NYT series on the housing crisis
The New York Times has an extraordinary and useful series of articles on the housing and financial crisis. It will likely become a core reference point for news and reporting on this issue, and no one...
View ArticleI, Pencil's power at 50
Thanks to Peter Gordon for reminding me this past week is the 50th anniversary of I, Pencil. I talk abou this when I teach high school classes and it never ceases to boggle the kids minds. And make...
View ArticleCalifornia can utilize pay-as-you-drive and pay-as-you-save programs for...
Last week, the California Air Resources Board unanimously adopted what The New York Times described as the "country's first comprehensive plan for curbing emissions of heat-trapping gases."In a new...
View ArticleCalifornia Air Resources Board Passes Costly Plan During Economic Crisis
In one room in Sacramento last week, state lawmakers were staring into a $40 billion budget hole stretching sometime into 2010. There's talk of the cash-strapped state government handing out IOUs when...
View ArticlePredicting the future is tough even for the gazelles
The Big Three automakers have had a tough year. Not only were they thrashed on the presidential campaign trail by both candidates for making "bad decisions," but they found themselves humuliated...
View ArticleL.A. City Controller Urges Broad Privatization Agenda to Shore Up Fiscal Health
This may be the most sensible set of proposals to come out of Southern California in some time... The city of Los Angeles should consider privatizing dozens of major operations, including Ontario...
View ArticleStates Sharply Raising Taxes to Meet Budget Shortfalls
With at least 75% of the states facing budget shortfalls for the coming budget cycle, states are planning large tax hikes to cover for decreased revenues. New taxes on everything from iPod music to...
View ArticleThe Growing Case for Inflation
One of the great achievements of our time has been the conquest of inflation. In the 1970s, it ravaged our savings, raised our taxes, and kept the economy on a roller coaster. So it is a measure of our...
View ArticleHOT Lanes Will Bring Congestion Relief to Northern Virginia
Traffic congestion in Northern Virginia is the second worst in the country, and infrastructure improvements are long overdue. The enactment of the Public-Private Transportation Act in 1995 enabled...
View ArticleChicago Raises the Bar in Privatization, Again
Compass Online Mr. Jones is coming into the city circa 2011. He has several quick stops to make. In past years he would have had to search fruitlessly for a rare, metered parking space near his...
View ArticleTom Daschle's Plan for Health Care Rationing
President-elect Barack Obama has nominated former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to become the new Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services—a.ka., the new "health care czar." Since losing...
View ArticleHouses of Pain
Your house isn’t worth as much as you’d like it to be.That’s probably no surprise right now. Maybe it’s unkind to rub it in. But a harsh appraisal has been one simple bit of reality to hold onto amid...
View ArticleGroundbreaking French toll tunnel project
The A-86 tunnel, completing the ring road around Paris with a toll tunnel under Versailles, is an iconic modern toll tunnel project. This detailed article in TollRoadsNews details the look and feel of...
View Article"Green" projects vs. shovel ready
The Obama Administration and Congressional leaders will have their hands full trying to placate the environmental lobby who won't stand for anything that resembles the "current system." Obama's...
View ArticleChicago parking privatization
Len's nice article on Chicago's major parking privatization deal is here. On December 2nd he [Mayor Daley] announced the winning bid for a 75-year, long-term franchise for the city's downtown parking...
View ArticleReason Obama document latest E-bay hit
Well, maybe not hit. But interestingly, the Oath of Presidential Transparency that Reason convinced President elect Obama to sign has turned up on Ebay. Not likely to be a hot seller. But at a time...
View ArticleAuto bailout last gasp of compasionate conservatism
Tracy Mehan in the American Spectator disects the bailout and how it represents the last pitiful act of Bush's failed compasionate conservatism. My favorite line: "What are the odds that (a) GM,...
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Artifact: Transparency in Action
On October 13, Neel Kashkari, an interim assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury, sought to ease concerns about how the just-enacted $700 billion financial bailout plan would be implemented. “We are...
View ArticleKrugmania: Part Deux
Steve Horwitz puzzles over why Krugman doesn't understand the relationship between prices and wages. But to really dig in to Krugman folly, check out this analysis by Dan Klein and Harika Anna...
View ArticleThere's No Pain-Free Cure for Recession
This WSJ op/ed is one of the nicest reality check commentaries I have seen on the panic over this recession. It would be irresponsible in the extreme for an individual to forestall a personal recession...
View ArticleAnd you thought infrastructure stimulus meant Roads and Bridges?
My colleague Bob Poole warned us that "Stimulus Shouldn't be an Excuse for Pork" in an article which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on December 10, 2008. He reviewed the Conference of Mayors...
View ArticleTransparency Needed Before More Spending
In July 2007, then-Senator Barack Obama signed the Presidential Oath of Transparency, ensuring that, if elected, his administration would be "fully and robustly committed to open, transparent, and...
View ArticleRetail Bailout Just Recycles Tax Dollars
We have been writing for months that the bailout mania gripping America will produce many long-term negative effects. Financial institutions, insurance companies, auto makers, states, cities, credit...
View ArticlePrivatization Can Transform the Delivery of State Psychiatric Services
Governor Kaine's newly-unveiled package of budget cuts includes proposals that may foster a paradigm shift in how the Commonwealth delivers mental health services. Calling Virginia a "dinosaur," Gov....
View ArticleStimulus = another major expansion of local government
Little noticed in the enthusiasm for a federal stimulus, and President-elect Obama's pledge to create 2.5 million jobs over two years, is that most of these jobs are likely to be government jobs....
View ArticleVirginia Slashes Highway Construction (except for PPPs, that is)
A colleague pointed me to a recent article in the Virginian-Pilot that inadvertently demonstrates the power of public-private partnerships (PPPs) in delivering new transportation capacity and why...
View ArticleWhy the stimulus money is likely to lead to waste
Nicole Gelinas, a contributing editor for the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, has an excellent article in the New York Post explaining why a lot of the so-called stimulus money is likely to be...
View ArticleUS residents bolt from California, Midwest
The US Census Bureau released data on population and migration trends from July 2007 to July 2008this week. What is most interesting is the trend in net domestric migration, which tracks what states...
View ArticleOregon begins move to mileage tax
Oregon, building on its successful pilot project testing the idea of a mileage tax, may begin the formal process of transitioning to a statewide mileage tax in 2009. Governor Ted Kulongoski has...
View ArticleIndia's Private Education Boom
According to a recent report by Asian brokerage and investment group CLSA, India's education and training market is valued at $40 billion and is growing rapidly. It is expected to be a $70 billion...
View ArticleNo Bailouts to "Save" Industries
The $17.4 billion bailout of the Big 3 automakers—GM, Ford, and Chrysler—which will certainly increase after President-elect Barack Obama takes office, was justified on the grounds that it was...
View ArticleMiami HOT lanes a national sensation
The latest HOT lanes project, where buses, carpools and hybrids ride for free, but drivers in other cars can pay a toll to avoid traffic, is a big hit. This AP article about the Miami lanes ran in...
View ArticleChesapeake, VA Pursuing PPP Toll Bridge
In addition to the Midtown Tunnel/MLK extension PPP project I discussed here the other day, the city of Chesapeake, VA is evaluating an unsolicited proposal to rebuild the recently-closed, 80-year old...
View ArticleMore Demagoguery on Indiana Toll Road
You'd think that Gov. Daniels' drubbing of Jill Long-Thompson, whose campaign platform seemed to revolve around a naive hostility to Daniels privatization initiatives, in the November election would...
View ArticleBetter Than a Bailout
What should the federal government have done in lieu of the $700 billion bailout signed into law by President George W. Bush? Here are four common-sense steps that don't involve the partial...
View ArticleCheering on the City of Chesapeake, Virginia
My collegue, Len Gilroy wrote about a terrific development for the City of Chesapeake, Virginia early today. Just to add a bit of context, (and futher encouragement to City) Cheasapeake was the first...
View ArticleTime to Consider Tolling the Interstates
Public Works Financing The prospect of a long recession, along with the continuing financial crisis, creates a problem for the many interest groups that were hoping for a large increase in fuel taxes...
View ArticleThe Market Needs Dynamic Regulation
There is a lot of debate about the role of regulation in the market. Free market critics say that deregulation was a core cause of the economic crisis. Leftist hawk Arianna Huffington wants to laugh...
View ArticleEconomics Actually
Romance novels and the dismal science don’t normally go together, but the George Mason University economist Russ Roberts has gone a long way toward reconciling the two. His previous novels, The Choice:...
View ArticleBill Dunkelberg's Notes on the Economy
Bill Dunkelberg is a professor of economics at Temple University, and writes a series of commentaries on the economy for the Wynnewood Institute that are well worth a read. His most recent article has...
View ArticleWhy 2009 Will be Worse than 2008
Whew. Now that 2008 is in the history books, $8.5 trillion in federal bailout money is in the pipeline, and bold leadership is set to take command, Americans can all breathe a little easier, right?Uh,...
View ArticleDemocratic governors call for $1 trillion stimulus
Four Democratic governors held a news conference to stump for a $1 trillion dollar "stimulus" package. Really, this is a state bailout, since virtually all the money they want is going to pay for...
View ArticleProposed Stimulus: Obama Tax "Cuts" are Bull-ogna
Its Monday, January 5, 2009. The start of the new year. Let the Washington Games begin! A Washington Post report this morning gives one of the first glimpses of whats coming from the Obama...
View ArticleState Asset Inventories, Divestiture are Key Reform Tools
Reason friend and colleague John Palatiello has an excellent article today in the newly-relaunched Bacon's Rebellion advancing a innovative proposal to use asset divestiture to fund augment...
View ArticleEngland to abandon urban growth boundaries?
In what may be one of the most significant moves in recent memory for urban planning, England's PM Gordon Brown seems on the verge of abandoning the urban containment policies that have been a...
View ArticleFunding System for Roads and Bridges Is Broken
In the midst of a recession and with well over $700 billion in bailouts already splashed around, there is talk of increasing the federal gas tax. Why? Federal transportation spending is exceeding...
View ArticlePrivate sector brings infrastructure projects in on time and under budget
It's more than a bit odd that Congress is debating the efficacy of private sector participation in providing infrastructure in the U.S. Congressmen, apparently, are reluctant to expand critical...
View ArticleSchwarzenegger's Failure
You can’t really argue with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political success. In 2002 the California Republican Party, still suffering from the anti-immigrant fervor cooked up by former Gov. Pete Wilson,...
View ArticleStimulus or Pork? 6,371 Earmarks in Last Transportation Bill
In a new column, Reason Foundation's Sam Staley and Adrian Moore write: States receive most transportation funding from the federal government based on a complex formula. The money isn't given to...
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