March 05, 2020

Eric Greitens Update

March 05, 2020/ Francis Menton

If you haven’t heard of Eric Greitens, it’s either because you don’t live in Missouri or you haven’t been paying attention to the Manhattan Contrarian posts on politicized phony prosecutions. Prior MC posts dealing with Mr. Greitens’s situation appeared first on April 12, 2018, and then a couple of weeks ago on February 18, 2020. Today there is a piece by Christine Dolan and John Solomon at Just the News, with new facts that are truly unbelievable.
The subject of the April 2018 post was a collection of weak and/or completely phony prosecutions brought by Democratic prosecutors against Republican officeholders in politically swing situations, where the investigation or potential conviction had a likelihood to drive the Republican from office and thereby potentially move significant power to the Democrats.

I was clear to say in that post, and I repeat here, that I do not contend that Republicans are pure on this issue; however, despite considerable looking, I have not been able to come up with a single example of a comparable situation with potential to swing political power from one party to the other where it was a Republican prosecutor pursuing a Democratic officeholder.
But let’s get to Greitens. . . .

March 04, 2020

The Quest For Perfect Fairness And Justice In Property Taxation, New York City Edition

March 04, 2020/ Francis Menton

Before leaving my current round of posts on New York City real estate issues, it occurs to me to make some fun of one of the funniest policy issues in that arena, namely the question of “fairness” of the property tax system.
New York has a crazy patchwork of laws and rules for who pays how much property tax. Those laws and rules have arisen from a long history of the usual attempts to create perfect fairness and justice in the system.
For today’s purposes, here’s what’s important: When trying to create a perfectly “fair” property tax system, there are two main goals which are, unfortunately, completely inconsistent. Goal one is that in a “fair” system, properties of equal value “should” be taxed at equal amounts. Really, who could disagree with that? But goal number two is that in a “fair” system, people of modest incomes “should” not be driven from their homes by rapidly accelerating property tax bills.
If you think about these two”fairness” goals for a moment, you will quickly realize that they cannot both be achieved at the same time. The more you strive to achieve one of them, the farther you get from the other. . . . .

March 02, 2020

March 02, 2020/ Francis Menton

Here in Manhattan, it is an article of unshakable religious faith that conjuring “affordable housing” into existence, through some magic recipe of taxpayer subsidies and coercion, is a fundamental responsibility of government.
And then you have the tiny handful of dissenters, like myself.
It was way back in January 2013 that I called government-coerced “affordable housing” the “most expensive possible way to help the smallest number of people.” A few months after that (in September 2013) I officially nominated “affordable housing” in Manhattan as “the worst possible public policy.”
In the intervening seven or so years, it has only become more and more obvious that I was right. . . . Is anyone starting to get the picture?
The answer is no.

February 29, 2020

February 29, 2020/ Francis Menton

Nothing, and I mean nothing, leads so quickly to the loss of all critical faculties as global warming hysteria.
One key claim in the maelstrom of global warming hype is the assertion that sea level will shortly rise and swamp coastal cities. I would put this claim in the category of total BS. For more detail than you would ever want to know on that subject, go to this link.
But for today’s purposes, assume that there is something to the claim of a big impending sea level rise.
I live here in Manhattan, specifically Lower Manhattan (the southern part of the island). If sea level is about to rise and swamp coastal cities, Manhattan looks like ground zero, and Lower Manhattan in particular. We are an island surrounded by estuaries, otherwise known as the sea. . . .

February 25, 2020

February 25, 2020/ Francis Menton

It was January 10, 2017 — just 10 days before President Trump’s inauguration — when Buzzfeed published the text of what came to be called the “Trump-Russia Dossier.” That event set off a tsunami of what easily became thousands of articles in the mainstream press claiming or suggesting that there had been some sort of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia to “hack the election.”
I first commented on the subject a few weeks later in a post on March 2, 2017 titled “What Is With This Weird Obsession With Russia?” In the midst of what were at that moment multiple articles every day in every mainstream press outlet obsessing over the supposed Trump-Russia cabal, that post made the obvious point that the whole idea that Russia had colluded with Trump or his people to help him win the election made no sense whatsoever.
Perhaps the most definitive reason why the thesis made no sense was that Russia’s energy-dependent economy had been crippled by the fall in oil and gas prices that had occurred in about 2014-15, brought about by American fracking, and if Putin was even remotely rational he would prefer the candidate who proposed to restrict American energy development over the candidate who proposed to unleash it.
Two plus years of Russia! Russia! Russia! later, the Mueller Report (released April 18, 2019) finally put the whole thing to rest. Or so we thought. . . .

February 23, 2020

February 23, 2020/ Francis Menton

Bernie Sanders has now scored a decisive victory in the Nevada caucuses, and is leading in the RealClearPolitics average of polls in almost every upcoming state. The RCP betting odds section gives Sanders a 55.6% chance of winning the nomination. It’s looking increasingly like the nomination is his to lose.
Well, if you’re the party of free stuff, why shouldn’t the guy who offers the most free stuff win? Bernie is clearly willing to outbid all of his rivals in the free stuff auction. What makes you think anybody can beat him by just bidding less?
At some point, if another candidate is going to prevail with a lesser bid, that candidate needs to articulate a limiting principle in some shape or form.
By a limiting principle, I mean a reasoned argument that provides some sort of rationale as to why government programs and expenditures to solve all human wants and needs can’t just be infinite; and that provides some basis for drawing a line beyond which government growth should not occur. . . .