Venture Chronicles

This entire article and interview sums up the schizophrenia that Washington politicians have about energy, the dominant source of which is crude oil and that’s simply not going to change in the next decade. The Democrats in Congress take every opportunity to skewer oil companies for not investing in domestic production and for relying on [...]

“Our sense is that almost all fares are higher now since airlines have raised fares and fuel surcharges because of the massive run-up in jet fuel prices over the last year,” said Tim Wagner, a spokesman for American. “Where fares may not have risen as much, or proportionately, the reason is simply going to be [...]

One of the things that has startled me throughout the Democrat nominating process is that it’s a good glimpse of what a future dominated by the Democrat party would look like. In their quest to legislate fairness into their nominating system the Democrats have found themselves with a byzantine rules structure that, in the words [...]

I haven’t read this entire study and to be totally truthful I don’t know much about this umbrella chambers of commerce organization in the EU, so it’s hard to gauge how credible the research is. “It will take the EU until 2072 to reach US levels of income per capita, and then only if the [...]

This is legislative cynicism at it’s worst. The only reason the legislature believes that they can get away with a 25% tax on porn is that they believe there will be few who will publicly criticize them for trying. Proposed Porn Tax in California: “This bill would impose a tax on the sale of, or [...]

What is going on in state and local defined benefit retirement funds is going to make the subprime crisis look like small change. The problem is that politicians have been promising benefits to employees at the state and local level that are unsustainable because 1) they are buying votes, and 2) by the time it [...]

California’s new law prohibiting non-handsfree cell usage by a driver in a moving vehicle goes into effect on July 1st and people are already saying it doesn’t go far enough. There has been an explosion of cell phone usage in the last 10 years but no corresponding increase in traffic accident statistics, in fact they [...]

Exhibit A for the argument that we can’t reform healthcare without also reforming the legal system. Read the whole WSJ piece, it’s eye opening. Politicians talk about healthcare reform almost exclusively from the payer side, as in forcing everyone to have insurance and the government establishing an entitlement program or expanding an existing one to [...]

The cause of hunger in the world is not a lack of food but poverty. Poverty is a consequence of dysfunctional economies suffering under corruption, dictatorships, and fascism. The same factors that contribute to poverty also contribute to global insecurity that drives up energy prices. You want to drive down food prices? Then create conditions [...]

Pro-tax politicians want to change this by allowing California to force Amazon to collect and submit sales taxes–and they may have found an ally in a U.S. Congress that’s controlled by Democrats. [From Tax-free Internet shopping days could be numbered | Tech news blog - CNET News.com] States complain that they are entitled to sales [...]