In The Climate Wars, Two Steps Forward For Every One Back

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The Climate Wars continue to rage.  In Washington, EPA Director Scott Pruitt has been driven from office, supposedly over a series of ethical issues.  All of them seemed exceedingly debatable and insignificant to me.  On the other hand, Pruitt must have known that the full force of the environmental left was gunning for him, so there was no excuse for errors, however minor.   Pruitt will be succeeded by Andrew Wheeler, another professed climate change skeptic.

Perhaps this is a good time to take stock of where things are going on the "climate change" front.  Have you noticed that the whole climate issue seems to have mostly disappeared from the news lately?  That could only mean one thing:  the latest information does not fit the preferred narrative.  Let's look at the news that you won't be finding in the New York Times or on CNN.

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From The Official Manhattan Contrarian Foreign Correspondent

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The Official Manhattan Contrarian Foreign Correspondent -- otherwise known as my long-time friend from the East Bronx -- writes with some thoughts on the victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in the recent congressional primary in his district:

I have lived in the area now included in the 14th [Congressional District] since 1975. . . .  [My part of t]he district [in the East Bronx] is a mix of 3, 2, and 1 family owner-occupied housing and apartments many of which are condos or co-ops.  Originally mostly Italian, Irish, and Greek, [the area is] now much more ethnically diverse and somewhat gentrified with Hispanic Americans being the largest group.  I can echo Mr Dooley in stating that the reason that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez was elected was that few voters knew who she was or even that there was a Primary.  There are virtually no socialist vote[rs] except possibly among the gentrified millenials.  

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In Late Stage Socialism, It Just Keeps Getting Worse

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The Socialist Death Spiral:  At first it proceeds so slowly that nobody even notices the deterioration and decline going on all around them.  With the government controlling the economic statistics, most likely the official numbers show economic improvement that is entirely fake, but can deceive people for a while.  But as the spiral continues, it goes faster and faster.

For the New York City Housing Authority, you could have known there was a problem for a long time just by looking at the buildings.  But the growing problem was well concealed.  It was only in 2015, early in the de Blasio administration, that they suddenly came out with a report, NextGeneration NYCHA, that revealed a backlog of "urgently needed" capital repairs of some $17 billion.  Wow -- that was close to $100,000 for each of the 170,000+ NYCHA apartments.  But that was only the start.  On February 6 this year, the Wall Street Journal then reported that the amount had just jumped to $25 billion:

City officials also said for the first time Tuesday that the housing agency’s infrastructure needs total about $25 billion, up from $17 billion several years ago.

And, this past week, the $25 billion took another jump to $31.8 billion.

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Now You Tell Us -- "Curbs On Unions Likely To Starve Activist Groups"

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"Curbs On Unions Likely To Starve Activist Groups" -- that's the lead headline (top right of page A1) in today's print edition of the New York Times.  In the online edition, it's "Supreme Court Labor Decision Wasn't Just a Loss for Unions."  The gist of the article is that this right-wing Supreme Court is now going after our friends to de-fund them.  To Pravda, that seems to be a big problem.  To me, it seems like there's a rather gigantic scandal going on here that has nothing to do with what Pravda thinks is the scandal.  

The Times's article discusses the effects of the Supreme Court's decision last week in the case called Janus v. AFSCME.  That's the case that invalidated so-called "fair share" payments, which are the payments that many state and local governments have required their employees to make to labor unions, even if a given employee declines to join the union.  Henceforth, under the majority opinion in Janus by Justice Alito, if a government employee does not want to join a labor union, he does not have to pay the union anything as a condition of keeping his job.

OK, but how exactly is this going to "starve activist groups"?  After all, prior to this decision, didn't non-members of the union already have the right to decline to contribute to the union's political activities, and to limit their payments to the portion of union dues that supports collective bargaining activities? 

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The Future Of The Democratic Party -- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

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When I was a kid, and I lost a tooth, my parents instructed me to put the tooth under my pillow when I went to bed at night.  The next morning, magically, the tooth was gone, and a quarter had appeared.  My parents explained that the quarter came from the tooth fairy.  

By the time my own kids got to the same stage of life, the tooth fairy had become much more generous.  The going rate seemed to be around two or three dollars per tooth.  And I heard of some instances where the magical money was up to five dollars.  At least by that time I knew it was all a fiction.

Is it possible to get to the age of 28 and not have figured out that the tooth fairy is not real?  Well, consider the case of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  You have probably recently heard of her.  She is the young woman who just knocked off Joe Crowley to become the Democratic Party's candidate for the 14th Congressional District of New York.  The 14th District covers some broad swaths of Queens and the Bronx, two of the boroughs that make up New York City.  (One of my daughters lives in that district.)  Ocasio-Cortez seems to believe that the tooth fairy is good for multiple trillions of dollars if you just demand firmly enough that the money be coughed up

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The Difference Justice Gorsuch Has Made

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Neil Gorsuch was confirmed to the Supreme Court on April 7 last year, and on April 9 I welcomed him with a post titled "A Few Places Where Justice Gorsuch Can Make A Difference."   That post took note of the remarkable fact that, while the "conservative" justices on the Supreme Court often disagreed with each other in high-profile cases, that was never the case for the "liberals."  In any case viewed as politically important to achievement of some policy outcome favored by the progressive movement, the "liberal" justices could always be counted on to vote as a unified bloc.  From that post:

The overriding philosophy of the "liberal" bloc has been discussed many times on this blog, and there is nothing complicated about it.  The basic concept is that the government consists of neutral, apolitical experts whose job it is to move us all towards greater and then perfect justice and fairness through the magic of more and more laws, rules and regulations.  The neutral experts must be given full authority and discretion to rule over the people in order to complete this project.  Obviously the government [and not the people] must run the country, because otherwise there would be chaos!  Or, even worse, unfairness!

Once you observe this unified voting for more bureaucratic power over the people enough times, you might even get the impression that perhaps these justices care little about upholding the Constitution, and mostly care about making sure that "our side" wins and the other side gets suppressed.

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