S.M. Oliva

The DOJ’s Case Against Mountain Health Care Demands Challenge

It's been nearly three months since public comments were filed in the Justice Department's antitrust settlement with Mountain Health Care. Nicholas Provenzo submitted comments on the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism's behalf, while I presented a 49-page filing...

Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s Irrationality

Rarely do you see a Supreme Court opinion with as little intellectual merit as Tuesday's judgment in Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs. Chief Justice William Rehnquist's reputation as a conservative, "states' rights" judge took a severe beating as he...

Antitrust, Politics and the Media

On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission plans to vote on a new set of rules for media ownership. These rules dictate how many television stations can own, as well as cross-ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market. The FCC's changes...

Capitalism Triumphs at Augusta

Mike Weir became the first Canadian, and first left-hander, to win the Masters. Weir triumphed in a one-hole playoff with American journeyman Len Mattiace after both players finished the tournament 7-under-par. Although the playoff was somewhat anticlimactic--a...

Death by Antitrust: Mountain Health Care, R.I.P.

Last Friday, Mountain Health Care of Asheville, North Carolina, will close its offices for good. The 11 year-old company died not from bankruptcy or poor business judgment, but of antitrust poisoning. More accurately, the United States Department of Justice executed...

Property Rights by Popular Vote

While the Buckeye case may not serve as a turning point in the battle to restore property rights, it is nonetheless an ominous indicator of just how far we have to go.

The Sin of ‘Sin Taxes’

Like most states, Georgia is facing a severe budget crisis. Estimates place Georgia's deficit for the next fiscal year at between $800 million and $1 billion. To help remedy the situation, Governor Sonny Perdue is trying the oldest political trick in the book--he...

Defending the Indefensible: Nestles-Dreyer’s Ice Cream Merger

The FTC knows their actions are rationally indefensible, which is why they rely on smearing their opponents and tossing around floating abstractions like “consumer welfare” to justify what they’re doing.

Untrustworthy Trust Accounts

Most Americans have never heard the acronym "IOLTA," but if you've ever been involved in a real estate closing or had an attorney hold your funds in escrow, than you've probably been affected by IOLTA. What does that mean? It means the government is taking money from...

Nike, Free Speech and the Constitution

Nike v. Kasky presents the Supreme Court with an opportunity to undo some of the constitutional damage resulting from the so-called "commercial speech doctrine," the Court's test for deciding whether self-interested speech is entitled to First Amendment protection....

Educating the Monopolists: Antitrust Prosecutor Klein Works to Reduce Competition in Education

When New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg first named Joel Klein to head the city's public school system, the irony was immediately apparent: an antitrust lawyer heading one of the nation's most infamous (and ineffectual) monopolies. Last month, however, Klein's tenure as...

Abortion and the Left: All the Rights But One

Last month marked the 30th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case which overturned a Texas ban on the procedure. To commemorate that anniversary, the well-known abortion rights group NARAL hosted a public event that...

Justice is Blind to Property Rights

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear the case of Three O Realty v. Empire State Development Corporation, an appeal of a New York state court's decision to allow that state to seize a number of privately owned buildings (via eminent domain) for the...

The Immoral Defense of ‘Amateurism’ as the Primary Virtue of College Sports

Consider the following scenario: A junior at a major university is majoring in marketing. She is one of the department's most successful and intelligent students. All of her professors agree she will rise to the top of her profession someday. Now suppose this...

The FCC and the Science of Tyranny

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell seems to long for his days as an antitrust lawyer in the Clinton Justice Department. According to news reports this week, Powell directed FCC economists to devise "an objective scientific formula" for the...

The John Adams Family

President's Day is the politically correct (and union-approved) way to celebrate the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, America's two defining presidents in the pre-20th century era. But while both men deserve much of the accolades they receive, they...

The Libertarian Anti-Manifesto

Susan Lee, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, has an essay in Wednesday's edition of that paper arguing in favor of "libertarianism." Superficially, she makes a strong argument for the libertarian manifesto: [L]ibertarians are concerned with...

Money, Wealth, and the Corruption of Government

It was hardly the end of an era, but the opening of the 108th Congress on January 07, 2003, brought the curtain down on the short tenure of Minnesota Senator Dean Barkley, a longtime ally of now-former Governor Jesse Ventura who obtained his Senate post two months ago...

The Crusading Lawyers

Lawyers are supposed to act as advocates, defending the individual rights of their clients before the law. In any controversy, be it civil or criminal, the case must revolve around the parties, not their counsel. Yet that is no longer a guiding principle for many...

The Antitrust “Shakedown” Racket: Abolish the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act

This Monday President Bush proposed a $2.2 trillion federal budget to Congress. Momentarily setting aside the sheer outrage over the destruction of such vast wealth in the pursuit of unconstitutional government programs, two items are of particular interest to those...