Climate-change cost overruns, the anti-crime ‘counter-revolution’ and other commentary
Albany Watch: Climate-Change Cost Overruns
The Beacon Island wind-tower project is “several months behind schedule and has doubled in cost before construction even begins,” Empire Center’s James E. notes Henley. According to New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, such “expect huge costs to rise as officials seek to radically transform the state’s economy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions”. Indeed, “the iron law of megaprojects is that they come in on budget, on time, over and over again.” Hmm: “Implementation of the CLCPA is expected to cost about $300 billion,” but if those costs were doubled they would outweigh the perceived benefits, for a “loss of $6,500 to $13,000 for each New Yorker.” .
Ukraine Desk: Don’t Blame NATO; Blame Putin
The idea that “NATO enlargement was primarily responsible” for the “Russia-Ukrainian war,” pushed most prominently by political scientist John Mearsheimer, is “false on so many counts that arguing against it” is “splattered earth.” is like telling members of” society that they may be out of touch with reality. Alexander J. at The Hill. Motil’s argument is. “The notion that the West was going to ‘push NATO east’ had no basis in reality.” Indeed, “the fact that Sweden and Finland’s choice to join NATO has elicited no Russian patience-rattling suggests that the problem was not NATO enlargement; This is Ukraine, which, in Putin’s mind, has no right to exist.” Furthermore, “heaps of evidence” show that “Putin had expansionist designs from his earliest days in office.”
Look at Congress: Take back your power!
“Why would a legislature give up its primary authority?” William asks Yeatman the reason, as the Supreme Court acknowledged Congress’ decision to let the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau operate with a “blank check”: for funding it “takes only what it wants from the Federal Reserve.” This is after decades when “Congress has abandoned meaningful engagement with the federal bureaucracy,” because it means “by avoiding tough decisions, lawmakers can avoid political accountability.” Yet the Framers warned: “A supine Congress undermines the separation of powers, an important bulwark of liberty.” The reality is, “Congress must rediscover its ambition, period. A good place to start would be for lawmakers to actively take back the power of the purse from the CFPB.
Neocons: The Anti-Crime ‘Counter-Revolution’
Americans “angry” about the decline in public safety had “a good week.” Cheers Commentary’s Abe Greenwald. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who has pushed to cut police funding and oversee a “25-year high” in homicides, was excluded from the vote. And President Biden supported a GOP resolution to overturn a pro-criminal DC bill. It is part of a “radical” 2020 campaign to “push back the counter-revolution” to relax law enforcement. First, “low-profile DEF advocates were defeated at the ballot box in cities like Seattle and Buffalo,” while others like San Francisco Mayor London Breed shifted to anti-crime rhetoric. Then, in June, San Francisco recalled its lawless DA Chesa Boudin. “Going forward, Democrats will get on the wrong side of public-safety issues at their political peril.”
Culture critic: The joys of teaching in prison
Desperate humanities professors might envy her classes “in a maximum-security prison for men.” writes Brooke Allen in the Wall Street Journal: Men are “highly motivated and hard-working,” some “will hold their own in any graduate seminar. That they’ve had bad experiences in the real world means they’re less liable to fall prey to simple ideologies.” And “they have preserved their attention spans, while modern college students are ravaged by their dependence on smartphones.” But “prison inmates . . . can pay full attention for a few hours, their political and Is it too much to ask of university students who can put personal differences aside, support each other’s academic endeavors, write excellent essays without the aid of technology, and get through the school year without cheating? Do the same? Or ask professors to try to create an environment where these habits can prevail?
– Compiled by the Post Editorial Board
