According to the Transportation Department website, LaHood’s entire career has been spent on government payrolls; he has no business experience of any kind. Perhaps that explains his fatuous notion that Spirit, a for-profit company in a fiercely competitive industry, can jack up its fees without regard to customer reaction.
Bob Higgs on defense spending, and on data:
Data are fine things; I’ve devoted much of my professional life to their examination and analysis. Yet it behooves all of us to realize that data may sometimes clothe madness or veil inhumanity, and to beware the power of numbers to lull us into an immoral sleep.
I once wrote a (less-powerful) essay along similar lines.
Campbell University economics professor (and GMU grad) Mark Steckbeck alerted me to his op-ed of a few months ago that relates to this blog post.
James Pethokoukis on five reasons why tax cuts are good for the economy.
Entrepreneurship and free enterprise. (HT Mrs. McAdoo) Clay Broga, who produced this video along with Dan Hayes, explains in an e-mail:
In an industry dominated by government subsidies, here’s an inspiring story of a small farming business that has excelled for 25 years without a dime from the government. In fact, the day I called them to propose doing the video, they had – that day – coincidentally met with a Department of Agriculture bureaucrat who was encouraging them to apply for a $4,000 grant. If we win the video contest, we’re sharing the winnings with them, and they will explicitly use the money instead of the $4,000 grant.
Wayne Crews and Ryan Young explain that regulation is a costly tax.
