Government-Tampered Temperature Data Goes To The DC Circuit

In a famous column in 2006 titled "How to identify American totalitarians," author Dennis Prager quoted what he called the old Soviet dissident joke: "In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it’s the past that is always changing."  Prager cited examples of the likes of the ACLU and anti-smoking activists brazenly altering things from the past to support their narratives.  But of course the far more serious totalitarian threat comes when the government makes up facts about the past in its quest to expand its own power and take freedom away from the people.

Now, our own government would never do anything like that, right?  Right??????  If you think that, then you obviously haven't been reading my long-running series titled "The Greatest Scientific Fraud Of All Time," the most recent entry of which (Part IX) appeared in December.  That series has included links to some dozens of articles and blog posts where mostly independent researchers have gone out and compared raw temperature data from hundreds of places around the globe to the current data sets published by our government functionaries at the likes of NASA and NOAA.  And somehow, when these comparisons are made, the results are always the same, over and over again: the government agencies have altered older data to be cooler, thereby introducing into history exaggerated warming trends not present in the raw data.

As just a few examples from the series, in Part IX I linked to descriptions by German journalist Gunter Ederer describing the recent (November 2015) work of Professor Friederich Ewert that included checking raw data of large numbers of randomly-sampled stations against current NASA-GISS data.  In Part III I discussed the work of a guy named Paul Homewood as to massive lowering of old temperatures from Paraguay and other locations.  In Part II I dealt with the extensive work of a blogger named Tony Heller in documenting literally dozens of instances of lowering old temperatures from around the world.  Follow this link to get an idea of the massive extent of this.  Consider this from the description by Ederer of Ewert's 2015 work:

Ewert painstakingly examined and tabulated the reams of archived data from 1153 stations that go back to 1881 – which NASA has publicly available – data that the UN IPCC uses to base its conclusion that man is heating the Earth’s atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels. According to Ederer, what Professor Ewert found is “unbelievable”:

From the publicly available data, Ewert made an unbelievable discovery: Between the years 2010 and 2012 the data measured since 1881 were altered so that they showed a significant warming, especially after 1950. […] A comparison of the data from 2010 with the data of 2012 shows that NASA-GISS had altered its own datasets so that especially after WWII a clear warming appears – although it never existed.”

Ederer writes that Ewert particularly found alterations at stations in the Arctic. Professor Ewert randomly selected 120 stations from all over the world and compared the 2010 archived data to the 2012 data and found that they had been tampered to produce warming.

(The work of Ederer and Ewert is in German, but the above can be found at NoTricksZone here.)

Now, what could be the purpose of the government altering temperatures of the past substantially downward?  Really, does anybody care what the temperature in Nome, Alaska was in 1910?  Well, there is the fact that EPA has declared to the world in its 2009 "Endangerment Finding" that CO2 from fossil fuels is a danger to humanity because it is warming the planet.  And EPA has used that "Endangerment Finding" as the basis for what it calls its "Clean Power Plan," (CPP) otherwise known as a massive seizure of power unto EPA, a federal takeover of the electric-power generating sector of the economy, as well as an effort to shut down the entire American coal industry from mining through power generation.

In one of the more consequential litigations going on in the country right now, some 27 states, plus numerous utilities that burn coal and numerous coal companies have sued EPA in the DC Circuit seeking invalidation of the CPP.  Early this year those petitioners asked the DC Circuit to stay the CPP pending the result of the litigation, and the DC Circuit refused the stay; but then the petitioners went to the Supreme Court for the stay, and in February they got it.  Now the case is before the DC Circuit for consideration on the merits.  And a couple of days ago there arrives on my desk a copy of EPA's main brief in the case justifying its position that the CPP is a valid exercise of its authority.  The brief is a massive effort at impenetrability, 175 pages of bureaucratic doublespeak.  But as relevant to this post, we find this at page 9:

Climate change is already occurring.  Nineteen of the twenty warmest years on record have all occurred in the past twenty years, and 2015 was the hottest year ever recorded.  Recent scientific assessments have found that climate change is damaging every area of the country.  80 Fed. Reg. at 64,686-88.  These assessments make clear that substantially reducing emissions now is necessary to avoid the worst impacts.

And what is the support for that statement that "2015 was the hottest year ever recorded"?  A footnote gives us these two links: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/videos/2014-global-temperature-recap; https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/no-surprise-2015-sets-new-global-temperature-record.  These are precisely the government press releases based entirely on the altered surface-temperature record discussed above.  And, despite the vast amount of discussion all over the web about the data alterations and the fact that they always go one direction and that the alterations turn a record that does not support the government's narrative of unusual warming into one that seemingly does, this brief simply does not mention the subject of the alterations at all.  The altered record is just presented to the DC Circuit as incontestable fact.  Hey, it comes from the perfect, all-knowing government functionaries!

Also somehow completely omitted from the government's brief is any mention of the satellite and balloon data sets that are inconsistent with and contradict the surface temperature record on which the government relies.  In a post on January 22 titled "It's Easy To Prove Your Hypothesis If You Just Pretend That The Adverse Evidence Does Not Exist," I commented on the very NOAA press release now used by EPA as the support for its position in court:

Everybody who follows this also knows that the ground-based thermometer records have been greatly "adjusted" by the people who publish them, and that all or nearly all of the increase in temperatures in recent years is in the adjustments and not present in the raw data.  So wouldn't you think that NOAA in its release would at the minimum acknowledge the existence of the other contrary data and attempt somehow to deal with the contradictions?  Well, take a look at that release; and, if you will, follow the link through to their full end-of-2015 Report.  You will not find the slightest mention that the satellite or balloon data even exist.  And of course that also means that you will not find any attempt to explain the discrepancies between and among data sets, or to justify why one is better than others.

That post also includes a chart of the satellite and balloon temperature data as presented by John Christy of UAH in his recent Congressional testimony.  The chart shows that the satellite and balloon temperature sets agree closely during the periods for which they co-exist.  Now, the satellite and balloon data sets on the one hand, and the altered surface temperature data set on the other hand, cannot both be right.   The government's presentation only of the one record it prefers, known to be filled with massive alterations all going the direction it needs them to go to support the narrative, without any mention or discussion of discrepancies as against other data sets, is the height of unethical conduct.

On the other hand, this approach maximizes the government's chance for success in a huge seizure of power.  Do they really care about anything else but that?  

Science Versus Orthodoxy Enforcement In The World Of Nutrition

Readers interested in the subject of orthodoxy enforcement in fields marching under a supposed banner of "science" are undoubtedly aware that the problem extends far beyond the archetype of anthropogenic global warming (AGW).  I've previously written several times about orthodoxy enforcement in the area of nutrition and dietary guidelines, including in January a review of the recent book by Nina Teicholz called "The Big, Fat Surprise."   

This subject is back in the news.  In early April, something called the Consumer Federation of America has scheduled its big annual National Food Policy Conference.  Ms. Teicholz was to be one of the speakers.  Late last week, she got disinvited.  Politico had the story on Friday:

In a sign that the nutrition space is as defensive as ever, Nina Teicholz, an author who has publicly criticized the science behind the government's low-fat dietary advice, was recently bumped from a nutrition science panel after being confirmed by the National Food Policy Conference. . . .  The event is set to take place in Washington next month. . . .  Teicholz said she was disinvited after other panelists said they wouldn’t participate with her.     

Now, you might ask, how does it even happen that we have something described as "national food policy" that rises to a level that we need to have "national food policy conferences"?  Aren't the American people capable even of eating on their own without incessant meddling from government busybodies?  Really, those are excellent questions.  Nobody even knows where the government claims to have gotten the authority to issue dietary guidelines and otherwise meddle in "food policy."  Try to find that one in the Constitution!  But once they got into the field, you can be sure that the bureaucrats and the lackeys they fund want to crush anybody who dares to undermine their authority and prerogatives. 

It seems that Ms. Teicholz has lined up some funding from something called the John and Laura Arnold Foundation to promote her countering of official government diet dogma.  Is there any problem with that?  Arnold is a former hedge fund guy who seems to have made his money mostly in oil and gas trading -- in other words, not a guy with any particular interest in the food business that he is pushing.  (Although, suppose he had such an interest; why would that be a problem either?)  A prior article from Politico from last October describes the horror of government lackeys and minions that any private actor may get to have some say on their turf.  For example, there's this from former government Dietary Guidelines panel member Barbara Millen:

[Teicholz's] effort is being bankrolled by billionaire Houston philanthropists, John and Laura Arnold. . . .  The lobbying alarms some who fear it will further politicize a process that informs nearly every aspect of how Americans eat, from what millions of school children are fed each day and the advice doctors give to their patients.  “It’s dangerous and it’s harmful,” Dietary Guidelines panel member Barbara Millen said of the campaign.

You see, in the world view of Millen and her ilk, government getting into an area in which it has no business whatsoever is completely apolitical, whereas any private actor trying to make a private pitch to the citizenry is "politicization" that is "dangerous and harmful."  Government meddling, after all, has nothing to do with politics, but is just the perfect, all-knowing experts (such as, of course, Ms. Millen herself) directing the stupid populace to do what the experts know is the right thing.

Or consider this from Marion Nestle of NYU, another draftsperson of the prior criminally-incompetent government dietary guidelines:

Marion Nestle, a New York University nutrition professor who took part in drafting previous guidelines, also questions whether Teicholz, who has staked out such a strong point of view, can be a credible advocate for science.   “How can she be so certain?” Nestle asked, referring to Teicholz’ advocacy of a diet high in saturated fats. “What I find so distressing is that this just further confuses the public.”

Yes, according to Nestle, the mere staking out of a "strong point of view" disqualifies any and all private persons from having a say in the public debate.  On the other hand, being one of the people responsible for prior government guidelines that are now shown to have been dead wrong and to have contributed to epidemics of things like obesity and diabetes -- and having a powerful interest to be sure that your prior incompetent work doesn't lead to professional disgrace -- that's not disqualifying at all!  Hey, Nestle was working for the government at the time.  The government is perfect by definition!

Teicholz had a very apt comment on the situation:

“Silencing the conversation won't work forever.”

She's right about that.  But meanwhile, the taxpayer-funded grants continue to flow to the Millens and Nestles of the world.
 

What Are Illinois's And Chicago's Options After The Latest Pension Ruling?

Last May I reported on a decision from the Supreme Court of Illinois that struck down as unconstitutional (under the Illinois State Constitution) a pension reform law that the Illinois legislature had enacted in 2013 in an attempt to rescue the state's woefully underfunded employee pensions.  A few days ago another Illinois statute, this one enacted in 2014 and intended to effect a similar rescue of various pension plans of the City of Chicago, reached the Illinois Supreme Court, and promptly met the same fate.  Here is a copy of the court's new decision.    

How badly funded are Illinois's employee pension plans?  Even though they put out regular annual reports, it's hard to get an exact handle on that because the reports are so lagged.  This article from Crain's Chicago Business from October 2015 takes numbers from the then-recently-issued annual reports for 2014.  According to the article, as of the end of 2014 the Illinois pension plans were the worst-funded of any state's in the country, at 39.3%.  That's the most recent number we have, now about 15 months old; but that was after the big run-up of the stock market in 2014.  From the beginning of 2015 to now the market has been nearly flat (as against assumed annual returns of 7-8%), and Illinois and its municipalities have continued to fail to put in so-called "actuarially required" contributions.  The funds could easily be less than 35% funded today, maybe even closer to 30%.  At that level, no amount of a booming stock market by itself will ever rescue these funds.

The hurdle that the rescue statutes need to clear is the provision of the Illinois Constitution (Article XIII, Section 5) that reads as follows:

Membership in any pension or retirement system of the State . . . shall be an enforceable contractual relationship, the benefits of which shall not be diminished or impaired.

As I pointed out in the May 2015 article, the best hope the legislature would have of trying to meet the constitutional test would be to pass a statute that explicitly protected all benefits accrued up to the effective date of the statute, and altered only benefits going forward from that date.  But, for reasons that I don't understand, the legislature did not attempt to meet that criterion in its initial 2013 statute, nor did it try to meet the criterion in the 2014 statute at issue in the new case.  For example, as set forth in the Supreme Court's decision,

The provisions in Public Act 98-641 . . . reduce the value of annual annuity increases, eliminate them entirely for certain years, postpone the time at which they begin, and completely eliminate the compounding component. The Act expressly states that these changes “apply regardless of whether the employee was in active service on or after the effective date of this amendatory Act."

In other words, they tried to cut pension payments even for those who had already retired, and therefore whose pension benefits, like it or not, were already fully accrued.  In partial defense of the legislature, this statute had already been enacted at the time of the Illinois Supreme Court's prior decision in 2015.  But still, I would have thought they would at least have made an effort to segregate out those cuts that only applied to as-yet-unaccrued benefits, in an effort to get those sustained; but they did not do that.

And now, with two rather angry and impatient, and unanimous, Illinois Supreme Court decisions on the books, the prospects for getting the court to recognize the already-accrued versus yet-to-be-accrued distinction have to be diminished.  Pension crises move with agonizing slowness, but some are predicting that the earliest of the Illinois funds to run out of money and start bouncing checks could hit that point in the early 2020s.

So Illinois has now lost three full years in its attempts to reform its pensions, and with each passing year its options get fewer and worse.  Of course, what the employee unions want is massive tax increases.  Short of that, what's left?

• A reform that recognizes the already-accrued/yet-to-be-accrued distinction.  At this point, such a reform would basically have to end future accruals, perhaps by replacing the defined benefit plans entirely with defined contribution plans.  The Illinois Supreme Court should approve this, but that doesn't mean that they will.
• Massive firings of senior employees and replacing them with new employees who have only defined contribution plans.
• Or, Illinois and Chicago can just stop putting money into the plans and see what happens.  When New Jersey recently tried that approach, its Supreme Court upheld the governor.  Will Illinois's do the same?

Meanwhile, Chicago's population, after what had seemed to be a turnaround, appears to have resumed its long-term decline.  Chicago's population reached its peak in 1950 at 3,620,962, and then went into an extended decline.  By 1990 it was 2,783,911.  After a small recovery in the 90s, decline resumed.  By 2010 the population was 2,695,598.  The Census Bureau has not yet released a 2015 estimate for Chicago, but just a few days ago it released an estimate for Cook County (the county that includes Chicago) that showed the entire county losing population.  Previously, Chicago's losses had been more than offset by gains in the remainder of Cook County. 

If you move your business into Illinois or Chicago, you voluntarily agree to take on the burden of the underfunded pensions, meaning that you agree to pay taxes now and in the future for services that were rendered in the past when you weren't around.  Now, why would rational people do that?

Review Of Auerbach And Kotlikoff On Income Inequality

In the current issue of The New Republic, economists Alan Auerbach and Laurence Kotlikoff have an article titled "We've Been Measuring Income Inequality Wrong."   The article is a short version of a longer scholarly paper that appeared in February as part of the NBER Working Paper series.  Several readers wrote in to ask me to take a look at A&K work and provide my thoughts, so here goes.

I should begin by summarizing my own views on income inequality.  (You can read all you want by following my Income Inequality tag.)  Basically, I accept that income inequality on the low end, otherwise known as poverty and/or extreme poverty, is at least potentially a problem.  I do not accept that income inequality on the high end, otherwise known as rich people and/or very rich people, is a problem. It's the hope and possibility that one might get rich that drive human ambition and creativity, and that have enabled countries like the United States, that allow private wealth accumulation, to become wealthy, to the benefit of all.  Allow the worst of human instincts like envy and jealousy to get the better of you, and you're going down the road of Venezuela.

Anyway, if you take as your measure of income inequality the numbers put out by, for example, the Census Bureau, you get what appears to be a dire picture for a not-small number of those at the bottom.  Using the yardstick of "income" as Census defines and measures it, there appear to be lots of people down there with little to no income at all.  How are they even eating?  The simple answer is that the Census Bureau doesn't count all kinds of things that represent real  resources to low income people but aren't included in the artificial Census definition of "income."  For lots of detail, read this article I wrote back in 2014.

A&K have undertaken what I would call a serious effort to correct the completely phony Census "income inequality" numbers to account for as many as possible of the redistributions already built in to existing major government programs.  At the top, they make big subtractions, mostly for taxes paid; and at the bottom, they make big additions, mainly for government redistribution programs that Census systematically fails to count.  The results:

First, spending inequality—what we should really care about—is far smaller than wealth inequality. This is true no matter the age cohort you consider. . . .  The fact that spending inequality is dramatically smaller than wealth inequality results from our highly progressive fiscal system, as well as the fact that labor income is distributed more equally than wealth. . . .  To be clear, spending power remains extremely unequal. . . .  Another key finding is that U.S. fiscal policy acts as a serious disincentive to work longer hours or harder for more pay.    

Fair enough.  I would note that people who follow the government numbers on these things would clearly not be surprised that this would be the result, particularly because the BLS puts out numbers independent of the Census Bureau, including something called the Consumer Expenditure Survey, broken down by income decile.  And those numbers have long shown that, for example, those in the bottom decile spend about 4 times as much as their "income."  Here is a BLS chart for 2014.  I would still applaud A&K for doing a lot of detailed and quantitative work, and particularly for quantifying the effects at the bottom of many of the government handout programs that Census systematically omits.

And yet, for all their good and hard work, I would still say that the A&K numbers way overstate income inequality, particularly in under-counting the resources available to those at the bottom.  To get the best indication of their methodology, I went to the NBER paper, which at page 38 contains a lengthy list of all the adjustments they made to government income data:

TFA [the A&K adjustment methodology] also handles all major transfer programs taking full account of their assorted incomes and asset tests. The list here includes Social Security retirement, spousal, child-in- care spousal, divorcee spousal, widow(er), divorcee widow(er), mother (father), child, and child survivor benefits (all subject to the family benefit maximum), Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Supplemental Security Income, Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and Social Security Disability benefits. The program also considers in fine detail Social Security’s earnings test, the adjustment of the reduction factor, early benefit reductions for retirees, spouses, widow(ers), the delayed retirement credit, deeming, the re-computation of benefits, the Windfall Elimination Provision, the Government Pension Offset provision, and all other major and minor factors associated with Social Security’s benefit provisions. . . .  

Whew!  That sounds rather comprehensive, doesn't it?  Actually, it's not even close.  The government has so many zillions of handout programs that literally nobody can keep track of them, no matter how hard they try.  If I might point out a few things that A&K do not mention:

• Housing subsidies are of course my favorite, although that may be because I live in Manhattan.  As I pointed out just Tuesday, we have lots of people in Manhattan who get annual housing subsidies of $50,000 and up per family, and some in my own neighborhood who get in excess of $100,000 per family.  I'm measuring this by rental value of nearby apartments, not by the size of the HUD and NYCHA budgets.  
• A&K point out that they have taken account of the Food Stamp (or SNAP) program.  But that's only the start of federal nutrition programs.  SNAP is about $80 billion per year.  How about WIC ("Women, Infants, Children"), which is another $8 billion; and the school lunch program, which is another $13 billion; and the school breakfast program, which is another $4 billion?  And there are plenty more food distribution programs, many funded by state and local governments and/or private charities.  
• How about job training programs?  According to a big government study in 2011 that I cited here, there were 47 such programs in 2009, costing some $18 billion.  Supposedly Joe Biden was going to reform them.  Have you heard anything about that since?  Do these things count as resources available to low income people?  If they don't, why do we have the programs?
• Education aid?  Perhaps it's fair not to count the $80 billion spent by the federal Department of Education on subsidies to state and local K-12 education.  But how about the interest subsidies on student loans for college?  With over $1 trillion of such loans now outstanding, the interest subsidies have to be at least $50 billion annually.  Of course, if you are a low income student, you get a Pell grant.  That's another about $30 billion a year, mostly for the low-income.  Should we mention the value of privately-funded need-based scholarships and fellowships?
• Energy assistance, clothing assistance, etc., etc., etc.
• Dare we mention private charity?  Why doesn't that count as resources available to low-income people.

And yes, I still haven't gotten to the big one, the one that is clearly bigger by a multiple than all the others put together.  I'm talking, of course, about that fact that A&K use as the basis for all their calculations the officially reported government numbers.  And these numbers have two gigantic, enormous, overwhelming holes:

• When the government surveys the people for their income and/or expenditures, they just take the numbers that people put down on the forms, without any kind of double check.  Of course people at the low end massively understate their incomes.  Wouldn't you?  Would you really trust the government not to use your survey response to take away some benefit you are receiving?
• And then there's the whole subject of the illegal and underground economy.  That is completely omitted from all government numbers.  In this post I cited a figure of $2 trillion per year for the illegal and underground economy.  Divide it up equally among all families in the bottom half of the income distribution, and it's around $20,000+ per family. 

My bottom line:  Unlike many people who call themselves "economists" but are really just shills advocating for the growth of the government (Paul Krugman comes to mind), I think that A&K are serious people trying to do a serious job.  But the fact remains that their work is entirely derived from government numbers, and for that reason is subject to the inherent flaws in the government numbers.  And the government and everybody in it is a shill advocating for the growth of the government.  And all government numbers on income and poverty are intentionally designed and constructed to massively overstate poverty and understate income and resources available at the low end in order to further the advocacy for the growth and expansion of government redistribution programs.

So A&K have done a huge amount of detailed work with a great deal of detailed calculations on effects of complex things like the tax structure and the Social Security program, but then they've left out a few trillion of adjustments that are clearly essential to getting the full picture but are not available in any government numbers.  Yes their work is a little useful, but how about getting to the big stuff?  Yes, you need to guesstimate it.  There's no other way.  You might as well admit that the apparent precision of your other calculations is an illusion.

As to the top end of the income distribution, I have no major reasons to believe that the A&K calculations are wildly off.  Basically, the bottom line is, after taxes the rich are only about half as rich as they appeared before, but they are still very rich.  Well, that's what makes capitalism go.  It doesn't bother me.

News From Greenwich Village

Undoubtedly, you have been hoping for some news from the crazy left-wing commune of Greenwich Village in New York City.  Fortunately, I have collected a few good items.

Unless you live here, you have very likely never heard of our state assemblymember, Deborah Glick.  Although she's been in the Assembly for some 25 years, she has mainly been known as a lackey of recently-convicted Speaker Sheldon Silver.  Certainly, nobody can name any bill in the 25 years on which she has voted contrary to the official leadership position.  And you would think that her seat is about the safest in the universe.  But recently a guy named Arthur Schwartz has announced that he will challenge her in the Democratic primary in September.  (Schwartz is known for serving a term as General Counsel of ACORN shortly before its demise, and currently for acting as counsel to the Bernie Sanders campaign in New York.)  Suddenly, Glick sees a need to show her face in the community, and thus a few days ago around came one of those taxpayer-funded newsletters touting her accomplishments.

There's a lot of humorous stuff here to give you a good laugh, but let me just pick my favorite:  Ms. Glick has been made a member of the legislature's "Anti-Poverty Working Group":

Almost 1.4 million people in New York are living in extreme poverty.  This includes a disproportionally high numbers [sic] of children, women, elderly and minorities.  The newly created work group will undertake an evaluation of the drastic increase of New Yorkers living in poverty and identify solutions to combat it.  It is our belief that a comprehensive approach is the only way to assist people to move out of poverty.  I look forward to formally working with my colleagues toward eradicating poverty throughout New York.    

Somehow Ms. Glick omits it, but let's start with this: a good rough estimate of what is currently spent annually in New York State by governments at all levels on anti-poverty efforts is $100 billion.  Now, you will never find an exact comprehensive number for that anywhere.  But here is a number for annual state and local "welfare" spending of $21.3 billion; here is a number for Medicaid of $54 billion; if we only get our pro rata share of the national pie, our annual food stamp and other federal nutrition spending will be about $8 billion; housing could easily be another $5 - 10 billion; and there's plenty more.  And yet, according to Ms. Glick, there has been a "drastic increase of New Yorkers living in poverty," and there are "almost 1.4 million people in New York . . . living in extreme poverty."  

Hey, Deborah!  You've been in the legislature for 25 years!  How can it possibly be that you guys spend $100 billion a year (that would be $2.5 trillion over 25 years) on anti-poverty efforts created and designed by you, only to see poverty "drastically increas[ing]"?  

According to the Census Bureau here, the official "poverty rate" for New York State is 15.9%.  Multiply that by a population just under 20 million, and you get about 3.2 million people in the state "in poverty."  At $100 billion of annual anti-poverty spending, that's over $30,000 per year per person in poverty, over $120,000 for a family of four.  The official "federal poverty level" for a family of four is $24,300.  We spend five times that amount on our "anti-poverty" efforts  for a comparable family in "poverty," only to see poverty "drastically increasing."  But then Glick, of course, represents not an average New York district, but rather one of the very wealthiest districts in the state.  And you know what that means:  it means that our "poverty" rate is much higher than the state average (the New York County (Manhattan) poverty rate is several points above the state average at 18.3%)(what???!!!) and we also spend far more than the state average on "anti-poverty" efforts (hey, a spot in a Housing Authority project in Chelsea is worth $50,000 to $60,000 per year in rent subsidies, just for starters), only to see none of the people ever leave poverty.

So, according to Glick, what we need now is a "comprehensive approach," which, if only we try it, will move us "toward eradicating poverty."  You mean it's that easy, and yet no one ever thought of it for the whole last 25 years you've been in the legislature wasting the $2.5 trillion?  Well, of course, we know that the answer to the question is that Glick is part of the disgusting state bureaucratic blob whose principal mission is to make absolutely sure that poverty will never go down so that funding can be maintained and enhanced and bureaucratic sinecures protected.  Is there any doubt that the recommendations of Glick's new anti-poverty "working group" will be more money for more anti-poverty efforts, none of which will ever remove anyone from poverty?

Something you may have seen yesterday was the open letter from 40 self-described New York "millionaires," asking and begging to have their taxes (and of course, those of all the other millionaires) increased in order to raise more money to fix the problem of poverty in our state.  Here is a copy of the letter from the Guardian, along with the names of all the signers.  The problem as they describe it:

It is a shameful fact that child poverty in New York State is at a record level, exceeding 50% in some of our urban centers. New York State has a record number of homeless families – more than 80,000 people – struggling to survive across the state. And far too many adults in our state do not have the work skills needed for the 21st century economy.  Now is the time to invest in the long-term economic viability of New York. We need to invest in pathways out of poverty and up the economic ladder for all of our fellow citizens, including strong public education from pre-K to college. . . .  

The proposal is for an increase in marginal tax rates on income above $665,000 (the cutoff for the top 1%) of up to an additional 3.15% on the highest incomes, which the authors claim will raise some $2.2 billion per year.  The authors see this as their "fair share" in a spirit of "shared sacrifice."

Really, how could anybody be so easy to dupe as these dopes?  Their incremental $2.2 billion is barely 2% of current annual "anti-poverty" spending in New York.  (And my calculation of "anti-poverty" spending didn't include public education.  Add that in, and the $2.2 billion is more like 1.5%.)  Can't a single one of them have the critical thinking capacity to ask how it could be that the $100 billion per year that we are already spending still leaves us with that 50% child poverty rate in some areas, yet supposedly another $2.2 billion will fix something?  Believe me, it won't take our "anti-poverty" bureaucrats until breakfast to figure out how to make an additional 2% in their budgets disappear without getting a single person out of poverty.  Does anybody really believe that they can make $100 billion a year disappear, but if it's $102 billion suddenly they will be motivated to cure poverty and wind down their no-longer-needed agencies?

And of course, if these 40 people, or some of them, are seriously rich (and clearly some of them are), then they don't make their money through taxable income.  For example, one of them is Steven C. Rockefeller, a great-grandson of John D.  Is there any chance that a meaningful part of the increase of his net worth in a given year comes through taxable income, versus (non-taxable) increase in the value of pre-existing assets?  Go ahead and increase the marginal tax rate to 100%.  You won't touch him!  He'll only notice to the extent that the new rates keep a few of the tacky nouveaux riches out of his clubs.  Meanwhile, he'll get a good laugh that the rubes fell for his sleight-of-hand.     

In other local news, our community newspaper called The Villager carries an article in its current edition reporting on a presentation by a guy named Jeffrey Trask focusing on the history of our local subsidized "artists" housing project known as Westbeth.  Westbeth is a collection of big formerly industrial buildings on the Greenwich Village waterfront (it was the home of Bell Labs, until they moved out in the 60s).  In the late 60s the buildings were converted to residences for artists.  The idea was to give a start to struggling young artists, who would then move on and make room for others:

[T]he project was intended as an arts incubator; artists were supposed to live and work there for five years, then move on, making room for a new group of artists.   

Really, the naivety is touching.  With deeply subsidized rents, the project struggled financially from day one, and of course, literally no one ever moved out.  Why in heavens name would anyone move out of a deeply subsidized apartment in the best neighborhood in the City?  From a different article in The Villager in 2009:

Almost 38 years later, Westbeth is still home to original tenants like Maile and Duberstein, as well as other longtime residents. Neil reported that about 60 percent of the tenants are over age 60 and half of those are older than 70; therefore, out of about 750 residential occupants, 30 percent are more than 70 years old.    

Add seven more years to that, and you can see that virtually everyone in this project collected on a lifetime rent subsidy.  The 2009 article gives the turnover rate as 3 to 4 apartments per year -- less than 1%.  Basically, the original tenants are all staying until they die.  Trask's take:

Although treasured by its residents and widely admired as a “noble experiment,” Westbeth never fulfilled its original promise, Trask said. By the time the project was complete, rent for loft space in the city had risen beyond the means of most artists, so residents did not move out of Westbeth after five years as originally planned. Trask concluded that Westbeth was a social success but did not succeed financially.    

Yes, the socialist model of subsidized public housing that is a financial disaster and transfers huge public resources to middle class people who don't need or deserve the subsidy, is nevertheless a "noble experiment," to be "treasured."  Who could have known?  Who could have suspected that people given a multi-tens-of-thousands of dollars per year rent subsidy available in only the one location will never move out?  (How big is the rent subsidy?  A new development along the waterfront about a mile south -- one of the few that is a rental rather than a condo -- has rents averaging about $10,000 per month.  This article gives the Westbeth average rent as $750 per month.  That would make the average rent subsidy to the Westbeth tenants over $100,000 per year.  And these people never had any claim to be poor!  How can this possibly be a good idea?)

Don't worry: no politician in New York will ever suggest that the Westbeth tenants should have to give up their subsidy, or any part of it.  After all, this is a "noble experiment" to be "treasured."  Like, say, the perfect fairness and justice that have been achieved in Cuba, or North Korea.

UPDATE, March 27: 

In cheerier news, the spring flowers have arrived in the tree gardens along Bleecker Street.

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Here's a closer view of one of the gardens.

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If you haven't been by recently to see our beautiful corner of the City, there's no time like the Spring!

Just Think How Neat And Orderly Everything Will Be Once Government Functionaries Can Monitor Everything

Really, it's disgusting how people keep messing up, when left to their own devices and without minute-by-minute guidance and monitoring by perfect and all-knowing government functionaries.  But don't worry, the technology for government to monitor everybody and everything all the time marches forward at an ever-accelerating pace.  Can it be long before the curse of human imperfection has been eliminated?

For example, consider cash.  Can you believe that the government to this day still allows people to conduct economic transactions using this untraceable and unreportable medium?  And the next thing you know, people use it buy and sell illegal substances like drugs, to gamble, to pay employees "off the books," to avoid taxes, and God knows what!  Get rid of it, and immediately everything will be neat, orderly, and in accordance with government-prescribed perfection.  Or at least that is the universal view of the government functionary.  Serious proposals are circulating right now to get rid of high denomination bills (like the $100 in the U.S.) as a step toward perfecting society.  And after the $100, why not just get rid of cash entirely?  Megan McArdle covers this subject in a column at Bloomberg View (that also ran in the New York Post):

The Bank of Korea is planning for a cashless society by 2020. Swedes are making the shift. I am intrigued but also troubled.  There’s a lot to like about the idea of a cashless society, starting with its effect on crime. The payoff to mugging people or snatching their bags has already declined dramatically, simply because fewer and fewer people are carrying cash around. I myself almost never have any of the stuff on hand. . . .  A cashless society would also see a decline in the next level of robberies: stickups of retail outlets. . . .   One step beyond that, there’s the effect on criminal enterprises, for whom cash is key. Making it impossible to transact business while keeping large amounts of money away from the watchful eye of the government will make it much harder to run an illegal operation.

What could possibly go wrong?  Well, for starters, could the perfect all-knowing government ever make a "mistake"?  McArdle:

When I was just starting out as a journalist, the State of New York swooped down and seized all the money out of one of my bank accounts. It turned out -- much later, after a series of telephone calls -- that they had lost my tax return for the year that I had resided in both Illinois and New York, discovered income on my federal tax return that had not appeared on my New York State tax return, sent some letters to that effect to an old address I hadn’t lived at for some time, and neatly lifted all the money out of my bank. . . .  Unmonitored resources like cash create opportunities for criminals. But they also create a sort of cushion between ordinary people and a government with extraordinary powers. Removing that cushion leaves people who aren’t criminals vulnerable to intrusion into every remote corner of their lives.

I would say that that kind of "mistake" is the least of our worries about the government.  What if the government itself is a pervasive criminal enterprise?

Anyway, don't get the idea that monetary transactions are the only thing that the government is planning to monitor.  On Tuesday (the Ides of March) the New York Times reported on a new New York State program, taking effect March 27, under which all prescriptions for pharmaceuticals are now required to go through a state-monitored computer system.  No more paper allowed!

Starting on March 27, the way prescriptions are written in New York State will change. Gone will be doctors’ prescription pads and famously bad handwriting. In their place: pointing and clicking, as prescriptions are created electronically and zapped straight to pharmacies in all but the most exceptional circumstances.  New York is the first state to require that all prescriptions be created electronically and to back up that mandate with penalties, including fines and imprisonment, for physicians who fail to comply.

The stated reason for this is to try to crack down on abuse of prescription opioid painkillers, which have caused increasing numbers of deaths in recent years.  But if that's the reason, why don't they just monitor those prescriptions, and stay away from the millions of prescriptions for medications against things ranging from diabetes to high blood pressure to cholesterol? And the answer is, they take the opportunity to monitor everybody for everything because they can.  Who's going to stop them?  And anyway, the only people with access to the information are going to be the perfect, all-knowing, a-political, expert state functionaries.  So what's to worry about?  (For now, there appears to be an exception to New York's new law for prescriptions that are to be filled out of state.  I guess I'll take advantage of that one.)

In other news, this time from Denver, Colorado, it seems that after several complaints were received, an independent monitor conducted a review of use of the supposedly confidential National Crime Information Center and Colorado Crime Information Center databases by the Denver Police Department, and promptly uncovered several dozens of instances of improper use.  David Kravets at Ars Technica has the story here.  Example: a policeman, on behalf of a friend who suspected his wife of having an affair, provided information to enable the friend to find and stalk the wife's suspected lover.  Or how about this:

[A] female hospital employee spoke with a DPD officer who was at the hospital to investigate a reported sexual assault. The female employee was not involved in the investigation, but the officer made ‘‘small talk’’ with her after his interview of the sexual assault victim. At the end of her shift, the female employee returned home and found a voicemail message from the officer on her personal phone. She had not given the officer her phone number, and was upset that he had obtained it. . . .  During an investigation into the incident, records revealed that the officer had, in fact, used the NCIC/CCIC database (and other DPD databases) to obtain her phone number. . . .

If you're wondering why you don't read about this kind of thing very often, Kravets points out that this review was only conducted in response to a series of specific complaints, and that there is no ongoing routine monitoring of police use of the databases.  Oh, and no police officer who committed misconduct was fired or received any cut in pay or any other meaningful punishment; the worst was a "reprimand."  Hey, the cops are the good guys!  Why should we worry about them doing anything wrong?  I mean, it's not like some government bureaucracy (like say, the IRS) might ever use this accumulating government information to disadvantage political opponents of those in power.  Right?

UPDATE, March 19:  Jeb Kinnison has a post that reminds us of what has to be the largest government corruption of all time, namely the fake prosecutions of banks for alleged wrongdoing in connection with the recent financial crisis -- raising in excess of $100 billion outside of the congressional appropriation process -- and the use of much of those proceeds to give to organizations supportive of the government's side of the political divide.  La Raza, National Urban League, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Neighbor Works America, etc., etc., etc.  He doesn't have a precise figure for how much of the $100+ biillion went to such organizations, but even if it's a relatively small fraction, it could easily equal or exceed all actual bribery that has occurred since our Republic was founded.  All administered by the Department of "Justice," of course -- the very people who get to decide who gets prosecuted for what in this country.  Don't worry, they won't be.