As John Tozzi and Michelle Cortez of Bloomberg report on the stem cell front, “press releases, popular media, and even some journal articles routinely inflate expectations for future therapies based on early findings that probably will never turn into cures.” Now the International Society for Stem Cell Research, representing more than 4,100 researchers, wants…
Read More »
When counting the cost of government, taxpayers should pay close attention to OPEB, the “Other Post-Employment Benefits” of government employees aside from their pensions but including their health care costs. Now taxpayers have a calculating tool, State Retiree Health Plan Spending: An examination of funding trends and plan provisions, a new report from the…
Read More »
How has the national debt burden per typical U.S. household changed during the last 8 years? To answer that question, it might help to know what a typical U.S. household is. For our purposes, a typical American household is one that earns the median household income, which means that 50% of U.S. households earn…
Read More »
As the story goes, somebody opened a restaurant with politicians and bureaucrats as waiters but it failed because they kept serving the food under the table. In the real world, likewise, politicians and bureaucrats strive to keep things out of sight from taxpayers. As Taryn Luna writes in the Sacramento Bee, one way they…
Read More »
As we observed in “Financial Crisis and Leviathan,” a deep recession, widespread unemployment, and fathomless debt were the prevailing conditions when the Obama administration created the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2011. The CFPB was based on the premise that consumers were unable to look out for themselves without help from the federal…
Read More »
When a government’s public debt grows too large, so much so that it needs to be bailed out in order to continue functioning, who do you suppose benefits the most from the bailout? If you said “the government”, or “the people”, you’re wrong. In reviewing the series of bailouts of Greece from 2010 through…
Read More »
The shell game is officially over – today, the U.S. commonwealth government of Puerto Rico will default on making $442 million in payments to its creditors. USA Today reports the news: Puerto Rico Gov. Alejandro García Padilla said Sunday afternoon in a televised address that he had ordered the island’s Government Development Bank not…
Read More »
California is a high-tech state and that leads Zócalo Public Square columnist Joe Mathews to wonder: “Why, in this Internet age, doesn’t my state offer a one-stop shop where I can renew my driver’s license, register to vote, pay my taxes and buy passes to a state park?” This one-stop shop, says Mr. Mathews,…
Read More »
A very cool YouTube video from Burton Folsom on why private investors are so much more successful at realizing technological achievements than are the kinds of schemes that are subsidized by the government: In addition to being very personally invested in the outcome of their endeavors, there is also a big difference in the…
Read More »
As we noted in March, the Sacramento headquarters of the California State Board of Equalization, known among reporters as a “24-story money pit,” sprung two leaks during heavy rains. Floors 10 and 22 both had a history of leaks and other troubles, but these were apparently unaddressed, despite more than 20 reports calling for…
Read More »
 |
 |
 |