Month: October 2005

Summary

Proposed legislation against “price gouging” is a bad idea. Rising prices in the wake of a disaster help to ration scarce resources and prevent shortages. Businesses that raise prices too high will lose customers, while bureaucratic attempts to fix prices are counterproductive and immoral. (more…)

The Portland Development Commission is close to spending millions of public dollars to subsidize a new Convention Center hotel. Cities around the country have been paying private developers to build such hotels on the theory that they will bring more visitors, thus turning losing convention centers into profitable businesses.

Studies have documented the fallacy that (more…)

Two years ago my family began making our own homemade diesel out of used fryer grease. Now we are watching with interest as the biodiesel movement gains momentum in the Pacific Northwest.

Seed crushing and biodiesel processing plants are opening or planned in multiple Northwest cities and bills to advance the alterative fuel have been hot items in state legislatures and Congress. Legislation has focused primarily on financial incentives and use mandates.

While well-intentioned, policy-makers are on the wrong track (more…)

Hurricane Katrina’s 372,000 displaced school children have become pawns in a political game they never signed up for. While scores of public, private and religious schools have taken them in, the question before Congress is whether to reimburse all host schools, or just the public ones.

Louisiana’s Republican and Democrat Senators want (more…)