The Oregon Ducks will compete for the national championship early next month, so they’ve had a good season. Unfortunately, Oregon’s government isn’t doing nearly so well. Politicians approved a big tax hike on those bad, evil rich people in 2009, and Oregon’s spite-filled voters approved that measure earlier this year. So how’s is Oregon’s class-warfare […]

There are plenty of reason to like and dislike the tax deal between President Obama and congressional leaders. On the plus side, we dodge a big tax increase for the next two years. We also replace a goofy and ineffective “make work pay” tax credit with a supply-side oriented reduction in the payroll tax rate […]

I take second place to nobody in my view that government is horribly incompetent, but even I’m shocked by this story linked on Drudge. According to a news report out of Indiana, students who take the government’s driver’s ed class are four times more likely to crash than those who don’t take the classes. There […]

My default assumption is that all politicians will do the wrong thing when they have to choose between defending freedom and appeasing special interests. Even the ones that spout good rhetoric often do the wrong thing, particularly after a couple of years in office (sort of like being assimilated by the Borg, for you Star […]

I’m glad I read Instapundit, because my day has been made brighter by the news that Arizona’s statists have given up on their money-grubbing speed camera program. Here’s a cheerful story which explains that widespread noncompliance was the key. Dozens of photo-enforcement cameras on freeways throughout the state are coming down this week. A total […]

Oakland politicans have created a fiscal crisis by spending too much money. This has caused strife with the police union according to a San Francisco paper. The details of the fight are not very remarkable, but I was stunned to read that the average compensation for a cop is $188,000 per year. I have plenty of […]

Supporters of the Cleveland Cavaliers, especially the owner of the team, are upset that basketball superstar LeBron James has decided to sign with the Miami Heat. The anger is especially intense because the Cavaliers offered $4 million more over the next five years. But their anger is misplaced, because more money in Cleveland, Ohio, actually […]

The Wall Street Journal opines about the latest bone-headed move by New York politicians to drive away productive activity. Connecticut is not exactly a low-tax jurisdiction, but sometimes being less worse is all that’s necessary to win a tax competition battle. Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell, a Republican who usually doesn’t mind higher taxes…has nonetheless declared […]

One of the good features of the Internet is that it gives people more options. But this is bad news for politicians, who like to control – and tax – what people are doing. But it’s not easy for politicians at the state level to impose high sales taxes on consumers when people have the […]

This chart, published in the New York Times and based on work by Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute, shows the states with the most serious debt problems. Maybe I don’t follow state issues closely enough, but I was surprised to find that Alaska had the most debt and that California was not very […]