The continuing dispersion of employment in the nation’s major metropolitan areas has received attention in two recent reports. The Brookings Institution has publishedresearch showing that employment dispersion continued between 2000 and 2010, finding job growth was greater outside a three mile radius from central business districts between 2000 and 2010 in 100 metropolitan areas Note 1). [...]
President Obama has led the biggest war on reliable energy – meaning primarily fossil fuels – of any President in history. And yet he repeatedly takes credit for these industries’ successes. Obama has repeatedly had the gall to take credit for the growth of jobs, revenues and energy production in the oil and gas industry, [...]
The NCPA has argued repeatedly that the best energy policy for the economy, consumers, government revenues and the environment would be an energy neutral policy, under which no energy source received subsidies, government support or special encouragement. Under such a policy, all energy sources would compete on an equal footing, with the result that inefficient, [...]
There has been a flurry of action on Capitol Hill regarding the need to improve our knowledge of the amounts of rare earths in the country, our current resource needs, constraints and bottle-necks and need to streamline mining laws. There is no easy link to this material so I post the full article below: MINING: [...]
Anyone following the energy markets knows that in the past few years natural gas has come to dominate the conversation – especially in the electric power market. Natural gas’ growth in the electric power industry has come at the expense of coal. As a recent paper, co-authored by me, explains, while the fracking revolution has [...]
I don’t know if it is serendipity or what, but during the last week several articles have popped up on my computer with similar theme: How liberals are increasingly shedding their humanist pretentions and showing (their true) misanthropic nature. The Scientific American brings us a story, “The Left’s War on Science,” in which Michael Shermer [...]
We have just released the 9th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey covering 337 metropolitan markets in Australia, Canada, China (Hong Kong), Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. As usual, the most unaffordable markets are those in with urban containment policy (also called by other names, such as smart growth and [...]
A report in the USA Today found that “green” schools in other states don’t actually perform as promised. The report, “Green Schools: Long on promise, short on delivery,” gave this example from the Houston Independent School District: The nation’s seventh-largest school district added features such as automated light sensors and a heat-reflecting roof, in hopes [...]
Though I don’t believe we’ll see a bill along the lines proposed passed in this Congress, at least one legislator gets it – he’s on the right track: Republican Representative Mike Pompeo of Kansas has called for the end to subsidies for all energy sources. I have suggested this a number of times, most recently [...]
Friday’s San Antonio Express-News commentary (“Streetcars will please San Antonians once they are running”) by Garl Boyd Lantham, president of the Texas Association of Rail Passengers begins: I still remember when, as a young child, my father first pointed out the dangers inherent with the misuse of statistical information. He told me that “an astute [...]