Think Tank West

Next week the Cato Institute will hold seminars in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara. The program is the same both places. Leda Cosmides, one of the world’s leading evolutionary psychologists, will kick things off at 11 a.m. with a talk on our intuitive ideas about fairness and justice. Then Cato’s Michael Tanner will warn about the [...]

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The Federal Diary column in the Washington Post is a curious piece of newspaper real estate. Most newspaper columns are aimed at the broad general public, but this column is aimed directly at the few hundred thousand government workers in the DC region. The result is that it takes a very government- and union-centric view of the [...]

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In the Washington Post today, columnist Harold Meyerson blames 1978’s Proposition 13 for today’s budget mess in California. That claim is not supported by the data. First note that California’s current fiscal crisis is in its state budget. Prop 13 puts restraints on local property taxes. Second, the most recent Census data show that total state and local [...]

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Showing off those pearly whites frustrates facial recognition software used by the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, so DMV workers are instructing motorists not to smile for their driver license photos. It’s a story worthy of The Onion, but it’s apparently true. Facial recognition is just another way that governments are looking to keep tabs [...]

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George Will recently accused Obama’s token Republican, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, of being the “Secretary for Behavior Modification” because of his support for programs designed to coerce people into driving less. Speaking before the National Press Club on May 21, LaHood pleaded guilty as charged. In the video of LaHood’s presentation, he was asked if [...]

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Desperate for fresh revenues to feed the giant spending appetite of President Obama, Democratic policymakers are talking up ‘tax reform’ as a way to reduce the deficit. Some are considering a European-style value-added tax (VAT), which would have a similar effect as a national sales tax, and be a large new burden on American families. A [...]

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On a post at the TechLiberationFront blog, I discuss the fluidity of important concepts in information policy — and catch a friendly organization disagreeing with itself. The upshot? “Until more intellectual groundwork is laid, information policy arguments before regulators, lawmakers, and courts will not rest on solid footing.”

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More than $1,000 per U.S. family in spending under the Recovery Act.

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The Washington Post reports that there is growing interest among politicians for a form of national sales tax known as the value-added tax (VAT). But rather than use the VAT to replace the income tax, the politicians want a new source of revenue to expand the burden of government. The story explains: With… President Obama [...]

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Libertarians often disagree with their non-libby friends about the need for government-mandated occupational licensing in fields like medicine. The idea behind such licensing is that the government has a compelling interest in protecting citizens and that licensing actually achieves that end. The evidence is not as cut and dried on the latter point as many people [...]

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