It's Not You, Mittâ??It's Me
Mitt Romney not only possesses an air of real-world know-how but also has mucho smarts. I've been a reluctant apologist for him for years now.And for those of you who believe he's out of touch with the...
View ArticleObamaâ??s Neverending Afghan Adventure
President Barack Obama snuck in and out of Afghanistan on Sunday. He made his secret escape from Camp David and flew around the world to show the troops he cared, and to assure all of them and all of...
View ArticleSean Penn, Chavista
In the essay bookending his translation of Plato’s Republic, Allan Bloom argues that Socrates' intention in philosophizing about the best regime was not to inspire his interlocutors to commit acts of...
View ArticleJaime Escalante, Rip
Reposted and written by Matt Welch at Reason's Hit and Run. The famous East L.A. calculus teacher, immortalized by the Edward James Olmos biopic Stand and Deliver, died from bladder cancer yesterday...
View ArticleTime is Money Particularly on Highway Projects
A recent article in the Omaha World Herald, discussed a Nebraska Department of Roads meeting with the Federal Highway Administrator. The meeting was about getting highway projects through the layers...
View ArticleThe Next California Budget
The following is the introduction from the report The Next California Budget: Buying Results Citizens Want at a Price They Are Willing to Pay.California often leads the nation, and the current fiscal...
View ArticleFixing the California Budget
Each year, the governor and state agencies create wish lists for next year’s budget based on how much they are spending this year. Unfortunately, despite a $20 billion deficit, results - whether or not...
View ArticleReinventing Government Author David Osborne on Fixing California's Budget Mess
Each year, the governor and state agencies create wish lists for next year’s budget based on how much they are spending this year. Unfortunately, despite a $20 billion deficit, results - whether or not...
View ArticleBudgeting For Outcomes Can Help California
The following is the introduction to my new Reason study, The Next California Budget, on how to fix the state's budget process:California often leads the nation, and the current fiscal crisis is no...
View ArticlePublic-Private Partnerships for Corrections in California
Full StudyPolicy SummaryWith a correctional system strained by severe overcrowding, a state fiscal crisis and a recent federal order to reduce the prison population by over 40,000 inmates, there are no...
View ArticleTransferring 25,000 Inmates to Private Prisons Would Save California $1.8...
Every inmate in a California prison costs taxpayers over $47,000 a year. Because of the state’s astronomical prison costs, a new Reason Foundation-Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation study finds...
View ArticleReducing California's Prison Costs By Billions
Every inmate in a California prison costs taxpayers over $47,000 a year. Because of the state’s astronomical prison costs, a new Reason Foundation-Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation study finds...
View ArticleRybczynski: Central Planning Not Solution for America's Cities
Real estate expert Witold Rybczynski has an excellent, short, and pithy article on Slate.com on the White House Office of Urban Affairs and its plans to create more "livable" cities. In a breath of...
View ArticleBig Brother on Your Trail
Suppose I approached you with a request. I want you to carry a small gadget that will automatically transmit your location to the police, allowing them to track your every movement 24 hours a day, 365...
View ArticleWhat We Know That Isn't So
Much government interference with our peaceful pursuits is based on junk science and junk economics. Politicians know a lot of stuff that isn't so. So do reporters.Let me count some of the ways. (I'll...
View ArticleRed America, White Power
On November 9, 1938, in the Tyrolian city of Innsbruck, Richard Berger, president of the local Jewish community, was snatched from his home and beaten to death with rocks and rifle butts, his body...
View ArticleA Crazy Idea for the SEC
I've got a crazy idea for the Securities and Exchange Commission. And when I say crazy I don't mean in a cool, this is awesome way. I mean in an I could be accused of not knowing what I'm talking about...
View ArticleWhite House Makes Fuel Economy Mandates Official
The White House made official its new fuel economy targets that would require automobile manufacturer's to boost fuel efficiency for the fleets to 35.5 miles per gallon. The new standards have to be...
View ArticlePublic Sector Employees are Killing the Economy: Head Start Edition
In light of Reason.tv's feature on the cost of pubic sector employees to the rest of us, let's examine how the stimulus is giving existing Head Start teachers raises instead of creating new jobs....
View ArticleWhy I Am a Bear
In case you hadn't noticed, the economy is in the clear... at least according to some top politicians:Rep. Chris Van Hollen, head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee says in today's USA...
View ArticleHow Obamacare Undermines Federalism: Part 2
Amity Shlaes has an excellent article in Businessweek dissecting the various ways Obamacare will undermine state experiments with health care reform. This is the classic example of the competitive...
View ArticleCocktails Cops Can't Resist
Beat a raw egg white into a citrusy cocktail and you get a meringue-like effect, frothy and delicious. The resulting beverage—technically classified as a flip or fizz—is irresistible, not only to the...
View ArticleOffshore Drilling Vs. Fuel Efficiency Standards
This week saw two apparently contradictory moves by the Obama Administration. The first was the much criticized (by the environmental community) decision to allow for offshore drilling off the Atlantic...
View ArticleThe Growth Managed Death of Oregon's Pear Farms
Oregon became a nationwide leader in statewide growth management when it passed its law in 1973 to protect farmland and open space. It turns out, an unintended side effect is the undermining of the...
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Long-Term Jobless Woes
From the weekend WSJ:It's especially distressing to see that the number of long-term jobless—those out of work for 27 weeks or more—jumped again to 6.55 million, and as a share of the total jobless hit...
View ArticleObama's "Unilateral Disarmament" is Neither
When Republicans and Democrats agree on a factual matter, it is for one of two reasons. Sometimes it's because a certain fact is true. And sometimes it's because both sides hope to gain from promoting...
View ArticleThe FCC Doesn't Need to Be
As exercises in bureaucratic hairsplitting go, it is tough to beat the sheer audacity of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski's recent declaration, "I've been clear repeatedly...
View ArticleThe NoVa Police Blackout
Last November along the roadside of Richmond Highway, a major thoroughfare in Fairfax County, Virginia, a police officer shot and killed David Masters, an unarmed motorist, as he sat in the driver's...
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Does Bus Transit Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
The American Public Transit Association claims that public transit saves an estimated 1.4 billion gallons of gas annually, which translates into about 14 million tons of CO2. Time’s Global Warming...
View ArticleA Theory of Recovery: Exports or Flying Cars
The Economist has an interesting vision of economic recovery, one that has them really bullish on the future of the market. Basically they posit that that "a 'rebalancing' is under way: from...
View ArticleTraditional Schools Aren't Working. Let's Move Learning Online.
Deep within America's collective consciousness, there is a little red schoolhouse. Inside, obedient children sit in rows, eagerly absorbing lessons as a kind, wise teacher writes on the blackboard....
View ArticleThe 9/14 Presidency
If you believe the president’s Republican critics, Barack Obama takes a law enforcement approach to terrorism. His FBI came under fire for reading Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian national who...
View ArticleRed Ink and Green Jobs
In 2006, when California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a mandate for dramatic reduction of greenhouse gasses into law, the state's economy was in a very different place. Unemployment was 4.5...
View ArticleUp from Slavery
For many libertarians, "the road to serfdom" is not just the title of a great book but also the window through which they see the world. We’re losing our freedom, year after year, they think. They (we)...
View ArticleThe FCC Loses Another One
The Federal Communications Commission keeps grabbing and the judges keep slapping its hands.The big news today is that a federal appeals court has ruled the FCC has no legal authority to regulate the...
View ArticleCutting Costs for State's Prisons
Orange County Register We all know California is swimming in red ink and facing chronic budget troubles. The state deficit is at least $20 billion â?? again. Debt levels and overwhelming pension...
View ArticleDon't Let President Obama Get Near Immigration Reform
Anyone who has had to deal with America's immigration system knows what a crazy, confusing and, at times, cruel mess it is. It seems to operate on the assumption that it is its patriotic duty to harass...
View ArticleSmoke a Joint, Lose Your Country
Under U.S. law, a legal resident who commits an "aggravated felony" is automatically deported. But a crime need not be aggravated or a felony to qualify: As several groups that defend immigrants'...
View ArticleLast Chance for School Reform
American public school teachers don’t get fired. They just don’t. In New York City, hundreds of teachers spend all day in “rubber rooms” because they’re deemed too dangerous or stupid to supervise...
View ArticleHealth Care's History of Fiscal Folly
The Affordable Care Act—otherwise known as ObamaCare—isn't the first attempt to expand health insurance coverage in America. Before Washington passed its law, a number of states took smaller-scale...
View ArticleNo Fat Kids!
No offense, but the next time I hear Michelle Obama lecture me about feeding kids locally farmed kumquats, I'll be forced to pile my family into an SUV and hit the Burger King drive-through just to...
View Article"The Trouble With Tolls" Gets It Completely Wrong
I submitted this letter to the Washington Times a week ago, but since it has not run there, I figured I'd post it here:Your editorial “The trouble with tolls” completely misses the point: the toll road...
View ArticleEstimating Massive Public Pension Deficits in California and Across the Nation
State and local public pension systems across the country are struggling with mounting obligations as a result of overly generous retirement benefits, unrealistic actuarial assumptions, and the...
View ArticleSane Thinking on Interest Rates
Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank president Thomas Hoenig made his strongest statement yet today on the way the Federal Open Market Committee is handling interest rates. Hoenig, who has a vote in the...
View ArticleNuclear Fantasies and Realities
President Obama released a new policy on the use of nuclear weapons the other day. From some of the reactions, I expected that on every government building, the Stars and Stripes would be replaced with...
View ArticleWhat Am I?
I used to be a Kennedy-style "liberal." Then I wised up. Now I'm a libertarian.But what does that mean?When I asked people on the street, half had no clue.We know that conservatives want government to...
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Injustice System
Since joining the Fox News Channel as a legal analyst in 1998, former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew P. Napolitano has emerged as one of America’s most prominent champions of limited...
View ArticleThe Democratic Way of Prohibition
The most illuminating ride-along I’ve ever gone on was a three-hour bus tour of South Los Angeles with City Councilman Bernard Parks, who represents the area that before two deadly riots was known as...
View ArticleCutting Prison Costs in California
Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and I have a column in the Orange County Register and LA Daily News on how much prison costs contribute to the California budget...
View ArticleGet Government Out of the Airport Security Screening Business
My new op-ed for the Washington Times' "Cut or Be Cut" series explains why it is time to get the TSA out of the passenger and baggage screening business:Following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11,...
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