Policy

President Biden may have received a rapturous welcome in Ireland, but Democratic strategists in Washington will have taken little notice.  read more »

Many eco-activists (and too many legislators, regulators, judges and journalists) have trouble thinking beyond slogans. They apparently believe declaring ecological emergencies, repeating clever mantras, and issuing proclamations and mandates will create a fossil-fuel-free, organic farming utopia. In their dreams.  read more »

Last week, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District approved new regulations that will ban the use of residential and commercial natural gas-fired water heaters and furnaces in 2027.  read more »

The upcoming ruling by the US Supreme Court on racial preferences is certain to ignite yet another divisive debate about whether or not a person’s ethnic heritage should determine their treatment by the state  read more »

Even in the era of identity politics, one category of identity has largely been ignored: what UK journalist Joe Glenton calls “veteranhood.”19 million former soldiers — most of them working class — share a strong sense of personal identity as vets  read more »

Few annual events produce more paranoid commentary than the World Economic Forum’s recently completed Davos conference.  read more »

Racial divisions have become the stalking horse of our politics and social discourse, with racism defined as white on black (often extending to Western vs. non-Western ethnicities). Google Trends reveals how the online topic of racism has steadily risen over the past decade, spiking like a seismic reading of an earthquake in June, 2020 that marked the George Floyd tragedy and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed.  read more »

The overwhelming majority of the money involved in the energy and climate debate in the U.S. today is not on the side of traditional energy producers. Instead, the money, the media, and the momentum are clearly on the side of the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex.  read more »

As if proliferating spy balloons and insidious TikTok feeds weren’t enough, America’s economic relationship with China also is going to get more complicated. And as usual when things are really important, Flyover Country will be right in the middle of it.  read more »

“From the Beginning, California promised much. While yet barely a name on the map, it entered American awareness as a symbol of renewal. It was a final frontier: of geography and of expectation.”
— Kevin Starr, “Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915” (1973)  read more »