Atlas Shrugged (Part I) had a strong debut weekend despite the effort of its philosophical critics, including some leading movie reviewers, to pan the effort and to discourage attendance (see the Appendix below where Walter Donway challenges Roger Ebert).

This movie and the classic 1957 book are important for today’s energy debate in a variety of ways, beginning with Enron and continuing with Obama energy policy. And how Rand undressed Richard Nixon with the energy crisis of her day(Part V–see schedule below)!

“Ah, Ha!”: Interpreting Enron/Ken Lay

For me personally, Ayn Rand’s philosophy was the key that unlocked the mystery of Ken Lay and the magical new energy company, Enron. I had once studied Objectivism but lost interest in Ayn Rand, finding it too dogmatic for my taste. (In retrospect, I ‘threw the baby out with the bath water’.)…

MasterResource is nine quarters old, having started at year-end 2008. Our total views have surpassed 825,000. We have a loyal, sophisticated readership whose comments add substance to many of the posts.

Our “free market energy blog” has attracted talent from across the nation and across disciplines–nearly a hundred bloggers in all. In particular, the growing national movement against industrial wind turbines includes a number of very informed citizens who choose MasterResource to publicize their issues and research.

Our concept is different from most blogs. With one in-depth post per day, we have created an open book of mini-chapters, creating a scholarly resource and a historical record for the energy and energy/environmental debates. We now have more than 300 categories–the index of our ever expanding book.

Most of all, our content will most assuredly meet the test of time as future scholars review MasterResource to understand the intellectual arguments and political discourse.…

[Editor note: Mike Riley, editor of Fabricating & Metalworking magazine (bio at end), took a neutral look at a new major manufacturing project and offers his opinions here.]

The total government subsidy given to industrial windpower rivals the price of natural gas paid by power generators– yet wind still cannot compete without mandates. With our nation being challenged to reduce its debt and shrink the federal budget, realistic business economics is confounding the hype about this once darling of renewable energy.

New Wind Plant for Port of Muskogee?

Muskogee is an economic center in eastern Oklahoma that country singer Merle Haggard commemorated in the old country song “Okie from Muskogee,” a hit back in 1969. Now the city is better known for operating the Port of Muskogee that is located at the edge of North America’s wind corridor.…

Two years ago, Spain’s fixation on renewables and “green jobs” was praised by President Obama as a success story worthy of our emulation. With Obama making renewables a centerpiece of his administration with an eye toward the 2012 election, the obvious question is: How is Spain doing today?

The Initial Debate

My editorial “Spain Is Tilting at Windmills” (May 2009) presented the results of a study prepared by Gabriel Calzada Álvarez, PhD, an economics professor at King Juan Carlos University in Madrid. The report, “Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources,” released in March 2009, was a comprehensive review of the long-term effects of Spain’s renewable energy policy on jobs and the economy. In sum, the study found that for every green job created, 2.2 private industry jobs were lost, and each “green job” cost the Spanish government 571,000 euros ($790,000 today).…