Taken By Regulation
According to the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, “private property [shall not] be taken for public use without just compensation.” The classic example of this is eminent domain, where the...
View ArticleFederal Transit Funding Rules Breed Inefficiency
For decades, federal transit funding has focused all its efforts on capital projects. Like the Interestate Highway System, the feds will build it, or fund its construction, but will not pay for the...
View ArticleInfrastructure Investor Southeast: Public-Private Partnerships Alive and Well
I had the privilege of being the Chair of the PEI Media conference on June 3, 2010 entitled Infrastructure Southeast. The conference focused on Florida, Georgia and Puerto Rico. Senior officials from...
View ArticleLegal System Problems and Solutions Discussed in New Book
I am pleased to announce the publication of a book to which I contributed called The Pursuit of Justice: Law and Economics of Legal Institutions. Here is a synopsis of the book from the Independent...
View ArticleLawyer Licensing Laws Lead to Higher Prices, Less Consumer Choice and Access...
In a previous post I noted the publication of a new book that I contributed to that discusses problems with the U.S. legal system and how to resolve them. The Pursuit of Justice: Law and Economics of...
View ArticleThe Growth of the Public Sector: New York City Education Department Edition
As the Obama administration pleads for billions to bail out public education keep in mind stories like this from the New York Post :The number of employees in the school system earning $150,000 or more...
View ArticleTeacher Bailout Needed because New Jersey Teachers Getting 3 Percent Raise...
As Obama Administration pleads for $50 billion bailout for state and local workers including $23 billion for teachers the Associated Press reports on teachers' supposed dire consequences in New...
View ArticlePennsylvania Needs to "Man Up" on Asset Privatization
Last Tuesday, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell reportedly exhorted state legislators to "man up" and vote for a large package of fee and tax increases to solve the state's nearly $2 billion budget...
View ArticleAre Toll Road Companies Getting Guaranteed Profits?
One of the strangest claims I’ve heard from populist opponents of toll roads developed and operated by private companies under long-term concession agreements (public-private partnership toll roads) is...
View ArticleWhy, Oh, Why Doesn't Obama Save Us?
Not long ago, Barack Obama was pilloried for being too activist, too meddlesome, and too inclined to see himself as the messiah. He was forcing health care reform down our throats, running General...
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Ideas Having Sex
The phrase diminishing returns is such a cliché that few people give it much thought. Picking out the pecans from a bowl of salted nuts gives diminishing returns: The pieces of pecan in the bowl get...
View ArticleWhos Liable for the Gulf Oil Spill? You Are.
BP has repeatedly promised to pay all “legitimate claims” for loss and damage as a result of the Gulf oil spill, now vying for the title fourth biggest oil spill in history at 2.3 million barrels of...
View ArticleFree Speech and Guns
Few scholars have led a life as varied as Eugene Volokh’s. Born in the Soviet Union in 1968, Volokh immigrated with his family to the United States at age 7. A prodigy, he entered the University of...
View ArticleChinese Environmentalism: Prestige Over People?
In the Western imagination, China is as much an environmental basket case as it is an economic miracle. Its prosperity, we are told in one account after another, has been purchased by a wholesale...
View ArticleRazing Arizona
Imagine you are competing in a marathon. Every time you pull into the lead, someone picks up the other runners in a van and lets them off next to you. When you object, he says you are still free to run...
View ArticlePlease Don't Save Us
You know what journalism could really use more of? Government participation. Who better, after all, than a gaggle of technocrats and political appointees to guide the industry in matters of...
View ArticleRacism, Civil Rights, and Libertarianism
Thanks to Rand Paul, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky and son of maverick libertarian Republican Ron Paul, we find ourselves in an unlikely debate about the Civil Rights Act...
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Public Sector Growth: California Higher Education Edition
So much for drastic cuts to higher education in California. I realize that many of these higher salaries are doctors and athletic directors that may add revenue to the UC system. However, the overall...
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How Public Schools Waste Money: Sick Teachers in Newark Edition
Excessive teacher absences offer one more reason to be skeptical of the need for a teacher bailout. Maybe districts like Newark should just pay the substitutes who actually show up to work. Similar to...
View ArticleEnd the Drug War
I'm confused. When I walk around busy midtown Manhattan, I often smell marijuana. Despite the crowds, some people smoke weed in public. Usually the police leave them alone, and yet other times they act...
View ArticleSecret Watchdogs
You won't find WikiLeaks' biggest impact in any specific story the site has exposed. You'll find it in the bracing fear of what the place might publish next. That anxiety, more than anything else,...
View ArticleThe Vanity Tax
Last December, on Christmas Eve, any Republicans in the Senate who had actually read the latest version of the healthcare reform bill they were voting on must have thanked the Democrats for one...
View ArticleAs the Spill Expands, So Does Presidential Power
The other day, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was asked what will happen if the people running BP decline to go along with everything the administration demands of it. "The president," he...
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The Post-Housing Tax Credit Slump Begins
Applications for the thrice-extended First-time Homebuyer Credit (FTHBC) ended in April 30, with the construction to be completed by June 30. At the end of each previous credit, we saw a slump in...
View ArticleGeopolitics and the Pill
America + The Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation, by Elaine Tyler May, Basic Books, 199 pages, $25.95When the Food and Drug Administration approved oral contraception in 1960, everybody...
View ArticlePeople of the Book
After gifting us with such lists as the top 50 conservative rock songs, this year National Review offered, under the guidance of political reporter John J. Miller, the “Ten Great Conservative Novels”...
View ArticleTARP Jr. a Wave of Contradictions
Rep. Frank introduced a bill in the House last month, now has 20 additional sponsors, that would give Treasury authority to begin investing in small banks and businesses around the country. The Small...
View ArticleVideo: Interview on Why Another Jobs Bill Would Hurt the Recovery
Last night I appeared on RT to discuss the Senate's job bill, which was voted down on Wednesday, but will likely resurface in some other form. (Concluding notes below the video.)Note: at the end of the...
View ArticleThe FCCs Fools Crusade
Choose your analogy: He pushed the button. He turned the key. He cried havoc and let slip the dogs of war.FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Thursday launched what could end up being a decade-long court...
View ArticleAn End to Spending Excess
One of the reasons the federal budget is chronically in the red is that most people, historically, couldn't care less. The national debt is an unfathomable abstraction that doesn't show up on your 1040...
View ArticleWhos Afraid of Subliminal Advertising?
The concept of subliminal advertising has long terrified America. When the 1950s adman James Vicary claimed to have boosted concession sales at a New Jersey theater by briefly flashing phrases like...
View ArticleAnother Marylander Arrested for Recording the Police
The city of Annapolis, Maryland recently received a Homeland Security grant for 20 new surveillance cameras in the downtown area. The city of Baltimore already has nearly 500. According to the watchdog...
View ArticleChinese Currency Reform
The Chinese government announced this weekend that they would move towards a greater degree of flexibility in the exchange rate. As stated by by the People’s Bank of China:“In view of the recent...
View ArticleAmid Fiscal Pressures, States Move to Privatize Workers Compensation Programs
Governing.com's "Better, Faster, Cheaper" blog Ongoing fiscal pressures are prompting policymakers to pursue a wide variety of government streamlining strategies to cut costs. One of the less visible...
View ArticleSpain's Emerging Banking Crisis
Spain was hit hard by the financial crisis. Like the U.S. and the UK, Spain experienced high capital inflows and rapidly rising housing prices in the years leading up to the crisis. And like the U.S....
View ArticleThe Slow Fade of Meatspace
When the New York Police Department revealed last year that it had spent nearly $1 million on typewriters over the course of a year, commentators mocked the two-fingered flatfoots for wasting scarce...
View ArticleA Feminist Flare-Up
Perhaps all the talk of the "Year of the Conservative Woman," sparked by the crop of fairly conservative Republican women running for office, has slightly unhinged some feminists on the left. Or maybe...
View ArticleOrszag Out at OMB
Rumored to be leaving for months, the political news lines are hopping today on news that Office of Management and Budget director Peter R. Orszag will be leaving in July. He will be the first cabinet...
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Extra Taxes From Each Taxpayer to Erase the Deficit
Vernonique over at Mercatus created this depressing graph. "This year alone, taxes would have to increase by an average of $10,000per taxpayer in order to pay for all of the federal government’s...
View ArticleSan Diego Must End Delays and Implement Managed Competition Now
The following are remarks delivered on June 14, 2010, at a press conference organized by San Diego Councilmember Carl DeMaio to promote a ballot initiative, The Competition and Transparency in City...
View ArticleWithout Significant Reforms, Public Pensions Will Bankrupt State and Local...
State and local governments across the country are struggling with public pension liabilities and discovering that they likely will not be able to afford the benefits they have promised. While this has...
View ArticleOil Gushes and Power Rushes
Last week, after President Obama pressured BP to create a compensation fund for victims of its oil gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, Rep. Joe Barton denounced the arrangement as "a $20 billion shakedown."...
View ArticleObama, Lord of the Rings
Your moral bearings obviously have been corrupted by high concentrations of carbon dioxide.You've gotten past that scandalous word—"oil"—for a moment and begun to wonder who gave the administration the...
View ArticleIs Obama an Anglophobe?
By the time British Petroleum completed its 1998 acronymization to BP, the company had probably spent millions in "brand consultant" fees. It’s an important point, this, because the rebranding was...
View ArticleIf You Love Newspapers, Let Them Go
Newspaper. Personally, I never touch the stuff. But rumor has it there is a certain amount of distress about the impending doom of the news-on-dead-tree industry.Here at Reason, our “News You Can Use”...
View ArticleEuropean Weakness Is Fuelling U.S. Profligacy
The European debt crisis has demonstrated the painful costs of fiscal profligacy and short-sighted Keynesian stimulus. In the words of financial historian Niall Ferguson, “there is no such thing as a...
View ArticleTaking State Parks off the State's Books, Part 2
Bacon's Rebellion My last column (see "Taking State Parks off the States Books," 4/14) explored the concept of long-term concessions with private recreation management firms for the operation and...
View ArticleComing Consumer Restrictions
The Congressional conference tasked with combining the Senate and House financial services reform bills appears to have reached an agreement on a new consumer financial protection agency (CFPA) housed...
View ArticleObama Missteps on McChrystal
In making and tolerating disparaging comments about his civilian superiors in front of a reporter, Gen. Stanley McChrystal failed a test of leadership, judgment, and respect for his role in a...
View ArticleGuns Save Lives
You know what the mainstream media think about guns and our freedom to carry them.Pierre Thomas of ABC: "When someone gets angry or when they snap, they are going to be able to have access to...
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