One needn’t be a rocket scientist to create California’s energy problems. According to the California Energy Commission, from 1996 to 1999 electricity demand, stimulated by a booming economy, grew by 12 percent while supply grew by less than 2 percent....
POLITICS
Basic Economics
Dr. Thomas Sowell has just released his latest treasure — it’s title is “Basic Economics.” Reading through the book reminded me of a 30-plus-year-old conversation I had with Professor Armen Alchian, one of my tenacious mentors during my...
Anti-Intellectualism Runs Rampant in U.S. Education
Diane Ravitch research professor at New York University and holds the Brown Chair in Education Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC and is author of the book Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms . Clowes: What prompted you to write Left...
The Executor’s Song: Part 6, Closing the Estate and Other “Stuff”
Author’s Note: This is the sixth and final part of a series of personal finance columns on the subject of being the executor of an estate. These columns are based on my own personal experiences in this regard. Individuals should consult a professional advisor...
Fire in the “Frankenforest”
A jihad against some of America’s best and brightest researchers continues unabated. Arsonists struck again in the Pacific Northwest this week, gutting a University of Washington horticultural lab in Seattle and burning down property at a poplar tree nursery in...
Moody Markets, or Manipulated Markets?
One of the things we often hear about the stock market is that it is an anticipatory animal, meaning that bear markets begin when the economy is good but people fear that things will get worse in the future, and that conversely, bull markets begin when the economy is...
The California Energy Crisis: Once Again Capitalism Takes The Fall For Statism
Politicians and pundits claim that the free market has had its chance and failed, calling for a government takeover of the electric utilities and power plants as the solution. The tragic irony is that California’s energy nightmare would have been absolutely...
Jim Jeffords’ Defection and the High Cost of Politics
In the years ahead, more violent criminals may be walking the street, some taking the lives of law-abiding citizens, because someone in the White House couldn’t keep his big mouth shut about how they were going to retaliate against Republican Senator Jim...
Patriotism and Pearl Harbor
The hallowed waters that surround the sunken U.S.S. Arizona murmur gently like eternal witnesses to history. There lie 1,102 American crewmen who lost their lives during the Dec. 7, 1941, air raid on Pearl Harbor. Above the ship, like a floating tombstone, rests a...
America’s Descent Into Servitude II
The Texas Legislature is currently considering a bill that will mandate “volunteer” work for all college and university students in the state. The result of this bill will be to introduce “volunteerism” as a component of college education. The...
W. Wimps Out on Guns
The “Million” Mom March fell about 999,800 bodies short this year. Rosie O’Donnell, a leading anti-gun loudmouth who emceed last year’s march and later sought armed security guards for her own children, was a no-show at the pathetically...
Senator Jim Jeffords and the Power of the Turncoats
Suddenly we find ourselves back in the nightmare world of the pregnant chad. And everything was going so well, too. Whatever you may think of the policies of George W. Bush’s new administration, at least it was clanking along pretty well and the political...
Urgent Virus Threat – NOT!
For the third time in two days, I’ve received an e-mail from some well intentioned idiot warning me of an extremely destructive computer virus for which there is no cure. In each case, it took me about a minute to go to the Symantec web site and learn that the...
The Right to Inhale
On May 14th, the US Supreme Court reached a verdict on the case of U.S. v. Oakland Cannabis Cooperative. By unanimous decision the Court ruled that manufacturers and distributors of marijuana cannot claim the medical needs of their customers as defense against federal...
The Third Rail of Gold
I have touched the third rail, and it is made of gold. For millennia gold has excited mankind’s passions, goading us to the heights of achievement and the depths of evil. Now, since I’ve been writing about gold’s role in the international monetary...
The Coming Telecom Capacity Crunch
In my past column, I explained why a telecom rebound is likely to occur faster than most people expect: the continued explosive demand for bandwidth, the reopening of capital markets courtesy of lower interest rates, increased telecom revenues resulting from price...
T For Two
On Friday investors will have to decide whether to exchange their shares of AT&T for shares of the AT&T Wireless tracking stock. When the big index funds decide, it will move the market. In the exchange offer that expires Friday, AT&T will accept up to 427...
The Executor’s Song: Part 5, Life Insurance, IRA’s, and Real Estate
Author’s Note: This is the fifth in a six part series of personal finance columns on the subject of being the executor of an estate. These columns are based on my own personal experiences in this regard. Individuals should consult a professional advisor and take...
Bush Energy Plan Caves In
President Bush’s newly released national energy plan offers us more of what already threatens this country. No, I am not talking about the president’s plans to allow oil drilling in Alaska, or to build more gas pipelines, or to license more nuclear power...
Home-Schooling Under Siege
There’s nothing like stiff competition to bring out the worst in government. Nowhere does this prove more true than in the battle between home-schooling parents and public school bureaucrats. In Maryland, local prosecutors are moving forward with a...
Put Broadcast Spectrum Under New Management
Last October, then-President Bill Clinton tried to prod federal regulators to carve out space in the nation’s airwaves for the next generation of wireless technology — technology that promises high-speed Internet access with simple hand-held devices. For...
Why Should You Worry About Medical Privacy?
Last year a sophisticated Internet hacker took control of the University of Washington Medical Center’s network and downloaded the admissions records of 4,000 cardiology patients. Among the thousands of pieces of private information he downloaded were names,...
Know When to Gold ‘Em
It never ceases to amaze me the way financial markets all fit together, like perfectly meshing gears in some infinitely complex machine. The day of the bottom in the yield on the long bond was March 22 — the very day of the bottom in the Dow Jones Industrial...
Fee-for-service Health Care Makes a Comeback
Remember when you could choose to go to any doctor, pay a reasonable fee for your medical service, and not worry about co-pays, deductibles, and some distant stranger authorizing or denying the care prescribed by your physician? If so, you have lived long enough to...
America’s Descent Into Servitude I
The Texas Legislature is currently considering a bill that will mandate “volunteer” work for all college and university students in the state. The result of this bill will be to introduce “volunteerism” as a component of college education. The...
‘Tis the Season for Small Caps?
“Holy Cow!” That’s the polite version of my exclamation when I heard that the US economy grew by 2% in the first quarter of this year. This rate of growth is really nothing special, usually not cause for excitement, and not even close to the rapid...
Global Warming: Beneficial To Human Civilization
Would some degree of warming be bad for most societies and natural environments? Probably not. “During the 20th century,” writes Dr. Patrick Michaels, “we have already proceeded more than half way to doubling the natural carbon dioxide greenhouse...
California Stealing on a Blackout Day
A reader in Michigan says that he has been living in retirement on $15,000 a year — about $5,000 from Social Security and about $10,000 from stocks he owns in Southern California Edison. But now that the California government has forced Southern California...
The Executor’s Song: Part 4, Getting the Estate Organized
Publisher’s Note: This is the fourth in a six part series of personal finance columns on the subject of being the executor of an estate. These columns are based on my own personal experiences in this regard. Individuals should consult a professional advisor and...
Eureka! Gold!
Yesterday I wrote in this column that we had taken a position, as advisor, in a couple of gold stocks — Newmont Mining and Homestake Mining. It’s been over 20 years since I’ve traded gold stocks — doing it again took me back to my earliest days...
Social Security and the Stock Market
Recent fluctuations in the stock market have been used by some liberal politicians as a reason why Social Security should not be privatized. What if someone invests retirement money in the stock market, instead of in Social Security, and then retires at a point when...
Que Pasa, Senor Bush?
If you thought ethnic pandering disappeared from the White House with the silverware and the Clintons, think again. Last weekend, President Bush proudly delivered the first White House radio address in Spanish. “Republican strategists” — media-hungry...
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