February 01, 2023

Time For The Rest Of The Red States To Follow The DeSantis/Rufo Lead

February 01, 2023/ Francis Menton

It was only six days ago, on January 26, when I wrote a post containing a list of proposals for Christopher Rufo and the other new trustees of New College of Florida to take back control of the institution from the insane left.
In an uncanny development, as if they having been reading the Manhattan Contrarian blog, Rufo and his fellow trustees, along with Governor Ron DeSantis, have already implemented the first proposal, and are well along on implementing the second.
How about all you other red states? Why can’t you do the same things?

January 30, 2023

Let's Face It: Net Zero Is Dead In The Water

January 30, 2023/ Francis Menton

The headline and the cartoon come today from Dr. Benny Peiser’s New Zero Watch newsletter. (If you don’t subscribe to this newsletter, you should. Go to this link to sign up. As with MC, there is no charge.)
This latest newsletter contains a roundup of articles from just the last couple of days reporting on the ongoing disaster of the Net Zero fantasy. In this post, I’ll just cover some of the highlights.
But first, can somebody please let President Biden in on this news, or at least some of it?
Even as the impossible dream of a wind/solar-powered economy collapses everywhere it is tried, the U.S. federal government blindly pushes forward with hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer funds to subsidize wind and solar generation and battery storage.

January 26, 2023

January 26, 2023/ Francis Menton

Over the past several years, Republicans have very gradually acquired some backbone in pushing back against progressive idiocy.
But a glaring example of failure to push back remains in the state university systems, very much including those of the red states. In essentially all of those states, Republican governors and legislatures have allowed the very worst of Marxist and racist monoculture to fester and metastasize not only without opposition, but with ever-increasing taxpayer funding.
Well, count on Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida to be the one to finally step up and do something about it. On January 6, DeSantis announced the appointment of six new trustees to the board of a unit of the Florida state university system called New College of Florida.
Are the new trustees going to be able to make significant changes in a short period of time?

January 25, 2023

January 25, 2023/ Francis Menton

I have so far avoided weighing in on the Biden and Trump classified documents scandals, but I guess the time has finally come.
I’ve had a “Secret” clearance in my life, and almost all of the “classified” documents I have seen have been of very underwhelming significance. So when the Trump classified document thing blew up with the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago back in August, I was not impressed.
It reeked of something highly likely to be completely devoid of real world significance, but useful to Biden and the left because Trump would be put in a position of not being able to defend himself publicly without disclosing the contents of the documents.
Meanwhile Trump as President had had complete authority to declassify the documents if he wanted, and his position was that he had done so. But even if Trump had a good or even excellent position that he had declassified the documents, he would not take the risk of disclosing their contents to defend himself.
So it seemed like a total freebie for Biden to go on 60 Minutes in September and say “How could anyone be that irresponsible?”
I want to look at two aspects in particular: (1) Do the facts support that Biden was “fully cooperating” with respect to this likely criminal matter involving him? and (2) Does Trump have a reasonable position that documents in his possession with classified “markings” had been declassified?

January 22, 2023

January 22, 2023/ Francis Menton

As previously mentioned here, I’m currently involved in a legal case where my client — the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council — seeks to compel EPA to reconsider and revoke the 2009 action by which the agency claimed to determine that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger to human health and welfare.”
That agency action could well be the single most absurd and destructive thing that the U.S. government has ever done in its 234 year history. The “Endangerment Finding” is the regulatory foundation that underlies all of the more than one hundred initiatives of the Biden Administration to destroy our energy infrastructure, drive up the cost of gasoline, heat, and electricity, and leave the American people impoverished and freezing in the dark.
It goes without saying that the government, under direction from the Biden White House and environmental zealots within EPA, opposes our efforts with every resource at its disposal.
But here’s what does not go without saying: a collection of non-profit organizations who would otherwise be strangers to the litigation has nevertheless sought to “intervene” in the case to support the position of the government.

January 19, 2023

January 19, 2023/ Francis Menton

If you follow developments out of China at all, you have likely noticed a spate of bad news recently. For years, even decades, it seemed that China could do no wrong in its growth toward becoming a major world power: China reported economic growth of 10% and up every year; it was becoming the hub of manufacturing for the entire world; and as its economy grew, its clout on the world stage increased rapidly.
Pundits on the left (and occasionally on the right as well), often with overt admiration for the Chinese model of authoritarian state-directed crony capitalism, widely predicted that China would supplant the U.S. as the world’s leading power some time not too far into the 21st century.
Suddenly that’s looking much less likely. What happened?
The fault lines have been there for a long time, but well-concealed by a regime with tight control over information flow, let alone by a Western press with a deep hatred of the West and not hiding its cheerleading for success of the Chinese model. In the last few months, as conditions have deteriorated, the regime has lost a big piece of its ability to keep the lid on.