Michael Giberson Perhaps you’ve seen the video of Elizabeth Warren, hoping to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, in which she declaims that since roads and police and fire protection are funded through taxes, people have no real claim to their income or wealth against a government that wants to take it. After …
On the Obligations of Income-Earners and Property-Owners to Pay Taxes Read More »
Michael Giberson I second Lynne’s recommendation of Yergin’s column in the Saturday Wall Street Journal. On the topic of Hubbert’s peak and peak oil generally, I particularly recommend these two paragraphs: Hubbert insisted that price didn’t matter. Economics—the forces of supply and demand—were, he maintained, irrelevant to the finite physical cache of oil in the …
Michael Giberson Yesterday the staff of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Az) conducted a “Solar Summit” in Washington, D.C. You can watch all three hours of the program here, or maybe you’d rather read the overview provided by Phil Riske at the Rose Law Group Blog, “Mayes, Spitzer bemoan congressional Republicans ‘retrenching’ against renewable energy funding and …
Interstate Commerce in Electric Power – Arizona Policymaker’s Two-faced View Read More »
Michael Giberson Wisconsin didn’t have an anti-price gouging law in 2001, so the state government’s response to post-9/11 reports of gasoline price gouging was pretty limited. While the Wisconsin governor called for an investigation of gasoline retailers, for all practical purposes the investigation was limited to fighting collusion in price setting and instances in which stations …
Michael Giberson The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, created a great deal of uncertainty and fear among Americans. In the retail gasoline market, some (but not all) consumers reacted to the uncertainty and fear by heading to a gas station to fill up their tanks. Some (but not all) gasoline retailers reacted to the …
Post 9/11 Gasoline Price Gouging in Wisconsin: Two Views Read More »
Michael Giberson Even an article in the New York Times is characterizing the spate of EPA regulations, recently issued or coming shortly, affecting the electric power industry as a “cascade.” Regional power grid operators have been reviewing their reliability projections and becoming alarmed. Here’s Matthew Wald in the Times: WASHINGTON — As 58 million people …
Epa to Power Industry: Don’t Worry About Reliability, We Can Grant Waivers Read More »
Michael Giberson Even before the natural gas subcommittee to the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board released it’s “Ninety Day Report” on hydraulic fracking today, anti-fracking groups shifted their spin operations into high gear. On Monday, a letter to President Obama sponsored by 68 groups called on him to “employ any legal means to put a …
Advisory Committee’s Fracking Report Spurs Outpouring of Spin Read More »
Michael Giberson Most of the current 18.4 cents per gallon federal gasoline tax is set to expire at the end of September, and there are some indications that it may become the occasion for the next big political fight in Congress. See Politico and Platts for background. Grover Nordquist, of Americans for Tax Reform, says …
Lynne Kiesling That’s the constant in my assessment of the political theater of the past two weeks — so much sound and fury, and the federal government’s debt rating is still likely to be downgraded. And it deserves to be downgraded, and probably should have had that happen a while ago. I mean, seriously, what …
Lynne Kiesling Steve Horwitz, this morning, on the cronyism between the oil industry and regulatory agencies: Despite the hopes of those who think this can be solved, as the AP report suggests, by better ethics laws or hiring “better” regulators, the revolving door that leads to capture is not a “bug” but a feature – …
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