Thedoomsday predictions of global-warming alarmists would have us believe there are more droughts, more extreme hurricanes and tornados, that arctic snow caps are melting, and all coastal cities are in danger of rising seas.

Convinced the sky is falling, Henny Penny and a band of gullible friends march off to tell the king, only to meet their end at the hands of a wily fox.”Thesky is falling!” Henny Penny said, in a silly tale about a chicken who believes the world is coming to an end.

Does this sound familiar? The defacto leader of “The Sky is Falling” Chicken Little Party, Gov. Jerry Brown warned in 2016,“If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite,” after he called Trump a“fraud” at the Democratic National Convention for his continued denial of global warming.

When President Donald Trump pulled the… Read More

By Tom Tanton and Katy Grimes

Many in America have grown convinced the world would become Utopia if it wasn’t for evil, dirty oil.Ironically, these oil critics are alwayssuccessful beneficiaries of the U.S. free enterprise system. When theydemonize oil profits,they show just how misinformed they are.

The relationship between oil and gas, and humans, is inextricably linked. As a nation’s economy grows, its oil consumption naturally follows suit.

Would America be a better place without the “Big Oil” and gas industry? Or is the vehemence behind demonizing oil and gas just a ploy for extracting exorbitant and punitive taxes? The… Read More

Fix It: Episode III – The episodic thing makes me feel like I am writing the next Harry Potter or something. OK, enough fantasizing. On to the real stuff.

Energy: The “fix” for our energy problems is actually one of the simpler ones. And, the reason it is simple is not because of any action of Congress or the President. It is not even because of our founding fathers. It comes from God.

This country is blessed with enormous natural resources. We have more coal than any other country on earth. We can make electricity from coal. We also have enough natural gas, by some estimates, to last us for a century. We make electricity from natural gas. We have a number of nuclear plants that generate electricity and we can build more. And, we have rivers to create hydroelectric power which can be harnessed to create more power should we need it. I have just described four sources that currently create more than 90% of all the electricity in this country. And, we can expand them all if we want or need to without importing anything from any other country.

But, you say, you haven’t mentioned anything about our… Read More

In the second “episode” of our saga on fixing our problems and bringing America a new period of growth and optimism, I will address an issue that none of you will be surprised to see me tackle – the debt and deficit. Since I was first elected to the California State Assembly in 2000, trying to get government to tax, spend and waste less has been a major priority for me. As such, you have heard a lot from me on this issue. So, I will not repeat much of what I have said incessantly for years so that I don’t become electronic Ambien for you.

Instead, let me put this problem/opportunity in the context of the larger issue we are talking about. Implementing a plan to gradually fix our deficits and reduce our debt is a necessary but not sufficient condition for growth. Fixing the deficit will not in and of itself free the economy for sustained prosperity. There are other things we have to do that I will write about in future episodes. Suffice it to say, fixing the deficit is not a sufficient condition. But, it is a necessary one. If we don’t do it, we will certainly bring on a crisis which will plunge us into a long and… Read More

If I were to tell you things were chaotic in Washington last week, you might correctly exclaim, “So, what else is new?”. But, things seem to be even more chaotic than normal right now. I submit the following rundown for your consideration:

The President announced his latest strategy for Afghanistan in which he tries to thread the policy needle by giving a timetable for some withdrawal, but at the same time keeps more troops there throughout his term than at any time during the Bush presidency. I don’t think he succeeded in pleasing anyone with this plan – certainly not this Member of Congress. He also still has not indicated what it is we are now fighting for and what the desired end-state looks like. Bin Laden is dead and al-Qaeda is largely out of Afghanistan. Are we nation building? I think we are and I don’t think that is worth $2 billion a week and more American lives. I also believe you either fight wars with all you’ve got, or don’t fight them at all. Vietnam taught us that. The President seems to want to fight half a war. Speaker Boehner criticized the President’s speech and basically called … Read More

Things are not so good out there. The unemployment rate, already stubbornly high, climbed even higher in May. Economists are revising economic growth predictions downward. Housing prices continue to drop, thereby further reducing household wealth. Real returns on bank deposits and Treasury Bills are negative. The dollar is dropping. Gas prices are up, inflation is up. There are some bright spots, certainly, but the overall picture is that of stagnation. Unfortunately, none of this is a great surprise given what the government has been doing of late. We are printing money and artificially holding down interest rates to try and spur recovery. But, this is creating those negative real (after inflation) interest rates, which are distorting capital flows. Most of the country’s tax policies expire in 18 months, so no one can do any long-term investment planning about taxes with any certainty. The government is retarding the development of almost all forms of economical energy (oil, gas, coal, nuclear), while subsidizing expensive wind and solar. We continue to run record deficits, which divert capital from other more productive uses and create the massive public debt overhang… Read More