As college students across America return to school this month, there is a lot of controversy over how their bills, and those of former students, are being paid. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loan debt hit an all-time high of $1.16 trillion in 2014. That marks a $77 billion increase from the previous year.
Ohio Checkbook Shows How Transparency is Supposed to Work
It has often been said that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” for the government. Informing citizens about how bureaucrats spend their money will help to ensure that it will be spent wisely. No effort has exemplified this principle more succinctly and comprehensively than the initiative undertaken by Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel (R).
Obama’s Clean Power Plan: All Pain, No gain
During a January 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, then-Senator Barack Obama remarked that under his ideal energy plan, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” He further noted that by capping greenhouse gasses, producers of energies like coal would need to make vast changes and, “that will cost money. They will pass that money onto consumers.”
Blundering TSA Needs a Mid-Course Correction
In this post-9/11 world, Americans would not argue that the government should do everything possible to protect them from harm. However, an agency tasked with that mission has tallied a frightening number of failures in nearly every area of its mandate and is in need of more significant reform.
Floundering USPS Needs Reform, Not Expansion
The United States Postal Service (USPS) is a government entity and has operated as such since 1775. It has a straightforward mandate: “To provide postal services to bind the Nation together.” And furthermore, “It shall provide prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons.” In 1970, Congress directed that USPS be run like a business, with its activities funded solely through its revenues.
The TPA Debate: Fears & Facts about “Fast-Track”
When Chicken Little said “The sky is falling!” and convinced his barnyard brethren of the same, the facts notwithstanding, he practically invented fear-mongering. Trade liberalization opponents are engaged in their own version of spreading false and misleading information by claiming that so-called “fast track” legislation is fraught with end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it perils. Just as the falling acorn […]
Fail and Expand: The USPS Way
In the world inhabited by rational people, when a business repeatedly falters and fails make a profit, it is slated for downsizing and a return to the basic services where it had previously operated effectively. But, in the world of government-sponsored entities, the opposite impulse occurs. Having lost more than $46 billion since 2007, The […]
DOE’s Green Loan Programs Waste More Green than They Create
A decade after the creation of the Department of Energy’s (DOE) first program to stimulate green energy projects, the concept is projected to lose more money than it receives, leaving taxpayers holding the reusable cloth bag.
The Ghoulish Amtrak Blame Game
Within hours of the deadly crash of an Amtrak train in Philadelphia, big spenders from Washington and New York pounced on the tragedy as a reason to throw more taxpayer money Amtrak’s way. Let’s begin with the fact that eight people lost their lives in this accident. More than 200 were injured. Politicians and liberal […]
EPA: The Intersection of Invasive and Inefficient
There is no shortage of government agencies that fritter away hard-earned tax dollars by imposing hostile rules and regulations on businesses and individuals. But the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has practically cornered the market on invasiveness and inefficiency.