FAA Shutdown And Our Air Traffic Control Funding System Are Absurd
The partial shutdown of the FAA came about because Congress failed to agree on extending the current law (and therefore the aviation excise taxes that fund most of FAA). This has been going on since...
View ArticleLocal Land-Use Regulation Adds 16 Percent to Cost of New Home
A study released earlier this month (July 5, 2011) by Paul Emrath at the National Association of Homebuilders (available at www.housingeconomics.com) estimates that local regulation adds significantly...
View ArticleFriday Privatization News Highlights (7/29/2011 edition)
News articles on some of the more interesting developments on the privatization and public-private partnership (PPP) front over the last week include:Federal"Postal Service eyes thousands of post...
View ArticleToo Cute to Fail?
The 2012 Republican presidential wannabes may not have Mount Rushmore-ready leadership skills, but they're an unusually fine-looking bunch of politicians.And that’s not even counting two of the...
View ArticleGDP Continues Its Fall to 1.3%, Key Statements in the BEA Report
Second quarter GDP numbers are in, and they are not pretty. By now you have probably seen the headline numbers: 1.3% annualized gross domestic product growth between April and June 2011.That is a very...
View ArticleDoes Your Body Belong to You?
“Perhaps you’ve noticed the trend among certain people these days,” wrote Neil Genzlinger in The New York Times the other day, “to decide that certain other people are not living acceptable lives and...
View ArticleDebt Debate Obscures Bad Economic News for Obama
Headlines are swamped with news about the debt debate, drowning out some singular bad news for President Obama: The economy is tanking. Even if the debt ceiling is raised, his presidency may be...
View ArticleRick Perrys Fair-Weather Federalism
Two of Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s most cherished loves are in conflict. Those two things are the 10th Amendment, which states that the “the powers not delegated to the United States by the...
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The Facts About Spending Cuts, the Debt, and the GDP
Editor's Note: Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy appears weekly on Bloomberg TV to separate economic fact from economic myth.Raising the debt limit might put off a...
View ArticleAre Car Companies Going the Way of Public Utilities?
If anyone harbored hopes that America's automobile industry would remain competitive and independent, those thoughts should have been dashed today when they stood shoulder to shoulder with the...
View ArticleThe Perils and Promise of Public Private Partnerships for Redevelopment
Quincy, Massachusetts has decided to make over it's tired and worn downtown. So, its embarked on a unique approach involving the private sector. This approach shows both promise and peril for property...
View ArticleWashington's Budget Theater
The debt ceiling fight has been long and exhausting, but it will have a big payoff. After it's finally resolved—with the Boehner plan or the Reid plan or something else—we will have confronted our...
View ArticleWhat You Won't Hear About the Debt Ceiling Deal
There is a lot of information flowing around today about the debt ceiling deal that has been struck in Washington. The headline is a $2.5 trillion cut in government spending for a $2.4 trillion...
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Why Art Failed Us After 9/11
A decade after the 9/11 attacks, the dust from that horrible day has mostly settled, literally if not quite figuratively. Builders are rushing madly to complete construction of the 1,776-foot-tall One...
View ArticleThe Price Tag for Schools for the Deaf
I weigh in at The New York Times, Room for Debate, on whether we should maintain separate schools for the deaf to the price tag of $87K per kid, and propose that special needs scholarships would be...
View ArticleIs the Glass Half Full or Half Empty?
The most newsworthy debate these days isn’t between the Republicans and the Democrats, between the Tea Party Republicans and the Republican establishment, or between the progressive Democratic base and...
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The Falling Middle Class Deduction
Ahead of the Curve Issue No. 5 The United States federal income tax code is full of complicated deductions, credits and loopholes, the largest of which is the mortgage interest deduction (MID)....
View ArticleObama's Top Four Power Grabs
Candidates never keep their promises once in office. But even by the unlovely standards of his political peers, President Obama has pulled a rather impressive switcheroo from the anti-Bush to...
View ArticleBeyond the Debt Ceiling Rhetoric
There is a lot of rhetoric being thrown around Washington, many victim cards are being played, and enough victory is being claimed to satisfy even the most morose Charlie Sheen. You might say that we...
View ArticleWe're from the Government and We're Here to Help
Last week in Mother Jones, Kevin Drum argued that the recent contretemps over the national debt had only a single cause. Defense, discretionary, and interest spending are mostly on a downward slope as...
View ArticleWhere Are the Reality-Based Candidates?
Editor's Note: This column is reprinted with permission of the Washington Examiner. Click here to read it at that site.Frantic updates on the debt-limit squabble bringing you down? Let's focus on...
View ArticleGovernments Combat Flood and Environment Problems They Created
The Climate Wire article “Slow Stirrings Among Conservatives on Adaption – Just Don’t Mention Climate Change” (July 28), discusses the growing trend among city planners to tip-toe around the word...
View ArticleA Trick of the Mind
Superstitions arise as the result of the spurious identification of patterns. Even pigeons are superstitious. In an experiment where food is delivered randomly, pigeons will note what they were doing...
View ArticleReviewing Geithner's Financial Reform Principles Regarding Dodd-Frank
Minyanville.com Last August, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner used a speech at New York University’s Stern School of Business to outline a few financial reform principles necessary to quickly and...
View ArticleKinda Cuts
Two weeks ago The New York Timesreported that Republicans "want a vastly smaller government." Last week the Timescalled the dispute about raising the federal debt ceiling "an epic clash over the...
View ArticleSettled Without Admitting or Denying Wrongdoing
"Settled without admitting or denying wrongdoing."Does this sound familiar? It might as well be the mantra of both the SEC and the CFTC. In fact it might as well be printed on both the commission’s...
View ArticleDo the Terrorists Win If We Balance the Budget?
You know what they say: One man's terrorist is another man's democratically elected congressman.That's just one of the many lessons of the debt ceiling compromise, a deal that heralds a new era of...
View ArticleDeregulation of Nuclear Power Saves Money and Reduces Pollution
“Deregulation, Consolidation, and Efficiency: Evidence from U.S. Nuclear Power,” a working paper out of Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas, finds that the deregulation of the nuclear industry in the...
View ArticleThe CFPB's Ironically Complicated Regulations
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau launched last month, without a confirmed director and with a slew of legislation attempting to fix its broken structure getting passed out of the House but...
View ArticlePhony Federalism
The 10th Amendment to the Constitution is like the skinny teenage girl who blossoms over the summer and suddenly finds herself besieged by suitors. Once ignored, it has found a host of champions among...
View ArticleLos Angeles Officials Recommend Phasing Out Red-Light Cameras
Last week the Los Angeles City Council recommended the city stop issuing red-light camera citations at the end of the month and move to “phase out” the program entirely, according to Ari Bloomekatz of...
View ArticleBalancing the Budget
The political class predicted "disaster" if Congress didn't raise its debt limit.I think that was a scam to get more money. See, the poor politicians don't have enough, and they need to borrow more. We...
View ArticleThe War of the Debt-Ceiling Analogies
A funny thing happened on the way to a resolution over raising the nation’s credit limit: The most basic definitions of easy-to-understand words such as “spending,” “increase” and “budget cuts” went...
View ArticleDon't Give Handouts to Hollywood
Denver Business Journal Colorado state officials searching for ways to jumpstart the economy and lower the unemployment rate are taking a hard look at movie production incentives.These incentives aim...
View Article[Op-Ed] Increasing Number of States Calling "Cut!" for Film Subsidies
Lawmakers across the country are scouring state budgets for ways to cut public spending and allow sustainable private sector job creation. One increasingly popular consideration is eliminating movie...
View ArticleJuly Unemployment: Better Than Expected, Worse Than Needed
Within five minutes of the highly anticipated unemployment report that was released at 8:30 this morning, the Bureau of Labor website crashed. And stayed down for quite a while. About an hour.At least...
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The Myth of the Middle Class Mortgage Deduction
Conventional wisdom has it that without the ability to deduct mortgage interest from federal taxes, homeownership rates and housing prices would tumble. Worse, middle class families would be relegated...
View ArticleEminent Domain in the Old Dominion
“Better a bleeding heart than none at all,” say some progressives, perhaps a trifle too smugly. No matter: Those who consider kindness a primary political virtue should make common cause with...
View ArticleBreivik and the Anti-Zionist Smear
In the aftermath of Anders Breivik's terrorist rampage in Norway, a "blame the Jews" theme has emerged: assertions that Breivik was driven by fanatical devotion to Israel. Mostly, complaints about the...
View ArticleMoodys Sounds the Alarm on Student Borrowing
A growing chorus of economists and educators think that the higher education industry will be America's next bubble. Easy credit, high tuition, and poor job prospects have resulted in growing...
View ArticleThe Downgrade Actuality
The ratings agencies are not exactly the most credible organizations following their plank-in-the-eye risk analysis during the housing bubble. So you do not have to agree with their Friday night...
View ArticleFlights from Nowhere
As a resident of Illinois, I'd never had any particular desire to fly from McCook, Nebraska, to Denver. But lately, I've been looking for an opportunity. Turns out the federal government is willing to...
View ArticleMarket Volatility Blame Game
Who is to blame for market volatility? Last week alone, Bank of America, Apple Inc. and ExxonMobil lost more than $80 Billion in combined market capitalization. On Friday, Bank of America lost $10.1...
View ArticleObama Gets a Blank Check for Endless War
The Obama administration is on pace to have more American soldiers killed in casualties related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan than the George W. Bush administration did in its first term.Already,...
View ArticleTeacherapocalypse NOT: In California Less Education Spending Equals Higher...
Perhaps forcing schools to focus school spending on priorities is not such bad thing afterall. As today's Sacramento Bee reports:It's a trend that would seem to defy conventional wisdom: As public...
View ArticleNewly Downgraded Fannie Mae Reaches $100 Billion in Bailout Funds
The quarterly ritual of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac asking for bailout money is upon us again. This time around Fannie Mae is asking for $5.1 billion to cover its losses. That is lower than last...
View ArticleFiscal Hawks vs. Defense Hawks
Post 9-11, the neocon wing of the Republican Party had made it seem positively gauche to think about money when it came to financing wars. But even though the debt-ceiling deal hammered out this week...
View ArticleShould Political Concerns Guide Debt Downgrade Decisions
A particularly stark stand out in the S&P statement on why it downgraded the U.S. is the political tone. The decision was essentially based on an analysis of the politics in Washington and less on...
View ArticleAl Qaeda Psychos Butcher Newspaper Staff!
I was savagely attacked by a crazed terrorist last week—and barely survived to tell the tale.OK, that might be a slight exaggeration. What actually happened was, Virginia senatorial candidate Jamie...
View ArticleA Terrible Conforming Loan Idea
Last week Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) introduced a bill that would extend the conforming loan limits, which are set to fall from their historically high levels at the end...
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