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.

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.

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!

 

In The UK The Net Zero Consensus Has Crumbled

October 03, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian  

Here in the U.S., ever since the push to “de-carbonize” the energy system to “save the planet” from global warming got going in a big way 20 or so years ago, there has always been a critical mass of skeptics strongly pushing back. I count myself among them. Another prominent example is the CO2 Coalition, an organization of about 200 scientists and intellectuals who dissent from the climate orthodoxy. Large portions of our Republican Party — recently approaching near unanimity — have also joined the dissent from climate orthodoxy.

But over in Europe, the same has not been true at all; and it has particularly not been true in the UK. There, at least until very recently, there was a near total consensus across the political spectrum in favor of mandatory reductions in carbon emissions, with an ultimate goal of zero emissions. In 2008, the then-Labour-controlled UK Parliament passed the Climate Change Act, setting a mandatory target for reduction of “greenhouse gas” emissions in the energy system of 80% by 2050. The vote in Parliament in favor of this Act and its mandate was 463-3 in favor. In 2019, Parliament amended the mandatory target to increase the required greenhouse gas reduction to a full 100% by 2050 — in other words, full “net zero.” That amendment passed by acclamation without any recorded dissent. This time, Theresa May was the Prime Minister, and her Conservative Party held a comfortable majority in the Parliament.

A lonely exception to the UK’s total climate consensus has been the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a small think tank founded in 2009 by Lord Nigel Lawson and Benny Peiser. (I serve on the Board of its American affiliate.). For many years, literally nobody listened to us.

We dissenters have long warned that the “net zero” fantasy was doomed to failure. A new centrally-planned energy system based mostly on intermittent wind and sun would inevitably prove to be wildly expensive, and would never be able to replace 100%, or even close to that, of the existing system. They didn’t believe us.

Well, let’s take a look at where the UK finds itself today.

The Telegraph had the story on September 30: “Britain paying highest electricity prices in the world as net zero costs rise.” (The link goes to a Yahoo re-publication of the piece that avoids the Telegraph’s paywall.). Excerpt:

New data published on Tuesday showed the price paid by UK industry for power was 63pc higher than in France and 27pc higher than in Germany. Britain is also the second-most expensive country in the world for household electricity, with billpayers paying twice as much as those in the US. . . . Cornwall Insight also warned on Tuesday that household energy bills will jump by £100 in April. The figures will increase pressure on the Energy Secretary, who has been accused of driving up electricity costs by adding green levies on to bills to fund renewables. This includes billions of pounds in subsidies for carbon capture and wind farms, which have contributed to the UK paying the highest power prices in the world.

Ed Miliband, the UK’s climate zealot Energy Secretary referred to there, is quoted attempting to shift the blame for recent net-zero-related energy price increases to — Margaret Thatcher!

[Miliband] told The Guardian: . . . “The truth is, the reason why people’s living standards are stuck, why growth has been so low and public services are on their knees, is … trickle-down economics from the 80s, which left us with huge inequality and austerity in the 20s.”

Good luck with that, Ed. But elsewhere in the UK, people are starting to catch on. Although he won’t say it out loud, even Miliband himself may be starting to catch on.

The political party currently leading in polling for parliamentary voting intentions in the next prospective UK election is Reform UK — a party only formed in 2021. (According to the most recent (September 26) poll from Politico EU, Reform UK leads with 30% of expressed voting intent, followed by Labour at 20%, Conservative at 16%, Liberal Democrats at 15%, and Greens at 10%.). Reform UK has made undoing the net zero mandate its second biggest issue after immigration. Reform UK lays out its platform in a document on its website titled “Our Contract With You.” They don’t mince any words. From page 8 of that document, headed “Net Zero is Crippling our Economy”:

Net Zero is pushing up bills, damaging British industries like steel, and making us less secure. . . . We must not impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets. CRITICAL REFORMS NEEDED IN THE FIRST 100 DAYS: Scrap Net Zero and Related Subsidies. Ditching Net Zero could save the public sector over £30 billion per year for the next 25 years. Scrap Annual £10 Billion of Renewable Energy Subsidies. Achieve this through equivalent taxes on them. Renewables are not cheaper. Our bills have increased dramatically in line with the huge increase in renewables capacity over the last 15 years.

Nor is Reform UK the only party to break ranks with the prior consensus. New Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has also recently pledged to repeal the Climate Act mandates. From Politico EU, October 2:

Kemi Badenoch’s Conservative Party has pledged to ditch the U.K.’s flagship climate law if they get back into government, in the latest signal that the party is firmly walking back on net zero commitments. . . . The Climate Change Act was ushered through parliament under Labour’s last term in power by then Energy Secretary Ed Miliband in 2008. It was backed by consecutive Conservative governments and was even tightened up by former Prime Minister Theresa May in 2019 to make the U.K.'s 2050 net zero target legally-binding.  However, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has promised to scrap it, blaming the law for pushing up energy bills and creating bureaucratic delays. “Climate change is real. But Labour’s laws tied us in red tape, loaded us with costs, and did nothing to cut global emissions,” Badenoch said.

And meanwhile, inside both the Liberal Democrats and the governing Labour Party, while they continue to talk the talk of pure climate religion, cracks are definitely starting to appear.

The Lib Dems have sought to position themselves as the most pure of all mainstream parties on climate issues. Notably, the Lib Dem platform has long called for net zero by 2045, thus five years ahead of the official Labour target of 2050. But at the Lib Dem party conference just held on September 22, members voted to ditch the earlier date and to align with the Labour target of 2050. From Politico EU, September 22:

The Liberal Democrats have scrapped their 2045 net-zero target and aligned with the Labour government's 2050 goal instead. Members passed a motion at the party's conference in Bournemouth Sunday, which supports “the U.K.’s existing net-zero framework and 2050 target.” This replaces the pledge, which had been party policy since 2019, to achieve net zero by 2045.

And even within the governing Labour Party, home of zealot Energy Minister Miliband, reality is slowly catching up. From Politico EU, September 25:

UK energy chief eyes an oil and gas loophole. . . . The U.K. government has quietly handed ministers new powers to reverse flagship climate promises and approve new drilling for fossil fuels.  Under new guidance drawn up in Whitehall, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband can give weight to the “wider benefits to the interests of the nation,” alongside environmental concerns, when deciding the future of controversial oil and gas fields.  Miliband has long insisted the U.K. must wean itself off high-polluting fossil fuels produced in oil and gas heartlands off the Scottish coast and embrace clean energy, like solar and wind power. But experts believe the new powers, buried in guidance published this summer by Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, provide a loophole to approve more drilling. 

It’s rather odd to see them calling oil and gas drilling a “loophole,” since the whole point of net zero has been to drive oil and gas entirely out of the energy system.

The simple conclusion to be drawn is that the inevitable cost impact of chasing the impossible net zero dream has caught up with its proponents. With soaring costs now crippling British industry and crushing consumers, net zero has become electorally toxic. Miliband can try blaming Thatcher or oil companies or whoever he wants, but at some point the voters aren’t that stupid.

It may be a while until the next election, but when it comes, I would expect it to be the death knell for net zero in the UK.

Biggest Hogwash Of The Week: Justice Department Independence From Politics

September 30, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Late Friday afternoon (September 26) the U.S. Justice Department filed an indictment against former FBI Director James Comey in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The indictment is extremely brief — barely one page of text — and focuses only on a single statement made by Comey in sworn Congressional testimony given on September 30, 2020, which statement is alleged in the indictment to be false.

For a few reasons, I’m not going to comment here on the strength or weakness of the indictment. First, the indictment does not allege the related facts that go to whether the statement in question was actually true or false; and I don’t have access to all the facts (like documents that may be in the possession of DOJ) that may be relevant to figuring out the truth or falsity of the statement. And second, it is notable that the indictment was filed on the eve of the expiration of the statute of limitations for this piece of testimony (the five year period after the statement would have expired today), and the indictment may well be amended to add more allegations.

Note that essentially every other commentator on this subject is in the same position that I am in of not being able to make a full analysis of the merits of the indictment. That has not prevented the usual suspects from criticizing President Trump for pushing for the indictment. To some degree, I agree with these criticisms, or at least I am sympathetic to them, to the extent that they criticize the President for seeking to use the justice system to get back at his political enemies.

But then, seemingly in each case, the critics go farther, and assert that with this indictment President Trump has done something totally new and different, and has entirely broken or transformed (or maybe “trampled on”) the former longstanding and proper norms of the Justice Department of never, ever abusing the justice system to attack political opponents. These assertions are not potentially appropriate criticism, but rather are complete hogwash. Indeed they are far worse than mere hogwash, because even if you assume the worst about the indictment of Comey being nothing more than meritless retribution from a vengeful President, the level of political misuse of the Justice Department and justice system by the current administration remains a small fraction of the misuse by the prior regime.

And then there is the much longer history in this country of misuse of the justice system to attack and disable political opponents. I’ll get into some of that below.

Let me start with a few key quotes from the usual suspects. The New York Times in its Saturday (September 27) print edition gives its main front page article the headline “A President of Reprisal Tramples On Safeguards.” (The link goes to a screenshot of the print front page.). From the third paragraph:

The charges, which were filed around 7 p.m. in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., thrust the Justice Department into perilous new territory. The push for the indictment tramples over the agency’s long tradition of maintaining distance from the White House and resisting political pressure, and it raised the prospect of further arbitrary prosecutions pushed by Mr. Trump against his enemies.

It’s “trampling” on “long traditions”; it’s taking the agency to “perilous new territory.”

Or we can look at the Wall Street Journal news pages from September 26, where we find a piece headlined “Trump Overcame Internal Dissent to Get His Case Against Comey.” From the sixth paragraph:

[Attorney General Pam] Bondi has effectively transformed the Justice Department in Trump’s second term, from an independent enforcer of the law into an extension of the White House that has pursued Trump’s foes and their associates with relish.

Were these people even alive for the past four years?

The list of Biden/Garland DOJ prosecutions of political enemies is long and disgraceful. That list is obviously not limited to mid-level functionaries like Comey, but included extensive efforts to take out the main political rival, Trump himself. They conducted a completely unnecessary and dangerous SWAT raid on Mar-a-Lago for no purpose other than to try to intimidate a political rival. The whole Florida classified documents case could never have been about more than a technicality, since Trump as President had complete authority to de-classify any documents that he wanted to take with him. 

Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021 — the subject of the other DOJ criminal prosecution against Trump — was clearly well within the bounds of protected First Amendment expression. You may well think that Trump behaved inappropriately in some respects on that day, and I would agree with you, but that does not mean that it was remotely OK to use the DOJ to prosecute him for a crime. Naming of a “special counsel” (Jack Smith) to give a patina of “independence” to these prosecutions should not fool anyone.

And DOJ’s role in persecuting Biden’s main political rival was not limited to criminal prosecutions. The Comey FBI — part of DOJ — was deeply involved in manufacturing the Russia collusion hoax and in using perjured testimony to get FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, and to continue investigating Trump even after he was President.

And then there is the list of other Trump administration officials or allies prosecuted for fake and politically-motivated reasons: Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Walt Nauta (Trump’s valet!), Carlos De Oliveira, Michael Flynn, Jeffrey Clark, and so forth. Was Michael Flynn prosecuted for any reason other than that if allowed to become National Security Advisor he was likely to uncover and blow the whistle on the Russia collusion hoax?

From what I know of American history, Biden ranks far and away as number one among Presidents for the misuse of the justice system against political rivals. But he is by no means the only one to do it. As a few examples:

• The Alien and Sedition Acts were enacted in 1798 under President John Adams. They criminalized speech that was found to be “false, scandalous and malicious” or which brought the government into “contempt or disrepute.” Some 26 people were prosecuted under these Acts from 1798 to 1801, mostly newspaper editors for the Anti-Federalist press. The most famous was James Callender, a big backer of Adams rival Thomas Jefferson. To be fair, Callender was a nasty piece of work, but that did not mean that criminal prosecution for speech was OK.
• After the Twelfth Amendment to the Constitution in 1804 changed the method for presidential elections, President Thomas Jefferson ditched his VP Aaron Burr. Burr went out to the Western frontier and made efforts to set up an independent country. In 1807 Jefferson initiated a prosecution against Burr for treason — a case in which Jefferson took a major personal role. Burr was ultimately acquitted (in a trial presided over by Chief Justice John Marshall, who was a second cousin, but not a political ally, of Jefferson).
• Under President Woodrow Wilson, Congress enacted the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which criminalized speech that allegedly disparaged or undermined the war effort (World War I) in any way. Hundreds of people were arrested and prosecuted under this Act. One of those was Eugene V. Debs, a prominent labor organizer and Democrat who ended up running for President in 1920 from prison after getting convicted under the Espionage Act and sentenced to 10 years behind bars.
• And don’t forget the prosecution by FDR of Andrew Mellon, one of the leading financiers in the country, who had been Treasury Secretary throughout the administrations of Presidents Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. After Roosevelt’s election, Mellon had become a prominent critic of his economic policies. The prosecution was over technical interpretations of the income tax statute.

So no, there is no grand tradition in the Justice Department of political independence or of not misusing the justice system against political rivals of those in power.

In the case of the New York Times, I might pay at least a little attention to what they have to say today if they had ever said one critical word about the misuse of the Justice Department and the justice system under the Biden administration. If that ever occurred, I somehow missed it — and I pay rather close attention.

The Case Of Bolsonaro: What They Had In Mind For Trump

September 24, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Donald Trump is now President of the United States for a second term, having survived an unprecedented campaign of lawfare that has included no fewer than four criminal prosecutions, two state and two federal, brought during the four years that he was out of office. All were brought by highly partisan Democratic Party prosecutors.

The four prosecutions of Trump are all now essentially dead. However, much of the process of killing off these prosecutions has occurred either since Trump’s re-election, or only because of the fortuity of Trump getting enough appointments to the Supreme Court during his first four years in office to have an effective majority on that Court.

To get an idea of how things might have gone differently for Trump, we need only look to the country of Brazil. There, a couple of weeks ago, on September 11, the prior President and leader of the opposition party, Jair Bolsonaro, just got sentenced to some 27 years in prison. According to the BBC, the charges against Bolsonaro included “armed criminal conspiracy,” “attempted abolition of the democratic rule of law,” and “attempted coup d'état.” In other words, the charges against Bolsonaro sound very similar to the charges against Trump in the Jack Smith Washington DC prosecution.

And yet the BBC also states that the subsequent and current President, known as Lula, “was sworn in without incident on 1 January 2023.” To be fair, there was unrest following the October 2022 election that was ultimately called for Lula, and on January 8, 2023, after Lula took office, Bolsonaro’s supporters staged a large protest in the capital of Brasilia, that turned violent. Bolsonaro himself was out of the country at the time, actually in Orlando, Florida.

The underlying merits of the case against Bolsonaro are almost impossible for an outsider to evaluate. However, the process employed against Bolsonaro is not difficult to evaluate: it had no semblance of fairness. Somehow the tribunal that rendered the verdict on Bolsonaro consisted of five Supreme Court justices, the majority of them closely allied with Lula. The head of the tribunal, one Alexander de Moraes, has made a name for himself taking on what he calls the “digital far right” in Brazil, and for shutting down “misinformation,” otherwise known as speech by political opponents. Among other things, de Moraes personally shut down Twitter/X in Brazil after Elon Musk took it over. Two other judges on the five-judge tribunal are close allies of Lula: a former Justice Minister in a prior Lula presidency, and a former defense lawyer for Lula in a corruption trial that he faced prior to his current term as President. Those three constituted a majority to convict Bolsonaro. One judge, a guy named Luiz Fux, voted to acquit Bolsonaro on grounds of insufficiency of evidence. Fux wrote a lengthy dissent.

Back here in the U.S., Jack Smith was the special prosecutor named by the Merrick Garland Justice Department to go after Trump while he was out of office. Smith brought two criminal cases against Trump — one in DC for conduct related to the January 6 demonstrations, and the other in Florida for alleged mis-handling of classified information. Smith did everything he could to get his cases to trial before Trump could get re-elected. In the DC case, that goal was frustrated by the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States in July 2024, holding that Trump had immunity as President for any official acts he took while in office.

Trump v. United States was a 6-3 decision, along straight party lines. In other words, if Trump had not had his appointments to the Supreme Court, the case would likely have gone the other way, and he would have found himself a defendant before a DC jury in the Jack Smith prosecution. Irrespective of the merits, he could well have found himself in the position of Bolsonaro.

You may think that Jack Smith has completely disappeared since he got fired upon Trump resuming office. However, Mr. Smith re-emerged giving a lecture last week at George Mason University. Here are a few excerpts from a September 22 piece in the New York Sun reporting on Smith’s talk:

The prosecutor declared that “what I see happening at the Department of Justice today saddens me and angers me … the government, using the vast powers of the criminal justice system to target citizens for exercising their constitutional rights.” The special counsel, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, reflected, “My career has also shown me how fragile” the rule of law can be.  “As an international prosecutor, I have seen in other countries the rule of law erode. … One of my concerns is that we have had the rule of law function in this country for so long that many of us have come to take it for granted.” . . . Mr. Smith insisted until the end of his tenure that he could have convicted Mr. Trump “but for” his victory over Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

According to the Sun, Smith got a standing ovation for his speech, which gives you a good indication how a DC-area jury may have viewed the case.

Do Not Give Up The High Ground On Freedom Of Speech!

September 20, 2025  Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

The four years of the Biden presidency were a terrible low point for the protection of freedom of speech in the U.S. A web of government agencies and allied NGOs sprang up with remarkable rapidity to identify and ban disfavored speech, almost always of conservatives. As just a few examples: the White House itself pressured social media platforms to suppress disfavored speech on politically sensitive topics like Covid and climate change; the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency collaborated with universities and NGOs like the Stanford Internet Observatory to get disfavored speech banned or suppressed; the Department of Homeland Security formed a Disinformation Governance Board to coerce social media companies to suppress speech deemed “disinformation”; and the FBI conducted wide-ranging investigations of Republican politicians and organizations. The entire enterprise got the accurate nickname of the Censorship Industrial Complex.

This was an extremely important issue that drove many voters to Trump. After Trump was elected, we had every reason to expect that efforts like those of the prior administration to coerce the suppression of opponents’ speech of would come to an end. And, for the most part, they have.

However, the past week has seen two bad unforced errors on the freedom of speech front by high-ranking members of the Trump administration:

Pam Bondi. Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on a podcast with someone named Katie Miller that aired Monday, September 15. NBC News has some quotes of key statements made by Bondi:

Asked if the Justice Department would be cracking down on groups that engage in such speech, Bondi said, “We will absolutely target you, go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech, anything — and that’s across the aisle.” . . . “You can’t have that hate speech in the world in which we live,” she said. "There is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society,” Bondi said, referring to Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist who was assassinated on a college campus in Utah last week.

Brendan Carr. Carr, Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, appeared on Wednesday, September 17, on a podcast with someone named Benny Johnson. Quotes of the key sections of the interview can be found at this article in Reason:

Carr warned that there are "actions we can take on licensed broadcasters" that carry Kimmel's show. He said it is "really sort of past time that a lot of these licensed broadcasters themselves push back on Comcast [which owns NBC] and Disney, and say, 'Listen, we are going to preempt, we are not going to run, Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out, because we licensed broadcaster[s] are running the possibility of fines or license revocations from the FCC if we continue to run content that ends up being a pattern of news distortion. . . . When you see stuff like this—I mean, we can do this the easy way or the hard way," he said. "These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead."

Both of these statements were badly out of line as a matter of law and policy. But they were also politically damaging. Republicans in general, and Trump in particular, have fought an endless battle to preserve freedom of speech and to claim the high ground of being the protectors of free speech. They need to keep this high ground.

Take Bondi’s remarks first. So-called “hate speech” is absolutely protected by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has been completely clear on that. The line between protected and not-protected speech is imminent incitement to violence. The Attorney General needs to know these basic principles.

The problem with the supposed “hate speech” category is that identifying it is a judgment call. The left thinks that most everything conservatives and Republicans say is “hate speech” — and if hate speech could be made illegal, and they came to power, their definitions would be enforced with arrests and prosecutions. In the UK, where “hate speech” is illegal, the police have been on a campaign of arresting dozens of people for perceived speech crimes (while completely ignoring, for example, rape gangs). In August a man was arrested for shouting “We love bacon” outside the site of a proposed mosque. Hate speech? Christians have been arrested under the same laws for praying silently.

On Tuesday, September 16, Bondi issued a post on X that appeared intended to correct or modify her statements on the Miller podcast:

Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment. It’s a crime. For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence.

That’s better, but I think still not a completely correct statement of the law. Although I am not an expert on the First Amendment, I recommend the community note that X has affixed to Bondi’s tweet for what I think is a more accurate statement of the case law:

The Supreme Court ruled it legal to "justify" or celebrate violence or "advocate or teach the duty, necessity, or propriety" of it; but not "incitement" to "imminent" violence (eg telling a mob with weapons to kill someone).

Bondi’s statements on the podcast drew what many took to be a rebuke from none other than Justice Sonya Sotomayor (although Sotomayor did not call out Bondi by name), speaking on a panel at New York Law School on September 16:

“Every time I listen to a lawyer-trained representative saying we should criminalize free speech in some way, I think to myself, that law school failed.”

Can we hope that Justice Sotomayor might even stand up for free speech of someone she disagrees with in an important case? Probably not. Most recently, in the major case of Murthy v. Missouri — the 2024 case challenging massive government-coordinated speech suppression on issues of Covid lockdowns, masks and vaccines — Sotomayor joined with her liberal colleagues plus Roberts and Barrett to find that none of the plaintiffs had “standing” to complain.

Carr’s statements are exactly the sort of regulatory overreach that conservatives constantly point to as a fundamental problem with the federal bureaucracy. The FCC has the ability to approve or revoke broadcast licenses, and to approve or disapprove corporate transactions among media companies. Therefore, the Chair does not actually need to do anything more than make a veiled suggestion to get regulated entities to toe a political line. And here Carr was not just making a veiled suggestion.

Carr’s remarks drew massive criticism from Democrats in Congress and the media. Yes, these are all people who never said a word about the Biden administration’s Censorship Industrial Complex directed at Republicans. So, they are hypocrites. But Carr never should have given them this opportunity to criticize him. It is likely that Kimmel’s show was losing money, and that Disney/ABC was looking for an excuse to cancel it. But once Carr made his remarks, the firing will always look like bowing to government coercion. And maybe it was. It would have been much better if Kimmel’s firing had been done as a pure business decision, without apparent government interference.

Can we take this opportunity to ask, exactly what function does the FCC perform today? The FCC was created in 1934, in the pre-television era of a small number of radio stations. Two decades later, the FCC was regulating the shared oligopoly of three television networks. At least in that environment you could articulate a rational case for government regulation. Today, there are hundreds of channels and streaming services, distributed over the air and by cable and satellite and wifi. Most of that isn’t even regulated by the FCC. If the FCC were abolished, would anybody miss it?

Comment Filed In Support Of EPA's Repeal Of The 2009 Endangerment Finding

 September 17, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Yesterday, along with two excellent colleagues, I submitted a Comment to EPA on the subject of the proposed and pending repeal of the so-called Endangerment Finding of 2009. The Endangerment Finding (EF) is the absurd regulatory action by which the Obama-era EPA purported to find that the trace gas carbon dioxide (CO2) constitutes a “danger” to human health and welfare as it accumulates in the atmosphere from the current level of about 0.04%, to perhaps 0.05% or maybe even (the horror!) 0.06% by some time later this century. 

The EF is then the basis for all the subsequent regulatory initiatives by the Obama and Biden administrations to regulate and suppress the production and use of hydrocarbon fuels. These initiatives have included things like rules to force the closure of all coal and natural gas power plants by some time in the 2030s; mileage rules for automobiles that would ratchet up over time until no gasoline-powered car could comply (also by some time in the 2030s); restrictions on oil and gas leases on federal lands; blocking the construction of pipelines; and even regulations that have made it so that dishwashers and washing machines don’t work very well any more.

Here is a link to our Comment.

Some background for those who have not been following closely, or maybe who have lost track of the status of this long-running saga: The EF was always absurd, but as long as Obama was in office it was pointless to try to get his EPA to reconsider it. However, after Trump first got elected in 2016, I got together with a group of friends and colleagues to see if we could encourage, or maybe even force, the new Trump administration to get rid of this very destructive regulation. On January 20, 2017 — Inauguration Day of the Trump 45 administration — we filed a Petition for Reconsideration of the EF. The Petition was based on scientific research that had come out during the time after the 2009 EF, and that undermined what was already the slim basis for the finding of endangerment.

But then, sadly, the first Trump administration did not make this issue one of its priorities. In the period from 2017 to 2020, we filed seven Supplements to our initial Petition, each time using citations to new information or research further undermining the basis for the EF in an effort to get EPA’s attention. But the first Trump administration never undertook the effort to repeal it.

Then Biden came into office, and issued a final rejection of our Petition for Reconsideration in 2022. We proceeded to appeal that rejection to the D.C. Circuit. Actually, we had no illusions that a Biden EPA would undo the EF, even if ordered to reconsider it by the D.C. Circuit or Supreme Court. However, we did think that by keeping the issue alive during the four Biden years, we could increase the chance that a new Republican administration in 2025 (whether Trump or someone else) would undertake the task, either on its own initiative or by compulsion from a court.

As it happened, we lost in the D.C. Circuit in 2023, and then got a final rejection in our certiorari petition by the Supreme Court in 2024. But then Trump got re-elected. Apparently, he had been paying attention to this issue during his four years out of office, perhaps in part as a result of our efforts. Promptly upon taking office for his second term, Trump issued an Executive Order directing the new EPA administrator to look into this issue. In July 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin initiated the formal process of repealing the EF. The EPA document initiating the reconsideration specifically stated that the Biden administration rejection of our Petition had been reversed! The comment period on the proposed repeal is currently open through September 22.

Our Comment focuses on two aspects of the supposed scientific basis for the EF that are just completely wrong, and without which the EF cannot stand. The first is the reliance of the EF on supposed evidence of what is called the “Global Average Surface Temperature” (GAST) records allegedly showing strong warming from the late 19th century to the early 21st; and the second is supposed evidence of increasing severe weather events, allegedly arising from warming derived from increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

Unfortunately for the EF, the GAST records are useless for any policy purpose, because they have been substantially created not by actual observations but by infilling (aka fabrication) by bureaucrats. From our Petition, pages 5-6:

The scientific basis for the 2009 GHG Endangerment Finding has been shown to have been built on quicksand because the Global Average Surface Temperature data have been, and continue to be, totally fabricated because, for a very significant portion of the planet and a substantial portion of the time periods in question, there was no surface temperature data whatsoever. This fabrication was done to support for global warming claims and was carried out by all three entities providing GAST data measurement, NOAA, NASA and the UK’s Hadley CRU. . . . 

For example, the Southern Hemisphere is 80.9% ocean, and prior to the year 2000 there was virtually no credible monthly ocean surface temperature data whatsoever for this massive area. This fact alone means that until 2000, the surface temperature record had virtually no data whatsoever for over 40% (50%*0.809) of the planet. But the situation is even worse than that because for much of the quoted surface temperature record since about 1850, there are virtually no credible monthly surface temperature data outside of North America and Europe.

Lots more detail on this issue is available in the Comment.

As bad or worse was EPA’s reliance in making the EF on claims of supposedly increasing and worsening severe weather events. Overwhelming amounts of research, ongoing since the 2009 EF, show these claims to be completely false. Our Comment contains multiple quotes from EPA’s EF documenting their reliance on worsening severe weather as a critical source of the claimed “endangerment” from atmospheric CO2. From our Comment, page 11, quoting the text of EPA’s EF:

“The evidence concerning how human-induced climate change may alter extreme weather events also clearly supports a finding of endangerment” [74 Fed. Reg.] at 66497:3. An entire subheading of the Endangerment Finding, Section IV(B)(1)(c), is devoted to explaining that the “Effects on Extreme Weather Events” “Endanger Public Health.” Id. at 66525:2. There is simply no question but that EPA grounded the 2009 Endangerment Findings in part on the claim that GHG emissions cause increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events.

The Comment then at pages 12-14 cites the latest research and data on every sort of extreme weather event — heat waves, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods, wild fires, snowfall, and so forth. The supposedly worsening trends in every case are missing from the data. You would think that the Biden EPA would have been embarrassed by this as the data continued to accumulate, but these people are beyond embarrassment.

I encourage readers to read the entire Comment, which is 20 pages long, for much more detail. Even at that, we did not by any means try to cover the whole range of arguments for rescinding the EF, but only a subset of the most important pieces of scientific data and logic that invalidate it.

Undoubtedly EPA will get some thousands of comments from various grifters and fake “scientists” living off government handouts, arguing for retaining the EF. If you happen to review any of those, see if they have any answer to the these two main points that we made. I don’t think that any good answer exists.

Many thanks to my colleagues Harry MacDougald and Jim Wallace, who did the main work in drafting this Comment. They were kind enough to let me participate.