Last week I wrote about Canada’s 270% tariff on certain U.S. dairy products. During the week, many of you saw Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attempting to blame the entire tariff issue on President Trump. He said his job was to stand up for Canadians, as he should. The media, of...
Virginia’s dependence on defense contracts puts it in both an enviable and awkward position. It is enviable because firms in the state received more revenue from defense contracts performed than any other state in the nation in the federal fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2017, except for California. It’s...
The Washington Post had what could have been an interesting idea: Map more than 52,000 homicides and arrests in major American cities over the past decade. Sadly, the newspaper floundered with the data, unable to identify any meaningful trends other than the entirely predictable finding that some cities do a...
This spring the already-serious problem of insufficient safe parking spaces for long-haul trucks has gotten significantly worse. As noted last issue, the new federal effort to seriously enforce federal Hours of Service (HOS) rules, thanks to electronic log books (ELDs), means thousands of drivers are desperate to find a safe...
A New York Supreme Court struck down portions of a General Permit which would regulate large concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). The New York Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued a General Permit under its own water statute and the Clean Water Act (CWA). New York’s DEC regulates CAFOs in...
If we continue to burn coal to generate electricity, we might destroy the Earth’s capacity to support life. If we switch to natural gas, then fracking might poison the water and set our faucets on fire. Biomass sounds good, but burning it also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Hydroelectric...
Virginia has its very own snail darter – the Roanoke logperch, a threatened species of fish, the existence of which could delay or even obstruct a multibillion-dollar infrastructure project. The snail darter became a cause celebre for endangered species in 1973 when concerns arose that the habitat of the endangered...
A new empirical study in the journal Housing Policy and Debate has set off extensive discussions about Smart Growth and related ideas such as “location-efficient mortgages.” In the study, Nicolas Klein (Cornell) and Michael J. Smart (Rutgers) analyzed data from 11,000 families in a range of income brackets over the...
It’s become a recurring, frustrating pattern, as legislators and regulators ignore the immutable laws of unintended consequences, to drive political agendas or aid favored constituencies, while harming others. A good example is corporate average fuel economy (CAFÉ) standards on vehicles. Originally enacted in 1975 to offset the impacts of the...
The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology issued a report on March 1, 2018, detailing how Russian-supported entities teamed up with U.S. environmental groups to use social media to raise arguments against the production of oil and natural gas. Meanwhile, Dr. Bonner Cohen recently wrote a...
