April 15, 2024

New York Shows Off Its Expertise In Central Planning: The Buffalo Billion

April 15, 2024/ Francis Menton

Let’s face it: Central planning of the economy hasn’t worked out so well in many places where it has been tried (e.g., Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, etc.).
But then, here in New York, we are so much smarter than the dolts who fell on their faces in those backwaters. With utter confidence in our genius, we have embarked upon the total centrally-directed transformation of the economy into “net zero” utopia, via the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019.
But that project is barely getting under way. It will be a few years before we have enough feedback to judge it a success or failure.
Meanwhile, is there any other significant central planning initiative here in New York that has gotten far enough so that we can judge whether it is succeeding? Yes! — It’s the “Buffalo Billion,” a massive state-subsidized industrial development project in the long-declining Great Lakes port in far Western New York. Let’s get an update.
The summary is, it’s hard to believe how badly wrong this has gone.

April 12, 2024

Illustrating The Absurdity Of New York's Energy Transition

April 12, 2024/ Francis Menton

By its 2019 Climate Act, New York has officially embarked on a great energy transition to Net Zero by 2050, with statutorily-dictated interim mandates along the way. The first of those mandates is 70% “emissions-free” electricity by 2030, only 6 years from now.
This is far and away the biggest government-directed project that the State of New York has ever undertaken. However, to date, relative to this project there exists no environmental impact statement, no feasibility study, no prototype, and no demonstration project to show how this can be done, let alone any detailed cost analysis to show how much it will cost.
Implementing the enforced energy transition is the responsibility of an alphabet soup of state agencies that makes the federal labyrinth of bureaucracies look simple and rational by comparison.

April 05, 2024

April 05, 2024/ Francis Menton

I doubt that there are any public schools in the country more completely under the thumb of the teachers unions and the radical Left than the New York City public schools.
With relentless advocacy for more funding and smaller class sizes, the unions and their allies have achieved what may seem like public school utopia: $37.5 billion of funding for 937,000 students in the current school year, which comes to just over $40,000 per student. (By contrast, according to educationdata.org, the average per pupil spending in the U.S. for the 2023-24 year is $13,701, while the state most comparable to New York, Florida, spends just $11,800.).
Yet, for all the spending, our schools somehow achieve sub-par results for the students, and on top of that are consumed with all the standard leftist obsessions, from socialism to “anti-racism” (aka racism) to LGBT and trans rights. Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the districts have started to get some push back from parents on at least some of these issues. To me, the push back seems to be remarkably low key.
Today’s New York Times has an entertaining front-page article on this subject.

March 08, 2024

March 08, 2024/ Francis Menton

For a number of years, I’ve been observing demands of activists and promises of politicians that we transition our electrical grid to being supplied mainly by the intermittent renewables, wind and solar, with all large dispatchable sources (fossil fuel and nuclear) banished.
Early on, I thought it was obvious that such a transition would inevitably mean that the only way to make the grid function full-time would be energy storage — on a vast scale never before contemplated or attempted.
How much storage, and at what potential cost? This is actually an arithmetic problem, somewhat cumbersome but conceptually very elementary, and easily done with today’s widely-available spreadsheet programs. To help matters along, in December 2022 I produced my energy storage Report (“The Energy Storage Conundrum”), laying out the main options and the calculations involved. My conclusion was that I could not see any way that this could be done at remotely feasible cost. (Anybody who disagrees is welcome to prove me wrong.) Today, if somebody wants to effect an energy transition in a state or country, they can just look to my Report to quickly understand the nature and extent of the energy storage challenge.
What has actually occurred since December 2022 is that our “climate leader” jurisdictions — in the U.S., that would be New York and California — have moved forward with energy storage proposals that any moron can easily see will not work.

March 05, 2024

March 05, 2024/ Francis Menton

The energy implosion set in motion by New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (Climate Act) continues to unfold slowly. This week we have gotten a few more new data points.
If you can read between the lines of wild spinning by the Governor and her team of bureaucrats, you will find that the scope of offshore wind projects moving forward with accepted bids has decreased by about two-thirds, while the price has just jumped by over 30%.
First, some background. The Climate Act sets several unachievable and impossible targets, the first of which is 70% of electricity from “renewables” by 2030.
How to get there? The bureaucrats in charge of meeting the targets have no idea what they are doing, but they have established as a first goal to have some 9,000 MW of offshore wind turbines (nameplate capacity) up and running by some point in the 2030s.

March 02, 2024

March 02, 2024/ Francis Menton

Two weeks ago, on February 16, in a case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, Justice Arthur Engoron of the New York State Supreme Court issued his decision ordering Donald Trump to pay some $355 million of “disgorgement” penalties.
The issuance of Justice Engoron’s decision brought forth an immediate reaction from many quarters (including Manhattan Contrarian here).
If the AG can use a broad statute to target a politically-disfavored individual like Trump in this way, how could any person doing business in New York think they are safe from similar legal abuse?
Recognizing the problem, our lightweight Governor Kathy Hochul went on a radio talk show on February 18 in an effort to reassure the New York business community.