New York/Florida State Budget Comparison, FY 2027 Edition

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  • New York’s and Florida’s respective state budgets have just been finalized for what they call the 2027 “fiscal year.”

  • In New York’s case the FY runs from April 1 to March 31, so the budget is supposed to be final by April 1; but, this being New York, the budget was about 8 weeks late. In Florida the FY runs from July 1 to June 30, and the legislature has already completed its work on the FY 2027 budget.

  • Ability to meet fixed deadlines is just one of many ways in which Florida exemplifies responsible state government while New York exemplifies the irresponsible version. Over the past several years, I have had multiple posts comparing state governance in New York versus Florida, for example this post from June last year comparing the budgets of the two states.

  • With another year’s budgets now complete, it’s time for an update.

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The Race For Congress In New York's 10th District: Dumb And Dumber

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The Race For Congress In New York's 10th District: Dumb And Dumber

  • I know that you readers are all hungry for some information on the race for Congress in New York’s 10th District. So I am here to fulfill your wishes.

  • NY-10 is the home District of the Manhattan Contrarian. It is a very prominent District, encompassing Lower Manhattan (from about 14th Street south) and a large piece of Northwest Brooklyn. Neighborhoods in this District that you may have heard of include Greenwich Village, Soho and Tribeca in Manhattan, and Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope in Brooklyn. And then there is the Financial District/Wall Street area — the heart of the financial system of the U.S., if not the world — which is also in this District. The District’s population includes large numbers of highly-educated and high income people. This 2024 study at SmartAsset.com found that the District ranked 12th wealthiest in the country as measured by percent of households earning more than $200,000 per year, with more than 103,000 such households. The District’s business community includes many prominent entities. As examples, the headquarters of Goldman Sachs and of Citigroup are in this District, plus major operations of companies like Google, Disney and Meta.

  • You probably already know that this District leans heavily Democratic, and particularly toward the elite and “progressive” factions of that Party. What you may not fully realize is what that actually means in practice in today’s bizarro world. In practice, the key to winning in this District is to promise to act as vigorously as humanly possible against the interests of the District’s residents.

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What Percent Of U.S. Households Headed By Illegal Immigrants Receive Welfare Benefits?

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  • As you are probably aware, in most circumstances and for most categories of handouts, illegal immigrants in the United States do not qualify for welfare benefits.

  • As I’m using it here, the term “welfare” does not include Social Security or Medicare, which are not restricted by income status; but the term “welfare” does include all of the large number of what are called “means-tested” programs, which in the aggregate consume nearly $1 trillion annually of federal spending (and well over $1 trillion if state contributions are included). The biggest of the “means tested” programs are Medicaid, SNAP (“food stamps”), and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, otherwise known as classic welfare); and there are dozens more. Illegal immigrants are specifically excluded from participating in those three big federal welfare programs, and from most (but not all) of the others.

  • And yet there was the New York Times, in its Sunday (May 31) print edition, with a lead front page headline that may set a new record (if that is possible) for anti-Trump spin: “Trump Cuts Off Life Necessities for Immigrants.”‍ ‍

  • When I saw that, my first reaction was, how can Trump “cut off” illegal immigrants from government benefits (whether or not the benefits are “life necessities”) when they are not eligible for those benefits in the first place?

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

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  • 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?

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Ocean "Acidification" -- Another Fake Scare That Won't Go Away

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Ocean "Acidification" -- Another Fake Scare That Won't Go Away

  • Ocean “acidification” is a somewhat unique branch of the overarching climate scare. It differs from other branches of the big scare in that it does not depend on atmospheric heating as the driver of the supposed scary consequences. Instead, with ocean “acidification,” the idea is that increased CO2 in the atmosphere (from the burning of fossil fuels) leads to increased CO2 dissolved in the oceans, which leads to lower pH of ocean water, which then becomes the driver of the alleged scary consequences.

  • Thus, ocean “acidification” can theoretically work as a scare even if the atmosphere fails to heat with increasing CO2 content to the extent predicted by advocates’ climate models.

  • But the ocean “acidification” claim has its own frailties. For advocates of apocalyse, it is a problem that the ocean is (somewhat) alkaline, rather than acidic, and that the change in ocean pH from even large increases in CO2 in the atmosphere is small. Some might even call the change in ocean pH “slight.” And the pH change, even in worst-case scenarios, is not nearly enough to bring it down to the level of neutrality, let alone acidity. The last point is the reason that I have been putting the term “acidification” in quotes.

  • So, how can advocates make ocean “acidification” into something sufficiently scary to motivate lots of people to hate or fear fossil fuels?

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Driving Behind A Tesla

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Driving Behind A Tesla

  • 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.

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