Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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When we think about the economic damage of climate change, most of us probably think about the physical destruction wrought by mammoth disasters like hurricanes, wildfires and droughts: Bungalows tumbling into the sea. Houses turned to ash. Acres of dead crops. That sort of thing. But the quieter, longer-term effects of global warming cut even deeper. Consider western North Carolina. It’s just beginning to repair the heavy physical damage to homes, businesses and infrastructure caused by Hurricane Helene nearly a month ago. The state’s tab for...
Since President Joe Biden ducked out of the presidential race last month, Vice President Kamala Harris has made steady gains against Donald Trump in most polls. If she wants that lead to endure past a honeymoon phase, she’ll need to articulate an agenda that appeals to persuadable but as-yet-undecided voters. The positions that will work most effectively just happen to be exactly those the country needs. No doubt, Harris has reason to hesitate before adopting any such approach. As ever, Trump is his own worst enemy. The vice president might b...
In response to the inordinate amount of time young Americans spend online, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing to curb students’ access to social media sites while at school. The goal of keeping students off TikTok during the school day is undoubtedly worthwhile, but policymakers would be better off taking a simpler and more effective approach: banning mobile phones from schools altogether. It’s by now indisputable that allowing kids to have phones in the classroom harms academic performance — even among those who don’t actually use the...
Regardless of your perspective, Harvard looks bad right now — and that’s good for America. The resignation of Claudine Gay as president has brought the university unwanted attention for lacking both academic standards and moral clarity. She made mistakes, but in many ways Harvard set her up to fail. Like all of America’s top universities, Harvard has taken on an unhealthy role in the U.S. economy and society. America’s best universities need to return to their original mission: producing academic excellence, not just signaling it. These s...
Wind power may be having a difficult year, but it’s still many times cheaper than oil or gas and remains a core piece of the energy-transition puzzle. A single rotation of a 260-meter-tall offshore turbine — General Electric Co.’s Haliade-X 13 MW, to be precise — can produce enough energy to power a household for more than two days, emitting no carbon or other pollutants. Not everyone is a fan. NIMBYism is one of the biggest barriers to green energy installations, as local residents protest “view-ruining” turbines and new grid infrastruct...
Ask any parent about the time their kids spend on mobile devices, and you’ll likely hear the same refrain: It’s too much. Excessive use of smartphones and social media is linked to rising rates of teenage depression and self-harm, while also damaging students’ academic performance and exacerbating achievement gaps. At this point, the question isn’t whether phones should be banned from classrooms, but why more schools haven’t done so already. Evidence about the negative effects of mobile devices on learning is overwhelming. Large-sca...
When the revolution in higher education finally arrives, how will we know? I have a simple metric: When universities change how they measure faculty work time. Using this yardstick, the U.S. system remains far from a fundamental transformation. It is no accident that former college president Brian Rosenberg titled his new book, "‘Whatever It Is, I’m Against It’: Resistance to Change in Higher Education." Some background: Faculty at Tier 1 research universities (which includes my own employer, George Mason University) typically bargain for w...
No one sells the future more masterfully than the tech industry. According to its proponents, we will all live in the “metaverse,” build our financial infrastructure on “web3” and power our lives with “artificial intelligence.” All three of these terms are mirages that have raked in billions of dollars, despite bite back by reality. Artificial intelligence in particular conjures the notion of thinking machines. But no machine can think, and no software is truly intelligent. The phrase alone may be one of the most successful marketing t...
Amazon.com Inc.’s pause of its plans to expand its second headquarters in Northern Virginia reflects some deep underlying trends — not just for metropolitan Washington, where I live, but for regional development more generally. First, with the end of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy, many developments are being canceled or postponed. Long-term projects are less profitable than they used to be, and capital is harder to come by. As the major technology companies lose market value, their urban and suburban refurbishment plans...
Russian President Vladimir Putin has raised anew the possibility he might use nuclear weapons against Ukraine to prevail in a conflict going sideways. The smart money says he won’t, because doing so — or otherwise expanding the conflict drastically — wouldn’t make a bad situation any better. Yet the smart money might not have predicted the choices that set Putin down this path in the first place. Much of Putin’s televised speech last week was a repetition of the familiar. He again blamed the U.S., the North Atlantic Treaty Organizat...
A Colombian family hoping to visit Disney World right now might have to wait more than two years to get their visas. The same goes for a Nigerian investor looking to close a funding round in Silicon Valley. Around the world, delays in visa processing are preventing scores of foreigners from coming to the U.S. — hurting the economy, sapping investment and undermining America’s image. Fixing the problem demands a more forceful and creative response than the U.S. government has mustered thus far. While processing times vary greatly from con...
As they prepare to spend $1.2 trillion on a bipartisan infrastructure deal, along with a vastly larger sum on a party-line social-policy bill, Democrats might be expected to defend their ambitions on the merits. Instead, progressive leaders seem to be focused on fiscal gimmickry. Their goal is to advance a $3.5 trillion initiative known as Build Back Better. With moderates balking at the bill’s scope and cost, efforts are underway to deliver a slimmer version that might command broader support. Unfortunately, these seem to be concentrating n...
President Joe Biden’s defense of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan was callous, self-serving and deeply unconvincing. Above all, it was beside the point. The question is no longer whether U.S. troops should have stayed. It’s how the U.S. can minimize the damage caused by this grievously bungled exit. Some of the gloating among U.S. rivals is overdone, but there’s no doubt U.S. credibility has suffered a crippling blow. Abandoning loyal Afghan allies to their fate will haunt future U.S. interventions around the world. Friends have been snubb...
The past 18 months have shown that accurately counting the dead is vital for protecting the living. At the outset of the pandemic, many countries lacked adequate registration systems, and others saw their processes break down under strain. This made it harder to track the spread of COVID-19 and deal with its consequences. Even in normal times, lack of data about deaths and their causes can seriously impede efforts to protect public health. Fixing this ought to be a global priority. Reliable information on mortality and morbidity can give...
In the mid-2000s, I spent two years as senior military assistant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, acting essentially as his military gatekeeper and translating his orders to the U.S. military via the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Before joining his team, I had been a Navy one-star admiral and commander of Enterprise Carrier Strike Group, in charge of 10,000 sailors and a dozen ships in combat in the Arabian Gulf. I mention that because my duties suddenly shifted from a pinnacle of command at sea to overseeing administrative misery: making...
The details of what went wrong in Texas last week — most likely the biggest forced blackout in U.S. history — will take time to establish. So will exactly what to do about it. But this emergency already underlines something that should’ve been obvious before. As the growing threat of extreme weather puts vital economic systems at risk, climate resilience needs to be taken much more seriously. Even Friday morning, nearly 190,000 homes were still without power as Texas grappled with an unusual weather pattern that sent temperatures plumm...
After the killing of Iran’s top nuclear scientist last month, President-elect Joe Biden is coming under renewed pressure to quickly resume negotiations with the regime. He should slow down and proceed with caution. Biden has long since telegraphed his desire to resuscitate the nuclear deal that Iran agreed to with the U.S. and other world powers in 2015. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as it was known, was designed to pause Tehran’s nuclear-development program well short of the weaponization stage. Since President Donald Trump’s decis...
The loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a double blow. It will be felt as a personal loss by millions of Americans, and it will stress America's politics at a moment when its fabric is already threatening to come apart. Consider this a measure of the country's current plight: What could be sadder than to fear that the death of a selfless and extraordinary public servant is more likely in the coming weeks to divide the nation than unite it? Justice Ginsburg taught many lessons over the course of her career in the law. One of the most important will...