Celebrate Opening Days for School Choice, Major League Baseball with Media Bullpen
Baseball season’s Opening Day means it’s not only time to start rooting for my Colorado Rockies. It’s also a great opportunity to introduce you to a relatively new baseball-themed website created by the Center for Education Reform, The Media Bullpen, and to celebrate two large school choice victories — in Washington, D.C., and Indiana.
If low-income Coloradans spend big bucks on booze, candy, & movies, they can afford higher Medicaid copays
Are Colorado Medicaid recipients spending hundreds of dollars on candy, booze, cigarettes, and movies while the state forces taxpayers to fund their medical care? Yes, suggests the 2009 Consumer Expenditure Survey.
Update on Yellowstone Wolves
“Many people hoped that introduction of wolves into Yellowstone would bring down elk populations and allow ecosystem restoration,” the Antiplanner noted last week. “While the wolves have changed park dynamics (to the detriment of coyotes but in favor of foxes), they haven’t made much of a dent in elk numbers.” On the prowl in Yellowstone.Flickr […]
Pioneering Teacher Compensation Reform: K-12 Educator Pay Innovation in Colorado
The transformation of teacher compensation is an integral piece of improving the overall quality of the K-12 instructional workforce. Research overwhelmingly shows the predominant single salary schedule, which pays teachers strictly according to seniority and academic credentials, to be ineffective and financially unsustainable. Numerous local innovations — led by Harrison School District Two, Eagle County Schools, and a number of public charter schools — place Colorado at the forefront of teacher compensation reform.
One Contract or Two, Making Employees Opt Out of Union Dues Each Year Isn’t Fair
As reported in the Pueblo Chieftain, today is the day a newly combined union of teachers and classified employees in School District 70 begins its master agreement negotiations. That’s fine as far as it goes. I guess one contract is easier to negotiate than two. At the risk of repeating myself from last June, the […]
Is health insurance “Commerce among the States?”
Behind the current constitutional debates over ObamaCare, there is an assumption that Congress has power to regulate health insurance as “Commerce among the States.” However, in various decisions over 150 years, the Supreme Court ruled that “insurance” was not within the Constitution’s definition of “Commerce.” Only a single aberrant Supreme Court case says it is. […]
Can an Interstate compact (HB 11-1273) protect Colorado from ObamaCare?
“Rather than wasting scarce legislative time trying to find the least harmful way of “implementing” Obamacare, state politicians should invest in reforms that will survive long after Obamacare is relegated to history’s dustbin. Including health insurance in an interstate compact would be such a reform.”
Antiplanner’s Library: Freefall
Nobel-prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz‘s take on the 2008 financial crisis is simple: Free markets are bad; government is good; we need more government. This is, essentially, a reiteration of what is known as the Greenwald-Stiglitz theorem, which states that markets are imperfect, so “government could potentially almost always improve upon the market’s resource allocation.” A […]
Keep Hope Alive: D.C. School Choice SOAR Act Faces Key March 30 Vote
Tomorrow is a big day in Washington, D.C. I’m not talking about any big speeches by the President regarding overseas kinetic military actions or about Republicans and Democrats fighting it out over federal spending cuts.
On Wednesday the U.S. House of Representatives is slated to vote on the SOAR Act, which would restore and expand […]
Will Lawmakers Stop the AQCC’s (almost certainly) Illegal Regional Haze Plan?
I’ve written before about the Air Quality Control Commission’s outrageous Regional Haze Implementation Plan. In particular, I objected to the plan’s treatment of two small coal fired power plants near Steamboat Springs, Hayden 1 and Hayden 2, because it mandates controls that are at least $100 million more expensive than what is required by the […]
The 12 Worst Features Of ObamaCare
The worst parts of ObamaCare include the Basic Health Plan, waivers, Accountable Care Organizations, and Medicaid Expansion.
EUs War on Cars
Some people say the “war on the automobile” is a right-wing myth. Then the European Union goes and proposes to ban cars (or at least fossil-fuel-burning cars) from cities by 2050. To complement this ban, the EU proposes to significantly increase fuel taxes (as if they were not already high enough). It also hopes to […]
