'Do it in a heartbeat'

Seeing as Jim Weider grew up in Woodstock, New York, and knew most of The Band’s original members, when Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Richard Manuel first reformed The Band back up in the ‘80s, he made for a perfect replacement for guitarist Robbie Robertson, who wasn’t interested in a reunion. In Weider, The Band found a kindred spirit who understood its mission statement: creating and playing music for the people and places they grew up around. But it wasn’t easy, and Manuel committed suicide in 1986. Hard as that was to manage, The Band soldiered on, reeling off three The post An Interview With Jim Weider Of The Band appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

Bill Withers grew up in Slab Fork, West Virginia, a small coal mining town that shaped both his worldview and the grounded tone of his songwriting. Raised in a working class family, he was the youngest of six children. After graduating high school, he joined the United States Navy, where he served for nine years as an aircraft mechanic. That experience came well before his recording career and provided the discipline and life perspective that later informed the plainspoken authority of his music. After leaving the Navy, Withers moved to Los Angeles and worked at a factory making airplane parts The post Complete List Of Bill Withers Songs From A to Z appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

There are TV shows that feel like products of their time, and then there’s Rollergames…a neon‑soaked, rock‑scored, alligator‑adjacent fever dream that could only have aired in 1989. It was roller derby turned up to eleven, CONTINUE READING... The post Rollergames: The Wildest, Loudest, Most 1989 Thing Ever Put on Television appeared first on The Retro Network.

Affordability has become the latest mantra for Democrats as they gear up for midterm elections. Yet, blue states lead the nation in driving up the cost of basic essentials like electricity and water, new studies say. A recent report by the Institute for Energy Research, titled “Blue States, High Rates,” found that while average electricity prices across America increased by nearly 40% since 2021, Americans in left-leaning states paid significantly more than their conservative compatriots. The report states that the vast majority of states with electricity prices above the national average are Democrat-led states. By contrast, red states comprised eight of the 10 states with the lowest electricity prices. “Because of the Federal Power Act, the states have most of the discretion in terms of how they want to structure their electricity markets,” Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research and one of the study’s authors, told The Daily Signal. “We have seen over the past 10-15 years that typically blue states have high rates and red states, especially in the south and southeast, have much more reliable and affordable electricity for their ratepayers.” The Federal Power Act, enacted in 1935, reserved authority to the states to set retail electricity prices and determine the mix of in-state power generation. In an attempt to control global temperatures, many Democrat-run states have used this authority to push wind and solar power and shutter coal, gas, and nuclear plants. Regulations typically favored by states pursuing this agenda include renewable portfolio standards, energy efficiency resource standards, and clean energy standards, which are designed to increase solar and wind power and decrease the use of fossil fuels. Proponents of wind and solar energy have claimed that these technologies will ultimately be a cheaper source of energy, but the reality has been the opposite due to, among other things, the backup systems required when the weather doesn’t cooperate. “Wind and solar being cheaper is a total and complete myth,” Pyle said. “It may cost less to install initially, but when you factor in the challenges of grid management and the fact that you have to back up the intermittency with dispatchable generation, wind and solar is exorbitantly more expensive.” These backup systems typically include gas, coal, or nuclear facilities that can be switched on when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Using these backup systems typically means constructing duplicate generation systems and building extensive new transmission lines to carry electricity from often remote sunny or windy locations to cities and towns. “It’s a perfect storm of subsidizing unreliable generation sources that have to be backed up, and then at the same time eliminating or reducing coal plants, nuclear plants—things that have already been running reliably and are paid for already,” Pyle said. Batteries have been proposed as the latest solution to the shortcomings of wind and solar power, but recent reports undermine this idea. “Utility-scale batteries are not long-duration, dispatchable power sources; they are energy sinks that carry significant economic and environmental costs,” a December 2025 analysis by energy expert and former wind farm manager Lars Schernikau, published by the National Center for Energy Analytics, states. According to Schernikau, batteries are significantly more expensive than alternatives and “most are designed to store chemical energy that can be extracted as electrical energy for one to four hours.” The sum of these additional expenses are typically passed on to consumers in the form of higher electric bills, but a November 2025 report by the Century Foundations, a progressive think tank, states that Americans are increasingly unable to afford these costs. “Nearly one in twenty households—equivalent to roughly 14 million Americans—have utility debt so severe that it was sent or soon will be sent to collections,” the report states. The average overdue balance on utility bills climbed from $597 to $789, a 32% increase since 2022. “These policies are not sustainable in their current form, when driven by mandates and subsidies that distort markets,” Lora Myers, an energy economist at the American Legislative Exchange Council, an organization focused on state-level policy. “The core issue isn’t the technologies themselves, but the overreliance on top-down mandates like Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), net-zero emissions targets, and cap-and-trade programs,” Myers said. “These policies force utilities to prioritize intermittent renewables at the expense of a diverse generation mix, leading to higher electricity prices for consumers.” In addition to electricity, a 2025 Utility Report by DoxoInsights, a data analytics firm, found that nine of the 10 states with the highest overall utility bills, including water, sewer, electricity, gas, and waste collection, were left-leaning states. The top ten most expensive states for these utilities were Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maine, and Vermont. Myers says the key to affordability is for states to give more leeway to private industry. “States should prioritize policies that foster energy abundance through market-driven innovation, diverse generation, and reduced regulatory burdens, ultimately lowering costs and improving reliability to support economic growth and higher living standards,” she said. “This means moving away from restrictive mandates which inflate prices by limiting choices and imposing artificial costs compared to open competition.” The post Why Red States Are More Affordable Than Blue States appeared first on The Daily Signal.

President Donald Trump flexed his populist muscles earlier in January when he promised to ban Wall Street from buying up single-family homes. “For a very long time, buying and owning a home was considered the pinnacle of the American Dream,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “It was the reward for working hard, and doing the right thing, but now, because of the Record High Inflation caused by Joe Biden and the Democrats in Congress, that American Dream is increasingly out of reach for far too many people, especially younger Americans.” “People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump added. The problem he’s addressing is real. Under President Joe Biden, the cost of a median price home more than doubled in just three years. Inflating hit a 40-year high, and the interest rate hikes that occurred afterwards drove mortgage rates to a 23-year peak.  In 1985, the median American family would have to save their entire income for three-and-a-half years to buy the median American home. Today, it would take five years of earnings. With the situation this bleak, it’s no surprise that millennials are less likely to own homes than other generations were at their age. The question, though, is why supply isn’t rising to meet demand.  For a clue, look no further than Invitation Homes, the country’s largest single-family rental firm. In 2021, the company admitted they target “markets that we expect will exhibit lower new supply” along with the “stronger job and household formation growth” that increase demand.  Institutional investors thrive in places where people are clamoring for homes, but red tape makes it illegal or prohibitively expensive to build them. Restrictive zoning, high minimum lot sizes, burdensome building codes, and endless environmental reviews are the real culprits behind the housing crisis. Every new home builder in America has to deal with some—or all—of these roadblocks.  Institutional investment, on the other hand, affects a comparatively tiny share of the housing market, and never accounting for even 2.5% of home purchases for a given quarter.  OK, so maybe Trump’s policy wouldn’t fix the problem, but it seems like it would help a little. So why not pull the trigger anyway? Because under current conditions, abysmal as they are, the single-family rentals these investors create are actually doing some good. Imagine a 20-something married couple in an urban studio apartment. They’d like to move out to the suburbs and have a baby, but they can’t scrape together a down payment for the two-bedroom house they’re eyeing.  Their only option is to put off starting a family until they can save up tens of thousands of dollars. But if an institutional investor buys that same two-bedroom and puts it on the market as a rental, our couple might have a chance.  Not only can they skip the down payment and closing costs, but their rent will be almost 40% lower on average than the monthly mortgage payment for a comparable home. They’ll also never have to worry about replacing the roof, installing a new water heater, or making any of the other drastic home repairs that can drain a young family’s bank account.  In an ideal world, Wall Street wouldn’t be buying up single-family homes because the rate of new home construction would hold prices down and make them an unattractive investment.  Making that world a reality will require serious reforms. The Trump administration is already doing its part by opening up underutilized federal land for residential use, keeping inflation down, and addressing population-driven demand pressures, but there’s only so much the White House can do. The regulatory barriers that keep prices high by preventing new home construction exist mostly at the state and local level.  Banning institutional investors from buying single-family homes might generate some positive headlines, but it would have a minimal impact because it confuses a symptom of the housing shortage with its cause. And as with many illnesses, fighting the symptoms risks making the disease worse. The post Trump Banning Wall Street Won’t Fix the Housing Crisis appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Mamdani's Strategy to Take Over Private Housing Laid Bare