Utopia, you are standing in it!

I hate the term “apples-to-apples.” I’ve heard those exact three words from so many senior people at or near New York subway construction in response to any cost comparison. Per those people, it’s inconceivable that if New York builds subways for $2 billion/km, other cities could do it for $200 million/km. Or, once they’ve been convinced that those are the right costs, there must be some justifiable reason – New York must be a uniquely difficult tunneling environment, or its size must mean it needs to build bigger stations and tunnels, or it must have more complex utilities than other cities, or it must be harder to tunnel in an old, dense industrial metropolis. Sometimes the excuses are more institutional but always drawn to exculpate the political appointees and senior management – health benefits are a popular excuse and so is a line like “we care about worker rights/disability rights…

One of the best things about 2021 was the fact that Congress did not approve Joe Biden’s economically debilitating plan to raise taxes and expand the welfare state.

His so-called Build Back Better plan was a very bad mix of class-warfare tax policy and redistributionist spending policy.

But one of the worst things about 2022 may be the reincarnation of a slimmed-down version of Biden’s plan.

Simply stated, the “slimmed-down version” of a terrible piece of legislation is bad news – even if it is possible to envision something even worse.

The Wall Street Journal‘s editorial on the package illustrates why it is bad news that Senator Joe Manchin is trying to rescue Biden’s statist agenda.

As the economy slouches near recession, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin…unveiled a tax-and-spending deal that they call the Inflation Reduction Act. Is their aim to reduce inflation…

After last week’s posts on the Reserve Bank’s handling of monetary policy, I thought it might be worthwhile to stand back and attempt a series of posts this week on how the Reserve Bank has handled things (mainly monetary policy) over the two and half years since, in late January 2020, Covid became an economic issue for New Zealand. In today’s post, I will look at the Bank’s preparedness and their responses over the first three months or so. In a second post, probably tomorrow, I will look at their handling of policy over the following year or so, and a third post will look at the more recent period. If it seems worthwhile, I might attempt a final post bringing it all together.

It is hardly a secret that I do not have a high regard for the Governor, but in this series I will be seeking to offer…

For renewable energy rent-seekers, the claim that wind and solar reduce carbon oxide gas emissions is a necessary and endlessly repeated lie. The necessity comes from the fact that without that (utterly false) premise the wind and solar industries would have been dead and buried, years ago. Incapable of ever supplying power as and when power consumers need it, wind and solar generators are responsible for a product with absolutely no commercial demand. Hence the massive subsidies.

For the record, STT is not overly concerned about human-generated carbon oxide gas and doesn’t accept the notion that it is ‘carbon pollution’. Plants crave the stuff and couldn’t care less whether comes from a volcano, peat bog or coal-fired power plant.

But, for those who worry about human-generated CO2, back in August 2014, STT posed the following question: How Much CO2 Gets Emitted to Build a Wind Turbine? Since then, that post has…

Stardate: 4513.3 (2268)
Original Air Date: November 3, 1967
Writer: Stephen Kandel, David Gerrold (uncredited)
Director: Marc Daniels

“What is a man but that lofty spirit, that sense of enterprise, that devotion to something that cannot be sensed, cannot be realized but only dreamed! The highest reality.”

In this goofy Harry Mudd sequel episode, a crewman named Norman (Richard Tatro) begins acting strangely and he rather quickly locks the ship’s controls and hijacks the entire vessel. He stiffly addresses the bridge (referring to himself as “we”) by stating that the Enterprise will arrive at a new intended destination in four solar days. Norman then reveals himself to be an android and then promptly shuts himself down while the ship speeds toward its unknown destination.

Several days later, the Enterprise arrives at an uncharted planet, classified a “Class-K” planet (meaning a planet which can be adapted for life…