June 04, 2025

Can Anyone Save New York From Its Coming Self-Inflicted Climate and Energy Disaster?

June 04, 2025/ Francis Menton

New York State has officially ordained the destruction of its electricity system and its economy with a mad dash to energy utopia, as prescribed by a 2019 statute called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). The Climate Act mandates a completely unachievable 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030, with even more draconian mandates following in quick succession thereafter.
New York City has piled on with its own fantasy energy statute called Local Law 97, mandating, among other things, forced conversion to electric heat by 2030 of most residential buildings over 25,000 square feet.
A so-called “Scoping Plan” on how to do all this, issued by the State in 2022, contains no bona fide feasibility analysis, and equally no bona fide cost analysis.
Everybody with over a sixth-grade education who has taken any time to look at this knows that it can’t possibly work. The only question is how much destruction will befall us before the whole thing crashes to the ground.
Can anyone save New York from the coming self-inflicted climate and energy disaster?

June 02, 2025

We Don't Need To Welcome In People Who Hate Us

June 02, 2025/ Francis Menton

Yesterday in Boulder, Colorado, a perpetrator sprayed a flammable liquid on a group of mostly elderly Jews protesting the continued holding of hostages in Gaza. Then he threw Molotov cocktails to set several of the demonstrators on fire. The New York Post reports here that 8 were injured, ranging in age from 52 to 88 years old.
Police arrested a man named named Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who was caught on video committing the acts. Oh, and also shouting slogans, including “They are killers! How many children you killed?” and “End Zionists.”
It quickly emerged that Soliman was an Egyptian illegally in the country. He had originally entered legally in 2022 on a tourist visa, but then overstayed. In 2023 he was granted a permit to work in the U.S. by the Biden administration. That expired in March 2025, after which he stayed on illegally.
Which raises the question, why was Soliman in the country in the first place?

May 30, 2025

May 30, 2025/ Francis Menton

In my last post a couple of days ago (May 28), I was critical of the blizzard of injunctions issued by the courts against seemingly every policy change that President Trump seeks to implement. I went so far as to call this the “opposite of democracy.”
But I also noted that there are instances where judicial restraints on the executive are legitimate, most notably where the statute on which the President relies to implement a sweeping policy does not in fact grant him the authority he claims. Thus, on finding a lack of grant of authority in the statutes cited, the Supreme Court had reined in President Biden when he sought to implement policies forgiving student loans and banning fossil fuel power plants.
I ended that article by asking whether President Trump’s actions with regard to imposition of tariffs may fall into the same category of overreach as Biden’s student loan and power plant gambits. I also noted that multiple law suits had already been brought challenging the legal basis for the tariffs unilaterally imposed by the President.

May 28, 2025

May 28, 2025/ Francis Menton

Now more than four months into President Trump’s second term, there have been dozens of District Court injunctions blocking policies that the new administration has sought to implement.
Deportations of gang members illegally in the U.S. back to El Salvador? Enjoined! Mass firings at USAID? Enjoined! Other mass firings at 22 other agencies and departments? Enjoined! Cancellation of funding of certain grants for Harvard? Enjoined! Ending of eligibility for Harvard to participate in foreign student visa program? Enjoined! Termination of federal funding for public schools maintaining DEI programs? Enjoined! Termination of security clearances for certain prominent law firms? Enjoined! And these are just examples among many more.
It seems that whatever new policy President Trump tries to implement, it will be enjoined within days by some left wing federal judge.
But before you get too outraged about the courts (and Democrat-appointed judges) blocking President Trump’s every move, let’s not forget about a few constraints that the courts imposed on prior President Biden.

May 24, 2025

May 24, 2025/ Francis Menton

On Thursday (May 22) the House of Representatives passed, by a narrow margin of 215-214, what is referred to as the “Big Beautiful Bill” — a massive compendium of taxing and spending measures that can now seek to avoid the filibuster in the Senate on grounds of being a “budget reconciliation.” The BBB is well over a thousand pages long (go here for full text), and covers a huge range of subjects.
Most summaries of the BBB that I have seen never get to the important subject of subsidies for so-called “green” energy — wind turbines, solar arrays, grid-scale batteries, hydrogen production, and so forth.
That is understandable given the large number of important issues covered in the bill. However, the green energy subsidies are a gigantic issue. They consist of generous tax credits for wind and solar facilities that have been around for a long time, plus a barrage of subsidies and handouts created by the so-called Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.
In a post that I wrote at the time of enactment of the IRA, I linked to an analysis that estimated the green energy handouts of just the IRA alone at approximately $370 billion (although I noted that the IRA handouts were un-capped and could end up being far more than that).

May 21, 2025

May 21, 2025/ Francis Menton

Over at the New York Times today, print edition, there is a big front page article documenting how their side is losing the latest battle in the climate wars. The headline is “U.S. Embraces Climate Denial In Science Cuts.” (online headline somewhat different). Also in the Times today (online version) is a feature called “Quote of the Day.” Today’s “quote of the day,” as selected by the Times, is taken from the “climate denial” article just previously linked. Here it is:
“It’s as if we’re in the Dark Ages.”
This quote is attributed to one Rachel Cleetus, identified as senior policy director with the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
But then, if you take some time to read the article, you come to what I would propose as another excellent candidate for quote of the day. It’s from Brooke Rollins, recently confirmed as the new Secretary of Agriculture in the Trump administration. Here it is:
“We’re not doing that climate change, you know, crud, anymore.”