Showing posts with label states. Show all posts
Showing posts with label states. Show all posts

Which Of The 11 American Nations Do You Live In?

by Reid Wilson.     Red states and blue states? Flyover country and the coasts? How simplistic. Colin Woodard, a reporter at the Portland Press Herald and author of several books, says North America can be broken neatly into 11 separate nation-states, where dominant cultures explain our voting behaviors and attitudes toward everything from social  ... MORE

Conservative Coal Towns Are Being Destroyed

by Stephen Moore.      Here’s today’s political quiz question: what do these five states — Rhode Island, Vermont, California, Oregon and Maine — have in common. Yes they are blue states ruled by Democrats, but that’s not all. These are the states that use the least amount of coal — less than 2 percent — for electric power. In fact, almost all of the states   ... MORE

Steve Forbes: Income Tax Rate Cuts Work. Always.

The federal government could learn from the states.  One of the genius features of our federal system of government is that it allows states to be laboratories for policies, to see what works and what doesn’t. The great welfare reform bill of 1996 came out of the pioneering policies of Wisconsin, which demonstrated that there could be a work   ... MORE

Income Tax Makes States Radioactive To Sports Stars

by Travis H. Brown.     Add Ndamukong Suh to the ever-growing list of professional athletes who are bidding farewell to their high-tax home state in favor of sunnier economic climates. Suh – considered one of the top-two players in free agency this season – is leaving Detroit for Miami. By doing so, the defensive tackle will give himself a significant tax    ... MORE

Nullification, Now Coming To The Supreme Court?

by David A. Graham.    When the Tea Party wave arrived in 2010, it swept away much of the Republican Party's existing structure, and instituted a more populist approach. But as waves tend to do, it left some even older debris in its wake. "Nullification," the theory that states can invalidate federal laws that they deem unconstitutional, had its   ... MORE

A. Barton Hinkle: End State Monopolies On Liquor Sales

It's time to get the state out of the booze business.    Virginia made a big mistake four years ago when it failed to end the state’s monopoly on liquor sales, and its residents are going to pay the price for that — again. So far in 2014 Virginia has hauled in 6 percent more revenue than it had by this point last year. But lawmakers had planned     ... MORE

Why Ending FEMA Will Improve Disaster Response

by Chris Edwards.  Under the U.S. Constitution, the powers delegated to the federal government are “few and defined,” as James Madison noted in Federalist 45, while the powers of the states “will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people.” That decentralized    ... MORE

Mark Strauss: How To Reduce Painkiller Overdoses

Just ask states with legalized medical marijuana.      As the number of patients who receive opioid prescriptions to treat non-cancer pain has increased in the past decade, so too have the number of overdoses. A new study, however, finds that states that legalized medical marijuana between 1999 and 2010 had 25% fewer annual       ... MORE

Map: How Much $100 Is Really Worth In Every State

by Niraj Chokshi.    Not all Benjamins are created equal. For the first time ever, the federal government this year introduced a data series that compares price differences among states and metropolitan areas. Those estimates — regional price parities and real personal income — offer something simple and immensely useful for anyone considering   ... MORE

Plan To Split California Into Six States Closer To Reality


by Travis H. Brown.     Thanks to the signatures of more than 807,000 concerned Californians, an ambitious idea has moved that much closer to becoming a reality. The “Six Californias” Initiative, sponsored by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper, seeks to create areas that are more governable, more productive, and more successful. As I wrote  ... MORE

Western States Want Feds to Surrender “Federal” Land

by Alex Newman.     Elected officials from across the American West, from top lawmakers to county commissioners, held a historic gathering in Utah in recent days to discuss how Western states could wrest control of the almost 50 percent of land in the region currently claimed by the federal government. Aside from constitutional concerns — with    ... MORE

Taxes More Than Food, Housing, Clothing Combined

by Caroline May.      No wonder tax freedom day falls later this year. The day when the nation collectively has made enough money to pay its total tax burden for the year is three days later this year, according to a new report. According to a report released Monday by the Tax Foundation, this year Tax Freedom Day falls 111 days into 2014, on April 21.     ... MORE

Steven Greenhut: Will Six Californias Be Better Than One?

Many feel unrepresented by the state legislature.      When most people think of secession, they think of the type of disturbing events unfolding in the Ukraine. But efforts to break up political boundaries could be coming to California, albeit in a laid-back and peaceful manner, as Silicon Valley venture capitalist Tim Draper   ... MORE

Petition To Split California Into Six States Gets Green Light

More laboratories of liberty please.       A venture capitalist who feels colossal California is too unwieldy to govern is proposing to split it into six separate states, and Secretary of State Debra Bowen has given him the green light to start collecting petition signatures. Tim Draper filed a ballot initiative in December stating that because of      ... MORE

John Hood: Laboratories For Prosperity

Confirmation of free-market principles.     Over the past three decades, America's state and local governments have experienced a large and underappreciated divergence. Some places, usually but not always led by Republicans, have become friendlier to free enterprise. Other places, usually but not always led by Democrats, have become   ... MORE