President Obama was shocked –SHOCKED! — to learn that bureaucracy and contracting hassles delay construction projects.

San Francisco is considering banning the sale of pets in the city limits.

Americans are more supportive of their tax money going to law enforcement than welfare.

San Francisco’s ban on sugary drinks is the latest example of nanny state reductio creep.

Some cops apparently still haven’t figured out that it’s legal to take pictures in public places — even of cops.

Brilliant, funny TED Talk about the disconnect between cost and effectiveness.

Daniel Larison and Reihan Salan have an intelligent discussion on the Internet, managing to persuade each other!

In conjunction with Father’s Day, the Obama administration unveiled Fatherhood.gov, a website offering advice to men on raising kids. Why is this a job for the federal government?

This is a bizarre and somewhat scary story. h/t DougJ

So, we’re in Minnesota for a wedding. Since we live in the DC suburbs and the wife and I need to be back at work Monday, that means flying and enduring the depredations of airport security and being herded about a jetliner like cattle. While we’re not such frequent fliers that we’re awaiting our meeting [...]

Gene Healy has a good article that describes how parentalism among pundits on both the Left and the Right. Here are some good snippets, But the adults among us ought to worry about a political culture that reacts to every difficulty by screaming “Save us, Superpresident!” It’s “taking so doggone long,” Sarah Palin wailed, for [...]

There’s a proposal floating out there from a Brookings Institution scholar that suggests we consider making it mandatory for every American citizen to vote in every election: William Galston thinks the key to less polarization in the electorate is compulsory voting.  It’s the disaffected, the angry, who vote.  The Howard Beales of the world.  If [...]

The CBO has provided an estimate of the impact of the stimulus bill on GDP and unemployment. Raised the level of real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) by between 1.7 percent and 4.2 percent, Lowered the unemployment rate by between 0.7 percentage points and 1.5 percentage points, Increased the number of people employed by between [...]

Steve Benen argues that the bailout of the American automobile industry has produced excellent results, proving that conservatives who railed against the measure were wrong. He cites Steven Rattner‘s WaPo op-ed, which notes that GM and Chrysler are both reporting modest profits, are selling cars for higher prices, and are running more efficient operations.  Indeed, [...]

Private pays share of personal income has shrunk to its lowest historical level. Private wages. A record-low 41.9% of the nation’s personal income came from private wages and salaries in the first quarter, down from 44.6% when the recession began in December 2007. The article also points out that the trend is not sustainable. The [...]

A Birmingham, Alabama area geometry teacher used the unfortunate example of shooting the president to illustrate the issue of angles, prompting a Secret Service investigation. “We did not find a credible threat,” said Roy Sex­ton, special agent in charge of Birmingham’s Secret Service office. “As far as the Secret Service is concerned, we looked into [...]

If you’re still around in 2020, the Census Bureau hopes to be able to give you the option of responding electronically: Happy Tuesday! How will Americans use the Internet in 2020? Will we all use cell phones? Will we still have snail mail? A team of experts at the U.S. Census Bureau is asking those [...]

One of the aspects of Senator Dodd’s proposed reforms is the “Orderly Liquidation Fund”. This fund is to be targetted to be $50 billion dollars and will be pre-funded out of bank profits. The target size of the Fund shall be $50 billion, adjusted on a periodic basis for inflation. The FDIC shall impose assessments [...]

Reason‘s Nick Gillespie, resplendent in his ubiquitous black jacket, explains, “How The Hell Did GM Pay Back Its Loans “in Full And Ahead of Schedule”? Well, It Didn’t.” The script: General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre has bragged in TV commercials and newspaper columns that GM has paid back its bailout “in full and ahead of [...]

A left-liberal meme I’ve been seeing a lot lately has been pushback against “conservative judicial activism.” The talking point, which I have seen repeated numerous times in various forums over the past several weeks, is to try to pin one of its own frequent complaints on the right. Now even President Obama getting in on [...]

It is unsurprising given the melt down in the financial sector that politicians are looking at “reforming” financial regulations. To most people the general idea of regulatory reform should be to prevent conditions form coming about that lead to the meltdown and thereby prevent further bailouts. Problem is it is looking like the reform in [...]

A recent survey of members of the National Association of Business economists shows that 73% do not think the stimulus help employment. NABE conducted the study by polling 68 of its members who work in economic roles at private-sector firms. About 73% of those surveyed said employment at their company is neither higher nor lower [...]

Radley Balko “got a little more libertarian” yesterday after a frustrating experience with his income taxes.  Essentially, his e-file was rejected because of an invalid Social Security number which wasn’t invalid at all, the Social Security office wouldn’t help him by phone, and the office was closed by the time he got there.  And he [...]

The Feds are telling going to limit the amount of salt that can be in processed foods, literally ranging from soup to nuts. The government intends to work with the food industry and health experts to reduce sodium gradually over a period of years to adjust the American palate to a less salty diet, according [...]

The big news overnight is that President Obama has ordered hospitals to allow partners of gays and lesbians to visit and be allowed to make critical decisions. Michael Schear, WaPo: “Obama extends hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners of gays” President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of [...]

Pilots will be allowed to fly while taking the most common antidepressant drugs and those who lied about doing so in the past will be granted limited amnesty. The government is lifting a 70-year-old ban on letting pilots fly while on antidepressants, citing improvements in the drugs and an unforeseen side effect of the restriction: [...]

This article in the NY Times is interesting in that it shows that for all the chatter about how big business cannot be trusted, neither can government. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to California, New York or other states suffering serious budget issues, there are indeed some amazing parallels between what [...]

George Takei and Brad Altman appear in perhaps the most memorable Census ad in history. I’m a bit bemused at the notion that people should fill out the Census based on their own perceptions of reality rather than reality itself. I get that some gays consider themselves married even though they live in states that [...]

Harvard economist Greg Mankiw argues that taxation as a percentage of GDP is a misleading way to compare national tax burdens and instead argues that we should consider taxes per person, which he calculates as Taxes/GDP x GDP/Person.   Using this metric, the United States is in the middle of the pack of major economies: France [...]

Government is so entwined in our lives that many who rail against it don’t even realize that they’re using government programs, Steve Benen argues.  He uses notes the case of a Tea Party leader who rails against socialized medicine even though she’s on Social Security and Medicare.  Steve says that people like this shouldn’t be [...]

One of the annoying things about America’s two-party system is that with so much of the political discussion locked in a “us vs. them” rhetorical stance it’s difficult to rise out and see how political models might move in a very different direction. We get so logjammed with overheated rhetoric that it’s sometimes difficult to [...]

Felix Ortiz, D-Brooklyn, wants to ban the use of salt in restaurants. “No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off [...]

In what seems an annual exercise, the Postal Service is complaining about resources and proposing to end Saturday mail service. Customers are continuing to migrate to the Internet and to cheaper standard-mail options, and away from the Postal Service’s signature product — first-class mail, Postmaster General John E. Potter will report in announcing the projections. [...]

Haiti suffered much more devastation from its recent earthquake than Chile did over the weekend from a far more powerful earthquake. Jonathan Franklin and Jeffrey Smith report for WaPo: While the death toll rose steadily to more than 700, according to a midday estimate, it remained a small fraction of the tally from a far [...]

Ladies and Gentlemen, the ATF has made a gigantic leap forward in the field of making sure adorable blonde moppets can’t shoot their eye out. A local business owner is flabbergasted after a shipment of 30 toy guns for his store was confiscated by ATF agents in Tacoma. Brad Martin and his son, Ben, sell [...]

In my discussion with Dave Schuler on the hearings about Toyota safety issues on last night’s episode of OTB Radio, I noted in passing my concern that Congress has a conflict of interest now that the federal government is effectively the owner of General Motors and Chrysler — direct competitors with Toyota. PJM’s Tom Blumer [...]

Here is a public service announcement to all police departments, when you find guys like this in your ranks it is probably a better idea to kick them from your ranks and throw the book at them, legally speaking. Protecting them just gets their stink on you. FAIRMONT — A Marion County sheriff’s deputy accused [...]

Tracking cell phones is now something the Obama administration wants to do. Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider [...]

Like Ezra Klein, I was surprised to read that “one in eight Americans” are now getting food stamps. But, reading Jason Deparle and Robert Gebeldoff‘s feature, it’s not hard to see why:  We’re actively recruiting people to sign up! A decade ago, New York City officials were so reluctant to give out food stamps, they [...]

Arnold Kling has a post on the temper tantrums some progressives have been throwing and here is the concluding comments, The important point is that Progressives are never wrong. Top-down reform is the only way to fix the health care system. Anthropogenic global warming is scientifically proven, and its solution requires strenuous exercise of political [...]

University of Chicago Professor John Cochrane explains the causes of the financial panic and how two mistakes turned what might have been a mild recession into a deep recession. The short form is: Failure to bailout Lehman Brothers after bailing out (or at least appearing to) Bear Stearns. The chaos surrounding the TARP legislation. Cochrane [...]

In a few posts I’ve noted that we can expect lower economic growth in the future and one reason is the enormous amounts of debt that the country has been taking on. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff layout why this is so here. In previous cycles, international banking crises have often led to a wave [...]

Rent seeking in economics is where firms or individuals seek economic rents (unearned profits) via the political process. Here is a nice example. Senator Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, placed a blanket “hold” in part because of the feud pitting Airbus parent EADS and its partner Northrop Grumman against Boeing, [...]

Where should we point the fingers for our current fiscal/economic mess? Keith Hennessey has a post that I tend to agree with. Hennessey looks at the opening statements from President Obama on his new budget, The fact is, 10 years ago, we had a budget surplus of more than $200 billion, with projected surpluses stretching [...]

For the fourth time in the last 5 weeks first time jobless claims have risen. WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of newly laid-off workers filing initial claims for jobless benefits rose unexpectedly last week, evidence that layoffs are continuing and jobs remain scarce. The rise is the fourth in the past five weeks. Most economists [...]

According to this story President Obama is planning on letting the Bush tax cuts and the ATM. In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year — effectively a tax hike by stealth. While [...]

While progressives are kvetching and conservatives are chortling over President Obama’s failures to enact his most visible policy initiatives, he’s quietly ratcheting federal control of society up to unprecedented levels. In a lengthy TNR feature, John Judis details how “Obama has reinvented the state in more ways than you can imagine.” Obama’s three Republican predecessors [...]

Once Again the CBO is bringing bad news to the Obama Administration. With the expiration of the AMT provisions at the end of 2009, an estimated 27 million people will be paying some amount of the AMT paying on average an additional $3,900 in taxes (granted the median tax increase is probably considerably less). Good [...]

The CBO’s look at the numbers (the Director’s Blog post) suggest it isn’t going to work out too well for the Obama Administration and whatever administration follows on. Now granted this is just a projection and quite a bit could happen between now and 2020. However, the idea that the Obama Administration is going to [...]

The special election to fill the Massachusetts Senate seat vacated by the passing of Teddy Kennedy is ongoing, with most expecting a win by Republican Scott Brown.  Andrew Sullivan sees this as the death knell of American politics. I can see no alternative scenario but a huge – staggeringly huge – victory for the FNC/RNC [...]