The last time so many people were as bedeviled as the people of California are today by electrical blackouts was back in 1979, when motorists in cities across the country were lined up for hours at filling stations, waiting to get gas. Both shortages had the same...
"State power managers ordered rolling blackouts across California for a second straight day Tuesday, cutting off more than 125,000 customers as demand for electricity again exceeded supply. . . . The blackouts Monday struck without warning, coming in two waves that...
President Bush meets today with Qian Qichen, China's deputy prime minister and the first senior Beijing official to visit the White House since the new administration began. Uppermost on Qian's agenda is the question of arms for Taiwan, which he calls "the most...
The Australian Dollar, while recently sinking to 19-year lows, doesn't seem to have gotten a lot of attention. In fact, the currency has never had the sort of impact on global currency markets as the Yen, the Euro, or the Pound, and even currencies like Brazil's Real...
Electricity restructuring is a complicated process, in California and across the country. As California faces rolling blackouts and soaring energy prices, the consensus is growing among political activists that restructuring may have been a mistake. Particularly...
President Bush has dictated that airline employees may not go on strike for at least two months, and maybe not at all. People like me, who have travel plans next month, should be relieved. Right? Wrong. Why the ingratitude? As much as I want to reach my destination...
THE TERM "LIBERAL" originally referred politically to those who wanted to liberate people -- mainly from the oppressive power of government. That is what it still means in various European countries or in Australia and New Zealand. It is the American meaning that is...
The Fed's surprise 50 basis point cut in the fed funds rate yesterday took the markets -- and me -- completely by surprise. And yet the stock market's reaction was strangely muted. Don't get me wrong: yesterday was great. But the rate cut probably didn't have all that...
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-Ariz., makes a lot of political hay portraying himself as the hero for campaign finance reform and against influence-peddling. He's for restrictions on the "soft money" millions that flow into the campaign coffers of the Republican and Democratic...
Former President Clinton has just received another fitting addition to his legacy. Two years ago, he sent U.S. troops to Kosovo to protect ethnic Albanians against attacks by Serbia. Now our troops are stuck trying to protect Macedonia against attacks by these very...
Q: How would you correct the problem of education in this country if you had complete control of the system? A: I would not seek "complete control of the system." Nor do I -- or anyone else (be it George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, the NEA, or whomever) --have the...
"Jesse slowly suffocated and died." A jury heard those chilling words this week in the opening statement of a little-noticed Arkansas trial. A mother heard those heartbreaking words spoken about her 13-year-old son, Jesse Dirkhising, whom prosecutors say died at the...
President George W. Bush's support for Social Security reform, together with strong public support for allowing workers to place some of their payroll taxes in personal retirement accounts, makes it much more likely that Congress will soon consider the issue. However,...
THE ONCE-POPULAR GAME SHOW "Dialing for Dollars" has its present-day counterpart in courts of law -- Demonizing for dollars. The most spectacular bonanza to come out of this process has been the hundreds of billions of dollars shared by lawyers and others, as a result...
Who remembers Ian Smith? Unless you are a graybeard, you may not know that Ian Smith was the (white) prime minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) when the country was a British colony. In 1964, Smith led an independence rebellion against Great Britain when it became...
Random thoughts on the passing scene: In trying to get away from the pardon scandals, Hillary Clinton has said everything except "Bill who?" After the tragic death of auto racer Dale Earnhardt, no one suggested banning the sport. Yet that is exactly what would have...
The other day, I talked about the tremendous broadband opportunity that Bellsouth has in the Atlanta area -- the opportunity to use its strengths in reliability and technical support to crush Charter Communications' cable modem business with its Fast Access DSL. But...
How would you feel if you needed an organ transplant to keep you alive, but could not get one? How would you feel if someone you loved had to stand in line for years waiting for a transplant that might never come? Would you be willing to pay for a liver or a kidney if...
It's as if Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has hung out a sign at the Pentagon: From now on, U.S. missile-defense policy will be made in accordance with how things are, not with how they used to be. That's the upshot, anyway, of what the secretary said at a...
There is a computer mouse that glows in the dark and the state of Michigan is sending more than 4,000 of them to businesses in California. This is to remind these businesses of the electrical blackouts that have plagued California -- and of the fact that Michigan has...
If to govern is to choose, then President Bush made a clear choice in the budget he released two weeks ago; National Missile Defense (NMD) is a big winner, while the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a mild loser. In the short run, this might be...
When Wall Street analysts talk about defensive stocks, they usually mean providers of food, tobacco, consumer goods -- things that people will buy no matter what the economy is doing. Since this seems to be the season for defensive stocks, you may be looking for...
Every once in a while I like to go out on a limb with a wild prediction. And my prediction today is that the Dow will experience a major league crash in 2001. If you thought Monday was scary, in the words of Al Jolson, "You ain't seen nothin' yet." Let me take you...
It may be easier than you think to get rich quick. Let's take a fairly common situation in California. A couple buys a little square box, two-bedroom house on a modest-sized lot during the 1970s for $30,000 or $40,000. Then, over the years, they pay off their...
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