Vanguard’s ESG Policy Choice Is to Echo

Morehouse College President David Thomas and Airbnb executive Tara Bunch joined rareified company this past year with appointment to Vanguard Group’s board of directors. They can expect annual pay of about $300,000 to help oversee the money-management giant’s 240-some mutual funds and ETFs. Beyond that, they will be at the forefront of a battle to

Milestone: Early Hamptons Farmland Preservation

The great story of land-preservation on the South Fork of Long Island (“the Hamptons”) is losing many of its first-hand witnesses. Another departed this life just before Christmas: John V.N. Klein, who as Suffolk County Executive launched the first major effort to sustain farmland on some of the richest (both in nutrients and dollar value)

A Burmese House of Mirrors

Burma is such a complex mess of a nation that it calls for the talents of a reporter like Hannah Beech to hold those responsible to account. The best Western journalist in Southeast Asia, Beech dropped a Christmas special in the New York Times that unmasked a seemingly sympathetic business figure’s dealings with the murderous

The Landfill Squeeze Reaches Long Island

If Americans stand accused of precipitating a supply-chain seizure by demanding too many goods in the past year, their purchasing habits also are perpetuating problems at the other end—the landfills. Many if not most population centers of the U.S. have more trash than they know what to do with. It’s not just the capacity of

A COP Vs. Calories: How (Less) Sweet It Would Be

In the spirit of Thanksgiving gourmandizing and the recent COP26 climate conference, might I suggest a global summit to de-calorize our environment? For as surely as the planet is warming, prompting calls to de-carbonize, we’re getting fatter and only scientific guesswork can tell us which will doom more of us. The body mass problem that

The Hamptons Has a New Favorite Hedge

There’s been a lot more green in the Hamptons stretch of Long Island in recent years, and it’s not just the incoming wealth tide. Hybrid arborvitae trees of the Thuja standishii x plicata cultivar, or Green Giants, have become the default landscaping choice for lot perimeters as the area’s trophy homes get bigger and closer

‘Bad News’ for the Wage Workers–Or No News?

The woke bent of many American newsrooms gives a topical edge to Batya Ungar-Sargon’s new book of reflections on class and race in America. “Bad News” (Encounter Books) is a useful check on the identity politics of the era from an avowed Jewish labor populist who is an opinions editor at the current iteration of

Shortage Economy: Will We Go Marching?

Washington pundits generally see the supply-chain hiccups and partially related price inflation as political risks for the Biden White House. Probably that’s so but there’s also opportunity for a left-ward administration. Check out the essay by reliable old Robert Kuttner in the latest New York Review of Books. After fondly recalling the marching orders given

In the Wings, Another $Trillion Biden Push: Student Loans

It might seem like every major domestic spending program of the U.S. government is caught up in the multi-trillion-dollar budget “reconciliation” negotiations, but no. A significant exception is the huge college-student loan program and the massive ($1.7 trillion?) debt outstanding. It’s a separate agenda item. The Biden administration, under constant progressive pressure, is trying to

The Rise of the Entrepreneurial Creative

The pandemic disrupted the labor force, but in the process also seems to have accelerated a certain type of entrepreneurialism: the startup “creative.” This includes performers of various sorts on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok, and writers and visual artists using the likes of Substack and Medium. Many of these individuals would have previously