On a Monday morning in June, in the year of our Lord 1215, on a meadow at Runnymede in England, barons and churchmen met with King John and agreed on the “Articles of the Barons,” which a few days later was enshrined into what we now know as the Magna Carta. It put some limitations on the power of the king. It was the beginning of transforming governance from “the rule of man” to the “rule of law.”

I am not against EVs. I own two of them (a Mustang Mach E and a Jaguar iPace) and I bought a plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt as my car to drive in DC back in 2012, which car my younger son still drives today. I love them all. But the future of EVs in the market and the mandates for and incentives thereon are not so simple as love/hate.

I usually try and give some depth to a single topic in each of these missives. You may have noticed that there is a lot going on these days. So today, I will do a shallow dive into a variety of different issues. Some of these will be hard to summarize in a few sentences, but here goes:

Figuring out where the economy is headed is never easy. We have more data available to us now than ever before. That data may actually make divining the future even more difficult because the data is conflicting. Let’s take a look at three important measures of economic activity – Inflation, Employment and Consumer Spending.

For the second week in a row, I feel compelled to write about something I hate to write about. I will have to put off my latest observations about the economy and foreign relations for another week. Again, the leftist press is obsessed with something that is really not that important in the grand scheme of things. But that is what the left does. They manufacture issues out of thin air in order to distract you from the real problems out there that they have created. They are like magicians who focus your eye “up here” so you don’t see the slight of hand going on elsewhere.

I was determined not to write about this. The Trump indictment is such BS. The press’ obsession with it is disgusting. There are so many real problems in the world that are far more significant. But I have no choice. This thing is a “nothing burger” now. But it is likely to trigger powerful impacts over the next year or so.

As part of her successful effort to take the majority back in the House of Representatives in 2006 after 12 years in Republican control, then minority leader Nancy Pelosi used the tagline “culture of corruption” to describe why the voters needed to vote for change. It worked.

It is more than 19 months before the next presidential election. That sounds like a long time. It is. But not for the players. They are already working hard to plan and set up a strategy to accomplish their goals. And those goals are not always to be president. Here’s the first of what I’m sure will be many blogs about this race over the next 19 months.

That country song came out in 2009. Change New York to Silicon Valley and make a few other adjustments, and it would seem relevant again right now. I was in Congress in the middle of the crisis in 2008. I rarely toot my own horn, but I actually do know a lot about this stuff. So, here’s my analysis on where we are, how we got here and what is next. I apologize that it is a bit longer than my usual missives. But, this is important stuff.

In a 1901 speech, then President Theodore Roosevelt said, “speak softly and carry a big stick and you will go far.” Roosevelt did not make up the phrase, which had existed as a proverb for a long time. But it is his use of the words that brought that proverb to prominence in American lexicon.

There are some things we know about the recent experience with the Chinese Spy Balloon. There are a lot more things we don’t know about it and the three other “objects” that we downed by U.S. missiles. In spite of so many unknowns, I think we can make reasonable postulates about the impact that the last few weeks have had or are likely to have on U.S. Foreign Policy.

From the title of this missive, you will be excused for thinking that it is about China. It could be. But it’s not. That’s for another conversation. It is instead about the coordinated attack on western Judeo/Christian civilization from within. This may be one of the more important pieces I have written to date.

Speaker McCarthy wants to get some spending reductions as part of the debt limit extension. Good for him. I hope he is successful. But even if he gets something, it will likely only very slightly slow the growth of the national deficits and debt. Both the current deficits and the total debt level are massive by almost any historical measure. Demographics and existing law suggest that the numbers only get worse from here.

The express purpose of this blog is to examine the chaos developing around us in the fields of politics, culture, economics and international affairs. In the realm of economics, the stock market is crazy.

I co-wrote the following article with Jon Coupal, the longtime president of the Sacramento-based Howard Jarvis Taxpayer’s Association. Well within my lifetime, Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann in 1978 launched a rebellion against tax increases in California. That successful effort spread nationwide and still, believe it or not, keeps the golden state’s taxes lower than they otherwise would be.