Figuring Out How Many Calories Are in Your Burrito

As if the Affordable Care Act wasn’t controversial enough, a lesser-known provision of the law has critics warning of regulatory zeal. Section 4205  of the ACA (in case you haven’t read that far) requires restaurants to post calorie counts for the meals they sell, a requirement critics claim will be costly to comply with, while being…

How Little Did We Accomplish with First Round of Fiscal Cliff Negotiations?

Here is a quick summary from the Wall Street Journal of what the U.S. Federal Debt looks like now that we have avoided, at least for now, the fiscal cliff.  As you will see, we didn’t do much to balance the budget.  In the short run, that is ok.  Too much balancing, too quickly, and…

What Airplane Safety, Mammograms, and Gun Massacres Have in Common

Gun rights advocates are correct: a well armed principal might have reduced the death toll from the tragic elementary school shootings in Connecticut last week. Gun carrying citizens might also have been able to take down the shooters in Aurora and Virginia Tech. To most people, after all, guns are about self-defense, not about committing crimes….

Evaluating the Quality of Charter Schools and Tertiary Care Hospitals

If Americans judged the quality of hospital care the way Newsweek judges high schools, we would soon be inundated with “charter hospitals” that only treat healthy patients. As reported in The New YorkTimes , thirty-seven of Newsweek’s top 50 high schools have selective admission standards, thereby enrolling the cream of the eighth grade crop. That means…