Business & Economics
Business & Economics
Prebuttals, Insults and Intellectual Honesty
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform on Wednesday is releasing its 2008 Lawsuit Climate report, an annual exercise in which the ILR surveys in-house counsels on their perceptions of how reasonable and balanced each state’s tort liability system is. (The 2007 survey is available here.) It’s one ...
Business & Economics
FCC Holds Kangaroo Court at Stanford
Though commissioner (and net neutrality opponent) Robert McDowell expressed disappointment over Comcast’s absence, the company understandably kept its distance from what quickly deteriorated into a kangaroo court. With 70 percent of the panelists, and 100 percent of the public comments supporting strict regulations and penalties, it appears that the verdict ...
Business & Economics
A well-intentioned bad idea
There’s troubling legislation in Sacramento to open the state’s lucrative public employee retirement system to private employees. Unfortunately, there’s little opposition, which may make the scheme inevitable. As with so many well-intended government ideas, Assembly Bill 2940 ostensibly would solve a problem. But as is also so often the case, ...
Business & Economics
Tax Day Is Over, but Internet Tax Threats Loom
As Americans stretched to pay the tax man this week, California Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello) was working on the sly to institute a new digital tax. Such a move is not only short-sighted, but also could seriously harm the state’s competitiveness. It’s no secret that the digital economy is a ...
Business & Economics
Commie Dearest
The Sacramento Union, April 17, 2008 SACRAMENTO – The Senate Education Committee held a hearing earlier this month on SB 1322, which allowed members of the Communist Party USA to teach and hold meetings in California’s public schools. This measure, authored by state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a southern California Democrat, ...
Business & Economics
North Carolina Found to be Friendly to Business in Tort Cases
That’s the conclusion reached by a new study from the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco think tank that advocates for free-market policy solutions. The 2008 U.S. Tort Liability Index found that North Carolina was the third best state in the country in terms of having relatively low tort costs ...
Business & Economics
Why Google Won’t Spare Any Change
East Valley Tribune (AZ), April 12, 2008, p. 71 Google’s innovation gives way to lobbying What can you buy for $45 billion? Just about anything you want — except, of course, the world’s second-most popular search engine. Yahoo recently rejected Microsoft’s enormous offer. And now the jilted tech giant has ...
Agriculture
Jump-Starting The Economy
If the presidential candidates are serious about bolstering the economy, they should address one of the major drags on it–widespread abuse of the tort system. The role of the tort system in compensating victims for their injuries is certainly valuable. But meritless plaintiffs and their opportunistic personal-injury attorneys clog the ...
California
Governor has good plans for uninsured
In the wake of the Massachusetts health reform and California’s recent attempt at an overhaul, more states are jumping on the bandwagon to “cover the uninsured.” That can be a tricky matter, like health reform in general. Gov. Charlie Crist’s 2008-09 budget includes a few costly reforms including expanded coverage ...
Business & Economics
California Lawmaker Says Speech Should be Free on the Internet … After Taxes?
Next week California lawmakers meet to consider a new $500-million tax on Internet commerce. Some have dubbed this the “iTax” because of its application to Apple’s iTunes digital music store, but Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) is targeting more than just songs. In reality, AB 1956 is a “free speech tax” ...
Prebuttals, Insults and Intellectual Honesty
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform on Wednesday is releasing its 2008 Lawsuit Climate report, an annual exercise in which the ILR surveys in-house counsels on their perceptions of how reasonable and balanced each state’s tort liability system is. (The 2007 survey is available here.) It’s one ...
FCC Holds Kangaroo Court at Stanford
Though commissioner (and net neutrality opponent) Robert McDowell expressed disappointment over Comcast’s absence, the company understandably kept its distance from what quickly deteriorated into a kangaroo court. With 70 percent of the panelists, and 100 percent of the public comments supporting strict regulations and penalties, it appears that the verdict ...
A well-intentioned bad idea
There’s troubling legislation in Sacramento to open the state’s lucrative public employee retirement system to private employees. Unfortunately, there’s little opposition, which may make the scheme inevitable. As with so many well-intended government ideas, Assembly Bill 2940 ostensibly would solve a problem. But as is also so often the case, ...
Tax Day Is Over, but Internet Tax Threats Loom
As Americans stretched to pay the tax man this week, California Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello) was working on the sly to institute a new digital tax. Such a move is not only short-sighted, but also could seriously harm the state’s competitiveness. It’s no secret that the digital economy is a ...
Commie Dearest
The Sacramento Union, April 17, 2008 SACRAMENTO – The Senate Education Committee held a hearing earlier this month on SB 1322, which allowed members of the Communist Party USA to teach and hold meetings in California’s public schools. This measure, authored by state Sen. Alan Lowenthal, a southern California Democrat, ...
North Carolina Found to be Friendly to Business in Tort Cases
That’s the conclusion reached by a new study from the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco think tank that advocates for free-market policy solutions. The 2008 U.S. Tort Liability Index found that North Carolina was the third best state in the country in terms of having relatively low tort costs ...
Why Google Won’t Spare Any Change
East Valley Tribune (AZ), April 12, 2008, p. 71 Google’s innovation gives way to lobbying What can you buy for $45 billion? Just about anything you want — except, of course, the world’s second-most popular search engine. Yahoo recently rejected Microsoft’s enormous offer. And now the jilted tech giant has ...
Jump-Starting The Economy
If the presidential candidates are serious about bolstering the economy, they should address one of the major drags on it–widespread abuse of the tort system. The role of the tort system in compensating victims for their injuries is certainly valuable. But meritless plaintiffs and their opportunistic personal-injury attorneys clog the ...
Governor has good plans for uninsured
In the wake of the Massachusetts health reform and California’s recent attempt at an overhaul, more states are jumping on the bandwagon to “cover the uninsured.” That can be a tricky matter, like health reform in general. Gov. Charlie Crist’s 2008-09 budget includes a few costly reforms including expanded coverage ...
California Lawmaker Says Speech Should be Free on the Internet … After Taxes?
Next week California lawmakers meet to consider a new $500-million tax on Internet commerce. Some have dubbed this the “iTax” because of its application to Apple’s iTunes digital music store, but Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Whittier) is targeting more than just songs. In reality, AB 1956 is a “free speech tax” ...
