Think Tank West

The New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn accuses Americans for Prosperity (AFP) of “lies” for running an ad that claims “Washington wants to bring Canadian-style healthcare to the U.S.” AFP’s ad is more defensible than Cohn’s criticisms of it. Cohn elides the question of whether Shana Holmes (the woman featured in the ad) was almost killed by [...]

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A couple of weeks ago, I ripped apart a factually anemic but all-too-typical USA Today article decrying the plight of student debtors. Today, the grand journalistic tradition of anecdote-and-pity laden reporting on student debt continues with offerings from Business Week and The New York Times. In an article about tight times for student loan forgiveness programs, The [...]

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The Cato Institute media department sent this press release to media outlets in Latin America, after the Venezuelan government tried to shut down a Cato-sponsored conference this week: CAUCAGUA, VENEZUELA—A Cato Institute educational seminar fell victim to an attempt by the Venezuelan government to shut it down for expressing ideas critical of the Chavez regime. [...]

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For a daily email briefing of new Cato articles, events and studies, subscribe to Cato Today. At CNN.com, Ilya Shapiro says that the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court shows that identity politics matter to President Obama more than merit. In the Washington Examiner, Gene Healy makes the case for downsizing the imperial vice presidency. [...]

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With just one sentence, Tom Sowell thoroughly demolishes Colin Powell’s statist assertion that the American people want higher taxes: Just days after Colin Powell informed us that the American people were willing to pay higher taxes in order to get government services– and that Republicans therefore needed to stop their opposition to taxes– California voters [...]

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The AP reports on a plan unfolding in Arizona to help keep foster children and kids with disabilities in schools of their choice: Republican-backed legislation to create new tax credits to help hundreds of foster children and disabled children attend private schools is advancing in the Legislature. On a special session’s second day, Senate and [...]

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Daniel Hannan, the British Member of the European Parliament who gained fame with his devastating critique of Gordan Brown, has been equally trenchant in criticizing the excesses of the European Union.  On his blog he explains the latest self-serving intricacies of voting in the upcoming election for the European Parliament: How many MEPs will be [...]

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Last week was an interesting week for transparency, with some good news and some bad news. On the “good” side of the ledger, the administration rolled out “Data.gov,” a growing set of data feeds provided by U.S. government agencies. These will permit the public to do direct oversight of the kind I discussed at our [...]

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President Barack Obama has declared that his goal in health care reform is “expanding coverage to all Americans.”  So what’s the price tag on universal coverage? Some reformers are throwing around numbers like $1 trillion or $1.5 trillion.  But according to the Urban Institute, the cost would be closer to $2 trillion. Jack Hadley and [...]

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Cato adjunct scholar Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago and New York University, finds much to worry about in Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court: The treatment of the compensation packages of key AIG executives (which eventually led to the indecorous resignation of Edward Liddy), and the massive insinuation of the executive [...]

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