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South Korea’s "DarkSeoul" Attack Highlights Challenges for Cybersecurity
Tweet Share on Facebook March 29, 2013 CommentHans Brechbühl is executive director of the Glassmeyer/McNamee Center for Digital Strategies and an adjunct associate professor at the Tuck School of Business. M. Eric Johnson is faculty director of the Center and associate dean of the MBA program at Tuck.
ATMs stopped dispensing cash. Computer screens at major broadcasters went blank. Online banking services ground to a halt. Last week, South Korea experienced a cyber-nightmare that may not be unusual in the coming years. An attack on the scale of "DarkSeoul," whose origins are as yet unknown, is almost certain to be replicated in the U.S. and Europe in the next decade.
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The Army Corps of Engineers Excels at Wasting Money
Tweet Share on Facebook March 27, 2013 CommentRyan Alexander is the president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
As budget watchdogs, we know that some federal agencies are more wasteful than others in almost every sense. For nearly two centuries, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been one of those agencies that seems to excel at wasting taxpayer money. (Someone on my staff has an 1836 House Ways and Means Committee report that documents 25 Corps projects that were over budget and demands, "actual reform, in the further prosecution of public works." Here at Taxpayers for Common Sense we are nerds—and proud of it.)
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Regulatory Reform Requires Quality Independent Analysis
Tweet Share on Facebook March 25, 2013 CommentPatrick McLaughlin is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and the co-creator of RegData, an online database that quantifies regulation. You can reach him on Twitter @EconPatrick.
Several states have recently started pursuing much-needed regulatory reforms, as the rise of the Office of the Repealer in Kansas demonstrates. Despite the office's dramatic name, it is quite reasonable to aspire to eliminate and prevent the creation of regulations that are economically inefficient.
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No, Paul Ryan's Budget Won't Reduce Health Care Costs
Tweet Share on Facebook March 22, 2013 CommentDavid Brodwin is a cofounder and board member of American Sustainable Business Council. Follow him on Twitter at @davidbrodwin.
The latest budget proposal from the House of Representatives proposes fundamental changes to the way Medicare and Medicaid are funded. For Medicare, the government would give vouchers to seniors, and then each senior would buy their own insurance on the open market. (Obama's health care exchanges would be scrapped.) For Medicaid, the federal government would give block grants to states, and each state would design (and fund) its own Medicaid program.
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The Murray Budget, Like Simpson-Bowles, Is a Responsible, Centrist Plan
Tweet Share on Facebook March 22, 2013 CommentChad Stone is chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Pundits depict the contrasting budgets of House Budget Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Budget Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) as mere statements of their respective parties' wish lists. But, in fact, the Murray budget—like every one of President Obama's budget proposals over the past couple of years — looks like the kind of centrist compromise those pundits profess to want.
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Spending Programs Dressed Up As Tax Cuts Are Bloating The Federal Budget
Tweet Share on Facebook March 20, 2013 CommentRyan Alexander is the president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
As Congress prepares to pass a continuing resolution to approve discretionary spending for the remainder of fiscal year 2013—and talks about how to implement or amend the sequester—we hear a lot of chatter about wasteful spending and ways to reduce the federal budget.
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Congress Must Enact More Thorough Patent Reform
Tweet Share on Facebook March 18, 2013 CommentEli Dourado is a research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University with the Technology Policy Program.
Silicon Valley firms have complained about "patent trolls" for years. As nonpracticing entities, trolls acquire patents but don't produce anything with them except lawsuits against companies that may (or may not) infringe on their patent portfolios. In recent years, trolls have even become a tool that practicing companies use to stifle competition. By transferring a patent to a troll and retaining a license, firms can inflict legal pain and distraction on their competitors.
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Paul Ryan and the GOP's 'Good Cop/Bad Cop' Deficit Strategy
Tweet Share on Facebook March 15, 2013 CommentDavid Brodwin is a cofounder and board member of American Sustainable Business Council. Follow him on Twitter at @davidbrodwin.
President Obama and Rep. Paul Ryan stalk each other, each seeking advantage in the epic negotiations over taxes and spending driven by deficit worries. Obama launched a charm offensive this week, trying to pry loose a few Republicans to get a "grand bargain" done. Meanwhile Ryan's new budget proposal defines a starting point for negotiation that's to the right of what the electorate rejected less than four months ago. To Obama, "winning" means getting a deal with the fewest possible concessions—few enough to avoid earning the undying enmity of the coalition that put him back in office. For Ryan, winning means holding fiercely to wavering Republicans and making Obama pay the steepest possible for a deal. Ryan and his less extreme colleagues have caught Obama in a classic "good cop/bad cop" negotiating strategy.
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The Smoke and Mirrors of the Congressional Budget Process
Tweet Share on Facebook March 12, 2013 CommentRyan Alexander is the president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
This week budget committees in both the House of Representatives and the Senate will be considering budget proposals for Fiscal Year 2014. Even though we haven't seen the president's budget request for FY2014 and Washington hasn't even settled on spending levels for FY2013 (the six month stopgap spending expires at the end of this month). So just what do the budget committees in the House and the Senate hope to achieve and what purpose will the documents the committees release actually serve?
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Raising the Minimum Wage Hurts the Poor
Tweet Share on Facebook March 11, 2013 CommentMark Adams is a research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
When they respond to the president's plea to help hardworking Americans by raising the minimum wage, Congress should follow the president's intent and not his policy. Government regulations, including the minimum wage, do little to help the poor. If Congress and the president want to help the poor, they should start by eliminating regulations that redistribute away from the poorest families.
