In 2023 a total of more than 1.5 million residential building permits were issued in the United States, according to the Census Bureau.  read more »

In the election’s wake, California remains part of the Left Coast, clinging to the western edge of Trump world, more an outlier than a trendsetter.  read more »

Ever since the rise of Barack Obama, Democrats have seen themselves as destined to rule. With his presidential victory in 2008, they created a seemingly unbridgeable political empire.  read more »

There have been a lot of articles in recent years about billionaires building bunkers in remote locations like New Zealand.  read more »

I have been interested in presidential politics and campaigns all my life. I cannot remember an uglier contest  read more »

This time around, Hillary Clinton is not lamenting Republican ‘deplorables’. She has chosen instead, along with Kamala Harris, to label Donald Trump and his supporters as out-and-out fascists. Different words but the same meaning: anyone who backs the GOP candidate in next week’s US presidential election is an enabler for modern-day blackshirts or stormtroopers.  read more »

Every morning, just as the sun rises, Charleston Harbor hosts a scene of stirring patriotism. There, in the courtyard of Fort Sumter, tourists raise a huge American flag, helped along by a National Park Service ranger.  read more »

Support for the Democrats among black voters shows signs of some erosion, but it’s Latinos – now the country’s largest racial minority – who may prove the critical decider  read more »

For the last two centuries, one of the most important demographic trends has been the movement of people from rural areas to the cities.  read more »

No power on earth is more fearsome than a highly educated class that faces a constrained, even dismal, future.  read more »