May 17, 2023

What Are The Three Worst Things You Could Possibly Imagine The Federal Government Or President Ever Doing?

May 17, 2023/ Francis Menton

The recurring themes at this blog all concern one or another badly misguided government policy that ends up being counter-productive or even greatly destructive of the welfare of the people. Examples include: undermining a functioning energy system in a delusional attempt to control the weather; spending vast sums on “anti-poverty” programs that never reduce poverty even a little; or indoctrinating young children and university students with idiotic and failed Marxist dogma.
All of these themes (and many others that I have covered) are individually important, even very important, measured by potential harm to the well-being of the people. But, however bad government actions in each of these areas may have been, there are even worse things that the government and/or the President can do.
So let’s step back from the news of the day, and consider in the abstract what could be the very worst possible things that the federal government or the President might do.

May 14, 2023

Biden Federal Government Goes Full Suicide Bomber Against America

May 14, 2023/ Francis Menton

From his first days in office, President Biden has promised — threatened — to activate the administrative state at every level to address and solve the “climate crisis.” In the orthodoxy of the Biden/Democrat climate cult, this is to be accomplished by reducing U.S. carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
Now, even if you believe that a little more CO2 in the atmosphere is some kind of a problem (it isn’t), there is nothing that the United States can do to have any meaningful impact on that situation, given that countries with populations a large multiple of ours (China, India, Africa) are building coal-fired power plants as fast as they can. Even if we closed our economy entirely and reduced ourselves to eating grass and bugs, the effect on the climate would be zilch.
Meanwhile we have waited through the first two plus years of Bidenism to find out exactly what punishments the administrative state has in mind for us for our sins of prosperity and enjoyment of life. In the last few weeks, we have learned at least part of the answer, in the form of a series of gigantic new regulatory proposals emanating from EPA and other agencies. The answer is, the federal government will become a suicide bomber seeking to blow up and destroy the American economy and the well-being of the American people.

May 12, 2023

May 12, 2023/ Francis Menton

On Wednesday Congressman James Comer and some colleagues held their.long-promised press conference detailing new information about corruption of the President of the United States. I happened to be driving at the time (not common for Manhattanites like me) and so listened to a portion of the event.
The oral presentation was expressed in general terms that mostly reiterated things that we already knew. Added to our previous knowledge was information from recently produced and analyzed bank records that enabled pinpointing exact dates, sources and amounts of various payments from foreign entities to intermediary shell corporations and thence on to various Bidens.
And thus little by little we learn more details about our current President accepting large amounts of money from multiple foreign countries, one of which is our most significant geopolitical adversary.

May 08, 2023

May 08, 2023/ Francis Menton

In a post back on March 23 (“Trying To Head Off New York’s Total Self-Destruction”), I took note of the recent issuance by a think tank called the Empire Center of a big Report titled “Next New York.”
The Report shines a spotlight on one area after another where progressive New York politicians have implemented destructive and crazily-expensive policies. My March 23 post discussed the subject of energy policy. Before too much time has passed, I want to delve into at least one or two more areas. For today, it’s public education.
The Next New York Report covers public education in a 15-page segment (pages 29-43) written by Ray Domanico.
The simple and undeniable fact is that New York, both State and City, spend ridiculously more on K-12 education than any place else in the country.

May 05, 2023

May 05, 2023/ Francis Menton

The notorious events in Jonestown took place so long ago that most readers probably don’t have personal memory of them.
In November 1978, in the jungles of Guyana, under the powerful spell of a religious cult with a charismatic leader, and of an all-embracing groupthink, some 900 people somehow agreed to participate in a mass suicide. It was a shocking instance of the kind of collective insanity to which humans can be susceptible.

You might think that the Jonestown massacre was a uniquely extreme example of such a mass psychosis, perhaps attributable largely to unusually susceptible subjects or to the isolated location. Surely our best and brightest leaders of government and business would never fall prey to such collective craziness.
If you think that, then perhaps you should look at what is currently going on in the automotive sector of the economy.

May 03, 2023

May 03, 2023/ Francis Menton

Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter in October 2022. Prior to Musk’s taking control, there had been many complaints, particularly from the right, of Tweets getting suppressed, down-graded, “shadow-banned,” or the like, but without anyone having detailed information of exactly what Twitter was up to.
Then in December 2022 a group of journalists recruited by Musk — e.g., Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Glenn Greenwald, Alex Berenson — started releasing lengthy Twitter threads documenting exactly how pre-Musk Twitter had “moderated” politically sensitive content to manipulate the public discussion.
In early 2022, back when his bid for Twitter was pending, Musk had famously called himself a “free speech absolutist.”
So to what degree is Musk living up to his promise to bring free speech to Twitter, including in particular allowing criticism of himself? Readers might be interested in the experience of Manhattan Contrarian on that subject.