by Dan Mitchell | Jan 22, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs
Remember the cluster-you-know-what in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina? Corrupt and incompetent politicians in both the city and at the state level acted passively, assuming that Uncle Sam somehow should be responsible for dealing with the storm. And we’ve seen...
by Dan Mitchell | Jan 8, 2016 | Big Government, Blogs
When I first read about armed protesters taking over a federal building in Oregon, I thought some nutjobs were about to cause some real trouble. Was this a right-wing version of the loons from the Occupy Wall Street movement, only with guns? Then I learned that the...
by Dan Mitchell | Oct 6, 2015 | Blogs, Economics
Since it’s basically a way of protecting property rights, environmental protection is a legitimate function of government. That’s the easy part. It gets a lot harder when calculating costs and benefits. Everyone surely agrees that a chemical company shouldn’t be able...
by Dan Mitchell | Sep 9, 2015 | Blogs, Energy, Taxation
When the International Monetary Fund endorsed a giant energy tax on the American economy, I was not happy. And not just because the tax hike would have been more than $5,000 for an average family of four. I also was agitated by the hypocrisy. …these bureaucrats...
by Dan Mitchell | Jul 31, 2015 | Big Government, Blogs, Energy, Regulations
When writing about the burden of regulation, I often share big numbers about aggregate cost, job losses, time wasted, and foregone growth. But I sometimes wonder if such data is effective in the battle for good policy. Maybe it’s better, at least in some cases, to...
