What is the Lexington Institute?

The New York Times has an OpEd touting a free market approach to the postal service. In an essay Letter From Europe (dateline Arlingon, Virginia!) Sam Ryan is all excited about changes taking place in Europe which include allowing businesses to compete for mail services. He's also jazzed about the prospects, on the other side of the world, of privatizing Japan Post. In the essay he makes it clear he wants to privatize the U.S. Postal Service:

Congress is now considering legislation that would present the first major reform of the United States Postal Service in 30 years. Despite the free-market rhetoric of our policymakers, however, this legislation makes no attempt to reduce the Postal Service’s monopoly, let alone to privatize the agency.

Fine. That's his opinion. But the line at the end of the essay describes Ryan thustly:

Sam Ryan is a senior fellow at the Lexington Institute, a policy research group.

A policy research group. But that doesn't tell you much. The Lexington Institute is a pretty hard-core "let's privatize everything" outfit. The New York Times should have informed readers, at a minimum, that the Lexington Institute is a free-market based policy shop.

But wait, there's more! Here is an excerpt from the Lexington Institute mission statement: (emp add)

The Lexington Institute believes in limiting the role of the federal government to those functions explicitly stated or implicitly defined by the Constitution. The Institute therefore actively opposes the unnecessary intrusion of the federal government into the commerce and culture of the nation, and strives to find nongovernmental, market-based solutions to public-policy challenges.

Okay. But what do we find in the Constitution? From Article I, Section 8:

Article 1 - The Legislative Branch

Section 8 - Powers of Congress

The Congress shall have Power ...

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;

They can't even follow their mission statement.

CODA: Aren't you tired of reading something in the newspaper that has the appearance of neutrality, but should you Google around, you discover that truths have been hidden (like the bias of the author) which force you to reasses the whole thing?


posted by Quiddity at 12/05/2006 11:14:00 PM