Under a bill signed in July, Arizona created the nation’s most expansive school-choice program. All families will be able to spend their children’s state-funded education dollars—about $7,000 a student each year—on any approved education expenses, including private-school tuition and fees, tutoring and instructional materials.

The further Vermont goes down the road to legalized state-controlled marijuana marketing, the more interesting surprises come to the surface. The most recent was published by Kevin McCallum in Seven Days three weeks ago. Here’s the headline: “Vermont’s Electrical Ratepayers Are Providing Generous Subsidies to Indoor Cannabis Growers”.

The progressive think tank Energy Innovation reports that California “is not on track to achieve its climate goals. Compared to historical trends, California will need to more than triple the pace of emissions reductions to hit its 2030 target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.” And this despite enduring an electric blackout in 2020 and narrowly avoiding a blackout this month, due to heavier reliance on solar.

​​In EAI’s August survey asking, “How do you anticipate housing shortage situation to progress?” 82% of respondents chose, “This is a long term, self-inflicted trend that is here to stay unless Vermont officials reform local zoning laws and Act 250 restrictions.”

My friend of ‘many years, Bob Moffitt, formerly Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, recently offered some interesting news about the United Kingdom’s government run National Health Service.

Why settle for new carbon taxes on just gasoline, diesel, and home heating fuels when you can apply a carbon tax to EVERYTHING! Implementing an “economy wide” “cap and invest” (which is the current euphemism for a carbon tax) program is the latest curlicue fluorescent lightbulb to go off over the heads of the twenty-three zealots charged with totally restructuring our economy around greenhouse gas reduction.

Last year the Michigan legislature approved two strong school choice bills that. established a Michigan Student Opportunity Scholarship (SOS) program. Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer vetoed them.  But the state constitution allows the Legislature to override a governor’s veto if enough petition signatures are collected to get the bill back to the Legislature. If passed again, the bills could not be re-vetoed by the governor.

A few weeks ago, President Biden gave a speech about battling climate change in Somerset, Mass at the site of the Brayton Point power plant. "As president, I have a responsibility to act with urgency and resolve when our nation faces clear and present danger” declaring climate change to be "literally, not figuratively, a clear and present danger … (to) the health of our citizens and our communities."

According to the Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Philip Swagel,  interest costs will become the fastest-growing federal budget category, and fuel a cycle of higher debt, deficits, and interest costs that deplete resources for investments, emergency response, or preparedness.

One of my favorite columnists is the hard-nosed Holman Jenkins Jr. of the Wall Street Journal. In a recent column he zeroed in on the mythology of climate change. Wrote he, “The half-trillion dollars you were asked to spend on climate change didn’t stop climate change - alternative energy is not replacement energy.”