June 11, 2026

"Affordability" Should Be A Winning Issue For Republicans

June 11, 2026/ Francis Menton

In a post back in January, commenting on the November 2025 off-year elections, I remarked that the buzz-word of the moment for the Democrats appeared to be “affordability.” Many credited that theme as being the winning issue that took the Virginia and New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidates (Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill) over the top.
And yet the policies that Spanberger and Sherrill had advocated as the centerpieces of their “affordability” agendas were taken from the playbooks of California and New York, otherwise known as the leading states for intentionally driving up costs for their residents.
Anybody could see that California and New York were among the most expensive states for the biggest items on the “affordability” list, particularly energy and housing. And yet Spanberger and Sherrill had succeeded by endless repetition of the bare word “affordability,” without any coherent explanation of how following California’s policies would somehow lead to a different result than what had befallen California.
So now we are in the long run-up to the 2026 midterms. From what I can observe in races near me, it looks like the “affordability” mantra is the central plank of all the candidates of the Democratic Party.

May 29, 2026

Climate And Energy Provisions In New York's FY 2027 Budget: Making The Coming Crash Worse

May 29, 2026/ Francis Menton

New York State’s fiscal year runs from April 1 to March 31, and thus there is a mandate that the budget for each year must be approved before April Fool’s Day. This year they blew right by that deadline. But today, 8+ weeks late, it appears that a new budget has been enacted for what they call “fiscal year” 2027, that is, April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027.
Among several contentious issues that held up enactment of this year’s budget, probably the most contentious involved the provisions relating to energy and “climate.”
Our climate law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (CLCPA) had imposed absurd deadlines for eliminating fossil fuels from the energy system. Seven years in, Kathy Hochul, our lightweight Governor, had finally mustered just enough brain cells to recognize that disaster was approaching. But she faces big legislative majorities of her own Democratic Party committed to “climate action.” And of the members constituting those majorities, most are not moderates open to pragmatism, but rather progressive activists committed to total climate purity.
How to get out of this trap?

May 22, 2026

May 22, 2026/ Francis Menton

Today I had the experience of driving for an extended period behind a Tesla. One of my daughters was with me. We were in a rural area of upstate New York, on a two-lane road with enough curves and oncoming traffic that there were few opportunities to pass. So we were behind this car for about 20 miles.
We took the opportunity to observe some things about how the new world works.
Living in Manhattan, we don’t go out for extended drives in the country all that often. Maybe most readers here drive much more than I do and have had experiences like the one I am about to describe. But this was new to me.

April 28, 2026

April 28, 2026/ Francis Menton

Co-op City, located (like the Yankees) in the New York City borough known as The Bronx, is the largest co-op apartment community in the City, and indeed in the United States. Built in the 1960s and 70s, it has more than 15,000 residential units in some 35 high-rise buildings, plus a smaller number of townhouses.
Co-op City has now suddenly become ground zero in the clash between energy fantasy and reality that is starting to come into focus as the deadlines of the State’s and City’s 2019 climate statutes start to get closer. The New York Post reports on the reality side of the story in a large piece today with the headline “NY’s climate mandates may send fees in affordable Co-Op City complex soaring from $950 to $4K.”‍ ‍
But before getting to that, let’s look at the fantasy side of the story. . .

March 22, 2026

March 22, 2026/ Francis Menton

As New York approaches the Green Energy Cliff, developments are starting to come more quickly.
When last I addressed the subject on March 6, there had just been “leaked” a three-page memo from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) to the Governor’s office, revealing that implementation of what New York calls its “cap and invest” program — actually, an artificial scarcity program intentionally designed to drive prices up and impoverish the people — would cost every New York household thousands of dollars in increased energy costs. (I put the word “leaked” in quotes because most knowledgeable observers think that the Governor released the memo intentionally.).
Clearly the Governor was using this memo to provide cover for her next move. That move then occurred on March 20, in the form of an op-ed published by the Governor in something called the Empire Report. Several of my co-energy realist bloggers have already commented on this piece at Watts Up With That, including Robert Bradley (“Democrats Retreat From Climate Activism”) and Roger Caiazza (“Hochul Claims the Climate Act Can Be Affordable”).
The only proper response to Gov. Hochul’s piece is scorn and derision, and no matter how much of those you can muster, it’s not enough.

March 16, 2026

March 16, 2026/ Francis Menton

New York certainly has its problems, and I write frequently write about many of them. But is it really awful living here?
I believe in keeping these things in perspective. New York is actually a pretty great place to live, at least for now. The problem is that we have a class of idiotic politicians (and voters who put them in office) who pursue obviously destructive policies that make things much worse than they could be.
However, rather than an imminent collapse, what we face is an ongoing slow relative decline compared to other parts of the country that follow more sensible policies. The problem is not really that things are so bad, but that they could be so much better with so little effort.
It is a tremendous missed opportunity. I remain optimistic that things can be turned around, although that could take a long time.