Like the coyote in a Roadrunner cartoon, our governor has run smack into the walls of energy policy and tax policy. Her stance on both demonstrates her abject lack of economic sense.

Regarding energy policy: Gov. Hochul was recently forced to admit publicly that New York cannot meet the net-zero mandates established by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019 (CLCPA). Energy realists have been warning her for seven years that the CLCPA mandates are impossible, but the governor ignored those warnings.

Or perhaps there is an election coming and people are noticing their electric bills.

By ignoring reality, our governor has wasted $79 billion of taxpayer money on wind/solar/BESS subsidies. She has made New York electricity costs 58% higher than the national average. She has caused our electric grid to come perilously close to instability and blackouts because she prematurely shuttered perfectly good power plants in favor of unreliable wind and solar.

After all this time and money, we only have a small fraction of the wind/solar/BESS infrastructure we would need to meet CLCPA regulations, if indeed those regulations could even be met. But we could have used that money to upgrade our aging fleet of natural gas fired power plants with new technology that would reduce future costs.

And every new wind/solar/BESS installation that our municipalities approve is one more nail in our economic coffin. The momentary joy of PILOT programs will be short-lived, indeed.

Quoting JP Morgan’s 2026 Energy Analysis: “It is increasingly looking like the rush to build solar and storage in the United States may go down as one of the largest misallocations of capital in our nation’s history.” Amen.

So, our governor is now doing what typical politicians do – kicking the can down the road. Rather than confronting the real problem – the uselessness and impossibility of CLCPA mandates – she is merely asking the state Legislature to postpone the 2030 mandates until 2031, after she is comfortably out of office. Such courage!

Meanwhile she continues to force taxpayers to subsidize wind/solar/BESS to satisfy her donors, even though she is admitting through her actions that there is no climate emergency!

Our governor then blames her problems on Trump’s cancellation of subsidies for offshore wind. If she actually believes that wind/solar/BESS is a great investment for New Yorkers, why is she not happy to fund it with New York tax revenue so we could reap the benefits in the future?

But energy policy is not the only wall that our governor has run into. In a Politico broadcast in March, she demonstrated her ultimate hypocrisy by shaming former New Yorkers for having fled the state to escape her punishing taxes and wasteful social policies.

But, in 2022 Hochul openly sneered at all those who opposed her hyper-Leftist high-tax policies, telling them to “take the bus to Florida or Texas”. She said “we don’t want you in New York”.

Now she is groveling for those same people to come back, saying “I need people who are high-net worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state.” She begs them to “cut her a check,” just like “patriotic millionaires” should.

Apparently the Empire State is officially now the Hochul Welfare State. We are supposed to be thrilled to live as serfs supporting Gov. Hochul’s government-run plantation.

Sorry governor, but the immutable laws of economics tell us that we can have a generous welfare system – or we can have a thriving economy – but we cannot have both at the same time. This is precisely why Europe is an economic basket case, and why Florida is doing so well compared to New York. There is no question why New York has lost so much industry, while attracting only welfare chasers.

Apparently our governor is trying to duplicate the economic disaster that Gavin Newsom created in California with his “wealth tax”. In the past four months a total of $538 billion has left California for other places, and Hochul wants to do the same here.

Perhaps our governor should ponder why people leave New York.

Hint: It’s not the weather.

Scott Axelson is a Jamestown resident. Michael Dee is a Silver Creek resident.