Think Tank West

The global tax revolution rolls on. From this week’s International Tax Review: Kazakhstan’s corporate income tax rate will be cut in half over the next three years after the country’s president approved drafts of the new tax and budget codes. The new rate of corporate income tax will come into force yearly, decreasing from 30% [...]

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According to the Irish Times, European Union bureaucrats in Brussels have decided that people no longer should be allowed to eat cakes, tarts, and other treats entered in baking competitions. American bureaucrats love to concoct senseless rules, but can anyone think of a regulation in the United States that matches this gem? New EU regulations [...]

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Following the collapse of the Doha round of multilateral trade negotiations last month, WTO members have chosen to pursue their trade objectives through litigation. Brazil (through its foreign minister, Celso Amorim) said Wednesday (eastern Australian time) that it plans to ask for billions of dollars of punitive damages from the United States in retaliation for [...]

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Is populism a good and noble cause that could never be associated with bigotry? NPR host Liane Hansen seems to think so. On NPR’s “Weekend Edition Sunday,” she interviewed Christopher Hedge, who composed the music for a PBS documentary on Andrew Jackson. When Hedge called Jackson a populist, Hansen objected. What about his treatment of [...]

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The Census Bureau’s release this morning of the latest income, poverty and health insurance numbers did not follow the script of those who want to paint a picture of a nation in crisis. Opponents of free trade, immigration, and limited government constantly tell us that the middle class is shrinking, the poor are getting poorer [...]

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Reporting from the Democratic National Convention two days ago, Salon’s Mickey Kaus was stunned to find a room packed with 500 people cheering as Newark mayor Cory Booker defended school choice. Booker complained of the viciousness of education politics, noting that “he’d been told his political career would be over if he kept pushing school choice.” And [...]

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I once ran out of gas in college, so I suppose I shouldn’t throw too many stones at Amtrak’s glass house, but presumably somebody actually gets paid to make sure that trains don’t leave stations without enough fuel to make it to their next destination. According to the AP report, Amtrak will be investigating how [...]

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Greece has a funny way of rewarding Olympic success. Medalists get government jobs, often as officers in the military (which must be a real morale booster for the any professional soldiers that might be in the Greek Army). Not surprisingly, North Korea also takes the same approach. The International Herald Tribune reports: Greece dropped the [...]

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Over on Flypaper, Mike Petrilli takes a swipe at NEAL McCluskey for pointing out why national standards are doomed to failure. And then he compares the infeasibility of national standards, as a method of improving education, to the political difficulty of passing something like our proposal for broad-based education tax credits that would open universal [...]

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In his now-famous 2002 speech, then state-senator Barack Obama said, “I’m not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.” And that would certainly represent an improvement over what we’ve got now. Curious, then, that Obama’s picked a running mate who seems to have no such objection. Today’s Washington Post details Biden’s role in [...]

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