As I write this, on the afternoon of June 13, nearly 650,000 homes and businesses in Texas remain without utility-provided electricity due to the effects of Hurricane Beryl.

Naturally, Texas politicians know where to put the blame.

No, not on a massive storm which, at times, hit Category 5 — the top of the Saffir-Simpson wind scale — wreaking havoc on power delivery to millions across the Caribbean, Mexico, and across a wide swath of the United States, but on the private sector and government utilities which actually generate and deliver electricity.

State senator Molly Cook (D-Houston), the Houston Chronicle reports, wants to know “Why is this happening? Why is it happening here? Who’s responsible? How do we fix it? What needs to happen at each level of government so that it does not keep happening?”

Why is this happening, ma’am? Well, there’s this thing called “weather.”

Why is it happening in Texas? Because hurricanes love the Gulf of Mexico and the Texas coastline on that body of water is either 367 miles long (if you ask the Congressional Research Service) or 3,359 miles long (if you ask the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).

Who’s responsible? Interesting question with many plausible answers, but for the sake of brevity let’s just go with “The Almighty.”

How do we fix it? Again, many plausible answers, but definitely not the answer Cook seems to imply in the final question: What needs to happen at each level of government so that it does not keep happening?

Her colleague in the state senate, Boris Miles, wants “highly enhanced oversight provisions” and a legislative study on the “feasibility” of burying power lines. All, of course, with a “significant investment of state dollars” that somehow magically doesn’t “[pass] the cost on to those whose lives are affected.”

A better answer would be for the state legislature to dissolve itself, perhaps designating Cook and Miles to exit the state Capitol last, turning out the lights as they go.

Failing that, the legislature could at least stop trying to centrally plan the generation and delivery of electricity over long-distance “grids” — which always and inevitably produces results like the Beryl outages — and let power companies and their customers figure out decentralized solutions that reduce the carnage.

Yes, such solutions MIGHT include burying power lines.

Such solutions would almost certainly include hyper-local (even down to the household level) power generation so that downed lines and blown transformers black out — at most — city blocks rather than entire cities.

Household-level solar and wind would mean that even if your power goes out, your neighbor’s might very well not.

Small nuclear reactors of the newer, more efficient, safer generation might mean that an outage in Pearland need not extend to Stafford.

Absent some really amazing technological developments, we can count on occasional terrible weather events forever.

And so long as government insists on blocking innovation and substituting its central planning for real solutions we can count on the fallout from those terrible weather events remaining worse than it has to be.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“There is one and only one reason to ever require students to spend time at home mastering what is introduced in class,” libertarian columnist Paul Jacob writes at Common Sense, in criticism of a California bill which might result in reduced homework loads for public school students. “Only to prepare them for earning a living and living life by helping them obtain knowledge and skills and realize their potential.”

I disagree.  Unless things have changed since the early 2000s — when my wife and I pulled our own kids out of government schools and switched to homeschooling — the “homework situation” in America is beyond crazy.

As an elementary school student in the 1970s, I could reasonably expect 30-60 minutes of homework per night. That seemed like a lot, but I was a preteen. The workload increased in junior high and high school, but probably still averaged not much more than an hour per day.

By the early 2000s, it wasn’t unusual for my kids’ teachers to send home three hours’ worth of homework per weeknight, or more, and several hours’ worth for weekends.

No, I’m not exaggerating. We were involved parents who helped our kids get through that insane workload.

A workload, I should remind you, that came ON TOP of six to eight hours per day, five days per week, nine months per year, either in school or commuting between school and home.

Almost any adult worker who spent eight hours a day on a factory floor or at an office desk, then was told to work another three hours from home each weeknight and six to eight hours on the weekend, “off the clock,” would seek a salary re-negotiation or quit.

The kids don’t get paid, and they’re not allowed to quit.

Also, they’re kids, not adult workers.

Kids need more, not less, sleep than adults. Kids need more, not less, time to play and socialize than adults. And at least some studies show that more than an hour of homework per day correlates with decreased, not enhanced, academic performance.

I’m not normally a “there oughtta be a law” type. In fact, I oppose the government’s “public” education system in its entirety and  prefer to see kids homeschooled or privately schooled.

But IF there’s going to be a “public” education system, I favor legally capping that system’s “homework”  loads at (for the student of average intelligence) an hour per day in elementary/middle/junior high school, and two hours per day in high school, perhaps with exceptions for “honors” courses, etc.

There’s a term for more homework than that: “Child abuse.”

Yes, education is important. So is kids’ quality of life outside school hours. Leave them some time for their kid stuff.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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“Two red lines remain,” the Associated Press reported on July 5, regarding the topic of Ukraine at this week’s North Atlantic Treaty organization summit: “No NATO membership until the war is over, and no NATO boots on the ground there.”

But, Politico reports as the summit opens, citing two anonymous sources, one a Ukrainian official, “NATO members are likely to declare that Ukraine’s path to membership in the alliance is ‘irreversible.'”

The reality:

Ukraine was, and is, never going to formally become a NATO member state.

Why is that never going to happen?

Because formal NATO membership requires unanimous consent from all of the current member states, because several NATO member states enjoy friendly relations with the Russian Federation, and because there’s no way at least one such member state wouldn’t exercise its veto for the purpose of maintaining and enhancing those friendly relations.

That being the case, why does NATO keep dangling the prospect of membership in front of Ukraine? And why do defenders of Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine continue to pretend that the prospect is real — just as Putin himself has from the beginning of the conflict?

As a bargaining chip, of course.

If peace talks ever begin in earnest, NATO negotiators get to offer a meaningless concession (withdrawing the non-existent prospect), and the Russian Federation’s negotiators get to pretend they got a meaningful concession (withdrawal of the non-existent prospect).

A key element of international negotiations is that all sides have to “get something.” Unconditional surrenders occur only when one side is militarily defeated and/or economically exhausted.

NATO’s likely “irreversible” statement is just NATO’s way of saying it’s not ready to negotiate yet. And if NATO isn’t ready to negotiate, neither is Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who has essentially become a US/UK/EU/NATO puppet “president.”

Zelenskyy wants the “irreversible” statement because he fears the appearance of any daylight at all between him and his regime’s western backers. Any slight crack in the wall of western support for his regime would encourage Russian forces to stay their military course, and likely end with him in exile at best, and more probably dead.

As a non-interventionist, I’ve opposed US meddling in Ukraine for a decade — ever since the US-sponsored coup that culminated in the secessions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk, and eventually in the 2022 Russian invasion.

The US and its allies worked hard to bring the current situation about, and — with the full cooperation of Vladimir Putin — succeeded.

If it was up to me, US aid to Zelenskyy’s regime would end today. Not because I support the Russian invasion, but because it’s simply not (and never was) any of “my” government’s business.

Of course, that aid WON’T end today, and after more than two years of stalemate, the war is far more likely to end in a negotiated settlement that leaves neither side completely happy than in either side collapsing.

The sooner Ukraine and its backers come to the table and start their horse-trading, the better for everyone involved.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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