The Race For Congress In New York's 10th District: Dumb And Dumber

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The Race For Congress In New York's 10th District: Dumb And Dumber

  • I know that you readers are all hungry for some information on the race for Congress in New York’s 10th District. So I am here to fulfill your wishes.

  • NY-10 is the home District of the Manhattan Contrarian. It is a very prominent District, encompassing Lower Manhattan (from about 14th Street south) and a large piece of Northwest Brooklyn. Neighborhoods in this District that you may have heard of include Greenwich Village, Soho and Tribeca in Manhattan, and Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope in Brooklyn. And then there is the Financial District/Wall Street area — the heart of the financial system of the U.S., if not the world — which is also in this District. The District’s population includes large numbers of highly-educated and high income people. This 2024 study at SmartAsset.com found that the District ranked 12th wealthiest in the country as measured by percent of households earning more than $200,000 per year, with more than 103,000 such households. The District’s business community includes many prominent entities. As examples, the headquarters of Goldman Sachs and of Citigroup are in this District, plus major operations of companies like Google, Disney and Meta.

  • You probably already know that this District leans heavily Democratic, and particularly toward the elite and “progressive” factions of that Party. What you may not fully realize is what that actually means in practice in today’s bizarro world. In practice, the key to winning in this District is to promise to act as vigorously as humanly possible against the interests of the District’s residents.

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What Percent Of U.S. Households Headed By Illegal Immigrants Receive Welfare Benefits?

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  • As you are probably aware, in most circumstances and for most categories of handouts, illegal immigrants in the United States do not qualify for welfare benefits.

  • As I’m using it here, the term “welfare” does not include Social Security or Medicare, which are not restricted by income status; but the term “welfare” does include all of the large number of what are called “means-tested” programs, which in the aggregate consume nearly $1 trillion annually of federal spending (and well over $1 trillion if state contributions are included). The biggest of the “means tested” programs are Medicaid, SNAP (“food stamps”), and TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, otherwise known as classic welfare); and there are dozens more. Illegal immigrants are specifically excluded from participating in those three big federal welfare programs, and from most (but not all) of the others.

  • And yet there was the New York Times, in its Sunday (May 31) print edition, with a lead front page headline that may set a new record (if that is possible) for anti-Trump spin: “Trump Cuts Off Life Necessities for Immigrants.”‍ ‍

  • When I saw that, my first reaction was, how can Trump “cut off” illegal immigrants from government benefits (whether or not the benefits are “life necessities”) when they are not eligible for those benefits in the first place?

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"Sue And Settle": Two Can Play This Game

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  • As you may be aware, early this year President Trump commenced a personal litigation against the federal government, seeking compensation for various alleged wrongs committed against him during the Biden presidency, and even during his own first term. According to this New York Times piece from yesterday, the wrongs that Trump has alleged against the government include “leak of his tax returns during his first term, as well as the investigations into his handling of classified documents after he left office and into his 2016 campaign’s potential ties to Russia.” The amount of damages Trump seeks has been reported as $10 billion.

  • And then two days ago (May 14) there comes news that there is a tentative settlement in the case. ABC News appears to have been the first with the story. Excerpt:

  • President Donald Trump is expected to drop his $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service in exchange for the creation of a $1.7 billion fund to compensate allies who claim they were wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.  

  • So how do you feel about that?

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What Will The Future Look Like After Louisiana v. Callais?

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What Will The Future Look Like After Louisiana v. Callais?

  • On April 29, the Supreme Court decided Louisiana v. Callais. That’s the case where the Court held that the Voting Rights Act did not require Louisiana to create a second “majority-minority” Congressional district because “[t]he Constitution almost never permits a State to discriminate on the basis of race, and such discrimination triggers strict scrutiny.”

  • A “majority-minority” district is one that has been gerrymandered to include sufficient numbers of the designated minority group as to make it nearly certain that a member of that group will be elected to represent the district.

  • The case arose out of the redistricting process following the 2020 census. Louisiana initially came up with a map containing only a single such “majority-minority” district. Plaintiffs who claimed that their voting rights were being infringed challenged the map, and a District Court judge in Louisiana entered a preliminary injunction requiring Louisiana to create a second such district.

  • After the case went into what Justice Alito’s opinion describes as a “legal limbo,” Louisiana then adopted a new map with a second “majority-minority” district; but that map was then promptly challenged by another group of plaintiffs who claimed that their voting rights were being infringed. This second challenge then became the Callais case.

  • The left-wing press has gone into apoplexy over the Callais decision.

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For The Future Of EVs, What Policy Is "Stupid"?

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  • Over the past couple of years, I have had several posts here expressing skepticism about whether electric vehicles (EVs) were really the wave of the future. Most recently, I had a post on December 17 noting the rapid decline of EV sales in the U.S. during the fourth quarter of 2025, following the expiration of certain tax credits on September 30.

  • Overall, my take has been that the EV market has been propped up by government subsidies and benefits and, like all businesses dependent on government handouts, would likely shrink drastically (if not completely disappear) without them.

  • For a different take, you might wonder where The New York Times stands on this. Well, I have your answer. Yesterday, they gave over a big chunk of their editorial page to an op-ed by a guy named Bill Saporito, headlined “$25 Billion. That’s What Trump Cost Detroit.”‍ ‍

  • The thesis is that EVs are wondrous products, and that American EVs would be conquering the world, and earning big profits for the automakers, but for a “war” against EVs instigated by President Trump.

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New Federal Dietary Guidelines Somewhat Less Idiotic Than The Previous Versions

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  • Do you think that the U.S. federal government might be a good place to seek reasonable guidance on matters involving science? If so, I question your sanity.

  • In recent years the part of the federal enterprise masquerading as “science” has suffered one debacle after another resulting from acceptance and promotion of pseudoscience, examples being Covid lockdowns and school closures, let alone the entire catastrophic climate change fiasco. Do you remember the CDC ordering (on no authority) a nationwide eviction moratorium (until struck down by the Supreme Court)?

  • And of course, the acceptance of pseudoscience by a federal bureaucracy is somehow inevitably associated with an effort by that bureaucracy to increase its budget and enhance its power to order the American people around.

  • In the area of federal claims based on dubious scientific authority, the Dietary Guidelines emanating from the Department of Agriculture are a prominent instance, although perhaps relatively benign.

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