The Future of Nuclear after Fukushima
Many are wondering if one of the casualties of Japan's tsunami last spring is the nuclear industry. Without question, the meltdown of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant was a wake up...
View ArticleIs High Speed Rail Becoming China's White Elephant?
The Heartland Institute has done a great service by making widely available a reprint of a feature article on China's faltering high-speed rail adventure (increasingly misadventure). The article, "Fast...
View ArticleThe Dangers of "Caylee's Law"
It was once suggested, as a general rule of staying alive, never to fly on an airline named after a state or the owner. As a general rule of sound government, it's also a good idea never to enact a law...
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Fear of a Muslim America
In March, almost 10 years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, America’s uneasy, contradictory relationship with Islam was on full display at two congressional hearings. The first, a House...
View ArticleStimulus: $28 billion Creates 65,110 jobs
Bob Poole's most recent edition of Surface Transportation Innovations newsletter (No. 93, July 2011) reminded me of this study from the General Accountability Office (June 2011) throwing a lot of cold...
View ArticleCA Supreme Court Upholds Plastic Bag Ban
The California Supreme Court ruled unanimously last week to uphold a plastic bag ban in Manhattan Beach, overturning two prior rulings. The plastic bag ban in question was instituted in 2008 by...
View ArticleDistorting Reagan's Record
Remember the big Reagan tax increase of 1982?Well, certain elements of the press do, all of a sudden, and, lo and behold, after years of demonizing Ronald Reagan as a fiscally irresponsible tax-cutter,...
View ArticleRichard Cordray as CFPB Director is No Better than Elizabeth Warren
After a year of dithering, on Monday, July 18, President Obama finally nominated someone for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) directorship—and surprise, surprise, it is not Elizabeth...
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The Facts About the Debt Ceiling
Editor’sNote: Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy appears weekly on Bloomberg TV to separate economic fact from economic myth.Myth 1:If a deal is not reached by August 2,...
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The Declaration of Independents
When was the last time you read the Declaration of Independence? Go ahead and call it up; give it a quick scan. Don’t focus on the detailed bill of particulars against King George (“He has called...
View ArticleFundamentalists vs. the First Amendment
Religious fundamentalists threaten the American way of life by seeking to impose their will upon us, because they hate our freedoms. So say lawmakers in a growing number of (mostly Bible Belt) states...
View ArticleErasing the "I" from Marriage
Every few years, the stars misalign and some social conservative comes out and does the political equivalent of baying at the moon. In the wake of 9/11, Dinesh D’Souza penned a whole book explaining...
View ArticleReturn to Normalcy
Editor's Note: This column is reprinted with permission of the Washington Examiner. Click here to read it at that site.Last week brought the unsurprising news that the Transportation Security...
View ArticleAn Environmentalist Joins the Reality-Based Community
Eco-activist and journalist Mark Lynas owes Bjorn Lomborg an apology. Back in 2001, Lynas famously smashed a cream pie in Lomborg’s face at a public meeting in Oxford to protest his then-new book The...
View ArticleSneak Surrender
Only in Washington, D.C., would Mitch McConnell's Rube Goldbergian plan to capitulate on the national debt limit without admitting it be taken seriously. The Senate minority leader's "Plan B" is...
View ArticleThe Eternal Fallout Shelter
In the summer of 1961, 100 pessimistic members of an Arizona-based religious sect called the Full Gospel Assembly Church spent about $250,000 (in current dollars) on food, locked up their homes, and...
View ArticleGood Idea, Wrong Time
When a reporter recently asked President Barack Obama about the House Republican efforts to pass the Cut, Cap and Balance Act of 2011, Obama explained that politicians "don't need a constitutional...
View ArticleA CFPB Political Deal
The Richard Cordray nomination to head the CFPB may have created a political opportunity. From our perspective, the CFPB is a bad thing. It is well-intended in theory (other than Elizabeth Warren's...
View ArticleWhen Ignorance Is the Best Excuse
When Rupert Murdoch went before the British Parliament yesterday to testify about the News of the World hacking scandal, he did not attempt to downplay the severity of his employees’ crimes. Rather, he...
View ArticleThe Real Effects of Gambling
Gambling has proliferated in America in recent years, and it's not about to stop. The Illinois legislature has approved a bill authorizing more casinos as well as slot machines at race tracks. Ohio has...
View ArticleWhere the Twentysomethings LIve When They Become Thirtysomethings
Joel Kotkin has an insightful blog entry over at Forbes.com (7/20/2011) discussing the demographics of urban living and migration in U.S. metropolitan areas. Citing numbers crunched by Wendell Cox,...
View ArticleA Businessman for President?
Herman Cain has an impressive record in the business world. He was a successful vice president at Pillsbury and Burger King, then he turned around the failing Godfather's Pizza.Is that the kind of...
View ArticleDeath to the Living Constitution
How should progressives approach the U.S. Constitution? Is it a living document, designed to evolve with the changing times? Or does it have a fixed meaning, one that may sometimes support progressive...
View ArticleNo Healthy Deals
Earlier this year, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) left the so-called Gang of Six, an independent team of senators who took it upon themselves to negotiate a proposed debt deal apart from the administration...
View ArticleThe Real Lesson From "Carmageddon"
The much ballyhooed closure of the I-405 over the Sepulveda Pass in Los Angeles ignited a national discussion and debate over cars, infrastructure, and funding. (See, for example, the New York...
View ArticlePodcast on Mortgage Interest Deduction Effects
This week I appeared on the Tax Foundation's regular podcast to talk about the mortgage interest deduction in a preview of our paper being published next week. We talk about the effects of the mortgage...
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Natural Gas Flip-Flop
The world’s projected natural gas supplies jumped 40 percent last year. Until a decade ago, experts believed it would be technically infeasible to exploit the natural gas locked in 48 shale basins in...
View ArticleFriday Privatization News Highlights (7/22/2011 edition)
News articles on some of the more interesting developments on the privatization and public-private partnership (PPP) front over the last two weeks include:Federal/International"Republicans push to...
View ArticleChina's Growth Heads to the Interior
All too often, Western analysts tend to depict China as a single unit. This is inevitable when national statistics are used to report on economic and some political trends. Adam Nathan Mayer, however,...
View ArticleTim Pawlenty's Illusion of Dullness
Indianola, Iowa—When you pick up a glossy, multi-page color brochure at a presidential campaign event, you expect to see a candidate's image on the front. The ones stacked on a table inside the Sports...
View ArticleEvite, July 28: Rethinking the Mortgage Interest Deduction
The Reason Foundation invites you to attend a policy luncheonRethinking the Mortgage Interest DeductionThursday, July 28, 2011 12:00 to 1:30 p.m., ET Location: The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street N.W.,...
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The Cybersecurity-Industrial Complex
In the last two years, approximately 50 cybersecurity-related bills have been introduced in Congress. In May the White House released its own cybersecurity legislative proposal. The Federal...
View ArticleFive Facts About the Debt
Five under-appreciated points about the federal budget and debt ceiling:1. Whenever I need to get my bearings in the debate over the debt, the deficit, or the debt ceiling, I go to the web site of the...
View ArticleThe Coming Autopocalypse
The thinking behind the Obama administration’s proposed new fuel efficiency standards seems to be: What won’t kill the auto industry will make it stronger. But these standards are the regulatory...
View ArticleIs the Tea Party Crazy or Just Nuts?
The late Sen. Paul Wellstone of Minnesota was a man of the hard left—"the Senate's most liberal member," as Mickey Kaus once termed him in the liberal online journal Slate. Wellstone opposed the first...
View ArticleWisconsin Commuter Rail Shows Perils of Transit Funding
A commuter rail line linking Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha and other Wisconsin suburbs is apparently dead now the that Southeastern (WI) Regional Transit Authority has been dismantled. Supporters of the...
View ArticleLessons from Norway's Horror
Editor's Note: This column is reprinted with permission of the Washington Examiner. Click here to read it at that site.I've never been a fan of waiting periods for gun purchases, but I'm warming to the...
View ArticleMcDonald's to Kids: Apple Slices For All, Whether or Not You Want Them
Every Happy Meal shall henceforth contain apple slices, according to a decree from McDonald's HQ today, which boasts that the change is part of "a comprehensive plan [that] aims to help...
View ArticleWhy Are People "Irrationally" Generous to Strangers?
Here’s a puzzle. Take the dictator game. It's a one-shot two-player anonymous experimental game. The dictator is given a sum of money, say, $10. She may keep it all or give some amount to the...
View ArticleCannabis Capitulation
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican and former U.S. attorney, has never been keen on his state's Compassionate Use of Medical Marijuana Act, which his predecessor, Jon Corzine, signed into law...
View ArticleThe Reid Plan: Cut $24 billion Net Direct Spending for $2.7 Trillion
The Congressional Budget Office has a score out for the competing debt ceiling increase proposals on Capitol Hill. President Obama has a stated preference for his fellow Democrat, Senate Majority...
View ArticleThe Boehner Plan: Another Debt Commission Please!
The Congressional Budget Office has a score out for the plan from Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner. They estimate that his proposed cuts would knock $850 billion off the deficit over the...
View ArticleObama the Immoderate
There is still a slim chance that this summer's debt ceiling debate won't end with demagoguery's winning the day. That's an unusual development, yes, and something to be thankful for, however fleeting...
View ArticleUnmasking the Mortgage Interest Deduction
The deduction of mortgage interest from federal income taxes subsidizes homeownership, making it more affordable to become a homeowner. Or so we've been told. It is a highly popular tax break, yet one...
View ArticleThe Danger of Snap Judgments
When news came last Friday of a bombing in Oslo, Norway, followed by a shooting spree at a nearby youth camp, virtually everyone assumed this was the latest chapter in the bloody annals of Islamist...
View ArticleChina Enforces Property Rights...Sort Of
CBS recently reported (July 25, 2011) that the government of Kunming (urbanized area population of 3.2 million), the provincial capital of Yunnan Province in southwestern China, closed five fake Apple...
View ArticleNew Study: Unmasking the Mortgage Interest Deduction
Ditching homeowner subsidies would allow everyone's income tax rates to be lowered 8 percent in revenue neutral solutionThe mortgage interest deduction does not increase homeownership rates and amounts...
View ArticleWhat We Don't Know Can Hurt Us
"It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so."That famous line, attributed to many authors but apparently said by humorist Henry...
View ArticleThe Perils of All-You-Can-Eat
Breathes there a Netflix user with a Blu-ray player so dead, who never to himself hath said,“There ain’t no way unlimited free downloads are going to last!”Netflix has announced that it is eliminating...
View ArticleStudy: Time to Eliminate the Mortgage Interest Deduction
The mortgage interest deduction does not increase homeownership rates and amounts to little more than a subsidy for wealthy homeowners, according to a new Reason Foundation study that recommends...
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