Financial Transparency Coalition

Tom Friedman has often—and correctly—observed that Americais undermining its own fight against terrorism through its dependence on oil. In case you haven’t heard the argument, here’s how it goes. Americaimports about 1,100,000 barrels of oil and petroleum from Saudi Arabia every day. With crude oil’s current price of about $100 per barrel, there’s a lot of money flowing out of America’s pockets to the Saudis. And what does Saudi Arabia do with all of this wealth? Well, we know what it does with a part of it. As Friedman has pointed out: …private Saudi donors today still constitute the most...

New York Times columnist and prize-winning author Tom Friedman is perhaps best known for his arguments for infrastructure—green or otherwise. His columns and books often, perhaps even ad nauseam, compare U.S. infrastructure to China’s, where “a bullet train to Tianjin…takes just 25 minutes to make a 75-mile trip.” Friedman also loves to deride U.S. terminals, like the “faded, cramped” LAX and NYC’s Pennsylvania station where the escalators don’t work. Though I’m not sure rebuilding LAX would solve our problems, I agree with Friedman on principal. I also believe in the vital importance of infrastructure—whether...