RIP John Murtha, Titan of Pork Spending
The Titan of pork barrel spending, Rep. John Murtha died this afternoon at the age of 77. He passed away in Arlington, VA from complications with a recent gallbladder surgery.Murtha was first elected...
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What is Wrong With an Optimistic View of Recovery
Brian S. Wesbury, author of It's Not As Bad As You Think: Why Capitalism Trumps Fear and the Economy Will Thrive, and his colleague Robert Stein write in Forbes today their reasons why the economy has...
View ArticleAnimal Shelter Privatization Success in Kansas City
Last year I reported that Kansas City was privatizing its animal shelter to achieve three important goals: lower costs, increase pet adoptions and reduce the number of pets euthanized. Nearly one year...
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New at Reason: Don't Break the Banks
I have a new article published by Reason.com:In the past few weeks, President Barack Obama has proposed a harsh new liabilities tax targeted at the top 50 or so financial firms and disastrous new...
View ArticleData Still Show No Signs That Stimulus is Working
Stanford's John Taylor slices the data in several nice simple graphs and shows:Note that none of the action in real GDP growth is due to government purchases. In other words during the entire first...
View ArticleAndres Duany: Humans Are Part of the Natural World, Not the Problem
Popular Mechanics has a short and revealing interview with New Urbanist planner Andres Duany on Smart Growth. The interview focuses primarily on promoting the Smart Growth Manual, a book he coauthors...
View ArticleThe Financial Crisis, In Rhyme Form
By economist Karl Case:The volume of mortgages written back thenStunned imaginations.In a single quarter in 2003,A trillion in originations!But something happened late that yearThat caused long rates...
View ArticleBudget Buster Express: High-Speed Rail, Amtrak or Frustrated Children?
An interesting editorial in the Washington Times on February 7, 2010, suggested:“Members of Congress must feel a bit shortchanged by the amount of playtime they received during childhood. Their ongoing...
View ArticleTransit Won't Save Detroit. High Speed Trains Won't Save the US
Monday night PBS aired a documentary Blueprint America: Beyond the Motor City which they say "examines how Detroit, a symbol of America’s diminishing status in the world, may come to represent the...
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Social Security Veers into the Red
USA Todayoffers a preview of things to come if we don't get serious about tackling out-of-control entitlement spending:Social Security's annual surplus nearly evaporated in 2009 for the first time in...
View ArticleKentucky House Leaders Want to Bet the Budget on Another Federal Bailout
Kentucky House leaders are so confident of either health care reform or another federal bailout of the states (see ARRA; stimulus) that they're willing to bet their budget on it. Per the Louisville...
View ArticleNo More iPhones: How Network Neutrality Threatens Wireless Broadband Innovation
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is proposing unprecedented intervention and regulation of the wireless industry. The Commission argues that the proposals, grouped under the heading of...
View ArticleHurtling Down the Road to Serfdom
Government is taking us a long way down the Road to Serfdom. That doesn't just mean that more of us must work for the government. It means that we are changing from independent, self-responsible people...
View ArticleA Rand Revival
Ayn Rand, the controversial Russian-born American writer, would have turned 105 years old on February 2. This anniversary takes place amidst a Rand mini-revival, sparked by the Obama Administration's...
View ArticleYour Education Stimulus Dollars at Work: iPod Edition
The Polk County school district is giving away iPods to some parents.The school district is using the device to reward parents of children with disabilities who fill out a 10-minute online survey. The...
View ArticleFed Strategy
The Fed is slowly revealing how it plans to tighten monetary policy. Jon Hilsenrath writes:When the Fed is ready to tap the brakes, it plans to raise the rate paid on excess reserves, according to Fed...
View ArticleHigh-Speed Rail Plans Are Misconceived
As someone who loves riding trains, it pains me to say that the Obama administration’s high-speed rail initiative is misconceived. It appears to be a solution in search of a problem, or problems, to be...
View ArticlePalin Exposes the Tea Partiers' True Colors
The tea party movement started as a welcome protest against the alarming growth of federal spending and federal control. It had a strong anti-statist flavor, or seemed to. But judging from the applause...
View ArticleWho Killed Apartheid?
Twenty years ago today, the South African government freed Nelson Mandela, a prisoner who had become the leading symbol of resistance to the segregationist system known as apartheid. Mandela, who led...
View ArticleHigh-Speed Rail Doesn't Fix Any of Our Transportation Problems
My latest piece on high-speed trains:As someone who loves riding trains, it pains me to say that the Obama administration’s high-speed rail initiative is misconceived. It appears to be a solution in...
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