Think Tank West

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) has introduced H.Con.Res.155, “Supporting the goals and ideals of ‘Complaint Free Wednesday.’” The bill description says: Expresses support for the goals and ideals of Complaint Free Wednesday. Encourages each person in the United States to remember that having a positive life begins with having a positive attitude. Recognizes and reaffirms the [...]

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A New York Times report on the Federal Housing Administration’s subsidies for higher-priced real estate reveals the insanity of federal housing policies. The 2008 stimulus package signed by President Bush temporarily doubled the maximum loan the FHA insured to $729,750 on single-family homes. Coverage on multi-family units can exceed $1 million. The article starts in [...]

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Regular readers of this blog are familiar with the tax competition battle, which largely revolves around high-tax governments attempting to track — and tax — economic activity that migrates to lower-tax jurisdictions. But this is not just a global fight between decrepit welfare states such as France and fiscal havens such as the Cayman Islands. [...]

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Two weeks ago in Defense News, I argued that America’s alliances are growing increasingly detached from American security interests.  With reference to Defense Secretary Bob Gates’ visit to the newly-minted government in Japan, I wrote that after imploring [new Japanese PM Yukio] Hatoyama to continue Japan’s minuscule contribution to the war in Afghanistan and not [...]

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Unfortunately, that win comes as another blow to property rights: The last major obstacle to a groundbreaking for the $4.9 billion Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn fell Tuesday when New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, dismissed a challenge to the state’s use of eminent domain on behalf of the developer, Bruce C. Ratner. [...]

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Looking for more commentary and analysis from Cato scholars? You can find their own blogs here: Daniel Griswold – Mad About Trade Jim Harper – Washington Watch & Tech Liberation Daniel J. Mitchell – International Liberty Patrick Michaels – World Climate Report Randal O’Toole – The Antiplanner David Boaz – DavidBoaz.com Malou Innocent – Huffington [...]

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Writing for The Hill, I explain why Keynesian-style stimulus does not work. In addition, I note that the so-called stimulus was just an excuse for pork-barrel spending. But my concluding point, excerpted below, is that the White House goofed politically by making specific claims about the good things that ostensibly would happen by increasing the [...]

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All too often policy debates regarding executive compensation appear driven more by populist politics than any real basis in fact.   In order to add some light to this debate, two professors at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Gian Luca Clementi and Thomas Cooley, recently released a working paper, offering their findings on trends in executive compensation, [...]

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Josh Blackman, my coauthor on “Opening Pandora’s Box? Privileges or Immunities, The Constitution in 2020, and Properly Incorporating the Second Amendment,” has inaugurated a series of podcasts devoted to law and liberty. He’s already has an interview with PLF’s Timothy Sandefur (also a Cato adjunct scholar) and the Independence Institute’s David Kopel (also a Cato associate policy analyst).  Tim [...]

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Climb aboard the TARDIS campers, we’re going to take a magic YouTube voyage to a strange parallel universe, very much like ours, except Barack Obama sports a dashing goatee and… Sorry, what’s that?  Not a parallel universe, you say? August of 2007, you say? Wait, that can’t be right. Because right around 20 seconds in, [...]

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