May 10, 2022

Some Tips On How To Spot "Disinformation"

May 10, 2022/ Francis Menton

If you’re a reader of this blog, you likely are interested in current events. And therefore, it is also likely that you already know that on April 27 our Department of Homeland Security revealed (at a Congressional budget hearing) that it had set up something called its Disinformation Grievance Board.
Secretary Mayorkas, who was testifying, stated that the DGB would not have operational authority, but would rather act as an advisory body to study best practices and provide guidance to the government on how to counter disinformation threats.
The head of the new Board, who had already been named, is a woman named Nina Jankowicz.
Put aside for a moment any problems you may have with the idea of the federal government trying to decide what is and is not “disinformation.” For this post let’s just look at Ms. Jankowicz and her qualifications for the job.

May 07, 2022

Some Contrarian Thoughts About Elon Musk And The Purchase Of Twitter

May 07, 2022/ Francis Menton

The news of the past few weeks has been all aflutter over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter.
The main issue for discussion has been, what does this mean for the future of free speech in the American public square? That’s an important issue, to which I don’t have the answer. I think that there are reasons for both optimism and pessimism. More on this issue later.
A second issue is what Musk’s Twitter venture signals as to progressive fantasies about net zero utopia. This second issue has been little discussed, let alone recognized at all, in the recent press coverage. So let me open the door.
The most logical way to look at what Musk is up to is that he is getting money out of Tesla in advance of an almost certain huge decline in its value, while placing his next bet on something else with a much better chance for major future growth. I think that he has recognized that the net zero utopia necessary for Tesla to have continuing exponential growth is impossible and not going to happen.

May 06, 2022

May 06, 2022/ Francis Menton

My previous post on Tuesday contained some highlights from the May 3 public hearing of New York’s Climate Action Council. The CAC is the body that is charged with devising a “Scoping Plan” to inform all us New Yorkers how we will achieve “zero carbon” electricity by 2030 and a “zero carbon” economy by 2050. I attended the hearing for about two and a half hours, during which about 60 people spoke.
Reflecting on the hearing a few days later, I think there are a few more highlights that would interest the readers, and will give some more insights into the nature of progressive thinking.
So what are the things that do drive the thinking of these other 55 or so speakers, who apparently represent the large majority of New York City’s citizenry?

May 03, 2022

May 03, 2022/ Francis Menton

Today I trekked out to Brooklyn to testify at a public hearing on New York’s plans to achieve “net zero” electricity by 2030 or so, and a “net zero” economy by 2050. Actually, it wasn’t much of a trek — the hearing took place at an auditorium in Brooklyn Heights, near the first subway stop on the other side of the East River.
The organization holding the hearing was the New York Climate Action Council. This body was created under New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (Climate Act), and is tasked with figuring out how to achieve the statutorily mandated net zero targets.
The first statutory target is 40% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030, which as a practical matter means that fossil fuels must be almost completely eliminated from the electricity sector by that date.
The Council issued its Draft Scoping Plan for how to achieve the targets on December 30, 2021. The Draft Scoping Plan is some 300 pages of text plus 500 pages of appendices; but the gist comes down to, we will order the private sector to eliminate emissions by various dates certain, and then it is up to the little people to work out the details. Today’s hearing allowed for members of the public to comment on the Draft Scoping Plan, supposedly so that any appropriate adjustments can be made before the Plan becomes final later this year.

May 01, 2022

May 01, 2022/ Francis Menton

The decennial census came out in 2020, and now, as the 2022 elections approach, we are in redistricting season. The gerrymanderers are out in force, fighting for advantage in every Congressional and state legislative race nationwide.
For many decades, gerrymandering battles often got fought in the federal courts, where the side that had come out on the short end in the legislature would argue for redress under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the federal Constitution.
In 2019 a 5-4 conservative majority of the Supreme Court substantially ended that game in a case called Rucho v. Common Cause. Rucho held that in most circumstances gerrymanders present political questions that are not justiciable by the federal courts. (The decision does carve out at least one exception, for racially-motivated gerrymanders. That seemingly small exception might be applied by creative lawyers to cry foul over almost any redistricting map, so don’t count on federal litigation on this subject to go away.)
The gerrymandering game has been playing out in a very humorous way here in New York.

April 29, 2022

April 29, 2022/ Francis Menton

Three and a half years ago, in November 2018, the good people of San Francisco enacted by a referendum called Proposition C a new special corporate payroll tax which would raise multiple hundred million dollars per year for the specific purpose of finally and once and for all solving the problem of homelessness.
During the run-up to that referendum, in October 2018, I had two posts discussing Proposition C, the nature of the progressive thinking behind it, and its prospects for success. On October 26 it was “The Morality Of Our Progressive Elite”; and on October 30 it was “More On The Morality Of Our Progressive Elite.”
Toward the end of that second post, I posed this question: “[What are] the prospects that San Francisco’s new $300 million might actually reduce the population deemed ‘homeless’?” My answer was: “Right around zero.”
On April 26 the San Francisco Chronicle ran a big feature article on the subject, with the headline “Broken Homes” (behind paywall). On April 28, that article was then expanded and commented on by Steven Hayward at PowerLine (“California’s Ongoing Suicide Attempt”), and by Erica Sandberg at the City Journal (“San Francisco’s Housing First Nightmare”).
And the answer is: The results are far, far worse than mere failure to reduce the population deemed homeless.