September 16, 2023

Continuing Manipulation Of Poverty Statistics

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.

December 21, 2022

You Must Assume That All Information Put Out By Our Government Is Corrupt

December 21, 2022/ Francis Menton

Throughout the agencies of our federal government, an important function is to issue data and information about the state of the country.
These data cover a vast array of topics such as population, demographics, income and poverty, the state of the economy, the GDP, employment and unemployment, activities of foreign adversaries, weather and climate, energy production and use, and much, much more. The Congress and states use this information in making important public policy decisions, and the people use it to make decisions for their everyday lives. Not the least of those decisions is how to vote.
So is the information issued by the government basically honest and reliable for important decisions? Or, instead, is the output of official information cynically manipulated and corrupted by a government interested mainly in perpetuating and increasing its own power?

November 02, 2022

November 02, 2022/ Francis Menton

The Supreme Court arguments in the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative action cases took place on Monday. I listened to some substantial portion, although it was not possible for me to listen to the whole thing (some 5 hours in total). From what I heard, I agree with most commenters that affirmative action in the form currently practiced throughout academia is not likely to survive.
Affirmative action is one of those issues on which the opinions of our intellectual elites diverge almost completely from the opinions of normal people.
In a piece on Tuesday (November 1) discussing the likely outcome of the Harvard/UNC case, the New York Times took note of the broad public opposition to affirmative action in college admissions, even extending to heavily Democratic constituencies:

October 25, 2022

October 25, 2022/ Francis Menton

Yesterday the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) filed a corrected version of its opening brief challenging the EPA’s Endangerment Finding as to CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
The brief can be found here.
The bizarre reason for the “corrected” filing was that the clerks at the DC Circuit rejected our initial filing on the ground that we used an excessive number of acronyms. They have a rule encouraging you not to use too many acronyms, but the rule gives no clue as to how many is too many. When you use the term “greenhouse gases” thirty times, should you shorten it to “GHGs,” or write it out every time? You only find out when they bounce the brief and require you to correct it. Anyway, with any luck the linked version is now the final one.
When you take a look at the brief, you will see that we are directly and openly challenging the fake science of predicted catastrophic human-caused global warming from GHGs.

February 10, 2022

February 10, 2022/ Francis Menton

Here in the mostly-deep-blue Northeast of the U.S., our genius politicians of the Democratic persuasion have determined to save the world — no, make that the “planet” — by greatly increasing the local voters’ cost of energy.
This is the punishment you must bear to atone for your horrible sin of living a comfortable modern lifestyle.
If you live in the Northeast, the mechanism of making you suffer goes under the name of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI. The members of RGGI are all six New England states, plus New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Pennsylvania may be in the process of joining (the Democratic Governor is trying to accomplish that over the opposition of the Republican-controlled legislature); but Virginia, with a new Republican Governor, is in the process of trying to exit.
The fight currently going on in Virginia gives insight into the newly competitive political battlefield on the subject of restructuring our energy economy in a supposed effort to stop “climate change.”

November 30, 2021

November 30, 2021/ Francis Menton

“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) — That’s the officially-established creed/cult currently devouring American higher education (not to mention plenty of other institutions at the controlling heights of society).
At elite academic institutions, what began fifty and more years ago as a reasonable effort to identify talented but previously overlooked black candidates for admission, has gradually morphed into a crazed obsession that overwhelms and obliterates any and all other purposes and goals of the institution.
Where once, with a purpose of educating students, we sought out and hired talented faculty, now our main purpose is DEI, and we hire dozens of new “diversity” deans, sub-deans and sub-sub-deans. Where once we created national standardized tests (e.g., SATs) to find and rate the most qualified candidates even from obscure places, now we ban use of such tests because members of “marginalized” groups don’t score high enough. Where once we valued academic rigor in our curricular offerings, now the key evaluation criterion for any course is its “diversity” component.
Let’s step back for a moment and take a look at this DEI obsession in academia. Does the whole thing make any sense?