I recently speculated whether Detroit’s fiscal problems should be a warning sign for the crowd in Washington. The answer, of course, is yes, though it’s not a perfect analogy. The federal government is in deep trouble because of unsustainable entitlement programs while Detroit got in trouble because of a combination of too much compensation for […]

School choice should be a slam-dunk issue. There’s very powerful evidence that we can provide superior education for lower cost if we shift away from monopoly government schools to a system based on parental choice. Yet some leftists oppose this reform, even though poor and minority kids would be the biggest beneficiaries. Here’s some of […]

If you don’t like the NSA collecting and monitoring all your communications, you probably won’t be thrilled about new technologies that will give government power to monitor where you drive and control how you drive. Let’s look at a couple of options and then ponder which is more offensive. We’ll start with government monitoring of […]

We’re making a tiny bit of progress in the battle against the welfare state. No, policy hasn’t changed yet, but at least there’s growing recognition that maybe, just maybe, it’s not a good idea to pay people not to work. Particularly when you trap them in lives of dependency and despair and undermine progress in […]

I’ve already shared some analysis of Mark Steyn’s libertarian-leaning views on foreign policy, so it’s very timely to see what he just wrote about Syria. Here’s some of his new article in National Review. His humor is sharp, but he makes a very important point. The administration’s ingenious plan is to lose this war in […]

During the big-spending Bush years, economic and fiscal people inside the Administration often would sympathize with my complaints about bad policy, but say that there was nothing they could do since all the big decisions were being made by the political types in the White House. In other words, Karl Rove and his crew were […]

I got involved in a bit of a controversy last year about presidential profligacy. Some guy named Rex Nutting put together some data on government spending and claimed that Barack Obama was the most frugal President in recent history. I pointed out that Mr. Nutting’s data left something to be desired because he didn’t adjust […]

It sounds strange, but my two favorite columns on gun control were authored by self-identified leftists. But they didn’t let ideology trump common sense. Justin Cronin, for instance, explained that restrictions on gun ownership undermined his ability to protect his family. And Jeffrey Goldberg looked at the evidence and concluded that guns make people safer. […]

Want to know why – as shown by this map – most of America’s richest counties are part of the metropolitan DC region? Part of the answer is that federal bureaucrats are overpaid. Another part of the answer is that the Washington area is filled with consultants and contractors, and this shadow government workforce also […]