Who owns publicly funded research — and the knowledge that comes from it? Is it the researchers themselves? The taxpayers who make their work possible? The community of academics who volunteer to peer review it? Or the academic journals that package and distribute all of this under respected titles? Maybe this sounds like inside baseball within the already too-insular world of academia. After all, is the public really clamoring to access the contents of the Journal of Diagnostic Medical Sonography? But there is a big question at play here as the U.S. Congress considers a bill called the ... Read More
Crafting Policy to Bridge the Red-Blue Divide
December 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Mississippi Republican Trent Lott recently recalled the Washington he moved to as a House aide in 1968: members of both parties would gather on Thursday evenings to play gin rummy, sip bourbon, and smoke cigars. “They knew each other,” he said. “They respected each other.” Three decades later — when he and South Dakota Democrat Tom Daschle traded Senate leadership as their parties traded majorities — each repeatedly would ask the other: “Is there a way we can get this done together?” Senators were highly partisan and had deep philosophical disagreements, he said. “It ... Read More
Don’t Tax Soda, Tax Sweeteners
December 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Public-health officials and policymakers across the United States have been talking a lot lately about tackling the epidemic of obesity through smaller nudges like a per-ounce tax on soda. Not surprisingly, as enthusiasm for this idea expands, so too has soda-tax scholarship. “Our take on this was basically that everybody is talking about a soda tax, so we stepped back and said, ‘Wait a minute, this is not very well targeted,’” said John Beghin, an economist at Iowa State University. “If you want to impose a tax and reduce calorie intake from sweeteners, there is a better way to ... Read More
Consistency Key to Renewable Energy Policy
October 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The bankruptcy of the solar startup Solyndra last month has placed government funding for renewable energy projects under a microscope. Were the government-guaranteed loans a wise way to use public funding to help green technologies? An analysis conducted by the George Soros-funded Climate Policy Initiative (“Evaluating Policies for Low Carbon Growth”) looked at six large-scale renewable energy projects in the United States and Europe, seeking answers about how their real costs matched up with their estimates, and "how policy affects project economics." The six projects were: wind ... Read More
Third Parties: The Avant-Garde of Change
October 5, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Throughout American history, many big changes in public policy — or in the country, for that matter — have been presaged by agitation from little-celebrated actors in the political process: third parties. "If you look at the range of issues that third parties were out in front of before the Democrats and the Republicans would touch them with a 10-foot pole," said political scientist David Gillespie, "I could take you down through page after page, including some very important ones." The Liberty and Free Soil parties wanted abolition before the mainstream did. The Prohibition Party ... Read More
Plain English Urged to Limit Federal Bureaucracy
July 12, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Back when Annetta Cheek first went to work for the federal government in the 1970s, she was tasked with writing regulations for the updated Archeological Resources Protection Act, a replacement for the American Antiquities Act of 1906. “The 1906 act was a page long, and the implementing regulations which came out a couple of weeks later were about three pages long,” Cheek recalled. “I was writing a regulation that ended up being about 40 pages, implementing an act that was about 20 pages long. And it did basically the same thing.” Here’s a real short version of what both bills ... Read More
I Gave It a Nudge But It Won’t Budge
January 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Legal scholar Cass Sunstein and behavioral economist Richard Thaler unleashed an incredibly seductive idea in 2008 with their popular book Nudge. Many of society's biggest problems, they suggested, from poor public health to environmental degradation to lousy retirement planning, could be solved without expensive interventions or intrusive regulation. All policymakers have to do is alter the environments in which people make decisions, gently nudging them toward the choices that would improve their lives — away from the potato chips, say, or toward that corporate 401(k) match. "To ... Read More
Texas Children: Canaries in the Coal Mine
January 25, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Texas. Merely mentioning the state's name evokes a vision of wide-open spaces, rugged independence and, most importantly, unrivaled economic prowess. The Lone Star State has carefully nurtured its national reputation as an economic leader. In fact, the official website of three-term Gov. Rick Perry includes a brag page; reading the national headlines listed there could lead even the most cynical Texan to blush with pride. It looks like Texas' longtime model of cutting spending and never raising taxes works exceptionally well, so it's not surprising that many states are following Texas' ... Read More
Are More Gun Laws for Mentally Ill Off Target?
January 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Headlines have reached one consensus about the policy implications of the shooting in Tucson, Ariz., this past weekend. "After Tucson: Why Are The Mentally Ill Still Bearing Arms?" asks Time. "How can we prevent crazy people from getting guns while still protecting the Second Amendment?" poses a lively Yahoo! debate. "Ten Rampages by Mentally Ill People Who Bought Guns That Can Teach Lawmakers What to do Next," blares a Phoenix New Times blog posting. Americans often squirm around these two topics — gun control and mental illness — but have little trouble finding agreement when ... Read More
Constitutionality Is in the Eye of the Beholder
January 4, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
When the 112th Congress convenes this week, Republican leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives plans to roll out a new rule: Every piece of legislation considered this session — no matter how mundane — must be submitted alongside a statement citing the specific authority in the Constitution that gives Congress power to enact the law. The idea, championed by the Tea Party and central to the GOP’s "Pledge to America," is a not-so-subtle reference to last year’s health care bill. The 111th Congress, critics complained, regularly exceeded its constitutional authority. And ... Read More
