Category: Commentaries

Summary Governor Kulongoski recently unveiled a new plan for creating “green” jobs in…

Summary African-Americans support school choice at a rate higher than any other ethnic…

Summary The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program enjoys broad bipartisan support, yet Congress is…

Summary The Salem-area Ready to Learn-Ready to Work program helps high school students…

Summary Portland’s population is expanding, but our highway and bridge network is crumbling….

Summary Journalist Andrew Gumble recently wrote in The Independent (UK): “Poverty deepens when…

Summary Oregon’s economy will create an estimated 250,000 new jobs over the next…

Summary As if helping kids weren’t hard enough, Oregon foster parents may one…

Summary A Portland delegation saw what real education reform looks like on a…

Summary For over 25 years, an increasing number of other countries have established…

Summary The Social Security System worked well when there were sixteen workers to…

Summary Dick Stamm’s experience on an Illinois school board shows what four dedicated…

Summary While supposedly a boon for tobacco prevention efforts, the Master Settlement Agreement…

Summary The demand for school choice is growing. The Children’s Scholarship Fund-Portland has…

Summary The slogan, “Business should pay its fair share,” misses the point. No…

Summary Welfare dependent people need access to physical, social and economic mobility to…

Summary Clean-up of pollution from motor vehicles has been one of the great…

Summary While TriMet has agreed to some reforms in the wake of the…

Summary “Income inequality” is a central part of the debate surrounding poverty and…

Summary The polling data is trending toward school choice. As more and more…

Summary The root of the contemporary American dilemma about how much to spend…

Summary Individual Oregon income taxpayers are set to receive a record $1.1 billion…

Summary The development of municipal wireless broadband networks has been popular with local…

Summary An expansive amount of research from across the political spectrum demonstrates the…

Summary Property is more than land. Eroding Oregonians’ property rights jeopardizes all the…

Summary The more something is taxed, less of it is produced. The capital…

Summary Milton Friedman wrote: “Nobody uses somebody else’s resources as carefully as he…

Summary A committee representing the three Central Oregon Counties has created a regional…

Summary Measure 50 on the November ballot would lock a tobacco tax into…

Summary Private sector unionism has declined to the point of irrelevance in America,…

Summary The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that retirees do not have an ownership…

Summary Congress wants to expand SCHIP to provide more uninsured children with health…

Summary Many of the problems present in Oregon’s health care system associated with…

Summary The payday lending interest rate cap passed by the Oregon legislature has…

Summary By defining the state’s most abundant energy resource, running water, as “non-renewable,”…

Summary While consumer choice is a proven cost-cutter, health insurance mandates raise premiums,…

Summary The 2007 Oregon Legislative Session ended June 28. With very few exceptions,…

Summary In just 10 years’ time, the Social Security system will begin to…

Summary The implication that private business success stories are really dependent on government…

Summary Low-income workers need access to higher-skilled jobs to increase their income and…

Although the phrase “light rail” wasn’t even mentioned in the hearing, it seemed…

From the 1840s through the 1860s more than 80,000 pioneers walked beside their…

Summary One third of the legislature supported the Freedom to Choose My School…

House Education Committee votes on our school choice proposal On Friday, May 11,…

While waiting to testify on another bill before the House Consumer Protection Committee,…

Summary Microenterprises have much to offer to the poor in this country, but…

Summary Protecting the earned income of low-income families is a proven method of…

Thursday, April 5, 2007, was a great day for me personally. I was…

When Sally C. Pipes of the Pacific Research Institute in San Francisco gave…

Summary The growing number of low-income workers in Oregon’s rural counties calls attention…

Summary Government health insurance mandates intended to increase health care coverage for all,…

Summary Central economic planning suffers from the fallacy of composition: assuming that what…

Ending Oregon’s War on the Poor 10 Strategies for Reducing Economic Barriers Cascade…

The legislative debate on whether to finance a rainy day fund by ending…

There’s no one right or wrong way to hold an election in a…

Cascade has researched, written and testified about what’s wrong with prevailing wage laws…

Summary Forty-three years after President Johnson declared the War on Poverty, Americans are…

Summary As Thomas Sowell once wrote, “What is politically defined as economic ‘planning’…

Summary The 2007 Oregon State Legislature is in full swing and it’s getting…

Oregon currently has 70 public charter schools which provide for some diversity in…

Summary Public benefit programs to support families in crisis have become distorted into…

Summary In his 2006 Action Plan for Energy, Governor Ted Kulongoski says he…

Summary While instrumental in maintaining some degree of stability for lower-income persons, the…

Summary Lack of reliable transportation is a crucial barrier for low-income and welfare…

Summary Metro’s $227.4 million bond measure on the ballot this November (Measure 26-80)…

Summary Oregon’s cigarette tax has become an “essential” source of funding for government…

Summary The ways in which Oregon judges are selected and held accountable lead…

Summary Prevailing wage laws discriminate against one group of workers in favor of…

Summary The Rainy Day Amendment responds to the fact that Oregon’s state budget…

Summary Three state lawmakers have turned the philosophy of individual rights on its…

Click here to read the report in PDF format This year, as you…

Summary The 2005 Oregon Legislature sought to improve health insurance by adding to…

Summary John Stossel’s recent TV special, “Stupid in America” energized the debate about…

Summary Though efforts to promote biodiesel have focused on subsidies and use mandates,…

Summary International commitments to increase foreign aid to African nations ignore the causes…

Summary Proposed legislation against “price gouging” is a bad idea. Rising prices in…

Summary Oregon is repeating Prohibition-era mistakes with the state’s new meth laws. Regulating…

Summary A Fourth of July flea market is a fitting celebration for the…

Summary Canada’s single-payer health care system was dealt a near-fatal blow in June…

Summary Proponents of new and more extensive laws against discrimination seem to lack…

Summary Occupational licensing boards often make licensing requirements arbitrarily difficult, limiting the competition…

Summary Fraudulent unemployment insurance claims cost Oregon taxpayers $76.3 million in 2003, or…

Summary Oregon’s teacher certification process keeps accomplished individuals from teaching their subjects in…

Summary Consolidating school districts sounds like a good idea, but in reality costs…

Summary Imposing price controls to protect consumers is one of the worst things…

Summary Both nationwide and in Oregon, Latino students score far below their white…

Summary Many public policies are designed to “get people out of their cars,”…

Click here to read the report in PDF format   The most pervasive…

Click here to read the full report in PDF format   As the…

Click here to read the report in PDF format   Conventional wisdom tells…

Politicians often use science as a source of statements to place their policy…