Do you prefer to use credit or debit cards rather than write checks? If so, you should know that the federal government is taking steps that could mean you’ll be paying an increased or new annual fee for that card. “Plastic” forms of payment are incredibly useful, but there are costs associated with them, including the expenses of issuing the cards and maintaining accounts. To […]
MNFMI
Save Money by Publishing Online
In Minnesota, Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa and Rep. Ann Lenczewski (DFL-Bloomington) want to free local governments from the requirement that they publish legal notices in newspapers. They say it could save government money in these tight times. Here’s the short description of HF162: “Political subdivisions authorized to publish proceedings, official notices, and summaries on their Web sites in lieu of newspaper publication.” Click here for the unofficial lengthy version, […]
Durbin, Dodd, Frank, and Lord Have Mercy
The more government intervenes in the financial markets, the more it finds a need to … intervene some more. That may be one message from the Dodd-Frank financial “reform” law that I wrote about the other day. The Wall Street Journal notes in an editorial that Daniel Tarullo, a governor of the Federal Reserve, now says the law, meant to protect taxpayers, could be creating institutions that are, as […]
An Interstate Compact as a Bulwark Against Federal Overreach
My friends at the North Dakota Policy Council alerted me to yet another arrow that advocates of health care freedom have in their quiver: an interstate health care freedom compact. Coupled with lawsuits and variations on the Freedom of Choice in Health Care Act, interstate compacts form an interesting and perhaps successful action against an overreaching federal government. Dr. Frankenstein’s monster popularly known as ObamaCare may have […]
Intervening in a Private Fight
Businesses have a love/hate relationship with credit and debit cards. On the one hand, the cards boost sales and remove the risk to the merchant that they will get paid with a bounced check. On the other hand, merchants have to cough up fees that pay for everything that’s involved in keeping that payment system going. Recently, some major merchants have cheered Congress onto imposing […]
Minnesota on Math
According to a recent report, “math skills better predict future earnings and other economic outcomes than other skills learned in high school.” So how does Minnesota compare with the other states and countries around the world? We get some answers in “U.S. Math Performance in Global Perspective” (PDF), published by the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard University. Minnesota does well compared with other […]
Will the New Charter School Law Close Options to 13,000 Children?
Last year the Minnesota Legislature imposed new requirements on the organizations that oversee charter schools. As a result, as many as 13,000 children may be forced back into district schools next year. Maybe the decision for the Minnesota Department of Education to get out of the business of serving as an overseer should be reconsidered. A school in a public school district is overseen by […]
School Choice is Gaining Ground
Since this is National School Choice, I’m offering up a five-minute interview of Jay P. Green by Nick Gillespie. According to Green, there are two major benefits of school choice: We can customize education to meet the needs of children and parents. Through choice and competition, we keep costs under control and improve performance. How much headway has the push for school choice made? A […]
Is China set to implode?
Is China the rising tiger that Americans should fear? Not exactly, says one commentary in Canada’s National Post, which predicts “China’s coming fall.” The essay is a good reminder of the fact that capitalism does not stand on its own; instead it requires a minimal level of integrity in government. Corruption in the Chinese government is enriching many people, but could lead to the downfall […]
School Choice is Good Because It’s a Moral Policy
Though people can have many reasons for supporting school choice, it’s commonly supported by free-market institutes. Why is that? The answer may be obvious, but then again, maybe not, so here’s an answer: An advocate of maximizing the role of markets in public policy should support such a policy because it maximizes the role of individual choice in the distribution of goods and services in […]