BobK

Gee, they’re coming fast and furious. The New York Times laments that “U.S. Freezes Solar Energy Projects.”  In truth, we’ve done no such thing.  But the Bureau of Land Management has placed a moratorium on large-scale solar deployments in public lands until further study of the impact is conducted.  As I warned in the first post of this series, people are preparing to pave the desert with solar panels in the name of protecting the environment.  And they’re shocked, shocked, that they’re being subjected to environmental scrutiny.

It may not make sense to Ms. Gordon, but it makes perfect sense to me.

Another illustration of the value of land vs. the value of energy.  U.S. Sugar has agreed to go out of business and sell nearly 300 square miles of land in central Florida for Everglades restoration.  Wait a minute… I thought sugar was a valuable source of ethanol?  I mean, it’s great to make new Everglades, but why aren’t the greens upset about the loss of this valuable source of renewable alternative energy?

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I see that the federal government has agreed to open 24 million acres of protected land for agriculture. Of course, the demand for that land has been created, at least in part, by the policies that favor ethanol production, but that’s somewhat beside the point. More important is that it reminds us that land is a limited resource. But unlike oil, there’s no substitute for land.

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I suppose this was inevitable. Amtrak will start screening passengers’ carry-on bags. They’ll show up unannounced at boarding platforms with bomb-sniffing dogs and all sorts of other equipment. Lovely.

All this might be tolerable if we had a problem with terrorism on intercity trains. But I don’t think there’s ever been a serious terror incident on a long-distance train anywhere in the world. At least none come to mind. In North America, train riders have more to fear from beaver dams than from terrorists.

Which begs the question: Does Amtrak suddenly have some budget to spare? If they do, is this a good way to spend it? If not, then which government agency is paying for it?  In any case, I expect that as long as no terrorists try bringing bombs aboard trains, they’ll tell us it’s working.

Not only is this a waste of money, it’s a completely unnecessary intrusion.

With a little too much time on my hands, I prepared this chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1900, highlighting the presidents in office at each stage. It’s easy to see why Hoover gets a bad rep.

It’s dangerous to try and read too much from it; in fact, my own opinion is that our choice of Presidents is mostly a reflection of the public’s feeling about the economy, and they don’t affect its direction nearly as much as they would have us believe.  Even so, it’s interesting to see the good times and the bad times highlighted this way.

Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig said in the wake of the Mitchell report that, “Those recommendations that I can implement independently, I will do immediately.”

Unfortunately the one action that would do more good than anything else, and which he could implement independently, isn’t going to happen.

He should resign in shame.

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How is it that these sentences came to be handed out in the same state?

- After the Station nightclub fire, the two club owners were sentenced to four years and to a suspended sentence for their criminal negligence that killed 100 people and injured dozens of others. The road manager who lit the pyrotechnics in close proximity to flammable foam also got a four year sentence.

- A 29-year old mother “with a history of volunteer work — and no criminal record” who caused a drunk driving accident that killed one person was sentenced to ten years in prison.

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Seems like lots of people are upset about the idea of providing relief to homeowners who are in a difficult mortgage situation. And on the face of it, it’s wrong. Of course, we should not rescue people who overextended themselves, who bought homes they couldn’t afford. Right? Why should taxpayers bear the burden, even indirectly?

Unfortunately, it’s not so simple.

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How cool is this? Immigrant gardeners provide seed money for college scholarships.

For all the blather about immigration, here in a nutshell is the story of how great it is. A guy immigrates from Mexico, he starts a gardening business, saves his money and buys a house on the peninsula (I’m jealous already), and his son graduates from law school at Berkeley. He’s so grateful that he starts a scholarship foundation. This is an immigrant gardener. He’s still a gardener, and he’ll probably always be a gardener. And he has accomplished more than many people who started life will far more advantages.

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