The Rise of Decline
When Andrew Joseph Stack, a software consultant with a history of tax troubles and marital problems, crashed his Piper Cherokee into the Austin, Texas, office of the Internal Revenue Service in...
View ArticleDown the Health Care Wormhole
If we can put a man on the moon, we can re-write the basic laws of supply and demand and get more quality health care, dispensed by fewer providers per patient, at lower prices for all Americans. Sure...
View ArticleFor Singles Suburbia Reigns
A new survey of home purchases by singles turned up something surprising for city watchers: 52 percent chose suburbs over urban or rural areas. The survey reveals a couple of other interesting tidbits...
View ArticleHigh Speed Rail Flops...in China?
Last week's news of blistering economic growth in China (11.9% for the first quarter 2010) overshadowed this tidbit gleaned from the tail end of a report in The New York Times (emphasis added):"Lending...
View ArticlePolicy Strategies for U.S. Surface Transportation Funding Reauthorization
Federal surface transportation policy is at a fateful crossroads. Since the completion of the Interstate system, the federal program has lost focus and a sense of purpose. The user-pays funding...
View ArticleGovernor Fights the Good Fight in New Jersey
An amazing story in the Wall Street Journal (April 17, 2010) chronicles how difficult it is to turn a state around. James Freeman interviewed Governor Chris Christie, who is making a valiant effort to...
View ArticleNetwork Neutrality's Impact on Smartphones
If you own a BlackBerry or other smartphone, try this experiment. Find a friend who owns an Apple iPhone and try out the same application, say Google Maps. On which device is it faster and easier to...
View ArticleHash Bash
On Saturday morning at the Cow Palace, a 15,000 seat indoor arena located just south of San Francisco, the nacho concession was surprisingly deserted. But it was early yet, and given the long line of...
View ArticleEarth Day Turns 40
Forty years ago this week, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day celebration. It was the largest national demonstration ever, with events taking place on 2,000 college campuses,...
View ArticleBitTorrent Was a Bad Case from the Start
After reading over some of the postings from the few weeks and exchanging emails with Richard Bennett at Technology Liberation Front, I am coming to see how disastrous a decision it was for the FCC to...
View ArticleChina's Failed "High" Speed Rail - An Update
Yesterday, I reported on a New York Times story that said a high-speed rail service in China's Fujian province had failed due to competition from air. After querying this further with our contacts in...
View ArticleMake California's Programs Compete for Money
David Osborne, who helped lead the Clinton administration's "reinventing government task force," is author of the book Reinventing Government and a new Reason Foundation study on how to fix the...
View ArticleAreas to Improve in the Dodd Wall Street Reform Bill
The Wall Street Journalmade an apt comparison in this morning's paper:Senator Chris Dodd's bill looks to us like a souped-up version of the Sarbanes-Oxley bill of 2002—that is, a collection of...
View ArticleFour Ways to Scale Back Government in Telecom, Internet and Media
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently unveiled its strategy for managing the nation’s telecommunications, Internet and information industries. The so-called “National Broadband Plan” is...
View ArticleGetting Away With Poker
At the beginning of last year, Daniel Tzvetkoff, the young Australian entrepreneur who cofounded the online payment processor Intabill in 2007, owned a yacht, 15 luxury cars, a Brisbane nightclub, and...
View ArticleSinners in the Hands of an Angry Gaia
Hundreds of years ago, before the birth of the science of volcanology in the 19th century, mankind looked upon volcanic eruptions as warnings or punishments from the gods. The gods were literally...
View ArticlePsychedelic Men
Arguably the second most memorable Good Friday in history took place in the basement of Boston University’s Marsh Chapel on April 20, 1962, when a graduate student under the academic direction of...
View ArticleHow Immigration Crackdowns Backfire
Arizona legislators are fed up with being terrorized by illegal immigrants, and they have passed a law to get tough. Under the measure, passed this week and sent to the governor, police would have to...
View ArticleMyths About Capitalism
I won 19 Emmy Awards by reporting a myth: that business constantly rips us off—that capitalism is mostly cruel and unfair.I know that's a myth now. So I was glad to see the publication of The 5 Big...
View ArticleFit to Judge
It’s hard to imagine a better dry run for this summer’s battle to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens than last Friday’s confirmation hearings for federal appellate court hopeful...
View ArticleHealth Care Reform to Bend the Cost Curve Down? Medicare Actuary Says No.
Hopefully Americans will find this news item today to be a "big #!&$%#* deal," though I suspect few will be surprised that the federal government has sold them yet another bill of goods. Medicare's...
View ArticleThe American Anti-Revolution
Last spring, University of Hartford historian Robert Churchill released a new book about "libertarian political violence and the origins of the militia movement," To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant’s...
View ArticleVolcano Eruption and Air Travel's Economic Importance
My new post at The New York Times' Room for Debate blog on aviation's importance to the world economy:The disruptions to air travel caused by a hasty overreaction to the volcano eruption in Iceland...
View ArticleSchool Sucks: The Movie
A Newark mother runs out of the room to shout "God is an awesome God!" toward the end of The Cartel, a new documentary about school choice. She bolts because she doesn't want to rub her good fortune in...
View ArticleMake State Programs Compete for Funds
California often leads the nation, and the current fiscal crisis is no exception. With its repeated use of borrowing and fiscal sleights of hand, the Golden State has become a poster boy for...
View ArticleThis Land is Your Land, This Land is My Land
My colleague Len Gilroy has an excellent article in today's Washington Times arguing for devolving the U.S. Forest Service's responsibilities to the state level. Len notes, among other things:Still,...
View ArticleFive Myths of Green Energy
The Manhattan Institute's Robert Bryce had an excellent article in the Washington Poston five myths of green energy (although I think there are many more). He takes on solar and wind power, foreign oil...
View ArticleThe Dodd Bill this Week: Creating Inefficiencies, Codifying Bailouts,...
The Dodd bill for reforming Wall Street rules is on tap this week—the first question will be how long will the GOP hold out in keeping the bill off the floor for debate. We've talked about several the...
View ArticleThe Wide Net of Material Support
The Palestine Liberation Organization and the Irish Republican Army, two of history’s most notorious terrorist groups, have never appeared on the State Department’s List of Designated Foreign Terrorist...
View ArticleWatching the Detectives
George Orwell famously said, "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever." He may still be right. But in today’s age of smart phones, Flip cams, and iPod...
View ArticleComing Up Short
Released two years after the historic failure of investment bank Bear Stearns, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, the new book by financial journalist extraordinaire Michael Lewis, doesn’t...
View ArticleThis Land is Your Land; This Land is My Land
Washington Times The federal government owns nearly 30 percent of all the land in the country. In the West, those numbers soar even higher. The federal government controls more than 84 percent of the...
View ArticleOut of the Mire of New York's 34th Street
The New York Times is promoting a discussion on Mayor Bloomberg's plan to close parts of 34th street to car traffic and make it a pedstrian mall as part of its on-line "Room for Debate" series. It's an...
View ArticleSNL Mocks Government Workers
Saturday Night Live aired a great skit this weekend called "Public Employee of the Year" that is just one shot after another at the ridiculousness that goes down in the public worker sector. Not only...
View ArticleGM's Phony Bailout Payback
GM CEO Ed Whitacre announced in a Wall Street Journal column last Wednesday that his company has paid back its government bailout loan "in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule." He is even...
View ArticlePeak Everything?
When you really need something, it's natural to worry about running out of it. Peak oil has been a global preoccupation since the 1970s, and the warnings get louder with each passing year....
View ArticleRacism and the Tea Party Movement
Ever since the "Tea Parties" gained national attention, the debate has raged on whether they are a grass-roots protest movement in the proud tradition of American dissent, or a hysterical mob driven by...
View ArticleThe Revenge of the Brands
No Logo: 10th Anniversary Edition, by Naomi Klein, Picador, 544 pages, $16Reading old works of journalism is like looking at old photographs, serving as a useful reminder that politics has its own...
View ArticleReport: Poorest States Rank Highest in Broadband Competition
Low-income states have a much higher degree of facilities-based competition than wealthier ones, according to a new report from ID Insight, a consulting firm that provides authentication, verification...
View ArticleBig Brown Bailout as Congress Helps Union Takeover FedX
The Teamsters got a big boost from Congress when the house slipped language into the bill that gave unions a big boost in organizing UPS rival Fedex. As the Wall Stret Journal reports:If you can't beat...
View ArticleNew at Reason: Coming Up Short
I have a new article at Reason.com, reviewing Michael Lewis' recent Wall Street meltdown book, The Big Short:Released two years after the historic failure of investment bank Bear Stearns, The Big...
View ArticleBreaking Down Obama's Debt Commission
Yesterday was the first meeting of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, a bi-partisan panel designed to come up with ideas for fixing America's debt and deficit woes. Oh, and...
View ArticleFree Speech for Us
From reading New York Times editorials, I gather that the First Amendment protects celebrities who curse on TV and pit bull enthusiasts who sell dogfighting videos. Yet somehow it does not protect...
View ArticleMeddlers At the Gate
No. Legislators never would employ crude and simplistic sloganeering like those rowdy anti-gummint protesters.Just ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who this week offered up this eloquent gem: "A...
View ArticleSaving the Internet from the FCC
The Internet is in trouble. And it's all George W. Bush's fault.That's what Net neutrality proponents would have the public believe, anyway. On April 6, a federal appeals court nullified the FCC's...
View ArticleThe Compassion of Opposing Minimum Wage Laws
Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation recently wrote a great article for LewRockwell.com on the insidiousness of minimum wage laws, and how they end up harming many of the very people...
View ArticleMysteries of an Immigration Law
After signing the new law requiring police to check out people who may be illegal immigrants, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer was asked how the cops are supposed to know when someone should be screened. "I...
View ArticleEveryone Prospers With Free Trade
Trade is win-win. Two people trade only because each values what he gets more than what he gives up. That's why in a store both customer and clerk say, "Thank you."At the international level, trade is...
View ArticleLike Father, Like Son?
If former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has anything to say about it, the political sins of the father will be visited on the son. On Patriots Day, Giuliani endorsed Trey Grayson in the Republican...
View ArticleHow Many More Are Innocent?
Freddie Peacock of Rochester, New York, was convicted of rape in 1976. This year he became the 250th person to be exonerated by DNA testing since the technique was first used in 1989. According to a...
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