September 24, 2015

The Evolution of the Fracking Revolution

History will record that in the last decade, the American oil industry staged one of the most miraculous recoveries in economic history.  In its own way, this recovery ranks with the resurrection of the Japanese and German economies after WWII. ...

June 15, 2015

Fracking: You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet!

It was only a couple of months ago that articles were being written about the demise of fracking, mainly by those skeptical of or even opposed to fracking – or written by people on the payroll of enemies of America’s energy renaissance. ...

April 5, 2015

Good News for School Reform

Several recent news reports are worth reviewing for the good news they bring about American K-12 school reform. The first is the news out of Atlanta that eleven out of twelve accused Atlanta educators have been found guilty of school test fraud. ...

March 2, 2015

Russian Money and Useful American Idiots: The Same Old Story

In a recent piece reviewing some of the geopolitical consequences of fracking, I had the nerve to suggest that Russia – that is, Putin’s wannabe Soviet Union Redivivus – was financing putative environmentalist opposition to fracking...

December 23, 2014

Melancholic Milestones

The U.S. has recently reached three major turning points, all of them worrisome. The first is the news report that China has now officially overtaken the U.S. as the largest economy on Earth, and indeed in all of history.  The International M...

July 10, 2014

A Fifth Column Undermines the War for American Energy Independence

The benighted administration of neo-socialist nebbish Obama continues to self-destruct with scandals (IRS-gate, Benghazi-gate, Green Energy-gate, GM-gate, and so on ad nauseam), foreign policy blunders (Egypt, Russia, Syria, China, Ukraine, Iraq, Isr...

May 21, 2014

Unions minus Coercion Equal Nothing

A recent piece in the WSJ is a classic illustration of the fact that the legendary political power of the vaunted labor unions is based at this point only on government-sanctioned coercion. One of the biggest supporters of Democrat politicians is ...

May 7, 2014

Toyota to California: 'Don't Mess with Texas'

Score a rather remarkable win for Texas in the business recruitment game: Toyota has announced that it is moving its California-based national headquarters to Texas. This is a considerable deal.  Toyota has had its U.S. headquarters and marke...

February 8, 2014

Free Trade: O Reaps What He Sows

A recent WSJ story struck my eye as an excellent illustration of the concept that you reap what you sow. The story reported that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) -- normally Obama's loyal lickspittle -- had broken ranks with the White House...

November 20, 2013

New Doubts about the Value of a College Degree

As Americans spend more and more to get college degrees, more and more people are beginning to question the value the recipients and the taxpayers are receiving. Certainly, as a percent of GDP, the U.S. spends more on college education than any oth...

November 4, 2013

Young Frogs Hop to New Ponds

A recent story concerning the French youth is fascinating.  It reports that a poll conducted by the leftist newspaper Le Monde shows that the French are not happy with their socialist government.  Seventy percent now believe that ...

October 28, 2013

Geopolitical Fallout from the U.S. Energy Revolution

A couple of recent reports about the geopolitical ramifications of the continuing U.S. energy revolutions are worth commenting upon. I regard the amazing renaissance in U.S. oil and natural gas production as a testament to the American spirit of en...

October 19, 2013

Rent-Seeking in French and English

Two recent news reports remind us anew just how much the neo-socialist Obama machine has made the American economic system resemble the dysfunctional French one. The first piece reports how the French socialist government has approved a law targeti...

October 10, 2013

The Coming of the Auto-Auto

The automobile constituted a major turning point in the history of the industrial revolution.  It dramatically increased mobility and the ease and speed of transportation.  It forever transformed the American economy and culture itself. ...

September 22, 2013

Unions Driven Crazy by Crisis

It has been obvious for quite some time that Big Labor is in crisis. Unions -- especially the private-sector ones -- are in deep trouble.  Despite their past prowess in electing politicians who would do their bidding (i.e., leftist Democrats), i...

August 18, 2013

What Fracking Hath Wrought

Several recent stories dramatically underscore the fact that the revolution in oil and natural gas production is continuing to cause profound long-term economic and geopolitical effects. The first piece reminds us anew of the Schumpeterian point th...

August 7, 2013

Unions Complaining about Digging Their Own Grave

Two reports -- ironically, both from the same source (the WSJ) on the same day -- point to continuing problems for the union movement. The first is the great news out of North Carolina of a defeat for the pernicious teachers' unions. Republican Gov...

June 8, 2013

Open Access to Public MOOCs

A couple of recent articles on the use of MOOCs (massive open online courses) in California colleges and universities raise an interesting ethical question -- one that hasn't attracted much attention, but certainly merits it.  The issue I have i...

April 6, 2013

French Follies Continue to Entertain

France is fascinating: a wonderful place to visit, with beauty, style, and culture.  But it has a statists welfare economy of an especially paralyzing nature -- and one that keeps playing out in some amusing ways. Certainly the Socialist gover...

February 13, 2013

Union Blues

A recent report of some importance seems to have escaped the eagle-eyes of the MSM, so it is worth bringing to light here. It turns out that even though unions reached the zenith of power with the re-election of their tool Obama last year, they hit ...

February 5, 2013

Domestic Energy: Triumph in the Face of Adversity

In the black days following the Obama administration's inaugural revels, some good news is always welcome.  And the WSJ has just furnished us with some good news, indeed. The news concerns the growth of American oil production.  Last year...

January 28, 2013

Bypassing Obama

In the black days following the Obama administration's inaugural revels, some good news is always welcome. And the WSJ has just furnished us with some good news, indeed. The news concerns the growth of American oil production. Last year it increased...

January 1, 2013

Atlas Left...with His Cheese!

One of my favorite French actors is the larger-than-life Epicurean and all-around bon vivant Gerard Depardieu.  His latest role is that of Atlas shrugging -- or, more exactly, taking it on the lam. It all started with the new French Socialist ...

December 17, 2012

More Students Thinking Outside the College Box

A number of recent articles explore the growing trend among college-age people to question whether college is worth the costs -- both the direct costs in terms of tuition and opportunity costs in terms of lost time.  In other words, many more co...

December 1, 2012

College Professors Get What They Asked For, Don't Like It Much

There is an antique saying -- no less true for its antiquity -- that you need to be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.  This came to mind when I read a recent report about what is happening at a Pennsylvania college. One o...

November 26, 2012

Approaching Crunch Time on the Student Loan Debacle

For a number of years now, a number of critics of the American system of higher education have rightly insisted that there is a "bubble" in the system, with more and more students running up loans in amounts they will find difficult to pay back. ...

October 8, 2012

Mitt Romney: The Whitest Man in the Room?

Some time back, I suggested that Romney is so squeaky-clean that, in their campaign, the Obamanistas would be reduced to snark-attacks focusing on the three things upon which they feel they can hurt him -- viz., that he is a rich, white Mormon. That ...

August 11, 2012

Teachers' Unions in Action

Two recent WSJ articles -- ironically, appearing on the same day -- remind us anew of the complete cynicism and utter immorality of the teachers' unions. The first is about the vicious fight that the Louisiana Association of Educators (LEA), one of t...

June 2, 2012

Regulators Gone Wild

How do we explain a government regulatory agency gone wild, turning viciously on its subject and seeking to destroy or impair it, regardless of the harm done to the general public? Some tough-minded economists some years ago developed a realistic des...

May 19, 2012

Note to President Romney: On Free Trade, Start with Brazil

If Mitt Romney defeats President Obama in November, it will be in great measure because he can articulate a coherent and compelling plan for rousing America from its economic malaise. Part of that plan will have to be returning to the formerly bipart...

April 14, 2012

Fracking Vindicated

The environmental left views the incredible rebirth of the American fossil fuel industry, wrought by unconventional methods (fracking and horizontal drilling), with alarm and disgust.  The idea that the United States could easily fulfill all of ...

March 2, 2012

Like the Price of Gas? Just Wait!

The worthy journalists of the mainstream media have not seen fit to raise urgent questions about the soaring price of gas, and the current the current administration's role in causing it. Contrast that with the intensely critical commentary directed ...

January 25, 2012

Crony College Capitalism, Chicago-Style

There is (and has been for quite a while) a move afoot to cronyize colleges -- that is, reward the key segments of the college industry that vote and contribute money the "right" way (which is actually the left or politically correct way!), and punis...

January 22, 2012

Obama's Head-Fake on U.S. Energy Development

The "insanity" of Obama's Keystone XL pipeline decision is only the latest of the administration's actions to block American fossil fuel production  to attract notice.  The EPA, the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture, and the SEC h...

January 18, 2012

Confirmed: Charter Schools Beat the Daylights Out of Public Schools

Is it any surprise that the mainstream media is ignoring the many recent reports that confirm the vast qualitative divide between public and charter schools? First was the news that the most recent Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores in reading a...

January 2, 2012

Unlimited Domestic Energy...Right Now

A rush of recent reports indicates that the explosion of non-conventional fossil fuel production continues to transform the world.  (Non-conventional fossil fuel production is the production of oil and natural gas by hydraulic fracking and horiz...

December 31, 2011

Remembering Baroness Thatcher

In my lifetime, I have witnessed only three cases of what I consider masterful governance: Ronald Reagan's presidency, Rudy Giuliani's mayoralty, and Margaret Thatcher's prime-ministership.  I have certainly witnessed other prominent historical ...

December 26, 2011

State of Denial: How New York May Squander Its Energy Boom

The Great North American Energy Renaissance is going full-bore, and it offers finally the prospect of true American energy independence.  This renaissance is due to the application of relatively recent technologies, such as horizontal drilling a...

November 26, 2011

Obama's Green War Continues

The Obama Regime has pursued a Green religious crusade on energy policy.  Part of this crusade --the soft option, so to say--has been to lavishly subsidize every kind of so-called "green energy" business (such as solar power, wind power, and eth...

November 14, 2011

Why Beverly Hills Needs School Vouchers

Despite the clear evidence that America's educational system is mired in failure, opposition to vouchers remains fierce.  While much of this opposition comes from quarters easily anticipated (such as teachers' unions and the prostituted politici...

November 9, 2011

School Reform Is Making Advances across America

I always like to report progress on a subject close to my classical liberal heart -- namely, the reform of our grotesquely dysfunctional K-12 public school system. School reform (from a classical liberal perspective) involves at least two things: sch...

October 1, 2011

Mickey D's in Education?

If, as I expect and pray for, voucher systems continue to be expanded and implemented around the country, several questions will become important.  One of them is, what form will private voucher schools take?  Will they (and should they) al...

September 10, 2011

The Continuing Disgrace of U.S. Education

If Americans dared to hope that their K-12 educational system might be improving, several new articles will bring the poor souls back to reality. The first is a piece by Paul Peterson of the Harvard Program on Educational Policy and Governance. ...

September 8, 2011

The Watermelon Regime's Pay-to-Play Way

The recent domino-like downfall of a slew of solar energy companies is shedding light on both the failure and corruption inherent in green politics. Most prominently in the news was the bankruptcy of Solyndra LLC, a Fremont, California-based manufact...

September 2, 2011

A State of Total Insanity

Two recent stories out of California show that what is already the most stupidly governed state is slipping into outright insanity. The first is a new illustration of the crazy compensation levels of all too many state employees.  It turns out t...

August 28, 2011

Obama Solves the Illegal Immigration Problem

It pains me to acknowledge any successes of the Obama Regime.  Luckily for me -- though not for the country -- the Regime hasn't had many successes, so I have been spared having to endure much pain.  But I must credit the Regime with one: i...

August 21, 2011

The Superiority of School Vouchers Demonstrated

The failure of the American K-12 public school system has been obvious for decades.  Some of us fossils can recall the public uproar that accompanied the release of the report "A Nation at Risk" back in 1987, documenting the mediocre at best, di...

August 13, 2011

Crazy Priorities in California's Colleges

Several recent stories point up the California state government's insane spending priorities when it comes to the state's increasingly dysfunctional system of higher education. The first was the report in the LA Times that the California State Univer...

August 3, 2011

Look for the Union Label...Courtesy of the Smoking Union Brand

It is simply amazing how obnoxious the UAW is, and how shameless.  It drove two of the three U.S. automakers into bankruptcy by its ceaseless efforts to extract ever more ridiculous increases in compensation for ever more obscene decreases in wo...

July 9, 2011

California's Newest Job-Killer

The job-killing internet sales tax law just signed by Governor Jerry Brown will only accelerate the decline of our most populous state. Consider the facts.  Already, on the recent ranking of states on the basis of their tax climates done by the ...

June 20, 2011

More Enviro-Anomalies

Some recent news reports shed light onto anomalies in the environmentalist weltanschauung, a peculiar form of paganism I have characterized elsewhere as driven by self-loathing hominids. The first report brings us more news about the downside of wind...

June 18, 2011

Trains to Nowhere

Two recent reports remind us of how ridiculous the Department of Transportation is when it comes to passenger rail service and offer additional insight into why this nation is heading towards bankruptcy. The first story is that Amtrak, our socialized...

June 2, 2011

How to Win Payoffs and Intimidate Enemies in Obama's America

Some recent stories instruct us anew on the cardinal tenets of Obamanomics, a.k.a, pay for play the Chicago way.  Consider first the story reviewing the rush of organizations to get exemptions from Obamacare.  So far, nearly 1,400 different...

May 25, 2011

Good News for School Choice

Despite the fact that the country is still in the statist grip of the Obama regime, several recent reports offer some evidence that school choice is inching forward.The first was the report last month that Obama, under pressure to get a budget deal d...

May 18, 2011

Environmentalist Schizophrenia

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May 1, 2011

Nuclear Power and Dread Risk

The eminent cognitive psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer wrote a classic article back in 2004 for the journal Psychological Science which, I believe, explains a bizarre fact about America energy policy.In "Dread Risk, September 11, and Fatal Traffic A...

April 17, 2011

Energy: A Tale of Two Narratives

When it comes to energy, two prominent narratives exist.  The environmentalist narrative states that the world has only a limited amount of supplies of fossil fuel, so we need to enact steep taxes or other statist punishments to make people cons...

April 15, 2011

Merit Pay for Teachers Works and the Evidence Now Proves It

The idea that any business would pay employees based simply on time served, rather than on the quality of work performed, is economically daffy on its face.  It is as offensive on economic grounds as it is on philosophic ones. On economic ground...

March 29, 2011

Another Fine Pension Mess

Amidst the raucous squawking occasioned by Obama's Kinetic Military Action in Libya, a story has gone unremarked in the general press. It concerns the pension tsunami that is looming at all levels of government.The story is the flimsy state of the Pe...

March 12, 2011

The Green Dream Is an Economic Nightmare

A rush of recent reports on energy has much to say about the fundamental foolishness of the green vision of energy production -- the vision long regnant in academia and the one that informs the Obama regime.The green vision -- really, the green dream...

February 6, 2011

A Hollywood Ending

It appears that the growing economic crises the states are facing are concentrating politicians' minds wonderfully.  In particular, a number of states seem to be awakening to the fact that tax subsidization of businesses in the hope of increased...

December 17, 2010

Expose the Public Pension Mess

It seems that many members of the incoming Congress are mindful of the looming tsunami of unfunded state and municipal worker pension liabilities, not to mention the impending insolvency of cities and even states (such as California, Illinois, and Ne...

December 8, 2010

Crony Car Capitalism

Several recent revelations bring home just what a cesspool of crony capitalism the American auto industry has become.  The Obama administration and the UAW (Obama's major financial and political supporter) are running the show.First is the news ...

May 12, 2010

President Hamlet's Energy Policy

Obama is proving to be as indecisive on energy policy as he is on so many other things. He is a leader as indecisive as Hamlet.Consider his actions on Afghanistan. Obama ran on the promise of making Afghanistan the focus of our military efforts, clai...

May 7, 2010

Dissonance and Victimhood

Obama's longtime minister was the infamous Rev. Wright. One of the tenets of Wright's peculiar theology that shocked and outraged most European-Americans was that the AIDS virus was invented by whites to exterminate blacks. While this issue was swept...

June 10, 2009

The Ethical Case for Boycotting Chrysler and GM

In business ethics, the typical way one makes a judgment about the morality of a business action or practice is to consider the facts surrounding it in the light of four major ethical perspectives. These four ethical theories have been the ones consi...