Cutting Federal Spending: The Case Of Food Stamps

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  • Down in the swamps of Washington, D.C., our Congress is said to be hard at work hammering out a budget for the coming fiscal year. With a crisis of massive deficits looming, supposedly they are going to come up with some major areas where government spending can be cut.

  • One of the areas under consideration for significant cuts is the program formally known as the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program,” or SNAP, and informally known as “food stamps.”

  • According to the latest data from the Department of Agriculture, as of February 2025 the SNAP program had some 42+ million “participation persons,” with the cost of the program running at just under $8 billion per month, which is close to $100 billion per year.

  • Is it possible to achieve meaningful savings in this program?

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As The Federal Government Abandons The Climate Fantasy, New York Doubles Down

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  • The first 100+ days of the second Trump administration (it’s now actually 113 days) have seen a near total abandonment of the fantasy that this one country’s government can change the weather and “save the planet” by suppressing use of hydrocarbon fuels and impoverishing the people.

  • Biden administration “climate” and energy policies amounting to thousands of pages in regulations and hundreds of billions of dollars in grants and subsidies to uneconomic energy projects have been swiftly reversed. Examples in just the past few weeks include:

  • The announcement by the Department of Energy just yesterday (May 12) of no fewer than 47 regulatory reversals, covering everything from ovens. to dehumidifiers, to clothes washers and driers, to shower heads, to dishwashers, and much, much more.

  • Rescission of hundreds of grants from the Department of Energy for so-called “green energy” projects.

  • Similar rescission of hundreds of grants from EPA, supposedly to fund “greenhouse gas reduction” and “climate justice” initiatives.

  • Commencement by EPA of a process to undo the “Endangerment Finding” — a regulatory action that underlies essentially all climate and energy regulation by that agency — and some 30 other climate and energy actions of EPA.

  • And these are just examples. There are many more.

  • At this point, you would think that the blue states might take the hint.

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Some Push-back Against The Plan To Eliminate Cash

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  • On the to-do list of the progressives setting out the steps needed to perfect the world, right at the top we find “Get Rid of Cash.” That makes total sense. Use of cash for financial transactions is the source and enabler of human sin and failing almost without limit.

  • Our free exchange (aka “capitalist”) system gives rise to endless varieties of undesirable activities, ranging from the criminal to the sketchy to the non-virtuous to the icky. If only we had a world without cash, all transactions could be forced onto electronic payment systems where they could be continuously monitored by the forces of good. The undesirable ones could be identified and stopped. What’s even the argument against this?

  • Over the near decade since I wrote two posts about this subject, the use of cash has declined significantly. . . .

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Update On Trump's Tariff Gambit

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Update On Trump's Tariff Gambit

  • It was back at the beginning of February that President Trump launched what I have called his “tariff gambit” — sequential edicts of flat-rate, economy-wide tariffs imposed against various of our trading partner countries.

  • The process began with February 1 announcements of blanket 10% tariffs on all goods from China, and 25% tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada. Since then, in a blizzard of activity, there have been multiple rounds of announcements on this subject: new countries added to the tariff edicts, increases or decreases in the blanket rates applicable to various countries or products, granting of exceptions and exemptions, postponements of announced effective dates, and more. It’s more than just about anybody can keep track of. Here is an April 10 chronology from PBS compiling all the various tariff actions issued by the administration up to that time. The sheer speed of the announcements, and lack of direction toward any discernible purpose, are astonishing.

  • In a post about a month ago on April 8, I expressed extreme skepticism about this gambit.

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New Manhattan Contrarian Comment Policy

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Starting tomorrow May 8, 2025, we will begin moderating our comment section.

Since I started this blog in 2012, I have refrained from intervening in the comments in any way. Over time, I have been very happy to host what gradually became a robust and engaged commenter community. With the exception of a Squarespace program that for some unknown reason randomly segregates around 1% of the comments, comments here have been posted as soon as the commenter clicks “Post.”

Most recently, the situation with the comments has deteriorated noticeably.  There have been increasing numbers of spam comments, promising easy money and soliciting readers to click links that I strongly suspect are malicious. Despite many attempts, we have not been able to filter these spam comments automatically. We have also seen an uptick in insults, antagonism, racism, and antisemitism. This is occurring to a degree that I feel has become detrimental to the experience of the blog. My hope has always been to foster intellectual discussion and debate, and to make the Manhattan Contrarian a place where people are comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas without fear they will be attacked.

I do not have the intention of censoring any large number of comments. The biggest issue is that once we begin moderating the comments, comments will be filtered before they appear. This  could mean there will be substantial delays before comments are posted.  We do not have any revenue here, or any paid staff. We are going to make an effort to review and post the comments at least every few hours, but there might be times that it takes even longer than that.

We know that many commenters come here for the active discussion. We are aware of other websites that have moderated their comments for a short period of time, and then stopped the moderation after things have calmed down.  We will see where we are in 30 days.

For those who wish to comment here, please be aware of the following:

Your comment will not pass moderation if:

  • It includes insults;

  • It directly antagonizes other commenters;

  • It includes racist or antisemitic statements;

  • It is spam.

We encourage comments that:

  • further discussion on the subject of the blog;

  • challenge other commenters in good faith;

  • critique or challenge the MC in a constructive manner.

We hope these guidelines will improve your experience as a reader and commenter, and that you will continue to join the conversation and debates the blog inspires. Of course, we are open to hearing your feedback.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Corruption In Politics: The Case Of Trump And Cryptocurrency

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  • In the New York Times from this past Thursday (May 1), the lead story was a scathing exposé of alleged corruption of our current President. The headline and sub-headline (print version) were “Trump Shapes the Policy On Crypto, and Cashes In. Hushed Deals and Foreign Investors Propel President’s Digital Money Start-Up.” The sub-headline in the online version was even more scathing: “World Liberty Financial has eviscerated the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in ways without precedent in modern American history.” The story fills the entire upper right-hand quadrant of the front page, plus another full page and a half in the interior of the paper.

  • So according to the Times, this is not just some ordinary, every day, run-of-the-mill political corruption. Rather, it is corruption that has “eviscerated” boundaries between business and government, and is “without precedented in modern American history.”

  • Is there any substance to these charges?

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