Clearing the Tabs December 15, 2022

Here are some things I've read so far this month or will be reading soon. A lot of people are staying at home looking for things to read, so I've broken this month into two parts again, expect a post on December 31 as well to round out the year. Also, just because I post something here does not mean I agree with it, it simply means it made me think and I think my readers might enjoy it.

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December 4
MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen Rejects ‘Climate Change’ As ‘A Quasi-Religious Movement Predicated on An Absurd ‘Scientific’ Narrative’

December 6
The ‘green leap’ forward

December 8
Applauding Governor Ducey of Arizona

American Christmas, American New Year

The absurdity of California’s reparations proposal
Activists are focusing on past injustice at the expense of present inequality

The Coming Crash Of The Climate Cult

December 9
A cold winter undercuts the warming narrative

Are we finally reaching peak climate hysteria?
The eco-derangement of the elites is a threat to reason, freedom and jobs.

December 11
Low Speed Fail
California's Solar Powered Rail Moondoggle

December 12
The Elite’s Plan For A No-Car Society

December 13
Misperception and amplification of climate risk

Electric car demand falls for first time since pandemic as electricity prices soar
Interest wanes amid falling petrol prices fall and surging energy bills

December 14
The Threat – and Soon Reality – of Climate Protectionism

How New York can survive
The city's decay is not inevitable

Clearing the Tabs November 30, 2020

Some things I've read so far in the second half of this month, or will be reading soon. It appears that a lot of people are staying at home looking for things to read, so I've broken this month into two parts again, and will probably keep doing this for a while. Also, just because I share something on here does not mean I agree with it, but I think opposing ideas are good for the mind on occasion.

November 16
Goldwater, Nixon, and WFB

November 19
Watching the Sausage Get Made

November 20
Media Banality Is a Covid Comorbidity
Deaths have nothing to do with Vietnam or jumbo jet crashes but with nature’s viral genetic lottery.

November 23
Corona-Absurdity Collides with California, New York, and Thanksgiving

The Original Thanksgiving Proclamation

November 25
France’s COVID Fail

Guilt Without Vice, Innocence Without Virtue
There is no shortage of memorable gems in this inviting and challenging book on the scourge of identity politics.

November 26
Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving proclamation provides comfort during challenging time

Gratitude: What We Owe to Our Country

America Isn't Falling Apart. It’s Still the Land of Opportunity.
These days, those opportunities are more often found in its suburbs and sprawl than in the cities that once defined it.

November 29
After 31 years, moving from a home is much more than leaving a structure

Clearing the Tabs July 31, 2020

Some things I've read so far in the second half of this month, or will be reading soon. It appears that a lot of people are staying at home looking for things to read, so I've broken this month into two parts again, and will probably keep doing this for a while.

July 19
Why Are Conservatives So Worked Up By Bari Weiss’s Letter Of Resignation?

July 20
Social Bonds are Fraying Fast in America’s Cities
How the pandemic has some people yearning to move to small towns and suburbs.

Glenn Loury appeared on EconTalk with Russ Roberts and the conversation was outstanding.

July 21
Opportunity abounds when government gets out of the way

July 22
New York and Fiscal Suicide

Podcast: Big Cities
Be it resolved, COVID-19 and its social and economic fall out spells the end of the big city boom.

July 23
Defunding police won't solve inner-city violence, but proven solutions can

July 25

Should We Expect Lower-Scoring Baseball in 2020?

July 27
As MLB restarts, Minor League Baseball survives and waits its turn

Donald Trump Is No Ronald Reagan

July 28
Blue Cities Give the 'Broken Windows' Economic Growth Theory a Try

The Quiet Fury Of Americans

July 30
Tax Increases Will Generate More Spending, More Debt, and Less Prosperity

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I was a guest on the Let's Get Two podcast this week. Listen to the 10 minute interview here:
(skip to 21:30):

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Upcoming Webinar - August 5, 2010
Conservative Conversations with ISI: Amity Shlaes

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Clearing the Tabs May 31, 2020

Some things I've read this month or will be reading soon.

May 16
The Coronavirus Means Millennials Are More Screwed Than Ever
A generation that already expected not to do as well as their parents is likely to take an ever darker view in the midst of a pandemic.

Where Are the Tears for the Workers Who Make New York, New York City?

May 17
The new geography of America, post-coronavirus

May 18
Coronavirus, Federal Spending, and Media Innumeracy

Poverty, Not Income Inequality, Is Our Modern Problem

May 19
Did Social Justice Efforts Kill Thousands of New York Seniors?

Why John Paul II Believed National Identity Protected Human Freedoms

New York vs. Florida, Round #4

Podcast: Red Bull Is Disgusting. And It Perfectly Captures Why Capitalism Is So Great.
Ludwig von Mises is “my hero,” and free markets have nothing to do with efficiency, says Ogilvy ad man Rory Sutherland.


May 21
Who Will Answer for New York’s Nursing Home Catastrophe?

The Economic Consequences of Expanding Pay-as-You-Go Social Security Systems

Economists Are Expert at 'Crisply' Extending Economic Misery

May 22
Unsustainable America

May 25
The Coronavirus Is Also Spreading a Dark New Era of Neo-Feudalism
Rather than a catastrophe ruining lives, some modern day clerics see the pandemic and the lockdowns as a “test run” for their dreams of achieving “degrowth.”

May 28
Andrew Cuomo's deadly failures

Exposing the hoax

May 29
A New Age of Feudalism for the Working Class?
If too many of the American working class lack any hope of improving their condition, we could face dangerous upheaval in the near future.

May 30
Covid-19 Infection or Losing Your Job: Which Would You Prefer?

Clearing the Tabs April 2020

Some things I've read this month or will be reading soon.

April 1

After coronavirus, we need to rethink densely populated cities

A Better Solution to the Covid-19 Economic Crisis

April 3
Keep Your Eye On The Lie: The Real Virus That Doomed Our Economy

April 9
But is it really no worse than flu?

April 10
Oligarchy and Pestilence

April 13
Who Will Prosper After the Plague?
The tech sector and the managerial class will get richer, while the rest of us become their serfs

On the Seasonality of the Virus

April 15
Six Habits to Cultivate on Your First Professional Project

April 18
Viral Politics

April 24
Reed Lays out Plan to Reopen the Country in a Way that will Keep Americans Safe & Secure

California’s Post-Corona Challenges
The Golden State faces some difficult choices ahead.

April 27
The Coronavirus Means You May Have Seen Your Last Skyscraper, New York

Triumph of the Woke Oligarchs

April 29
Why the largest-ever Arctic ozone hole just closed

Clearing the Tabs 2-22-2019

Some things I've read this week or will be reading over the weekend.

February 16
America’s role model should be America

February 17
Cities Point the Way in Promoting Opportunity and Reducing Poverty

February 18
The dark side of Green technology

Cheer up. Despite national gloom, we're actually pretty happy with our lives and neighbors.

February 19
Health Care and Opportunity Zones: The Game Begins

"Of the 8,762 census tracts across the county that have been designated as Opportunity Zones, 2,905 (33%) either contain a hospital or are ½ a mile from a hospital."

I found Alan Alda's conversation with Stephen Fry completely interesting:


February 20
New York’s Slow-Motion Fiscal Suicide

February 21
Arthur Brooks has a new podcast episode this week that is off the beaten path and completely worth your time:


February 22
Curing Blindness is Just the Beginning

America’s oligarchs face left-wing, right-wing backlash

Vin Scully, Babe Ruth and Baseball History

There will be many people who will say many more things about Vin Scully as he enters his last week as the Dodgers broadcaster, and most will say it all much more eloquently than I ever will. I wanted to relay one story while it was fresh on my mind, and while I cannot stop thinking about it.

I watched Vin's last broadcast from Dodger Stadium today. Vin was in fine form, telling some amazing stories. This man is a monument to the game of baseball. Sure, the game will outlive him, as it will outlive all of us, but one story really made me think about Vin Scully's long reach into baseball history.

Vin was telling a story about being at the Polo Grounds as a kid. I don't recall if he mentioned a year, but since he was born in 1927, it's safe to say he was a "kid" in the 1930s. He said that during the game, all of a sudden there was a ruckus out in the upper right field stands. So, being a kid, like all kids, he ran to the scene to check it out. There, was Babe Ruth. Retired from baseball, just there at the game. The Babe wasn't signing autographs that day. Instead, he was handing out business cards that contained his signature. Vin did not mention whether the card had anything else on it, or if it was just a white business card with a signature.

Vin finished the story by saying that he got one of the cards that day at the Polo Grounds.

What happened to the card? Vin said he has no idea, that he lost it somewhere along the way. Here is a man, retiring from the Dodgers broadcast booth after 67 years, and this man met Babe Ruth in the 1930s at the Polo Grounds. It's mind-boggling to think about, even as I write these words.

Baseball cannot escape itself.

It is fun to think back on the great Dodgers (Brooklyn) and Yankees rivalry and think about all the great teams and the great games that Vin saw and got to broadcast. But I am still struck by the fact that as a little red-headed boy back in New York in the 1930s, Babe Ruth had a card with his signature on it, and he handed it to that little boy, who close to 80 years later would be telling that story during a Major League Baseball game.

In NYC, Communism Wages War on Children, the Poor and Minorities

Communist New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is certainly blazing a path in New York City. Peggy Noonan has a revealing column in the Saturday edition of the Wall Street Journal. (highlights are mine)

What a small and politically vicious man New York's new mayor is. Bill de Blasio doesn't like charter schools. They are too successful to be tolerated. Last week he announced he will drop the ax on three planned Success Academy schools. (You know Success Academy: It was chronicled in the film "Waiting for Superman." It's one of the charter schools the disadvantaged kids are desperate to get into.) Mr. de Blasio has also cut and redirected the entire allotment for charter facility funding from the city's capital budget. An official associated with a small, independent charter school in the South Bronx told me the decision will siphon money from his school's operations. He summed up his feelings with two words: "It's dispiriting." 

Some 70,000 of the city's one million students, most black or Hispanic, attend charter schools, mostly in poorer neighborhoods. Charter schools are privately run but largely publicly financed. Their teachers are not unionized. Their students usually outscore their counterparts at conventional public schools on state tests. Success Academy does particularly well. Last year 82% of its students passed citywide math exams. Citywide the figure was 30%.

Communists like de Blasio hate the poor, they kids and they hate minorities. Fortunately for the communists, in their efforts to keep people poor and under-educated, the kids, the poor and the minorities never realize what's going on.

This war on children via a war on education is appalling. But why do this? Well, here's why:

But the people who run the public-school system that doesn't work—the one where you can't fire teachers who sexually prey on students and principals who don't even show up for work, which is to say the public schools run by the city's huge and powerful teachers union—don't like the charter schools. And they are the mayor's supporters, a significant part of his base. 

The very existence of charter schools is an implicit rebuke to the public schools. It means they are not succeeding, and something new must be tried. That something new won't be perfect—no charter school is, and some are more imperfect than others—but people still line up to get into them. And there's something to the wisdom of crowds. When a school exists for the students, you can tell. When it exists for the unions, you can tell that too.

It's obvious to observers or participants in the debate over parental choice in education that the unions always care more about their constituency (the teachers) than the students.

In this move more than any so far, Mr. de Blasio shows signs he is what his critics warned he would be—a destructive force in the city of New York. When a man says he will raise taxes to achieve a program like pre-K education, and is quickly informed that that program can be achieved without raising taxes, and his answer is that he wants to raise taxes anyway, that man is an ideologue. 

And ideologues will sacrifice anything to their ideology. Even children.

Bingo! Mayor de Blasio is a loyal follower. There is no reasoning with him. Sadly, he was just elected, so unless there is a recall effort at some point, NYC, and the nation, will have to suffer under de Blasio's iron boot for four years until the next election.

In the meantime, my questions for Mayor de Blasion and his fellow Leftist travelers would be these: Why do you hate the poor? What do you hate Hispanic children? Why do you hate black children?