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The International Energy Agency said its member countries would release 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency stocks, the largest reserves distribution in history, in a bid to bring down crude prices that have soared during the war with Iran.

Iran warned the United States Wednesday that oil prices could soar to $200 a barrel as escalating U.S. and Israeli strikes against the country continue to rattle global energy markets.

The International Energy Agency said Wednesday that member countries had unanimously agreed to release 400 million barrels of oil from their reserves in a bid to ease prices that are soaring due to the Iran war.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” That phrase, coined by the one-time chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Herbert Stein, was a tongue-in-cheek retort to concerns about the accelerating federal debt. As National Review’s Dominic Pirro explained: “What Stein was saying is that the fact that the federal debt can’t increase forever is not, in itself, a problem.… We don’t have to be worried about it increasing forever, because it will stop at some point. It has to. That doesn’t mean the debt isn’t a concern, though. It’s just a concern for different reasons.” I thought of Stein’s Law this week as I considered Assembly Bill 1383 in the California Legislature, which will surely expand the state’s massive and growing pension debt by allowing public-sector unions to negotiate bigger pensions and earlier retirement ages for new hires. It would gut some key aspects of the Public Employees’ Pension Reform Act of 2013 — Gov. Jerry Brown’s modest reform that helped stave off a fiscal crisis caused by rapidly rising unfunded pension liabilities. During that era’s fight over pensions, many of us in the pension-reform movement had argued that the state’s overly generous, underfunded pension system was not sustainable. It couldn’t go on forever, as local municipalities’ costs for retired workers were outstripping their costs for current employees. These crazy levels of pension debt would crowd out services, boost taxes, and — like any Ponzi scheme — eventually run out of suckers. We were wrong, or at least only half right. We had every reason to be concerned about the state’s pension systems — but we underestimated the ability of our governments to kick the can down the road. Here we are 13 years later and, sure enough, the pension mess is continuing along. Overspending on public employee retirement benefits has not stopped and likely won’t as long as the people who control the system have a vested interest in manipulating it in a way in that it won’t stop producing payouts, at least until we’re all long gone. And as long as the state has taxpayers who ultimately will foot the bill. Lawmakers will continue to ignore the naysayers — not because their numbers are wrong, but because the financial disruptions they predict aren’t imminent. Let’s look at some data from the California Policy Center’s Marc Joffe in December: “Our analysis finds that California’s non-federal public sector entities collected $828 billion in revenue in FY 2024 — consuming 20.6% of the state’s entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Despite this massive intake of taxpayer funds, total long-term debt has ballooned to $1.37 trillion, or 34.1% of state GDP.” It found that some major California local agencies “now have debt loads exceeding 200% of their annual revenue, driven largely by generous public safety retirement formulas.” Other reports give hints at a problem that our governors and Legislature have steadfastly ignored since PEPRA went into effect. In December, the Reason Foundation noted that “California’s state and local governments have the most public pension debt in the country, with total unfunded pension liabilities of more than $265 billion,” amounting to more than “$6,000 in pension debt for every state resident.” The report reminded us that taxpayers ultimately are responsible for any shortfalls. The likely results are higher taxes and service cutbacks. Meanwhile, California’s pension funds now have around 79 percent of the money they need to pay out their existing promises, which are senior obligations of the state. With defined-benefit pension plans of the sort offered in California, public employees receive a guaranteed benefit based on a formula. Public safety officials — police employees, firefighters, prison guards — often receive 3 percent at 50. That means they receive 3 percent of their final pay (now the average of their final three years’ salary) times the number of years worked, available at age 50. PEPRA extended retirement ages, but that latest legislation would start ratcheting down the ages again. To pay for this, the major pension funds such as the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) invest the employer and employee contributions into the stock market and other investments. The liabilities are calculated based on guesses of investments returns. The more generous the benefits, the more aggressive the funds have to be in their investment strategies to assure a sufficient rate of return to cover their outlays. The funds are dependent on a stock market that has fluctuated greatly in recent months. A severe downturn could of course precipitate another crisis of the sort that led to the 2013 pension reforms. Big debt numbers are hard to visualize. We’re all used to reading eye-popping numbers about, say, the federal debt, which is now above an inconceivable $38.8 trillion. But it’s easier to grasp the enormity of the state’s problem by looking at the public data about individual compensation. The first page of my search on Transparent California shows 50 fire officials earning total compensation packages ranging from $600,000 to $1.4 million. Keep that in mind when, say, Los Angeles officials claim that they need more money for additional firefighters. And yet, despite signs of growing pension problems across the state, the Legislature is not only refusing to address the issue by revisiting reforms — but it’s actively trying to make the problem worse. “By increasing the cost of these benefits, AB 1383 would result in less money for salary increases, which could therefore harm future recruitment efforts. Additionally, the changes in this bill could result in labor unrest by furthering the equity issues between safety and non-safety employees,” according to a letter from city and county governments quoted by the Sacramento Bee. Of course, the state never learns. In 1999, police unions secured a law that retroactively boosted pensions for California Highway Patrol officers. That “equity issue” was resolved in a predictable way: other public-safety unions then secured the same benefit for their bargaining units. Then non-safety unions also, one by one, secured massive increases in their benefits. That precipitated that 2012 pension crisis and this bill threatens to do so again. To those who say that this can’t go on forever, I’d argue that the last 13 years proves that it maybe it can go on — if not forever, for at least a few more decades. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be concerned, as allowing the current system to fester will continue to increase state and local taxes, and erode our already poor public services. It’s just that lawmakers or voters are going to need to show some courage. It’s not going to stop on its own. Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org. READ MORE by Steven Greenhut: Will Congress Keep on Trucking? Trump Touts ‘Housing-Ban’ Buncombe California Doubles Down on a Boondoggle

You might think that feminism wouldn’t have had a chance with me. After all, I grew up among traditionally minded Catholics and evangelical Protestants. Not only did my mother stay at home to raise her 10 kids, every woman I knew and respected did too. It was totally natural that, as a kid, my dream job was either the kitchen or the nunnery. And yet, somehow, by the time I’d met a man, married him, and birthed his child, feminism had done its work. In principle, my husband and I agree. It’s best for our baby that he be the breadwinner and I rear the child and keep the home. As C. S. Lewis once wrote in a letter, “I think I can understand that feeling about a housewife’s work being like that of Sisyphus (who was the stone rolling gentleman). But it is surely in reality the most important work in the world. What do ships, railways, miners, cars, government etc. exist for except that people may be fed, warmed, and safe in their own homes? … your job is the one for which all others exist.” I find that quote beautiful. But, in practice, a day of chattering with a three-month-old and cooking leaves me simultaneously exhausted and convinced that I’ve done nothing productive. Why? The short answer is that, at some point, I began to associate money with productivity. (READ MORE: The Epstein Effect: Men, Women, and the Spectacle of Scandal) It sounds absurd when it’s written out like that, but such is the power of the cultural experiment we’ve all been subjected to for decades. Feminism tells us women should be like men; they should be equal in the workplace; their earning potential should be the same. Feminists screech the moment they find that women somehow do not yet make up 50 percent of our governing officials, our scientists, or our engineers. They insist that the perfect society must pay men and women the same. It all amounted to the subtle message that success and productivity are measured in dollars. Even when we know better, we find ourselves practicing this and other absurd lies. As it turns out, despite being steeped in feminist propaganda, this generation may know better — or so a recent poll out of the King’s College London and Ipsos suggests. According to the poll, just under a third of Gen Z men believe that wives should “obey” their husbands, and an even larger percentage of them think husbands should have the final say. The results didn’t stop there. This poll would suggest Gen Z is far less ideologically committed to feminism when compared to the generations that raised them. Not only do they believe St. Paul had a point, but 24 percent of Gen Z men believe women shouldn’t “appear too independent or self-sufficient” (the number is just 12 percent among baby boomer men), and 59 percent of Gen Z men believe they’re “expected to do too much to support equality” between the sexes. The poll, it should be noted, included responses from 23,000 individuals across 29 countries, including the United Kingdom, Australia, India, and the United States and was supposed to mark this year’s International Women’s Day. One imagines the results were a bit of a blow to feminists. That said, generally, one should take statistics with a mountain of salt. Not only do people simply no longer respond to the statisticians (just ask Gallup), but the attempt to measure humanity by percentages necessarily gives you a generalization so vague that it’s hard to consider it helpful in the quest to discover what humans really think. And yet, every now and then, statistics prove irresistible — especially when they are corroborated by anecdotal internet trends, as these ones certainly are. (READ MORE: Ivory Towers and the Volume of Women) Recent years have seen the rise of all sorts of influencers — from stay-at-home moms promoting budget-conscious living to macho men (usually without wives) promoting six-packs and body counts. The poll, if you believe it, suggests that these accounts aren’t participating in a movement relegated to the fringes of the internet, but that they may be shaping a generation that’s disenchanted with the feminism we grew up with. I’d like this to be all positive. It’s great, after all, that young men (and, to a lesser extent, young women) are beginning to recognize that the feminist narrative they were spoon-fed as kids doesn’t quite fulfill nature. It’s controversial to say, but there’s a reason St. Paul tells women to obey their husbands and husbands to love their wives with a self-sacrificial love: Both commandments are a remedy for our fallen nature. Unfortunately, assuming that the polling at least reflects a social reality, it’s quite possible that Gen Z men aren’t invoking Pauline obedience, but instead the submission that men like Andrew Tate demand of their victims. One suspects that the answer is somewhere in between. Regardless, one thing is clear: Men don’t want to be the wimps feminists have insisted they become. That’s worth celebrating, even if we must do so cautiously. READ MORE by Aubrey Harris: Incoming: A Hippy Surgeon General Ozempic Is Cheaper Than Ever. That’s Bad for Society.

The country-folk singer canceled the rest of his 2026 tour and announced an indefinite hiatus, saying his mental health has declined after pushing himself to keep touring. Continue reading…