October 28, 2022

NYC Hates Its Middle Class Homeowners

October 28, 2022/ Jane Menton

Four years ago, just before our son was born, my husband and I bought our first home: a two bedroom, one bathroom apartment in Queens.
Queens has a lot to recommend it; it is often known as the City’s “middle class” borough, with almost no slums, and an equivalent lack of notable wealth.
It is not a small area: more than 100 square miles, with a population over 2.25 million. The homeownership rate is about 45%, which is high for New York City.
In addition, it is the most ethnically diverse county in the U.S., and a place where immigrants from all over the world have sought the American dream.
Unfortunately, our politicians are working hard to put an end to that.
About a year ago I joined the board of my building.. Within my first month of joining a senior board member, one who has been on the board for many years and is about 20 years my senior, sent us all the following email:

October 25, 2022

CHECC Brief Challenging CO2 Endangerment Finding Now Publicly Available

October 25, 2022/ Francis Menton

Yesterday the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) filed a corrected version of its opening brief challenging the EPA’s Endangerment Finding as to CO2 and other greenhouse gases.
The brief can be found here.
The bizarre reason for the “corrected” filing was that the clerks at the DC Circuit rejected our initial filing on the ground that we used an excessive number of acronyms. They have a rule encouraging you not to use too many acronyms, but the rule gives no clue as to how many is too many. When you use the term “greenhouse gases” thirty times, should you shorten it to “GHGs,” or write it out every time? You only find out when they bounce the brief and require you to correct it. Anyway, with any luck the linked version is now the final one.
When you take a look at the brief, you will see that we are directly and openly challenging the fake science of predicted catastrophic human-caused global warming from GHGs.

October 23, 2022

October 23, 2022/ Francis Menton

Here in ultra-progressive Greenwich Village, there is no such thing as a Republican running a competitive race for an office at any level — local, city-wide, state or federal.
The only contests are between the left and the far left, or maybe the far, far left. All local and city-wide races are decided in the Democratic primary, and generally the Republicans do not even field candidates for the State Legislature and City Council races.
All of which makes the current issue of our local community newspaper, West View News, so remarkable. It is unlike any issue of this or any other local newspaper in this neighborhood that I have seen in an election season at any time in my nearly 50 years living here.

October 22, 2022

October 22, 2022/ Francis Menton

In a post last week, I gave notice that battle was about to be joined with the EPA over what it claims to be the “science” behind global warming alarm.
The case is called the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) v. EPA, now pending in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. CHECC challenges EPA’s 2009 Finding that CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare. At the outset of the Trump administration, CHECC filed a Petition for reconsideration and rescission of the Endangerment Finding. That Petition was finally denied by EPA on April 20, 2022, more than a year into the Biden administration, and the appeal followed. I am one of the attorneys for CHECC.
The opening Brief on behalf of CHECC was filed on October 14, and a week later on October 21 an amicus curiae brief was filed in support of CHECC by the CO2 Coalition, together with Professors William Happer of Princeton and Richard Lindzen of MIT.

October 20, 2022

October 20, 2022/ Francis Menton

Sometimes I look at the U.S. government under President Biden, and I think that it couldn’t be possible to be more incompetent than this.
But take a look at any of the U.S.’s main geopolitical adversaries — besides Russia there’s China, and Iran, and perhaps you might throw in a Venezuela or a North Korea — and you quickly realize that all of them have far, far more incompetent government policy than the U.S. on its very worst day.
For today I’m going to focus on Russia.

October 17, 2022

October 17, 2022/ Francis Menton

Not being a dope, you likely realized a long time ago that it was going to take a lot of energy to manufacture the components of the future green energy utopia. Wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars, and so forth — there is lots of steel, other metals, and silica involved that all need to be melted at high temperatures to get formed into the devices. How are they going to achieve that at reasonable cost using just the wind and sun as energy sources?
Up to now, the main strategy has been to buy most of the devices from China, where they are made largely using energy from coal. Out of sight, out of mind.
But both Europe and the U.S. have made an effort to get at least somewhat into the game of making these things.