Uber vs. PUC

by Joshua Sharf | 11:38 pm, January 29, 2013

This past Saturday’s Wall Street JournalWeekend Interview was with Uber founder Travis Kalanick (“Travis Kalanick: The Transportation Trustbuster“).  Uber allows a customer to summon an otherwise idle limo or SUV, on demand, through a smartphone app.  The prices are competitive with town car service, and don’t require pre-arrangement.  The article details, in part, Kalanick’s battles [...]

PERA Gains a New Client Group

by Joshua Sharf | 10:00 am, October 19, 2012

What makes it so hard to fight the growth of government is its ability to create client groups seemingly at will, with the money of the very people it’s seeking to co-opt.  I see it myself all the time at the JCRC, where what had been private, service groups are reduced to begging for scraps [...]

Democrat Disillusionment

by Joshua Sharf | 1:31 pm, October 7, 2012

Wednesday night, Mitt Romney punctured the balloon that was Barack Obama’s inflated reputation as a debater and communicator.  I guess having a hollow core and thin skin is a bad combination. Romney did this largely by turning out not to be the stick figure that Obama had been running against for the last 18 months, [...]

Q3 and QE3

by Joshua Sharf | 4:13 pm, September 28, 2012

The Democrats-with-a-byline who populate the MSM are no doubt going to point with glee at the performance of the markets over the last quarter.  A good Q3 in an election year usually means re-election for a sitting president, and with the Dow Industrials up 6.6%, the S&P 500 up 8.4%, and the NASDAQ gaining 9.4%, [...]

Children of the Corn

by Joshua Sharf | 3:05 pm, July 27, 2012

My latest for Who Said You Said: “When everyone says you’re drunk, you’d better sit down.” When both The Wall Street Journal and NPR have questions about a policy, it’s time to rethink it. The Renewable Fuel Standard’s ethanol mandate requires an increasing amount of ethanol be blended in gasoline every year. Last year, more than a third of America’s corn [...]

WalMart Hatred and Racism?

by Joshua Sharf | 10:28 pm, July 9, 2012

I don’t tend to post a lot on purely social issues.  But there are times when the two issues intersect in their own very illuminating way.  During the June 26 hearing on the Colorado Health Care District redevelopment, one gentleman, one of three African-Americans in the room, took exception to some of the concerns being [...]

A Bridge Loan Over Troubled Waters?

by Joshua Sharf | 5:35 pm, June 22, 2012

As mentioned yesterday, the Denver Democrats have invited Rep. Maxine Waters to speak at the annual State House District 7 Unity Dinner this Saturday night. While we think Waters is a terrible excuse for a Congressman, she’s all-too-representative of her party in at least one respect – a belief that it’s possible to give money [...]

An Evening With Arthur Brooks

by Joshua Sharf | 11:19 pm, May 23, 2012

Also last night, Susie and I went to go hear Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute speak, at the Young Americans Center for Financial Education. The Center is truly a wonder, set up to teach grade schoolers about business, finance, and economics. Brooks spoke in Young Ameritowne, a large hall set up like a [...]

How Would You Sell The Tea Party?

by Joshua Sharf | 5:36 pm, March 22, 2012

Reading Malcolm Gladwell’s What the Dog Saw, I got to his essay, “True Colors: Hair Dye and the Hidden History of Postwar America.”  He argues that the difference between Clairol’s “Does She or Doesn’t She?” and L’Oreal’s “Because I’m Worth It,” is the difference between 1950s and 1970s feminism.  Moreover, even when the two product’s [...]

Chronicles of Crony Capitalism

by Joshua Sharf | 3:08 pm, February 23, 2012

So far, the LightSquared story has mostly been written as one of the FCC favoring a politically-connected company at the expense of its competition, and that favoritism having resulted in nothing but waste.  See, for example, today’s Coffee and Markets podcast on the subject. Their related links (Documents: LightSquared shaping up as the FCC’s Solyndra [...]

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