Monthly Archive: August 2013
Federal election law reforms, like most policy reforms, add layers of regulation to the legislative onion. Law and established tradition becomes ever more corrupted by legislation, where legislators and regulators endeavor to plug the leaks and...
A news article on the recent deaths of dolphins along the Atlantic coast includes this interesting personal story about Bob Schoelkopf, a former dolphin trainer and now opponent of dolphin captivity: … His diving...
Who knew that “tens of millions” of rubber ducks race rivers for charity. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, in a KUOW radio interview, discusses the popular charity races where people can bet on (or “adopt”) a rubber duck for...
In May 2012, a majority of Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to bar the adoption of new catch-share programs along the Atlantic Coast or in the Gulf of Mexico. In the...
Bryan Caplan, in The Myth of the Rational Voter, examines why democratic majorities tend to vote for people and policies that slow social progress and economic prosperity. Caplan argues that voters tend to make systematic errors...
Jeffrey Smith’s June 12, 2013 article in The Atlantic, “‘Walking-Around Money’: How Machine Politics Works in America Today,” takes a look at the long history of paying for votes in U.S. elections. Get Out...
How can people make sure their vote is counted? One way is to vote both in person and via absentee ballot. Many send in their absentee ballots at the last minute, and some apparently...
Jonathan Adler, in a 2011 Volokh Conspiracy post, notes that catch shares made Alaskan king crab fishing a lot less dangerous. Alder links to a Nov. 14, 2011 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Alaskan...
Bradley Smith argues that federal government restrictions on tea party and other Constitution and conservative groups were not related to their tax-exempt status, but rather to their ability to gather, raise funds, and speak...
Rognvaldur Hannesson’s Privatization of the Oceans is a fascinating story of the development of property rights in ocean fisheries… Hannesson sets the tone with an interesting comparison between the development of property rights in...