PolicyGuy has moved to a new location! Click here to go to http://policyguy.com! All your permalinks will continue to work on the old site.

Choice for This But Not for That Hand-wringing over so-called suburban sprawl is not just a U.S. phenomenon. It's also the latest social experiment in Canada, country with even more land but fewer people than the U.S. You might think that sprawl would not be an issue there. You'd be wrong. Brian Lee Crowley, president of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies in Halifax, Nova Scotia, finds

The Benefits of School Choice Keep Rolling In In an editorial today, the WSJ says that "Florida has delivered real school choice to more American schoolchildren than anywhere else in the country." As the editorial outlines, the state has three different options for families seeking the choice that is readily available for other services (even, with tax dollars, food stamps or college tuition).

States Can Bar Local Telecom Socialism The Supreme Court has ruled that states can bar local governments from operating commercial phone systems--telecom socialism if you will. Missouri cities sued the state after it passed a law prohibiting the practice. They argued that the Telecommunications Act of 1996, with the stated goal of promoting competition, enabled them to operate their own

Michigan Lawmaker Objects to Raising Cigarette Tax Michigan lawmakers hope to fetch more state revenue by raising the tax on cigarettes. Smokers are easy target, but the chairman of an important committee says he's opposed. Here's hoping they actually use the occasion to consider some advice from the Mackinac Center. More in an entry I posted to the Political State Report.

Medicaid Scammers: We Told You So Governments are keen to prevent the proliferation of schemes--except when one level of government is trying to scheme another. Recently the Illinois Policy Institute warned against a proposal in the Land of Lincoln to game the Medicaid system (PDF link here). In short, the state taxes hospitals, who pass along the cost, ultimately to people with insurance. In

To Protect a Few, Make Everyone Pay More. A Lot More. 30 million Americans have hearing loss, and it's the third-leading chronic condition among the elderly. Hearing aids cost an average of $2,200, putting them out of reach for some. Why so expensive? Blame government regulations and private interest. Hearing aid sales were largely unregulated until the mid-1970s. A U.S. Senate committee found

Family Doctors Prescribe Antipsychotics: More Trouble for Drug Companies? Three years ago, general physicians, rather than psychiatrists wrote 17 percent of prescriptions for drugs known as atypical antipsychotics. Today it's slightly over 30 percent. Two drug companies encourage the practice by funding educational seminars for doctors, a practice one academic psychiatrist calls "not good

Tobacco Settlement Money Diverted The states went after Big Tobacco, claiming they needed more money for health care programs, as well as to discourage smoking. Pardon the pun, but the General Accounting Office has put those claims up in smoke. As the GAO says in this summary, "The Master Settlement Agreement allows states to use their tobacco settlement payments for any purpose." And "any

California: Insurance Mandate May be Repealed A new initiative measure to repeal government-dictated health insurance is underway. Last year, the California Assembly enacted a proposal to require employer-sponsored health insurance for all companies with over 50 employees. (Guess how many businesses with 49 employees will try hard to avoid having to hire that 50th employee?) Costs of the

Air Quality: It's Getting Better With traffic congestion a regular topic of complaint in metropolitan areas, it's easy to assume that air quality is getting worse. Wrong. PIRG (the group started by Ralph Nader) is wrong about many things, including the desirability of automobiles. Their latest report calls on governments to "curtail the growth of vehicle travel," citing pollution

Google is Great, but ... More than a few people could have saved themselves some trouble caused by a con artist had they did more than google him. So says a story in the New York Post, which reports that Shamoon "Sam" Rafiq snared nearly $3 million in ill-gotten gains. People who searched for information on him on Google came up with no dirty laundry. Only when you searched for him with other

Mass Transit Doesn't Move Me The Illinois Department of Transportation says that the next stage of transportation improvements in the far western suburbs of Chicago is three to five years away. It expects the area (US 59 to I-39) to double in population by 2030. One of the most sensible steps is one of the mostly hotly contested (by a minority of anti-auto activists): building a new road between