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Social Sciences Fact Check: Romney’s Debate Dig at Spain

October 4, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
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Here's a quick fact-check on Mitt Romney's mid-debate comment last night, that the US doesn't want to go down the same economic road as faltering Spain: Specifically, he was talking about government expenditures equalling 42% of GNP, which the Republican candidate claimed to be similar in the European case and in the US under Obama. True? Yes. Not in the way Romney implied, however: that US economic policy was a copy of a failed policy in Spain. This chart by USgovernmentspending.com, which tracks a broad range of such statistics, shows current US government spending roughly ... Read More

More like this: The 101, Uncategorized
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State Arts Agencies Refuse to Die

July 19, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

Last year, as they grappled with falling tax revenues, a number of governors proposed eliminating their state’s arts agency. As we reported, arts advocates responded with alarm, fearing the loss of a vital resource that provides grass-roots organizations needed money (including federal funds, which are distributed through the agencies), as well as information and assistance. It turns out these organizations aren’t all that easy to kill. In recent days, one such agency has returned after a brief hiatus, while another, which was shut down a year ago, has resumed operations in a slightly ... Read More

More like this: By The Way ..., Culture & Society, The 101
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How Incumbents in Washington Hurt the Economy

March 1, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Earmarks Per Population

Conventional wisdom suggests that states are better-served in Washington by elected officials who can stay there long enough to accumulate power, get things done, and funnel home some of that government largesse. The longer an incumbent serves, the higher he or she rises in party ranks, and the more likely constituents will benefit. (The people of Maine, for instance, may be bigger losers than the GOP following the retirement announcement this week of long-serving and well-respected Senator Olympia Snowe.) There is new research, however, that suggests really powerful politicians may ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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The Price of a Fumble by the Super Committee

November 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Sequestration graphic

If the congressional “super committee” fails to come up with a deal by Thanksgiving — as the media and public now predict — all kinds of automatic budget cuts will take place across the federal government. Decimal points will be moved and programs trimmed without much deliberation. To meet the $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction goal, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that non-defense discretionary spending will have to take an immediate 7.8 percent cut across the board — and that number could cut away at anything. “It’s meant to be painful and idiotic,” said David ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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U.S. Evaluating Government Programs More Than Ever

September 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Whatever else comes of Barack Obama's legacy on health care, financial reform or the federal deficit, his administration has seeded a little-recognized but critical shift in the way government funds and runs social programs. The insight sounds fairly obvious, although academics will recognize it as much more: The government is now trying to use evidence. According to a new report commissioned by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in the U.K. (because the Brits would like to figure out how to do this, too), the Obama administration is instituting "the most sweeping ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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Budget Hawks, Enviro Doves Offer Budget Cuts

August 24, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The Heartland Institute and Friends of the Earth don't agree on much of anything. Heartland, based in Chicago, is a free-market think tank widely viewed with suspicion by environmentalists. Friends, as its name suggests, is a progressive environmental advocacy group that's fought for action on climate change. Neither of them, though, can stand the federal government's flood insurance program. It spends billions of dollars offering insurance to property owners at rates much kinder than they'd find on the private market. And it encourages the development of watersheds where no one should be ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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Give Me a Receipt Next Time I Pay Taxes

July 14, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

One common misperception about how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars popped up last week during the president's Twitter town hall. In response to Obama's own query into cyberspace about what costs America should trim to reduce the deficit, Elizabeth from Chicago suggested we "stop giving money to countries that waste it." "You know..." Obama began, tapping into the professorial tone he often uses to disarm political memes. "I think it's important for people to know that foreign aid accounts for less than 2 percent of our budget. And if you defined it just narrowly as the kind ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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The Magic of Re-reinventing Government

December 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Last summer I got pick-pocketed in Chicago. I was walking back to my hotel room after dinner when, mid-block, I reached down, found nothing where my wallet should have been and went straight to panic mode. Thanks to FedEx and my passport, I was able to make it onto an airplane and back to the West Coast, where the pocket-picking gave me a delayed lesson in governmental competence, via the seemingly simple and parallel tasks of replacing a Social Security card and a driver's license. The Social Security office in Santa Barbara, Calif., is located in an outdoor mall downtown, but it's not at ... Read More

More like this: January-February 2011, Not the Editor's Letter, Politics
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Deficit Death by a Thousand Cuts

November 18, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Most proposals out of Washington to rein in the deficit have been maddeningly unspecific. Politicians talk about freezing discretionary spending, although exactly what they mean by "discretionary" is often up to interpretation. They trot out "waste, fraud and abuse," as if there were a few trillion dollars hiding there. Most often, they pitch vague ideas about cutting everything but, of course, the important things, which invariably turn out to be the most expensive. Within the past week, however, some folks have finally been getting down to real specifics. Not surprisingly, these plans ... Read More

More like this: Politics, The Idea Lobby
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Clean Energy and the U.S. Handicap: One Man’s Story

July 25, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment

Jim Dehlsen, America's most successful wind power innovator and entrepreneur, has been tilting at windmills since the early 1980s. Back then, he installed one of the largest wind farms in the world in the mountains near Mojave, Calif., where a strong gust could snap a windmill blade in two. He called it his "Victory Garden." Today, at 73, Dehlsen is producing one of the most advanced and efficient windmills in the world, employing 300 people at a plant in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And he is building a plant in England to manufacture the largest offshore windmill in the world, creating 500 ... Read More

More like this: Environment
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