In “Problems possible with nearly 65,000 Arlington graves, report says” in the Washington Post, Christian Davenport reports that the newly released year-long study, after earlier reports of misidentified remains, shows that the 150-year-old, Army-run, Arlington National Cemetery has problems with 25% of the graves! Errors include “mismarked or unmarked graves, urns that had been…
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In new analysis from the Mackinac Center, James Hohman discusses how $3 billion in federal and state funding for General Motors’ Chevy Volt, the much acclaimed “green,” plug-in, hybrid electric vehicle, is costing taxpayers $250,000 per car. As noted by Hohman, the Volt “might be the most government-supported car since the Trabant,� the car…
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Traditional public policy and welfare economics have held that �market failures�—the presumed inability of a free market to deliver certain goods and services deemed to be in the public interest—are common and require government intervention to protect the public good. But is this actually the case? The Independent Institute book, Beyond Politics, by Senior…
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Angela Greiling Keane reports in a recent article at Bloomberg Businessweek, “A Bailout for the U.S. Postal Service?”, that the U.S. Postal Service’s costs “will exceed revenue by $2.7 billion, even after borrowing $3 billion from the U.S. Treasury, the annual legal limit. Total debt, now $12 billion, by law can’t exceed $15 billion….
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News item: �California to Sell 24 Government Buildings for $2.3 Billion� (AP, October 12, 2010). As a way of helping plug the State of California�s now-chronic budget deficit, this headline is welcome news. Among the state-owned properties on the auction block are LA�s Ronald Reagan State Building and San Francisco�s Civic Center. I have…
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In this new article on United States transportation infrastructure and spending, Gabriel Roth explains the� wasteful spending endemic to the central planning approach taken to transportation.� Rather than a leaky bucket, Roth proposes using market forces based on local transportation needs: “President Obama�s recent announcement of a $50 billion ‘up-front investment’ for ‘renewing and…
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In an article by Janet Adamy, the Wall Street Journal reports that contrary to the claims of the Obama administration, rates for health insurance for individuals and small businesses are projected to increase by as much as 20%. Although such rate increases primarily apply to new policies, “consumers could be subject to the higher…
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Far from being an investment program, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go operation where new revenues are spent immediately and future entitlements are funded exclusively through the promise to tax workers in the future, many of whom haven�t even been born yet. It is taxation without representation in the most cynical sense. The program is…
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