It's funny. But the death of the public option in the new health care "deal" that Sen. Harry Reid has brokered with centrist and leftist Democrats has produced no triumphant chest-thumping among opponents of the public option. Why? Because what they are getting in exchange is arguably far worse.
As Tunku [...]
Deferring action once again on aviation funding the US House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill to extend aviation programs and excise taxes through the end of March 2010. The three-month extension will give lawmakers additional time to work on the long-delayed multi-year FAA reauthorization bill. The Senate is [...]
During the 2008 election, then-Senators Obama and Biden were fond of the line, "That's not change, that's just more of the same." That line would be useful in the House financial services debate.
In yesterday's first round of discussion on the House floor, special interest groups won a few concessions in [...]
The only thing more shocking than ClimateGate is the climate science community's response to ClimateGate. As Clive Crook points out in the Atlantic today:
The first line of response to the leaked or hacked emails, you recall, was to say that they showed science going on as usual--even science at [...]
The CBO released its analysis of the the Wall Street Reform Act last Friday. The bill will cost, according to the non-partisan group, a mere $4.5 billion added to the deficit from 2010 to 2019. There was a time when that number was high, but given number inflation due [...]
Reason Foundation senior analyst Shikha Dalmia will be discussing climate change and Copenhagen on The Andy Caldwell Show today at 4.30 PM PST. Californians can tune in to 1440 AM KUHL. The show will also be broadcast live online here.
Read Dalmia's latest column on climate change: Emmissions [...]
I have a new article up at Reason.com:
Last week, the House Financial Services Committee approved the final piece of a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulations proposed by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.). The full House is schedule to begin debate on the bill today, and a vote could come as [...]The White House held its big jobs summit last week, but it has presented few new ideas. Is a jobs bill looming in Congress anyway? The Hill reports:
House Democratic leaders have made passing a jobs bill their top priority for the end of the year, but time is running out [...]The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has just released a report showing that carbon dioxide emissions from light trucks, cars, and SUVs have fallen dramatically since 1975 even as the proportion of SUVs and trucks sold has increased to nearly half of all sales. Grams of carbon per mile have [...]
Testifying before the Senate at his confirmation hearing yesterday, Fed Chairman Bernanke apologized that he did not anticipate a crisis of this magnitude.” I am cautiously in favor of Bernanke’s reappointment—though not necessarily of Bernanke himself.
It is a practical thing: given the president’s displayed and stated fiscal preferences, I [...]
Central Texas opened its first modern tollway on March 7, 2007, when the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority unveigled the 183A tollway. Since then, the tollway has logged traffic of 55,000 transactions per day, more than double the number projected in the original forecasts. Notably, the tollway is [...]
The San Diego Union-Tribune recently published a column of mine on California's high-speed rail project. The counterpoint article was written by California High-Speed Rail Authority member Lynn Schenk. As expected, it was filled with fantasy and wishful thinking, so I tried to bring a dose of reality in [...]
Louisiana's Streamlining Government Commission recommends two new school choice proposals. The first directs the state government to pursue a funding system in which the money follows the child into each school through a student-based budgeting system. The second recommendation is the implementation of a statewide refundable education tax credit program [...]
By now, most people following the economy know that the national unemployment rate dipped from 10.2 percent in October to 10.0 percent in November according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That dip has started quite a discussion over what it means.
My colleague Anthony Randazzo does a nice [...]
Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) took a Louisville Slugger to Bernanke in the Fed Chairman reappointment hearings yesterday. The Hall of Fame baseball player opened by reminding Bernanke that he opposed him in 2005 and that he opposes him now. He ripped into him with line after line, but one stands [...]
In a bit of a surprise turn, unemployment dipped slightly in November. Numbers released this morning show that unemployment fell from 10.2% to 10%, with workers cutting just 11,000 jobs last month. Some had expected as many as 130,000 jobs to be lost, which was roughly the average lost [...]
The House Financial Services Committee is sending a massive Wall Street reform bill to the House floor next week: "The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009" (here's a link to a PDF of the bill).
The bill is a bundle of the different pieces of reform that [...]
Yesterday, the House passed the "Enhanced S.E.C. Enforcement Authority Act" to grant new authority to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The bill essentially says that if the SEC gets a court in any jurisdiction to issue a subpoena for witnesses and/or documents that the directive extends to any other jurisdiction. [...]
Today is the greatly anticipated White House Jobs Summit. Today is the day when unemployment will be fixed. Today is the day when we will get real solutions. You’d wonder why “today” didn’t come any sooner.
In reality, today’s gathering of business leaders, journalists, economists, and other demographics represents the next [...]
As President Obama confers with 133 people more sympathetic to his policy positions than critical of them, National Review has hosted an on-line symposium on economic policies that could really stimulate private investment and job creation. Among the contributors are Peter Ferrara, Burton Folsom, Nicole Gelinas, and yours [...]
Ever since U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was slapped down by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs after suggesting we discuss a distance-based fee to fund infrastructure, many have questioned how much leadership can actually eminate from the department.
Now, Micheal Ennis, the transportation policy analyst at the [...]
The answer unfortunately is yes, perhaps! In my latest Wall Street Journal column, I write:
In the pre-iTunes, pre-MTV age, there was usually a multiyear lag before hit songs in the West reached India. Now India is experiencing a similar time-lag on global warming. Just when fresh doubts about the issue [...]
In a not-so-subtle dig at his predecessor, President Obama promised when he took office that : "Science and scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my administration on a wide range of issues, including ... mitigation climate change...The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process." [...]
We know that the TSA doesn't know how to set security priorities or spend money wisely. They've focused on security theater instead of real, risk-based security. In this podcast with Paul Plack of Aero-News Network we discuss the troubling plan to involve TSA in FAA-licensed aircraft repair stations; hundreds [...]
Let me suggest five guiding principles.
First, do no harm. By that I mean don't undercut or hobble the democratization of air travel ushered in by the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Even though adjusting' [...]
By now, many readers of this page have probably read about "climategate"--the controversy over thousands of hacked emails that appear to reveal a conspiracy among climate change researchers to marginalize those that disagree with them and even manipulate data to support their points.
Others, particularly Reason's science correspondant [...]
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski linked spectrum management, universal service and network neutrality in a speech yesterday at the Innovation Economy Conference in Washington, and in the process may have signaled some comprehension of the negative consequences network neutrality regulation may have.
His most significant statement was a concession [...]
Do you know how the stimulus is screwing you?
Recovery.gov, the website supposedly tracking the spending of the stimulus money, has a feature on the left side of the page called "Did You Know?" Today's happy note of information:
The University of Michigan received $19 million in Recovery funds to expand a [...]
I agree with Paul Krugman on at least one thing: the continued prospects for high unemployment in America is a bad thing. In his NYT column yesterday, Krugman the Keynesian wrote:
The damage from sustained high unemployment will last much longer. The long-term unemployed can lose their skills, and even [...]The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve have pushed back the deadline for banking industry compliance with regulations pursuant to the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA). UIGEA, the controversial tack-on to the Bush administration’s SAFE Port Act aimed at curtailing on-line gambling by making it illegal for [...]
One of the more important problems facing tollroads is creating a seamless and user-friendly system of charging users for the services of the facility. This is easy and relatively cheap for regular users--create an account. For occasional users, and perhaps the majority of travelers, the problem (and solution) isn't so' [...]
The American Dream Coalition's most recent edition of its e-newsletter, The American Dream Communicator, has these useful links to growth management, land use, and housing issues in the news:
Housing & Land Use
Portland, America's ultimate White City – Aaron Renn, Dallas Morning News
Living better' [...]
Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke stepped back into the realm of politics yesterday with an op-ed in the Washington Post. In his piece he defends the Federal Reserve's response to the crisis as "distasteful and unfair" but "unfortunately necessary." He goes on the attack against Congressional moves to shift bank regulatory [...]
The American Dream Coalition's e-newsletter American Dream Communicator has a number of useful links to transportation and mobility stories in the news recently. (Note also their annual conference will be June 10-12 in Orlando, Florida so save the date!)
Mobility & Transportation
Will Looming Debt Penetrate Federal Transportation' [...]
This article in the New York Times lays it out.
Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to [...]
Last night's Senate vote to move forward with the debate on the universal health "don't-care" bill left me deeply pessimistic that this monstrosity could be stopped now. The margin of resistance - mere four senators -- appears too thin for a filibuster. All Comrade Harry Reid had to do, it' [...]
In an attempt to increase oversight over state contracting, some members of Louisiana's Commission on Streamlining Government are proposing a well-intentioned—but ultimately counterproductive—recommendation that would thwart competition and undermine the sensible procurement reforms already underway in the Louisiana Division of Administration. On Monday, the Streamlining Commission will consider [...]
Early Thursday morning a computer glitch disrupted the nation’s system which handles flight plan processing for air traffic controllers. For nearly four hours, flight plans filed by many pilots had to be entered into the National Airspace Data Interchange Network by hand. The problem occurred at the FAA Telecommunications Infrastructure [...]
I have a new commentary posted at Reason Online looking at how Sen. Dodd's new Agency for Financial Stability would be the financial equivalent for the FBI seeking to take down La Cosa Nostra:
Perhaps Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) thinks of himself as a modern day John Sherman. [...]Systemic risk oversight is on tap up on the Hill. (Though you wouldn’t know it with all the health care talk.) The House is laying the groundwork for a new division of Treasury called the "Financial Services Oversight Council" to monitor systemic risk. The Senate Banking Committee is going to [...]
Now Congress really is out for blood. Yesterday, the House Financial Services Committee moved a step closer to giving regulators the power to break apart companies if they are considered too big to fail. The Committee is currently discussing the creation of a Financial Services Oversight Council that would [...]
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the federal government's watchdog agency, has taken a look at the numbers and found 10 percent of the jobs claimed as "saved" or "created" by the so-called stimulus program didn't have any spending attached to them. In other words, the reported numbers are so' [...]
I reported yesterday that the Netherlands is proposing to replace its vehicle taxes with a distance- based charge closer to a real user fee. Today, I found an English language explanation published by the Dutch government of the new approach that is well worth a quick read. Perhaps [...]
Republicans are trying to defeat ObamaCare by arguing that its public option -- or government-run insurance plan -- will drive private insurance companies out of business, leaving Americans with less - not more - options. But the fudmental problem with ObamaCare, I note in my latest Forbes column, is not [...]
Several hundred people gathered in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday (November 17, 2009) to hear ideas and thoughts on the federal level transportation policy reform.
U.S. Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del) started out the forum hosted by the National Journal with an engaging, humerous and telling commentary on the state of climate change [...]
As the holiday travel rush approaches, air travelers grounded by delays should take a moment to think about why they're stuck in airports or on the tarmac. There's a good chance Washington is to blame.
"The air traffic control system in the United States is technologically obsolete," says Robert W. Poole, Jr., director of' [...]
In a Fox News interview with President Obama to air later today, the president will make an interesting remark:
"It is important though to recognize if we keep on adding to the debt, even in the midst of this recovery, that at some point, people could lose confidence in the" [...]The evidence of the strikingly poor data provided to the federal government on jobs "created" or "saved" from the stimulus continues to mount. Ohio Watchdog reports that according to recovery.org, the federal web site tracking stimulus dollars, ten new Congressional Districts spent $5.3 million and created 11 jobs. [...]
Got to love transparency. Building on Sam Staley's post from earlier today—pointing out how MPI discovered the government was reporting job creation numbers in 12 districts that don't exist—there is now a slew of reports pointing out bogus job creation numbers. An ABC News report highlighted several of' [...]
The Montana Policy Institute decided to check out where the federal stimulus package was "creating" jobs in the state. Much to its surprise, the number of Congressional districts in Montana has expanded, from one to thirteen!
According to MPI's press release written by Michael Noyes and distributed on the web:
BOZEMAN - [...]
As our roads crumble, the U.S. continues to put transportation policy on the back burner. Meanwhile, the Dutch government is moving forward with a wholesale remake of approach to financing transportation infrastructure. The Transport Ministry has forwarded a proposal to parliament that would replace vehicle taxes with a fee based [...]
Job retraining without job creation is, um, pointless. The federal government is banking heavily on job retraining to help those who lost jobs in this recession, as are many states. But job retraining is taking a beating these days. As my colleague Brian Doherty summarized for Reason magazine:
The federal [...]
Theodore Kim at the Dallas Morning News highlights the growing trend of municipal privatization/outsouring in North Texas cities:
Plano decided to eliminate its city printing and graphic design staff in September, farming out the work to Office Depot and Ricoh.
At Plano's Douglass Community Recreation Center, Kennedy Estrada, 10, [...]
This summer I was on a driving tour around the Turkish capital city, Ankara. About half way through the day, an economist friend of mine pointed out a rather imposing structure: “That’s the Bureau of Economic Planning.” Internally reflecting on some of Turkey’s recent economic troubles, I quipped back, “And [...]
The National Journal is holding a lunch forum on transportation policy at the Liaison Capital Hill hotel, Metropolian Ballroom, beginning at 11:30 pm on Tuesday, November 17th. U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) will be the featured speaker and will be followed by a panel discussion on the role transportation [...]
The Federal government's approach to its proposed takeover of subway and light rail safety regulation is an all too common way it approaches problem solving: Identify a problem, identify a political solution, but the federal government in charge. Secretary Ron LaHood says as much based on statements reported in [...]
Last week, the drug maker Pfizer announced it would close its research and development facility in New London, Connecticut. The Pfizer facility was at the heart of the city's decision to use eminent domain to seize and raze an entire neighborhood to make way for the development project [...]
The NGA-NASBO reports issued yesterday—which predict a fiscal "lost decade" for states—weren't the only source of bad news for state policymakers. The Pew Center on the States also released a new report—Beyond California: States in Fiscal Peril—profiling the fiscal disasters in the worst-hit state, California,' [...]
...Nick Gillespie?
Before our 2009 webathon ends next Friday (November 20), We're looking to get 500 new donors to Reason Foundation, the nonprofit that publishes Reason magazine, Reason.com, Reason.tv. Like all magazines of ideas, we don't fully cover our production costs via subscriptions, ad sales, and other revenue streams, so we [...]
In the "Highly Qualified Teacher Dodge," the New York Times editorializes that the Obama administration has failed to drive reform that would give poor students better teachers.
The rules for the Race to the Top Fund, which is designed to reward states that embrace reform and bypass those that do [...]
The Boston Globe has investigated the number of jobs supposedly "saved" or "created" in Massachusetts by $4 billion in stimulus money, and--surprise!--they found huge errors, omissions, and flat out wrong numbers. In some cases, such as rental subsidies, money that would have normally gone to agencies and landlords [...]
Politico reports this morning that President Obama has decided to keep his promise to be fiscally responsible... next year:
President Barack Obama plans to announce in next year's State of the Union address that he wants to focus extensively on cutting the federal deficit in 2010 – and will downplay [...]Some privatization news highlights from the last week that haven't been covered elsewhere on the blog:
FEDERAL
"White House push to reduce contractors is at odds with expanding role of agencies," Government Executive "Former Defense acquisition chief warns against 'global war on contractors'," Government Executive "Federal procurement nominee outlines agenda," Washington' [...]Every special interest group knows that in Washington, "you are either at the table or on the menu." Big Pharma seems to have taken this motto to heart as Obama & Co. proceed to make mince meat out of the American health care system. And it is coming out a [...]
States' fiscal crises are going to stay put for some time. That's the word from the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers, who released two reports today forecasting continued fiscal woe for states over the next decade. From the press release (emphasis mine):
The weakening of' [...]This is sure to brighten your Thursday evening: according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) numbers, motor vehicle output accounted for 47.78% of GDP growth in the third quarter. The Cash for Clunkers program had a huge impact on sales in the third quarter, leading to a huge spike [...]
Get ready for some spin from the White House on the supposed cost savings of insourcing (or de-privatizing) federal work, writes Professional Services Council president Sam Soloway in an excellent column at Washington Technology. As Soloway notes, these claims will have been based on fuzzy math that utterly underestimates [...]
Free Minds and Free Markets Don't Come Free!
For the next week, Reason magazine Editor in Chief Matt Welch and I will be asking you to please help us keep Reason.org, Reason.com, Reason.tv, and Reason magazine going stronger than ever by giving a tax-deductible donation to Reason Foundation, the nonprofit publisher' [...]
The good news is that Fannie Mae lost $10 billion less than before. The bad news is that the GSE still lost nearly $20 billion and is asking for another $15 billion in "help us" money:
Last week, Fannie Mae posted a quarterly loss of $19.8 billion—which believe it or not [...]Henrey Kaufman presents a lot of questions that the Fed is dealing with right now:
Today, with interest rates near zero and the stock market booming, increased political pressure will be put on the Fed when it begins to shift away from its current posture of quantitative easing. What will [...]As Crain's Chicago Business reports, Midway Airport's strong economic performance of late is rekindling interest in a long-term lease:
Midway Airport is pulling out of the recession faster than O'Hare International Airport, as shifts in the air travel market boost Midway's fortunes and breathe new life into Mayor Richard M.' [...]As I've written recently, the Milwaukee County Board is where good privatization ideas go to die—in particular those proposed by County Executive Scott Walker, who deserves credit for his tenacity in trying. It's happened yet again, as the Board has just opted for higher taxes to avoid privatization of' [...]
Belize has privatized the management of its state-run lottery:
Following several months of rumored privatization, the Government formally announced today that it has awarded a 10-year contract to Brads Gaming Company Ltd. [...] to take over the management of the public lottery.In a book by Steve Forbes and Elizabeth Ames, How Capitalism Will Save Us, Why Free Markets and Free People Are the Best Answer, the question was asked: Didn’t deregulation wreck the airline industry? The resounding answer is NO! It actually greatly benefitted consumers. As the a short version in [...]
Rep. Ron Paul's "Audit the Fed" bill has been back in the national conversation the past week with news of an amendment offered by North Carolina Rep. Mel Watt (D). The Ron Paul amendment would have the GAO audit Fed monetary policy decisions, including the recent expansion of the Fed [...]
In a somewhat surprising decision today, former Bear Stearns hedge fund managers Ralph Cioffi and Matt Tannin were found not guilty by a jury of their peers in federal court. Nearly a month to the day after their trial began, the jury ruled that Cioffi and Tannin did not [...]
With the health care bill passed out of the House this weekend, and the cap and trade bill approved by Representatives earlier this year, Speaker Pelosi has more breathing room to bring financial services reform to the House floor for debate. Well, debate might not be exactly what will happen. [...]
Though it generated a lot of headlines in places like The New York Times, Arizona's ballyhooed proposal to turn over some or most of its prisons to private operators is revealing itself to be all smoke but no fire. According to the Arizona Daily Star:
Arizona's plan to turn [...]Since we at Reason have been celebrating the ideas of Ayn Rand lately (see here and the related articles and videos posted at reason.org and reason.tv), I thought I would share with you some of her thoughts on the economic crisis—in 1962. Unfortunately, it seems our national [...]
My colleague Bob Poole, in his most recent Airport Policy and Security Newsletter( # 51) highlighted the General Accounting Office report looking at airport security (or lack there of).
About the same day, the Washington Times also had a critical editorial citing many of the same [...]
In this weekend's WSJ, Mark Spitznagel, founder and chief investment officer of the hedge fund Universa Investments LP, writes that, in the 1920s, German economist Ludwig von Mises predicted how our crisis would evolve:
Taking his cue from David Hume and David Ricardo, Mises explained how the banking system was endowed' [...]Yesterday, the House passed a bill that extends the homebuyer credit an extra six months by a vote of 403-12. The Senate passed the same bill on Wednesday 98-0. Overall, the tax credit stimulus is expected to cost $24 billion:
Under the measure, an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers would [...]Unemployment continued to rise in October, a sign that the highly touted recovery isn't all the administration and Wall Street would like us to believe. From Reuters via Yahoo! finance:
The U.S. jobless rate unexpectedly jumped to a 26-1/2-year high of 10.2 percent last month, adding to pressure on the' [...]In England, gun crimes committed by youth gangs are becoming a big problem.
Footage of boys, hardly out of childhood, wielding revolvers, shotguns and jumping on police cars was posted on YouTube just two weeks after Rhys Jones was killed.
Yet it was the 11-year-old's murder during an unprecedented feud' [...]
Tibor Machan was one of the founding partners in Reason Enterprises, which began publishing Reason magazine in 1971, three years after its creation. He became editor in the spring of 1971 and worked with the magazine through the '70s and '80s as an associate editor and senior editor. In 1978 he [...]
Some privatization news highlights from the last two weeks that haven't been covered elsewhere on the blog:
FEDERAL
"VA will turn to a contractor to reduce backlog of GI educational benefits," NextGov.com "Senators express concern about administration's contracting guidance," Government Executive "OMB's new procurement guidance inadequate, lawmakers say," Federal Times "OMB'" [...]The Federal Open Market Committee released its November statement yesterday. There was little change from the September statement, and interest rates remain at to .25 percent. However, the FOMC did indicate what it was watching in terms of inflation indicators. We see it in the changed language between statements:
Perhaps the powers that be in Sacramento are finally waking up to the fact that the state's public pension system is in need of serious reform.
First, at a seminar in August, California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) chief actuary Ron Seeling admitted that the cost of pension benefits for' [...]
With financial services reform put on a fast track out of the House Financial Services Committee, the Senate is preparing to move as well. From Bloomberg:
Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said he will unveil legislation next week to overhaul regulation of U.S. financial markets without Republican support after [...]Manuel "Manny" Klausner was one of the founding partners in Reason Enterprises, which began publishing Reason magazine in 1971, three years after the publication's creation. He became editor in the summer of 1972 and a senior editor in June 1978. In 1978 he co-founded the Reason Foundation with Tibor Machan [...]
Rand has a profound effect on people, especially the youth, when they first read her. But over time she loses her appeal. This makes it very hard to build a social movement around her ideas.
Rand's adherents blame all this on the faulty philosophical principles of society--especially on issues of [...]
Robert W. Poole Jr. was one of the founders of Reason Enterprises, which began publishing Reason magazine with its January 1971 issue. He co-founded the Reason Foundation in 1978 with Manny Klausner and Tibor Machan and has held many titles with the magazine, including editor, managing editor, executive editor, [...]
I couldn't help but notice the irony of Berkshire Hatthaway's $34 billion offer to take Burlington Northern Santa Fe railway private. Berkshire Hathaway is the investment arm of financial mogul Warren Buffet, widely regarded as one of the world's most prescient investors ("The Oracle of Omaha"). Railroads were also the [...]
One of the White House's most vocal supporters of Internet regulation has quietly resigned, creating speculation as to whether there is mounting West Wing concern about the scope of President Barack Obama's plans to tighten federal oversight of Internet business.
Susan Crawford, Obama's advisor on telecom and Internet policy, resigned last [...]
