Posts tagged as “Column of the Day”

The University of Connecticut probably won't show any embarrassment over last week's abrupt resignation of its president, Thomas C. Katsouleas, who was not even two years into the job.

Having alienated the trustees, he won't be missed -- and indeed as a practical matter he won't be, for he really won't be leaving at all: his contract allows him to remain at UConn as a tenured professor with an office, secretarial help, and an annual salary of $330,000 -- an extravagant and premature pension.

Katsouleas' predecessor, Susan Herbst, is enjoying a similar arrangement as a tenured professor with a nominal courseload at UConn's Stamford branch with a salary of $319,000.

Meanwhile, three of New Haven's four highest-paid employees are police officers: a detective whose nominal salary was $84,000 earned $264,000, last year, and two officers whose nominal salaries were $76,000 earned $258,000 and $234,000.

● Read in Journal Inquirer

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Read and comment here on The Red Line

The International Energy Agency ( IEA) has assembled a large body of data about a central, and until now largely ignored, aspect of the energy transition: It requires mining industries and infrastructure that don’t exist. Wind, solar and battery technologies are built from an array of “energy transition minerals,” or ETMs, such as lithium, graphite, nickel and rare-earth metals.

As the IEA observes, there are no plans to fund and build the necessary mines and refineries. The supply of ETMs is entirely aspirational.

The transition to green energy would entail a shift away from liquids and gases whose extraction and transport leave a very light footprint on the land and are transported easily, cheaply and efficiently toward big-footprint mines, the energy-intensive transport of massive amounts of rocks and other solid materials, and subsequent chemical processing and refining that pose contamination risks through acid mine drainage, wastewater discharge and the disposal of tailings.

● Read in Wall Street Journal

Has anyone noticed that the president has proposed increasing federal spending by nearly $1 trillion a year, while promising that 98% of Americans will pay nothing for it? The very idea would have seemed mad to every previous generation of Americans. Today it is considered conventional.

From 1970 onward, the country has shifted to a budget-deficit policy—spending more than current revenue as a matter of routine.

Deficits had averaged 3% of spending in 1950-69. Then, deficits grew to 10% of spending in the 1970s and 18% in the 1980s. The U.S. borrowed for 22% of spending in 2019, a growth year that would have called for a budget surplus under the old regime.

Federal expenditures have shifted to benefits. In 1970, about 36% of federal spending, net of interest payments, was benefits to individuals—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (new programs at the time), unemployment compensation, means-tested welfare benefits. Benefits spending then grew mightily, roughly in tandem with deficit spending, and is now about 76% of spending, heading briskly toward 80%.

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Read in Wall Street Journal

What a rotten, unwarranted attack on Ryan Fazio and his campaign for state senate by Greenwich Democrats who filed a campaign finance complaint with the State Election Enforcement Commission (SEEC). Moving at lightening speed, the SEEC dismissed Democrats’ complaint in less than a month, without taking testimony. Complainant Bob Brady admits he didn’t even read the applicable regulations before filing the complaint. Yet he refused to apologize for his action or his ignorance.

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Read in Greenwich Time e-edition

● Read and comment here on The Red Line