Category: Government

Miami Mayor Welcomes Private Enterprise with Public Safety, Low Taxes, and Few Regulations

(p. A15) On one side, we have the socialist model: high taxes, high regulation, less competition and declining public services with government imposing itself as the solver and arbiter of all social problems. On the other side, we have the Miami model: low taxes, low regulation and a commitment to public safety and private enterprise. The models present a stark choice on issues ranging from personal freedom, economic opportunity, public safety and the role of government.

. . .

In Miami, many residents have personally experienced the socialist model along with its symptoms of hyperinflation, class resentment and stagnant growth. Four years ago Miami residents elected me to pursue a different path. We reduced taxes dramatically, and our revenue base doubled. We invested in our police, and our crime rate dropped. And last week we reduced taxes to their lowest level in history—cutting costs for residents and promoting economic growth.

Miami is a place where you can keep what you earn, invest what you save, and own what you build. We are meeting the high demand of rent costs by encouraging public-private partnerships, activating underutilized land through zoning reforms, and harnessing free-market forces to build more. It works, and our new residents from New York and California can confirm it.

For the full commentary see:

Francis X. Suarez. “Miami Takes On the Socialist Model.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Aug. 22, 2022): A15.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date August 21, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

Leftist Anti-Covid-Vaccine Roman Catholic Nun Defends Free Speech

(p. A12) MONTSERRAT, Spain — Sister Teresa Forcades came to public notice years ago for her unflinching liberal views: an outspoken Roman Catholic nun whose pronouncements ran counter to the church’s positions on same-sex marriage and abortion.

She became a fixture on Spanish television, appearing in her nun’s habit to advocate independence for her native region of Catalonia, and to debate other hot-button topics, including vaccines. She had trained as a doctor, partly in the United States, and argued that vaccinations might one day pose a danger to a free society.

. . .

“It’s always important that criticism is possible, to have dissenting voices,” she said of her views, which center as much on her doubts about the vaccines as her right to question them in public. “The answer cannot be that in the time of a crisis, society cannot allow the criticism — it’s precisely then that we need it.”

. . .

In the world of vaccine skeptics, Sister Teresa, who was born in 1966 to a nurse and a commercial agent, is hard to categorize. She acknowledges that some vaccines are beneficial, but opposes making them mandatory. Her misgivings about coronavirus vaccines largely stem from her view that pharmaceutical companies are not to be trusted, and the clinical trials were rushed.

. . .

Sister Teresa, though staunchly leftist, doesn’t distance herself from right-wing followers, calling her distrust of some vaccines a “transversal question able to reach a wide spectrum of people.”

For the full story see:

Nicholas Casey. “Spanish Nun With Medical Training Champions Vaccine Distrust.” The New York Times (Saturday, April 24, 2021): A12.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the article has the date April 23, 2021, and has the title “A Nun and a Doctor, She’s One of Europe’s Longstanding Vaccine Skeptics.”

“Overzealous Environmentalism” Hurts Poor Poaching “Misunderstood Outcasts”

(p. 17) In the journalist Lyndsie Bourgon’s telling, . . ., the poachers are not quite villains. Instead, they are responding — if not justifiably then at least predictably — to a lack of economic opportunities and the perception that the rules governing forests are arbitrary and heavy-handed.

Bourgon puts herself in the poacher’s shoes, and the result is a refreshing and compassionate warning about the perils of well-intentioned but overzealous environmentalism.

. . .

. . . she regards the history of the American conservation movement with something approaching scorn. It was hatched, she writes, to serve the whims of wealthy urban vacationers who wanted access to lands unspoiled by their longtime inhabitants. National parks were conceived as vehicles to resist “any attempt to turn to utilitarian purposes the resources represented by the forest,” as one booster put it.

At times, the motives were even less pure. Bourgon describes how ultrarich environmentalists in the early 1900s saw conservation — and in particular the protection of California’s redwoods — “as part of a mission to enshrine a white, masculine dominance over the wilderness.” Some conservationists, she notes, were “eugenicists who saw parallels between environmental destruction and the decline of Nordic supremacy.”

. . .

This is the backdrop for Bourgon’s depiction of “tree thieves” as misunderstood outcasts. “I have begun to see the act of timber poaching as not simply a dramatic environmental crime, but something deeper — an act to reclaim one’s place in a rapidly changing world,” she writes, tracing that desire back to 16th-century England, where poachers in royal forests were celebrated as folk heroes.

Bourgon immersed herself with a small handful of these men in the Northwest, and a picture emerges of a fractious band of down-on-their-luck crooks. A number abuse drugs. The poachers acknowledge that what they’re doing is illegal, but they frame it as principled, akin to stealing a loaf of bread to feed their families.

. . .

On the one hand, unemployed loggers and others who are suffering economically because of stringent enforcement of conservation laws are facing poverty. On the other hand, the damage that poachers are inflicting on forests appears to be, in the grand scheme of things, modest.

For the full review, see:

David Enrich. “No Clear-Cut Villains.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, July 24, 2022): 17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date June [sic] 21, 2022, and has the title “When It Comes to Timber Theft, There Are No Clear-Cut Villains.” Where the online version has “misunderstood poacher’s” [sic], the print version quoted above has “misunderstood outcasts.”)

The book under review is:

Bourgon, Lyndsie. Tree Thieves: Crime and Survival in North America’s Woods. New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2022.

Omaha Streetcar Will Look More Like St. Louis Failure Than Kansas City Success

(p. A1) After decades of stops and starts, Omaha is the closest it’s ever been to the development of a modern streetcar line.

But where city officials and local developers see an asset for economic development connecting midtown to the riverfront, one transit professional urges caution.

Tom Rubin knows a few things about public transportation and finance, having worked as the chief financial officer for the large transit system serving Los Angeles. And the Omaha native is skeptical of the plans for a streetcar in his hometown that he fears could financially run off the rails.

He’s concerned that rising inflation and interest rates could raise the cost of building the system and at the same time reduce the private development that’s being counted on to pay for it.

He questions why the city has not thought further about pursuing federal dollars to help defray the construction costs.

(p. A3) And he thinks there needs to be much more independent study of its financial feasibility beyond the lone review to date that was written by an engineering firm in the business of designing streetcars.

. . .

Rubin is not an Omaha taxpayer. But the Omaha native, who has more than four decades of experience in public transit as a senior executive, consultant, auditor and author, has taken an interest in the Omaha proposal.

Rubin founded the transit practice of what is now accounting firm Deloitte, formerly served as CFO of the nation’s third-largest public transit system in Los Angeles and has served as a consultant to numerous federal, state and local transit agencies and planning organizations.

He also has written papers and studies on transit issues for groups as varied as the Environmental Defense Fund and the free-market Reason Institute. He has said he may seek to publish a paper on the Omaha project.

. . .

“What is the magic that will make people decide to put their new office building along the streetcar route?” he said. “I’m far from convinced that putting tracks down generates development.”

Streetcar supporters disagree, often pointing to the Kansas City streetcar as a shining example of the development potential.

. . .

But there are other systems built in recent years that Rubin holds up as less than ideal. He mentioned St. Louis, where a streetcar shut down shortly after going into service. In that city, the line’s developers chose a route that did not have nearly enough ridership to support it.

Rubin said the current economic environment also raises concerns about bonding the Omaha project. Inflation could raise building costs, and higher interest rates figure to raise the cost of borrowing.

“It’s a lot easier to show you can make the debt service with a 2.5% bond than a 5% bond,” he said.

And higher interest rates also could slow development along the streetcar line. Less development would mean fewer TIF dollars to pay the bonds.

Another concern Rubin raises is the high cost of the streetcar system, which he said makes it hard to justify as a mode of transit. It is much more expensive per rider, for example, than Metro’s new ORBT rapid bus transit service.

Rubin said that prior to a major investment in a streetcar, an independent and unbiased analysis of the alternatives is needed. The HDR draft analysis at this point isn’t enough to convince him the streetcar is either a good idea or financially feasible for Omaha.

He noted Omaha-based HDR has long been a heavy hitter in the world of massive transit projects, including streetcars. On the Omaha project, the company did some initial design work on the streetcar route, utility coordination, the location of the streetcar vehicle maintenance facility and vehicle specifications.

. . .

Rubin acknowledged the Kansas City streetcar is working well but questioned whether Omaha could replicate that success. He’s not sure the Omaha route would be as viable as the one in Kansas City, which links the city’s riverfront and downtown with the arena district and Crown Center.

“They have a good route and some things that work well for them,” Rubin said. “I don’t think Omaha, even best case, could be as successful as Kansas City.”

For the full story see:

Jessica Wade and Henry J. Cordes. “Transit Consultant Skeptical of Omaha’s Streetcar Project.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, June 5, 2022): A1 & A3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the article was updated Aug. 5, 2022, and has the title “Public transit consultant skeptical of Omaha’s streetcar project.”

U.S. Climate “Net-Zero” by 2050 Costs $11,300 per Person per Year

(p. A19) . . . Mr. Biden’s current promise—100% carbon emission reduction by 2050—will be . . . phenomenally expensive.

A new study in Nature finds that a 95% reduction in American carbon emissions by 2050 will annually cost 11.9% of U.S. gross domestic product. To put that in perspective: Total expenditure on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid came to 11.6% of GDP in 2019. The annual cost of trying to hit Mr. Biden’s target will rise to $4.4 trillion by 2050. That’s more than everything the federal government is projected to take in this year in tax revenue. It breaks down to $11,300 per person per year, or almost 500 times more than what a majority of Americans is willing to pay.

Although the U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gasses right now, America’s reaching net zero would matter little for the global temperature. If the whole country went carbon-neutral tomorrow, the standard United Nations climate model shows the difference by the end of the century would be a barely noticeable reduction in temperature of 0.3 degree Fahrenheit. This is because the U.S. will make up an ever-smaller share of emissions as the populations of China, India and Africa grow and get richer.

For the full commentary see:

Bjorn Lomborg. “Biden’s Climate Ambitions Are Too Costly for Voters.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, October 14, 2021): A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated Oct. 14, 2021, and has the same title as the print version.)

Maverick Rickover Was Dedicated to the Project of a Nuclear Powered Navy

Several years ago, a student in my entrepreneurship seminar asked if he could do his paper on Admiral Rickover. I am glad that I finally said “yes.”

(p. C9) . . ., in “Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power,” Marc Wortman delivers a 17-gun salute to this short, profane spitfire who pulled a reluctant Navy into the atomic era.

. . .

Though physically courageous, Rickover, according to one of his commanding officers, showed “no outward signs of qualities of leadership.” In the late 1920s, he spent a year studying electrical engineering at Columbia University.

. . .

It can be difficult for landlubbers to grasp the significance of nuclear power to a navy. Freed from the shackles of fuel tenders, a nuclear-powered submarine can “slide into the depths and maintain top speeds for weeks or even months without need for recharging fuel, air, or battery,” Mr. Wortman notes. “Atomic-powered submarines represented a seafaring and naval warfare leap as fundamental as that from sail to steam.”

. . .

[Rickover’s] experience at Columbia imbued him with an unconventional attitude toward authority when he headed the Navy’s nuclear-propulsion group. At the Atomic Energy Commission’s Division of Naval Reactors, “he abolished rank and uniform,” Mr. Wortman writes. “ ‘There is no hierarchy in matters of the mind,’ Rickover said, and he insisted that all were ‘permitted to do as they think best and to go to anyone and anywhere for help. Each person is then limited only by his own ability.’ ”

But he also demanded accountability and was a Captain Bligh to the men he selected to run his reactors. Addressing one group of newly minted engineers, Rickover “jumped his then-seventy-seven-year-old body up on a tabletop, stomped with rage like an angry djinn, and screamed at the top of his lungs, ‘I understand genetics. If you make a mistake with my nuclear plant, it’s because your mother was a street whore who trawled for tricks with a mattress on her back!’ ” His Pattonesque benediction concluded: “On penalty of all you hold dearest, do not fail to live up to my standard of perfection.”

His maverick approach threw off sparks when it rubbed against military structure. “Navy and government officials bristled at Rickover’s rebellious nature, indifference to the chain of command, and frequent workarounds,” Mr. Wortman writes. “He was obstinate, egotistical, and abrasive, a specialized engineer indifferent to and sometimes actively in rebellion against the Navy’s chain of command, protocols, and culture. By pushing the Navy into technology frontiers, his nuclear-power program proved alien to existing thinking.” Passed over for promotion twice, the ill-tempered Rickover relied on supporters in Congress and the White House to move up to admiral and remain in uniform past retirement age.

For the full review, see:

Jonathan W. Jordan. “The Navy’s Atomic Generator.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022): C9.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed name, added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date February 11, 2022, and has the title “‘Admiral Hyman Rickover’ Review: The Navy’s Atomic Generator.”)

The book under review is:

Wortman, Marc. Admiral Hyman Rickover: Engineer of Power. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2022.

Feds Requiring EV Chargers in Desolate Parts of the West That Are Off the Electric Grid

(p. B1) The U.S. government wants fast EV-charging stations every 50 miles along major highways. Some Western states say the odds of making that work are as remote as their rugged landscapes.

States including Utah, Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico and Colorado are raising concerns about rules the Biden administration has proposed for receiving a share of the coming $5 billion in federal funding to help jump-start a national EV-charging network. The states say it will be difficult, if not impossible, to run EV chargers along desolate stretches of highway.

“There are plenty of places in Montana and other states here out West where it’s well more than 50 miles between gas stations,” said Rob Stapley, an official with the Montana Department of Transportation. “Even if there’s an exit, or a place for people to pull off, the other big question is: Is there anything on the electrical grid at a location or even anywhere close to make that viable?”

. . .

(p. B2) Some Western states are unhappy over the federal determination of which U.S. highways should have the chargers, which is a carry-over from 2015 legislation for alternative-fuels roadways.

Mr. De La Rosa of New Mexico said it could result in a disproportionate number of charging stations in the southeast part of the state, and none in the northwest. “It’s not apparent here in New Mexico how those decisions were made,” he said.

Utah’s population is largely clustered in cities along the Wasatch Front and Interstate-15 in the northern and southern parts of the state, and there are concerns that spending on remote locations could skip serving the routes most delivery drivers and residents use, said Kim Frost, executive director of the Utah Clean Air Partnership.

For the full story see:

Jennifer Hiller. “Plan for EV Chargers Meets Skepticism in West.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 14, 2022): B1-B2.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 13, 2022, and has the title “Biden Plan for EV Chargers Meets Skepticism in Rural West.”)

Government Sends Town’s $360,000 Covid Relief Funds to 24-Year-Old Who Loses It All at Online Casinos

(p. A4) TOKYO — Residents of a rural Japanese town were each looking forward to receiving a $775 payment last month as part of a coronavirus pandemic stimulus program.

But a municipal official mistakenly wired the town of Abu’s entire Covid relief budget, nearly $360,000, to a single recipient on the list of low-income households eligible to receive the money. After promising to return the accidental payment, the police said, the man gambled it away.

The man, Sho Taguchi, 24, told the police that he had lost the money in online casinos, a police official in Yamaguchi Prefecture said by phone on Thursday [May 19, 2022]. The day before, the authorities arrested Mr. Taguchi, the official said. The charge: fraud.

Japan is not the only country where coronavirus relief money has been misappropriated. The fraud has been so widespread in the United States that the Justice Department recently appointed a prosecutor to go after it. People have been accused of buying a Pokémon card, a Lamborghini and other luxuries.

But Abu, population 2,952, may be the only town on earth where an entire Covid stimulus fund has vanished at the hands of an online gambler who received it through administrative error. The details of the case, and the rare attention from Japan’s national news media, have come as a shock to residents of the seaside town.

For the full story see:

Hisako Ueno and Mike Ives. “A Town’s Covid Money Was Sent to One Man in Error. He Gambled It Away.” The New York Times (Friday, May 20, 2022): A4.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 19, 2022, and has the title “A Town’s Covid Money Was Sent to One Man in Error. He Gambled It All Away.”)

Young Despairing Chinese Adopt the “Run Philosophy”

(p. B1) “I can’t stand the thought that I will have to die in this place,” said Cheng Xinyu, a 19-year-old writer in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu, who is thinking of migrating to foreign countries before the government’s iron fist falls on her.

She can’t imagine having children in China, either.

“I like children, but I don’t dare to have them here because I won’t be able to protect them,” she said, citing concerns like pandemic control workers breaking into apartments to spray disinfectant, killing pets and requiring residents to leave the keys in their apartment door locks.

Ms. Cheng is part of a new trend known as the “run philosophy,” or “runxue,” that preaches running away from China to seek a safer and brighter future. She and millions of others also reposted a video in which a young man pushed back against police officers who warned that his family would be punished for three generations if he refused to go to a quarantine camp. “This will be our last generation,” he told the police.

His response became an online meme that was later censored. Many young people identified with the sentiment, saying they would be reluctant to have children under the increasingly authoritarian government.

. . .

(p. B3) The “run philosophy” and the “last generation” are the rallying cries for many Chinese in their 20s and 30s who despair about their country and their future. They are entering the labor force, getting married and deciding whether to have children in one of the country’s bleakest moments in decades. Censored and politically suppressed, some are considering voting with their feet while others want to protest by not having children.

. . .

Doris Wang, a young professional in Shanghai, said she had never planned to have children in China. Living through the harsh lockdown in the past two months reaffirmed her decision. Children should be playing in nature and with one another, she said, but they’re locked up in apartments, going through rounds of Covid testing, getting yelled at by pandemic control workers and listening to stern announcements from loudspeakers on the street.

“Even adults feel very depressed, desperate and unhealthy, not to mention children,” she said. “They’ll definitely have psychological issues to deal with when they grow up.” She said she planned to migrate to a Western country so she could have a normal life and dignity.

Compounding the frustrations, headlines are full of bad news about jobs. There will be more than 10 million college graduates in China this year, a record. But many businesses are laying off workers or freezing head counts as they try to survive the lockdowns and regulatory crackdowns.

. . .

“When you find that as an individual you have zero ability to fight back the state apparatus, your only way out is to run,” said Ms. Wang, the young professional in Shanghai.

For the full commentary see:

Li Yuan. “The New New World; Young Chinese Feel Suffocated.” The New York Times (Wednesday, May 25, 2022): B1 & B3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 24, 2022, and has the title “The New New World;‘The Last Generation’: The Disillusionment of Young Chinese.”

Sri Lankan Ban on Synthetic Fertilizer Causes Soaring Food Prices and Hunger

(p. A17) The Green Revolution of Norman Borlaug, the American agronomist who did more to feed the world than any man before or since, set Sri Lanka on the path to agricultural abundance in 1970. It was built around chemical fertilizers and crops bred to be disease-resistant. Fifty-two years later, Sri Lanka has pulled off a revolution that is “antigreen” in the modern sense, toppling its president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa. In an uprising that has its roots in Mr. Rajapaksa’s imperious decision to impose organic farming on the entire country—which led to widespread hunger after the agricultural economy collapsed—Sri Lanka’s people have wrought the first contra-organic national uprising in history.

. . .

. . ., Mr. Rajapaksa was driven from office in part because he was an overzealous green warrior, who imposed on his countrymen a policy that the American environmental left holds sacred.

. . .

. . ., Mr. Rajapaksa took a step that poleaxed Sri Lanka. On April 27, 2021—with no warning, and with no attempt to teach farmers how to cope with the change—he announced a ban on all synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Henceforth, he decreed, Sri Lankan agriculture would be 100% organic. Agronomists and other scientists warned loudly of the catastrophe that would ensue, but they were ignored. This Sri Lankan Nero listened to no one.

. . .

What happened next? Rice production fell by 20% in the first 180 days of the ban on synthetic fertilizer. Tea, Sri Lanka’s main cash crop, has been hit hard, with exports at their lowest level in nearly a quarter-century. Whether from indignation over the new laws or an inability to go organic, farmers left a third of all farmland fallow. Food prices soared as a result of scarcity and Sri Lanka’s people, their pockets already hit by the pandemic, began to go hungry. To add to the stench of failure, a shipload of manure from China had to be turned back after samples revealed dangerous levels of bacteria. The farmers had no synthetic fertilizer, and hardly any of the organic kind.

For the full commentary see:

Tunku Varadarajan. “Sri Lanka’s Green New Deal Was a Human Disaster.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, July 15, 2022): A17.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 14, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.

Firms Move from High Crime Chicago to Lower Crime Texas, Virginia, and Florida

(p. B4) The hedge fund Citadel and the trading firm Citadel Securities, both run by the billionaire Ken Griffin, are moving their offices to Miami after more than three decades in Chicago, according to a memo to employees that was obtained by The New York Times on Thursday [June 23, 2022].

The move follows elevated tensions between Mr. Griffin and Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat, over taxes and the city’s crime rate. (Florida is one of the few states that don’t have a state income tax.) And it comes as the rise of remote work during the coronavirus pandemic has enabled companies to more freely move their offices in search of lower taxes, a more affordable work force or other potential perks. In recent months, Caterpillar said it was moving its office from Illinois to Texas, and Boeing has said it is moving from Illinois to Virginia. . . .

“The firms are having difficulty recruiting top talent from across the world to Chicago given the rising and senseless violence in the city,” said Zia Ahmed, a Citadel spokesman. “Talent wants to live in cities where they feel safe.”

According to the Chicago Police Department, there were 797 murders in 2021, up from 772 in 2020. Crime has been spiking in the city, though it is largely concentrated in a few areas.

While not a direct comparison, Miami Dade County reported 30 homicide offenses this year through May, down from 48 over the same period last year.

For the full story, see:

Lauren Hirsch. “Hedge Fund Cites Crime for Leaving Chicago.” The New York Times (Friday, June 24, 2022): B4.

(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 23, 2022, and has the title “Citadel says it will move offices to Miami because of crime in Chicago.”)