December 08, 2021

The Ongoing Disaster Of NYCHA: Why It's A Mistake Ever To Start Down The Road To Socialism

December 08, 2021/ Francis Menton

NYCHA — the New York City Housing Authority to local cognoscenti — has been one of my favorite topics over the years. For a sampling of prior posts see here, here, here and here.
Multiple factors make NYCHA a core subject matter for this blog. First, it is one of the most prominent and largest examples in the U.S. of a major enterprise that operates on a very pure socialist model, with full public ownership of the assets and distribution of the “benefits” (deeply discounted housing units) on the basis of perceived “need.” Second, NYCHA has failed catastrophically, and for all the reasons that socialist endeavors are always doomed to inevitable failure. Third, NYCHA has demonstrated an ability to coerce for itself one taxpayer-funded rescue after another, making it an excellent illustration of the seeming inability to ever get rid of, or even scale back, a socialist failure, no matter how obvious or how disastrous it may be or how much it costs to keep it going. And finally, NYCHA illustrates the exploitation of ongoing failure as a way to enrich the well-connected cronies of politicians.

So now for the latest: A week ago, on December 1, New York City announced a deal with two developers to do a comprehensive rehabilitation and upgrade of two specific large NYCHA projects in the West Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.

December 06, 2021

The Main Victims Of Progressive Racism Are Blacks

December 06, 2021/ Francis Menton

Currently, America is afflicted by a scourge of overt racism often going under the name “Critical Race Theory,” or alternatively under the even more Orwellian term “antiracism.” I call these doctrines “overt racism” because they squarely fit the definition: they accuse people of evil not on the basis of any act those people have committed or of any statement they have made, but rather solely on the basis of their skin color.
The most patent manifestations of the overt racism of Critical Race Theory and “antiracism” doctrine are found in their accusations of evil against people of the white or Caucasian race. Whites are “privileged”; they are engaged in “oppression” of people of other races; they are “white supremacists” — all of which claims are made without reference to anything the individual accused has ever done or said. Indeed, often the accusations are made to children as young as kindergarten age, as indicated in race training materials now spreading like a cancer through the American public education system.
But where do blacks fit into the CRT/”antiracism” worldview? The stated purpose of the CRT/”antiracism” project is to advance the position of black people, and people of other non-white races, supposedly by overcoming alleged white racism of the past or present. As these things are being practically implemented in the real world, is that what is happening?

December 04, 2021

December 04, 2021/ Francis Menton

Somewhere a couple of decades or so ago, the rich parts of the world embarked on a program of replacing energy from fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas) with energy from intermittent “renewables” (mainly wind and solar). In trendy academic, journalistic, and otherwise progressive circles, the idea took hold that this was the way to “save the planet.”
This program was undertaken without any detailed engineering study of how or whether it might actually work, or how much it might cost to fully implement. In the trendy circles, there took hold a blind faith in the complete ability of the government, by dispensing taxpayer funds, to order up whatever innovation might be needed to move us forward to this energy utopia.
The latest UN-orchestrated effort to implement the renewable energy program, known as COP 26, has just broken up. To read the verbiage emanating from the affair, all is on track, if a bit slower than one might have hoped.
But I have long predicted that this program would come to an end when (absent some miraculous innovation that nobody has yet conceived) the usage of the renewables got to a sufficient level that their costs and unworkability could not be covered up any longer. Until very recently the pressure of elite groupthink has been able to maintain a united front of lip service to the cause.
But consider a few developments from the past few weeks, just since the end of COP 26:

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?

November 27, 2021

November 27, 2021/ Francis Menton

Is President Biden doing anything right? To this observer, his policies range from at best merely incompetent, to at worst malicious hatred of the country and people whose interests he was elected to advance.
Somewhere in between those two extremes we have Biden’s energy policy. In this arena, appropriate adjectives would be inconsistent, incoherent, and destructive. Don’t even attempt to make sense of it. To summarize in one word, it is complete madness.
I’m old enough to remember the 1970s, and the two “oil shocks” that occurred during that decade.

November 26, 2021

November 26, 2021/ Francis Menton

The Chinese Virus (aka Covid-19), including the Xi variant, may or may not be fading away. But here in Greenwich Village, despite the best efforts of our politicians and health bureaucrats to keep the population cowering in abject fear, Covid fatigue has definitely set in.
On the West end of Bleecker Street, the many store fronts that became vacant at the peak of the pandemic are almost all now re-occupied with optimistic new ventures. The shoppers are back in force, almost all unmasked. Today looked to me to be unusually busy even for a Black Friday.
The fashion this season is for the storefronts to surround themselves with elaborate floral displays.