Politics

The essense of New Suburbanism is to support a clean, but wider human footprint - which is anathema to much of conventional environmentalist wisdom.  In many parts of the world, such as within the state of California, there is abundant space. California, especially within its vast interior, has hundreds upon thousands of virtually vacant square miles of rolling foothills, rangeland, forests, farms and fields. The Golden State is a whopping 158,000 square miles in size, with only 36 million people, most of them already crammed quite amicably within reasonably dense urban areas. California will always have plenty of available land, and the mantra that the personal residences of humans...

Twenty-five years ago, along with another young journalist, I coauthored a book called California, Inc. about our adopted home state. The book described "California's rise to economic, political, and cultural ascendancy." As relative newcomers at the time, we saw California as a place of limitless possibility. And over most of the next two decades, my coauthor, Paul Grabowicz, and I could feel comfortable that we were indeed predicting the future. But much has changed in recent years. And today our Golden State appears headed, if not for imminent disaster, then toward an unanticipated, maddening, and largely unnecessary mediocrity. Since 2000, California's job growth rate - which in...

It is difficult to overstate the pride and the hope that accompanies the election of Barack Obama to the Presidency of the United States. As America's leader, he brings youth, intellect, optimism and empathy to the world stage; he represents many of America's greatest virtues; ability to change, desire to improve, belief in progress, compassion for everyone. Barack Obama is the latest wonderful surprise America has delivered to the world; he is American exceptionalism incarnate. The City on the Hill celebrates today, as a new page in history is turned. Obama's victory showed the world the good character of the American people. With a Democratic Congress, and an enthusiastic following...

Has global warming alarm become the goal rather than the result of scientific research? When the history of the early 21st century is written, it may be the financial health of the global economy was rescued by a new currency, carbon. This new asset class, fungible and tradeable, reinflated the balance sheets of governments and international financial institutions alike, and pulled humanity back from the brink of a worldwide depression. That is the hopeful scenario, and not one to be lightly dismissed. The other outcome that may be our legacy, however, will be that just when technology and capitalism were about to deliver prosperity and security to an unprecedented number of people...

We have written about unions dozens of times, and have consistently acknowleged the contributions unions have made. But over the past fifty years, the role of unions in the United States has changed in two important ways. First, most of the initial grievances that inspired workers to organize have been met; second, union power has migrated out of the private sector and into the public sector. In our post "Unions - Ideals vs. Reality" we present a graph that illustrates the problem with unions in the public sector.  Unions in the private sector bargain with companies who have to compete globally, and this is a powerful self-regulating mechanism. If the union is too aggressive, the company goes out of business...

Last week EcoWorld posted a lengthy explanation as to why we endorse John McCain for President.  We were so careful and so reasoned that some commenters actually thought we'd endorsed Obama.  We tried to acknowlege Obama's strengths, and we criticized McCain's weaknesses, and from it all emerged a tepid endorsement of McCain.  But not tepid whatsoever is our fear of what an Obama Presidency could do to the United States. For years our commitment to free market and property rights based environmentalism has led us to publish countless reports on how adhering to these principles creates wealth, ownership, stewardship, and equitable and efficient allocation of resources.  All you have...

Are the Studies We Rely On Reliable? We discovered "The Antiplanner," Randall O'Toole, a few months ago, and ever since we have been publishing selected works by this prolific author and researcher. His findings, carefully documented, contradict important pillars of the conventional wisdom that informs modern urban planning - transportation options in particular. O'Toole's work deserves as large an audience as possible because his conclusions, if correct, or even partially correct, have profound implications when determining how best to allocate taxpayer funds. If light rail, for example, is not nearly as cost-effective or even fuel efficient as cars and busses, for example, why are we...

It is always interesting to read the ballot in California when there are a dozen or more citizen's initiatives.  Californians, despite being social liberals, still tend to vote against any new taxes of any sort.  During the internet boom and the housing boom there was so much revenue flowing into the state and local governments it didn't matter - Californians had the best of everything.  But as California's economy, along with the rest of the nation, returns to sustainable rates of economic growth, something's got to give.  California's state and local governments will either dramatically cut spending, or they will dramatically raise taxes. Muddling the issue is the issuance of...

About four years ago the New Yorker Magazine endorsed a Presidential candidate for the first time in its then eighty year history. One should not doubt who they chose, John Kerry, someone who I also voted for. In their most recent issue, a bursting "theme issue" tome of erudite and addictive political commentary, the New Yorker has done it again, endorsing Barack Obama. So should Obama be the next President of the United States? And should EcoWorld be a platform to make an endorsement, anyway? Perhaps, since we do have a rather clear editorial position when it comes to what we consider agreeable environmentalist ideology - read Rational Environmentalism. EcoWorld, a publication examining environmental issues and...

We have been warning readers about the pension crisis for a few years now.  In a nutshell, the problem is the following:  California public employee unions - which are virtually unregulated despite the fact they operate in the uncompetitive public sector - have pretty much taken over California's state and local governments. In recent years they have negotiated pay and benefit increases so dramatic that the average government worker in California often earns 2-4x what globalized private sector workers earn to do jobs of comparable worth.  This dramatic disparity is largely due to the value of their retirement pensions.  The present value of what someone collects in retirement must be...

It is our official position that long-range government planning cannot work no way no how. But it is a mark of how bankrupt the planning profession has become that many of its members never seem to bother to follow its standard planning system, which is known as the Rational Planning Model. As defined by Wikipedia, the Rational Planning Model "is the process of realizing a problem, establishing and evaluating planning criteria, create alternatives, implementing alternatives, and monitoring progress of the alternatives." This model, Wikipedia adds, "is central in the development of modern urban planning." If it is so central, then why do so few urban planners follow it? In particular, most...

The opponents of California's ballot Proposition 7 (read full text of Prop 7) claim it will "cost consumers and taxpayers hundreds of millions per year in higher electric rates - a $300 increase per household per year."  It is hard to get access to the calculations behind these estimates, so we have attempted to come up with estimates of our own. In our recent post "California Proposition 7" we put forward some fundamental assumptions and come up with a total projected cost to install the generating facilities.  We assume that by 2025 Californians will draw 1,000 gigawatt-hours per day, meaning at 50% renewables we'll need 500 gigawatt-hours per day to come from renewable sources.  We therefore project, based on $2.5 billion per...