Blog

Something good in CA: Fewer car inspections

Depending how old your car is, in California every couple of years you have to take it to get “smogged” before your license is renewed. It costs from $25 to $50. As government bureaucracies go in California, it’s relatively low

Homage to Catalonia independence

John Seiler November 13, 2014

Is there still hope for the Six Californias initiative of entrepreneur Tom Draper? This year it failed to get enough signatures to make it to the 2016 ballot. The next attempt would be 2018. If so, hope comes from Catalonia, the

Will severe school lunch policies eventually cost Dems? Maybe

Chris Reed November 13, 2014

The news this week that UC San Francisco had “unveiled a repository of sugar science, designed to collect the evidence against sweetened foods and disseminate that information to the public — and persuade people to boot fructose and most other

Gordon Tullock, RIP

John Seiler November 12, 2014

The great economist Gordon Tullock died recently at age 92. He is most associated with Public Choice Economics. Under it, economists look at government bureaucrats, not as disinterested, omniscient parties trying to keep things going by enforcing the rule of

‘Net neutrality’ = double-nickel

John Seiler November 11, 2014

President Obama’s “net neutrality” scheme was branded “Obamacare for the Internet” by Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., a 2016 presidential hopeful. A better analogy is the double-nickle, the 55 mph speed limit President Nixon imposed on the country in 1974, just

Modest-seeming CalSTRS pension estimate lacks key context

Chris Reed November 11, 2014

The California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers do a good job of promoting the narrative that state teacher pensions are very modest at best. It’s true that there aren’t the same type of outrageous stories that we see in

Mexico also having high-speed rail problems

John Seiler November 10, 2014

California isn’t the only place having problems building high-speed rail. So is Mexico. The Times reported: Bowing to intense criticism, the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto yanked a contract worth nearly $4 billion from a Chinese-led consortium to build