Category: Government

U.S. Forest Service Started the Most Destructive Fire in New Mexico History

(p. A10) MORA, N.M. — It started small, with a team of federal employees using drip torches to ignite a prescribed burn in the Santa Fe National Forest, aimed at thinning out dense pine woodlands.

But as April [2022] winds howled across the mountains of brittle-dry northern New Mexico, driving the fire over its boundaries and soon into the path of another out-of-control prescribed burn, it grew to become one of the U.S. Forest Service’s most destructive mistakes in decades.

The resulting merger of those two burns, called the Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Peak blaze, now ranks as the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history. Still burning in a zone of more than 341,000 acres — larger than the city of Los Angeles — the fire has destroyed hundreds of homes and displaced thousands in a region where Hispanic villagers settled centuries ago.

The painful losses have created a backlash against the Forest Service and provided a pivotal test case for how the authorities react when a prescribed burn goes badly wrong.

“I hope those responsible for this catastrophic failure are not sleeping at night,” said Meg Sandoval, 65, whose family settled in the region in the 1840s. She is now living out of a pickup camper shell after her home in Tierra Monte was destroyed by the fire.

“They ruined the lives of thousands of people,” she said.

. . .

. . . like many of her constituents, Ms. Leger Fernández said she was furious to learn that the Forest Service had started both blazes. “How could you make the same mistake twice in the same neighborhood?” she asked.

. . .

Patrick Dearen wrote a book about the Pecos River, whose headwaters are threatened by the Calf Canyon/Hermit’s Peak fire. He noted that in the 1890s, the forest around the river that is now designated as national forest was made up mostly of “old burns,” as well as meadows, open parks and barren peaks.

An inventory in 1911 showed that a typical acre of ponderosa pine habitat had 50 to 60 trees. By the end of the 20th century, Mr. Dearen said, after a long national policy of suppressing natural fires, that had skyrocketed to 1,089 trees per acre.

“Nature had done its job well, but no one recognized it,” Mr. Dearen said. Still, if the government is going to assume nature’s role of thinning out forests, it needs to own up to its mistakes, he said.

“If an individual goes out and starts a fire on purpose and it gets away, he’s probably going to go to jail,” he said. “The federal government needs to assume responsibility to the people.”

For the full story, see:

Simon Romero. “Thousands Lost Everything In Fire Set by Forest Service.” The New York Times (Thursday, June 23, 2022): A10.

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

(Note: the online version of the story was updated June 24, 2022, and has the title “The Government Set a Colossal Wildfire. What Are Victims Owed?”)

The book by Dearen mentioned above is:

Dearen, Patrick. Bitter Waters: The Struggles of the Pecos River. Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016.

New York City Hurt as Wealthy Residents Move to Miami

(p. A1) When roughly 300,000 New York City residents left during the early part of the pandemic, officials described the exodus as a once-in-a-century shock to the city’s population.

Now, new data from the Internal Revenue Service shows that the residents who moved to other states by the time they filed their 2019 taxes collectively reported $21 billion in total income, substantially more than those who departed in any prior year on record. The IRS said the data captured filings received in 2020 and as late as July 2021.

Many new or returning residents have since moved in. But the total income of those who had initially left was double the average amount of those who had departed over the previous decade, a potential loss that could have long-term effects on a city that relies heavily on its wealthiest residents to support schools, law enforcement and other public services.

The sheer number of people who left in such a short period raises uncertainty about New York City’s competitiveness and economic stability. The top 1 percent of earners, who make more than $804,000 a year, contributed 41 percent of the city’s personal income taxes in 2019.

About one-third of the people who left moved from Manhattan, and had an average income of $214,300. No other large American county had a similar exodus of wealth.

Early in the pandemic, Sam Williamson, 51, a white-collar defense lawyer living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, first relocated to Utah, then to Long Island. After a return to the city, he and (p. A19) his family permanently moved to Miami last year when his law firm opened an office there.

“I love New York City, but it’s been a challenging time,” Mr. Williamson said. “I didn’t feel like the city handled the pandemic very well.”

. . .

Gergana Ivanova, 28, a clothing designer and social media influencer, said her decision to move to Miami was less about taxes. The pandemic made the downsides of living in New York City more noticeable, she said, including the lack of space in her tiny Queens apartment and the trash piling up on the sidewalks. She felt less safe walking around when the streets were emptier.

“It didn’t feel happy and positive like it used to,” she said.

. . .

The exodus to Florida was especially robust, and not just for the retiree crowd. In 2020, New York City had a net loss of nearly 21,000 residents to Florida, IRS data showed, almost double the average annual net loss from before the pandemic.

. . .

Zak Jacoby was the general manager of a bar on the Lower East Side when the pandemic hit. Throughout 2020, his employment status fluctuated with the city’s changing indoor dining rules, a stressful period that put him on and off unemployment benefits.

Mr. Jacoby, 37, flew to Miami in January 2021 to see a friend — and decided to stay permanently after getting a job offer at a local restaurant group. If there was another virus surge, he said, the state would be less likely to shut down businesses, giving him more job security.

“My mind-set was, Florida’s more lenient on Covid, and there’s going to be less regulation,” he said.

For the full story see:

Nicole Hong and Matthew Haag. “Exodus of New York’s Wealthy Leaves Lasting Costs in Wake.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 28, 2022): A1 & A19.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “The Flight of New York City’s Wealthy Was a Once-in-a-Century Shock.” The online version of the story says that the print version has the title “An Exodus of New York’s Wealthy Has Left Lasting Costs,” but my National print version has the somewhat different title “Exodus of New York’s Wealthy Leaves Lasting Costs in Wake.”)

“Maverick” Chinese Entrepreneur Zhou Hang Dares Criticize Zero Covid Policy

(p. B1) China’s entrepreneur class is grappling with the worst economic slump in decades as the government’s zero Covid policy has shut down cities and kept would-be customers at home. Yet they can’t seem to agree on how loudly they should complain — or even whether they should at all.

. . .

Their approach, the equivalent of an ostrich sticking its head in the sand, doesn’t make sense to Zhou Hang. Mr. Zhou, a tech entrepreneur and a venture capitalist, has questioned how his peers can pretend it’s business as usual, given the political and economic upheaval. Stop putting up with the ridiculous reality, he urged. It’s time to speak up and seek change.

Mr. Zhou is rare in China’s business community for being openly critical of the government’s zero Covid policy, which has put hundreds of millions of people under some kind of lockdowns in the past few months, costing jobs and revenues. He’s saying what many others are whispering in private but fear to say in public.

“The questions we should ask ourselves are,” he wrote in an article that was censored within an hour of posting (p. B4) but shared widely in other formats, “what caused such widespread negative sentiment across the society? Who should be responsible for this? And how can we change it?”

He said the lockdowns in Shanghai and other cities made it clear that wealth and social status meant little to a government determined to pursue its zero Covid policy. “We’re all nobodies who could be sent to the quarantine camps, and our homes could be broken into,” he wrote. “If we still choose to adapt to and put up with this, all of us will face the same destiny: trapped.”

. . .

Mr. Zhou, 49, is known as a maverick in Chinese business circles. He founded his first business in stereo systems with his brother in the mid-1990s when he was still in college. In 2010, he started Yongche, one of the first ride-hailing companies.

Unlike most Chinese bosses, he didn’t demand that his employees work overtime, and he didn’t like liquor-filled business meals. He turned down hundreds of millions of dollars in funding and refused to participate in subsidy wars because doing so didn’t make economic sense. He ended up losing out to his more aggressive competitor Didi.

He later wrote a best seller about his failure and became a partner at a venture capital firm in Beijing. In April [2022], he was named chairman of the ride-sharing company Caocao, a subsidiary of auto manufacturing giant Geely Auto Group.

A Chinese citizen with his family in Canada, Mr. Zhou said in an interview that in the past many wealthy Chinese people like him would move their families and some of their assets abroad but work in China because there were more opportunities.

Now, some of the top talent are trying to move their businesses out of the country, too. It doesn’t bode well for China’s future, he said.

“Entrepreneurs have good survivor’s instinct,” he said. “Now they’re forced to look beyond China.” He coined a term — “passive globalization” — based on his discussions with other entrepreneurs. “Many of us are starting to take such actions,” he said.

For the full story see:

Li Yuan. “A Solitary Critic on ‘Zero Covid’.” The New York Times (Saturday, June 11, 2022): B1 & B4.

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

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 10, 2022 and has the title “A Chinese Entrepreneur Who Says What Others Only Think.”)

Surge in Blacks Buying Guns “for Protection Against Crime”

(p. A17) It’s well known that gun sales have surged in recent years, but less well known is that blacks have led the trend. Retailers in an online survey conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade group, reported that they sold 58% more guns to black customers in the first half of 2020 than a year earlier, the highest increase for any ethnic group. Personal safety tops the list of why people decide to buy a firearm. In a 2021 Gallup survey, 88% of respondents said they own a gun “for protection against crime,” which is up from 67% in 2005.

. . .

The source of the problem is the failure or inability of the government to protect us. Common sense dictates that we do what is necessary to protect ourselves in the meantime.

For the full commentary, see:

Jason L. Riley. “Why Black Americans Are Buying More Guns.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, June 8, 2022): A17.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary was updated June 7, 2022, and has the same title as the print version.)

“Byzantine Health Care System” Slowed Rollout of Effective COVID Anti-Viral Medication Paxlovid

(p. A16) GREENBELT, Md. — Last month, the owner of a small pharmacy here secured two dozen courses of Pfizer’s new medication for treating Covid-19, eager to quickly provide them to his high-risk customers who test positive for the virus.

More than a month later, the pharmacy, Demmy’s, has dispensed the antiviral pills to just seven people. The remaining stock is sitting in neatly packed rows on its shelves here in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. And the owner, Adeolu Odewale, is scrambling to figure out how to get the medication, Paxlovid, to more people as cases have increased over 80 percent in Maryland in recent days.

“I didn’t expect that I was still going to be sitting on that many of them,” he said of the pills he still has on hand. “It’s just that people need to know how to get it.”

. . .

But with the medication now more abundant, pharmacists, public health experts and state health officials say that encouraging the right people to take it, and making it easier for them to access, could help blunt the effects of another Covid wave.

State health officials say that many Americans who would be good candidates for Paxlovid do not seek it out because they are unaware they qualify for it, hesitant about taking a new medication, or confused by the fact that some providers interpret the eligibility guidelines more narrowly than others.

Since the medication has to be prescribed by a doctor, nurse practitioner or physician assistant, people have to navigate an often byzantine health care system in search of a prescription, then find a pharmacy that carries the treatment, all within five days of developing symptoms. The medication, prescribed as three pills taken twice a day for five days, is meant to be started early in the course of infection.

. . .

More than 630,000 courses of the drug — roughly a third of the supply distributed to date — are currently available, and the federal government has been sending 175,000 courses to states each week, according to federal data.

. . .

Giving pharmacists prescribing power could help people get the treatment much more quickly and easily, public health experts say. But regulators at the F.D.A. and other federal health officials believe there is reason to not allow pharmacists to prescribe Paxlovid themselves, even though some Canadian pharmacists can do so. The treatment can interfere with certain medications and should be prescribed at a lower dose for people with kidney impairment, which is measured with a blood test.

Pharmacists say that they are highly trained and well equipped to conduct such screening themselves. Michael Ganio, senior director of pharmacy practice and quality at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists, said pharmacists could get Paxlovid to patients faster if they could prescribe it, “without having to call a physician’s office and wait for a call back, and hope it happens within five-day period.”

For the full story, see:

Noah Weiland. “Plenty of Covid Pills, Not Many Prescriptions.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 27, 2022): A16.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 26, 2022, and has the title “With Supply More Abundant, Pharmacies Struggle to Use Up Covid Pills.” The online version says that the article appeared on p. A18 of the print version, but in my National edition of the print version, it appeared on p. A16.)

“We Approach Complete Leftist Saturation Among Professors”

(p. A13) The current left-right campus faculty ratio is probably about 15 to 1, but new appointments are being made at a rate of about 50 to 1. As we approach complete leftist saturation among professors, college campuses will become even more intolerant, irrational and politically aggressive.

More important still, academia’s influence on society will intensify as the number of people who have graduated from radicalized campuses increases and the number of those who graduated with a conventional college education declines. A generation—students from about 2000 to now—has graduated from one-party campuses. Where will we be when two generations have done so and another generation has died off?

. . .

Parents and students feel a need for credentials, even while the credential of a college degree has been corrupted. A more important factor is that public perception hasn’t caught up to the reality of academia. Older adults cherish memories of their time at college. Campus buildings are as impressive as ever, and the names of the institutions like Harvard and Yale are still magical, but a stream of poisonous ideology flows daily from academia into American culture.

For the full commentary, see:

John Ellis. “Can Politics Get Better When Higher Ed Keeps Getting Worse?” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022): A13

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date January 14, 2022, and has the title “Can Politics Get Better When Higher Education Keeps Getting Worse?”)

The commentary quoted above is related to the author’s book:

Ellis, John M. The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, the Damage It Does, and What Can Be Done. New York: Encounter Books, 2020.

Private Sector Scores 10 Points Higher Than Government on Customer Experience Index

(p. A4) . . . the government customer experience has improved over time. Federal agencies and programs in 2021 earned an average score of 62.6 points out of 100 in the Customer Experience Index, an annual ranking produced by Forrester Research Inc. The score was the highest federal average the market research company reported since it began studying government in 2015.

But the federal customer experience average still lags 10.7 points behind the private-sector average on the Forrester index.

“There have been people in the federal government doing good [customer experience] work for years,” said Rick Parrish, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. “The problem is the improvements haven’t been big enough, or fast enough.”

For the full story, see:

Katie Deighton. “Bureaucracy Studies Why It’s So Frustrating.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, April 20, 2022): A4.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 19, 2022, and has the title “White House Presents Plan to Fix Federal Customer Experience.”)

New York Subsidy of Buffalo Bills Stadium Sets NFL Boondoggle Record

(p. A21) ALBANY, N.Y. — New York State officials have reached a deal with the Buffalo Bills to use $850 million in public funds to help the team build a $1.4 billion stadium — the largest taxpayer contribution ever for a pro football facility.

. . .

. . ., the negotiations over a new stadium rekindled a bitter debate about whether government should be in the business of subsidizing arenas for professional sports teams; economic research has found that sports stadiums have rarely had a substantial impact, if any impact at all, on overall economic growth.

. . .

“To say you’re going to spend $850 million to get economic impacts, you’re playing on people’s emotions and not dealing with reality,” said Mark Rosentraub, a professor of sport management at the University of Michigan. “In the end, it’s nothing more than a subsidy to the N.F.L.”

Public assistance, in the form of tax breaks and free land, has been used to finance the construction of arenas for New York sports teams, but many of the teams, from the Yankees to the Mets, have financed most of the costs themselves. The Giants and the Jets, who play in New Jersey, paid for nearly all of their stadium, which opened in 2010.

For the full story, see:

Luis Ferré-Sadurní. “N.F.L.’s Buffalo Bills Close Deal for Taxpayer-Funded Stadium Costing $1.4 Billion.” The New York Times (Tuesday, March 29, 2022): A21.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 28, 2022, and has the title “Buffalo Bills Strike Deal for Taxpayer-Funded $1.4 Billion Stadium.”)

Unknown Theodore Judah Mattered More Than Famous Leland Stanford in the Success of the Central Pacific

(p. A15) . . . Mr. De Wolk insists that his subject paved the way to a postindustrial revolution. “The way virtually every man, woman, and child in the world would live would be altered permanently,” the author writes. “All because of Leland Stanford’s life.” Nonsense.

The story that Mr. De Wolk tells is of an undistinguished man who had no success on his own as a young adult. But he did have the good fortune of having brothers who set him up with a wholesale grocery shop in Sacramento, Calif. More good luck came his way when Huntington, at the time a fellow shopkeeper, and two other local merchants hatched a railroad company—even though none of them had any railroad experience—and invited Stanford to join as a partner. The vast sums of capital that they would need would be mostly supplied by 30-year bonds issued by the federal government, which also awarded enormous grants of land, gratis.

. . .

The most important person in the company’s founding was altogether excluded from the quintet at the top: Theodore Judah, a young man in his early 30s and the only one among the leadership who had any real experience building railroads. Judah’s surveys of the Sierra Nevada led to the discovery of a feasible passage at Donner Pass. It was Judah’s presentation to prospective investors that emboldened the Sacramento shopkeepers to go into the railroad business.

For the full review, see:

Randall Stross. “BOOKSHELF; Leland Stanford: Life and Myth.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, October 28, 2019): A15.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date October 27, 2019, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; ‘American Disruptor’ Review: The Life and Myth of Leland Stanford.”)

The book under review is:

De Wolk, Roland. American Disruptor: The Scandalous Life of Leland Stanford. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2019.

Chair of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers Worries that the Huge Covid Stimulus Spending Is Causing “Permanently Higher Inflation”

Jason Furman, quoted below, was the Chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors. He is now a professor of economics at Harvard.

(p. B1) The United States spent more aggressively to protect its economy from the pandemic than many global peers, a strategy that has helped to foment more rapid inflation — but also a faster economic rebound and brisk job gains.

Now, though, America is grappling with what many economists see as an unsustainable worker shortage that threatens to keep inflation high and may necessitate a firm response by the Federal Reserve. Yet U.S. employment has not recovered as fully as in Europe and some other advanced economies. That reality is prodding some economists to ask: Was America’s spending spree worth it?

. . .

“I’m worried that we traded a temporary growth gain for permanently higher inflation,” said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University and a former economic official in the Obama administration. His concern, he said, is that “inflation could stay higher, or the Fed could control it by lowering output in the future.”

For the full story, see:

Jeanna Smialek and Ben Casselman. “Same Relief Goal, Different Costs.” The New York Times (Wednesday, April 27, 2022): B1 & B3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 25, 2022, and has the title “Rapid Inflation, Lower Employment: How the U.S. Pandemic Response Measures Up.”)