In the digital age, the monetization of personal assets has become a new phenomenon. Whether it is renting out the spare bedroom in your house through Airbnb, using your personal vehicle to earn money by transporting people via Uber or Lyft, or even booking a luxury private jet at a fraction of the cost through JetSmarter.
Purple Money
The largest public-private partnership (P3) in the U.S. is expected to start construction by the end of the year sits just outside the Capital Beltway in Maryland. What Maryland calls the Purple Line, we consider a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars. The Purple Line was first estimated to cost around $2 billion to construct, operate, […]
State Tobacco Settlement Funds Go Up In Smoke
In 1998, 46 states and five U.S. territories signed onto the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) in order to recover taxpayer dollars lost to the treatment of tobacco-related health issues, which would then be used to fund anti-smoking campaigns and public health programs. As part of the settlement, the states and territories will receive an estimated total of $246 billion over the first 25 years.
Waste Land
In the land of the free, the federal government still controls more than 50 percent of all land west of Kansas. The ongoing control of such a large part of the western states by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has been disastrous to the environment and the economy. With record-setting wildfires burning millions of acres, emitting pollutants into the air, and destroying habitats and watersheds, the only solution is to transfer the public lands to willing states, which will provide for more accountable and efficient land management.
Water Wars: The Man-Made Drought
In the summer of 2002, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and several other local environmental activist groups in California announced their radical agenda to combat the “drought” in California by removing 1.3 million acres of farmland from production in the San Joaquin Valley. The effort to remove such a vast amount of farmland from production was due to an effort to save a 3-inch long minnow called the Delta Smelt. The burden that water policies in California have had on taxpayers is often overlooked and widely misunderstood. It is worth understanding what these policies mean and how they affect not only California, but the rest of the country.
The Moral Hazard of Subpriming Solar
In January 2016, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker announced the launch of the $30 million Mass Solar Loan Program (MSLP). MSLP will provide residential solar customers income-based loan support and interest rate buy downs. The program will also include a subprime loan loss reverse scheme to reduce the risk to lenders, opening the door for financial chaos to ensue.
Solar Wars: The Revenge of the Subsidies
Those who have followed the solar energy debate may be the only ones aware of “net metering.” For everyone else, it is worth understanding what it means and how it works.
Net Metering: Get Subsidies or Die Tryin’
The pro-solar energy activists have been on full alert since the Nevada State Legislature passed a solar bill last May that failed to raise the net metering cap for rooftop solar customers.