Enjoy a selection of my commentaries below. To see the full listing of commentaries, please click here.
Reform running into roadblocks
Even though the President’s Task Force on National Health Care Reform has been in business since January 25, it looks like the wheels are coming off — and it has not yet left the garage. Late last week task force director Ira Magaziner said the group would not make the president’s May 3rd deadline. Sources…
Wyoming tends to its ‘gardening’
CASPER, Wyo. — Sixty years ago, Mississippi governor Hugh White established a program called Balance Agriculture with Industry. Purpose: To couple Mississippi’s low taxes, cheap land, unskilled labor and low wages with tax abatements and other subsidies — called “incentives” — to entice Northern industries to expand or relocate in the South. With this program,…
Rangeland Reforms Spawn Babbittowns
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt’s Aug. 9 announcement of his sweeping “reform” of grazing on public lands is pretty familiar stuff: a 130% tax increase to ranchers in the form of increased grazing fees; a federal takeover of many Western water rights; and establishment of new government bureaucracy to manage public lands, descriptions of which sound…