In 1983, the National Commission on Excellence in Education declared that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people.” Forty-one years later, much the same can still be said about the state of our education system in California. Nowhere is failure more disturbing than in reference to California’s close to 5.9 million public school children – the largest K-12 public education system in the country. In fiscal year 2023-2024 California will spend about $128 billion on K-12 public edu ..read more

From the earliest days of European settlement, Latinos have played a crucial role in the remarkable ascendancy of California. However, as they become the majority of the state’s population, workforce, and students, the trajectory of Latinos is being blocked by policies hostile to traditional middle-class values, like homeownership, entrepreneurial freedom, educational progress, savings, and security. As more of California’s historically white middle class depart to other states, Latinos are now primed to occupy that void. Latinos, the key to the future middle class, face a difficult road towar ..read more

French historian and demographer Emmanuel Todd was the first person to have predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. He noted that, unusually, its infant mortality rate was rising, and that they had even ceased publishing that statistic. Based on this and other data, he concluded that the Soviet Union had entered “the final fall.” In something of a parallel to that work, his new book, La défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West), published in January, says that the West is on track to lose the conflict in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, this was received poorly by critics who accused him of repea ..read more

Three years ago, in the wake of Winter Storm Uri, the alt-energy lobby and their many allies in the media made sure not to blame wind energy for the Texas blackouts. The American Clean Power Association (2021 revenue: $32.1 million) declared frozen wind turbines “did not cause the Texas power outages” because they were “not the primary cause of the blackouts. Most of the power that went offline was powered by gas or coal.” NPR parroted that line, claiming, “Blaming wind and solar is a political move.” The Texas Tribune said it was wrong to blame alt-energy after Winter Storm Uri because “wind ..read more

Over the past decade, I have been affiliated with Columbia University as a professor, collaborator, and, most recently, a visitor. There was often an undercurrent of antisemitism throughout the campus that was overlooked by the Jewish community, but sat just under the surface. The recent explosion of violence and protests has exposed this truth for the world to see. Student groups, filled with hate and anti-Zionist agendas, have the support of some of the faculty at Columbia, effectively destroying the façade of a commitment to “fighting all forms of discrimination.” While antisemitism has boi ..read more

As in the Medieval past, scarcity will likely define our present, facilitated by our “net zero” economy. This brave new world will support fewer people, juggling between them expensive resources, less food, and uncertain energy production. Perhaps the biggest struggle will be over electricity, the preferred energy solution of our ruling green hierarchy. Already electricity demand has become ever more precarious as western countries continue to place their hopes on “renewable” fuels while rejecting nuclear power and relatively low-carbon sources like natural gas, the dominant factor in reducing ..read more

While wind and solar do not emit carbon dioxide, there are substantial environmental degradation and humanity atrocities occurring in China, Africa, Turkey, Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile. The materials for EV batteries and to produce electricity from wind turbines and solar panels require large-scale mining of critical minerals and metals, many of which are mined and refined in countries like China and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where human rights violations against miners are common and environmental protections are limited. Environmentalists’ tunnel vision just toward the wealthier co ..read more

As America’s cities continue to decline, as even ardent boosters warn of “an urban doom loop”, how does London remain a global powerhouse? The straightforward answer is that it retains an old advantage: its origins as a former imperial capital. Unlike the high-rise “transactional” cities of New York, Chicago and San Francisco, all groaning under record levels of vacancy and massive investor losses, London never had an official “downtown”, with all major business clustered in dense formations. Rather, as one observer noted in 1843, London’s development occurred organically, surrounding “itself ..read more

Over a decade ago, I led a team of Singapore-based researchers to investigate why families were declining. Back then, we were experiencing a historic shift away from population growth and familial ties, towards individualism. Since then, the post-familial age has entered full swing. This situation would have been unthinkable in the 1960s, when ‘overpopulation’ was seen as inevitable. In his 1968 book, The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich predicted that the number of people on Earth would rocket to unsustainable levels, resulting in global famine. Yet the disaster Ehrlich predicted has not materia ..read more

In 2014, Tony Seba, an author and lecturer in “entrepreneurship, disruption, and clean energy” at Stanford University, declared, “By 2025, gasoline engine cars will be unable to compete with electric vehicles.” He continued, claiming that internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles “are toast.” In a 14-page presentation called “Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation,” that was subtitled, “How Silicon Valley is making oil, nuclear, natural gas, coal, electric utilities and conventional cars obsolete — by 2030,” Seba claimed “solar, wind, electric vehicles, and autonomous (self-driving) car ..read more