GM Bailout Fails as Viable Business Test and Industrial Policy
When the "new" GM issued its Initial Public Offering (IPO) as a new company, pundits and the White House applauded the milestone as an example of how the government can surgically intervene in the...
View ArticleFreedom to Fail
Freedom: A Novel, by Jonathan Franzen, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 576 pages, $28Jonathan Franzen may be the country’s most popular literary novelist. In Freedom, his aptly titled new book, he takes...
View ArticlePiling On For Sanity in Airport Security?
Salon's aviation writer, Patrick Smith, is bullish on a plan most recently proposed by the International Air Transport Association to bring some sanity to airport security.The International Air...
View ArticleTop 10 Reasons Business Is Leaving California
From American's For Prosperity and Joe Vranich.
View ArticleBowles-Simpson May Be Resurrected for 112th Congress
Earlier this month, it seemed that the White House budget committee's report was to be tossed aside after it failed to win enough support to prompt immediate congressional action based on its...
View ArticleCarbon Rationing By Other Means
Plan A was to get a massive cap-and-trade carbon rationing scheme adopted by Congress. The scheme aimed at imposing mandatory cuts on U.S. emissions of the greenhouse gases, chiefly carbon dioxide,...
View ArticleTransportation Policy in a New Fiscal Era
On December 10th, the big four transportation groups (AASHTO, AGC, APTA, and ARTBA) sent a joint letter to Congress urging the inclusion of Build America Bonds in the year-end tax bill. But to no...
View ArticleFollow the Bouncing Buck
Two weeks ago, writing in The Washington Post, Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius argued that Americans must be forced to buy government-approved...
View ArticleBoothless, Electronic Tolling Continues to Move Forward
Electronic tolling may no longer be "cutting edge" and perhaps should instead be considered state of the art, conventional technology. Viritually all new tollroads are using electronic tolling...
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Tech Neanderthals as Regulators?
As FCC aggressively takes and end run around Congress and asserts the power to regulate the highly competitive world of Internet access--in order to "ensure fairness" of course--realize there is no...
View ArticleDespite Recession, Texas Continues Infrastructure Investment Through PPPs
Privately financed toll roads have certainly been a controversial issue in Texas (see here, here, here and here.) However in spite of the controversy, officials have been able to apply innovative...
View ArticleThat's Just a "Cognitive Defect" Making You Drink That Soda
Arguments for new and higher taxes on soda, snacks and all the other food items you love are a dime a dozen these days. Still, not every food tax proponent has the courage to center his argument around...
View ArticlePlease Stop "Helping" Us
Last year, Congress passed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act. It was supposed to really end the alleged abuses perpetrated by the credit card companies. The law...
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The Year in Books
Ronald Bailey, science correspondent The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley, Harper Collins, 448 pages, $26.99Ideas have sex. In biology, through the evolution of sex some...
View Article2010: The Year John Cage Broke
The week before Christmas, the number 21 spot on the British pop charts was held by a supergroup called Cage Against the Machine, a gang of pop stars who had gathered to record John Cage's 1952...
View ArticleThe ObamaCare Fraud
There are a great many things wrong with Obamacare, but the biggest is perhaps one that neither party is paying any attention to: It is one huge entrapment scheme that will turn patients and providers...
View ArticleGasp! I Have No Words . . .
The power of unions: Average stagehand at Lincoln Center in NYC makes $290K a year. At Avery Fisher Hall and Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, the average stagehand salary and benefits package is...
View ArticleOver a Billion Dollars for 48 Minutes?!
Ken Orski's latest Innovation Brief takes high speed rail enthusiast's hard look at the Chicago--St. Louis high speed rail plan, and comes up disapointed, to say the least.I single out of his analysis...
View ArticleJapan's Economic Doldrums and Asia's Ascendance
Growing up in the 1970s, I heard a lot of talk about Japan's economic ascendance. This was a particularly powerful analogy for someone growing up in Ohio, where Honda established an economic foothold...
View ArticleWill Airports Punt TSA?
A detailed Washington Post article, As frustration grows, airports consider ditching TSA, points out that:Some of the nation's biggest airports are responding to recent public outrage over security...
View ArticleKeep Highway Spending Within Our Means
On Dec. 30, 2010, 21 transportation organizations sent a joint letter to the House leadership urging them to scrap a proposed rule change affecting federal highway and transit funding. It may sound...
View ArticleIncreasing GSE Fees
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac offer a guarantee that mortgage payments will be delivered to investors, and they charge fees to cover the risks inherent with these promises. But they don't charge enough....
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Which Parts of the Economy Are Creating Jobs?
Though the U.S. economy has 7.48 million fewer jobs today than in early 2007 and unemployment has remained close to 10 percent, employment is up 1.1 million from its December 2009 trough. The Obama...
View ArticleCorrections 2.0: A Proposal to Create a Continuum of Care in Corrections...
Reason Foundation & Florida TaxWatch Full Policy BriefCurrent government correctional systems can be characterized as a fragmented collection of facilities and services—including prisons, halfway...
View ArticleIs A Strong Central Government Necessary for Economic Growth?
As the U.S. economy fell into the so-called Great Recession, U.S. policy policymakers and many economists argued that a strong central government response was essential to bolster economic growth....
View ArticleJerry Brown to CA: "Hey, Remember Those 'Temporary' Tax Increases...?"
It turns out that those income, sales and vehicle tax hikes passed as an emergency budgetary measure last year may survive for some time to come. The Los Angeles Times reports (HT: Joe Henchman at the...
View ArticleNudgers vs. Nannies
There’s a new divide amongst Britain’s political classes, an explosive war of words over the future of our nation. It’s not the left-right divide come back from the dead, nor is it an old-fashioned...
View ArticleE.T. Stay Home?
If extraterrestrial civilizations exist in our galaxy—and there are good reasons to think they do—it's probably a good idea to mind our own business and hope they do the same.There seems to be plenty...
View Article"Orphaned Transportation Earmarks" Total in the Billions
USA Today has an excellent front page article entitled “Earmarks to Nowhere: States Losing Billions” authored by Cezary Podkul and Gregory Korte. They found over 7,300 congressional directed...
View ArticleBrown's Budget Cut Plans Emerge
We are finally getting a sense of what Gov. Brown proposes to cut to try to close the over $20 billion budget deficit we face. The Sacramento Bee provides a rundown here, but let me boil it down...
View ArticleNo Booze for You
Last year the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board installed"wine kiosks" in 31 grocery stores. Last month it shut the machines down for repairs, just in time for the holidays.The kiosks, a bungled,...
View ArticleChina's Demand for Car Travel Outstrips Economic Growth
The positive relationship between automobile demand and wealth is well established, but trends in China suggest this connection is stronger than previously thought. Automobile ownership is rising...
View ArticlePrivate Sector Employment Growth Triples in December?
According to the latest employment report released by Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (HT: Calculated Risk), the U.S. economy created 297,000 private sector jobs in the month of December, over three...
View ArticleA Physician's Take on the "Death Panel" Revelation
Over the Christmas holiday weekend, The New York Timesrevealed that the Obama administration's Medicare regulators have enacted new regulatory guidelines, in complete defiance of Congress, that will...
View ArticleThe Constitution Is Dead
Almost every patriotic fiber of my body tells me that reading the Constitution aloud at the commencement of congressional sessions is a good idea. Heck, a pop quiz might even be in order. It is vital...
View ArticleRethinking the Politics of Freeway Congestion Pricing
Center for Multimodal Solutions for Congestion Mitigation For several decades, using variable pricing to address freeway congestion has been a goal of transportation planners. Not only would such...
View ArticleDignity Doesn't Fly
That the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has saved a single life is unproven and doubtful. But it did something good for the country last fall by provoking a long overdue reaction against...
View ArticleVirginia Lawmakers Experiment with iPads
Earlier today David Harrison of Stateline, a project of the Pew Center on the States, wrote about how Virginia lawmakers are experimenting with Apple's new tablet iPad in the state...
View Article2010 Highlights in Local Government Privatization
Bacon's Rebellion With many local governments entering 2011 facing continuing fiscal challenges, privatization remains an attractive and viable option for policymakers to ensure high quality and...
View ArticleThe Tampa to Orlando High-Speed Rail Project
Governor Rick Scott is evaluating whether to proceed with construction of the proposed Tampa to Orlando high-speed rail project. The potential cost to Florida taxpayers is a principal factor in this...
View ArticleTampa to Orlando High-Speed Rail Could Cost $3 Billion More Than Expected
If the proposed Tampa to Orlando high-speed rail line goes over budget or fails to meet ridership expectations Florida taxpayers could get stuck with a bill of up to $3 billion, according to a new...
View ArticleCleveland Transit Agency Management Gets Pay Raise Despite Falling Ridership
The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA) is restoring a paycut imposed in 2009 for its management and nonunion personnel. Union drivers and other GCRTA workers have been without a...
View ArticleProhibitionists: Leave Us Alone!
Sometimes I drink Scotch and then, to wake myself up, I drink coffee. So what? Many people consume mixtures of caffeine and alcohol in drinks like rum and Coke. Again, so what?But recently some college...
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Explain That Intel Monopoly Again?
After a steady relationship that lasted several generations of the Windows operating system, Microsoft has told Intel that it wants to see other chip makers.In a world where antitrust law was pursued...
View ArticleDefending the Right to Offend
On December 9, 2010, the Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason magazine,Reason.com, and Reason.tv, held an event celebrating free speech at New York City's The Box and commemorating...
View ArticleThe Price of Dissent in Putin's Russia
When the new trial of former Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky began in March 2009, many Russian and Western commentators noted that the outcome would be a measure of how strong the Kremlin...
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2010 Unemployment Roundup
The Labor Department's final employment report for 2010 is out and, as expected, December capped the painfully slow but somewhat encouraging turnaround the labor market has seen throughout 2010....
View ArticleBeware Bipartisan School Reform
We are in for a season of grisly partisan bloodletting—or at least some pretty fierce jello wrestling—over health care, budgets, and pork, if the coverage of the opening days of the 112th Congress is...
View ArticleCan Private Markets Rescue Urban Brownfields?
Professor Marie Howland at the University of Maryland has a really useful and interesting paper in the most recent issue of Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research (Volume 12, No. 3,...
View ArticleNew Jersey Privatizing State Broadcasting Network
Last month New Jersey Governor Chris Christie signed the New Jersey Public Broadcasting System Transfer Act (A3604) into law, initiating a transition to private and independent management for New...
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