Commentary
Business & Economics
Bankruptcy one of state’s few options
SACRAMENTO – Congressional Republicans “should be ashamed of themselves for even suggesting” bankruptcy as an option for California and other debt-plagued states, according to Sacramento Bee Capitol columnist Dan Walters. Unlike municipalities, states aren’t allowed to go bankrupt, but some conservatives have talked openly about changing the law. Walters, reflecting ...
Commentary
Crowdsourcing, Price Formation, and Health IT
Last year, a non-profit called Costs of Care sponsored a national essay contest, inviting people to submit anecdotes “illustrating the importance of cost awareness in medicine.” One of the winning entries concerned a billing error for inserting an IUD. Before the procedure, the patient learned (via “a few keystrokes”) that ...
Commentary
Obamacare Is Already Falling Apart
Last week, the House of Representatives voted by a wide margin — 245 to 189 — to repeal the president’s landmark health reform package. It’s unclear whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will bring the measure up in the upper body. But even if he doesn’t, the law is ...
Commentary
Sustaining Environmental Quality and Economic Growth
A few weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revoked a permit for one of the largest mountain-top coal mining projects in the United States. That left West Virginia’s politicians up in arms over what they consider major regulatory overreach by the federal government. The action also highlighted key issues ...
California
A School Choice Week lesson for Gov. Brown
Gov. Jerry Brown eliminated the office of the state secretary of education, but aside from that symbolic and inconsequential act, his proposed education budget for 2011-12 contains no real reform ideas. California’s new chief executive should use National School Choice Week, the last week in January, to consider innovative ways ...
Business & Economics
Is Brown dodging pension reform?
At a League of California Cities event in Sacramento, Gov. Jerry Brown promised local officials struggling under the weight of pay and benefit costs that he would, indeed, put forward pension-reform proposals in the coming weeks. Yet I see little evidence so far that the new governor is interested in ...
Business & Economics
The Acting Governor
As Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped down as governor of California, he could behold two dispiriting sights: a state struggling with structural budget deficits, just as it had struggled when he marched into office as a conquering action hero, and an approval rate just 1 point higher than his disgraced and recalled ...
Commentary
Choosy about right to choose
Jan. 22 marks the 38th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which guaranteed a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. On this date annually, both sides of the abortion controversy confront each other over one of America’s most contentious issues. Liberal Democrats vigorously defend ...
Commentary
Health exchanges a bad idea for Wisconsin
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has joined the multistate legal challenge to the federal health reform law. The law has been unpopular with Badger State voters for some time; nearly 60% favored repeal in a Rasmussen poll taken just before the midterm elections. Fortunately, Wisconsin can help defeat this ...
Business & Economics
Brown targets corporate welfare
This really could be the beginning of the end for the state’s redevelopment agencies, those noxious, corporate-welfare-enabling entities that have wreaked havoc on property rights in California since the 1950s. The new governor’s budget plan would eliminate California’s 425 redevelopment agencies and divert the cash that now goes through them ...
Bankruptcy one of state’s few options
SACRAMENTO – Congressional Republicans “should be ashamed of themselves for even suggesting” bankruptcy as an option for California and other debt-plagued states, according to Sacramento Bee Capitol columnist Dan Walters. Unlike municipalities, states aren’t allowed to go bankrupt, but some conservatives have talked openly about changing the law. Walters, reflecting ...
Crowdsourcing, Price Formation, and Health IT
Last year, a non-profit called Costs of Care sponsored a national essay contest, inviting people to submit anecdotes “illustrating the importance of cost awareness in medicine.” One of the winning entries concerned a billing error for inserting an IUD. Before the procedure, the patient learned (via “a few keystrokes”) that ...
Obamacare Is Already Falling Apart
Last week, the House of Representatives voted by a wide margin — 245 to 189 — to repeal the president’s landmark health reform package. It’s unclear whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., will bring the measure up in the upper body. But even if he doesn’t, the law is ...
Sustaining Environmental Quality and Economic Growth
A few weeks ago, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revoked a permit for one of the largest mountain-top coal mining projects in the United States. That left West Virginia’s politicians up in arms over what they consider major regulatory overreach by the federal government. The action also highlighted key issues ...
A School Choice Week lesson for Gov. Brown
Gov. Jerry Brown eliminated the office of the state secretary of education, but aside from that symbolic and inconsequential act, his proposed education budget for 2011-12 contains no real reform ideas. California’s new chief executive should use National School Choice Week, the last week in January, to consider innovative ways ...
Is Brown dodging pension reform?
At a League of California Cities event in Sacramento, Gov. Jerry Brown promised local officials struggling under the weight of pay and benefit costs that he would, indeed, put forward pension-reform proposals in the coming weeks. Yet I see little evidence so far that the new governor is interested in ...
The Acting Governor
As Arnold Schwarzenegger stepped down as governor of California, he could behold two dispiriting sights: a state struggling with structural budget deficits, just as it had struggled when he marched into office as a conquering action hero, and an approval rate just 1 point higher than his disgraced and recalled ...
Choosy about right to choose
Jan. 22 marks the 38th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which guaranteed a woman’s right to choose to have an abortion. On this date annually, both sides of the abortion controversy confront each other over one of America’s most contentious issues. Liberal Democrats vigorously defend ...
Health exchanges a bad idea for Wisconsin
Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has joined the multistate legal challenge to the federal health reform law. The law has been unpopular with Badger State voters for some time; nearly 60% favored repeal in a Rasmussen poll taken just before the midterm elections. Fortunately, Wisconsin can help defeat this ...
Brown targets corporate welfare
This really could be the beginning of the end for the state’s redevelopment agencies, those noxious, corporate-welfare-enabling entities that have wreaked havoc on property rights in California since the 1950s. The new governor’s budget plan would eliminate California’s 425 redevelopment agencies and divert the cash that now goes through them ...
