Grants and government-backed loans have pumped ever more money into the education market.  The idea was to make college more "affordable", but the actual result was simply to drive up prices.  Schools upped their tuition and fees to absorb what students and parents could pay, plus the extra money from the government.  ...more

Contrary to what some people seem to think, most drivers really aren't idiots.  That's why speed limits should be set at the 85th percentile.  (Where they're necessary at all.  There are plenty of rural interstates that really don't need any.)  Instead of busting anybody who exceeds some arbitrary limit, crack down on ...more

And one more time, the problem isn't caused by pot, it's caused by pot prohibition.  If it were legal, few of these problem would be occurring.  Ever heard of houses ruined by underground tomato cultivation?  For the record, I'm not a marijuana advocate.  I'm just a foe of prohibition.  Howzabout treating people as...more

I'm amused (yet disgusted) by the way some people frame lower taxes as some kind of giveaway, as if everything that anyone produces belongs to the state, and they're doing us a favor with every cent they allow us to keep.  Of course, once you've decided you know how to spend other people's money better than they do, I ...more

Let's think about this for a second.  I took the low estimate for annual cost ($1.9 billion) and the high estimate for lives saved (112) and injuries prevented (8,374).  1,900,000,000 divided by 8,486 works out to over two-hundred thousand dollars ($213,819.49) per death or injury prevented.  Is this really a cost-effe...more

Yeah, except when the cameras don't produce enough revenue, cities have a charming habit of shortening yellow lights.  This tends to produce more accidents, not fewer.  It's all about raising money, no matter how much the powers-that-be may pontificate about safety.