October 29, 2024

Cuba: The Collapse Accelerates

October 29, 2024/ Francis Menton

Less than three weeks ago, on October 10, I had a post about Cuba with the headline “What The Hell Is Going On In Cuba?”
The post noted that it is difficult to get real information from Cuba, and that there had recently been almost total silence about that island from the mainstream media. But if one researched some out-of-the-way sources, it turned out that there is some sort of sudden economic collapse going on there.
Besides economic production declining significantly, and pervasive shortages of basic goods, there was also information from a source in Spain (El Pais) that Cuba’s population had suddenly dropped by close to 20% over just the past two to three years. Moreover, the 20% who had departed were not randomly distributed, but rather were concentrated among those in their prime working years, meaning that Cuba had suddenly lost around a third of its working age population.
In the short period since that post, the collapse has accelerated.

October 26, 2024

New York Times Runs Huge Free Campaign Ad For Trump

October 26, 2024/ Francis Menton

I know it’s crazy, but I continue to get the print edition of the New York Times delivered to my front door every day. It’s part of my mission to keep up with what the other side is thinking.
I read it (less and less) so that you don’t have to. But even an occasional skim makes it obvious that with every passing year and day they retreat ever more from serious news, and descend ever further into crazed partisan zealotry.
So imagine my surprise this morning when the entire central portion of page 1, covering three of six column on the top half of the front page, contains what appears to be a huge free ad for Trump for President.

October 23, 2024

October 23, 2024/ Francis Menton

For well over two decades, the linked causes of climate alarmism and energy transition have provided their adherents with a powerful upper hand in American politics. For that matter, supporters of those causes have had just as strong, if not a stronger upper hand in the politics of all the countries with advanced economies, whether in the EU, or Canada, Australia, and others.
Here in the U.S., for all this time, almost no politician — even those claiming to advocate generally for smaller government or less regulation — has been willing to push back directly against assertions of “climate crisis,” or against demands for reducing “carbon emissions” or for achieving a “net zero” energy economy via government coercion and massive subsidies. Most Republicans seeking office have been cowed into deflecting and deferring on these issues, if indeed they have not openly gone along with the left’s energy program.
I have long said that this situation can’t last. The reason is that the proposed energy transition is infeasible and can’t possibly work; and the effort to achieve the impossible via government mandates and subsidies would inevitably drive up costs and otherwise impact voters directly in ways they would see.
At some point the voters would react. But when would that occur?

October 20, 2024

October 20, 2024/ Francis Menton

When I started this blog back in 2012, we were just coming to the end of 20 years of Republican, or quasi-Republican, New York City mayors (Giuliani and Bloomberg), who also had support from a newly-Republican Congress elected in 1994.
One of the great triumphs of that era was welfare reform. The new Republican Congress made reform of welfare a priority, and after their first efforts were vetoed by President Clinton, in August 1996 he signed a compromise bill called the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act. Among the reforms contained in that Act were time limits and work requirements for welfare recipients.
It’s now nearly 11 years since Bloomberg left office, and the goal of minimizing welfare dependency is long gone and forgotten.

October 18, 2024

October 18, 2024/ Francis Menton

Here in New York we have our own unique and special acronym for how we think we are going to make our future emissions-free electrical grid work with predominantly wind and solar generation. The acronym is DEFR — the “Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource.”
When the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing in the dead of winter, we will crank up the DEFR to keep us all warm and cozy. There will of course be zero carbon emissions, because by definition the DEFR is “emissions-free.”
Unfortunately nobody is quite sure what this DEFR might be.
There are only a few options. Nuclear could work, but in New York it is completely blocked by regulatory obstruction and the certainty of decades of litigation. Batteries are wildly too expensive and physically not up to the job.
That leaves many green energy advocates grasping at hydrogen as the last remaining option. Granted, we don’t yet have any meaningful production of hydrogen from carbon-free sources. But it seems so simple: just use wind and solar generators to run electrolyzers to make hydrogen from water; then store the hydrogen in some big caverns, and burn it when you need it. No carbon is involved. Problem solved!

October 16, 2024

October 16, 2024/ Francis Menton

The American presidency has definitely had its ups and downs over the years, but at least the occupants of the office, and the contenders who have sought it, have taken the job of being President seriously.
Until now, uniformly, they have thought it important to outline some kind of a vision for the country, and to propose policies intended to achieve that vision. Even if in some instances you might disagree entirely with the candidates’ vision, at least they had it. Or, if they really didn’t have a vision, or much of one, then they pretended to.
In this sense, has there ever been a more fundamentally unserious candidate for President than Kamala Harris?