Commentary

California

Costs Soaring After Bay State Health Change

Anyone wanting a preview of Obama-Care need just focus on Massachusetts, the state that provided the blueprint for Obama’s plan. It makes a great case for making haste in repealing ObamaCare. In Massachusetts, health care prices are out of control, emergency rooms are overcrowded, the government is at war with ...
Commentary

Making the Pieces Fit

New Study Finds Foster-Care Scholarship Program is an Academically and Fiscally Responsible Reform —Would Benefit Students, Public Schools, and the State— San Francisco— Today, the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a California-based public policy think tank, released a policy brief on improving education opportunities for foster-care children in California. Fostering Opportunity ...
Business & Economics

Make California ‘open for business’

California’s unemployment rate, according to the most recent figures, is 12.4 percent, down from a revised 12.5 percent the month before, which was the highest jobless rate ever recorded for California since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting standardized data in 1976. Such high unemployment is powerful evidence of ...
Commentary

Making health information technology a HIT

If the federal government’s ambitious new plan to digitize the nation’s medical records comes about, filling out reams of paperwork at the doctor’s office may become a thing of the past. Thus far, however, those who would benefit most from a break in pushing paper — doctors — have balked ...
Business & Economics

Government ‘too big to fail’ and too big to succeed

These days, one is hard-pressed to read a newspaper or watch the news without encountering the phrase “too big to fail.” The debate over TBTF, as it also is known, completely ignores the one institution that deserves attention when assessing the real risks of TBTF: government. To get a sense ...
California

Boxer, Fiorina mostly MIA on war

SACRAMENTO – As usual, American policy-makers, the media and California’s political candidates avoid the big issues while they make a huge deal out of the small stuff. The latest example is Afghanistan, where Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and coalition commander, got booted from his post by the president Wednesday ...
Business & Economics

Oil Producers’ Liability Should Not Be Unlimited

Everyone loves a villain. And with the Deepwater Horizon disaster at the two-month mark, the love knows no bounds, uniting much of the political-media complex in a sticky goo of opportunism, finger-pointing and phony demands for apologies. That BP–having schmoozed the environmental left for years while compiling a dreadful safety ...
Business & Economics

What an economist learned in Haiti

I recently spent a week in Haiti helping with reconstruction efforts. I volunteered only as someone with two hands and a lot of Gatorade, but my professional background as an economist allowed me to diagnose some of Haiti’s problems. These go much deeper than the earthquake. I registered with the ...
Business & Economics

‘Government involvement’ never leads to lowered prices

After almost a month of repairs, the K.R. Har­ring­ton Water Treat­ment Plant is back in oper­a­tion. Nashville res­i­dents can bathe and wash dishes nor­mally. Now that the cri­sis has passed, it is use­ful to reflect on the eco­nomic lessons of gov­ern­ment pric­ing and rationing. Let’s start with the basic facts. ...
Business & Economics

How lawsuit reform could jump-start Illinois’ economy

The Illinois economy continues to struggle, with an unemployment rate of 11.5 percent, near the highest in the nation. If lawmakers want to put people back to work, without costing taxpayers another penny for “stimulus,” they can enact desperately needed lawsuit reforms. In the newly released U.S. Tort Liability Index: ...
California

Costs Soaring After Bay State Health Change

Anyone wanting a preview of Obama-Care need just focus on Massachusetts, the state that provided the blueprint for Obama’s plan. It makes a great case for making haste in repealing ObamaCare. In Massachusetts, health care prices are out of control, emergency rooms are overcrowded, the government is at war with ...
Commentary

Making the Pieces Fit

New Study Finds Foster-Care Scholarship Program is an Academically and Fiscally Responsible Reform —Would Benefit Students, Public Schools, and the State— San Francisco— Today, the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a California-based public policy think tank, released a policy brief on improving education opportunities for foster-care children in California. Fostering Opportunity ...
Business & Economics

Make California ‘open for business’

California’s unemployment rate, according to the most recent figures, is 12.4 percent, down from a revised 12.5 percent the month before, which was the highest jobless rate ever recorded for California since the Bureau of Labor Statistics began collecting standardized data in 1976. Such high unemployment is powerful evidence of ...
Commentary

Making health information technology a HIT

If the federal government’s ambitious new plan to digitize the nation’s medical records comes about, filling out reams of paperwork at the doctor’s office may become a thing of the past. Thus far, however, those who would benefit most from a break in pushing paper — doctors — have balked ...
Business & Economics

Government ‘too big to fail’ and too big to succeed

These days, one is hard-pressed to read a newspaper or watch the news without encountering the phrase “too big to fail.” The debate over TBTF, as it also is known, completely ignores the one institution that deserves attention when assessing the real risks of TBTF: government. To get a sense ...
California

Boxer, Fiorina mostly MIA on war

SACRAMENTO – As usual, American policy-makers, the media and California’s political candidates avoid the big issues while they make a huge deal out of the small stuff. The latest example is Afghanistan, where Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and coalition commander, got booted from his post by the president Wednesday ...
Business & Economics

Oil Producers’ Liability Should Not Be Unlimited

Everyone loves a villain. And with the Deepwater Horizon disaster at the two-month mark, the love knows no bounds, uniting much of the political-media complex in a sticky goo of opportunism, finger-pointing and phony demands for apologies. That BP–having schmoozed the environmental left for years while compiling a dreadful safety ...
Business & Economics

What an economist learned in Haiti

I recently spent a week in Haiti helping with reconstruction efforts. I volunteered only as someone with two hands and a lot of Gatorade, but my professional background as an economist allowed me to diagnose some of Haiti’s problems. These go much deeper than the earthquake. I registered with the ...
Business & Economics

‘Government involvement’ never leads to lowered prices

After almost a month of repairs, the K.R. Har­ring­ton Water Treat­ment Plant is back in oper­a­tion. Nashville res­i­dents can bathe and wash dishes nor­mally. Now that the cri­sis has passed, it is use­ful to reflect on the eco­nomic lessons of gov­ern­ment pric­ing and rationing. Let’s start with the basic facts. ...
Business & Economics

How lawsuit reform could jump-start Illinois’ economy

The Illinois economy continues to struggle, with an unemployment rate of 11.5 percent, near the highest in the nation. If lawmakers want to put people back to work, without costing taxpayers another penny for “stimulus,” they can enact desperately needed lawsuit reforms. In the newly released U.S. Tort Liability Index: ...
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