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Why is TransCanada “exploring how to modify existing contracts with Keystone XL customers to allow for rail shipments” of oil (as Bloomberg reports)? The answer is that the U.S. government—spurred by environmentalist groups—has prohibited completion of the pipeline. “This is a market inefficiency created by regulatory impediments,” explains TransCanada CEO Russ Girling.

In the big picture, when government violates people’s rights in order to “run” libraries, rail transportation, and the like, it cannot do so without stealing money from the productive and thus precluding them from using that money productively; it cannot do so without destroying wealth and blocking or pushing out private alternatives.

Legislation that grants “rights” to entities such as “natural communities” (whatever that means), “wetlands, streams, rivers,” or the like, necessarily violates the genuine rights of individual human beings—the only entities that possess or can possess rights. With such a legal framework in place, the majority of voters could violate the rights of individuals virtually whenever they want.

When today’s leftists speak of “white privilege,” their goal is not to abolish overtly racist laws—those were abolished in part by Lincoln and his supporters in the Civil War and virtually in full within a century of the Civil War. Nor is the left’s goal to eradicate private bigotry—which today is big news precisely because it is rare (e.g., Donald Sterling).

TOS is looking for a part-time Social Media Specialist to join our team and help advance the principles of Objectivism. This person will: Work closely with TOS’s writers and staff to produce and post content to TOS Blog and TOS’s social media properties; Create, purchase, and manipulate images for use on TOS’s website and social media properties; and the like.

Martin Luther King, Jr. rightly called on people to judge others not “by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Radersma is a racist, not because of the color of her skin, but because of the corrupt ideas she chooses to embrace and the malicious words she chooses to speak.

For twenty-seven years Joseph “Gabe” Sonnier of Louisiana worked as a janitor for Port Barre Elementary. Although Sonnier never treated the position as beneath him, he worked hard to reach new levels of success, first as a teacher, then—as of November—as the principal of Port Barre.

It is absurd to suggest that opening one’s business to the general public somehow obligates one to serve every individual who walks through the doors, regardless of context. Must a cake baker bake a “God Hates Fags” cake for the bigoted Westboro Baptist Church, or a swastika cake for a neo-Nazi group?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently documented the United Kingdom's skyrocketing consumption of wood for electricity generation and space heating—a consequence of the country’s regressive “environmental” policies. Among other things, these policies require electricity providers to use a set proportion of more costly fuels such as wood, now trendily called “biofuel.”

“Imagine being able to speak in German, and have your message conveyed grammatically and semantically correct in English. That future is here,” Microsoft touts in a recent video. Microsoft is developing the translator for use with Skype, the web communication platform Microsoft purchased a few years ago.

The so-called Civil Rights Commission did not rule that “the baker was wrong” (he was in fact wrong); rather, it ruled that government will punish the baker if he does not bake cakes for gay couples. There is a world of difference between a private individual condemning some action as immoral, and the government punishing that action.

A recent article by the Associated Press, “Oil Boom Bringing More than Construction,” describes the revitalization of Watford City, North Dakota—revitalization made possible not only in that town but in many others as well, by the fracking revolution. “Luke Allen, who moved here last summer to start his dental practice, finds the pioneer spirit exhilarating,” the AP reports.

Whereas rational ethics holds that if you want the values on which your life and happiness depend, you must take the actions necessary to gain and keep those values; rational economics holds that if you want to trade value for value in the marketplace, you must first produce value with which to trade.

According to Sunstein, although the Chinese government was not uniformly successful, “the new curriculum greatly affected students’ thinking” in various ways. Sunstein writes that the Chinese government indoctrinated students (among other things) to view the government as legitimate and democratic and to view free markets with suspicion.

“Russia's No. 2 oil producer, Lukoil, and France's Total agreed . . . to set up a joint venture to tap vast tight [shale] oil reserves in Siberia” Reuters reports. The move provides further evidence that the Russian government’s criticism of fracking in Europe is intended to maintain Russia’s position as a key supplier of European energy.