October 20, 2024

The Ongoing Erosion Of Welfare Reform In New York

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.

September 27, 2024

More On The Adams Indictment

September 27, 2024/ Francis Menton

Does the indictment of Eric Adams represent a bona fide prosecution of a dishonest politician, or is it mainly retribution against a political opponent by a deeply corrupt DOJ and FBI?
As several commenters on yesterday’s post noted, we have come to a very sad point when our first thought upon an indictment of a politician is that it may well represent the deep state using its powers to take out a political opponent. But after four years of the deeply politicized Biden-Harris-Garland Justice Department, that’s where we are. And it is entirely appropriate for the citizenry to evaluate the present indictment in light of the DOJ’s conduct throughout the course of this administration.
Unlike my usual approach, I wrote the post yesterday immediately after learning about and reading the indictment, and before allowing any time for things to settle down. Today many other voices have weighed in. In this post I’ll consider a few of them.
But the bottom line is, there is every reason to believe that this indictment is mostly politically motivated, and has little or nothing to do with fighting real corruption.

September 26, 2024

September 26, 2024/ Francis Menton

The answer to the question is that it’s not a close call. The Biden-Harris DOJ/FBI is far more corrupt.
For the latest evidence, consider the new federal criminal case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Yesterday, a federal grand jury, acting at the behest of the Biden-Harris Department of Justice and FBI, handed down an indictment of Adams. The indictment was then released today. The full text can be found here.
Plenty in the Democrat Party media took the occasion to credit the work of the feds and jump all over Adams.

September 24, 2024

September 24, 2024/ Francis Menton

It’s Climate Week here in New York, and you can feel the excitement.
The UN General Assembly is in town, and simultaneously something called the “Climate Group” (“Our mission is to drive climate action. Fast.”) is holding some 600 (!) events to promote policies that they somehow believe will “save the planet.”
At one of these events yesterday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul showed up to deliver what she probably thought was a significant policy speech. The Governor’s web page describes the speech this way:

September 21, 2024

September 21, 2024/ Francis Menton

“Net Zero” — That’s the two-word slogan that has been adopted as the official goal of every virtuous state or country for decarbonizing its energy system. The “net” part is backhanded recognition that some parts of the energy system (like maybe air travel or steelmaking) may never be fully de-carbonized. Thus some kind of offsets or indulgences may need to be accepted to claim achievement of the goal.
But the “net” thing is not for the easy parts of decarbonization. And by the easy parts, I mean the generation of electricity, and the powering of anything that can be run on electricity or batteries. In electrifiable parts of the energy system, there is to be no tolerance for “net”; only “zero emissions” will do. The official line is that zero emissions electricity is easy and cheap because it can be provided by the wind and sun.
The official line is wrong. As the build-out of these wind and solar generation systems continues to progress, it has become increasingly obvious that there will never be a zero-emissions electricity system powered mainly by wind and sun.

September 09, 2024

September 09, 2024/ Francis Menton

As many readers likely know, New York is the center of the legal profession in this country.
New York City has a large community of major law firms that advise the business community both across the country and also internationally. This is the industry in which I had my own career prior to retiring from it in 2016.
There are large numbers of distinguished practitioners who are highly sought out for every sort of legal problem. We have multiple well-known bar associations — notably the Association of the Bar of the City of New York (known as the City Bar) and the New York State Bar Association — once respected for their contributions to the betterment of the legal system and the rule of law.
All of which makes what follows nearly incomprehensible to me. In recent years the law enforcement and court systems of New York have become highly politicized in ways that are the antithesis of the rule of law.