California

California’s coastal urban centers, once the ultimate land of opportunity, suffer notorious traffic congestion, unaffordable housing, and a social chasm defined by a shrinking middle class, a small wealthy sector, and a sizable population seemingly locked in poverty.  read more »

Note: This article is adapted from the recently published Reason Foundation report Assessing the Results of the High-Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program, by Wendell Cox  read more »

For the first time in 70 years, through the fracking boom in recent years, the U.S. attained energy independence status meaning we were no longer held hostage to unstable Petro-powers and the vagaries of foreign energy supplies. Under President Trump, America had a very aggressive pro-domestic energy policy, that allowed America to become not only energy independent, which politicians have talked about for decades, but energy dominant.  For the first time since Harry Truman was president, we had more energy exports than imports.  read more »

As the Biden administration settles in and begins to formulate its agenda, progressive pundits, politicians, and activists point to California as a role model for national policy. If the administration listens to them, it would prove a disaster for America’s already-beleaguered middle and working classes.  read more »

Call Your Mother is lame enough as it is. But a major extra shortcoming of ABC’s latest sitcom, which recently debuted with a pilot episode, is that one of its foundations is a banal juxtaposition of Flyover Country with the coasts.

Get this: A central premise of the show is that an empty-nester widow moves to Los Angeles from Iowa to be near her two adult kids who like living in California right now. In that important regard, Call Your Mother is so, well, 2019 – and so heedless of the current zeitgeist.

Now that Trump has been edged out of office, Joe Biden may emerge as the harbinger of a brighter, better blue future or as a version of Konstantin Chernenko, the aged timeserver who ran the Soviet Union in its dying days. To succeed, he will have to confront massive pessimism about America’s direction, with some 80 percent thinking the country is out of control. The Atlantic last year compared the U.S. to a “failed state,” while The Week predicts “dark days ahead.”  read more »

Concern about overcrowded housing has been heightened by its association with greater COVID-19 infection risk. As a disease transmitted by human proximity, exposure is increased by being in overcrowded and insufficiently ventilated spaces where sufficient social distancing is not possible. Exposure density for a person is intensified by the amount of time spent in such circumstances.  read more »

For the past half-century, California has dominated America’s tech industry. From the development of precision farming to the incubation of aircraft, space, semiconductors and computer systems, this state has emerged time and again at the cutting edge of future industries.  read more »

Denizens of the Great Lakes watershed long have looked at those five vast, deep, shimmering pools not only as an unmatched economic and cultural resource but also as the ultimate trump card.  read more »

A crazy week with a *ton* of new items I'll only be able to partially get through in this post, including some followups to last week's post about California tech companies moving to Texas:  read more »