Archive for March, 2011

CHANGE: Gas Prices Have Doubled Under Obama: “According to the GasBuddy gasoline price tracking web site, the price of a gallon of regular gas was around $1.79 when Mr. Obama took office. Today the national average is $3.58. . . . Four-dollar-a-gallon gas has arrived on average throughout California, and a number of other states are headed in that direction.” I think he’d like to see gas at about five dollars a gallon, to encourage alternative modes of transportation.

HOW CAN YOU RANK COMPANIES FOR ETHICS without being clear about what’s ethical?

UPDATE: Charlie Martin emails: “I know, I know! Pick the companies you want to abuse and call them unethical.” Ya think?

DAVE RAMSEY on the 5 basics of personal finance. This should all be obvious stuff — but if it were that easy, fewer people would be in trouble.

UPDATE: Reader Vadim Lozko writes: “I’m glad you posted a link for Dave Ramsey. His ‘The Total Money Makeover’ book has had such a profound impact on our family. We’ve paid off all of credit cards and car loans within 1.5 years and even though we have about $200k in college loans between the two of us, we’ve already mapped out a plan on living debt free and with no mortgage within 10 years all thanks to his advice and encouragement.” He’s got a lot of fans. A while back Megan McArdle wrote that her household was living according to his principles, even to the envelope-based budgeting technique. I haven’t heard if they’re still doing that, but she found the approach powerful, and surprisingly easy.

ANDREW KLAVAN AND BILL WHITTLE ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS:

At least, they will if you subscribe to PJTV, or join the PJTV Facebook page and ask them one.

INSIDER TRADING AT THE FDA: Larry Ribstein comments: “Well, I suppose we should be happy somebody’s benefiting from the FDA’s unpredictable and overly careful policies.”

WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: The Shores Of Tripoli: Our Latest Wilsonian War. “The Wilsonians now have their war; they also now have their president. Barack Obama’s inner Woodrow Wilson has clearly won out; he has nailed his colors to the mast of a liberal international foreign policy. The cautious Jeffersonian realists have lost one policy battle after another in this administration. Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn law (‘if you break it, you own it’) has been cast to the winds. A president who won his party’s nomination as the most consistent opponent of unpopular interventions abroad has become an apostle of liberal war. Not since Saul went to Damascus has there been such a dramatic conversion. . . . Like Wilson, President Obama is going to find it easier to fight for humanitarian ideals than to make them prevail.”

Say, we sure haven’t heard much from Colin Powell lately, have we?

PUBLIC UNIONS: Is California Next? “Wisconsin’s public union fight is the battle of the century in American politics. But while the governors of Wisconsin and Ohio have led the pushback, it’s possible that the public-pension battle could shift in the future to California—with or without the participation of its governor, the endlessly recyclable Jerry Brown. Even in this bluest of states, the ground is shaking beneath the unions.”

All over, the gods of the copybook headings are having the last laugh.

CHANGE: Obama’s Friends Turn Radioactive After Japan Accident.

President Obama’s push to expand renewable domestic energy has put him in an awkward position following the explosions at a nuclear plant in Japan and the subsequent leakage of radiation. While Obama can still talk about solar, wind and biofuels, nuclear power is practically the only way to generate reliable and affordable energy without fossil fuels.

Making things more uncomfortable for Obama, three of his most intimate corporate friends — General Electric, Duke Energy and Exelon — are deeply involved in nuclear energy.

Read the whole thing. Personally, I see this as a case where the Obama Adminstration’s predilection for crony capitalism might actually work in the public interest.