Charles and David Koch are among the most committed and influential free-market champions in America today. According to an editorial in the New York Times, the Koch brothers have invested about a million dollars to try to save California from self-destruction, courtesy of the nation’s most ludicrous energy program: AB-32. That’s a noble effort on the part of Kansas petroleum magnates, even though debt-ridden, job-starved California seems determined to follow Spain’s disastrous path leading toward an unattainable green-energy nirvana.

Naturally the Times doesn’t quite see it that way, assuring readers that the Koch brothers are a dangerous part of sinister, right-wing forces who have aligned to kill California’s bright green future. The Times describes the provisions of AB-32 accurately, although they treat the fantastical goals contained in the bill as though they could be met with a wave of the hand:

The 2006 law, known as AB 32, is aimed at reducing California’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2020 and by 80 percent at midcentury. To reach these targets, state agencies are drawing up regulations that would affect businesses and consumers across the board — requiring even cleaner cars, more energy-efficient buildings and appliances, and power plants that use alternative energy sources like wind instead of older fossil fuels.

More regulations, more government control of private industry, more unreliable, expensive wind power: what could possibly go wrong? (more…)

Ever feel that you’re trapped inside a lunatic asylum, where all the normal rules of logic and discourse have been turned on their heads, and screaming nutbags roam the halls, hurling imprecations at imaginary enemies?  A place where up is down, black is white and left is right? Welcome to MSNBC, whose daily lineup has become a who’s who of strutting Napoleons, fantasy Christs and various Emperors of Cloud Cuckoo-Land.

Look!  Here’s Dylan Ratigan now, in his memorable, nearly career-ending exchange with Florida congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

Which may explain why Ratigan (who, like MSNBC regular Donny Deutsch, has a claim to punditry fame based on… what, again?), and his antagonistic show Morning Meeting vanished from the low-rated cable network in December, to be replaced by the kiddie corps of Chuck “Horse Race” Todd and the utterly unintelligble Savannah Guthrie (as Henry Higgins might ask: why can’t young American women learn to speak?).

So you’ll be pleased to know that, for some recondite reason, the pride of Saranac Lake is now back on the air weekday afternoons as host of The Dylan Ratigan Show.  Whence comes this great moment in television: (more…)