These Mayors Understand How to Run a City

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Urban leaders have greeted the return of Donald Trump with about as much enthusiasm as they would have for a reprise of the bubonic plague. The National Urban League imagines an “extreme right-wing” administration that will ban abortion, threaten the civil service, and end both immigration and racial quotas.  read more »

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Midwest Metro Musings #1

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I’ve said for years that the issues that plague Midwestern cities, and the successful strategies they’ve employed, have gone unnoticed as the cities of the east and west coasts have pulled away economically and culturally.  read more »

LA Fires Extinguished Gavin Newsom's Presidential Dream

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Two years ago Gavin Newsom was widely seen as a rising Democratic star and likely future presidential candidate.  read more »

The Big Reversal

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It took the re-election of a battered Republican candidate — and a milestone rejection of the Democratic Party’s climate and energy policies by the American electorate — to stop the years-long assault on rural America, our landscapes, and our wildlife by Big Wind and its many allies.  read more »

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How Governable is Los Angeles?

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Los Angeles is being investigated, pilloried and derided over the horrific loss of life and property in the 2025 fires.  read more »

Recycling for Sustainable Electricity is the Key for Future Generations

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Our planet has numerous resources, but they are NOT unlimited resources. What’s the future of humanity 100 to 500 years from now, after humans have extracted the oil, coal, lithium, and cobalt resources from the 4.5-billion-year-old Earth?  read more »

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Europe Faces Green Energy Immiseration. Trump is About to Offer it a Lifeline.

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Teddy Roosevelt believed in speaking softly and carrying a big stick. Donald Trump will never speak softly, or even politely, but he will soon pack the power inherent in presiding over the world’s number one producer of oil and gas.  read more »

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Smart Growth Burns Thousands of Homes

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Los Angeles city and regional planners are just as responsible for the Palisades, Eaton, and other fires that have burned in the past few days as if they had poured gasoline on the homes and lit the matches.  read more »

This is Not the Dawn of a New Fascist Era

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Is the US on the edge of a new fascist epoch? To listen to much of the media, progressive politicians and many academics, Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday will usher in a politics we have not seen since the days of Mussolini, Franco and, worst of all, Hitler.  read more »

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Even Hollywood is Turning on LA Mayor Karen Bass

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After her election as mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, Karen Bass was a heroine of California’s Left. A former backer of Fidel Castro, she decisively defeated billionaire businessman Rick Caruso  read more »