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Who Will Watch The Watchmen?
Every time a terrorist tries to blow something up, newscasters and pundits across America holler about the failure to "connect the dots." But what happens when there are so many dots, no one knows...
View ArticleObama Embraces Nixonomics
Barack Obama has often modeled his policies on Franklin Roosevelt. Lately, though, he's been coming across more as Richard Nixon Lite.In 1971, fed up with the steady rise of wages and prices, Nixon had...
View ArticleWhose Body Is It?
People suffer and die because the government "protects" us. It should protect us less and respect our liberty more.The most basic questions are: Who owns you, and who should control what you put into...
View ArticleDetroit Public Schools To Privatize Bus Services
The Detroit News weighs in on the plans to privatize school bus services in that city (emphasis mine):The state-appointed emergency financial manager of the Detroit Public Schools will cut the cost by...
View ArticleParis to Rebuild Zoo through $181 Million Public-Private Partnership
The Los Angeles Times reports that Paris, France is entering a $181 million public-private partnership to rebuildâ??really, rescueâ??the city's zoo:Closed since 2008, and its animals mostly shipped...
View ArticleA Bipartisan Solution to ObamaCare
Forbes President Obama's televised health care summit has put Republicans in a tough spot. They can't accept any part of his latest trillion-dollar, Big Government overhaul, but if they reject it as a...
View ArticleChicago's Use of Asset Lease Proceeds: A Clarification
I was surprised to see myself quoted in a Medill Reports article today entitled, "Chicago is blowing its future on current spending, analysts say." It seems that there must have been some...
View ArticleNY Transit Should Consider Market Pricing for Fares
The New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority is facing an $800 million gap as subsidies dry up from state and local governments and the recession dampens demand. To the fill the gap, the MTA is...
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Households Have Some Ground to Cover
Texas State economics professor David Beckworth has some disturbing information for households published on his blog yesterday:there has been some meaningful repair to banking system's balance sheet...
View ArticleWill We Have a LUV Recovery?
At the recent World Economic Forum policy-makers discussed what kind of recovery the global economy will be looking at. Some suggested the acronym LUV would be a good description: A conventional V...
View ArticleKill the Endowments
With the federal deficit touching an eye-popping $1.56 trillion dollars -- or 10.6% of the GDP -- one would have thought that President Obama would go into full gear to cut every bit of non-essential,...
View ArticleGetting the 14th Amendment Right
When the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on March 2, 2010 in the landmark gun rights case McDonald v. Chicago, the Second Amendment won’t be the only thing on the justices’ minds. That’s because...
View ArticleDressed for Success
When Steve Jobs appeared onstage at a press conference last month to unveil the iPad, he was wearing the exact same sartorial interface he’s been wearing for at least 15 years now: Levis 501s sans...
View ArticleAmtrak Line Earns Profit...NOT
It's always good news when an Amtrak intercity rail line makes money. That means taxpayers and other non-users don't have to pay for a service provided to a very narrow and usually higher income...
View ArticleNew Orleans Schools Creative Destruction
John O'Leary takes an insightful look at how the mess Katrina left behind became the best thing to happen to NOL schools in a long time. The outrage is that it took the natural disaster of Katrina to...
View ArticleWill Gun Rights Get a Big Boost?
The Supreme Court is poised to make the next big decision on gun rights. Damon Root breaks it down and some broader implications for economic liberty.In sum, the 14th Amendment was designed to protect...
View ArticleThe Myth of the Skyscraper and the End of an Era
National Public Radio recently noted the closing of a 52 floor office tower in downtown Dallas, and took this symbolic act to muse on the future of downtowns. More specifically, is the era of the...
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The Myth of the Recovery
Reason The economic headlines sure look better than they did a year ago. Gross domestic product (GDP) is finally growing again, rising by 2.2 percent in the third quarter of 2009, with an early...
View ArticleMore Numbers Support Fauxcovery Thesis
More numbers came out last week that support the thesis that the GDP growth at the end of 2009 is really a fauxcovery that won't be sustainable or a solid foundation to build on.Sales of existing homes...
View ArticleSafe Toyotas, and Other Surprises
Last week, facing a congressional committee acutely dissatisfied with his company's safety record, the head of Toyota, Akio Toyoda, was asked what he would tell President Barack Obama if he had the...
View ArticleA Tale of Two Libertarianisms
If Murray Rothbard—Austrian school economist, anarchist political philosopher, early American popular historian, and inveterate libertarian organizational gadfly—had never lived, the modern libertarian...
View Article4.5 SWAT Raids Per Day
Cheye Calvo's July 2008 encounter with a Prince George's County, Maryland, SWAT team is now pretty well-known: After intercepting a package of marijuana at a delivery service warehouse, police...
View ArticleA Doomsday Cycle
Economists Peter Boone and Simon Johnson think the economic system could be stuck in a “doomsday cycle”:Over the last three decades, the US financial system has tripled in size, as measured by total...
View ArticleWallison on the Status of Regulation Reform
Peter Wallison has a fantastic commentary in The Wall Street Journal today looking at where the process of altering financial services regulations stands. His basic criticism is that nothing positive...
View ArticleFannie and Freddie Losses Are Mounting
From yesterday's WSJ:It was another impressive three months at Fannie Mae, as Uncle Sam's mortgage finance company reported a fourth quarter loss of $16.3 billion. That wasn't quite as strong as the...
View ArticleWarren Buffet is Wrong...On Economic Policy
Warren Buffet showed his Keynesian economic policy colors on CNBC's morning show "Squawk Box" on Monday, March 1 (see Warren Buffet Watch). This in and of itselft is not worthy of criticism. Rather, my...
View ArticleFederal Transportation Department Shuts Down
If you've missed the news, the Federal Department of Transportation has essentially shut because an extension of their funding is bottled up by Sen. Bunning's fillibuster. Given how dependent states...
View ArticleThe Five Varieties of Bad Political Thinking
Anyone who has kept up with politics lately is no doubt aware that certain intellectual attitudes and habits recur no matter what the subject under discussion. The rise of the Internet has democratized...
View ArticleShare of Travel in Large Cities by Private Vehicle in 1963: 85%
Frank Turner was the Chief Engineer and Asst. Federal Highway Administrator for the U.S. Department of Commerce (before the department of transportation was founded). In a paper titled "Transportation...
View ArticleFederal Dollars for Federal Roads
Washington Times America's highway system is not delivering the high-quality transportation a competitive economy needs. Congestion gridlocks our urban expressways, costing Americans $76 billion per...
View ArticleDiverting Gas Tax Money to Sidewalks and Transit Hurts Highways
My column in today's Washington Times:America's highway system is not delivering the high-quality transportation a competitive economy needs. Congestion gridlocks our urban expressways, costing...
View ArticleStimulus Saves Government Jobs!
If you thought the stimulus was about saving your job, you are wrong, unless you are a government employee. Veronique de Rugy put together this nice graph to tell the sad tale.The graph shows...
View ArticleAtlanta Needs Serious Reforms to Address Public Pension Problems
A Status Report: Implementing AB 900's Prison Construction and Rehabilitation InitiativesState and local governments across the nation have been struggling with their pension liabilities, but Atlanta...
View ArticleJoin Drew Carey and John Stossel This Friday
You are invited to join The Price Is Right Host Drew Carey and John Stossel as they discuss the upcoming Reason Saves Cleveland series on Stossel's Fox Business program. If you'd like to be part of the...
View ArticleCap and Trade is Dead
The great newspaperman H.L. Mencken allegedly once said, “For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple—and wrong.” But in the halls of Congress, complex carbon rationing schemes...
View ArticleCarry On
Yesterday the Supreme Court considered the question of whether the Second Amendment applies outside of jurisdictions controlled by the federal government. The Court will almost certainly say yes, and...
View ArticleTwo Steps Forward, No Steps Back
It's not the size that matters.Today President Barack Obama will unveil health care proposal Part VII. The new House bill, according to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, will be "much smaller" than previous...
View ArticleCreated or Saved or Estimated or Assumed
In selling the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act—otherwise known as the economic stimulus—to the American public last year, the Obama administration promised that the massive spending package...
View ArticleVideo: How Kohn's Retirement May Give Obama An Opportunity to Shape the...
Here is an interview I did last night on RT talking about what the retirement of Fed Vice-Chair Donald Kohn means for the future of the Federal Reserve, and how Obama may have a chance to shape the...
View ArticleGetting Serious About Pension Reform in Atlanta
Atlanta’s unfunded pension liabilities grew from $321 million in 2001 to $1.5 billion in 2009 and the pensions are just 53 percent funded — well below the 80 percent level considered healthy. As Mayor...
View ArticleWhat Universal Kindergarten Tells Us About Universal Preschool
Elizabeth Cascio's excellent new study "What Happened When Kindergarten Went Universal?" finds few positive outcomes from universal kindergarten.Via the study published at Education Next in a...
View ArticleSprawl Likely to Continue Despite Housing Bust
Lots of planners were almost giddy when the housing market collapsed and gas prices made commuting from far flung ex-urbs too expensive; this would be the day of reckoning for urban sprawl. I address...
View ArticleGoing Into Debt to Finance Highways
Public Works Financing I've been somewhat taken aback by the rapid growth of interest availability-payment mechanisms for large new highway projects. This seems to have become the project finance...
View ArticleNew Jersey's Entire Transportation Appropriation Will Be Needed to Cover Debt
My latest Public Works Financing column looks at how we fund our highways...I've been somewhat taken aback by the rapid growth of interest availability-payment mechanisms for large new highway...
View ArticleFederal Transit Administration Turns Watchdog?
I've been critical of the recent move away from cost-effectiveness as a criterion for transit projects, believing that this step represented a shift toward more political decisionmaking. I may have to...
View ArticleKeep Your Laws Off My Body
"It's a free country."That's a popular saying—and true in many ways. But for a free country, America does ban a lot of things that are perfectly peaceful and consensual. Why is that?Here are some...
View ArticleGuns for All, Privileges or Immunities for None
Justice Antonin Scalia delivered the big laugh line of the hour at Tuesday’s Supreme Court hearings in McDonald v. Chicago. That case’s outcome will decide whether the Second Amendment rights...
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The Wrong Policy at the Wrong Time
Widely used in Europe, the Value-Added Tax (VAT) has always seemed a non-starter in the United States. That may be changing given apparently insurmountable structural deficits and fear that the...
View ArticleBusting the Well-Endowed
In the face of crushing deficits, is Washington finally serious about curbing its profligate ways? The clearest indication that the answer is "no" is the continued existence of the three national...
View ArticleWhat Can Educators Do Besides March in Rallies to Cope with School Budget Cuts?
As the Los Angeles Times reports:Thousands of students, teachers and parents in California and across the country are expected to stage rallies, demonstrations, walkouts and other actions Thursday to...
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