timwferguson

An Ode to the Op-ed Sweetener

Back in the 1980s, when the Wall Street Journal was still exclusively a print product, my little team in the op-ed department formalized the near-daily placement of a short, usually humorous or poignant, article at the bottom of the section. Because of the position on the layer cake, we called those pieces the “tertiary” andContinue reading “An Ode to the Op-ed Sweetener”

Green Living: Cows Are Coming Home

This correspondent at Unherd tries to separate the current Dutch farming protest over nitrogen restrictions from more sweeping global pushback against climate and other environmental strictures. Sure, there’s generally a more localized context to every “global” story. But it’s nonetheless true that what are being presented as planetary urgencies are beginning to impinge on largeContinue reading “Green Living: Cows Are Coming Home”

On the Trail of Hamptons Preservation

The year 2022 is triggering public anniversary memories on the East End of Long Island, some of which go back 50 years to significant developments that changed Suffolk County such as the abrupt completion of the Long Island Expressway and the birth of the resource-preservationist outfit known back then as the Group for America’s SouthContinue reading “On the Trail of Hamptons Preservation”

AC/DC as a Fetish

The pursuit of electricity as a climate relief strategy has become rather a fetish on the left, even in quarters where you’d expect more skepticism about any power source. Mainstream media are fully on board. There’s an all-out push in Washington and around the country for subsidizing battery-powered vehicles, even though 1) combustion engines areContinue reading “AC/DC as a Fetish”

Soon to be Overrun With the Old

When media spotlight “existential crises” they often are referring to some resource whose supply is in peril for future generations. Usually this has some environmental element, such as species depletion or food supply, or any other angle of climate change. But in First World societies there’s a demographic “timebomb” as the baby boomers and successiveContinue reading “Soon to be Overrun With the Old”

Hamptons Traffic and the Road Not Taken

My interest in land-use policy 50 years ago on Long Island was piqued when I learned offhand* of a state highway that was to have been built back then, not far from where our home now sits in Water Mill. How could that have been the case, over a route that today features much largerContinue reading “Hamptons Traffic and the Road Not Taken”

FTC Has Fetched a New Stick

The action in this latest Wall Street Journal story on the now-progressive Federal Trade Commission concerns veterinarians, but it is not a mere dog and pony show. It reflects a concerted push to rein in the nation’s private-equity firms, particularly those involved in mergers or “roll-ups” of businesses in the same type of enterprise. TheContinue reading “FTC Has Fetched a New Stick”

Sociology’s Un-economic Impulse

In the agitated state of modern societies, a rebellion against “neo-liberalism” heralds some preferred order, usually a form of ostensibly democratic socialism. Inherent in this movement is a rejection of economics, which is the study of allocating scarce resources. This is a startling proposition, coming off a generation or two in which economics has beenContinue reading “Sociology’s Un-economic Impulse”

Beijing’s Man in Jakarta

Hard as it may be for Westerners to think that today’s People’s Republic of China, with all of its glaring repressions and slavishness over Covid, could be still a draw for emerging nations…it is. As this latest op-ed in the New York Times from an Australian think tank argues, China is actually gaining ground inContinue reading “Beijing’s Man in Jakarta”

Big Media’s Mere Cameo in a Tale of Conservatism’s Shift

Matthew Continetti’s book, “The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism,” is getting much respectful attention from mainstream media. It is deservedly praised for an encyclopedic narrative of what has evolved into a greatly populist—disparaged as Trumpian–force in American politics. My beef with the work is that it largely misses a key element inContinue reading “Big Media’s Mere Cameo in a Tale of Conservatism’s Shift”