No surprise in Massachusetts: Central planning still fails
The Dec. 11 Associated Press article about health care in Massachusetts illustrates why central economic planning will always fail. As Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek wrote: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.”
Movie Review: Road House
The Antiplanner doesn’t ordinarily review movies, but then, not many movies cover the dark side of urban renewal. Someone once called Road House, featuring the late Patrick Swayze, the “cheesiest movie ever made,” but they must not have been aware of the political subtext. In the movie, Brad Wesley (played by Ben Gazzara) is the […]
The Feds’ Nosy Survey
[Rob Natelson is the author of The Original Constitution: What It Really Said and Meant – an objective explanation of the Constitution as understood by the Founders.] The people who run the federal government may not be able to balance its budget or even pass an appropriation bill on time, but they certainly can tell […]
Does Indiana Have a Lower Tolerance for Corruption than Colorado?
The Hoosier State is roiling over inappropriately cozy relationships between state regulators and the utility they oversee. It started when a top lawyer for the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission took a job with Duke Energy shortly after acting as a judge in a major rate-case before the utility. That got Governor Mitch Daniels’ attention. Then […]
Seasons’ Greetings
The Antiplanner is taking tomorrow off for the holiday. So today I wish a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, fabulous Festivus, or whatever is your holiday of choice to all my faithful allies and loyal opponents. We have a lot of snow here this year and I took this photo at nearby Lake Creek last Sunday. […]
Charitable Donations vs. Taxes
If you don’t feel comfortable forcing your friend to help someone or donate to a charity, should you vote for a politician, your representative, the empowers government agents to do so? This video illustrates the point.
Antiplanner Presentation
On December 11, the Antiplanner gave a presentation to the Elbert County Conservative Breakfast Association, a Tea-Party-like group in Colorado, and one of the members of the audience posted it on line. The introduction is by Tom Peterson, who also happens to be the director of the Colorado Asphalt Pavement Association, to which the Antiplanner […]
Mandatory insurance vs. personal responsibility
Mandatory insurance is not about “personal responsibility.” It’s about forcing you to pay for others’ medical care by making you to buy more insurance than you’d like. If those who use the “responsibility” argument were honest, they’d want to repeal Medicaid & other government programs that force one person to finance the medical care of others.
Norfolk Light Rail Scandal
When the light-rail line in Norfolk, Virginia, went nearly 50 percent over its projected cost, the general manager of Hampton Roads Transit resigned in disgrace–but they gave him $300,000 in severance pay. Now documents have come to light that agency officials knew the line was going to cost more than their published projections but kept […]
Education Reform Stocking Stuffers
Kids are out of school. Christmas is 5 days away. Nobody is writing about education now. It seems like just about everybody has packed it up to go on vacation until 2011. But you get one more post from me before the holidays steal the last bit of your attention away. And it could be […]
Should Colorado ask for a Medicaid block grant?
Rhode Island was granted a waiver to receive its Medicaid funding as a block grant rather than a federal match for Medicaid spending. The result: The state saved $150 million in the first 18 months. Should Colorado do the same?
The Dream of the ’90s Is Alive
Portland — the place where people are content to be unambitious; an alternative universe, Gore won, the Bush administration never happened; where you can put a bird on something and call it art! No wonder the media love Portland. This is apparently the teaser for Portlandia, a series to begin on IFC in January. Jack […]
