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…)

Thursday during the 1 p.m. hour, CNN’s “Newsroom,” this exchange took place between CNN reporter Ali Velshi andTime Magazine’s deputy international editor Bobby Ghosh:

VELSHI: The name Cordoba- some people are associating it with Muslim rule and bloody battles, when, in fact, Cordoba was one of the finest times in relations between the major religions.

GHOSH: Exactly right- in interfaith discourse-

VELSHI: Yeah-

GHOSH: And the great mosque of Cordoba that people are talking about and that Newt Gingrich was talking about- the man who built it, the Muslim prince who built it, bought it from a Christian group- paid money for it and bought it from a Christian group. And there was not a lot of alarm and anger raised then.

These statements are journalistic malpractice—ahistorical, whitewashed drivel—compounded by Ghosh’s ad hominem attack on Newt Gingrich. (more…)

You know things are tough all over when even the media start noticing what’s wrong with this picture:

But while most of the country is pinching pennies and downsizing summer sojourns – or forgoing them altogether – the Obamas don’t seem to be heeding their own advice. While many of us are struggling, the First Lady is spending the next few days in a five-star hotel on the chic Costa del Sol in southern Spain with 40 of her “closest friends.” According to CNN, the group is expected to occupy 60 to 70 rooms, more than a third of the lodgings at the 160-room resort. Not exactly what one would call cutting back in troubled times.

Reports are calling the lodgings of Obama’s Spanish fiesta, the Hotel Villa Padierna in Marbella, “luxurious,” “posh” and “a millionaires’ playground.” Estimated room rate per night? Up to a staggering $2,500. Method of transportation? Air Force Two.

Hard to see how anybody could object to that, right? (more…)

Recent revelations about the way that president Obama’s plan to weatherize U.S. homes has gotten off to a less than stellar start symbolize what’s wrong with so-called “green jobs.” Green job programs depend on government subsidies and mandates, require government oversight and, as a result of those two factors, are slightly less efficient than your average Rube Goldberg machine.

One year into the $5 billion program, the government has weatherized five per cent of the target number of homes overall, and less than fifty per cent of what was expected for 2009. The problem? Government rules, believe it or not. Gosh, who could have possibly foreseen that glitch in the plan? But, it seems that it’s difficult to figure out how much to pay contractors, how to protect historic homes and how to solve the nuances of a host of other problems for which government needs to formulate policies and procedures.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a system in which some responsible party – say, the homeowner for example – could make those decisions and save the United States the time, expense and trouble of having to do so? Wait, I seem to remember that we used to have a system something like that. It was called “capitalism,” or some such. (more…)