June 04, 2025

Can Anyone Save New York From Its Coming Self-Inflicted Climate and Energy Disaster?

June 04, 2025/ Francis Menton

New York State has officially ordained the destruction of its electricity system and its economy with a mad dash to energy utopia, as prescribed by a 2019 statute called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). The Climate Act mandates a completely unachievable 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030, with even more draconian mandates following in quick succession thereafter.
New York City has piled on with its own fantasy energy statute called Local Law 97, mandating, among other things, forced conversion to electric heat by 2030 of most residential buildings over 25,000 square feet.
A so-called “Scoping Plan” on how to do all this, issued by the State in 2022, contains no bona fide feasibility analysis, and equally no bona fide cost analysis.
Everybody with over a sixth-grade education who has taken any time to look at this knows that it can’t possibly work. The only question is how much destruction will befall us before the whole thing crashes to the ground.
Can anyone save New York from the coming self-inflicted climate and energy disaster?

May 30, 2025

Legitimate Scope Of Judicial Restraints On Presidential Power -- Trump Tariffs Edition

May 30, 2025/ Francis Menton

In my last post a couple of days ago (May 28), I was critical of the blizzard of injunctions issued by the courts against seemingly every policy change that President Trump seeks to implement. I went so far as to call this the “opposite of democracy.”
But I also noted that there are instances where judicial restraints on the executive are legitimate, most notably where the statute on which the President relies to implement a sweeping policy does not in fact grant him the authority he claims. Thus, on finding a lack of grant of authority in the statutes cited, the Supreme Court had reined in President Biden when he sought to implement policies forgiving student loans and banning fossil fuel power plants.
I ended that article by asking whether President Trump’s actions with regard to imposition of tariffs may fall into the same category of overreach as Biden’s student loan and power plant gambits. I also noted that multiple law suits had already been brought challenging the legal basis for the tariffs unilaterally imposed by the President.

May 28, 2025

May 28, 2025/ Francis Menton

Now more than four months into President Trump’s second term, there have been dozens of District Court injunctions blocking policies that the new administration has sought to implement.
Deportations of gang members illegally in the U.S. back to El Salvador? Enjoined! Mass firings at USAID? Enjoined! Other mass firings at 22 other agencies and departments? Enjoined! Cancellation of funding of certain grants for Harvard? Enjoined! Ending of eligibility for Harvard to participate in foreign student visa program? Enjoined! Termination of federal funding for public schools maintaining DEI programs? Enjoined! Termination of security clearances for certain prominent law firms? Enjoined! And these are just examples among many more.
It seems that whatever new policy President Trump tries to implement, it will be enjoined within days by some left wing federal judge.
But before you get too outraged about the courts (and Democrat-appointed judges) blocking President Trump’s every move, let’s not forget about a few constraints that the courts imposed on prior President Biden.

May 07, 2025

May 07, 2025/ Francis Menton

It was back at the beginning of February that President Trump launched what I have called his “tariff gambit” — sequential edicts of flat-rate, economy-wide tariffs imposed against various of our trading partner countries.
The process began with February 1 announcements of blanket 10% tariffs on all goods from China, and 25% tariffs on all goods from Mexico and Canada. Since then, in a blizzard of activity, there have been multiple rounds of announcements on this subject: new countries added to the tariff edicts, increases or decreases in the blanket rates applicable to various countries or products, granting of exceptions and exemptions, postponements of announced effective dates, and more. It’s more than just about anybody can keep track of. Here is an April 10 chronology from PBS compiling all the various tariff actions issued by the administration up to that time. The sheer speed of the announcements, and lack of direction toward any discernible purpose, are astonishing.
In a post about a month ago on April 8, I expressed extreme skepticism about this gambit.

May 04, 2025

May 04, 2025/ Francis Menton

In the New York Times from this past Thursday (May 1), the lead story was a scathing exposé of alleged corruption of our current President. The headline and sub-headline (print version) were “Trump Shapes the Policy On Crypto, and Cashes In. Hushed Deals and Foreign Investors Propel President’s Digital Money Start-Up.” The sub-headline in the online version was even more scathing: “World Liberty Financial has eviscerated the boundary between private enterprise and government policy in ways without precedent in modern American history.” The story fills the entire upper right-hand quadrant of the front page, plus another full page and a half in the interior of the paper.
So according to the Times, this is not just some ordinary, every day, run-of-the-mill political corruption. Rather, it is corruption that has “eviscerated” boundaries between business and government, and is “without precedented in modern American history.”
Is there any substance to these charges?

April 26, 2025

April 26, 2025/ Francis Menton

On April 14 I recorded a podcast with Tom Nelson. He has since posted a slightly edited version on his YouTube site. Go to this link if you would like to watch it — about an hour long. The main subject is the sordid history of EPA’s Endangerment Finding and efforts of people including myself to get it rescinded.
The good news on the Endangerment Finding front is that EPA under new Administrator Lee Zeldin is very much on the job of eliminating the EF. Of course, once it has been rescinded it will face a blizzard of legal challenges. I hope and expect that Zeldin and his team are up to the job of carrying out a rescission that will stick. I offered my suggestions for how to do a rescission that will stand up to challenge in this post from January 26.
Separately, Nelson has made a thing out of compiling a growing list of “Signs That The Climate Scam Is Collapsing.”