Climate Theater Of The Absurd

Everything about the "climate change" political circus is completely absurd.  There's a big climate confab coming up at the end of the year in Paris, and lots of unproductive parasites are looking to that event as their last best chance to solidify a permanent life sinecure for themselves in some U.N. bureaucracy before a critical mass of the general public catches on to the scam.  Right now it may only be May, but the drumbeat of climate scares is getting louder every day.  So today I'm just going to put a few recent developments next to each other, and you can try to figure out for yourself how any sane person thinks that any of this makes sense.

First up is President Obama's commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy last week.  It was classic global warming evangelism.  Global warming is a terrible and immediate crisis.  The U.S. is to be committed to rapid reduction of "carbon pollution," and to revamping its electric power industry without any concern about costs.  A few choice excerpts:

As men and women in uniform, you know that it can be just as important, if not more important, to prevent threats before they can cause catastrophic harm.  And only way -- the only way -- the world is going to prevent the worst effects of climate change is to slow down the warming of the planet. . . .  So, going forward, I’ve committed to doubling the pace at which we cut carbon pollution.  And that means we all have to step up.  And it will not be easy.  It will require sacrifice, and the politics will be tough.  But there is no other way. . . .  We have to move ahead with standards to cut the amount of carbon pollution in our power plants.

Seems like the word still hasn't gotten to Obama that we've just gone through more than 18 years of no global warming whatsoever.   And turning our gaze for the moment from predictions of a disastrous future to the immediate past, we find that the government has just reported revised numbers for Q1 2015 GDP, and the result is -- shrinkage of 0.7%.  As reported today at Breitbart, reason number one given for the decline by Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jason Furman was -- you guessed it -- "harsh winter weather."  Where had I just gotten the idea that warming was bad and cooling must be better?  Is that no longer operative?

So we're on to Paris for a grand global deal to "cut emissions" and save the world.  Has anybody checked in with India on that?  Here's what recent Indian Minister of Environment and Forests (2009 - 2011) has to say about that (quoted in the Guardian on May 27):

The idea that India can set targets in Paris is completely ridiculous and unrealistic. It will not happen. This is a difficult concept for eco-fundamentalists, and I say this as a guy who is considered in India to be very green. Copenhagen failed because of climate evangelism. I was sitting for days with Gordon Brown, Ed Miliband, Angela Merkel, Barack Obama and Sarkozy. It was absolutely bizarre. It failed because of an excess of evangelical zeal, of which Brown was the chief proponent. Even with the most aggressive strategy on nuclear, wind, hydro and solar, coal will still provide 55% of electricity consumption by 2030, which means coal consumption will be 2.5 or three times higher than at present.     

"Ridiculous," "unrealistic," and "bizarre," and sorry, we're about to triple our coal consumption whether you like it or not -- yes, Barack, that's what India thinks of your "climate" plans for them.  And by the way, this guy was part of the previous government over there that was considerably more left wing than the new guys.

Here's a Bloomberg News write-up from May 22 on India's coal plans over just the next few years:

India thinks of coal right primarily as a poverty-fighting tool. It's the most vocal and influential champion of the fuel these days now that China's industrial hangover has begun. . . .  Indian coal demand could jump 42 percent, or 300 million metric tons, by 2020, and India is expected to add 124 gigawatts of electricity capacity in that time, according to Bloomberg Industries. In just two years, it may surpass China as the largest importer of seaborne coal.

Shall we check in on Germany?  There the government supposedly has a plan to reduce carbon emissions some 40% (from 1990 levels) by 2020.  They're nowhere near that, and have figured out that the only way to get there is to close many coal plants and much of the coal mining industry.  Oops!  All of a sudden the labor unions are catching on that they are the targets.  Die Welt had a report on May 25 titled, "German Government in Crisis Over Escalating Cost of Climate Policy."    They have lots of pictures of big union-led demonstrations back in April.  The Economics Minister has plans for taxes on coal and coal plants to achieve the goal, but here's the response of Armin Laschet of the Christian Democratic party:

Affected power plants would be threatened by a "wave of decommissioning and structural upheaval in the regions lignite mining area and in eastern Germany would be the result." The plan threatens "tens of thousands of jobs" in the energy and heavy industries.

Surely there's a 7-year-old around here somewhere to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes?

The New York Times Comments On De Blasio's Public Housing Plan

At the time I wrote yesterday's post, I had not noticed that the New York Times' lead editorial of the day was about the exact same subject, Mayor de Blasio's plan for dealing with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).  The Times' title, "To Save New York's Public Housing," really tells you all you need to know.  As usual their way of looking at the world is just completely opposite to mine.

In essence, the Times' take is that "saving" NYCHA is a sacred duty and that de Blasio is bravely undertaking this heroic task.

Of all the monumental tasks that Mr. de Blasio has set for his administration, none may be more important than saving the New York City Housing Authority.

Needless to say, they completely steer clear of adding up the costs.  They never ask whether this could possibly make any sense compared to other things that could be done for the money, including ways of providing the same amount of housing for a fraction the cost.  And, God forbid, they certainly do not remotely consider ways of actually removing the beleaguered residents from the lifetime poverty trap in which NYCHA imprisons them.  Oh, and somehow they seem to have completely missed the fact that the big dollars of de Blasio's "rescue" plan consist of transferring large amount of costs off NYCHA's books and hiding them elsewhere in New York City's accounts.

Then I came to this one line that I thought I could agree with:

Its apartments are high-rise, brick-and-mortar insults to the very idea of a city committed to equality and dignity for the working class and poor.

Yes! thought I.  But then I realized that they meant by that the exact opposite of what I thought they meant.  I at first thought they meant that it's an insult to the idea of a city committed to equality and dignity for the working class and poor to imprison them in grim and hideous poverty traps where the only way they can collect on their supposed "good fortune" of a highly illiquid lifetime gift of deeply subsidized housing is to remain poor, show minimal measurable income, and live off government handouts.  But the next lines show that the Times has something very different in mind:

But only when tenants begin to see significant repairs made, with visible improvements in their living spaces and surroundings, and tangibly more competent and responsive management, will it be possible to say the mayor’s ambitious plan is on the right track.

So the Times thinks that if only the City taxpayers spend a few more billions on "significant repairs" and "visible improvements in their living spaces and surroundings" then NYCHA will no longer be an "insult" to "equality and dignity for the working class and poor."

Well, New York Times, I've got news for you.  After those next few billions of taxpayer cash go down the rat hole of NYCHA, these will still be the same grim and hideous buildings.  And even if the roof no longer leaks, the residents will still be in the same insulting and demeaning position of having to live the life provided to them by their overlords and masters with no ability to improve themselves unless they walk away from their multi-million dollar unsalable in-kind "gift".  They won't have any more ability to move to a different apartment that better suits their needs, because they only won this one place in the lottery.  They won't be able to sell it, rent it, borrow against it, or monetize any part of it to improve their lives.  The fundamental "insult" to the "equality and dignity of the working class and poor" is not a leaky roof or a broken window.  It's being trapped by handouts into a life of dependency on the government.  

de Blasio Public Housing Report Reveals The Disastrous State Of NYCHA

I've written much about the crazy New York policy of forcing the building of "affordable" housing on some of the most expensive real estate in the world.  Not far behind that on the crazy list is so-called low-income public housing, exemplified here by the massive and hideous "projects" run by the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA.  In New York City the grim NYCHA projects contain some 180,000 apartments, warehousing in excess of 400,000 people, most of them in a state of near-permanent poverty.

Toward the end of his tenure in office, former Mayor Mike Bloomberg came out with a proposal to raise money for NYCHA by selling development rights on unused NYCHA land to developers who could then put up some market rate housing and make money.  That proposal brought cries of outrage from NYCHA residents (e.g., "It will block our views!"), let alone opposition from incoming "progressive" Mayor de Blasio, and basically de Blasio dropped the proposal when he took office.  We didn't hear anything more on the subject until last week, when de Blasio came out with his own plan for dealing with NYCHA, a 117 page Report called NextGeneration NYCHA.

Probably to no one's surprise, de Blasio's main thrust here is to somehow maintain the status quo at all costs. (The projects are "an asset that must be protected" says the Report at page 21.)  But the Report actually does provide one valuable service, which is to compile in one place data on NYCHA finances that reveal what a total disaster it is.  At page 32 we learn that the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development has been providing two-thirds, or about $2 billion, of NYCHA’s annual $3 billion operating budget. That means that NYCHA’s rent collections provide only about one-third of the operating budget, and, of course, nothing at all toward capital projects or property taxes.  But lately HUD has been cutting back on its subsidies to NYCHA, leading to operating shortfalls "in recent years ranging between $53 million and $170 million." (page 22) As a result, NYCHA’s cash operating reserves have plummeted, from a peak of around $800 million in 2007 to just $179 million at the time of the Report. (page 32) That is only enough cash for four weeks’ operations – rather dangerously low for an entity that is hemorrhaging cash.

And that’s only the start of the picture of an accelerating financial collapse. The historical operating deficits pale in comparison with those projected for the immediate future if nothing is done: "Projected operating deficits moving forward surpass $100 million in 2016, $200 million by 2020, and increase to $425 million by 2025." (page 32) The total projected operating deficit for just the next ten years is $2.5 billion (page 8) -- and that's after sucking $2 billion or so per year out of HUD, which in any reasonable world would also be counted as part of the operating deficit.  And then there’s the backlog of capital projects, estimated here at an astonishing $16.9 billion (page 6), or around $100,000 per apartment. In the past those have also largely been provided from (yet additional) federal funding, but now that has been cut back significantly, with no indication that the big annual blank check will ever return.

A fair summary is that NYCHA is in the final stages of a socialist death spiral.  Billions of dollars of annual losses have up to now been hidden with the annual $2 billion check from the big "free money" account of the federal government.  Now that that is diminishing the losses are turning up as an escalating cash hemorrhage on NYCHA's own books.  What to do?

As to proposed solutions in this Report, some attention in the press has focused on de Blasio's partial revival of the Bloomberg idea of building market rate buildings on vacant NYCHA sites.  But if you read the Report, you learn that the amount of that is so small, and the associated "affordable housing" impositions are so large, that little money can be found there.  Instead, the big money to rescue NYCHA -- well in excess of $200 million per year -- is to come from transferring expenses off NYCHA's books and on to the City's taxpayers generally, thus burying and hiding the expenses in larger accounts so that nobody can any longer figure out how desperate NYCHA's situation really is.  For example:

• Although NYCHA pays no property taxes, until recently it has paid an annual "PILOT" (payment in lieu of taxes) of $30 million or so to cover specific services like garbage pick-up and senior citizen centers.  That will now be waived.
• Prior to 1995 NYCHA provided for security through its own police force.  Then that force was merged with the NYPD, and since 1995 NYCHA has made a payment for the specific police services that provide security to its projects.  It is estimated here that that would have been about $70 million per year going forward.  It will now be waived.
• The Report proposes to "shrink[ NYCHA's] central office workforce by nearly 1,000 through attrition and integrat[e] some operations and positions within NYCHA into other City agencies" -- a naked concealment of expenses properly allocated to NYCHA in bigger accounts in the City budget.  This one supposedly "saves" $90 million per year -- big money.
• And then there's another $37 million per year from a new payment that the City will make to NYCHA in return for NYCHA's providing services to formerly "homeless" people.  Previously NYCHA was not paid for this.

And the best part is, nobody will ever be able to find a line item in the City budget that reveals how much of these expenses properly should be allocated to NYCHA.  They'll just be part of the Sanitation budget, or the Police budget, or the Homeless Services budget, or something else.  So we can all pretend that all is well at NYCHA, at least until its losses (as measured by current accounting) exceed the new $200+ million per year worth of slush funds, which is not projected to happen until some time after 2020.  Will de Blasio even still be around?  We'll worry about it then!

Here's the bad news:  socialist death spirals only get worse.  Maybe the crash can be put off a long time, but not forever.  For an actual solution to the NYCHA crisis that, in addition, offers the benefit of helping to lift many or most of the residents out of poverty, see my proposal to give away the housing to the residents.

The Main Business Of The Government Is Promoting Its Own Growth

On Monday May 18 the New York Times had an article on government self-promotion that has gotten at least some attention.  The article is "Critics Hear E.P.A.'s Voice in 'Public Comments,'" by Eric Lipton and Coral Davenport.

Seems that EPA administrator Gina McCarthy recently testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on the subject of some new regulations relating to drinking water.  To demonstrate to the Committee how popular the regulations are, McCarthy cited some one million or so public comments, nearly 90% of which, she claimed, supported the rule:

“We have received over one million comments, and 87.1 percent of those comments we have counted so far — we are only missing 4,000 — are supportive of this rule,” Ms. McCarthy told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in March. “Let me repeat: 87.1 percent of those one-plus million are supportive of this rule.”

But it turns out that the supposedly supportive comments were in response to a social media lobbying campaign orchestrated by EPA itself:

Late last year, the E.P.A. sponsored a drive on Facebook and Twitter to promote its proposed clean water rule in conjunction with the Sierra Club. At the same time, Organizing for Action, a grass-roots group with deep ties to Mr. Obama, was also pushing the rule. They urged the public to flood the agency with positive comments to counter opposition from farming and industry groups.

Anything wrong with that?  It's just the latest example of a federal government with trillions of dollars of annual taxpayer money to play with, using the money for goal number one, which is promoting the ongoing growth in size and power of the federal government itself.  How can ordinary citizens possibly amass resources to push back in any meaningful way?  Over at Powerline, Steven Hayward cites this latest government abuse as one more example in what he calls "The Crisis Of The Administrative State."

[T]oday’s administrative state—the increasingly independent fourth branch of government—has transformed government into its own special interest faction, lobbying itself on behalf of itself—increasingly in partisan ways.

Good job New York Times and Steven Hayward.  But the problem I have is that this latest EPA gambit is just the tip of the iceberg, and there is very little systematic attention paid to the vast scope of government self-promotion in all areas.  As soon as you start looking at this, you start realizing how pervasive and revolting the whole enterprise is.  I have previously covered this, for example, here, here, here and here.  Examples are literally everywhere:

• The aggressive campaign during the Obama administration to grow the number of food stamp recipients, including sending government representatives out as door-to-door salespeople to sign up new dependents, resulting in a doubling of food stamp expenditures and near-doubling of the number of recipients to approximately 46 million during a time of supposed economic recovery.
• The campaign to sign up recipients for Obamacare, reported by the Associated Press to have cost $684 million annually.
• The Department of Agriculture's fake "food insecurity" surveys, designed so that no amount of food aid will ever be found to reduce food insecurity, and thus to support endless promotion of the growth of the Department of Agriculture.
• The Census Bureau's fake "poverty" statistics, again carefully designed so that no amount of government spending can ever make the number of people in "poverty" go down, and thus to support advocacy for more and yet more spending.
• The outrageous convention that government spending on goods and services, no matter how wasteful, is counted at 100 cents on the dollar in the GDP, thus making it falsely appear that any cuts to even the most wasteful government spending reduce GDP.
• The vast distribution of money by the Federal Reserve to housing and other community activists who in turn lobby the government for more spending on their pet projects.  A 2014 article by Charles Calomiris, cited at the link, estimated this spending at $850 billion in the period 1992 - 2006.

It would be easy to go on all day with this.  But I would like to remind readers that we once had a President who thought that shrinking the government was a good idea, and who actually forbade members of his administration from advocating for growing their budgets.  That President was Calvin Coolidge.

Skelos, Clinton, And The Inherent Corruption Of Politics

The fundamental premise of the progressive political vision is that fairness and justice in human affairs can be had by delegating to government-employed experts the job of making decisions for us and allocating society's resources.  And so every year in the ongoing quest to achieve perfect fairness lots of society's resources get channeled through the government, whether it be through "anti-poverty" programs, or "affordable" housing, or food stamps, or the takeover of the energy sector in the name of "climate justice," or whatever.

Did anybody ever stop to consider that there is no such thing among humans as a completely neutral, fair expert who never looks out for the interest of him/herself?  The allocation of resources by governments (all levels) in this country is above 40% of GDP, or around $7 trillion per year, which by the way is still well below where it is in Europe as a percent of GDP.  Obviously there is tremendous money to be had by currying favor with government officials and thereby getting some of that money directed your way.

So how to get your hands on some of the $7 trillion?  One idea would be to do an explicit trade with a sitting pol or bureaucrat.  "I'll give you $1 million if you get $10 million of state funds awarded to my 'anti-poverty' agency."  That kind of explicit quid pro quo with a sitting functionary is called bribery, and will end you in jail -- and appropriately so.  But there are a million fact scenarios in this world.  How about if you just make the mil a campaign contribution?  OK, they've put limits on that.  How about if you divide the mil up into smaller increments and give it to a hundred or two hundred pols?  How about if a pol has a year or two off between holding one office and running for the next -- Can you just give that person unlimited amounts?  How about if a pol you are lobbying asks for help in finding his son a job, and you make a few calls to your friends?

You may have different views on whether some of these things are or should be criminal acts.  The law can prohibit explicit quid pro quos, but the fact is that it is not possible to stamp out the human reality of people in power using that power to benefit those who have somehow helped them along the way.  Or to put it another way, all politics is inherently corrupt.  You can criminalize the most blatant abuses, like explicit bribery, but the next-closest abuses that cannot be effectively criminalized are almost as bad.  And then there is the phenomenon that the processes of prosecuting and convicting the alleged bribe-takers are also inherently corrupt.  For example, if the current prosecutor is a Democrat, might he prosecute a Republican for corruption when a fellow Democrat who is simultaneously doing something as bad or far worse avoids investigation entirely?  Of course.  And I certainly don't mean to suggest that you couldn't reverse the parties there and have the statement be equally true.

And that brings us to the cases of Dean Skelos and Hillary Clinton.  I assume every reader here knows who Madame Hillary is, but for those outside New York, Dean Skelos, a Republican (in this very blue state) was until last week the Majority Leader of the New York State Senate.  As Majority Leader Skelos is the guy who has in recent years had the seemingly almost impossible task of keeping the Republicans in control of the State Senate, and who actually managed to win an increase in their precarious Senate majority in the 2014 elections.  Or to put it another way, Skelos is a guy the Democrats in New York would very much like to be rid of.  Skelos' career hit a stumbling block on May 1 when he was charged by the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, under the direction of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, with six counts of various sorts of corruption.  Here is the criminal complaint.  After briefly struggling to maintain his leadership position despite the charges, Skelos gave up and was replaced by another guy on May 11.  

It would be hard not to have noticed the recent record of federal prosecutors in New York of bringing flaky charges against high profile defendants and having the charges ultimately thrown out.  A notable example would be the case against Joe Bruno, Skelos' immediate predecessor as Majority Leader of the State Senate, whose conviction was reversed on appeal, after which a jury acquitted him on re-trial in May 2014, barely a year ago.    Then there are the 85 or so "insider trading" convictions obtained by Mr. Bharara's office, half or so of which are in a slow-motion process of falling apart now that the Second Circuit has determined that what the perpetrators were prosecuted for was not a crime.  For other examples of flaky high profile prosecutions here in New York, try clicking my "phony prosecutions" tag.  Nevertheless, there is a remarkable degree of lack of skepticism about the current charges against Skelos.  For example, the New York Post is the most reliable supporter of Republicans among the local press organs, and it promptly called for his ouster as soon as the charges were announced.  Aside from some of his Senate colleagues, it is hard to find anyone standing up for Skelos.

On the other hand, read the charges against Skelos and you will find them remarkably thin.  This is all about Skelos allegedly trying to help his son Adam get some paying work.  There is no allegation of any money improperly going to Skelos himself.  The total amount of money alleged to have improperly changed hands seems relatively trivial -- $218,000 if I am counting correctly, and over a period of four years.  Of the $218,000, almost all, $198,000, is from a consulting contract that Adam got with an unnamed and uncharged environmental technology company.  Supposedly the company gave Adam the consulting gig because the dad got the company a $12 million contract with Nassau County.  But wait a minute -- Skelos didn't have any position with Nassau County.  The contract was subject to approval by the County Legislature, and got that.  These legislators may well all be friends of Skelos (his State Senate seat is in Nassau County), but it can't possibly be that he controlled this decision in any real sense.  That's rather a large gap in this thing.  Throw that out and you have a big $20,000 remaining.  The 20K was supposedly a fee for real estate "title work" referred to Adam by a large campaign contributor to Skelos and Senate Republicans with interests in the rent regulation renewal and extensions of tax exemptions, and the allegation is that Adam didn't do any title work.  OK, but did he do anything compensable related to it, like maybe being the salesman for the work?  Then there's this: throughout the complaint are statements that Skelos "pressured" the subjects to throw fake work to his son.  In evaluating that I see that there are lots of quotes here of things said in meetings -- clearly they had people wearing wires and telephone lines tapped.  And yet I can't find any words quoted that allegedly constitute this "pressure."  Dozens of taped meetings over four years and not one single instance of words you can quote to show the "pressure"? 

Don't get me wrong -- I think politics in New York is thoroughly corrupt.  But as I said above, all politics is inherently corrupt.  It's the nature of the game.  That doesn't make it criminal.

And might I briefly mention Madame Hillary?  Seems that Skelos managed to get his son a consulting gig that paid about $200K over four years, $50K or so a year.  Chelsea Clinton somehow got a $600K per year job at NBC News -- a job that even loyal Clinton supporter New York Magazine called "fake."  Of course, nobody took the trouble to tape every phone conversation that Bill or Hillary may have had with NBC or affiliates over the last several years to see if there was any "pressure."  Oh, and Bill and Hillary have also been paid some $30 million over just the past year or so making "speeches."  The prices run from about $200K to $500K each.  Who pays for these things?  Of course, every "speech" with this kind of price tag is paid for by someone with interests before the U.S. government.  It almost goes without saying, because the U.S. government has its fingers in literally everyone's life today -- hey, that's how you achieve perfect justice and fairness!  But wasn't it all OK because it happened while neither Bill nor Hillary had a job with the U.S. government or was running for any office?  Well, Skelos didn't have any job with Nassau County either.  And wasn't it completely obvious to everybody that Hillary was going to run for President and would be the leading contender to win?  Can you really give the prospective candidate $30 million the day before she announces (not even to the campaign -- personally) when the limit is $4800 the next day, and even then only to the campaign?  And I haven't even started on the Foundation, that somehow pays for all the Clintons' expenses and lifestyle.  And by the way, it's tax exempt!

Really, this Skelos guy is just so small time!  Also, of the wrong political party relative to the federal prosecutors of the moment.  Other from that, which is the worse corruption?

Are "Trade Deals" Really The Problem In Galesburg, Illinois?

I don't mean to be overly bashing the New York Times lately -- there are plenty of other media outlets that are just as bad -- but sometimes it's unavoidable.  Yesterday they had a big front-page article titled "Town's Decline Illustrates Peril Of Trade Deals," by Binyamin Appelbaum.  The article is about Galesburg, Illinois, its long decline, and the causes of that decline.  Or I should say "cause" (singular), because exactly one cause is discussed, namely "increased foreign trade."  Does that really explain anything at all about what is going on here?

Now there is no doubt that Galesburg has declined.  Wikipedia here helpfully collects decennial census data, showing that Galesburg reached a peak population of 37,243 in the 1960 census, and was down to 32,195 by 2010.  Much discussion in the Times article concerns a large Maytag factory in Galesburg that closed in 2004, when a large part of its production moved to Mexico:

In 2004, Maytag shut down the refrigerator factory that for decades was Galesburg’s largest employer and moved much of the work to Mexico. Barack Obama, then running to represent Illinois in the Senate, described the workers as victims of globalization in his famous speech that year at the Democratic National Convention.  A decade later, many of those workers are still struggling. The city’s population is in decline, and the median household income fell 27 percent between 1999 and 2013, adjusting for inflation.

Permit me to point out a couple of problems with the thesis that Galesburg's woes have been caused by "trade deals" and "globalization."

• Which "trade deal" are you blaming for Maytag moving these jobs to Mexico?  NAFTA?  That was 10 years earlier in 1994.
• Even if the closing of this factory could be directly attributed to some "trade deal," or to "globalization" more generally, the problem is that lots and lots of places have lost lots of manufacturing jobs without declining overall.  Exhibit A of course is New York City.  Here in New York we had over 1 million manufacturing jobs in the 1950s.  Today there are about 75,000.  But the total number of jobs is up significantly, recently setting all-time records of around 3.6 million.    So all of the manufacturing jobs and then some have been replaced by other jobs, and in fact much better jobs, mostly much cleaner and cushier white collar and office jobs.  I'm certainly not meaning to hold up New York City as a model of a good business climate to attract jobs.  But New York City is definitely a complete disproof of the thesis that loss of manufacturing jobs to foreign competition dooms a city to economic decline.  Los Angeles would be another such example if any were needed.

Let's face it, trade deals or no, globalization or no, every factory sooner or later is going to close.  Even if the Chinese can't make the stuff cheaper, eventually someone will come up with a better product, or a cheaper way of making the same product, or the equipment in this factory will wear out, or this company will hire incompetent managers who run the place into the ground, or something else.  No town can maintain itself over the long pull by just hoping to hang on to the exact same set of factories forever.  To maintain yourself and grow, it is essential to attract new businesses.  And that requires one very simple thing, which is a good business climate.

Does Illinois have that?  No.  What are the problems?  There's nothing very complicated about this:

• Overall state/local tax burden.  The most recent (2011) Tax Foundation data put Illinois at #13 out of 50 states, which is bad but not disastrous.  (Numbers 1 through 4 are NY, NJ, CT and CA respectively).  But perhaps more relevant to Illinois's situation is that almost all the states around it are lower, including Ohio (#18), Michigan (#21), Indiana (#22), Kentucky (#23), Iowa (#29) and Missouri (#33).  The only neighboring state ranked higher is Wisconsin (#5), and there they have been cutting taxes aggressively under Republican leadership of recent vintage.
• Pension burden.  By this time almost everybody knows that Illinois has the worst unfunded pension problems of all 50 states.  And just last week the Illinois Supreme Court basically declared unconstitutional any effort to fix the problem short of massive tax increases or firing all state employees en masse.
• Illinois is not a right to work state.  Neighboring Michigan, Indiana, Iowa and Wisconsin are right to work states.

So if you have an idea for a new factory and money to build it, are you going to invest it in Galesburg, Illinois, where you will be a sitting duck for high current taxes, big coming tax increases and predatory unions?  When you could just as easily go to any of those neighboring states and avoid all those problems?

Sorry, New York Times, but "trade deals" and "increased international trade" have next to nothing to do with the woes of Galesburg, Illinois.