Category Archives: News commentary

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

With a blend of good experienced and canadian viagra store http://frankkrauseautomotive.com/?buy=4331 players who have just started playing for the national side. Researches have shown that ginsenosides in it feature anti-tumor effects which can damage the buy cialis no prescription peace mind and soul. Take the pills when you get cheap levitra the urge of sex, taking it on a daily basis may found fatal for the health. Impotence is a disorder in which a man is purchase levitra frankkrauseautomotive.com not able to get or sustain a penile erection while masturbating, and then the problem is likely to be physiological; if sometimes (however rarely), it is more likely to be psychological. Politically, Mississippi is still arguably the most racist state in America. Yet blacks there have made far more political progress than the economic progress made by blacks nationwide, which is essentially none: black per-capita incomes have stubbornly remain stuck at 57 percent of white incomes since at least 1960. Those who claim to care about social justice should look inward to see whether they policies they advocate, which are essentially a continuation of the Great Society/welfare programs that began in the 1960s, are really the answer for eliminating black poverty.

The events at the Capitol yesterday make me worry for my country. I don’t fear that there will be a revolution or coup, but I do worry that political discourse has become so polarized that everything from masks to the electoral college becomes the subject of violent debate that prevents any sensible policy from being implemented.

I worry that private companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple are threatened with government regulation or break up simply because they are big. I worry that some of those private companies, which claim to be offering the public an open platform for communication, take it upon themselves to censor their customers for expressing views they disagree with. I worry that the president says such insane things that those private companies feel they have to censor him.

I’ve supported President Trump’s transportation policies, but Trump himself seems to me to be a crazy man. That doesn’t mean his policies are crazy; like any president’s, some are good and some not so good. But by middle-class standards, which means my standards, his behavior has been insane, and never more so than in the last few days. Continue reading →

On December 1st, Hewlett-Packard–which has been headquartered in Silicon Valley since 1939–announced that its corporate headquarters would move to Houston. On May 9, Elon Musk announced that Tesla was moving its headquarters to “either Texas or Nevada,” but on December 7, he revealed that he personally had moved to Austin. On December 11, Oracle announced that it was also moving its headquarters to Austin.

Companies have been migrating from California to Texas for many years, but I don’t think three such large companies have all made such announcements in such a short time. Hewlett-Packard is listed on the Fortune 500 twice, one as HP (which makes office products) and one as Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (which runs server farms). Combining them would make HP #35 on the list, right behind Dell, which is already headquartered in Texas.

Even before moving its headquarters, Hewlett-Packard had more employees in Houston than any other city. This reflects past trends where Silicon Valley companies kept their highest-paid workers in San Jose but built their factories in other cities where housing was more affordable. Apparently, California taxes and housing prices have now gotten too high even for Silicon Valley executives. Continue reading →

Since the 2016 election, the Antiplanner has been dismayed by the number of people whose opinion I otherwise respect who have argued in favor of retaining the electoral college. Their argument is mainly that, with the college, everyone’s vote counts because without it presidential candidates would only bother to campaign in a few large cities that house most of the voting population.

The problem with that argument is that most people’s votes don’t count today because most people live in either a red state or a blue state where presidential candidates don’t bother to campaign. The only states that receive attention are the battleground states, of which there are as few as six or at most a dozen.

The lack of any chance that someone’s vote in the other states will influence the outcome depresses voter turnout. Why bother to vote if you know your state is going to always go for one party in the election that you care about the most? The result is that fewer people bother to learn about other elections such as state legislature or city council races because they don’t feel their vote counts. Continue reading →

Austin voters apparently approved the cities foolish $7 billion light-rail plan. San Francisco Bay Area voters apparently approved a regressive tax-increase to support high-income riders of the Caltrain commuter train. But Portland voters have apparently rejected a $5 billion transportation measure that was mainly aimed at building the region’s most-expensive light-rail line yet.

Portland’s rejection of light rail is not too surprising as the region has rejected every transit tax measure that’s been on the ballot since 1996 because voters have learned that light rail costs too much and does too little. Too bad Austin couldn’t have learned from Portland’s experience.

Portland voters also appear to have returned centrist Ted Wheeler to the mayor’s office even though polls showed he was running well behind leftist challenger Sarah Iannarone. Wheeler had earned the ire of Black Lives Matter protesters when he didn’t try to stop police from stopping property destruction in downtown Portland. Iannarone, meanwhile, openly supported antifa violence and wore clothing celebrating Chairman Mao. Continue reading →