The Beacon | The Blog of the Independent Institute

Time 2020-06-26 06:04:22

Web Name: The Beacon | The Blog of the Independent Institute

WebSite: http://blog.independent.org

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You can now support the Independent Institute when you shop on Amazon with the AmazonSmile program. Every time you make a purchase, 0.5% will be donated to Independent on your behalf, at no extra cost to you. Just visit smile.amazon.com, log in using your usual Amazon account details, and select the Independent Institute as your charity.New Books Free Shipping On Orders Over $60! (Within U.S.A.) FUTURE: Economic Peril or Prosperity? Christopher J. Coyne, Michael C. Munger, Robert M. Whaples “California will restrict state-funded travel to Idaho as a result of two discriminatory bills signed into law in Idaho this year despite,” proclaims California Attorney General Xavier Becerra in a June 22 statement. This action extends a travel ban already in place since 2016. “California’s High-Speed Rail Is the Very Definition of a Boondoggle,” headlined a commentary by Adam B. Summers nearly one year ago. Plagued from the start by fanciful assumptions, the costs “quickly ballooned from $40 billion or $45 billion to $98.5 billion,” and Gov. Gavin Newsom said the project would “cost too much and take too long.” Embattled Californians might wonder, how the project is faring during the lockdown the governor proclaimed on March 19. The runaway federal spending that has accompanied the coronavirus pandemic will force a reckoning in the mandatory portion of the U.S. government s budget after the pandemic has passed.That s the assessment of AEI resident fellow James Capretta, who indicates that the reckoning will mean big changes for mandatory entitlement programs whose spending has been running on autopilot for years, such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which together represent the majority of future federal spending. “Is now the time to bring back affirmative action in California?” wonders Ben Christopher of CalMatters, in a piece about Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5, which could allow voters to repeal Proposition 209 in November. The 1996 ballot measure, the Sacramento Bee editorial board contends, “banned affirmative action in all state institutions.” In reality, the measure, officially titled the California Civil Rights Initiative, banned only state-sponsored racial, ethnic and gender discrimination. As CCRI states: We are not talking enough about Uruguay. That small South American country boasts impressive results in its handling of the coronavirus. It is also signaling that it wants to prosper and that it understands more freedom might be the way to go about it.Under president Luis Lacalle Pou, Uruguay has suffered a very low number of deaths from coronavirus (23 as of June 15) and the number of confirmed cases (848) is small. At no point did the government decree a national quarantine, preferring instead to let individual responsibility, guided by accurate and transparent information that originated from a team of scientists and experts, do the trick. In the wake of the death of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis cop, calls are ringing out to defund the police. Those who question the wisdom of such a move might want to consider some other candidates for defunding. The U.S. Department of Education would be a good place to start.  At the time of peak lockdown, nearly 94 percent of the U.S. population was placed under stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of Covid-19. Currently, every state is working toward ending, or already has ended, their stay-at-home measures.Lifting the lockdown has provided many benefits. Foremost, the U.S. economy climbed out of a severe downturn, adding nearly 2.5 million jobs and reducing the unemployment rate from 14.9 percent to 13.3 percent. Despite widespread predictions of a long recovery period, some are calling recent economic turmoil the shortest recession in U.S. history. The pensions of public employees, the people who work for state or local governments, are in trouble.After years of promises by politicians who, like public employees themselves, have done little to provide funds to pay for the generous retirement benefits many public employee pension funds are now at increased risk of insolvency as the economy faces turmoil from the coronavirus lockdowns. Unfortunately, we have seen this before: police beat, shoot, or kill an unarmed person, people gather in the streets to demonstrate peacefully, but eventually rioting and looting follows. Anger erupts, blood is spilled, property destroyed, neighborhoods are ruined, but, in the end, local policing is largely unaffected.Typically, the governmental response involves creating a task force to investigate the police department at the local, state, or federal level; reports are published; news conferences held; training is modified, but the institutional structure of local policing remains intact. Another unjustified police killing occurs soon thereafter. 2020 INDEPENDENT INSTITUTE, 100 SWAN WAY, OAKLAND CA 94621-1428 | (510) 632-1366 | (510) 568-6040 FAX | SEND EMAIL

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