A New Low For New York Attorney General Letitia James

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  • When I was young, the New York Attorney General’s office had a reputation for integrity. But somewhere along the line, the office went completely off the rails.

  • Eliot Spitzer was elected AG in 1998, and spent his two terms in frightening misuse of the office to further his naked political ambitions, mainly through shaking down financial institutions on the thinnest of pretexts. After eight years improperly using this tactic to keep his name in the headlines, he was then elected Governor; whereupon his successor — Andrew Cuomo — followed the same playbook for one term, and with the same result of becoming Governor. The next guy, Eric Schneiderman, was, if this is even possible, the worst of the three in the category of politicized prosecutions and shakedowns. Mercifully, Schneiderman was forced from office in a sex scandal before he could move up to the governorship.

  • In the 2018 election, we got a woman named Letitia James. By this time, all pretense that the Attorney General ought to be an impartial law enforcement officer had been long forgotten.

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An Example Of A Real Threat To "Our Democracy" (Or, More Accurately, To Our Constitutional Republic)

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An Example Of A Real Threat To "Our Democracy" (Or, More Accurately, To Our Constitutional Republic)

  • The latest endlessly recurring mantra of Democratic politicians and press is that some position articulated by the opposition is a threat to “our Democracy.”

  • I suppose that those words must resonate with some people, or otherwise they would not be so endlessly repeated. Of course the statement is fundamentally wrong, because we don’t actually have a “Democracy,” but rather a Constitutional Republic.

  • Having a Democracy would mean that a 50.1% voting majority can do whatever it wants to the hated 49.9%, including locking the 49.9% permanently out of power. The whole idea of the Constitutional Republic is to keep that from happening, and our Constitution puts multiple institutions in place to prevent a temporary slight majority from seizing permanent power for itself.

  • Most of the current railing about threats to “our Democracy” turns out, on examination, to represent nothing more than dissatisfaction with the fact that we have a Constitutional Republic rather than a Democracy. Understanding the distinction between Democracy and our Constitutional Republic is the key to distinguishing the real threats to our system of government from the nonsense filling the media every day.

  • This post considers a recent example of one of the real threats, which has received almost no press coverage.

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Cost Of The Green Energy Transition: Who You Gonna Believe, Some Research Assistants From Oxford Or Your Lyin' Eyes?

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Cost Of The Green Energy Transition: Who You Gonna Believe, Some Research Assistants From Oxford Or Your Lyin' Eyes?

  • Over in Europe, and particularly in those countries in the vanguard of the green energy transition, the enormous costs of this folly have begun to hit home. In the UK, average annual consumer energy bills were scheduled to rise as of October 1 to £3549/year, from only £1138/year just a year ago. (The figure may now get reduced somewhat by means of massive government subsidies, which only conceal, but do not obviate, the disastrous cost increases.) Germany’s regulated consumer gas bills are scheduled for an average annual increase on October 1 of about 480 euros, about 13%, from an already high 3568 euros.

  • Anyone with a pair of eyes can see what has happened. They thought they could get rid of fossil fuels just by building lots of wind turbines and solar panels, which don’t work most of the time. Then they suppressed fossil fuel production, because that is the virtuous thing to do. Somehow they lost track of the fact that they needed full backup for the wind and sun, and have no alternative to the suppressed fossil fuels. With supply of fossil fuels intentionally and artificially constrained, prices spiked.

  • And they have not even yet gotten to 50% of electricity, or 15% of final energy consumption, from wind/sun on an annualized basis.

  • Is anybody learning a lesson here?

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The Latest Pre-Election Bait And Switch On Poverty Statistics

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The Latest Pre-Election Bait And Switch On Poverty Statistics

  • It’s September, in an even year. Labor Day has passed. The big mid-terms are less than two months away. It’s time for a pre-election bait and switch on poverty statistics to deceive any low information voters who aren’t paying attention to how the poverty scam works.

  • The poverty scam has been a big topic over the years at this blog, although perhaps less so in the most recent couple of years. This link will take you to all my prior posts on Poverty, some 129 in total.

  • The most important recurring theme has been that the government cynically manipulates the poverty statistics so that the official measured rate of poverty never goes meaningfully down, no matter how much taxpayer money is spent, thus manufacturing a fake basis to hit up the people for ever increasing funding at regular intervals.

  • But there is an exception. When a big election is coming up and the Democrats are in power, suddenly alternative statistics magically emerge showing that poverty has dropped dramatically, all of course due to compassionate programs put in place by the Democrats.

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California And New York: Do Not Back Off Your World-Beating Green Energy Schemes!

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  • Today the Manhattan Contrarian formally calls upon the states of California and New York: Whatever you do, do not back down from your crash program of green energy schemes!

  • The full text of the Manhattan Contrarian official announcement follows:

  • California and New York: It is critical to mankind that you pursue the full extent of your green energy schemes to conclusion as soon as possible and at all costs. If you really believe, as you proclaim, that all-renewable energy is a moral necessity to save the planet from the existential crisis of climate change; if you really believe that energy derived from fossil fuels is dangerous and polluting and is causing dangerous climate change; if you really believe that renewable energy is now less expensive than fossil fuel energy; if you really believe that an all-renewable energy system can actually work to power a modern economy; and if you really believe that all that is needed to get to an all-renewable future is to build enough solar and wind generators to do the job — then you absolutely must see this project through to conclusion and without delay.

  • Now is not the time to go wobbly. You owe it to the world to show everyone how this can be done. This is your moral duty.

  • The context of this plea is that, of the four jurisdictions in the world that are the leaders in the push to 100% green energy — California, New York, the UK, and Germany — two of them — the UK and Germany — are giving strong signals that they are ready to cry “Uncle!” and back off on the plans.

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Another Round Of Rolling Blackouts In California

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Another Round Of Rolling Blackouts In California

  • This summer has seen repeated warnings in California that another round of rolling blackouts could be coming. (The last such round was in August 2020.). Somehow, before today, several close calls have been averted. But today, California’s luck seems to have run out. Even as I’m writing this post, California’s main utility PG&E has put some 525,000 customers on notice that rolling blackouts could be imposed this evening as the sun sets and power from solar arrays konks out.

  • Temperatures in California, particularly in the Bay Area, are indeed running unusually hot, although in most cases not all-time records.

  • You won’t be surprised to learn that one mainstream press source after another attributes the power shortage and resulting blackouts to “climate change.”

  • But the funny thing is, as hot as the temperatures are, they are no hotter than temperatures experienced this year — and indeed every year — in other states like Arizona and Texas. And yet those states are not having rolling blackouts caused by inadequate electricity on the grid.

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