Public Policy and Governance

Fifty-One Percent

In a recent New York Times column, Gail Collins observed “the thing that makes our current politics particularly awful isn’t procedural. It’s that the Republican Party has become over-the-top extreme.” She left out “mean-spirited and patriarchal.” I was an active Republican for 35 years, but the party I belonged to no longer exists. There is [...]

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Speaking of Gushers….

American taxpayers subsidize the giant oil companies to the tune of 4 billion dollars a year. The American tax code contains a variety of provisions that make oil production one of the most heavily subsidized businesses in the country, with tax breaks available at virtually every stage of the exploration and extraction process. According to [...]

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Audacious in Chicago

This morning’s New York Times reports that Rahm Emmanuel will announce a 7.1 billion-with-a-b infrastructure improvement plan for Chicago. Improvements will be made to everything from the water system to the airport, from public transportation to parks. The improvements will be financed primarily through a public-private investment trust, details of which Mayor Emmanuel is supposed [...]

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What Legislatures are For

Given the antics of the Indiana General Assembly in the just (mercifully) ended session, you might think the role of the legislature is to ensure proper singing of the national anthem,  determine whether children need to learn cursive and require the BMV to honor the prejudices of people who hate gays. So it might come [...]

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I Was Wrong

Yesterday I blogged about something I’d gotten right. Today, I’m going to admit being wrong. When people first began talking about a “war on women,” I thought the rhetoric was over the top. Sure, there were some retrograde legislators in statehouses around the country–not to mention Washington–but that’s always been the case. Attacks on Roe [...]

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