GOP Won on Economy, So Focus on It | David Boaz | Cato Institute: Commentary

GOP Won on Economy, So Focus on It | David Boaz | Cato Institute: Commentary: "It always feels great to win an election. But the real job for fiscal conservatives and smaller-government advocates starts now.

The usual pattern is that after the election, voters and the activists go back to their normal lives, but organized interests redouble their efforts to influence policymakers. The people who want something from government hire lobbyists, make political contributions and otherwise do all they can to get their hands on taxpayers' money."

"victorious Republicans must demonstrate to voters that they're serious — finally — about more freedom and less government."

"Republicans pledged to repeal it, and should keep their promise to voters. But, of course, the Senate and the president aren't likely to go along with a repeal bill. So the House should refuse to appropriate money to implement the bill's provisions, and prohibit the Department of Health and Human Services from spending any money to implement the bill's worst provisions — especially the individual mandate."

"As noted, the moment the polls close, the organized interest groups descend on the new members of Congress. From pharma to farmers, from oil companies to the Social Security/Medicare lobbyists, everybody wants to pay off a campaign debt and take a senator to a game at the Verizon Center. Republicans — and Democrats — need to show some virtue and resist these organized interest groups. The country's overriding interest is to reduce spending, the deficit and the national debt. That means keeping a comfortable distance between lobbyists and the public trough. One tactic might be for the House to pass a continuing resolution to fund agencies at 90 percent of current spending, bypassing the notoriously porcine appropriations subcommittees."

Will the Republican win turn into a conservative win?

The Republican party won big last night -- especially in Wisconsin where they took the Governor, Senate, and Assembly. Now we will have to see if they stick to the conservative ideals that I think most people expect of them.

Man bites dog? Google sues the government | Relevant Results - CNET News

Man bites dog? Google sues the government | Relevant Results - CNET News: "the Interior Department specified that the system needed to be part of Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Suite"

So what choices were there besides that?

Drug Decriminalization Policy Pays Off | Glenn Greenwald | Cato Institute: Commentary

Drug Decriminalization Policy Pays Off | Glenn Greenwald | Cato Institute: Commentary: "By any metric, Portugal's drug-decriminalization scheme has been a resounding success. Drug usage in many categories has decreased in absolute terms, including for key demographic groups, like 15-to-19-year-olds. Where usage rates have increased, the increases have been modest — far less than in most other European Union nations, which continue to use a criminalization approach.

Portugal, whose drug problems were among the worst in Europe, now has the lowest usage rate for marijuana and one of the lowest for cocaine. Drug-related pathologies, including HIV transmission, hepatitis transmission and drug-related deaths, have declined significantly.

Beyond the data, Portugal's success with decriminalization is illustrated by the absence of political agitation for a return to criminalization. As one might expect for a socially conservative and predominantly Roman Catholic country, the decriminalization proposal sparked intense controversy a decade ago."

"First, when a government threatens to turn drug users into criminals, a wall of fear divides officials and the citizenry and, thus, prevents effective treatment and education campaigns. Portugal's top drug official has said the stigma created by criminalizing drug use and the resulting fear of government were the biggest barriers to effective education and treatment programs in the 1990s.

Second, treating drug addiction as a health issue, not a criminal offense, means the right solutions can be found. Counseling is far more effective than prison in turning addicts into nonusers.

Third, when a government no longer spends inordinate amounts of money on arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning drug users, that money can instead be used on highly effective treatment programs, as well as services, like methadone clinics, to limit drug-related harms."

Are the Austrians Too Harsh? - John P. Cochran - Mises Daily

Are the Austrians Too Harsh? - John P. Cochran - Mises Daily: "The Journal, then, granting NBER's chronology, contrasts the current recession and 'recovery' with the almost equally long (16 months) and severe (unemployment peaked above 11 percent) recession of July 1981–November 1982 and subsequent recovery. Their conclusion is that the different policy circumstances significantly explain the drastically different recovery paths: following the trough in late 1982, the economy rapidly surpassed the prerecession levels of output. But currently, nearly 15 months past the trough, our economy is still significantly below prerecession levels."

Happy Birthday, Bank Bailout! | Mark A. Calabria | Cato Institute: Commentary

Happy Birthday, Bank Bailout! | Mark A. Calabria | Cato Institute: Commentary: "An admittedly unscientific but useful first approximation of any government program is to ask, did such program change an underlying trend? One of the rationales offered for TARP was that it would 're-start' our credit markets. If TARP did help the credit markets, then its impact should show up in the amount of credit outstanding.

However, consumer credit peaked several months before the creation of TARP and seemingly continued a relatively smooth trend downward. Would that trend have been worse without TARP? Maybe. But since it appears that the trend did not change much at all, I believe the burden is on the program's proponents to prove it did.

Another objective of TARP was to 'restore confidence.' The idea was that if the American public and the financial markets saw that the government would do and spend whatever was necessary, calm would return. Interestingly enough, the first consumer confidence reading after TARP passed was lower than the measure taken just before its signing. While consumer confidence did start to improve in the beginning of 2009, one would have expected TARP's impact on confidence to have been felt sooner rather than later.

The statutory language of TARP repeated talk about protecting homeownership, home values, and jobs. One need not reproduce charts for these variables. We all know how weak they have been. This of course should not really be a surprise. TARP did nothing to change the fundamentals of supply and demand in the housing market, or in the labor market."

"despite TARP's goal of cleaning the banking system of bank assets, there are more bad assets than ever. While TARP, of course, did not cause those bad assets, it was supposed to reduce them.

The real costs of TARP are likely not going to be felt for years, until the next financial crisis. In rescuing the financial system, TARP has created the expectation that in a moment of crisis, the government will throw money at the problem, reducing the incentive of market participants to reduce their own risk exposures."

Shattered Dreams: Homeowner Protection - FoxNews.com

Shattered Dreams: Homeowner Protection - FoxNews.com: "Judge Lippman developed a new procedure requiring attorneys to sign a form confirming that they have personally reviewed the paperwork, including a loan file where a client, the lender, is claiming a homeowner is behind on their payments and in default. Without this document included in a court file, a foreclosure action can no longer be filed in New York."

We Can't Afford the Luxury of High-speed Rail | Randal O'Toole | Cato Institute: Commentary

We Can't Afford the Luxury of High-speed Rail | Randal O'Toole | Cato Institute: Commentary: "At an inflation-adjusted cost of about $450 billion paid out of highway user fees, the Interstate Highway System, to which high-speed rail is sometimes compared, provides more than 4,000 miles of passenger travel for every American, miles that Americans were not traveling before the system was built. By comparison, a $600 billion expenditure on high-speed rail will provide, at best, around 300 miles of travel per person."

"Amtrak brags that its high-speed Acela between Boston and Washington covers its operating costs, though not its capital costs. It does so, however, only by collecting fares of about 75 cents per passenger mile. By comparison, airline fares average only 13 cents a passenger mile, and intercity buses (which, Amtrak doesn't want you to know, carry about three times as many passengers between Boston and Washington as the Acela) are even less expensive."


"Since most high-speed rail stations will be in downtowns, the main users will be downtown workers such as lawyers, bankers, and government officials. Yet less than 8% of American jobs are in central city downtowns, meaning all Americans will subsidize trains used by only a small urban elite."

Grading the Governors | Chris Edwards | Cato Institute: Commentary

Grading the Governors | Chris Edwards | Cato Institute: Commentary: "As the Republican Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons said in opposing tax hikes, 'It's not the role of the state government to put people out of work.'

Another troubling trend is the spread of 'tax credit disease.' Most states offer dozens of narrow tax breaks to favored activities. For example, more than 40 states offer film production incentives — favoring Hollywood jobs over, say, manufacturing."

The Twofold Roots of the Great Depression: Inflationism and Intervention - Lionel Robbins - Mises Daily

The Twofold Roots of the Great Depression: Inflationism and Intervention - Lionel Robbins - Mises Daily: "If for some reason there is more money than usual available and business conditions look favorable, it is surely not difficult to see that investors and business men may be led to make mistakes — to launch out new undertakings that can only be carried on satisfactorily if these easy-money conditions are going to last."