A California Regional Sustainability Plan for the 88 cities of Los Angeles County to be carbon neutral by 2050 includes a sunset to the oil and gas industry. That 220-page plan will also sunset the 5th largest economy in the world. Sunsetting, as used here, means bringing it to a slow and untimely death.  read more »

About a month ago, I came across a paper via Twitter in which the authors, Michael Hankinson of the City University of New York and Asya Magazinnik of MIT, studied the impact of at-large and district representation in local government on the "trade-off between the efficient production of collective goods and the equitable distribution of costs."  read more »

In the ever-intensifying battle between red and blue, the consultants, fixers and self-serving media thrive, but America suffers.

Now we seem destined to face a graphic battle of extremes between Donald Trump and Elizabeth Warren, two self-styled populists best suited to exacerbating polarization while both sides toss around charges of “treason” and embrace the idea of an inevitable civil war.  read more »

What do you picture when someone refers to the “Trump’s base”?  read more »

As a recently released Organization for International Cooperation and Development (OECD) noted, house prices have been generally rising far in excess of incomes in a number of nations (Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class). OECD finds that these rapidly rising house prices have been a principal contributorto rising cost of living that has already resulted in economic reversals for the middle-class.  read more »

American cities such as Berkeley, San Jose, San Francisco, Houston, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Albuquerque, and other U.S. cities are moving to ban natural gas as a step toward becoming carbon free in the next few decades. They’re about to take one giant step toward Germany’s failed climate goals which should be a wake-up call for governments everywhere, but it appears our leaders deliberately intend to follow the German failure.  read more »

From questions of upward mobility and opportunity to concerns about access to health care and education, rural America clearly isn’t perfect.  read more »

The next great political civil wars won’t be over race, the nation-state, religion or even class. They will be generational, pitching the Boomers, who still dominate the global economy, against their offspring, the Millennials, who assuredly do not.  read more »