Category Archives: News commentary

Since it appears increasingly likely that the winner of the popular vote for president will not win the election, we are already seeing calls to “dump the electoral college.” Predictably, since the Democrat is the candidate who is likely to win the vote but lose the election, these calls are coming from Democrat supporters, while conservatives are supporting of the status quo. But if the situation were reversed — if the Republican were winning the popular vote but losing the election — I’m certain we would be hearing conservatives say we need to abolish the electoral college.

Seven states are currently undecided, so those are the states where candidates are doing most of their campaigning. Source: Real Clear Polling.

I want to abolish the electoral college not because of how it would change the outcome of this particular election but because of how it would change democracy. The United States is known for its low voter turnouts, and a large part of that is because many people don’t believe their vote counts. When it comes to the presidential election, those people are absolutely right unless they live in one of the “battleground states,” which this year are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Because presidential politics get more media attention than, say, gubernatorial or legislative politics, people who don’t think their vote for president counts are also less likely to vote in other elections. Continue reading →

Four people were shot and killed on a Chicago Blue Line elevated train early Labor Day morning. Police say the victims, who were not seated together, appeared to be asleep at the time and “may have been homeless.” A suspect is in custody, and police say it was “an isolated incident and a random attack,” as if that is supposed to make people feel safer.

Some reports of the murders claimed the crime took place on a commuter train; others said it was a subway. In fact it was an elevated train. Photo by AlphaBeta135.

When I learned about these murders, I had already been thinking about transit crime because of a story that appeared in the St. Paul Pioneer Press about the decline of the intersection of Snelling and University, two of the most important commercial corridors in Minnesota’s capital city. Continue reading →

The harsh response of left-wing commentators to last week’s Supreme Court reversal of the Chevron decision reveals more about the Left than about the courts. “The Supreme Court just made a massive power grab,” blusters Ian Millhiser for Vox. “Supreme Court executes massive power grab from executive branch,” agrees Kate Riga for TPM.

“Fill her up with Chevron Supreme.” Photo by Joe Ravi.

In 1981, the Environmental Protection Agency under Ronald Reagan changed the definition of the word “source” (as in “source of pollution”) in one of its regulations, effectively allowing industries to pollute more with less oversight. In a case known as Chevron Oil v. the Natural Resources Defense Council, the NRDC challenged this definition and won at the district and appeals court levels. But the Supreme Court overturned this, ruling that courts should give “deference” to federal agencies in how they interpret the law. This became known as the Chevron decision and it has hampered citizen efforts to monitor bureaucracies ever since. Continue reading →

“You either die a hero,” said a character from a Batman movie, “or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Neil Goldschmidt, who died last week four days short of his 84th birthday, was once my hero but died the leading villain of Oregon politics.

The official portrait of Mayor Goldschmidt.

After working as a legal aid lawyer for several years, Goldschmidt joined his friend, homebuilder Tom Walsh, in running as reform candidates for the Portland City Council in 1970. Portland, they said, was run by a “good old boy” network that left minorities, low-income people, and many others out of the system. Goldschmidt won; Walsh lost. Continue reading →

Libertarians will sorely miss David Boaz, who died last Friday after a year-long battle with cancer. While many familiar with the libertarian movement will remember Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard, and Karl Hess, Boaz, who was about a year younger than me, was arguably the most eloquent and influential libertarian of my generation.

When Ed Crane founded the Cato Institute in 1977, David Boaz was one of the first persons he hired. For the next 41 years, Boaz served as Executive Vice President. While Crane’s job was to raise money, Boaz effectively ran the organization, overseeing a shop of more than 50 policy experts. Continue reading →

Urban elites are far more likely than other Americans to oppose gasoline powered cars, SUVs of all types, and gas stoves, according to a survey released last week by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The survey defined “elites” as people who have post-graduate degrees, live in households that earn more than $150,000 a year, and live in zip codes with densities of more than 10,000 people per square mile, which is about four times the average urban density in the U.S.

The cities of Boston, Chicago, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco all average more than 10,000 people per square mile. Photo by Mai-Linh Doan.

Conducted by Scott Rasmussen, the survey found that 72 percent of these elites (and 81 percent of Ivy League elites) favored banning gasoline-powered cars, compared with 24 percent of Americans as a whole. Further, 58 percent of elites favored banning SUVs compared with 16 percent of Americans and 66 percent of Ivy League elites, while 69 percent of elites (and 80 percent of Ivy League elites) favored banning gas stoves compared with 25 percent of all Americans. Continue reading →

The Oregon State Court of Appeals invalidated rules written by the state Environmental Quality Commission for implementing the state’s Climate Protection Program. The state legislation creating this program required the EQC to explain “Any alternatives the commission considered and the reasons that the alternatives were not pursued.” In response, the agency claimed that it “considered many alternatives” but didn’t describe a single one or explain why it was rejected.

Smokey, the Antiplanner dog, checks out the environmental quality of an Oregon stream.

This is entirely typical of government planning today. I’ve reviewed many plans that didn’t bother to identify and evaluate any alternatives because planners were so certain they knew what was right and anything else was wrong. What is atypical is that a state court has enforced the law requiring identification and evaluation of alternatives. Continue reading →

A net 338,000 people who resided in California on July 1, 2022 had left the state by July 1, 2023, according to population estimates released by the Census Bureau last week. This follows a loss of 625,000 residents in the two years prior to July 1 2022, indicating that the pandemic-related forces that led to this migration out of the state are still at work.

More U.S. residents moved to green and yellow states than left those states, with darker colors representing greater in-migration. More residents moved out of red and orange states than moved to those states, with darker colors representing greater out-migration.

International migration plus net birth rates (births minus deaths) meant that California’s overall population declined by only 75,000 people in 2023. This was exceeded by New York, which lost 102,000 people. A net of only about 217,000 New York residents migrated out of the state in 2023, but New York didn’t have as many international immigrants to make up for this loss, so its overall population decline was bigger than California’s. Continue reading →

Last week, the Economist published an article about when the New York Times lost its way. The article traces it to a June 2020 opinion piece by conservative U.S. Senator Tom Cotton that provoked such outrage among Times staffers that the editorial page editor, James Bennet, was forced to resign. Since Bennet now writes for the Economist, and in fact was the author of this article, it is easy to see why he would consider that incident to be a turning point for the Gray Lady.

In 2020, the Economist argued that countries should take advantage of the pandemic to enact draconian policies aimed at reducing climate change.

While it is easy to argue that the New York Times lost its way long before that incident, I have a different question: When did the Economist lose its way? The weekly magazine that calls itself a newspaper was founded 180 years ago based on the principles of free trade and free markets. Yet it seems to have forgotten those principles today, advocating for more and more government control of the world and national economies. Continue reading →