September 22, 2023

Why Do The Poor Countries Always Stay So Poor?

September 22, 2023/ Francis Menton

It’s now more than sixty years since the independence movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s transformed nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa into independent countries.
Hopes soared for a new era of progress and prosperity. But six plus decades on, with essentially no exceptions (maybe Botswana?), the 49 countries of sub-Saharan Africa are about as poor as ever.

The New York Times treats the subject in a big piece by Patricia Cohen a few days ago on September 18. Sorry if this is behind their paywall, but I subscribe to this stuff so that you don’t have to.
In the treatment at the Times, this is just a case of the sad cruelty of nature, an extreme instance of “bad luck.” But we can learn a good deal about the true source of the bad luck by looking at clues that Ms. Cohen and the Times inadvertently drop in the course of their reporting, without even noticing that they are doing it.

September 19, 2023

The Bidens: "Stone Cold Crooked" (9) -- When Can We Start Calling It What It Is, Namely Bribery?

September 19, 2023/ Francis Menton

The Biden family corruption scandal gets deeper with every passing day. Speaker Kevin McCarthy finally opened an impeachment investigation in the House last week, and now the first hearing in that investigation has been scheduled for September 28 before the House Oversight Committee.
So what is the potential impeachable offense? You will undoubtedly recall, in the context of the two Trump impeachments, the endless semantic contortions that took place trying to shoehorn Trump’s conduct into the vague constitutional catchall of “high crimes and misdemeanors” that might support an impeachment.
Now, with Biden, the conduct at issue goes by various euphemisms like “the family business,” “business dealings with foreign nationals,” “influence peddling,” “selling access,” or maybe just “corruption.” Are these impeachable offenses?
Well, how about “bribery”?

September 16, 2023

September 16, 2023/ Francis Menton

As I have written many times, I don’t think that the federal measure of “poverty” in the United States was originally created with fraudulent intent to deceive the voters.
However, as the measure of poverty has evolved over the years, the thing deemed “poverty” by the statistics no longer bears any meaningful resemblance to what normal people think of as poverty. Rather than measuring anything that might resemble actual physical deprivation, the statistics have evolved into an artifact to manipulate the voters. In a post about a year ago I described what I call the “poverty scam” as follows:
[T]he 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.
Over the past week or so we have just been treated to the umpteenth iteration of this poverty scam.

September 13, 2023

September 13, 2023/ Francis Menton

In New York, politicians are selling the public a narrative that electricity is going to be the solution to climate change.
We will eliminate all CO2 emissions by banning gasoline-powered cars, banning natural gas infrastructure, banning gas heat in buildings, and banning gas for cooking. All of these are to be replaced with supposedly “green,” emissions-free, alternatives – which in practice consist of only one thing, electricity. We’ve been told that this is how we are going to protect the planet for future generations.
But there is nothing emissions-free about the way electricity is currently generated in New York. About half of our electricity comes now, as it traditionally has, from burning fossil fuels.
New York has announced plans to eliminate those from electricity generation by 2030, but as of now has no realistic plan to replace them. Meanwhile, it is forcing its citizens to convert essential systems like heating to electricity, with no basis to believe that the electricity will be available to prevent people from freezing in the winter only a few years from now.
This is a glaring contradiction, that needs urgently to be addressed before we suffer a self-inflicted catastrophe.

September 10, 2023

September 10, 2023/ Francis Menton

Does the federal government do anything noticeable these days other than use its vast taxpayer-supplied resources to grind down and persecute its political enemies?
You already know more that you want to about things like: unprecedented criminal prosecutions against the former President; a Censorship Industrial Complex to bully social media platforms into silencing opponents; and wildly disproportionate prosecutions of J6 protesters.
Here are a couple of examples for today that you may have paid less attention to:

September 06, 2023

September 06, 2023/ Francis Menton

We are on our way to Net Zero by 2050. It must be true because everybody says so.
The entire $6+ trillion per year federal government is committed to the project, which obviously would not be the case if the whole thing were impossible. Equally fully committed are essentially all of the colleges and universities, where all of the smartest people are to be found. As well as every other elite institution of every kind and sort.
Take the World Economic Forum. If there is a number one elitest among all elite institutions, this has to be it. At their annual confab in Davos, Switzerland, they gather the greatest of geniuses to instruct the very top government and business leaders how to run the world. Would you like to go? It will cost you $52,000 to join the organization, and then an additional $19,000 to attend the conference. Chartering a private jet to get you there will cost a few more thousand. Once there, you can hear the very smartest people imparting their thoughts on the most important topics of the day, like “The Great Reset,” “Emerging Technologies,” “Diversity and Inclusions,” and, of course, “The Net Zero Transition.”
Is it possible that these people are completely incompetent and have no idea what they are doing?