Environment
California
Voters, not leaders, confront Vallejo’s mess
Two years after Vallejo made history as the first city in the Golden State to file for bankruptcy, voters have grasped the city’s dire financial situation even if some members of local government haven’t. Residents appeared to have approved Measure A by a slim margin last week. The vote count ...
Commentary
The Massachusetts health care mess is coming soon to the rest of America
Devotees of big government, like Archimedes, believe that if they have a long lever and a place to stand, they can move the world. In 2006, a bipartisan band of such politicians in Massachusetts immersed themselves in wishful thinking, ignored both hard facts and proven theory, and used their political ...
Health Care
The Federal Government Can Never “Fix” the “Doc Fix”
Key Points: Medicare Part B beneficiaries are facing a crisis of access to physicians, because the federal government sets fees at an inadequate level. The U.S. government has promised physicians that it will “fix” the fees for the long term, but has proven incompetent to do anything more than patch ...
Environment
Inherit the Wind – the Reality Show
Investor-owned utility company National Grid agreed to a 15-year purchasing contract with Cape Wind, where the utility would purchase the project’s wind energy at 20.7 cents per kilowatt hour beginning in 2013, and increasing at 3.5 percent annually thereafter. Contrast this with the current average wholesale energy rate of 6 ...
Business & Economics
Can Government Balance Nature by Killing Sea Lions?
SACRAMENTO – California sea lions sometimes swim some 90 miles up the Sacramento River, passing the state capitol on their journey. A local fisherman, Mr. Larry Legans, has been accused of shooting a sea lion for consuming the fish he caught. Mr. Legans, who faces three years in prison and ...
Environment
Trying to Recapture That Old Earth Day Magic
The contrast between PBS’s celebration of the huge public events of the first Earth Day in 1970 with the sleepy affair it is today tells you what’s wrong with today’s environmentalism: it is stuck in the past. For the last 15 years, Earth Day has been the occasion for me ...
Climate Change
Dump Doomsday Dogma
Earth Day turns 40 today, April 22, a good time for scientists, politicians, journalists and the public to dump climate-change orthodoxy. Too many facts are interfering with the familiar story line. The earth is getting warmer and the cause is modern industry. Unless we curtail industry, and much other human ...
Climate Change
Environment too important to be left to the government
Earth Day turns 40 today, a good time to review some realities we didn’t know on the first Earth Day in 1970, when economic prosperity was assumed to be the enemy of the environment. That turns out to be wrong. The Index of Leading Environmental Indicators has been monitoring the ...
Blackouts
The Energy Policy Morass
‘Think, Baby, Think’ April 26, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 30 If you think the health care debate is a tangled mess, try wading into the thickets of the energy sector, which is high on the Obama administration’s list of targets to subjugate. Few areas of national policy offer as bad ...
Business & Economics
Earth Day Agenda: Cap and Trade Plan for AB 32
California environmental officials have decided against implementing the “cool car” regulations they finalized last June. The move could be a first step toward a better environmental policy and an improved economy. Last June the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted a rule forcing car companies to install metallic reflective windows, ...
Voters, not leaders, confront Vallejo’s mess
Two years after Vallejo made history as the first city in the Golden State to file for bankruptcy, voters have grasped the city’s dire financial situation even if some members of local government haven’t. Residents appeared to have approved Measure A by a slim margin last week. The vote count ...
The Massachusetts health care mess is coming soon to the rest of America
Devotees of big government, like Archimedes, believe that if they have a long lever and a place to stand, they can move the world. In 2006, a bipartisan band of such politicians in Massachusetts immersed themselves in wishful thinking, ignored both hard facts and proven theory, and used their political ...
The Federal Government Can Never “Fix” the “Doc Fix”
Key Points: Medicare Part B beneficiaries are facing a crisis of access to physicians, because the federal government sets fees at an inadequate level. The U.S. government has promised physicians that it will “fix” the fees for the long term, but has proven incompetent to do anything more than patch ...
Inherit the Wind – the Reality Show
Investor-owned utility company National Grid agreed to a 15-year purchasing contract with Cape Wind, where the utility would purchase the project’s wind energy at 20.7 cents per kilowatt hour beginning in 2013, and increasing at 3.5 percent annually thereafter. Contrast this with the current average wholesale energy rate of 6 ...
Can Government Balance Nature by Killing Sea Lions?
SACRAMENTO – California sea lions sometimes swim some 90 miles up the Sacramento River, passing the state capitol on their journey. A local fisherman, Mr. Larry Legans, has been accused of shooting a sea lion for consuming the fish he caught. Mr. Legans, who faces three years in prison and ...
Trying to Recapture That Old Earth Day Magic
The contrast between PBS’s celebration of the huge public events of the first Earth Day in 1970 with the sleepy affair it is today tells you what’s wrong with today’s environmentalism: it is stuck in the past. For the last 15 years, Earth Day has been the occasion for me ...
Dump Doomsday Dogma
Earth Day turns 40 today, April 22, a good time for scientists, politicians, journalists and the public to dump climate-change orthodoxy. Too many facts are interfering with the familiar story line. The earth is getting warmer and the cause is modern industry. Unless we curtail industry, and much other human ...
Environment too important to be left to the government
Earth Day turns 40 today, a good time to review some realities we didn’t know on the first Earth Day in 1970, when economic prosperity was assumed to be the enemy of the environment. That turns out to be wrong. The Index of Leading Environmental Indicators has been monitoring the ...
The Energy Policy Morass
‘Think, Baby, Think’ April 26, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 30 If you think the health care debate is a tangled mess, try wading into the thickets of the energy sector, which is high on the Obama administration’s list of targets to subjugate. Few areas of national policy offer as bad ...
Earth Day Agenda: Cap and Trade Plan for AB 32
California environmental officials have decided against implementing the “cool car” regulations they finalized last June. The move could be a first step toward a better environmental policy and an improved economy. Last June the California Air Resources Board (CARB) adopted a rule forcing car companies to install metallic reflective windows, ...
