government

So what’s next?

This morning, we went over the preordained Republican takeover of the Senate. So, other than having to hear “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says” over and over, what will the next two years look like? For the most part, you’d be correct in assuming that it’d look a lot like the last four years: With Democrat Barack Obama still the president, and a Republican-controlled House and Senate, it’s going to be a loud not much. Yet even with that caveat, we can still look into what a unified legislature is going to at least try, and perhaps...

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Private buses and the government as a business

Yglesias suggests that the future maybe should involve privately-owned intracity bus lines: Bus lines don’t have the power to transform neighborhoods that rail construction possesses. But buses are by far the cheapest and simplest way of adding mass transit, and municipal leaders should always have their eyes on potential ways to improve things. One possibility that naturally suggests itself is to let entrepreneurs start private intracity bus lines just as we have inter-city buses running from New York to DC, Philadelphia, Boston, etc. Unlike the barbering field I would want to see regulation of this kind of activity...

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Another unelected Prime Minister for the U.K.?

A bit ago, I made a (likely inebriated) prediction to Estes that I suspected that David Miliband, who had served as Foreign Secretary in the last Labour government, would be Prime Minister before 2011. And, gosh darn it, it looks as though it might be closer to reality. Gordon Brown today announced that he will resign as soon as a new government is formed, an action that had been predicted would be a necessary preerequisite to any deal with the Liberal Democrats to form a government. The Lib Dems had first approached the Tories because the Tories...

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