Nanny Government Monitors Household Trash Bins in U.K.
The other day, I wrote about a nanny state law to ban restaurants from offering toys with meals deemed too unhealthy by the government in Santa Clara County, California. Here is another entry in the...
View ArticleConsumer Financial Protection Bureau Problems
Building on some of the critiques we've had of Congressional plans to boost consumer "protection" by establishing increased regulatory oversight for financial products, here is another perspective on...
View ArticleImmigration Isn't the Problem
The Congress of the United States—an institution that spent a chunk of the past year cajoling passage of the most contentious legislation devised in decades—may not have the "appetite" to take on...
View ArticleChina Debates High-Speed Rail
The China Daily recently had an interesting debate between experts on the usefulness of high-speed rail in meeting China's transportation needs.Interestingly, the pro-side was taken by a World Bank...
View ArticleHow Starving Government Still Gets Fat
Sarah Palin may hunt moose with a rifle, but when she's out for bigger game, she relies on an unorthodox approach to bring down her quarry: Deprive it of food. "Please, starve the beast!" she recently...
View Article12 of 20 Most Economically Stressed Counties are in CA. Hmmmmmm
AP has put out it's index of the most economically stressed counties in the nation, and most of them are in CA. Drill down into it here.
View ArticleCompostion of California's Population Growth
This look at the composition of migration to and from CA over the past 20 years is interesting.In 12 of the 19 years since 1990, more Californians have left the state to go to other states than moved...
View ArticleIndia's Government by Quota
Wall Street Journal For nearly half a century, group or racial preferences have been America's prescribed remedy for racism and other -isms standing in the way of social equality. But anyone wishing to...
View ArticleWhat Made the Burnham Plan Succeed? The Private Sector
Aaron Renn has an interesting post over on his blog the Urbanophile on Chicago's regional plan created by Daniel Burnham. His fundamental question is: Why did this one succeed? A big part of the...
View ArticleZIRP Killing Us
The FOMC met last week and once again ZIRP—zero interest rate policy—reigned supreme. The verdict: no change in the Fed's previous position to "maintain the target range for the federal funds rate at 0...
View ArticleCongress Didn't Learn Anything From the Financial Crisis
Voting is expected to begin today on Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-CT) financial reform bill as the Senate takes up debate on amendments to the gigantic piece of legislation. Some of the amendments have broad...
View ArticleHas the Netherlands Solved the Electronic Toll Privacy Issue?
One of the benefits of attending a large conference like the one hosted by ITS America (Intelligent Transportation Society of America) in Houston this week is the side conversations with experts from...
View ArticleCash For Clunkers: Government Accountability Office Weighs In
The Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save (CARS) Act was signed into law on June 24, 2009. Remember we all knew it as “Cash for Clunkers.” Last summer Congress directed the Secretary of...
View ArticleBudgetary Three-Card Monte
Lawrence Lindsey, President George W. Bush’s first National Economic Council director, was fired in 2002 after estimating publicly that the war in Iraq could cost upward of $200 billion, about four...
View ArticleWeighing the Benefits & Costs of Offshore Drilling
Two weeks ago BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded, killing 11 workers. The exploratory well began gushing oil at an estimated rate of 5,000 barrels per day when the...
View ArticleHighway, Infrastructure Spending Needs Benefit-Cost Analysis
At the National Journal Transportation blog I take part in, Lisa Caruso asks:On April 26, the organization representing state transportation officials released the first in a series of reports calling...
View ArticleNew at Reason: Congress Didn't Learn Anything From the Financial Crisis
I have a new commentary out, continuing to point out errors in the Dodd bill. It is certainly the best version so far, but that is little solace when looking at mind twisting errors like the absence of...
View ArticleVMT Wrong Metric for Climate Change
I've spent the last several days at the Intelligent Transportation Society of America's 20th annual conference in Houston, and today I was on a panel on transportation and climate change with Deron...
View ArticleAndres Duany Criticizes Combersome Planning Process
New Urbanist planner and architect Andres Duany has taken aim at the contemporary U.S. planning process, arguing that its openness prevents innovative projects from getting approved. Talking to...
View ArticleArrest Everybody
A few years ago, David and Jessica Rodriguez were leaving Arizona's Bartlett Lake with their two children when they accidentally headed down a road that had been closed because of rain damage. They...
View ArticleThe Global War on Something
Even as investigators were hunting for the perpetrator of the botched "man-caused disaster" in Times Square, our cool homeland security secretary, Janet Napolitano, was reassuring a frazzled nation...
View ArticleArizona's Un-American Immigration Law
If universal health coverage was part of the longstanding liberal agenda to implement a European-style welfare state in America, Arizona's tough new anti-immigrant law represents the conservative...
View ArticleThe Myth of the Menacing Militias
Flash back to the end of March, when the authorities hauled in nine members of the Hutaree, a Christian paramilitary group, and charged them with plotting a mass assassination of police officers. The...
View ArticleUnpaid Interns Are Exploited?
Do you employ unpaid student interns—college students who work in exchange for on-the-job training?If so, President Obama's Labor Department says that you're an exploiter. The government says an...
View ArticleLos Angeles Destroys Functioning Businesses in a Recession
Los Angeles has lost over 150,000 jobs in the past year, is on the brink of bankruptcy, and experienced an unexpected 16 percent decline in sales tax revenue last year. And it’s located in a state with...
View ArticleLaHood on Trains: If You Build It, They Will Come
I attended, the U.S. Department of Transportation's fourth "listening session" on transportation reauthorization in Houston on Wednesday, May 5th. The event was well attended--several hundred listened...
View ArticleThe Failure of Surveillance Cameras
New York City has thousands of police surveillance cameras, which really come in handy when a terrorist strikes. After the car bomb attempt last weekend, they captured an image of the vehicle driving...
View ArticleThe Future of Rail in California and Los Angeles?
On Tuesday night I participated in a forum on the future of rail in California and Los Angeles at the Peterson Automotive Museum in LA. Watch the discussion of the event here.
View ArticleThe Future of Transportation Funding
A common theme has emerged in discussions of reauthorizing the federal surface transportation program. Besides the much-discussed problem of insufficient infrastructure investment, we also face the...
View ArticleFixing the Way We Fund Infrastructure
My new Public Works Financing piece:While spelling out a complete revamp of the federal program is beyond the scope of this column, here are several guidelines. First, we must refocus and narrow the...
View ArticleUnstable Markets Are Pointing to a Fake Recovery
A few weeks ago, many market bulls were pointing at the steady, and impressive growth in the stock market as signs the recovery was ramping up. According to the bulls, the growth in the Dow, NASDAQ,...
View ArticleThe FCC Goes Backwards
I have an op-ed on the FCC's broadband re-classification plan on AOL today, paired with a counterpoint commentary from Megan Tady of Free Press. My piece focuses on how the plan will lead to FCC...
View ArticleBreaking Down April's Unemployment Numbers; Up to 9.9%
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released their unemployment numbers today. The headline is that unemployment is up to 9.9% in April, from 9.7% percent, where it has been all year. But, the good news is...
View ArticleWe Are Out of Money
American conservatives, particularly the fiscal variety, tend to hold up the European Union as a model of irresponsible, big-spending economic policy. But consider this: According to E.U. rules, member...
View ArticleNotes from the Oslo Freedom Forum
There is a photo buried on the website of Aftenposten, Norway’s largest circulation quality daily, of marching German troops stopping foot traffic on Karl Johans Gata, one of Oslo's main thoroughfares,...
View ArticleThe Case for Added Road Capacity
The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials has released a series of three reports making the case for expanding road and freight infrastructure capacity called...
View ArticleTale of Two High Occupancy Toll (HOT) Lane Projects in Virginia
The front page of the Metro Section of the Washington Post recapped the 1995 Base Realignment and Closing (BRAC) decisions as they affect traffic in Northern Virginia."Plans to move more than 19,000...
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Comparing Private Sector and Government Worker Salaries
There has been much debate over whether public sector employees are overpaid or underpaid, relative to their private sector counterparts, and how to make an "apples-to-apples" comparison of the...
View ArticleReason's Adrian Moore Discusses California and Greece on C-Span's Washington...
This morning Adrian Moore, vice president of research at Reason Foundation, discussed the parallels of the fiscal problems in California and Greece, as well as the economic stability of other U.S....
View ArticleMeeting Stupidity with Stupidity
Isaac Newton formulated three laws of motion, No. 3 being: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If he were still around, he'd propose a fourth: For every action, there is an...
View ArticleGin, Girls, and Governance
In February, President Barack Obama told a New Hampshire audience, “You don’t blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.” Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman was still livid when...
View ArticlePaul Ryan: Radical or Sellout?
PAUL RYAN, free market extremist: With an economics degree in his pocket and small-government conservatism in his blood—Calvin Coolidge appointed his grandfather as a U.S. attorney—Wisconsin’s Paul...
View ArticleYou Don't Know Jack
When the lights went down at the Washington premiere of Casino Jack and the United States of Money, a new documentary about disgraced super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, I was a bit gratified to see that the...
View ArticleThe Euro-Crisis: Fear Is Back in Play
“Now, fear is back in play,” said William H. Gross, managing director of Pimco, as the European crisis sent shock waves into financial markets around the world.There is fear that the sovereign debt...
View ArticleEuropeâ??s Political and Economic Crisis
Some interesting news items last week on the European crisis:A “wild week” (Financial Times)“Fears of eurozone sovereign risk contagion to banks, tighter monetary policy in China and surprise intraday...
View ArticleAnother Financial Crisis in the Making
World-wide stock markets plunged last Thursday as the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe is worsening. The Dow fell 1000 points–its worst ever intraday drop–before rebounding, but still ended down...
View ArticleSolving Car Pollution Problems Through Technology Fixes
Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in using public policy to shift travel behavior, most notably in the U.S. Department of Transportation's strategic plan that emphasizes "livability" and...
View ArticleThe Pill: The Male Version
The oral contraceptive pill was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on May 9, 1960, liberating millions of women from the burdens of unplanned pregnancies and allowing them to enter the...
View ArticleA Drug Raid Goes Viral
Last week, a Columbia, Missouri, drug raid captured on video went viral. As of this morning, the video had garnered 950,000 views on YouTube. It has lit up message boards, blogs, and discussion groups...
View ArticleThe Suburbs Are Growing Up
I've seen several articles since the Great Recession arguing that the the housing market has fundamentally shifted away from typical suburban "sprawl" and toward cities. People are no longer interested...
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