Striking the proper balance between incentives for innovation and encouragement of competition has been an issue for lawmakers since the patent system was first devised.
As my column for Thursday observes, Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Rep Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) achieved this beyond their wildest expectations with the Hatch-Waxman Act [...]
I don't fully understand why the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, has become such a symbol of bad government anti-recessionary policy. No one who kept a close eye on the state of the financial system in September and October of 2008 can ever forget the feeling in the pit [...]
Attacking the University of California is a perennial political sport -- who can forget that Ronald Reagan's heckling of Berkeley students was as important in launching his conservative political career as was the support of General Electric Co.?
But the system today faces greater peril than at any time [...]
The most encouraging sign that the country is getting serious about environmentally friendly automobiles is that politicians, always ready to embrace a public enthusiasm, are jumping on the bandwagon.
My Monday column observes that political leaders from President Obama to Mayor Villaraigosa are trying to encourage interest in plug-in hybrids, the [...]
Time Warner Cable's launched its "Roll Over or Get Tough" campaign just before Thanksgiving, hoping to stake out the high ground early in what is likely to be a bruising round of negotiations with programming providers.
As my Thursday column explains, the idea is to enlist the sympathy of its [...]
Ever since the federal government decommissioned the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station and turned its 3,700 acres over to local control, Orange County and the city of Irvine have made themselves experts in the art of looking a gift horse in the mouth.
As my column for Monday observes, the [...]
...may or may not be gold, as Shakespeare wrote* in The Merchant of Venice, but with the spot price of the metal approaching $1,200 an ounce, it will do until something better comes along.
The topic of my Thanksgiving Day column is the return of the gold bug. Every day [...]
Few outside university economics departments may have noticed that the dramatic trend in recent decades toward the concentration of wealth in ever fewer hands coincided with the ouster of Keynesian economics from policymaking in the U.S., and the substitution of the so-called New Classicism.
The theme of my column for [...]
One can count on two developments after every gubernatorial election: The victor will declare himself or herself the "education governor," and nothing will be done.
As my column for Thursday observes, this phenomenon is especially disturbing in California, because our schools are among the most beleaguered in the nation. They're [...]
The Angelides commission, convened by Congress to investigate the financial meltdown of 2008, today announced a passel of "senior staff" appointments. Earlier, the commission appointed an executive director, Thomas Greene. It has held one public meeting, on Sept. 17. Yet to come: [...]
Economic nationalism -- or is it merely xenophobia? -- is nothing new on these shores. It crops
up whenever America's hegemony as the world's No. 1 economy appears to be threatened by an upward-scuttling challenger.
As my column for Monday observes, today the challenger is China, heir apparent [...]
One can while away the hours debating what is California's best-known export. The avocado? The microprocessor? The Real Housewives of Orange County?
As my column for Thursday suggests, the Fender electric guitar deserves pride of place in this roster for its enduring position in the market [...]
...Just like the old Carly?
My column for Thursday raises the question of whether the newly minted candidate for U.S. Senate from California will fall prey to the same flaws often cited by critics of her management at Hewlett-Packard: too much Carly, too many fancy advisors and not enough deep thought.
The [...]
The health insurance industry's so-called "antitrust exemption," the subject of my column today, is something like that. Liberal members of [...]
One way to gauge the sincerity of lawmakers is by their willingness to let their bills be debated out in the open. The federal ban on Internet gambling flunks that test.
It was enacted in 2006 when Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., who thought he'd be running for President, [...]
Followers of America's healthcare mess know that its outstanding feature is the loophole. Insurance companies exploit loopholes to deny coverage to those they fear might develop, you know, an illness, and to rescind coverage purchased by those whose illnesses threaten the carrier's dime.
As my Thursday column states, the key to [...]
The myth of the "overburdened rich" has assumed a place of honor in today's political narrative right next to that of the "undeserving poor," though it's often accompanied by an economic argument out of the brow of Ayn Rand: If you require the wealthy and accomplished to fund more [...]
The Senate voted this week to give Boeing's C-17 military cargo plane a reprieve, appropriating $2.5 billion to save 5,000 jobs in Long Beach and another 25,000 scattered strategically around the country. But nobody thinks that solves the problem of what to do with a program that Congress [...]
With the appointment today of the 10 members of a congressional commission to investigate the financial meltdown, many people are hoping that the spirit of Ferdinand Pecora once again walks among us.
Pecora was the general counsel of the Senate Banking Committee who in 1933 and 1934 investigated, in spectacular [...]
