UPSTATE NEW YORK RESIDENTS AFRAID VILLAGE WATER IS KILLING THEM:

Michele Baker is fed up with being ignored by Albany.

“We need to know who polluted our water, why it was polluted, and moreover why Governor Cuomo let us continue to drink contaminated water for 18 months,” Baker told Time Warner Cable News.

Baker wants to find out if New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) knew she and her family in Hoosick Falls, N.Y., were drinking water at home that was polluted with the PFOA chemical, and how long his administration might have covered up the answer.

Andrew Cuomo doesn’t have time to worry about one tiny town with a population of 3500 or so in upstate New York – he’s busy saving the entire planet singlehandedly: “Hey New York – You Do Realize It’s Global Warming, Right?”, Seton Motley asks at Red State:

“Since the energy mandate was approved, (New York Governor Andrew) Cuomo’s energy regulators have been dismissive of any cost concerns. PSC chair Audrey Zibelman has told members of the press that the energy mandate will actually benefit consumers. But how so, if no one denies that consumer prices will rise?”

Consumer prices rising — in the name of keeping global temperatures from rising. When global temperatures — aren’t rising. New York spending tens (hundreds?) of billions of additional dollars — and voluntarily, dramatically contracting its economy. To stop something from happening — that isn’t happening.

And let’s put New York’s exorbitantly expensive, destructive move — in its proper, global perspective. This is allegedly GLOBAL warming, after all.

The planet is home to some 7.4 billion people — who generated in 2014 a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $77.6 trillion. New York State’s population is 19.7 million — and their 2015 GDP was $1.4 trillion.

So New York’s GDP — is 0.02% of the world’s. Which means its global carbon footprint — is microscopic. If everyone in New York stopped doing any and everything — the impact on the world’s climate would be, for all intents and purposes, NIL.

Yet Governor Cuomo has consigned New York to commit this economic suicide. In order to have zero impact — on a problem that doesn’t exist.

I’m no politician — but that’s pretty terrible policy.

But it’s a textbook definition of what Victor Davis Hanson once dubbed “The Bloomberg Syndrome.” As VDH wrote in early 2011 when then-New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg failed to adequately remove a foot and half or so of global warming from his city streets:

It is a human trait to focus on cheap and lofty rhetoric rather than costly, earthy reality. It is a bureaucratic characteristic to rail against the trifling misdemeanor rather than address the often-dangerous felony. And it is political habit to mask one’s own failures by lecturing others on their supposed shortcomings. Ambitious elected officials often manage to do all three.

The result in these hard times is that our elected sheriffs, mayors, and governors are loudly weighing in on national and global challenges that are quite often out of their own jurisdiction, while ignoring or failing to solve the very problems that they were elected to address.

Quite simply, the next time your elected local or state official holds a press conference about global warming, the Middle East, or the national political climate, expect to experience poor county law enforcement, bad municipal services, or regional insolvency.

And quite possibly, a fair amount of “bad luck” to strike as well.