Plans to create five million “green jobs” took a hit last month with the resignation of Anthony “Van” Jones, the President’s green jobs czar. Jones quit not because his claims regarding creating green jobs became exposed for the myth they are, but rather for a series of impolitic remarks and revelations of associations with unsavory […]

FREE hosted several conferences this summer with participants from all over America. Several, indeed many, asked me to explain the signs “Shame on NorthWestern Energy.” Here’s my answer. The NorthWestern experience and subsequent public reactions follow the usual pattern. To illustrate I’ll begin with a bit of history and follow with the account of a […]

One of life’s greatest blessings is to live in a community where trust is the norm. This is true for innumerable social, psychological, political, and economic reasons. Trust is indeed a luxury to treasure. Among its other benefits, is that it reduces the costs of all exchanges and transactions. If we trust the person or […]

Until Barack Obama was elected president, Chicago’s Saul Alinsky was America’s most famous “community organizer.” While Obama never met Alinsky, who died in 1972, I did. It was in the late 1960s, shortly after he published Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. Here’s how it happened. I was a grad student at […]

Health care reform seems hopelessly complex only because it is. Yet, there are a few underlying, but seldom spoken about, forces that make it more intelligible. All of this is in accord with a fundamental principle of political economy; important issues that are complex and carry heavy emotional baggage naturally generate error and acrimony. Political […]