April 23, 2025

Pope Francis Was No Friend Of The Poor

April 23, 2025/ Francis Menton

Pope Francis passed away two days ago, on Easter Monday. He had been the leader of the Catholic Church for just over 12 years.
He presented himself as a well-intentioned and deeply religious man, none of which I ever doubted. But good intentions are the paving stones of the road to hell. I often tried to find some positive things about Francis so that I could admire him. But unfortunately I think that his overall impact on the world and on the church was overwhelmingly negative.
Thinking that he was working to uplift the poor and downtrodden of the world, Francis accepted all the most destructive prescriptions of the international Left. I’m sorry, but I don’t find that acceptable in a man claiming to be a major religious leader and asserting moral authority to tell others how to lead a good life.
After a century and more of the destructive horrors of socialism, people in major leadership roles in society have a responsibility to learn about that and understand it and not continue to spread it.

April 20, 2025

Progress Report On Purging The Climate Scam From Federal Websites

April 20, 2025/ Francis Menton

In a post on January 28 — a week into President Trump’s second term — I urged that it is time to “purge the climate scam from the federal websites.”
Trump 1.0 did a remarkably poor job of taking control of communications on the climate issue on websites like those of EPA, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Transportation. Are they doing any better this time?
They have definitely taken some significant steps to address this issue here in the early weeks of the new administration. For example, on April 15 the Guardian ran a piece with the headline “Green groups sue Trump administration over climate webpage removals.”

April 17, 2025

April 17, 2025/ Francis Menton

In June 2019, when New York passed its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), it all seemed so easy.
Back then, everyone knew that “renewables” were cheaper than fossil fuels for making electricity; it was only the nefarious machinations of evil oil and gas companies that stood in the way of an effortless energy transition. New York would assume the mantle of climate leadership to show everyone the way.
And even as recently as December 2022, New York’s path to energy utopia still seemed clear. That’s when the state issued what it called the Final Scoping Plan under the CLCPA, laying out the simple steps to achieve the goal. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and by 2030 we would have 70% of our electricity from renewables.
In the just over two years since then, things have fallen apart with remarkable speed.
Yesterday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered a halt to all construction work on a project called Empire Wind, an offshore wind project located about 20 miles South of Long Island and just East of New York City. This is close to a final stake through the heart of the energy transition program outlined in the Scoping Plan.

April 15, 2025

April 15, 2025/ Francis Menton

Back on February 14, I had a post titled “How Much Of This Has Been Paid For By The U.S. Taxpayer?” The post asked that question about a sample of issues held dear by the Left: migrant caravans, services in the U.S. to illegal aliens, DEI and climate alarm.
Over the intervening weeks it has become clear that the general answer is “a lot of it,” but the details will be slow to emerge. For example, you can go to the website of DOGE and get an endless list of hundreds of contracts and grants that have been reduced or canceled. But they all seem to have legitimate headlines or titles, even if they were wasteful.
How much of this money was getting diverted to an NGO, and from there to another NGO and then another until it ended up funding migrant caravans or pro-Palestinian propaganda or some other such cause. There is very little indication.

March 20, 2025

March 20, 2025/ Francis Menton

Many political jurisdictions claim to be on a path to eliminating emissions of carbon dioxide from their energy systems. Notable examples include California and New York in the U.S., and the UK and Germany in Europe. The Biden administration during its term in office even claimed to have set the entire U.S. onto a path toward what they called “net zero.”
But so far none of these places has gotten anywhere near the goal. Indeed, as of today, many hundreds of billions of dollars into the effort, not one of them has even issued a detailed engineering plan of how this is supposed to be accomplished.
For reasons expressed in some dozens of posts on this blog, with the exception of a vast expansion of nuclear energy, I don’t believe that this “net zero” thing can actually be done, at least without entirely impoverishing the people. However, I’m completely willing to be proved wrong.
For many years, I have been calling for a Demonstration Project . . . .

March 16, 2025

March 16, 2025/ Francis Menton

JP Morgan Chase — that’s the largest bank in the country. It has been headed for almost 20 years by celebrity CEO Jamie Dimon.
For much of the 20 years, Chase and Dimon have been known for their fealty to woke orthodoxies, at least in their official pronouncements. For example, here is a Forbes piece from October 2020 citing Dimon on the subject of “systemic racism.” (Pithy quote: “Systemic racism is a tragic part of America’s history. . . . It’s long past time that society addresses racial inequities in a more tangible, meaningful way.”)
The fealty to woke orthodoxies has in the past extended in particular to the subject of “climate change.” In April 2021 JPM put out a big announcement of plans to facilitate investment of some $2.5 trillion in what they called “climate action and sustainable development.” In October 2021, JPM joined the so-called Net Zero Banking Alliance, then being organized by the UN (led by Mark Carney), promising to starve fossil fuels of investment capital in order to reduce CO2 emissions.
But meanwhile, over at J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, they have a guy named Michael Cembalest, who currently has the title Chairman of Market and Investment Strategy.