FREE is preparing for our August 25-29 seminar. We designed it for Article III federal judges and their clerks. This program will feature a field trip to Yellowstone Park. We will have presentations from the current Park Superintendent, a retired superintendent of Yellowstone, and natural scientists specializing in wildlands ecology. Ramona and I have been […]
Read MoreIntroduction by John Baden, Chairman, FREE My friend and colleague, professor Jerry Johnson of Montana State University, just returned from two inspiring trips. One was to Lake Iliamna, the largest lake in Alaska. The other was the Greater Yellowstone Coalition’s (GYC) first 400-mile bike trip through the Greater Yellowstone area. Jerry’s essay below focuses on the […]
Read MoreThis column is an exploratory essay and I welcome your suggestions. I’m thinking of creating the Greater Yellowstone Policy Salon Series, an adventure in intellectual and policy entrepreneurship. Let’s unpack this new idea and I hope influence change for the better. There is a huge potential for policy reform in nearly every arena of American […]
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Anyone who pays even passing attention to American politics is familiar with the map (Figure 1) of the United States showing states in which a majority of voters favored President Obama (colored blue) and those where Romney garnered the most votes (in red). This map conveys three dominant messages: first, that states can be meaningfully […]
Read MoreIntroduced by Dr. John A. Baden, PhD Here is one great truth that has stuck with me since I was an undergraduate. There is little disagreement among micro economists; their basic model is largely uncontested. This field studies the behavior of individual households and firms in making decisions on the allocation of limited resources. It examines markets and […]
Read MoreThe End of Unions? by Richard A. Epstein (Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow and member of the Property Rights, Freedom, and Prosperity Task Force) Defining Ideas: A Hoover Institution Journal What Michigan Governor Rick Snyder gets right and wrong about labor policy. The age of big government is now upon us. The question is how to […]
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Despite gains in employment and a drop in the jobless rate in November, the labor force data released Friday were disturbing. They showed a drop of 350,000 in the number of people in the labor force, a big decline for one month and an extension of a troubling trend. Here is the bigger picture: the […]
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This article appeared in New York Post on December 3, 2012. Washington is consumed with wrangling over how to deal with the specter of big automatic tax hikes that will hit Jan. 1 when the Bush tax cuts expire. It’s also the day that the sequester kicks in, which is the budget-wonk term for an automatic process […]
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Introduction by John Baden: Ramona and I often are out of town on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, Election Day. Since we are likely to be gone, we are registered to receive “absentee ballots.” How easy they are; mark, sign, stuff into envelopes, put on a stamp, and we’ve done a small portion of […]
Read MoreAllen Johnson is founder and leader of Christians for the Mountains. This group is devoted to fighting mountain top removal mining in West Virginia and adjacent areas. Christians for the Mountains helps the people and environment that suffer from this destructive but politically powerful abuse. I’ve known and worked with Allen for several years and […]
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