The Latest Political Scam -- "Affordability" -- Is Really Taking Off

November 12, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

If you want to run for office as a Democrat, there is a new catchword that you need to make as your main promise: “Affordability.”

As anybody paying attention knows, the cry of “affordability” was the central theme that carried the Democrats to victory in all the big races this year, most notably those of Zohran Mamdani for Mayor in New York City, Abigail Spanberger for Governor in Virginia, and Mikie Sherrill for Governor in New Jersey. The same theme also carried two Democrats to victory as Public Service Commissioners in Georgia — the first victories by Democrats in statewide elections for state office in Georgia since 2006.

But here is the question: Is the promise of “affordability” by these politicians something that has any prospect of being delivered through their proposed policies? Or are the proposed policies instead more likely to be useless, or even counterproductive, thus making the promise of “affordability” a scam from the outset?

In the campaigns, the theme of “affordability” got applied across multiple areas of household spending, including such areas as housing, healthcare, and transportation. But one spending category was the biggest focus of the campaigns above all others: energy. In a piece at Vox on November 7, Umair Irfan exults at the success of the Democratic candidates’ appeal to affordability as to energy, under the headline “Clean energy could become a huge political winner.” (available outside paywall at MSN here). Excerpts:

This off-year election was a pressure test of Democrats’ broad message on affordability and who voters hold accountable for the rising cost of electricity. . . . In New Jersey, Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, ran on a promise to fight skyrocketing energy bills. She even vowed to declare a state of emergency and freeze utility rates on day one in office. And it worked. . . . In Virginia, Democratic Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger also made affordable energy a tentpole of her campaign against republican Winsome Earle-Sears. . . . [In Georgia] Democrats Peter Hubbard and Alicia Johnson defeated two incumbent Republicans [for seats on the Public Service Commission]. . . . Frances Sawyer, founder of Pleiades Strategy, an energy analysis firm, [said] “It is just a huge sign that Georgians are fed up with rate hikes. They’re fed up with high bills. . . .”

So what are the policies that are supposed to deliver “affordable” electricity rates? For Sherrill and the Georgia PSC Commission candidates, number one was a freeze (or opposition to increase) of rates. And for both Sherrill and Spanberger, next came big expansion of wind and solar generation. From Sherrill’s website:

By prioritizing the right investments in new clean power resources, we can reduce our carbon footprint, increase energy independence, and help families across the state save money. . . . Prioritize and support low-cost, in-state clean energy investments and innovations to bring down rates. . . . Increase the use of state properties to host solar projects. . . . Assist New Jerseyans in adopting clean energy solutions, like community solar. . . .

Sherrill appears to be clueless that wind and solar generators require vast additional backup, energy storage, and transmission capacity to make an electricity grid work full time, thus making their end costs to consumers a multiple of those for traditional thermal generation. The same blindspot applies for Spanberger. From the Spanberger for Governor website:

Abigail knows that Virginia has the opportunity to be a national leader in clean energy, including by bringing high-paying clean energy jobs to the Commonwealth through investments in offshore wind, rooftop solar, and other renewable energy sources. In Congress, Abigail supported commonsense incentives for increased deployment of clean energy sources such as wind and solar, as well as electric vehicles and grid-scale energy storage. As the next Governor of Virginia, Abigail is committed to making sure Virginia can meet its energy needs while growing its economy and keeping costs low for Virginians.

Back here in New York City, electricity costs are not so much on the Mayor’s agenda, but Mamdani preached “affordability” of everything from housing to groceries to buses. How to deliver that? For housing, how about a rent freeze? For groceries and buses, subsidies from the taxpayers.

Why anyone would ever again build or maintain a rental apartment building in New York under a regime of permanent rent freeze is an issue that apparently has never occurred to Mamdani (or the people who voted for him).

To give you an idea of just how far the fantasy cry of “affordability” has penetrated the ranks of current Democrats, take note that one Jack Schlossberg has just declared that he is running for Congress from New York’s 12th Congressional District. Have you heard of Schlossberg? He is JFK’s grandson, via daughter Caroline. The 12th Congressional District includes much of Midtown Manhattan, plus the Upper East and West Sides (currently represented by the execrable Jerrold Nadler, who is retiring). 

According to an October 2024 piece here at Yahoo Finance, New York 12 is the third wealthiest district in the country (ranked by median household income), trailing only two Silicon Valley districts in California — although NY12 is second in “mean” household income, and also has more people earning $200,000+ (156,102 households out of 393,204) than either of those two pikers in California.

And of course Schlossberg’s number one issue according to his announcement: the “cost of living crisis.” OK, it’s slightly different messaging from “affordability,” but only slightly. Schlossberg attended the Collegiate School in Manhattan for high school, where the current tuition is about $66,000 per year (it probably was in the range of $45,000/yr 15 years ago when Schlossberg attended). He makes a point in his announcement that he took the cross-town bus each day, from the Upper East Side to the Upper West Side, to get to school. In other words, he is a true man of the people.

Schlossberg has not yet addressed what policies he intends to implement to address the “cost of living crisis.” But as we know, there are really only two policies in the Democrats’ playbook to deal with such a thing, namely price controls and taxpayer subsidies. I might suggest to him as a start that he impose price controls on exclusive Manhattan private high schools.

You might think that the voters of NY 12 would have to realize that in any effort to control the “cost of living” via government subsidies, the wealthy like them would have to pay far more in taxes than any benefit they might receive in lower prices. Don’t count on it. The more solidly Democratic is any voting group, the more innumerate it proves to be.

Federal District Judges Running The Executive Branch: Even Justice Jackson Draws A Line

November 08, 2025  Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

The first nine months of the President Trump’s second term have seen repeated instances of a Federal District Court judge temporarily enjoining some action of the administration, only to have the Supreme Court stay the injunction while the litigation proceeds. Examples of this pattern of events have occurred in cases involving such things as funding rescissions, staff lay-offs, and deportation procedures.

A recurring feature of this pattern has been dissents from the three liberal Supreme Court justices — Kagan, Sotomayor and Jackson — who would have left the temporary injunctions in place during the pendency of the litigation. Justice Jackson, in addition to joining the other two liberal justices, has also issued several individual dissents strongly criticizing her conservative colleagues for vacating temporary injunctions from District Courts.

The question of whether the administration gets enjoined while litigation proceeds, versus an injunction getting issued only at the conclusion of full litigation, is very consequential. Full litigation of any one of these cases through a District Court, Court of Appeals, and Supreme Court, could take four years or more — in other words, the entire presidential term. If a temporary injunction gets put in place by a District Court judge when the case starts, and then litigation proceeds for four years with that injunction in place, that would mean that the Trump administration never gets to implement its policy at all during its term in office — even if the Supreme Court ultimately rules that Trump had the authority to implement the policy all along. With enough of these temporary injunctions, the entire Trump administration could be tied up in knots, and prevented from doing much or even most what it was elected to do.

The past week has seen two more instances of the pattern play out. But notably, in one of the cases that reached the Supreme Court on Friday November 7, the District Court injunction proved too much even for Justice Jackson. In that case Justice Jackson herself issued an administrative stay of the District Court’s temporary injunction.

The first of these two cases to reach the Supreme Court this week was Trump v. Orr. This case involves a Trump first-day (January 20, 2025) Executive Order that directed that the federal government would only “recognize two sexes, male and female,” and further directed the State Department to “require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex.” Seven “transgender” individuals challenged the Executive Order, and their case came before District Judge Julia Kobick in the District of Massachusetts. On June 17, Judge Kobick issued a temporary injunction, barring the federal government from implementing the new policy. The Justice Department then went to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which declined to stay Judge Kobick’s ruling. On September 19, the Justice Department filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court issued its decision on November 6. There is a four paragraph unsigned opinion on behalf of the six conservative justices, followed by a 12 page dissent from Justice Jackson, in which Justices Kagan and Sotomayor joined.

The remarkable thing about this case is that there was no statute from Congress that the plaintiffs said the administration was violating. The policy to allow passports matching “gender identity” rather than biological sex was nothing more than a policy of the State Department, which had changed a previous policy of the State Department that had been consistent with the Trump administration position. The majority opinion dispatches with the plaintiffs’ argument in a few sentences, notably this one:

Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth—in both cases, the Government is merely attesting to a historical fact without subjecting anyone to differential treatment.

Justice Jackson meanwhile works herself up into some high dudgeon:

[S]enseless sidestepping of the obvious equitable outcome has become an unfortunate pattern. So, too, has my own refusal to look the other way when basic principles are selectively discarded. This Court has once again paved the way for the immediate infliction of injury without adequate (or, really, any) justification. Because I cannot acquiesce to this pointless but painful perversion of our equitable discretion, I respectfully dissent.

Justice Jackson’s dissent never discusses the issue that the practical effect of the result she asks for would be to have a lone District Judge in Massachusetts running the State Department passport-issuance process for the four years of the Trump presidency.

But then the very next day, November 7, a case came to Justice Jackson that crossed even her line for what a District Judge ought to be able to do. The case is Rollins v. Rhode Island State Council of Churches, and involves the question of whether the federal government must “fully fund” the SNAP (food stamp) program during the current government shut-down, despite lack of congressional appropriations for the program.

The Rhode Island Council of Churches brought their case in the District of Rhode Island, and got themselves before the Chief Judge of that court, noted partisan John McConnell. For those unfamiliar with Judge McConnell, before President Obama appointed him to the bench he was a partner of the Motley Rice law firm, one of the lead counsel in the massive tobacco litigation that ended in a $240 billion settlement in 1998. McConnell’s total personal compensation from that litigation has not been disclosed, but Legal Newsline reports that in connection with his Senate confirmation he revealed that he would get continuing payouts of between $2.5 and $3.1 million per year from 2011 to 2024 (after he was on the bench!) and that his total payout from the settlement was “perhaps as much as” $78 million. McConnell has also tussled with the Trump administration in previous litigations.

The Council of Churches brought its case in late October, as the government shut-down continued and it looked like the food stamp program would run out of money in early November; and as the days wore on, it looked like the money would run out on November 7. According to the government’s emergency motion to the Supreme Court:

[A]fter 5 p.m. last night [November 6], [Judge McConnell] ordered the Department of Agriculture (USDA) to cover the SNAP shortfall by transferring billions of dollars that were appropriated for different, critical food-security programs—such as the National School Lunch Program—within a single business day (i.e., by tonight).

The Justice Department managed to get itself to the First Circuit (where no stay was immediately issued) and then to the Supreme Court by 9 PM on November 7. Here is another brief excerpt from the Justice Department’s application to the Supreme Court:

The district court’s ruling is untenable at every turn. The court demanded that USDA find some, any, way to fund SNAP, treating the program essentially as a mandatory entitlement. But the SNAP statute is explicit that SNAP benefits are subject to available appropriations, and it states plainly that SNAP payments shall not exceed the funds appropriated for the program. . . . As USDA explained, pulling billions of dollars from the Child Nutrition Programs would jeopardize those programs’ ability to fully operate this year—putting at risk critical food-assistance initiatives relied upon by millions of children every day, and raiding a program that Congress did fund to instead extend one that Congress has not funded.

Apparently this one was too much even for Justice Jackson. According to SCOTUS Blog, at 9:17 PM yesterday, Justice Jackson issued an administrative stay, staying Judge McConnell’s order until the First Circuit has time to consider whether it will issue a stay pending appeal. (And if it doesn’t, then presumably the government will immediately be back at the Supreme Court again.)

There still is that pesky “appropriations clause” of the Constitution: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” We’ll see if that rather clear language can stand up to the emotional arguments being made.

In the United States, we are the country where our iconic national holiday, now approaching, celebrates how brave pioneers were able to come to an uncharted wilderness and figure out how to feed themselves. And yet somehow now we have some 42 million people, about one person in eight, dependent on government handouts and supposedly at risk of starvation if the handouts don’t arrive on time. Really, it is shameful.

Jane Menton Comments On Zohran Mamdani

November 04, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Editor's Note:  As you can see this was published before the election, but it's prescient and insightful.  RK

My sometimes co-poster and daughter Jane Menton has been absent from these pages, and from political commentary, for a couple of years. In her defense, she has three little kids on her hands. However, this morning, just in time for today’s election, she had a piece published in the Daily Wire. The subject of the post is Zohran Mamdani’s position on our local electric heat mandate, known as New York City Local Law 97. The Daily Wire has graciously agreed to allow me to repost the article. Here it is (with an introduction by the Daily Wire editors):

 Zohran Mamdani Says He Wants To Make NYC Affordable. Don’t Believe Him.

 The socialist’s pursuit of “climate justice” will price middle-class New Yorkers out of their homes.

America is watching with anxious anticipation as New Yorkers head to the polls, likely to install socialist Zohran Mamdani as the city’s next mayor.

Since his shocking primary victory this summer, Mamdani’s candidacy has become a national story, with Americans wondering if the young radical represents a new direction for the national Democratic Party. And while Mamdani’s socialism and views on Israel are certainly cause for alarm, the policies he’s proposing for New Yorkers are just as shocking, though often overlooked.

That’s why we asked Jane Menton, a lifelong New Yorker, to write about one Mamdani-backed policy that has New Yorkers on edge. Local Law 97 would force most buildings to “reduce emissions” by 2030, an expensive flight of climate fantasy that could price middle-class New Yorkers out of their homes. The policy, which Mamdani has pledged to enforce without mercy, is reminiscent of Biden-era climate policies that would have forced Americans to shoulder the burdens of climate extremists.

America may have moved on from these policies.

*********** 

It’s Election Day in New York, and Zohran Mamdani, the socialist assemblyman from Queens, is almost certainly going to be the next mayor. But on his home turf, residents are terrified of the policies he supports.

Among those policies is Local Law 97, which will require over 50,000 buildings to reduce emissions 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050. For large buildings, full compliance requires full electrification and millions of dollars in renovations. The alternative is to pay hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in annual penalties.

And here’s the kicker: even if buildings follow through with electrification, at tremendous expense, there is currently an inadequate electricity supply to support the electrification mandates, and the city has no credible plan to provide it.

Mamdani has pledged to enforce the law fully, with no adjustments. To him, Local Law 97 is about “taking on the real estate industry” and achieving “climate justice.” As with most of Mamdani’s policies — free buses, city-run grocery stores — the feel-good messaging ignores residents who are concerned about their quality of life.

The law “is an existential threat for New York’s co-op and condo owners,” former New York Lieutenant Governor and Save NYC cofounder Betsy McCaughey said. 

“It will massively increase the costs for them to keep their home, while endangering the solvency of their homeowners’ associations. It may ultimately trap them from being able to sell their apartments as the market crashes and liens are placed against their developments for the unpaid conversion costs.”

“This will financially destroy these middle-class homeowners and any dreams they may have had for a comfortable retirement.”

On the eve of the election, 150 Queens residents gathered in the courtyard of Glen Oaks Village to oppose Local Law 97. Undeterred by the chilly, overcast weather, they warned their fellow New Yorkers that the radical climate policy could force them out of their homes.

One of the speakers was Alicia Fernandez, the treasurer of a 726-unit apartment building in Mamdani’s state assembly district.

“We had a full feasibility study done for our building, and the costs came to 60 million dollars for our 726 apartments. That is $60,000 per one-bedroom and over $125,000 for our three-bedroom units.”

The looming implementation of the law has Queens residents on edge.

“People don’t know if they can send their children to a certain college,” Fernandez said. “Should they reduce their 401(k) contributions? Can they afford to help their parents when their parents need help? Their lives are affected by this on a daily basis.”

Glen Oaks, a middle-class apartment complex with 2,904 units and over 10,000 shareholders, is representative of the hundreds of thousands of residents facing this crisis. Bob Friedrich, the president of Glen Oaks, has been speaking out on behalf of his shareholders since Local Law 97 was first drafted in 2019.

“[Our buildings] remain the last stronghold of affordable middle-class homeownership,” said Friedrich, noting that Local Law 97 “threatens that affordability.”

“A clean environment and affordable housing is not a binary choice,” Friedrich noted. “You can have one without destroying the other. A mayor must understand this and unfortunately, mayoral candidate Mamdani does not.”

Mamdani’s campaign has largely revolved around New York City’s affordability crisis. Like his ally, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Mamdani loves stoking conflict between the rich and the poor, the landlords and the tenants. He presents New York City as a town of the haves and have-nots, and that narrative has propelled him to the national spotlight.

But it’s an incomplete picture. While progressive politicians love to present New York City as a town of the ultra-rich and ultra-poor, there are several neighborhoods — many of them in the outer boroughs Mamdani represents — where a middle class has been able to thrive. Members of that middle class say that Local Law 97, and politicians like Mamdani, hurt them by misrepresenting their concerns and ignoring their existence.

“You know what no one is talking about? We are New York,” said Fernandez. Mamdani “is pandering to renters, to young people under 35, and all he cares about are bike lanes. That’s all Mamdani emails me about.”

“He doesn’t care about the seniors. He doesn’t care about the vets. He doesn’t care about the generations who have supported our communities. We are the silent majority.”

No matter who wins Tuesday’s race, the fight over Local Law 97 will continue until lawmakers make adjustments, or else doom New Yorkers to impossibly high housing costs in the name of climate justice.

New York’s middle class is raising its voice. The city’s next mayor would do well to hear them.

Jane Menton is a Queens resident and the Director of New Yorkers for Affordable Reliable Energy.

Can We Add Vietnam To The List Of Countries Abandoning Socialism?

November 02, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Even as New York City looks poised to try one more time to make socialism work, multiple countries that have gone down the socialist road are trying instead to turn off. Notable examples include Argentina, where President Xavier Milei’s party just scored a notable victory over the Peronists in legislative elections; and Bolivia where, in the August 2025 first round of the presidential election, after nearly 20 years of explicitly socialist rule under the MAS Party, accompanied by economic stagnation, the MAS candidate for President got just 2% of the vote.

Can we add Vietnam to the list of countries moving away from socialism? A November 1 piece at American Greatness by Stephen Young and Bradley Thayer asserts the thesis that we can. The headline is “Did We Just Win the Vietnam War?” Excerpt:

Half a century after America’s withdrawal, Vietnam has quietly vindicated U.S. sacrifice—abandoning Marxism for nationalism and embracing the very ideals America once defended. . . . While few Americans have noticed, Vietnam’s new General Secretary of the Communist Party, To Lam, has replaced Marxist-Leninism as the Party’s governing ideology with something more authentically Vietnamese: Truong Ton Dan Toc, or “Vietnamese nationalism.”

Young and Thayer cite some serious evidence in support of their thesis. My overall conclusion: Vietnam is making some meaningful strides in the right direction, but still, Young and Thayer are getting ahead of themselves.

Here are the main points that Y&T make in support of their thesis:

• In a speech on April 27, 2025, Vietnamese Communist Party General Secretary To Lam “presented his party as one dedicated to Vietnamese nationalism, not Marxist-Leninism, saying that honor will always be given to those who sacrificed for the Vietnamese people’s “happiness and prosperity” and “their truong ton [nationalism] and development.”
• “On May 4, 2025, the Politburo of the Vietnamese Communist Party adopted Resolution 68, putting private enterprise at the center of economic development. The resolution gave responsibility for national wealth creation to self-management, self-effort, and self-empowerment. The rights of private property will be guaranteed and protected. The Vietnamese state will henceforth ‘serve and support’ private enterprise and not contradict the ‘principles of the market.’”
• On October 8, 2025, in remarks closing the 14th Session of the Central Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party, “To Lam doubled down on his new vision for a non-Communist, truly Vietnamese Vietnam. Democracy must be guaranteed with discipline and transparency, with elections as broad-based politics to earn the trust of the people. Private enterprise must be pushed forward for national development. The benefit of the people must become the objective of the government’s new economic policy. Finally, dogma, meaning turgid Communist dogma, must be eliminated.”

These are all excellent points, and I certainly wish the Vietnamese people the best in their efforts to leave Communism behind and move forward to capitalism, democracy, and prosperity. However, the Communist Party has been in power continuously since the 1970s, and remains in power. No elections are scheduled, nor are any serious preparations for elections under way. Current GDP per capita is only about $4700 — a pitiful level, representing the fruits of decades of excessive government control of the economy.

The transition away from socialism or Communism is not simple. Once private business is allowed, some businesspeople start to succeed, and become rich. That makes them a threat to the power of the governing elite. And then the push-back begins, where only those businesspeople under the thumb of those in power are allowed to succeed. And the party re-tightens its grip. This is what has happened in China during the reign of Xi Jin-Ping.

In January 2019 I took a trip to Vietnam, and wrote a series of posts about my observations. Here is an excerpt from my post of January 16, 2019:

So with the perspective of the last 44 years, who “won” the Việt Nam War? The U.S. is very close to achieving all of its principal objectives without having risked any more lives or fired any more shots since 1973. Probably, about the same economic situation would prevail today if there had never been any Việt Nam War. Although proclaiming itself a “socialist republic,” Việt Nam is not part of an aggressive and militaristic communist bloc that continually threatens its neighbors. Its citizens are chasing prosperity through private property and free exchange just as fast as they can chase it. The only thing left of “socialism” is a government sector much larger than it needs to be or than it should be.

It would be nice if today’s government of Việt Nam could find itself feeling secure enough to stand for election like grown-up governments do; but there is no current prospect of that. On the other hand, achieving a government willing to conduct periodic elections was never really one of the main objectives that the U.S. was hoping to accomplish with its military force those many decades ago.

To Lam’s recent statements represent additional progress from where Vietnam was six years ago. But the progress is slow and incremental, rather than the sudden reversal painted by Young and Thayer. Hopefully, the change will continue, without the backsliding seen in China. I’ll believe that Vietnam has truly come out of its long winter when an election is held and advocates of a free economy win a decisive victory.

So has the U.S. finally won the Vietnam War? Basically yes. But the main lesson is that a free economy most often cannot be established by military force. With almost all academic elites teaching and believing economic nonsense, people need to learn the lessons of freedom through their own bitter experience. Little by little, Vietnam is getting there.

Magical Thinking Is Why Socialists Get Everything Wrong

October 28, 2025 By Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

What is the source of the wealth of a nation? That’s actually the question addressed by Adam Smith in “The Wealth of Nations.” Smith doesn’t put it in these exact terms, but his answer lies in some combination of hard work of the people plus figuring out how to work more efficiently through specialization and exchange.

And then there’s the other theory that the wealth just appears somehow, by luck or magic (or maybe by oppression of marginalized peoples). Which theory you buy into has everything to do with what you might think are appropriate public policies.

At Hot Air on October 16, David Strom embeds a clip of Bernie Sanders and AOC appearing together the previous day on CNN with host Kaitlin Collins. In the clip, Sanders launches into a rant, where he starts by declaring that in the U.S. we have a “housing crisis” and a “healthcare crisis” and an “education crisis.” And then he gets to this key quote:

We're living in the richest country in the history of the world. Right. Alright, you tell me why we're the only nation not to guarantee healthcare to all people. The only nation, not to guarantee paid family and medical leave. Why We have a $7 25 cents an hour minimum wage. 

Bernie clearly thinks this is shameful. That conclusion follows from a worldview where the country’s wealth came not from hard work and specialization and exchange, but rather from luck or magic or something like that. Apparently, Bernie has never stopped to consider that maybe we are the richest country in the world precisely because we don’t have the government dragging down the productive economy by raising taxes to provide, as an example, free healthcare to “all people,” which is a term that includes not just the poor but also the well off and the productive and even the rich. Instead, we provide the free healthcare only to the poor (with a very broad definition of that), and expect the majority of the citizens who are capable of doing it to provide for themselves. That’s how we free up resources to enable the people to apply them to productive uses and make the country wealthier.

If you look around, you can find endless examples of politicians — mostly of the Democratic persuasion — proceeding on the same assumption that wealth has come from luck or magic and now the only thing left to do is to issue government orders to achieve fairness and justice. For a second example today, I’ll take New Jersey Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill and her views on electricity generation.

Here’s some background on the Sherrill situation. Back in June the electric utilities in New Jersey increased rates by what they say is an “average” of 17-20%. Here is a piece from the Regional Plan Association reporting on that event. An average of 17-20% is high to begin with, but many New Jersey residents have reported that their own increases range up to a doubling of rates, or close to it. Unsurprisingly, many are upset. Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli has been making some headway blaming the increase on the current Democratic Governor, Phil Murphy.

And in fact Ciattarelli is completely right. Murphy has gone all in on the intermittent renewable energy fantasy, apparently never bothering to read the 50 or more posts at this website explaining in excruciating detail why increasing intermittent wind and solar generation would inevitably multiply the cost of electricity to consumers. Here is a piece from Philly Voice on October 19 explaining the basics of the Murphy energy and electricity policy as his term winds down. Excerpt:

Murphy's energy goals were always ambitious. In successive pronouncements, the governor called for New Jersey to draw 100% of its energy from clean sources, first by 2050 and then by 2035.

So New Jersey built lots of solar farms, and shuttered plants that used fossil fuels. Meanwhile, ambitious plans for offshore wind did not materialize (they would only have made things worse):

Murphy presided over a broad expansion of solar power in New Jersey, his greater plans to produce thousands of megawatts in offshore wind generation ultimately failed to create any new power, even as some existing power plants were shuttered, reducing the electricity New Jersey sends to its multi-state grid. . . .

Not mentioned in the Philly Voice piece, but covered in the RPA write-up, is that as it closed power plants New Jersey has had to buy more power in auctions from its regional grid, PJM. Of course, it now needs power when the intermittents aren’t working, which means it must buy just when everyone else wants to buy, and thus pay premium prices at the auctions.

So what is Sherrill’s answer? Declare a “State of Emergency” and order a freeze of utility rates! Here is Sherrill’s webpage laying out her “plan,” if you want to call it that. Some key quotes:

Utility costs are out of control in New Jersey. Families are spending almost their entire budget just to pay the electric bill this summer. It’s time for action, because people just can’t wait any longer. So on Day One as New Jersey’s next governor, I’m going to declare a State of Emergency on Utility Costs and freeze your utility rates. . . .

Then there’s chasing down the hoarders and wreckers or other hobgoblins who are making the electricity expensive:

I’ll immediately open up [the utilities’] books to see where rising costs to families are going, . . . I will instruct my Attorney General to take Trump and New Jersey’s grid operator, PJM, to court — in coordination with governors in our region — to force them to end their mismanagement. . . .

And don’t forget building more of those fantasy solar panels and battery farms that, after all, provide the “cheapest” electricity:

This means immediately breaking ground on new solar and battery storage projects. . . .

To her partial credit, Sherrill does concede a need to keep some natural gas and nuclear in the mix, at least for now. But the overall thrust of her approach is that producing electricity is an easy job to be done by the little people. If rates are going up it can’t because of counterproductive government policy, and therefore it must be because bad people are ripping the consumers off behind their backs.

Good luck to New Jerseyans if you elect this half-wit. If you do, you will be in for a fate not so different from that of New York, or Germany.

The New York Times And The Approaching New York Mayoral Election

October 23, 2024 By Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

In the early days of this blog — say, prior to about 2020 — I made a regular sport of heaping scorn on the New York Times. Every week or two I would take a particularly preposterous article and attempt to analyze whether it represented incomprehensible ignorance of the world versus intentional deception of the readership. Or maybe both! More recently, the Times has gotten so crazy, and the craziness so widely recognized, as rarely to justify such an effort on my part.

But then, sometimes I can’t stop myself. Take today’s Times.

As background, yesterday was the occasion of the last televised debate in the three-way mayoral race among Zohran Mamdani (Democrat), Andrew Cuomo (Independent) and Curtis Sliwa (Republican). Election Day is only 12 days away, and early voting starts in two days. If you go to the New York Post, you will find that the front page and several internal pages are devoted to coverage of the debate, including key soundbites from all candidates. That seems about normal to me. The Post’s take is that Cuomo had a good night, and Mamdani not so good, which you can take for what it’s worth (given that the Post is strongly supporting Cuomo at this point). Here is the Post’s cover from today:

 

And then there is the Times. I continue to subscribe to the print edition. I have gone through today’s edition multiple times to verify that the following statement is true: There is not one word about the debate. There is not even a mention that it took place.

Now granted, in this internet age the print edition no longer represents the totality of content at the Times. So I have gone through the website as well, looking not only for information about the debate, but anything about the campaign. First, I go to the opening page at www.nytimes.com, where my subscription gets me behind the paywall. Then I scroll way, way down — past Weather, and past More News, and past Culture and Lifestyle, and past The Athletic, and past Cooking, and past Games, and finally I come to an area called “News,” which among multiple other topics has three articles under a heading of “New York.” One of those is about gambling and the NBA, one is about an ICE raid on Canal Street, and the third has the headline “After Remark About Mamdani and Sept. 11, Cuomo Faces Democratic Rebukes.” This article also mentions nothing about the debate; and indeed the event reported in this story occurred this morning, and thus could not have been covered in today’s print edition. It seems that Cuomo appeared on a radio talk show hosted by conservative host Sid Rosenberg. The Times reports the exchange as follows:

Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo laughed along with a conservative radio host on Thursday who said that Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim mayoral candidate, would celebrate another Sept. 11-style terrorist attack on New York City. Within hours, the exchange ricocheted across the campaign trail, where Mr. Mamdani and a cross-section of Democrats denounced the conversation as Islamophobic and outside the bounds of even a heated campaign.

The Times then proceeds to quote a litany of Democrats who are horrified and take the opportunity to cast Cuomo as an “Islamophobe.”

If you click the link and read this article, and make it all the way to the end, you will find a section headed “More on the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race.” And in there is a link to this article: “N.Y.C. Mayoral Candidates Trade Zingers in Final Debate.” So yes, it does exist. I wonder how many people other than myself had the persistence to find it.

But getting back to the front page of today’s print edition, what we do find is a lengthy (some might say endless) puff piece about Mamdani’s days in high school, including the seminal moments of his political career running for class vice president: “How an Elite Public High School Set Mamdani on the Path to Politics. Zohran Mamdani’s time at the Bronx High School of Science expanded and helped shape his views of New York, from the cricket pitch to politics.” Here’s a good sample:

Cricket had never been recognized as an official sport in New York City’s public schools. Mr. Mamdani, like many South Asian schoolmates who had grown up around the game, wanted in anyway. And so, he and a friend effectively created a team themselves, with all the logistical fortitude available to distractible adolescents, amassing a cache of bats, pads and player sign-ups (“brown ain’t no requirement to play this game,” Mr. Mamdani urged on Facebook) and working to persuade enough students and adults that they were fronting a legitimate operation.

Just an innocent, enthusiastic, hard-working kid! And he promised free orange juice for all!

(Should I mention that my mother-in-law spent her career teaching at Bronx Science? She retired about 10 years before Mamdani got there.)

Getting back to what is actually on the front page of today’s Times, the biggest article in terms of real estate on the page has the headline “Pro-Palestine Activists Lament the Steep Cost.” (Slightly different headline online.). It’s all so sad:

For a time, the Gaza protests seemed to have the ingredients to grow into the next mass political movement for young Americans. The cause — which adherents saw as a struggle between a marginalized and dispossessed people and an oppressive global power — connected with university students, many of whom were already drifting to the left and had experienced their political awakenings during the racial reckoning in the summer of 2020. Many of them, in fact, started calling the Palestinian suffering “the moral issue of our time.”

And then, somehow, the American people just wouldn’t go along. It’s so inexplicable!

The other item taking up a big chunk of page 1 real estate is a picture of some activists gathering on an iceless King William Island in far-northern Canada to lament that global warming is making the Arctic more accessible to unwanted outsiders.

You get the picture. It’s not just that each article is more absurd than the next. It’s that none of them contain any actual useful information. They are all just the latest spin to promote one left-wing cause or another.

I apologize to the readers for continuing to spend money on this, but every once in a while it is useful to this blog to consult the Times to understand what the official party line of the left is on some particular subject.

A Bright New Energy Dawn In The UK

October 20, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 15 Comments

It was just a couple of weeks ago — October 3 to be precise — that I reported that the long-running “net zero” political consensus in the UK was finally “crumbling.” In the intervening two-plus weeks, the slow crumbling has turned into a rapid collapse.

The biggest roadblock for opponents of a green energy transition in the UK has been that the Conservative Party, which should have been the natural home of opposition to net zero, has instead long (and foolishly) allied itself with the net zero cause. In June 2019, the Conservatives (under Prime Minister Theresa May) put through an ambitious amendment to enhance the net zero targets of the 2008 Climate Act, and then proceeded to a general election that December where they won a substantial majority of 365 seats (in a parliament of 650). In subsequent years, a parliamentary faction in the House of Commons called the Net Zero Scrutiny Group struggled to get to about 50 or so Conservative members, who were far outnumbered by the opposing faction of the same party called the Conservative Environment Network. The UK voters had surely demonstrated their climate virtue.

But unfortunately things did not work out quite as they had anticipated. Energy bills accelerated until, as reported in the Telegraph on September 30 and then here on October 3, UK electricity bills have become the highest in the world. De-industrialization has set in and worsened. Britain’s last primary blast furnace steel works at Port Talbot closed in September 2024. A final rolling mill at Scunthorpe, now under Chinese ownership, threatened to close earlier this year until the government intervened. Similar reports of factory closures come regularly from all energy-intensive industries.

On October 6, immediately after my prior post, the Conservatives held a party conference in Manchester. One of the speakers was Claire Coutinho, the Shadow Energy Secretary. Her speech was an incredible breath of fresh air, and marked a dramatic u-turn from prior Conservative energy policy. The title was “Energy Is Prosperity.” Some excerpts:

In the last few decades, we’ve lost sight of a simple truth. Energy is a good thing. Conservatives know that great eras of British growth and prosperity happen when we have an abundance of cheap, reliable energy. . . . [E]nergy is not just part of the economy. It is the economy. It feeds into the costs of every business, every journey, every loaf of bread. . . . That’s why right now, the cost of energy is one of the biggest problems we have. It’s a stealth tax that is making us all poorer. And it’s killing our industry.

The Conservatives have finally figured out that the net zero agenda is a program to make the people poorer in sacrifice to the climate religion. More from Coutinho’s speech:

[H]ere’s the problem with the Left – they’re infected with a poverty mindset. They believe that Britain has a duty to make itself poorer on the altar of Net Zero. And they think that ordinary people should be the servants of their climate targets. So, take air conditioning. In America, nearly every single home has air con. Here in Britain? Just 5%. But Sadiq Khan’s London Plan effectively bans air con in all new homes - why? Because it uses too much energy. Rather than people fitting into the Government’s policy on energy, I believe a Conservative energy policy should serve the needs of the people.

Maybe I’m crazy, but I suspect that opposition to a program of intentional impoverishment of the people ought to be an electoral winner. The Labour Party and its Energy Minister, Ed Miliband, continue even now to claim that building more wind turbines will make electricity cheaper. But that claim is based on pretending that huge costs of intermittency, backup, storage, and transmission don’t exist. It has taken a long time for the reality of those costs to become clear, but the truth is now out.

The change in direction from the Conservative Party has come none too soon. On October 10, Bretibart News reported that the UK’s grid manager, National Energy Systems Operator, was forecasting reduced safety margins for electricity generation this winter, at the same time as the Labour government proceeds with dynamiting coal plants that could still be used for backup. The headline is “‘Tight Days’ For Electricity This Winter Says Network Operator as UK Presses on With Dynamiting Potential Backup Power Stations.” Excerpt:

Most notable was the revelation that the gas supply margin this winter is the lowest in years and down by 34 per cent over last year, a change [National Gas] attributes to the dwindling supply of gas being extracted from the North Sea. . . . 1960s-vintage power plants were brought online on command to cover tight margins several times in recent winters. Yet they have now all powered down for good, cut off from the national grid and are being demolished. Indeed, just days before today’s announcement of potential “tight days”, fresh footage of some of the final coal-powered power stations in the UK being dramatically dynamited was published.

I’m not going to predict that Britain will definitely experience major blackouts this winter. But the risk is far higher than it was just a few years ago, and that risk will continue to increase in coming years, until Britain can get itself to build more dispatchable generation, which in anything less than 15 years means natural gas or coal.

And it is not just the Shadow Energy Minister who has caught on. In today’s New York Post there is an op-ed by Kemi Badenoch, the new Conservative Party leader and prospective PM should the Conservatives win the next election. (It is not obvious that they will do so, since the next election could be years away, and another party called Reform UK — also net zero opponents — leads both Labour and the Conservatives in the polls.). Ms. Badenoch’s op-ed covers multiple topics, including immigration and the Middle East as well as energy. Here are some things she has to say on the topic of energy:

[A] place I agree with this White House is on energy. Cheap energy is the foundation of a growing economy. No serious politician can talk about putting money in people’s pockets if they’re also doing things that make energy bills more expensive. . . . [I]n Britain, Labour ministers are so obsessed with chasing net-zero targets that they’re making life harder for ordinary families. . . . We’re sitting on North Sea oil and gas, yet the government refuses to grant new licenses.  We’re now in the crazy position of importing gas from our near-neighbors Norway, who are getting stuck into those same oil fields in the North Sea.

The Conservatives came close to destroying the party by joining the Left’s net zero crusade. The current u-turn may or may not be enough to save the party. However, adding the Conservatives’ position in the polls to that of Reform UK would indicate that opposition to net zero is now close to if not an absolute majority electoral position. That represents an enormous swing in a few short years.

NYISO Weighs In On The New York State Draft Energy Plan

October 14, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

NYISO is the New York Independent System Operator — the not-for-profit entity created to manage New York State’s electrical grid. Their main job is assuring that there is sufficient electricity generated moment to moment to closely match customer demand. Neighboring states have multi-state ISOs (i.e., PJM and ISO-NE) to do the same job, but being New York, we have our own.

If there is any entity that ought to be loudly outspoken about New York’s ridiculous energy schemes, it is NYISO. After all, when generating most of our electricity from wind and sun proves not to work, as it will, and when the blackouts follow, as they will, NYISO stands to get a large share of the blame.

So where are they? The good news is that they are slowly waking up. The bad news is that even now they are not being nearly as outspoken or as loud as they should be. On October 6 they submitted a long (25 page) Comment on the State’s new Energy Plan. That Comment takes the level of their expressed alarm to a new, if still unjustifiably muted, level.

As background, in 2019 New York State enacted its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, mandating, among other things, 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030, and 100% from “zero emissions” sources by 2040. At the same time, New York City enacted its Local Law 97, mandating (via complex maximum emissions formulas) that most large buildings convert to electric heat by 2030. Supposedly, the State and City would enable fulfillment of these mandates through having developers construct large amounts of wind and solar generators. That process had barely gotten off the ground when, earlier this year, the federal government ended nearly all of the grants and subsidies that had made construction of wind and solar facilities at all feasible.

On July 25 the State’s Energy Planning Board came out with its self-described “Draft Energy Plan.” It’s a “draft” because they are taking comments, and may even make some revisions depending on those (don’t count on it). In a post on August 11 I described the so-called Plan as “hundreds of pages of fluff,” cheerleading for a supposed transition to a renewables-based electricity system, but lacking anything as basic as a feasibility study or a cost projection. I then submitted my own Comment on the Plan, and had a further post describing that on September 27. Key takeaway:

[T]he so-called “Energy Plan” is not an energy plan at all.  It would more accurately be described as random musings and wishful thinking by some completely incompetent people who have no idea what they are doing.

So with that background, let’s take a look at NYISO’s newly-issued Comment. This sentence from page 1 is fairly representative of the overall tone:

The NYISO submits these comments to highlight electric system reliability concerns and to offer approaches that support ongoing electric system reliability through competitive markets for consideration as part of the final State Energy Plan.

They are submitting comments to “highlight . . . concerns.” Yes, I guess so, but I find that a wholly inadequate statement of the problem. In fact, the energy bureaucracies are driving the State down an impossible path from which it becomes increasingly difficult to exit before disaster strikes.

This from pages 2-3 is a little stronger, but still much less specific than it needs to be:

Large energy-intensive economic development projects, such as semiconductor manufacturing plants and data centers, are driving up demand for electricity significantly after relatively flat demand trends over the last decade. Collectively, all these elements create uncertain conditions today, in the near term, and in the longer term, and each uncertainty has the real potential to cause major impacts on electric system reliability. 

All electric industry stakeholders, including the state agencies involved, must be aware of and factor these concerns into their planning and strategy. Progress towards the CLCPA goals, other public policies, and supplying the electricity that New Yorkers demand requires the State Energy Plan to support a well-functioning, reliable electric power sector. Reliable electric power is the foundation of the State’s plans to electrify other aspects of the economy and to reduce emissions. The NYISO urges the Board and NYSERDA to consider these comments and prioritize electric system reliability in the final State Energy Plan.

They just can’t make themselves say out loud that wind and solar by themselves cannot provide reliable electricity to match demand.

As you move through the Comment, the statements get stronger, little by little. From page 6:

Fossil-fuel-based generation is and will continue to be necessary to meet consumer demand and to maintain electric system reliability. The final State Energy Plan must include a recommendation consistent with the Draft Plan observations that combustion generating units “remain essential parts of electric grid reliability and affordability, and retirement of these units will not be able to occur until resources that provide the same grid reliability attributes are put in place.”

From page 8:

Simply maintaining the existing fossil-fuel-based generation fleet and carefully managing the requirement of these resources over the next fifteen years is not enough to maintain electric system reliability. The electric system needs all existing generation resources and needs new generation resources before the current fleet suffers a catastrophic failure that jeopardizes the health, safety, and welfare of New Yorkers.

“New generation resources” are needed, but the State’s Climate Act requires those to be carbon-emissions-free. We are therefore talking about the magical “dispatchable emissions-free resources” (DEFRs) that will supposedly replace fossil fuel generation to meet the requirements of the CLCPA. Can we somehow get ourselves to say that those don’t exist and are not going to exist in any relevant time frame? We come to a discussion of that subject on page 14:

The NYISO fully supports identifying and developing technologies that have the greatest potential to support electric system reliability and the needs that will arise throughout this energy transition. As noted in the Draft Plan, many of the technologies necessary to meet system needs for firm, dispatchable capacity are not yet commercially available at scale. The development of these technologies must start now as these technologies need to be proven and deployed to the electric grid before the resources that currently supply the energy that consumers demand and the reliability attributes needed to support the grid can be retired.

The DEFRs “are not yet commercially available at scale” and therefore “development . . . must start now.” How lame is that? They just can’t bring themselves to say that “you must admit that this is not going to happen.” With a mandate for tens of thousands of megawatts of these mythical generators by 2030, and it’s almost 2026, we haven’t even started “development.”

At least you don’t need to read between the lines of this Comment to see that the NYISO is issuing a very explicit warning to the State’s energy planners. But still, with the planners offering no idea as to feasibility, cost, or time frame for availability of necessary new resources to support the energy transition, the best the NYISO can say is to “start development now”? What they should be saying is that this can’t work, it won’t work, and continuing further down this path is incompetent, irresponsible, and dangerous.

Unlike the people at the other State energy bureaucracies like NYSERDA and the Energy Planning Board, I’m not saying that the people at NYISO lack competence. However, it is a problem that the entity is organized as a not-for-profit. Nobody there has any skin in the game, and they are unlikely to be held accountable when there are catastrophic system failures. It’s just one more instance of a failed socialist-lite model.

Can President Trump Deploy The National Guard To Portland Or Chicago?

October 11, 2025 Francis Menton, @ Manhattan Contrarian

The first nine months of the second Trump administration have seen extraordinary litigation efforts by opponents of the government seeking to block its initiatives of every sort. This page at Lawfare Media tracks some 190 active cases challenging Trump administration actions; and I don’t think that that list of 190 is comprehensive. The cases cover subject matter areas ranging from spending reductions to employee terminations to migrant deportations to regulatory actions, among many others.

Those following these litigations, or some of them, have undoubtedly noticed a pattern whereby a District Court judge, usually in a blue state, enjoins the administration’s action, only to have that injunction stayed by a Court of Appeals or by the Supreme Court within a few days or weeks. This pattern has been repeated multiple times in areas including spending reductions and migrant deportations. Although none of the cases has yet reached full merits review at the Supreme Court, nevertheless there is a growing sense of District Court judges going beyond their job of enforcing the law, and instead seeking to supplant legitimate executive authority with their own policy preferences.

The latest series of cases involves the efforts of President Trump to deploy units of the National Guard to Portland and Chicago to support the efforts of ICE in those cities to enforce the federal immigration laws. About two weeks ago, Trump called up units of the Oregon National Guard to be deployed to Portland, citing ongoing demonstrations at an ICE facility there, said to be interfering with the law enforcement actions. According to a report at NPR here, on Saturday (October 4) a federal judge in Oregon, Karen Immergut, issued a TRO blocking the deployment of the National Guard in Portland. Here, from the NPR piece, is an excerpt from Judge Immergut’s ruling:

“This country has a longstanding and foundational tradition of resistance to government overreach, especially in the form of military intrusion into civil affairs,” Immergut wrote. She later continued, “This historical tradition boils down to a simple proposition: this is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law.”

Meanwhile, over in Chicago, a very similar story is playing out. In a suburb called Broadview, site of an ICE facility, protests in recent days have turned violent. A piece in the New York Post on Friday described the protests as “raging,” and the crowd as “unruly” and as “unleash[ing] chaos.” Here is one of several pictures from the Post piece:

President Trump also sought to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, and specifically to Broadview, to support ICE in its law enforcement efforts. On Thursday (October 9) a federal judge in Chicago, April Perry, in a case brought by the State of Illinois and City of Chicago, temporarily blocked that deployment. From the New York Times, October 9:

A federal judge in Illinois issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday evening blocking the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops in the Chicago area, days after the president called up soldiers over the Democratic governor’s objection. The judge, April M. Perry, a Biden appointee, said in court that “I have seen no credible evidence that there is a danger of a rebellion in the state of Illinois,” rejecting one of the administration’s stated reasons for the deployment.

Here’s the problem for Judges Immergut and Perry: There is a statute called the Insurrection Act that would appear to explicitly permit Trump to do what he is doing. Here is some of the text of that Act, from 10 USC Section 252:

Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.

Note that the statutory text begins with the words “whenever the President considers . . .” — thus committing this determination to the President rather than to the courts. From what I can find, the argument that this determination is non-justiciable because of the statutory language was clearly made by the government’s lawyers to both the Oregon and Illinois judges, to no avail.

And so we are finding the usual pattern as these cases quickly get to the court of appeal on an emergency basis. A three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard an emergency application in the Oregon case on Thursday October 9. From Politico, October 9:

[A] three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals — which covers Oregon and other western states — signaled it was likely to rule in Trump’s favor on his deployment of the guard in Portland. Two members of the 9th Circuit panel — both appointed by Trump during his first term — expressed disagreement with an earlier ruling from a district judge in Oregon who had found Trump’s basis for federalizing 200 of the state’s guard troops to be illegal. Their comments suggested that the panel is likely to lift the earlier ruling while the case continues. The two Trump appointees on the appeals panel emphasized the extraordinary deference courts owe the president on matters related to the use of the military to protect federal property and personnel.

“I’m sort of trying to figure out how a district court of any nature is supposed to get in and question whether the president’s assessment of executing the laws is right or wrong,” one of the Trump appointees, Judge Ryan Nelson, said. Judge Bridget Bade, the other Trump appointee on the panel, also appeared to favor putting a hold on a decision issued Saturday by U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut blocking Trump’s use of the Oregon National Guard. Immergut also is a Trump appointee.

Over in Illinois, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals today (October 11) issued an unsigned emergency Order staying Judge Perry’s TRO to the extent of allowing Trump to federalize the National Guard, but denying a stay as to “deployment of the National Guard.” So deployment will have to await a further order of that court, or of the Supreme Court.

I frankly can’t see how the injunctions of Judges Immergut and Perry are not going to get completely reversed, whether by the respective Courts of Appeal or by the Supremes. I’m thinking of the Chinese invasion force landing on the beaches of California, and some federal district judge ordering that the President cannot deploy troops to defend the country until a trial is held to determine if the invasion is serious enough to allow him to do that.

Incidentally, I should mention that Oregon Judge Immergut is herself a Trump appointee, although she clearly also got approval of Oregon’s Democratic Senators Merkley and Wyden. Judge Perry is a Biden appointee.

HUD: You Are Getting Scammed By NYCHA. Time To Pay Attention!

October 08, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

A favorite subject of mine over the years has been the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA. NYCHA operates hundreds of buildings housing some 500,000 people, in some 170,000 +/- apartments, mostly built from the 1950s to the 1970s. Organized on a pure socialist model of public ownership with heavily subsidized rents, NYCHA has followed the trajectory of all socialist schemes ever attempted, having gone from an excited beginning into a long, slow death spiral that has now been ongoing for at least two decades.

When NYCHA was building the buildings, everyone seems to have assumed that bricks and mortar just last forever; so nobody bothered to consider that at some point the capital investment would need to be renewed, or to plan for how that would be done. By the 2010s, the buildings were turning 40, 50 and even 60 years old. In 2015 NYCHA announced that it had suddenly discovered a need for some $17 billion to fund urgently-needed repairs. Thereafter, the amounts claimed to be needed for such repairs escalated rapidly: by 2021 it was $32 billion; and by 2023 a new “audit” found the “need” to be $78 billion — about $460,000 per unit. And this is for “low income” housing. (For comparison, according to the most recent data from FRED, the median price of a single family house in the U.S. in the second quarter of 2025 was about $410,000.)

So what’s the plan now? In recent weeks, news reports have revealed that renovation projects are now moving forward on substantial numbers of NYCHA buildings (although a small percentage of the total). Costs, to the extent announced, are in the range of well over $400,000, and up to about $600,000, per unit. And where is the money going to come from? You will not be surprised to learn that they are being as opaque as possible about that. However, it is clear that the main plan is to scam the money out of the federal taxpayers.

HUD: It is time for you to get on top of this situation and shut it down.

Here is a smattering of reports on NYCHA renovation projects that I have come across in the past couple of weeks:

• Something called the NYCHA Journal had a piece on September 25 with the headline “NYCHA & Partners Close on Financing for $433M PACT Project to Renovate 5 Brooklyn Developments.”The piece states that the $433 million will cover “nearly 2,000 residents” in “14 residential buildings.” Since NYCHA buildings average about 3 residents per unit, this plan involves about 700 units, which means that the renovation cost per unit is in the range of $600,000 per unit.
• On October 3, the New York YIMBY website reported that a NYCHA project in East Harlem called the Gaylord White Houses had secured some $272.6 million in financing to renovate four buildings with 523 residential units. That would come to some $521,000 per unit. Again, the financing was said to come via this PACT program.
• On October 4, YIMBY reported that a “$93M Renovation Project [had been] Approved For Bronx River Addition In Soundview, The Bronx.” “The project will include repairs across 226 apartments in two buildings. . . .” $93 million divided by 226 units comes to about $412,000 per unit.
• An October 6 piece, again at New York YIMBY, reported that the NYC Public Housing Preservation Trust is seeking “requests for proposals” to renovate two NYCHA buildings in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The two buildings are said to contain “more than 400 residents” in 209 units. No price is yet available for this prospective renovation.

So what exactly is the plan to pay back these very large new loans?

As background, the average rent on a NYCHA apartment (2024 data) is $588 per month, or just over $7000 per year. Moreover, rents are limited to 30% of resident income, and the average income (same link) is said to be about $25,000 — so NYCHA has almost no ability to raise rents. The $588/month current rent covers only about a third of operating costs, with almost all of the rest provided by federal subsidies totaling in the range of $2.5 billion per year.

But the new loans are going to more than double the operating shortfall. Assuming that the borrowing entity can get a 6% interest rate (likely better than you could get today), and a renovation cost per unit of $400,000 (very optimistic), that means $24,000 annually of added interest cost per unit, or $2000 per month. Tenant rent stays at $588 per month, so taxpayer subsidy must then go from about $1500 per month to more like $3500 per month. If extended to all NYCHA apartments and paid for by the federal taxpayers, the extra $2000 per month per unit would take annual federal subsidies to NYCHA from about $2.5 billion to more like $6.5 billion. (For comparison, the total of rents collected from all NYCHA tenants is around $1 billion per year.)

The renovations are being financed under something called the PACT program (Permanent Affordability Commitment Together). The NYCHA Journal piece linked above has this to say about the PACT program:

The PACT program transitions developments from traditional Section 9 assistance to Project-Based Section 8 and unlocks funding for resident-selected PACT partners to complete comprehensive repairs and to oversee daily property management of the campus.

New York City has a web page further describing the PACT program. From that page:

Through PACT, developments will be included in the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) and convert to a more stable, federally-funded program called Project-Based Section 8. This allows NYCHA to unlock funding to complete comprehensive repairs, while also ensuring homes remain permanently affordable and residents have the same basic rights as they possess in the public housing program. . . . Why do we need PACT? NYCHA needs more than $78 billion to fully restore and renovate all of its buildings, but the federal government has provided only a fraction of the funding needed for these improvements.

They are “unlocking” federal funding by going from “traditional Section 9 assistance” to “project-based Section 8" funding. “Section 9” means a multi-billion dollar annual subsidy payable directly from HUD to NYCHA. “Section 8” means that each tenant gets a subsidy in the form of a housing voucher covering the difference between his rent (30% of income) and a rental amount sufficient to cover all the new costs. This will then be “more stable” — with that term apparently meaning no more need to rely on tenants who may or may not pay rent when due, when you can now just get a big regular handout from Uncle Sugar’s infinite pile of money. The federal taxpayer will go from paying around two-thirds of the cost of operating these buildings, to more like five-sixths. And by the way, these buildings don’t pay property tax!

So, HUD, if you just let this happen, you will get scammed for an additional $4 billion a year or so, while NYCHA will remain as a sore tooth in New York City for potentially generations to come. You have an opportunity to shut it down now, through the device of not awarding unlimited Section 8 subsidies to this left-wing graft factory. With that step, you can force NYCHA into a long overdue fundamental restructuring, which otherwise will never occur. Time to pay attention!

 

The Problem With A Regime That Criminalizes "Hate Speech"

October 05, 2025 Francis Mentor @ Manhattan Contrarian

“Hate speech.” The term calls to mind every sort of vile and disgusting insult and racial and ethnic slur. Who could possibly be in favor of allowing that? Large numbers of people instinctively assume that hateful statements, particularly those based on racial, religious or ethnic categories, must surely be illegal.

But here in the U.S., such statements in general are not illegal, and not subject to criminal prosecution. A couple of weeks ago, our Attorney General Pam Bondi was recorded on a podcast saying that “We will absolutely . . . go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech . . . . You can’t have that hate speech in the world in which we live.” I, among many others, pointed out that Ms. Bondi had badly mis-stated U.S. law on the subject. Our Supreme Court has drawn a line under the First Amendment that makes almost all “hate speech” constitutionally protected, short of incitement to imminent violence.

If you think that that line might not make sense, consider the alternative. Over in the UK, they have seen fit to criminalize “hate speech.” The main statute is the Public Order Act of 1986, with subsequent amendments. Relevant statutory text includes this:

A person who uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting, is guilty of an offence if . . . he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred. . . .

Amendments from 2006 and 2008 extended the statute also to criminalize speech involving “stirring up hatred” regarding religion and sexual orientation.

With these statutes on the books, the UK is now reaping the consequences.

There is a fundamental difference between our “free speech” regime, and the British “hate speech” regime. Our right of free speech is a right of individuals against the government. It restricts the government as to what speech it can prosecute criminally. The “hate speech” regime now in force in the UK does the opposite: it empowers police and prosecutors to pick and choose whom they want to arrest and prosecute. Unfortunately no prosecution regime is ever completely objective or politically neutral, and thus inevitably “hate speech” ends up defined as most of the speech of our political adversaries, but never the speech of our allies. In today’s UK, that proposition is getting taken to absurd extremes.

Here a piece from Human Events on August 20. It describes an incident that arose when the site of a proposed new mosque in northern England attracted a group of demonstrators:

A 23-year-old man was arrested during a protest at the site of a proposed mosque on the edge of the Lake District after allegedly shouting “We love bacon” in a singsong voice, per the Telegraph. Police officers escorted the single father away from the demonstration, and he could face court action on charges of public disorder or racially aggravated conduct. . . .

The Muslim religion bans eating pork, and apparently the allegation is that saying “we love bacon” therefore “stirs up hatred” against Muslims.

A piece in the New York Post on August 19 describes the case of Lucy Connolly of Spofford. In July 2024 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana attacked a Taylor Swift-themed children’s dance party in Southport, killing three children and injuring ten others. Within hours of the attack, Ms. Connolly published a tweet that stated “Mass deportation now, set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care… if that makes me racist so be it.” (It’s not clear from the source, LBC, whether the asterisks were in the original or were inserted by LBC.). It turned out that Mr. Rudakubana was born in Wales and was a UK citizen, although his parents are immigrants from Rwanda. Connolly quickly realized her mistake and deleted the tweet within three hours after posting; but police still showed up a week later to arrest her. Ms. Connolly then pled guilty and was sentenced to 31 months in prison for “publishing written material with the intent to stir up racial hatred,” an offense under [the Public Order Act] from 1986. In August 2025, Ms. Connolly was released after serving about 10 months of her sentence.

Or consider the case of Irish comedian Graham Linehan. In April 2025, while living in Arizona, Mr. Linehan published a tweet stating “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls." On September 1, Linehan traveled to the UK, and was greeted at Heathrow airport by some 5 policemen to arrest him. Linehan was promptly put on trial in Westminster Magistrate’s Court. I can’t find any word at this writing of whether he has yet been convicted or sentenced.

On the other side of the ledger, consider some of the things that are said regularly at mosques in the UK. In November 2023, in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacre, a British site called Talk TV put together a compilation of video clips of Muslim clerics speaking at various UK mosques. That compilation was then re-tweeted by British anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson on October 2, 2025. The compilation includes only videos, but I have transcribed some excerpts:

• From a preacher said to be speaking at the Redbridge Islamic Center, Ilford: “Oh Allah, curse the Jews and the children of Israel. Oh Allah, curse the infidels . . . . Oh Allah, break their works, shake their feet, disburse and tear apart their unity, and ruin their houses and destroy their homes.”
• From a preacher said to be speaking in Birmingham: “Behind me the stones will speak and say, oh Muslim behind me there is a Yahudi, come and kill him.”
• No location or mosque is given for this one: “Oh God, hear our hearts regarding the usurping Jews and of every enemy of you and the Muslims. Oh God, limit their number, kill them indiscriminately and don’t leave any of them alive. Oh God, our Lord, shake the ground beneath their feet and freeze the blood in their veins, make them captive to the Muslims.”
• And another one without a specific location or mosque given: “Oh revenger, revenge from the oppressive aggressor occupying Zionists. Oh Allah, shake the earth beneath them. Oh Allah, limit their number, kill them indiscriminately and do not leave any of them alive.”

The narrator of the Talk TV piece says that they have taken this information to the authorities, who say that they are investigating and will take appropriate action. However, here nearly two years later, there is no report of any prosecutions.

Robinson appends this comment to his retweet of Talk TV’s compilation: “Hate speech laws are only used against natives to silence them whilst our country is flooded & raped.” Sadly, he is right. The speech of the political enemies of the regime, even if seemingly innocuous, will be twisted to find “hateful” implicit connotations. Meanwhile, the speech of allies of the regime, no matter how hateful that speech may be or how explicitly calling for violence or even mass murder, will never be prosecuted.

Thank God for our First Amendment, and for a Supreme Court willing to uphold it.