The Cardinal's Nest Blog

  • Friends, Christmas is less than a week away! Hopefully, you’ve finished all your shopping. If not… I wish you luck this weekend out with fellow procrastinators.   With the spirit of gift-giving in the air, there are two key ways to think about the gifts you pick out for friends and family: efficiency and signaling.…

    December 19, 2019

  • “People need to be a valued member of something larger than themselves.” Chris Arnade, author, Dignity.   When I heard Mr. Arnade say this, I immediately though, “How many West Virginians feel as though they are a valued member of something larger?” I have no hard evidence, but I wager comparatively few. The quote, taken…

    December 5, 2019

  • We are so excited to announce that we are partnering with West Virginia Voices for Education Choices to host a screening of Miss Virginia! We will also be hosting Virginia Walden Ford herself for a Q&A session after the movie! Come prepared with your burning education choice questions. This will be an exciting way to…

    November 7, 2019

  • In these Halloween Haunts, we share some frightening government waste of  taxpayer money that is truly scarier than any horror film!    The Untrackable $200 million Asset   State lawmakers finally created a centralized state vehicle inventory system in 2018 to help track as many as 12,000 government vehicles. With a 2018 estimated population of…

    October 30, 2019

  • In these Halloween Haunts, we share some frightening government waste of  taxpayer money that is truly scarier than any horror film!    Superintendent’s Five-Finger Discount Yields Felony Charges A former superintendent and curriculum director for Logan County Public Schools, was charged with two counts of wire fraud, two counts of theft from a federal fund-receiving…

    October 30, 2019

  • In these Halloween Haunts, we share some frightening government waste of taxpayer money that is truly scarier than any horror film!    Health and Human Resources Wastes $1 Million on Phantom Leases   The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) wasted nearly $1 million in taxpayer money between 2015 and 2018 by…

    October 30, 2019

  • Is it time to relocate Washington, D.C.? Well, not in a literal geographical sense – that would be a feat that would make even Marvel supervillain, Ultron, blush. (Look up the plot for Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.) More realistically, what about relocating the litany of federal agencies that currently sit in our nation’s capital?…

    October 24, 2019

  • Government regulation of most industries is taken for granted. However, there are many fields where the free market could do a better job regulating quality and protecting consumers than the existing government apparatus. Government-imposed occupational licensing is often a burdensome requirement on people looking to get back to work, enter a new career field, or…

    October 10, 2019

  • We interact with prices every day.   But, what is a price? What do these prices mean? What information do prices convey?   Take a moment to think about it.   If you’re like me - most of the time, those interactions take the form of their sum ballooning wildly out of control and rapidly…

    September 26, 2019

  • Along with its partner, the Knee Center for the Study of Occupational Regulation at Saint Francis University, the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy released the final results from its study on the occupational licensing regime in West Virginia this week. In the study, we looked at West Virginia’s occupational licensing burdens compared to its…

    September 12, 2019

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