A Free-Market Energy Blog

Memorial Weekend: Let’s Go!

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 23, 2014

“Beginning with the Memorial Day weekend and throughout the summer, Americans will spend their hard-earned dollars traveling to visit family, friends, and the great outdoors. Meanwhile, Big Oil will be making huge profits off of these travel expenditures on fuel, while at the same time fighting for decreased public health and climate-change protections.”

Center for American Progress (and Climate Progress), one year ago.

Get a life. Get happy. The automobile and the open road are freedom and environmentalism-on-wheels to escape the concrete to visit the great outdoors.

So forget the spin and go for a spin!

Each year, MasterResource celebrates the beginning of the peak-driving season knowing that our free-market philosophy is about energy abundance and affordability. And there is little to apologize for.

Oil, gas, and coal have been/are being technologically transformed into super-clean energy resources.

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Joe Romm: Climate ‘Disinformers’ Now Holocaust Deniers (inside the shouting phase of denial)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 22, 2014

“When a liberal says it’s time for you to shut up, it usually means they’re losing an argument. When they want you arrested and prosecuted, well….”

– Steven Hayward, “Climatistas Double Down on Stupid,” Power Line, March 29, 2014.

When faced with a powerful, threatening argument to a troubled paradigm, those in denial will first ignore. If this does not work, they will ridicule. And it this does not work, they will shout and even use hateful talk.

“You just don’t get it,” Jeff Skilling would tell Enron’s detractors. Ken Lay, in the middle of his company’s implosion, likened short sellers and media critics to ‘terrorists’ (his last speech to employees was a few months after 9/11). The Enron duo wanted an undeserved peace. They were really saying: “Stop the criticism.

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Gabriel Kolko and ‘Political Capitalism’

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 21, 2014

“Political stabilization … allowed men to relax, to hope that crises might be avoided, to enjoy the bountiful fortunes they had already made.”

– Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism (New York: The Free Press, 1963), p. 285.

“Ironically, contrary to the consensus of historians, it was not the existence of monopoly that caused the federal government to intervene in the economy, but the lack of it.”

– Gabriel Kolko, ibid., p. 5.

Gabriel Kolko, a New Left historian who popularized the term political capitalism, and documented the role of business in initiating and furthering government intervention in the free-market economy, died this week at age 81.

I have mixed feelings about Kolko (1932–2014) as a scholar. (I never personally met him.) I grew up taking his work at face value, following my intellectual mentor Murray Rothbard.…

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Tax Farming Seminar for Renewable Energy

By James Rust -- May 20, 2014
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Beautiful Progress (Book review, ‘Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper’)

By Josiah Neeley -- May 19, 2014
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Greens Going Gas (emissions data, economics speak for themselves)

By Steve Everley -- May 16, 2014
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Marcellus: Natural Gas Giant of the East (new technology, new life for 19th century energy fields)

By Fred Lawrence -- May 15, 2014
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Electric Reform Needs a Pro-Market Voice (unopposed politicization must cease)

By Ken Malloy -- May 14, 2014
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M. A. Adelman on Resourceship (Part II)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 13, 2014
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M. A. Adelman: A Final Salute (Part I)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 12, 2014
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