxpayers really think they were getting a bargain by paying for students' college loans and then paying again to hire these same people in government-financed jobs? Would workers now in health care and education jobs be happy to see the cheeky new government-paid "volunteers" arrive, eliminate private-sector growth in low-skill jobs and drive down the private-pay scale? Would the volunteers really serve society best in such artificial, temporary posts, expending tax revenues, or by getting on with their own careers and contributing to tax revenues? Read More ›

The concept of news. Folded stack of Newspapers on laptop

^{Bruce Chapman
December 26, 1992
Citizen Leadership

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Policing political LIES

_{Bruce Chapman
December 26, 1992
Citizen Leadership

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FALSEHOODS in political advertising are widely regarded as a growing menace in our public life and a source of voter anger. So the media were busier than ever this past election season trying to referee truth in politics, while candidates issued what seemed to be unusually numerous, and fulsome, critiques of their opponents’ honesty. But was that enough? Legislators and Read More ›

Bronze figurine of Lady Justice with her scales

^{Bruce Chapman
November 25, 1992
Citizen Leadership

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Ethic Cleansing

_{Bruce Chapman
November 25, 1992
Citizen Leadership

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The Clinton honeymoon is hardly underway and the Society of Permanent Busybodies is already questioning the integrity of his Transition Committee. They want to know: How can Vernon Jordan, former head of the Urban League and co-chair of the transition, presume to give advice on presidential appointments when he serves on the board of a tobacco company? About the time Read More ›

Red man lies on the background of the rest. Infected person. Coronavirus pandemic infection COVID-19. Quarantine. Self isolation. Crowd

^{Bruce Chapman
November 4, 1992
Citizen Leadership

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Welcome to the dawn of the Age of Victimhood

_{Bruce Chapman
November 4, 1992
Citizen Leadership

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IN ONE of those "new studies" that repeatedly illuminate the medical news, we learned recently that genes may be responsible for disposing some people to smoking. This is a development beyond the hopes of America's weed addicts: Suddenly smokers are on their way from being seen as practitioners of a disagreeable vice to becoming the unfortunate victims of a genetic disorder. In America, once that kind of opinion switch is made a freshly established class of victims can start winning arguments and lawsuits. They are no longer accountable for their actions. In the Age of the Victim, society is always wrong. Some say that a nation founded on individualism is becoming a society of finger-pointing interests, each trying to score off the whole. Actually, we still believe in individualism, it's just that it's an individualism of rights, not responsibilities, and, paradoxically, those rights are now the products of group membership. For example, our tattered code of individual responsibility would have it that a chronically late employee might expect, eventually, to be fired. But, in "A Nation of Victims," a new book by Charles J. Sykes, the case is related of a Pennsylvania school employee fired for constantly arriving late at work. It seems that the worker then sued for reinstatement because his therapist said he suffered from "Chronic Lateness Syndrome." He won the case, too, though it later was lost on appeal. Read More ›

^{Bruce Chapman
October 30, 1992
Uncategorized

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Is Fortune’s blessing justified? Well, yes and no

_{Bruce Chapman
October 30, 1992
Uncategorized

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Editor's note: Is Seattle really "the best city for global business in the U.S."? In the current issue of Fortune magazine, a survey of 900 business executives suggests that the answer is yes. By various criteria, Seattle ranked highest among 60 American cities. Of the top five cities on Fortune's list, Seattle surpassed Houston, San Francisco, Atlanta and New York. Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based public-policy organization, is at work on a project called "International Seattle: The Making of a Globally Competitive Community." Examining the Fortune findings in light of this area's international strengths and weaknesses, Bruce Chapman, Discovery's president, and John Hamer, senior fellow, arrived at two different - and provocative - conclusions. For the past few years the Foreign Trade Division of the U.S. Census Bureau has been compiling export trade statistics on a "state of origin" basis. We now can tell with greater accuracy which states are generating the most exports. And, since metropolitan Seattle accounts for a great bulk of state exports, we can assume that if urban area trade figures were available, we would perform even better in those. We know that the Seattle and Tacoma ports, together, are now the second largest in the United States, after Los Angeles/Long Beach. Read More ›

Pile of Various newspapers over white background.

^{Bruce Chapman
October 26, 1992
Citizen Leadership

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Policing Political ‘Lies’

_{Bruce Chapman
October 26, 1992
Citizen Leadership

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SEATTLE–Legislators, bureaucrats and newspapers in Washington State think they have found a way to stop political lies: They’ve passed a law and are vigorously enforcing it. Washington isn’t the first state to try this, of course: Some 13 others have passed measures to curb political lying, but all have been found unenforceable on First Amendment grounds. That’s why Washington Stat’s Read More ›