Cash savings are not dead money – they’re the deposits that finance the banks’ loan books.

Tossery built upon ignorance. Richard Murphy – that Sage of Ely – is one of the few people in the country able to proffer up budget ideas even worse than the ones we’re going to get from Rachel this week.

– Tim Worstall

Local Law 11 requires owners of New York City’s 16,000-plus buildings over six stories to get a “close-up, hands-on” facade inspection every five years. Repair costs in NYC’s bureaucratic and labor-union driven system are very high, so the owners throw up “temporary” plywood sheds that often sit there for a decade. NYC now has some 400 miles of ugly sheds.

The ~9,000 sheds stretching nearly 400 miles have installation costs around $100–150 per linear foot and ongoing rents of about 5–6% of that per month, implying something like $150 million plus a year in shed rentals citywide.

Well. at last something is being done! The sheds are being made prettier! Six new designs, some with transparent roofs as in the rendering below are now allowed. Looks nice in the picture. Will it look as nice in real life? Will it cost more? Almost certainly!

To be fair, City Hall is cracking down as well as doubling down: new laws cut shed permits from a year to three months and ratchet up fines for letting sheds linger. That’s a good idea. But the prettier sheds are the tell. Instead of reevaluating the law, doing a cost-benefit test or comparing with global standards, NYC wants to be less ugly.

How about using drones and AI to inspect buildings? Singapore requires inspections every 7 years but uses drones to do most of the work with a follow-up with hands-on check. How about investigating ways to cut the cost of repair? The best analysis of NYCs facade program indicates something surprising–the problem isn’t just deteriorating old buildings but also poorly installed glass in new buildings, thus more focus on installation quality is perhaps warranted. Moreover, are safety resources being optimized? Instead of looking up, New Yorkers might do better by looking down. Stray voltage continues to kill pets and shock residents. Manhole “incidents” including explosions happen in the thousands every year! What’s the best way to allocate a dollar to save a life in NYC?

Instead of dealing the with the tough but serious problems, NYC has decided to put on the paint.

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David Bozell, president of the Media Research Center, is warning liberals to be careful what they wish for when it comes to the release of the Epstein files. Last Friday on WMAL, Bozell told afternoon drive host Derek Hunter that despite the elitist media’s obsession with the fake news narrative that the files implicate President Donald Trump, the files could be bad news for liberals. Bozell also noted the media have given House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries a pass on his Epstein scandal. If Speaker Johnson had solicited a contribution from Jeffrey Epstein after he had been arrested for child sex and rape, every single member of the Washington DC press corps would be camped outside his office until he resigned, every single one. The fact that Jeffries is caught red handed doing exactly that, and no one says ‘boo’ about getting him to step down as leader of the Democratic Party in the House, is another example of just how one-sided this has become and how everything is about get Trump, get Trump, get Trump. The networks unleashed on the American public over 800 minutes on Epstein since July on the broadcast networks in an effort to get Trump. He's down in the polls, largely because of this. We've got to fight even harder to get our message out that this has nothing to do with him, and hopefully the releases will prove that. And I think the Democrats are going to have to be careful what they wish for. Listen to the full interview here.

The home, a defining example of the architect’s vision for American design, has been acquired by the Mississippi Museum of Art, which will open it to the public, giving visitors the chance to experience Frank Lloyd Wright’s genius firsthand