Hadrian, the third of the “five good emperors” of Rome, ruled from 117 to 138 in a time of consolidation of the Roman Empire.  Best known for building Hadrian’s Wall, which marked the northern most reach of the Roman Empire, his policy focus was securing the Empire by leveraging its strengths rather than overextending its reach. Hadrian had a disciplined attention to detail and focused on the infrastructure needed not only to defend the Empire’s territory but leverage its resource potential and revenue growth. 

Today’s economy is marked by uncertainty and volatility at home and abroad. This uncertainty is causing businesses to hoard cash—at last estimate about $1.4 trillion worth.

We have a huge federal deficit, a broken housing situation, and looming costs for unsustainable entitlement programs promised for generations by spend-now, pay-later politicians. …

Previous posts at MasterResource have been critical of the energy-related positions of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, such as The U.S. Chamber’s Energy Security Index: Where’s the Definition? by Robert Michaels and Dear U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Why Attempt to Resuscitate a Brain Dead Climate Bill? by yours truly.

The Chamber, in fact, was waxed and waned for and against the free-and-neutral market for virtually its whole existence. Such is life in political capitalism where special government favor is sought and received by business.

John T. Flynn’s 1928 essay, “Business and the Government”   (Harper’s Monthly Magazine), criticized the Chamber motto More Business in Government and Less Government in Business as “sloganeering.”

Flynn noted that new laws were coming far less from the imaginations of legislators as from “the legislative program committees of trade associations or from the special counsel of trade groups … backed often by resolutions from trade conventions and chambers of commerce.”…

The 100^th birthday of President Ronald earlier this year brought forth a flood of nostalgia. Americans rightfully love their great man. But enviro-revisionism from some slammed Reagan for his reversal of President Jimmy Carter’s energy program. As Joe Romm puts it, Reagan “almost single-handedly ruined America’s leadership in clean energy.”

Such criticism reflects a extremely selective memory and a fundamental misunderstanding of the nation’s energy challenges.

Carter Was Pro-Coal, Nuclear Too

In recent years, true, some of Carter’s energy policies have been rehabilitated in the name of “energy independence” and addressing the alleged human influence on global climate. The implication—not always stated explicitly—is that Carter’s energy plan was primarily about renewable energies. The solar thermal panels he had installed on the White House roof, indeed, epitomized the differences between him and Reagan—who had the panels removed.…

Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his policies would cause electricity rates to “skyrocket” and “bankrupt” any company trying to build a coal-fired generating plant. This is one promise he and his über-regulators are keeping.

President Obama energetically promotes wind and solar projects that require millions of acres of land and billions of dollars in subsidies to generate expensive, intermittent electricity and create (really centrally plan) jobs that cost taxpayers upwards of $220,000 apiece – most of them in China.

His Interior Department is locking up more coal and petroleum prospects, via “wild lands” and other designations, and dragging its feet on issuing leases and drilling permits.

Meanwhile, his Environmental Protection Agency is challenging shale gas drilling and fracking, and imposing draconian carbon dioxide (CO2) emission rules, now that Congress and voters have rejected cap-tax-and-trade.…