Tag: Bragging

Where I’ve Been

It’s been a minute since I’ve posted here, as virtually all my time this year has been spent on The Center for Economic Accountability, where I’m the president and one of the founding board members.

I’ll keep this site for stuff that doesn’t relate to my work on behalf of transparency, accountability and free-market-based reforms of state and local economic development policy, but for the most part you should be paying attention to the CEA’s website (or Facebook page, or Twitter feed) if you want to see what I’m working on at any given time.

(I’m not quite sure why anyone would, but life’s full of mysteries. Thanks for visiting.)

Op-ed in the Des Moines Register

DMRI’m proud to have co-written an op-ed in the Des Moines Register with John Hendrickson of Iowans for Tax Relief. Iowa’s politicians have gone hog-wild (pun intended) for economic development subsidies, and it’s time for the state’s taxpayers to have the transparency and accountability they need to decide whether or not they’ve gotten a good deal for their money.

Op-ed in The Oakland Press

Oakland PressMy most recent op-ed on economic development ran in The Oakland Press this week. In it, I try to get the reader to think about whether or not the stakeholders in economic development subsidies are generally telling us the truth about what’s going on, and what we should require of them in the process.

Detroit News op-ed: Simply adding more voters won’t make our government more representative

DN squareThe Detroit News published another op-ed from me today, taking on the proposed voting reform ballot initiative. I think most of the practical fixes are decent ideas (other than the restoration of straight-ticket voting) but I think the realistic effect of adding more unengaged voters will be an increase in candidates winning on name recognition or partisan ID rather than their merits.

I think the real lesson here is that if we’re this dysfunctional at choosing the people who run our government, we should probably rethink how much power we give that government — and those people — over our lives.

Expert Opinion

It’s always nice to have people whom I respect like my work. But it hit an entirely different level today when nationally-known and widely respected economics professor Mark J. Perry wrote a blog post for the American Enterprise Institute to point people at my “excellent” and “insightful” Jones Act corporate welfare article.

That makes one thing I’ve written that Dr. Perry liked and found valuable (as far as I know), so I’ve only got several hundred more to go until we’re even.