January 18, 2020

Another Of The "Stupidest Litigation" Contenders Dies -- But Just Barely

January 18, 2020/ Francis Menton

Among the many important initiatives of this website has been holding the competition for the Award for “Stupidest Litigation in the Country.”
To many readers, the very first nominee for the Stupidest Litigation Award has always been the clear leading contender to win it. That nomination, made in December 2017, went to the litigation titled Kelsey Cascadia Rose Juliana v. United States. This is the case where a group of adolescents in the Pacific Northwest have sought an injunction to require the federal government to decree an end to all use of fossil fuels, in order to “save the planet.” Really, it’s hard to top that one for Stupid.
But just because a particular litigation is the leading contender for the Stupidest Litigation Award does not mean that no judge will grant victory to the plaintiffs. After all, the whole idea behind each of these Stupid Litigations is to offer some judge a thinly-veiled rationale to become a hero in the progressive movement by taking self-government away from the people and turning control over to the bureaucrats and experts.
Which is why it is significant that yesterday, a three-judge panel of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Juliana case dismissed.

January 14, 2020

A Little-Noted Trump Administration Success: Food Stamps

January 14, 2020/ Francis Menton

Your impressions of the successes or failures of the Trump administration very likely correlate closely with the things that have been the focus of the news cycle: Russia!, immigration, the border, the Wall, the economy, unemployment, Supreme Court justices, etc.; and lately, Ukraine and Iran.
But among the notable successes of the last few years, there are some that have been much less the focus of the news. One of those is food stamps. Of course, depending on your political views, you may not consider this a success.
The number of people enrolled in the food stamp program has undergone a significant and accelerating decline since Trump took office. Perhaps you think that that is and should be the norm for times of a growing economy. Maybe so, but such was definitely not the case under President Obama. . . .

January 12, 2020

January 12, 2020/ Francis Menton

A new (January 10) Des Moines Register poll shows Bernie Sanders starting to pull away from the field at 20%, with Elizabeth Warren second (17%), and Pete Buttagieg suddenly down 9 points to 16%. Is the Democratic nomination battle really going to come down to just crazy versus crazier?
But, you say, there’s Joe Biden. He’s stuck at 15% in the Register poll, although perhaps will do better in subsequent states like South Carolina. But is he really a moderate? Among other things, Biden has endorsed the total socialist restructuring of the U.S. economy known as the Green New Deal; the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of blue collar jobs for the green dream; and the jailing of fossil fuel executives. Not a lot of moderation there.
So today, let’s take a look at Mike Bloomberg. . . .

January 08, 2020

January 08, 2020/ Francis Menton

Each day you listen to unceasing climate change advocacy, always claiming the mantle of “science.” But you can’t help noticing the steady drumbeat of the standard narratives used by religious cults.
The end of days is nigh. You have grievously sinned. Your sin is taking you down the road to damnation. Yet salvation is at hand. But only if you and all humanity immediately repent and follow the gospel of your new climate change priests. If not, the apocalypse of judgment day shall soon be upon you.
Of course these narratives pervade the rhetoric of the fanatics seeking to be messianic leaders of the climate movement, from the Greta Thunbergs to the Al Gores. But over in the more sober organs of elite thought leadership, surely the climate advocacy must be based on actual science. Right?
If you are struggling with that question, perhaps you should take a look at some of the recent coverage of the wildfires in Australia that has appeared in our elite media, the gist of which is that Australia’s wildfires are the punishment for its grievous sins of failure to follow the true climate change gospel. . . .

January 05, 2020

January 05, 2020/ Francis Menton

As you probably know, over the course of several weeks in December Iranian proxies known as the Kataib Hezbollah carried out multiple attacks against military installations in Iraq.
On January 3, the U.S. military, under orders from President Trump, conducted a retaliatory strike that killed the leader of Iran’s so-called Quds Forces, Qasem Soleimani. Subsequently, Iran has threatened further rounds of retaliation against the U.S., although those have not occurred as of this writing.
Before getting too caught up in the tensions of the current moment, perhaps we should step back and look at how things have been going lately for Iran. The answer is, not very well.
This is one of those things that you can figure out if you look around enough, but rarely is the information compiled in one place. So I’ll do it for you. As I have remarked before, the U.S. has been incredibly blessed over the years by the rank incompetence of its geopolitical adversaries. . . .

January 03, 2020

January 03, 2020/ Francis Menton

On December 30, the Census Bureau issued its latest population numbers, going up through July 2019. Here is a link to the press release; and here is a link to various charts and graphs of statistics.
The long-time official spin on U.S. population changes has been that people are leaving the cold North and East in favor of the warmer South and West. Hey, people like warmer weather!
But while there may be something to that, a closer look supports a strong inference that what people really like is lower taxes, even if accompanied by a lower level of government spending and services. In other words, the news is not good for “blue model” governance.
Some ten states are estimated to have lost population in the year from July 2018 to July 2019; they are Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and West Virginia. Many of those declines are small, and perhaps based on special circumstances (e.g., the decline of Alaska’s North Slope oil fields).
But two states stand out for remarkably large losses. The leader is my own New York, with a loss of about 77,000 residents — 0.39% of population in one year. . . .