No, It's Not a Messaging Problem
The White House says it has a "messaging" problem when it comes to health care reform—as in a "you're-not-buying-our-message" problem. And this week's news, to say the least, was no help.You'll...
View ArticleA Techno-Agrarian Manifesto
Now that there are hardly any farmers left to migrate from the cornfields to the city, farms themselves are poised to make the big move. This, at least, is the premise of Dickson Despommier’s The...
View ArticleTSA Needs a Risk-Based Approach to Airport Security
As I’ve frequently noted in my Airport Security Newsletter, intrusive screening of everyone is inherent in the TSA’s current approach to airport security, which treats all air travelers as equally...
View ArticleSoda Taxes Are Still Not a Substitute for Real Tax Reform
Much of the criticism of the Bowles-Simpson report has focused on its bold, but not bold enough approach. Yesterday the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) released its own deficit reduction plan, including...
View ArticleTime to Tear Down Wrigley Field?
Wrigley Field: It's one of the most iconic stadiums in America, with a distinctive urban location, nearly a century of history, and an old-fashioned ambience. It's the best thing about the Chicago Cubs...
View ArticleHow I Balanced the Budget
The New York Times much talked about interactive budget tool has a lot of short comings: it has limited options, doesn't present arguments for an against each option, and rests upon mistaken...
View ArticleNatural Is Not Always Better
It's not what we don't know that causes us trouble. It's what we know that isn't so. Whichever famous writer said that (it's been attributed to many), what he said carries truth.What are some of the...
View ArticleEarmarks Banned
Just like that, and the House has banned earmarks for the 112th Congress. The long sought after restriction on legislative excess was unanimously agreed to today by House Republicans to be applicable...
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Going Broke by Fractions of a Percent
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s rollout of $600 billion in quantitative easing was a public relations disaster that deserves to be studied in college communications classes. And he could have...
View ArticleThe Sari Doesn't Need Saving
Globalization produces different anxieties in different people. And for the high-priests of Indian culture it is the sari. Famous novelist, boy genius, and former Indian cabinet minister Shashi Tharoor...
View ArticleRap and Metal on Planet Islam
Nabyl Guennouni, 30, is a heavy metal singer and band manager in Morocco. He also sits on a jury that selects rising talents to perform at Casablanca’s annual L’Boulevard des Jeunes Musiciens, a...
View ArticleGetting TSA Out of Passenger Screening
In a column for the Daily Beast, Reason Foundation's Robert Poole expands on his earlier thoughts on fixing airport security: People are outraged at the TSA’s aggressive pat-downs and privacy-invading...
View ArticleWhat Can Rand Paul Do?
For all the furor the Tea Party movement generated this year, when it came to the mightiest deliberative body in human history, the U.S. Senate, the Tea Party won only one real prize: Rand Paul's...
View ArticleLewis Black Lambastes the Nanny State
Earlier this week Lewis Black went off on the growing Nanny State, targeting:New disturbing image requirements for cigarette packs to discourage smoking;TSA crotch grabbing; San Francisco's Happy Meal...
View ArticleWill Republicans Get Serious on Spending?
Barely a week has passed since the thumping Republican victory in congressional elections, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is enjoying the chance to reveal how the GOP will use its new...
View ArticleDave Nolan, R.I.P.
Dave Nolan, who died on November 20, 2010, and I were classmates at MIT. We were part of a large contingent of budding libertarians on campus, running the MIT chapter of Young Americans for Freedom and...
View ArticleThe Cake Is a Lie
In 2007 Sonya and Joseph Smith were tried for felony murder in connection with the 2003 death of their 8-year-old son, Josef, who medical examiners said was beaten and deprived of food and water. The...
View ArticleDoctorsâ?? Orders
Doctors who own independent practices sometimes band together to provide a bulk offering of services, at a collectively negotiated rate, for third-party payers such as large health insurance carriers....
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Would Higher 30 Year Fixed-Rate Mortgages Hurt Homeownership
At the center of the debate over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform is the question of 30-year fixed-rate mortgages. The industry and progressive left argue that without some kind of government...
View ArticleThe Well-Pilfered Clavier
He has been called the “immortal god of harmony,” “the beginning and end of all music,” “the supreme genius of music…who knows everything and feels everything,” and “a benevolent god to which all...
View ArticleRobert Poole Talks Airport Security on CNBC
Reason Foundation's Robert Poole, who advised the Bush White House and members of Congress against creating the TSA back in 2001 (see here, here and here), talked about private airport security...
View ArticleRare Earth Ruckus
Earlier this year, the world was jolted when China apparently cut supplies of rare earth metals to Japan. In addition, China has announced that it is dramatically tightening its export quotas on the...
View ArticleNetflix Blows It All Up
So now you can pay Netflix $7.99 a month and stream all the video you want? Damn cool if you ask me!What does the Netflix decision mean for consumers—two words: More choice! This is what functional...
View ArticleLoco Over Four Loko
Timothy Leary noted that "psychedelic drugs cause panic and temporary insanity" in people who have never tried them. The same can be said of Four Loko, the drink that federal regulators banned last...
View ArticleTSA Pat Downs Kill
Well, not directly. But one consequence of making airport security more ridiculous and intrusive is more people will choose to drive instead, and more driving means more acidents, injuries and deaths....
View ArticleIt's About Time We Politicized the Fed
Monetary policy is a complex and mystical business—yet it was not, as far as I know, handed down from God to Moses to Alan Greenspan.But in case you forgot, "it is very important to keep politics out...
View ArticleOnly 400 of 2,200 Body Scanners Are In Place at Airports So Outrage at TSA...
Defenders of the TSA’s intrusive new airport screening procedures (including The Nation) keep pointing to last week’s CBS News poll that showed 81% of Americans supposedly support full-body airport...
View ArticleThe Case Against Motorcycle Helmet Laws
If you have a strong disregard for your own health and safety, you are free to express it in all sorts of ways. You can smoke cigarettes. You can gorge on fast food five times a day. You can go live...
View ArticleA Simple Way to Improve Medicare
Medicare, the government's health plan for seniors, has observed a ritual that's as regular and anticipated as the presidential pardon of a Thanksgiving turkey. It's called the “Doc Fix” and it's been...
View ArticleTSA: Travel is a Privilege
It's been a few days, but I'm still struck by the utter boldness of Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole's public and presumably intended to be quoted comment: “I see flying as a...
View ArticleTransit-Oriented Developments in Austin, Texas Falter
Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, but Austin, Texas is having trouble making its transit-oriented development (TODs) work. From the Austin Chronicle (11/26/2010):"Five years later, Austinites can...
View ArticleIt's Not About NO Airport Security, but BETTER Airport Security
Steve Horwitz has a column emphasizing that objections to the TSA are about finding ways to improve security, not eliminate it.Marcotte should take seriously the libertarian alternative, which is to...
View ArticleIsraeli air security experts insist their methods better than U.S.
The Washington Post reports:Israel has long held the reputation as home to the world's most stringent airport security procedures. But most passengers aren't frisked, there are no intimately revealing...
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Did the Midterms Matter?
Now that the dust has settled from Election Day, it's worth asking whether the midterms will have much impact on American governance, especially in the brief lull before the 2012 presidential season...
View ArticleCovering Their Assets
In March the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, praised Indiana for curbing asset forfeiture abuses by assigning proceeds from seized property to the state's public schools...
View ArticleFederal Pay Freeze Side Show Ignores Real Spending Drivers
The Obama Administration's decision to freeze federal pay is more sideshow that meaningful fiscal restraint. The probem with federal spending is that government is expanding its role in all sorts of...
View ArticleWhite House Federal Pay Freeze Proposal Is a Start
President Obama will propose today freezing federal employee pay for the next two years, a move no doubt aimed at Republican attacks that the White House isn't willing to substantively address the debt...
View ArticleThe Conquering Bureaucracy
Reputation and Power: Organizational Image andPharmaceutical Regulation at theFDA, by DanielCarpenter, Princeton University Press, 856 pages, $29.95After spending months in the Amazon sometime in the...
View ArticleTransportation Projects Aren't Being Chosen on the Merits
The Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act of 1998 (TIFIA) was enacted as part of the TEA-21 reauthorization. Its purpose was to “leverage limited federal resources and stimulate...
View ArticleThe Appearance of Corruption
When Theodore Roosevelt became president in 1901, he quickly established a reputation as a trust buster, railing against the power of giant corporations. In 1902 he ordered a Sherman Act lawsuit aimed...
View ArticleTax Exemption for Health Benefits On Its Last Legs?
Though it's uncertain whether the next Congress will enact meaningful budget reform, there's reason to believe that once sacrosanct tax benefits could soon be canceled in the name of deficit-trimming....
View ArticleIn Defense of Economic Growth
Daniel Ben-Ami, a London-based journalist, has covered economics and finance for two decades, contributing to such publications as The Guardian, The Independent, the Sunday Telegraph, the Financial...
View ArticleThe Eleventh Commandment: Punish Free Riders
Two of the deep puzzles in human evolution are religion and cooperation between genetically unrelated strangers. In recent years, many researchers have come to believe the two phenomena are intimately...
View ArticleAre All Farms Created Equal When It Comes to Subsidies?
The Bipartisan Policy Center's plan to control the federal deficit, which argues convincingly for cutting distortionary and unfair elements of the tax code, occasionally seems to encourage the very...
View ArticleNaked Truth
According to the Transportation Security Administration, Americans have no problem with the new airport screening procedures. So they should stop complaining.That self-contradictory reassurance, which...
View ArticleEnd the Lame-Duck Sessions
It was a moment of inadvertent public honesty. An open C-SPAN microphone caught the often-beleaguered Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), lamenting the impotence of this congressional lame-duck...
View ArticleFinal Report Released by President's Fiscal Responsibility Commission
The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform today released its final report, modestly entitled "The Moment of Truth", with recommendations for shaving $4 trillion off the federal...
View ArticleBreaking Down the Federal Pay Proposal
A Review & Outlook in The Wall Street Journal today took on the president's pay freeze proposal, noting that it is modest but a step—as we argued on our blog yesterday:Mr. Obama proposed a two-year...
View ArticleCongress Forces Millions to Cut Up Their Credit Cards
Eight million Americans cut up their credit cards this year, according to new data out from credit bureau TransUnion. Some of those plastic deserters were folks who faced scary economic conditions and...
View ArticleMaking Parks Decent Again
America is filled with parks that are filthy, dangerous, and badly maintained. The governments in charge plead: We can't help it. Our budgets have been slashed. We don't have enough money!Bryant Park,...
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