"Affordability" Should Be A Winning Issue For Republicans

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  • In a post back in January, commenting on the November 2025 off-year elections, I remarked that the buzz-word of the moment for the Democrats appeared to be “affordability.” Many credited that theme as being the winning issue that took the Virginia and New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidates (Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill) over the top.

  • And yet the policies that Spanberger and Sherrill had advocated as the centerpieces of their “affordability” agendas were taken from the playbooks of California and New York, otherwise known as the leading states for intentionally driving up costs for their residents.

  • Anybody could see that California and New York were among the most expensive states for the biggest items on the “affordability” list, particularly energy and housing. And yet Spanberger and Sherrill had succeeded by endless repetition of the bare word “affordability,” without any coherent explanation of how following California’s policies would somehow lead to a different result than what had befallen California.

  • So now we are in the long run-up to the 2026 midterms. From what I can observe in races near me, it looks like the “affordability” mantra is the central plank of all the candidates of the Democratic Party.

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What's Up With The Endangerment Finding Litigation?

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  • Have you heard of the “Endangerment Finding” (EF)? You have if you have been reading this blog for any period of time.

  • The 2009 EF is likely the most consequential, expensive and destructive regulatory action ever put in place by the federal bureaucracy. In that action, EPA claimed to find that carbon dioxide and several other so-called “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare. Using the EF as the predicate, the administrative state under the Obama and Biden presidencies implemented dozens of major regulations intended to transform the entire energy sector of the U.S. economy. Obama/Biden regulations based on the EF sought, for example, to force the closure of all fossil-fuel based power plants; to end the production of internal-combustion-based cars in favor of electric cars; to restrict drilling for oil and for natural gas; to halt construction of pipelines; and many, many other such things.

  • The total cost was heading well into the trillions when President Trump returned to office in 2025. One of Trump’s first day Executive Orders in his second term directed all agencies to “review” and then begin to “suspend, revise, or rescind” all agency actions “identified as unduly burdensome” to U.S. energy production. EPA promptly began a lengthy regulatory process to rescind the EF. The final rule doing away with the EF became final on February 13, 2026. I had a post reporting on the rescission on February 15.

  • If it withstands court challenges, the rescission of the EF is a death blow against the entire and vast climate grift industry. Obviously the rescission was going to unleash a tsunami of litigation.

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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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