May 23, 2023

NYCHA, Circling The Drain

May 23, 2023/ Francis Menton

From time to time I like to check in on the latest from the New York City Housing Authority. NYCHA (along with many other municipal housing authorities) is one of the purest examples in the U.S. today of socialist-model economic organization.
When we last looked back in 2018, NYCHA had just been sued by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York for failing to maintain “decent, safe and sanitary” conditions, including failing to remediate lead paint, failing to control mold and vermin, and failing to provide consistent heat, hot water., and elevator service. NYCHA had promptly settled that lawsuit with a Consent Decree in which it promised to spend some $4 billion of New York City taxpayer money to fix the identified problems.
In the intervening close to 5 years, NYCHA has been mostly out of the news. Surely, the large infusion of funds has turned things around, and all is now going smoothly?

May 20, 2023

Finally, A Solution To The Problem Of Intermittent Power Generation -- The "Virtual Power Plant"

May 20, 2023/ Francis Menton

As discussed here many, many times, the big problem with generating electricity from wind and solar sources is that they are intermittent. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they don’t work for days on end. The times when both wind and sun fail at the same time for multiple days tend to be concentrated in the very coldest days of the winter. This poses a huge problem for central planners’ dreams of “net zero” electricity. Try to solve the problem with grid-scale batteries, and suddenly you’re talking wildly unaffordable costs in the trillions of dollars.
Not to worry. Recently everywhere talk has emerged of a new and seemingly easy solution to the problem of intermittency. Have you heard of it? It’s the “Virtual Power Plant.” I mean, today pretty much everything can be “virtual” if you want it to be. We have the “virtual” meeting, the “virtual” office, and the “virtual” school — even “virtual” reality. So why not a “virtual” power plant?
But, in the context of generating electricity, what does this business of “virtual” mean?

May 17, 2023

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

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.