construction

President Donald Trump has proposed a trillion-dollar plan for infrastructure investment. 

If this is the kind of housecleaning and swamp draining we’re going to get, we’re in real trouble.

Imagine you’re hiking through the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in rural Pennsylvania. The Sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and more than a mile below the ground you stand on is a network of natural gas wells producing vast quantities of natural gas. At the surface, you’d never know it. This is the advantage advances in horizontal drilling technology have brought to the table, dramatically increasing natural gas production in the United States while greatly reducing the surface footprint of drilling operations.

The headline line in the Sunday St. Louis Post-Dispatch asked “Are St. Louis Area’s Home Prices too Low?” This is could not possibly have appeared describing any major metropolitan area of Australia, New Zealand, or the United Kingdom. Nor will newspapers in Vancouver, Toronto, Calgary, Portland, Seattle, Boston, New York or in any of the overpriced markets of California decry low prices any time soon.

The construction industry on Wednesday received a double-whammy of bad news. The government reported that seasonally adjusted housing starts fell to nearly the lowest level on record in February. Meanwhile,…