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Prices in the U.S. have been rising across the board, but the increase in airfares has been particularly acute. Part of that is due to a significant pilot shortage. A new report from the Oliver Wyman consulting firm finds that North America has about 90,000 pilots, falling approximately 8,000 pilots short of demand. And the problem is only getting worse, projected to rise to a shortage of 30,000 pilots over the next decade. We can blame three coalescing events: regulatory changes enacted under President Obama, vaccine mandates, and forced pilot retirements as airlines scrambled to stay afloat during the pandemic....

Gun ownership increased sixfold under former Brazilian President Bolosonaro, homicides dropped 34% A gun expert is asking academics to put their money where their mouths are and bet $1,000 on Brazil as a case study that stricter gun laws won't mean less crime. No one has taken him up on the bet yet, but some have hit back by calling the challenge a "stunt" and saying they will put cash up if the terms meet their requirements. Brazil took a hard turn away from gun ownership with a new left-wing presidential administration this year, sparking a debate on whether Brazil’s...

If you believe tweets from Michael Bloomberg’s The Trace and its employees, I am “one major factor” why the U.S. hasn’t passed stronger gun control laws and thus, they claim, responsible for mass shootings in the United States. These are becoming regular tweets after each mass public shooting. They are upset that I have quoted mass murderers on their decisions to target gun-free zones. Yet, statements such as, “Areas where CCW are outlawed or prohibited may be good areas of attack” are common among mass murderers. That doesn’t make sense to gun control supporters. Immediately after this week’s shooting at...

Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down gun control laws in Chicago and Washington, D.C.  Politicians predicted disaster. "More handguns in the District of Columbia will only lead to more handgun violence," Washington’s Mayor Adrian Fenty warned the day the court made its decision.  Chicago’s Mayor Daley predicted that we would "go back to the Old West, you have a gun and I have a gun and we'll settle it in the streets . . . ."  The New York Times even editorialized this month about the Supreme Court's "unwise" decision that...

This Tuesday, I attended a panel discussion called “What I Wish I Knew As A Freshman Girl.” The female upperclassmen speakers talked very frankly about their mistakes as freshmen and offered their warm support to the assembled first-year women. The event seemed highly valuable, and I was left wondering why no similar opportunity existed specifically for first-year men. Female Dartmouth students have access to more support than their male peers. Female advocacy groups at Dartmouth include Women in Business, the Society of Women’s Engineers, Women in Leadership and the Women in Science Program, which provides faculty mentors and paid internships...

With unemployment at over 9 percent and millions of Americans giving up on looking for work, relative to the rest of the country, Texas has done well. Click link for video

With Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry officially entering the presidential race last week, liberals have started attacking Texas' economic record. Paul Krugman in the New York Times went first last Sunday. "So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment," Krugman claimed. With the latest Gallup poll showing that just 26 percent of Americans approve of President Obama's performance on the economy, liberals have little choice but to try to distort what is happening in Texas. Krugman: "In...

Just hours after Rick Perry officially entered the presidential race last Saturday, liberals started to attack Texas’s economic record. Paul Krugman got the ball rolling in Sunday’s New York Times: “So what you need to know,” Krugman claimed, “is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.” With the latest Gallup poll showing that just 26 percent of Americans approve of President Obama’s performance on the economy, liberals have little choice but to try to distort what is happening in Texas. To do so,...

Academic debates occasionally get pretty ugly, and that is just the way it is. Sometimes they get very ugly. There is one case that has bothered me for several years. James Q. Wilson is now 80 years old, and for decades he has been the most prominent criminologist in the country, responsible for a number of important ideas, such as the Broken Windows theory, which argues that urban disorder and vandalism produce additional crime. Undoubtedly, Wilson has made a number of enemies, as he has taken positions that upset some on the left. One such issue was Wilson’s involvement with...

Click on the Read More Link to watch some excellent talks Should Students Be Allowed to Carry Guns on College Campuses? Where: National Press Club Ballroom When: noon until 5:00 PM, August 8th, 2011 Introductory remarks by Dan Crocker (SCC president) 5 minutes Personal experiences panel -- Crime and College Campuses 25 minutes Amanda Carpenter (10 minutes) Nicole Goeser (10 minutes) Debate over "Should Permitted Concealed Handguns be Allowed on College Campuses?" 50 minutes (18 minutes each, 4 minute rebutals) John Lott, author More Guns, Less Crime Colin Goddard, Assistant Legislative Director, Brady Campaign Panel by academics -- Academics talking...

There seems no place to hide. Americans have seen the value of their stock portfolios crash this week. The S&P 500 and NASDAQ have both lost about 8 percent of their values, and they are headed down again today. This week the Japanese NIKKEI stock market also lost over 9 percent of its value. And the UK's FTSE has lost over 11 percent. The German DAX about 13 percent. So much for promises that if we only passed the debt ceiling increase the stock markets would be calmed. Everyone was waiting for today's unemployment numbers to be released. The 117,000...

With a debt ceiling agreement finally in place and the Senate on track to approve it today congratulations are being handed out all around.  Armageddon and catastrophe has supposedly been averted. And politicians are rushing to put the best face on the deal.  Unfortunately, the new agreement does not accomplish as much as many had hoped, or as much as it should have, in terms of curbing spending and continued deficits. This explains why stock markets continued to fall despite the supposedly "good" news. The reason is because, once again, politicians are continuing to push the problem to the future. ...

Sun News' Ezra Levant and John Lott discuss the horrible multiple victim public shooting in Norway.

Failure to raise the Federal debt ceiling limit could "roil the financial markets and cause severe economic problems," "cause profound damage to our country," and have “dire consequences.” So wrote the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and New York Times. But the year was 1995, not 2011. Other ills predicted during that contentious debate were rising unemployment, reduced GDP growth, and soaring interest rates. That was at a time when President Clinton and Democrats were fighting off attempts by Republicans to link cutting the deficit to the increase in the debt ceiling and a continuing resolution on spending. Then as...

Video at link discusses: "Too many holes in the ‘Gang of Six’ proposal?" http://video.foxnews.com/v/1078462529001/gang-of-six-not-ready-for-prime-time/

Is there an overload of doomsday predictions?

If Congress and the president don't raise the debt ceiling, the consequences will be disastrous, politicians and pundits tell us, -- the equivalent of an economic Armageddon. And President Obama warns that the consequences are so dire that he cannot possibly tolerate any delay in making an agreement. He announced yesterday that any debt deal must be completed by today, July 15th. According to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner, failure to raise the debt ceiling limit will cause the United States to default and "cause a financial crisis potentially more severe than the crisis from which we are only now...

Tuesday night the Greek government survived a no confidence vote, with relative ease, thus allowing the Greek government to go forward negotiating a new bailout. The government faces a vote over "new austerity" measures, but there is no more reason to believe that Greece will keep its promises to sell assets and cut spending this time than it has over the past year. Last year's mammoth €110 billion ($157 billion) European Union and International Monetary Fund bailout was supposed to cover Greece's financial problems for three years. But just one year later Greece is seeking another €100 billion. The G-7...

Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke couldn't deny the obvious in his speech Tuesday in Atlanta. The economy is bad, with Obama’s “recovery” is setting records for being anemic and the unemployment stuck above 9 percent. Almost 5 million Americans have completely given up looking for work and left the labor force since the "recovery" that started in June 2009. GDP growth the seven quarters into the Obama recovery has averaged an annual rate of only 2.8 percent, a fraction of the 4.6 percent average growth during recoveries since 1970. And this recovery would have been even worse if the Federal...

Who has the best plans to fight the budget crisis? Well, it seem that the Democrats do not even have a plan, or perhaps they secretly have one but are embarrassed to release it. Either way, Democrats are stubbornly refusing to release any budget plan. Instead, they just complain about the two that have been presented so far. Thus when the Senate voted on budget plans this week, Senators considered two options but neither one received a single yes-vote from a Democrat. One proposal, the House Republican budget, the so-called "Ryan plan," was attacked by Democrats as "draconian” or “unconscionable."...