Politics

Aaron Renn wrote a great piece over at his Urbanophile blog entitled The Challenge of Change. In it, he discusses some of the negative reaction that he got to his recent post on Kokomo, Indiana and its Mayor Greg Goodnight’s efforts to reinvent the city using what Renn describes as “the model of the working-class/creative-class, blue-collar/white-collar synthesis that many believe we need today.”  read more »

In much of the country a powerful energy boom is providing a serious stimulus to economic growth. But in California, where fossil fuels are considered about as toxic as tobacco, we are lurching toward an anticipated energy shortage that will further exacerbate the state’s already deep geographic and class divisions.  read more »

While Ohio has been trending Republican for more than two decades, electing mostly Republican governors and state legislators, it is not yet fully a red state. If not quite color blind, Ohio remains purple.  read more »

In their race to save an unpopular president and their lack of a positive agenda, many Republicans and conservatives increasingly identify the rise of “democratic socialism” as their ultimate, if you will, Trump card. Given the fact that most Americans, particularly older ones, still favor capitalism and are less than enthusiastic about expanding federal power, this approach might work.  read more »

A thoroughly scientific dictatorship will never be overthrown — Aldous Huxley

In contemporary China, it’s hard to know what people outside the party dictatorship think about the future. As in the former Soviet Union, often the best guide may be not in the controlled media or cowed academia, but in the speculative wanderings of writers.  read more »

That means less cronyism and more competition.

“Inequality is not necessarily bad in itself: the key question is to decide whether it is justified.”____ Thomas Piketty in Capital in the Twenty-First Century.

Piketty’s words read like a premise that is only half right, followed by a problematic corollary. Reasonable people will agree that some inequality is not only “not necessarily bad” but also very desirable and very necessary in order to stimulate the economy’s entrepreneurial and innovative spirits. Further, if some inequality is desirable, how much is enough and how much is too much? And who gets to decide?  read more »

The San Bernardino County’s Board of Supervisors slammed the brakes on big solar projects and highlighted a challenge California could face if it seeks to eliminate the use of fossil fuels.  read more »

The people who build our homes increasingly can no longer afford them. As the state elite and their academic cheering crew celebrate our progressive boom, even the most skilled, unionized construction workers, notes an upcoming study, cannot afford to live anywhere close to the state’s major job centers.  read more »

Ships under foreign flags arrive daily at ports of call up and down California’s coastline carrying a precious cargo that the State can produce itself, yet it imports it because the powers that be won’t let California’s historically successful oil industry tap into the resources already available.  read more »

Today’s big news is that New Yorkers are pleading with Amazon to reconsider its decision to halt its HQ2 project in their city. The Wall Street Journal reports that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been in contact with Amazon executives, urging them to rethink their decision to abandon plans for a headquarters campus – and 25,000 jobs – in Queens.  read more »