What Is The Single Most Important Thing The U.S. Can Do To Enhance Its National Security?

The recent terrorist attacks in Paris have refocused attention on national security issues.  Presidential candidates from both sides have spoken out in the days since the attacks, with proposals to enhance U.S. security ranging from military action against ISIS to more effective surveillance to refusing to accept Middle Eastern refugees.  In the midst of this, perhaps we should step back and ask the big question, namely, what is the single most important thing that the U.S. can do to enhance its national security?

I think the answer is obvious: the single most important thing the U.S. can do to enhance its national security is to pursue policies to keep the price of hydrocarbon fuels low.  Now of course, that doesn't mean doing much.  In fact, the U.S. government doesn't have to spend a dime to keep the price of fossil fuels low.  That's the best part about this.  The U.S. just has to engage in basic capitalism, which means that it just has to get out of the way and let the producers increase the supplies, and that will cause the price to be driven down.

Perhaps when you considered the question, you came up with a different answer from mine.  But I suggest that if you think about it you will realize that I am right.  Essentially all the bad guys in the world are mostly funded by revenues from fossil fuel extraction, principally oil and natural gas.  In the bad guy category, I certainly put Iran, Russia and Venezuela, as well as ISIS.  Saudi Arabia and various Gulf states should also be on the list, not so much because their governments are direct strategic adversaries of the U.S., as because wealth stemming from oil extraction in those countries ends up via donations as revenue for ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their various affiliates. 

I concede that Cuba and North Korea are serious bad guys, and they don't have significant fossil fuel revenue; but it's their very absence of fossil fuel revenue, combined with the fact that their economies are such basket cases, that leaves them with no weight to throw around on the world stage.  I also concede that falling oil and gas prices are not a panacea for national security, and that all of the bad guys have at least some other sources of revenue that can be used to wreak havoc.  The effect of falling oil revenue varies from one bad guy to the next.  Russia, Iran and Venezuela have big fixed costs of government that leave them financially crippled when oil prices remain low for long periods.  All of them need oil prices well over $100 per barrel to avoid big budget deficits and seeing their international reserves dwindle.  ISIS is a much lower cost operation that seems to be able to sustain itself with taxes in its controlled territories and only small amounts of oil revenue; but think about how much more havoc they could wreak if their revenues from oil suddenly doubled or tripled.

Anyway, whether low oil prices are critically important to U.S. national security or just very important, there can be no question but that low oil prices financially hamper all of our serious strategic adversaries and greatly constrain their ability to make trouble on the world stage.  So therefore, the policy of the U.S. is to seek lower oil and gas prices by all reasonable means.  Right?

Actually, it's the opposite.  The U.S. and many of its states intentionally engage in policy after policy seeking to raise the price of fossil fuels, and in ways that have the effect of increasing the revenues of the bad guys.  In some cases these policies take the form of purposely and directly forcing the prices up.  In other cases, the policies take the form of hampering and restricting alternative and competing production, which leads to lower supplies and therefore higher prices for the remaining producers.  In the category of purposely and directly forcing prices up, we have various "cap and trade" programs, including one in California and the so-called "Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative" among several states in the Northeast.  Then there's EPA's "Clean Power Plan," which seeks to force coal to stay in the ground (and, since wind and solar basically don't work, therefore forces demand to migrate to oil and gas).  And then we have all the many, many policies that just prevent the production of alternative and competing supplies: the federal government stops selling oil leases on public lands; offshore drilling is subject to more and more restrictions; drilling is banned on the federal lands in Alaska (which comprise well over 90% of that vast state); the Keystone pipeline is blocked; Andrew Cuomo bans fracking in New York; and so forth.  Somehow the fracking revolution nonetheless got around all of these restrictions and brought about huge price declines to the current low levels.  But that was in spite of these government efforts, all of which were intended to achieve the opposite result.

But isn't national security the first priority of the government?  Well, according to our President, the greatest threat to our national security is -- get ready -- climate change!  From the Wall Street Journal on May 20, reporting on President Obama's commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy:

As rising seas swallow low-lying areas and threaten coastal military installations and as extreme-weather events increase the need for humanitarian missions, the U.S. military will need to factor climate change into plans and operations, the president said. Politicians who say they care about military readiness should care about addressing climate change, he said.  “Denying it or refusing to deal with it endangers our national security,” Mr. Obama said.  A new White House report released Wednesday lays out the links between climate change and national security, saying that it may exacerbate existing stressors such as poverty and political instability, and may provide enabling environments for terrorist activity abroad.       

And of course, Obama is not alone in claiming climate change as the greatest national security threat.  Secretary of State John Kerry has said the same thing multiple times.  Candidate Bernie Sanders took the same position during Saturday's debate.  Without doubt, Madame Hillary will be on board before you know it.  Really, the level of cluelessness is impossible to comprehend.

The Revolt Of The Privileged Poseurs

As I've pointed out more than a few times, there's no more intensely felt jealousy and anger than the jealousy and anger of percents 2, 3 and 4 against the perceived wrongs of the evil top one percent.  The phenomenon plays out in arenas ranging from the Occupy Wall Street protests a few years ago to the furious opposition of my affluent Greenwich Village neighbors to new condos priced for purchase by people even richer than themselves.  When a large number of the Occupy Wall Street protesters got themselves arrested in late 2011, and were required to provide publicly available addresses, the Daily Caller did a big service by putting together a slide show of large homes of many of the participants.  Enjoy it here. 

And now we have the terribly significant protests by the "oppressed" and "marginalized" students from places like the University of Missouri, Claremont McKenna, and my favorite, Yale.  Yale is my favorite not only because I went there myself (class of 1972!) but also because the whole concept of the "oppressed" and "marginalized" Yale student is something I have a hard time getting my head around.  I went there on scholarship myself, and my overwhelming feeling was one of gratitude for the opportunity -- even though the fraternities and secret societies could not have been less interested in me.  Do students attending this uber-elite Ivy League school really think that anyone (or at least, anyone outside their own campus) is going to take them seriously in a claim to be "oppressed" or "marginalized"?  Newsflash:  the day you accepted Yale's offer of admission is the day you stopped being one of the "oppressed" (if you ever were) and became an official member of the elite.  Better get used to it.

When I first learned about the Yale protests, I saw that the big issue was that the protesting students claimed that they felt "unsafe."  And my initial reaction was that that seemed to make sense, because New Haven is not a safe city.  Its murder rate, at about 20 per 100,000 per year, is more than five times the current rate in New York City (although still well less than the 40 - 50 per 100,000 in places like Baltimore, Detroit and St. Louis), and rates for other crimes are similarly elevated.  Or perhaps they were thinking of the very serious threat of international terrorism, which could very well turn its sights on the elite kids at some fancy Ivy League school.  But, of course, neither of those is what the protesters were talking about at all.  Instead, they asserted that they felt unsafe because the associate master of Silliman College had written an email in which she urged that despite "genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation," it might be OK for a Halloween costume to be "a little bit obnoxious":

I don’t wish to trivialize genuine concerns about cultural and personal representation, and other challenges to our lived experience in a plural community. I know that many decent people have proposed guidelines on Halloween costumes from a spirit of avoiding hurt and offense. I laud those goals, in theory, as most of us do. But in practice, I wonder if we should reflect more transparently, as a community, on the consequences of an institutional (which is to say: bureaucratic and administrative) exercise of implied control over college students. . . .  Even if we could agree on how to avoid offense – and I’ll note that no one around campus seems overly concerned about the offense taken by religiously conservative folks to skin-revealing costumes – I wonder, and I am not trying to be provocative: Is there no room anymore for a child or young person to be a little bit obnoxious… a little bit inappropriate or provocative or, yes, offensive? American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition.    

As far as I can find, it is that seemingly exquisitely sensitive and even deferential language -- and nothing to do with a couple of dozen murders a year in their midst -- that is making certain Yale students feel "unsafe."  Or at least so they say.  Another possibility is that there actually was at least one offensive costume out and about on the Yale campus on Halloween; but in extensive looking around the internet, I can't find any indication that such a thing actually existed.  If you haven't seen it, this video of a Yale student confronting Nicholas Christakis (husband of the email author) gives a flavor of the intellectual and emotional level of the protest:

The shrieking young lady in the video has been identified (again by the enterprising Daily Caller) as Yale student Jerelyn Luther.   The Daily Caller also came up with an address for her family home in nearby Fairfield -- one of those very affluent coastal Connecticut towns between New Haven and New York.  Zillow puts an estimated value on the house of $876,188, which is by no means at the top of values in this area, but still well into the top 5% of home values in the U.S.  Here is a picture from Zillow:

They have it as 3,324 square feet, which makes it about triple the size of the house my family lived in when I was in high school and college.  The kitchen has recessed lighting, top-of-the-line appliances and nice stone counter tops:

There are lots more pictures of both the exterior and interior on the Zillow site.  (The pictures of the house on Zillow were probably compiled in connection with a prior sale, so it may not look the same today.  On the other hand, it's hard to believe that the new owners would have made the place worse.)

But no matter how well off you are in life, there's always someone yet better off.  For example, take the guy who sparked the protests at the University of Missouri with his hunger strike.  That would be one Jonathan Butler, an African-American Mizzou grad student, who, according to Omaha Metro here, turns out to be the son of Eric Butler, Executive Vice President of the Union Pacific Railroad.  According to an SEC filing smoked out by Western Journalism, Mr. Butler father earned some $8.4 million last year, in addition to a family net worth exceeding $20 million.  I guess that would put the Butler family in the super-evil top tenth of a percent.  Asked about the purpose of his hunger strike, Omaha Metro quoted the younger Mr. Butler as follows:

“For me, it really is about a call for justice,” he said. “I’m fighting for the black community on campus because justice is worth fighting for. And justice is worth starving for."

Butler famously forced the resignation of Mizzou's President when he got the black players on the football team to threaten to strike in the middle of the season.  Other than the President's resignation, what was the goal Butler was seeking?

Instead of being governed by a board, Butler wants “shared governance” so that students, teachers and staff at the system’s universities have more input into big hiring and operational decisions.    

In other words, what he was seeking was some power for himself -- a member of the super-elite -- in running the university.  Now, how about those black football players?  They are the subject of the ongoing NCAA naked antitrust conspiracy to be sure that they are paid nothing in what for many of them is the only brief chance they will have to make some real money in their lives.  Nope, they get nothing.

Anyway, back in my days in college, we had our share of protests.   Yale was partially shut down by protests in the Spring of 1970, my sophomore year.  I admit that I didn't support those protests either.  But there were some fundamental differences between those protests and the current crop.  The 1970 protests were directed toward things occurring in the world outside the university, notably the Vietnam War, the shootings at Kent State, and, as to New Haven, the trial of several Black Panthers accused of conspiracy to murder.  The goal of the protesters was to motivate as many people as possible in the community to support their effort.  In the current situation the protesters appear to be leveling charges of racism and improper behavior against others in their own community, and in particular are aiming charges at their fellow students, their professors, and the college administrators.  This seems like a very unlikely way to win friends and allies.       

What Is The Distinction Between Criminally Corrupt Politicians And All Other Politicians?

After almost five months of occupying the front pages of the legal press here in New York, the criminal  trial of the top executives of the Dewey & LeBoeuf law firm has finally ended (without convictions) -- only to be replaced on those pages with each day's news from the next high-stakes trial, that of former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver.  Silver is being prosecuted by the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York principally for something known as "honest services fraud."  I previously covered this prosecution back in January at the time it was initiated.

The Silver trial is giving something of a window into the highly corrupt transactional politics that are the hallmark of Albany and of Silver's leadership.  But I continue to scratch my head in wonderment at why the events in the Silver indictment are claimed to be criminal while a hundred other things that are the fundamentals of Albany business are not.

Shortly after the initiation of the Silver prosecution, I wrote another article on the Silver situation, marveling that essentially all the facts in the Silver complaint had been either publicly known or obvious inferences from what was publicly known for years, yet essentially all of the local press supported and even lionized the guy.  Then, literally the day after the federal prosecutors labeled one small corner of Silver's conduct criminal, the press suddenly turned on him, like they were suddenly "shocked, shocked" to find out that gambling was going on at Rick's Café. 

So for today's quiz, I'm going to briefly set forth the law of "honest services fraud," and then see if you can figure out why what Silver is charged with is any different from much worse examples of the routine conduct of New York pols.

A longer summary of the law of "honest services fraud" appears in my January 25 article linked above, but in any event it's not very complicated.  Basically, 18 U.S.C. Section 1341 makes it a federal crime to engage in "any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for [the] obtaining [of] money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises."  Then in 1988 Congress added the following words to 18 U.S.C. Section 1346: "For the purposes of this chapter, the term “scheme or artifice to defraud” includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services."  Unfortunately, nobody had any idea what that was supposed to mean, and in 2010 the Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction of Jeffrey Skilling (ex-CFO of Enron) on the grounds that the statute was too vague; but the Court went on to throw in that the statute was sufficiently un-vague to survive as long as what is alleged is a "bribery [or] kickback scheme."    So as things stand today, essentially the words of the two statutes have been thrown out, and what is a federal crime under the "honest services fraud" rubric is "a bribery [or] kickback scheme" -- no more, no less.

So let's compare and contrast.  First, the allegations in the current Silver trial.  Silver became "of counsel" at a law firm called Weitz & Luxenberg, known for a prominent market share in the very lucrative field of cases of people with mesothelioma caused by exposure to asbestos.  A prominent doctor at Columbia with a lab doing research in mesothelioma was in a position to refer certain mesothelioma patients to law firms.  That doctor also was in need of funding to support his lab.  The doctor made it known that he preferred to exercise his ability to refer cases in favor of law firms that supported his research.  Silver, as Speaker of the Assembly, had discretionary state funds effectively in his sole control, and directed $500,000 of those funds to support the doctor's lab.  The doctor referred a number of mesothelioma patients to W&L.  Silver did minimal work on the cases, but was paid "referral" fees each time one of the cases settled.  Over the course of several years, Silver got approximately $3 - 4 million in referral fees from this source.  After Silver had directed two grants of $250,000 each to the lab, the doctor solicited more, but Silver said (according to the doctor's testimony) "I can't do that any more."  Nevertheless, the doctor continued to refer patients to Silver and W&L.  Asked why at the trial, the doctor responded: “I will keep giving cases to Shelly because I may need him in the future -- he is the most powerful man in New York State.”     In agreeing to go easy on the doctor to obtain his testimony, the prosecutors asked him to concede in his plea agreement that the state research funding and the case referrals were explicit quid pro quos for each other; but the doctor refused, and that language was stricken from the agreement.

OK, that's pretty bad.  But how about this (from an article in Crain's New York Business on July 15, 2014):  Mayor Bill de Blasio is known for an obvious ambition to advance his "progressive" agenda on the national stage.  To support that, he has created a non-profit group called "Campaign for One New York," and has sought to raise charitable contributions for it.  On April 9, 2014 the non-profit received its largest donation, $350,000 from -- you guessed it -- the American Federation of Teachers, otherwise known as the union that represents public school teachers in New York City.  At the time, the union and the City were in the thick of negotiations over a new contract.  Indeed, prior to de Blasio taking office as Mayor in 2014 the City and teachers had gone multiple years without a contract, because prior Mayor Bloomberg had insisted that the City did not have sufficient funds for retroactive raises demanded by the union.  Then, in early May 2014 -- less than a month after the AFT contribution -- the City and union entered into a new nine-year deal.  The deal included substantial raises, both prospective and retro-active, and the City's outyear projected budget deficits were revised upward by some $5 billion.  Asked whether the union's contribution and the contract concessions had anything to do with each other, a spokesman for de Blasio was quoted as saying that the contribution "had no impact."  Right!

Now, as between these two, there's no question which one was worse.  Silver got $3+ million for himself, but only gave away $500,000 of taxpayer funds, and arguably for a good cause.  De Blasio got $350,000 for himself, and gave away $5 billion of taxpayer funds.  Is one of these really much more clearly a "quid pro quo" than the other?  If so, it's only based on nuances and subtleties rather than anything explicit.

And I don't mean to suggest that de Blasio is alone in doing dubious deals with unions representing teachers and other City employees.  The City employee unions are in fact the dominant funders of the state Democratic party.  On January 19 the New York Post reported that the teachers union had spent some $4.7 million during 2014 on political contributions (essentially all to Democrats) and lobbying.  And in return they get endless obstructionism against charter schools, protection of teacher tenure, rules that make it impossible to fire anyone, no meaningful evaluations, etc., etc., etc.  And minority kids get imprisoned in failing schools.  Criminal?

The main conclusion that I draw is that the idea that the government and its politicians can act in a disinterested, neutral and non-corrupt manner to create fairness and justice in the world by passing out taxpayer funds is just a complete fantasy. 

Crony Capitalism Not Working Out Too Well For Upstate New York

On Saturday the New York Times, deep in its interior (page A21), had a report on the economy of upstate New York titled "Governor Struggles to Preserve Jobs and Economic Momentum Upstate."  I like the term "economic momentum" in relation to upstate New York.  As far as I know, all the economic momentum there is negative, and preserving that kind of momentum is the last thing anyone would want to do -- I think.  Another theory is that upstate New York leans Republican in its politics, and Governor Cuomo and his Democratic allies are intentionally shrinking it because they would like nothing more than to have it disappear.  You be the judge!

Upstate New York is a world center of crony capitalism, by which I mean every sort of government grant, tax break, incentive, and handout to big employers to induce them to come and bring "jobs."  The Times article goes through a litany of various of these giveaways.  Examples:

Mr. Cuomo has been aggressive about promoting business in the state, cutting or capping a variety of taxes and doling out state money, including $1.5 billion in stimulus through a regional development competition promised this year. He says such plans are necessary to reverse what he calls the “negative synergy” of job and population losses.  To that end, the state has awarded nearly $3 billion through its Regional Economic Development Councils over the past four years, nearly $2.4 billion of it upstate, to create or retain some 150,000 jobs, according to the Empire State Development Corporation, the state’s economic development agency. New York has also offered billions in other incentives dating back to previous governors’ terms.        

They hand out billions and billions, and all they have to show for it are ongoing "job and population losses."  Somehow, nobody ever realizes that in the world of handouts and tax giveaways, the politically disfavored who don't get the handouts and breaks end up bearing disproportionately high taxes, and over time they give up and close down.  Overall, the results of the game are negative.  Lots of that is reported in the Times article:

On Monday morning, the Entergy Corporation said that it would close a nuclear plant on Lake Ontario, eliminating more than 600 jobs north of Syracuse. Hours later, Alcoa said it would soon idle or close two smelting plants in Massena, on the St. Lawrence River, leaving nearly 500 people out of work. The same day, the state posted a formal notice that Sentry Safe, a safe-building company in Rochester, would close a factory with some 300 jobs next summer.      

And there are plenty of more examples.  Then there are the brilliant efforts of our political saviors to swoop in at the last minute with big government handouts to "save" some jobs:

[O]n Wednesday, . . . Mr. Cuomo and Senator Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, announced a deal with Kraft Heinz, committing up to $25 million in state funds for upgrading several of the company’s upstate plants, which make products such as mozzarella and Cool Whip, in exchange for the company’s maintaining nearly 1,000 jobs for five years.     

Without a doubt, Kraft Heinz will shortly be back for another handout, and then another, to "save" the jobs again and then yet again.

There is nothing new about this.  In upstate New York they've been trying to lift themselves up by the magic of crony capitalism for as long as I've been alive.  Check out this article from Forbes in 2000 titled "Willis Carrier's Ghost."  Willis Carrier is the Carrier of Carrier Air Conditioning, a large employer originally attracted to the Syracuse area by government handouts.  According to Wikipedia here, at its peak Carrier employed over 7000 in the Syracuse area, but now the total is more like 1000.  "Over the course of 2011 the majority of [Carrier's] manufacturing buildings of the Syracuse campus were demolished at a cost of nearly 14 million dollars."

But Carrier is only the tip of the iceberg in Syracuse's dabblings in crony capitalism.  From Forbes:

By the estimate [in 2000] of Vito Sciscioli, the city’s longtime development director, some $2 billion has been shelled out in Syracuse over the past five years in government grants, tax abatements, benefits from tax-exempt financing, infrastructure improvements and utility breaks. This is a staggering sum for a city that now has only 152,000 people in it.      

The population of 152,000 was in 2000.  By 2014 it was more like 144,000.  I guess the $2 billion didn't work out too well.  Too bad for the suckers who stuck around but didn't get the handouts!

But Cuomo and his allies have no ideas for upstate other than more of the same crony capitalism that has driven the place into the ground for decades.  Another billion dollars for Buffalo!  Four new casinos!  And of course, the one business that was ready to come in and start work right away without government handouts or help of any kind -- "fracking" for natural gas -- has been banned.  With gas prices now way down, it's probably too late for that, now, at least for several years. 

New York -- The Endless Source Of Bad Policy Ideas

Far more bad public policy ideas come out of New York than anyone can even keep track of.  But I thought I'd just take note over a period of a few days and see what turned up.  So here are some of the latest in the endless list of bad ideas.

Restricting hotels in industrial zones.  The New York Observer reports on November 3 that our Mayor and City Council have reached an "agreement" to make changes to the zoning law to limit new hotels in industrial zones.  Up to now, under New York's zoning laws, hotels have been permitted "as of right" as a lawful use in areas zoned for industry.  The new proposal is that you can't build a hotel "as of right" in such a zone any more, and you will need to go through a long and expensive process to get a special permit, after which you may well not get approval at all.

Before a few years ago this was never really an issue, because there were almost no hotels in the industrial zones; and who would want to build a hotel next door to a noisy, dirty factory anyway?  But in the last few years suddenly there have been lots of hotels getting built in the industrial zones.  Did something change?  Most importantly, most of the factories have closed or moved away.  According to the latest data from the New York Department of Labor, New York City is down to only 73,900 manufacturing jobs, well less than 2% of all jobs (the total is 4.192 million), and yet another decline from 76,500 last year, even as other types of jobs were up substantially.  And, with most of the factories gone, the gritty former industrial zones became kind of cool.  Because you can't build much else there, particularly residences, the land is cheap.  So hotels became an obvious choice.

Now, why would the City possibly want to restrict an influx of new productive economic activity into these otherwise mostly dormant industrial zones?  Read the Observer article, and you'll find quotes from Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen and Councilman Stephen Levin (who represents an area of Brooklyn with some industrial zones) talking about preserving existing jobs, and preserving space for new factories just waiting to move in.  Do you buy it?  I sure don't.  Manufacturing in New York City has been in rapid decline toward oblivion for my whole lifetime, and it ain't coming back any time soon.  The answer is elsewhere.  It is that the hotel workers union has been putting on a big push for the zoning restrictions, because the new hotels in the industrial areas provide low cost non-union competition for the established hotels in the fancy areas.  You have to do some looking to find articles discussing this (the unions prefer to do their corrupt deals behind the scenes), but there are plenty if you look.  Here's one from the same Observer back in 2010.  Excerpt:

The main force behind the push-back against the limited-service hotels [in industrial areas] is Peter Ward, the president of the New York Hotel & Motel Trades Council. His union is threatened by the explosion of such hotels-since 2005, the union estimates that more than 13,000 rooms in limited-service or boutique hotels have been developed or are in development. Given that the vast majority of the limited-service and boutique hotels have small staffs and are non-union, this draws business away from some venues that employ Mr. Ward’s membership. 

Yes, our City Council is completely willing to prevent entry of new businesses and jobs into underutilized areas in order to protect a union from competition and keep its political contributions flowing.

Opposition to expensive new condominiums.  In my neighborhood of the West Village, two big new condominium developments are nearing completion, with a total of perhaps 300 units.  The apartments are big, and the average price over the two projects is something like $7 million per apartment.  That means a total sales price for the two of well over $2 billion.  In any rational world you would think that the government and the neighbors would be salivating over all the real estate and income taxes that are going to be paid by these well-heeled new neighbors.  The two projects replaced a former warehouse, that paid very little in taxes, and a hospital, that paid nothing.

Well, you don't understand Greenwich Village or New York City.  You won't find anyone (except me) in Greenwich Village to say a good word about these new condos, and our Mayor de Blasio when he was running specifically opposed the one that replaced the hospital.  Many raised a huge ruckus over "losing" our hospital, although since it closed the nearest one is barely a mile away, and there are 20+ other hospitals on our little island of 23 square miles.  Taxes?  We get plenty of those from the tooth fairy.

So what is the thinking?  An article in the new November issue of our local paper West View News ("The Voice of the West Village") may help you to understand.  The article considers the effect of yet another new large development now proposed for the southwest corner of the neighborhood, on top of the two mentioned above.  Here is their take:

[W]e are being surrounded by a new generation of Villagers who can afford some of the most expensive apartments in the world.  And soon they will be the majority voters at the Community Board meetings asking to end rent stabilizations so their kids graduating from Ivy League colleges can move into those nice quaint brown stone apartments currently occupied by little old Villagers on Social Security. 

It's the envy of percents 2 and 3 against percent 1.  Or, in the case of our neighborhood, maybe the envy of the bottom half of the top one percent against the top half of the top one percent.  The evil rich must be stopped before they drive us out of our homes!  (It's not clear to me how that would work, given that the apartments at issue are new ones that nobody lived in previously.)  Make those "kids graduating from Ivy League colleges" suffer two hour commutes in from Staten Island!  It's all very unbecoming.

Support of EPA's Clean Power Plan.   According to the New York Law Journal this morning, New York's Attorney Journal Eric Schneiderman has joined a coalition of 24 "states, cities and counties" seeking to intervene in litigation in the D.C. Circuit to support EPA's "Clean Power Plan."  The CPP is otherwise known as the Obama administration's gambit, without Congressional support, to shut down the U.S. coal industry.  The article does list seventeen states that have lined up with New York to support EPA, although it concedes that some 25 states have taken the other side.  Here are the Law Journal's quotes from Schneiderman and City Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter:

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the plan is needed to respond to the threat of climate change and incorporates strategies New York and several other states have used to cut pollution. . . .  Corporation Counsel Zachary Carter said in a statement, "These important rules are firmly based in law and in science, and give government the critical tools it needs to protect our environment well into the future."    

Over at Power Line, Steven Hayward points out that the U.S. has approximately 500 coal power plants today.  Meanwhile, in Asia they are planning to build around 500 coal power plants next year alone -- and then another 500 plants the following year, and another the year after that, and so on until about 2030, at which point everybody in Asia should finally have electricity.  The large majority of it from coal.  And this is not just China -- it's India, and Indonesia, and Japan (got to replace Fukushima!), and South Korea, and Thailand, and on and on and on.  So what exactly is the point of the U.S. closing its 500 plants?  Hey, it's what all right-thinking New Yorkers agree we should do!  Don't ask us for any actual rational thinking.  

No Subject Generates More Ignorance Than Poverty

Back in the 90s when welfare reform got enacted, a chorus of cries went up from the Left, loudly proclaiming that the heartless cutbacks would throw millions of innocent children into poverty and starvation.  Even New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, justly famous prior to that time for educating people on the destructive effects of welfare dependency, joined the chorus.  In early 1996 Moynihan took to the floor of Congress to deliver a famous speech opposing the welfare reform then about to be passed.  Here are some excerpts (from a March 1996 article in First Things):

Welfare reform proposals in Congress, especially provisions to put time limits on the reception of benefits, “will produce a surge in the number of homeless children such that the current problem of ‘the homeless’ will seem inconsequential,” declares Moynihan. Then comes the most stark and chilling statement of his counsel of despair: “I believe our present social welfare system is all but overwhelmed. . . . Hundreds of thousands of these children live in households that are held together primarily by the fact of welfare assistance. Take that away and the children are blown to the winds. [An] Administration analysis concludes that the welfare conference agreement [between House and Senate] will force 1.5 million children into poverty."       

Then the welfare reform became law, and to literally everyone's surprise, child poverty went down.  And not by a little.  A study by Heritage in 2003 found that the poverty rate for black children went down from 41.5% in 1995 to about 30% in 2000.  Here is their chart:

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I will admit that I too was surprised at the time, but that's because this was before I started getting into the numbers and understanding how this works.  Then I studied up a little and learned how it works, and I had the aha! moment.  You can have it too.  Here's how it works:

The government "antipoverty" programs are specifically and intentionally designed to make absolutely sure that nobody who takes the handouts ever escapes from poverty.  Far and away most of the government handouts are either post-tax or in-kind rather than cash (examples: food stamps, public housing, Medicaid, EITC, clothing and energy assistance).  The official definition of "poverty" excludes all post-tax and in-kind benefits.  Then there are benefits distributed in cash, notably TANF and SSI.  These things count in the definition of "poverty," but the level of the handouts is very specifically and precisely set to be sure that it is always just below any applicable poverty thresholds.

Now why would the government intentionally design "anti-poverty" programs to keep the level of measured "poverty" up?  Do you think that it doesn't make any sense?  If so, then you understand nothing about how bureaucracies work.  In fact it makes perfect sense.  If the number of people in "poverty" actually shrank, then the public's willingness to support huge anti-poverty spending would shrink, and the bureaucracies would be threatened.  From the bureaucracy's perspective, it is absolutely essential that the number of people counted as being in poverty be kept high.

Meanwhile, simply working full time for the year, even at a minimum wage job, is sufficient to raise most people out of poverty (depending somewhat on family size and number of workers in the family).  When people get cut off from welfare, many go to work, and by doing so they exit the ranks of those counted as poor.  So actually, as soon as you understand how things are counted, it would be completely obvious that the 1996 welfare reform was going to lower poverty.  Similarly today, reductions in the number of participants in "anti-poverty" handout programs would absolutely lower measured poverty, and dramatically.  On the flip side, expanding handout programs will dramatically increase measured poverty.  Anybody who understands the first thing about this subject knows that.

And then we come to this editorial yesterday from Bloomberg News, titled "How to Cut Poverty Rates Right Now."  And, you guessed it, the proposed way to cut poverty rates "right now" is to increase participation in the handout programs.  What???

Why aren't America's public-assistance programs helping more people out of poverty? One important answer is that too many people who could benefit don't sign up. Just 32 percent of those eligible for welfare enroll, along with 64 percent for Supplemental Security Income. And nonusers are often the people who need help the most.              

It's almost beyond belief.  They think that the idea of public assistance programs is to "help people out of poverty"?  Nobody but nobody gets out of measured poverty by taking America's public assistance programs.  And they don't know that TANF and SSI levels are almost always insufficient to raise the recipients out of poverty -- while at the same time trapping those unfortunates on the easy elixir of handouts?  Could they be any more uninformed?  Yes!  Try this on the EITC:

[In a recent study]  three small changes -- repetition, simplification and disclosure of potential benefits -- persuaded 31 percent more eligible tax filers to claim the earned income tax credit. If the same changes were made nationwide, they could provide tax credits for millions more needy families.      

Wow -- they don't know that the EITC is deemed "post-tax" and does not count at all in the measure of poverty!  In fact, as things are counted, you could multiply the amount disbursed by the EITC by one million and not raise a single person out of poverty.  It doesn't count!  And these are people claiming to know what they are talking about and to make public policy prescriptions to the government!

In the many comments to the Bloomberg editorial, there is much back and forth on whether it is a good idea for a society to push citizens into taking handouts that they had previously done without even though entitled to take them.  That is a very reasonable issue to raise.  But there is literally no recognition or awareness that the government handout programs are intentionally designed to keep their participants in measured poverty.  Somehow, that most critical of facts just slips beneath everyone's notice.

So I'll close with this important quote from the 2013 book The Problem Of Political Authority, by Michael Huemer (page 220):

The general lesson is that if some part of government fails in its function, it will most likely be given greater funding and power.  Of course, the purpose of this is not to reward failure; the thinking would be that more money and power will enable the agency to solve the problem.  But the effect is that government grows when social problems grow, and thus it is not in the government’s interests to solve society’s problems.            

Hat tip, Don Boudreaux, Café Hayek.