Economists who have studied alcohol prohibition in the U.S. talk of a political coalition of “bootleggers and Baptists” that kept it going for more than a decade. Bootleggers were for it for obvious monetary reasons (it put them in business), whereas the Baptists believed it would please God. The latest example of a bootlegger-and-Baptist-style coalition is one that got the EPA (religious zealots who worship the earth goddess)to ban the sale of oil-based house paint in one-gallon cans in the Mid-Atlantic region. The EPA claims that opening a one-gallon can of the stuff causes too many “volatile organic compounds” to … Continue reading Green Monopoly