By Steve La Fleur and Todd Wynn

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Summary:The first alternative fuel vehicle to hit the market arrived without government subsidies. Within a decade, the gas-powered automobile dominated the market. While the emergence of automobiles took place more than a century ago, it is an excellent analogy to the current development of the electric car. . . . Read more!

Metro, along with Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties, is nearing the end of a complicated planning process to designate urban and rural reserves for the next fifty years. But how do counties who have been struggling with identifying areas for growth and preservation over the next fifty years make an educated decision? . . . Read more!

Portland economic consultant and Cascade adjunct scholar Eric Fruits, Ph.D. joined other health care policy reform experts last week traveling the country to explain how state-based reforms like the Oregon Health Plan have failed and why current national reform efforts are doomed to also fail.

Watch Dr. Fruits interview in Arkansas here:

Rose Director Friedman, wife of the late Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, passed away yesterday at the age of 98.  While Milton was better known, Rose was a great economist in her own right, and a tireless champion of individual liberty. . . . Read more!

This summer Indiana became the most recent state to enact a state tax credit scholarship program for lower-income families to send their children to the schools of their choice. Providing a 50% tax credit for donations to student tuition scholarship organizations, the legislation promises to be a lifeline for lower-income children in the Hoosier state. . . . Read more!

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Summary: Cascade Policy Institute announces the establishment of the Rural Oregon Freedom Project. Cascade will work with rural communities and the state legislature to remove barriers inhibiting rural economic opportunity and to advance balanced and creative approaches to rural community issues. . . . Read more!

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Summary: A recent U.S. Supreme Court case requiring a school district to reimburse parents of a disabled child for education expenses widens the gap between the legal rights of disabled children and non-disabled children. In contrast, education tax credits or vouchers could provide every child with an education that meets his or her individual needs. . . . Read more!

Why are Governor Ted Kulongoski and the Oregon Legislature spending millions of dollars pursuing what could prove to be carbon-emitting energy? While Oregon’s commercialization of wind power may appear to be carbon-free, it can bring a hidden carbon footprint.
. . . Read more!