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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...

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Obama 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...

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Whose 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...

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Detroit 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...

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Paris 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...

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A 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...

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Chicago'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...

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NY 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...

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Will 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...

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Kill 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,...

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Getting 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...

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Dressed 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...

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Amtrak 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...

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New 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...

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Will 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...

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The 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...

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More 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...

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Safe 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...

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A 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...

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4.5 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...

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A 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...

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Wallison 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...

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Fannie 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...

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Warren 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...

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Federal 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...

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The 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...

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Share 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...

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Federal 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...

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Diverting 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...

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Stimulus 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...

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Atlanta 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...

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Join 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...

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Cap 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...

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Carry 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...

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Two 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...

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Created 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...

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Video: 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...

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Getting 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...

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What 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...

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Sprawl 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...

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Going 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...

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New 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...

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Federal 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...

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Keep 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...

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Guns 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...

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Busting 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...

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What 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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