January 02, 2026

Mayor Mamdani: Can You Feel The Excitement?

January 02, 2026/ Francis Menton

In New York, officials elected in November take office on January 1. And thus, on New Year’s Day 2026, we had the inauguration of our new Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Can you feel the excitement?
For myself, not so much. The best I can say is that this too shall pass. Hopefully without too much destruction in the meantime, but we have no assurance of that.
And yet it seems that plenty of people really do feel excitement. I’m not making this up

December 31, 2025

There Is Much More To The Immigration Issue Than Just The GDP Effect

December 31, 2025/ Francis Menton

A couple of years ago, in July 2023, I participated in a debate at the Soho Forum on the subject of immigration. The resolution for the debate was: “Resolved: The U.S. should have free immigration except for those who pose a security threat or have a serious contagious disease.” Alex Nowrasteh of the Cato Institute took the affirmative. I took the negative.
Nowrasteh, a Senior Vice President for Policy at Cato, is known as a free immigration absolutist. And to his credit he had some good points to make. The most important one was that nothing increases world GDP so much and so fast as letting poor people immigrate into rich countries. Even working at the lowest-paid jobs in the U.S., their incomes immediately multiply by factors of five or ten or more. How could anyone be against that?
At the time of the debate in 2023, the Somali frauds in Minnesota had begun to come to light, but only to those paying close attention.

December 28, 2025

December 28, 2025/ Francis Menton

The geniuses who are planning New York’s energy future think that they can make intermittent wind and solar generators work to power the electrical grid by the simple device of providing some battery storage.
The idea is that when there is abundant wind and sun, they can store up the power for use during those calm and dark periods in the winter. How much battery storage will that take? It’s a simple arithmetic calculation, but none of our supposed experts have taken the trouble to crunch the numbers.
Nevertheless, without any kind of feasibility study of whether this will work, they soldier forth building large grid-scale battery storage facilities. The battery building program is under way, at least to some degree, and a few such facilities are actually complete and operating out in the rural parts of the state. Meanwhile, there are plans for some much larger such facilities in New York City, including right in some of its most densely-populated sections.
Is there any problem with this that we ought to know about?

December 26, 2025

December 26, 2025/ Francis Menton

I often write about the folly of attempting, through a myriad of government mandates and subsidies, to compel the replacement of our electricity system with one powered by the wind and sun. You may think it would be impossible to come up with any public policy that is worse than that one of a forced energy system transformation.
And yet, the Manhattan Contrarian designee for “worst possible public policy” has gone to something else. That something else is the building of what they call “affordable housing” on some of the world’s most expensive real estate here in Manhattan.
The term “affordable housing” as used by housing advocates is a euphemistic term of art that means something different from what you would think. What it really means is subsidized and income restricted.
The policies of forced energy transition and of building “affordable housing” in Manhattan share some notable characteristics. One is that a few simple observations are sufficient to demonstrate that the policy wastes vasts amounts of taxpayer resources while accomplishing essentially nothing and indeed being destructive. Another is that there is near total consensus among the Manhattan cognoscenti that the policy is a not only good idea but indeed a moral imperative.

December 22, 2025

December 22, 2025/ Francis Menton

Birthright citizenship — the idea that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen, with full right to receive all benefits and vote when they come of age — has been a fixture of the administration of the laws in this country for my entire lifetime.
But does the text of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution make the birthright citizenship rule apply to all cases, even the most extreme?
Under the 14th Amendment, properly interpreted, do children born of illegal aliens subject to a deportation order really qualify for birthright citizenship? How about children born of an illegal entrant who has snuck across the border for a few hours just to have the baby and then immediately go home? How about children born of a Chinese billionaire who has hired surrogates in the U.S. to produce dozens of babies? Under the version of “birthright citizenship” implemented by the federal government for the last hundred years or so, all of these examples, and plenty more, qualify.
Advocates for the position that all of these extreme cases should qualify for birthright citizenship generally think that their position is exceedingly simple and obvious, so much so that anyone arguing the contrary, or for any exceptions or limits, must be either dishonest or crazy.

December 19, 2025

December 19, 2025/ Francis Menton

If you have been following this blog closely, you know that I have been participating, along with two excellent colleagues, in the rate proceeding of our local utility, Con Edison.
A rate proceeding is the mechanism by which a utility goes before a regulatory body, in our case the New York Public Service Commission, seeking to increase the rates charged to consumers. Our purpose in the proceeding has been to object to and disrupt having the ratepayers charged for the building of infrastructure in pursuit of the futile and infeasible “climate” goals of our deluded politicians.
One of the rules of these things is that anybody with a genuine interest in the outcome can “intervene” if they want, and participate as a party in the proceedings. That’s how we got ourselves in on the action.
And by the same mechanism, multiple parties advocating for the utopian future of “renewable” and “zero emissions” energy also joined up. Among the green energy advocates in the mix were the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Alliance for a Green Economy. And then there was the New York City government, which wants to present itself as an advocate for low consumer rates, but at the same time has enacted its own mandate for electric building heat that can only be implemented with the support of some expensive new infrastructure to be built by Con Edison.