Think Tank West

A law that would prevent fast-food restaurants from opening in South Los Angeles neighborhoods was unanimously approved by the LA City Council on Tuesday. Paternalist? You bet. Violation of equal protection? It would seem so. The City Council trusts white people, but not the blacks and Latinos who live in South Los Angeles, to make their [...]

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In yesterday’s New York Times, David Brooks lamented the yawning chasm in educational attainment that divides America: the children of wealthy and highly-educated parents graduate from high school and go on to college vastly more often than those of lower-income, less educated parents. Here, he is on solid ground. But, columnists being columnists, Brooks goes on to give [...]

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Though reauthorization of E-Verify was briefly in doubt, it appears now that congressional authorizers have agreed on a way forward, and that the program needs a lot more study. A bill on the House floor today would extend E-Verify as a “voluntary” program for 5 years and require much more study of the system and [...]

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Via Yglesias, Sam Brownback is outraged that the Chinese government would spy on foreigners on its soil without a warrant. When it was pointed out to him that the United States government is now authorized to conduct warrantless spying in the United States, he had this to say: We don’t put the hardware and software [...]

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Welfare enthusiasts have always used pushes for free trade as leverage for increased support for laid-off workers. The logic was that because free trade brings myriad benefits to society, society could give just a little spare change to those who no longer can shelter behind consumer-funded protectionist walls. That is not exactly a principled position, of course (as I have [...]

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I suppose the charges brought against Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) aren’t terribly interesting to most libertarians. Perhaps we get a bit of schadenfreude as one of the mighty fall, but shady dealings that edge into outright corruption are part and parcel of politics. You’re not going to see a lot of jaws dropping around the [...]

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A few years ago I wrote a paper trying to itemize where federal education dollars go. Unfortunately, no one keeps comprehensive data on uses like this. Apparently, you just can’t analyze student performance without “four-and-a-half acres of indoor gardens and winding waterways….a 25,000-square-foot day spa and fitness center” and “the energy of Glass Cactus nightclub.”

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Over at Flypaper, Liam Julian has started a Quick and the Ed Watch, a quest to expose every bit of hyperbole that comes out of the blog belonging to the think tank Education Sector. Well, we at Cato have had our own share of run-ins with those fine folks, and Kevin Carey’s response to my [...]

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After nine days of trying to reanimate the cryogenically preserved Doha Round, negotiators are calling it quits again. I have sympathy for the well-intentioned, hard-working members of those trade delegations who hoped to finally nail down the structure of a Doha Round agreement in Geneva this week. Unfortunately for them, their counterparts included too many [...]

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“[The speaker] urged the students to study in order to serve the people and those in need, and not to fill their pockets,” reported the media. Sound familiar? No, it wasn’t Barack Obama urging students to pursue “collective service” instead of chasing after a “big house and nice suits,” but Aleida Guevara, the daughter of [...]

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