Amid continuing car problems, Tamara and I have been considering just going all out and purchasing a newer vehicle … and we have a hybrid in mind. We’ve borrowed a friend’s Toyota Prius a couple of times, and it seems to be a fine car.
Because we’ve been considering hybrids, it caught my attention when GM […]
“The parable of the broken window was created by Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay Ce qu’on voit et ce qu’on ne voit pas (That Which We See and That Which We Don’t) to illuminate the notion of hidden costs (a.k.a. opportunity costs). Bastiat uses this story to introduce a concept he calls the broken […]
“Solar power has been the Next Big Thing for decades now, yet it remains a niche player in the energy world. The problem of intermittency is unsolved, up-front capital costs remain high, and surging demand for polysilicon, a key component of solar panels, has recently outstripped supply, stifling production. So when someone claims that within […]
“Economists are not real big fans of command and control pollution regulations–you know the kind where the regulatory agency says here is how much pollution is allowed and here is how you are going to do it. The reason? Because there are usually cheaper ways to meet the same goals. Requiring everyone […]
“General Motors Corp. will resurrect it with a plug-in version of the Saturn Vue sport utility vehicle, said G. Richard Wagoner Jr., GM’s chairman and chief executive. He wouldn’t say when it would be ready for sale. ‘I can’t give you a date but can tell you this is a top priority program for GM […]
“The city of Hercules is planning to file a lawsuit of eminent domain in Contra Costa County Superior Court in Martinez by the end of this week in an effort to [steal] a 17-acre parcel of land in central Hercules currently owned by Wal-Mart Stores Inc., according to City Attorney Alfred Cabral. The city council […]
“A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to immediately resume making housing benefits available to the thousands of evacuees of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon said FEMA failed to adequately explain why it ended the 18-month housing assistance program for people who lost their homes in the […]
“Edwin Black is on a mission. He wants to go head-to-head with the head of General Motors in a showdown at Starbucks. The best-selling author has nothing against the coffee chain, but says he wants a public venue to confront the nation’s largest car industry with his charges that GM has addicted the U.S. to […]
“In a powerful response to last year’s Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. New London, voters approved nine state-ballot initiatives prohibiting the seizure of homes and businesses for private development. These initiatives — in Florida, New Hampshire, Arizona, and Michigan — won in a landslide, with a nationwide average of some 75 percent in favor. […]
“The view from the Panoche Cotton Gin outside Firebaugh, Calif., reveals a great deal about the state of the cotton industry in the U.S. A generation ago, fields of cotton surrounded the gin as far as the eye could see. Today, the gin — a warehouse-sized plant that can clean and bundle dozens of tons […]
