Author Archives: Dana Pico

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“I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” We need to take care of Americans first!

I will start out with full disclosure: I am not a fan of Lexington Herald-Leader columnist Linda Blackford. She’s a liberal writer among a seemingly all-liberal editorial staff at what my best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal. But I have to laugh when a supporter of more government action winds up complaining about the inefficiency of government!

FEMA knows disasters. Why aren’t they doing a better job in Eastern Kentucky?

by Linda Blackford | Friday, August 12, 2022 | 10:48 AM EDT

There’s probably not a lot that Sen. Brandon Smith, R-Hazard, and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear agree on, politically or otherwise.

My nephew Nate flirting riding with KY National Guard lieutenant during search-and-rescue missions in Breathitt County. Click to enlarge.

But they are united on this — flood victims in Eastern Kentucky are not getting the help they so desperately need from the federal government in the wake of catastrophic flooding on July 28.

As Tessa Duvall wrote in a story on Thursday, “State Sen. Brandon Smith, R-Hazard, said in news release, he has received ‘countless phone calls from desperate eastern Kentucky residents’ outlining FEMA’s ‘alleged inaction, denials and an indication of surprisingly inadequate financial assistance to rebuild their homes and lives.’ “

Beshear has heard the same stories and concluded, “it’s not right.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell also announced Friday that he “spoke personally with President Biden, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Mayorkas, and Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) Administrator Criswell to advocate for increased aid. After hearing concerns from Eastern Kentucky residents and local officials during this week’s visits, Senator McConnell contacted FEMA Administrator Criswell again to encourage expedited assistance for Kentuckians impacted by flooding.”

Sometimes, it’s good to have one of the most powerful politicians in Washington on your side.

LOL! That won’t be good enough for Mrs Blackford and the Herald-Leader not to endorse former state Representative Charles Booker in the November election! The Lexington newspaper always endorses Democrats, and if Mr Booker is running against incumbent Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) rather than Mr McConnell, they also endorsed Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes in 1984, and Amy McGrath Henderson, in 2000, over Senator McConnell. Both lost in huge landslides.

But if we are all on the same side here, what is the problem? FEMA administrators surely have enough experience — many decades — with catastrophic flooding to know that if someone’s house is completely flooded, they aren’t necessarily going to have the documents they need to prove they own it. They must know that people need help immediately, and lots of it. They must understand that $37,900 — the total cap for housing reimbursement — will no longer go very far in rebuilding a house from scratch these days.

And they must understand that if that help is not forthcoming in rebuilding, people will have to leave, further hurting the region.

Surely she can’t be surprised that bureaucrats act like bureaucrats.

Mrs Blackford noted that there’s a hard cap of $37,900 in disaster assistance money, and while that certainly won’t rebuild a house, it doesn’t matter: FEMA agents cannot authorize more money than the law allows. Checking the website for Clayton Mobile Homes in Richmond, $37,900 won’t even buy a decent house trailer. Earlier today I found one mobile home for $50,000, two bedrooms and two bathrooms, and a whopping 820 ft², but now that one is gone.

If you didn’t have good flood insurance, too bad, so sad, but you are stuck to another object by an inclined plane, wrapped helically around an axis. And flood insurance, if you can even get it, is extremely expensive, beyond the means of many of the poorer people living in eastern Kentucky. A lady I know in Irvine had flood insurance, because it was required for her to get a mortgage on the home she bought. Trouble is that the only flood insurance she could afford had a $10,000 deductible, and the March 2021 flood did $6,500 in damage to her home. She spent all of that money for flood insurance, and it did her no good at all. Really, flood insurance is only good if your home is a total loss.

But, most importantly, she mentioned that we have sent billions of dollars in money and equipment to Ukraine, a country surely in need, but a country that is not the United States! The United States has sent Ukraine roughly $9.1 billion so far, and $9.1 billion could provide $100,000 in housing aid to each of 91,000 families in eastern Kentucky, far more than were unhoused by the flooding.

Don’t worry about Ukraine; we need to take care of Americans first!

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Killadelphia Not all murders in Philly are in the combat zone neighborhoods

The Philadelphia Police Department updates its Current Crime Statistics Page only during “normal business hours,” Monday through Friday, so homicides on Friday, Saturday and Sunday are not reported until Monday morning. The City of Brotherly Love — and yes, while I like to use various nicknames for places, using Philly’s nickname is pretty much mocking it these days — had no reported murders on Thursday, leaving the city with 338 homicides, nine more, 2.74% more, than the same date in 2021.

But just because the numbers won’t be officially reported until Monday, we already have one for Friday on the books:

Woman fatally stabbed in South Philadelphia home; 16-year-old relative is person of interest

Police responded to the home on the 2300 block of South 20th Street shortly before 12:30 a.m. Friday.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Friday, August 12, 2022

A 64-year-old woman was stabbed to death early Friday morning and police said a 16-year-old relative is being treated as a person of interest.

Shortly before 12:30 a.m. Friday, police responded to a report of a stabbing in a home on the 2300 block of South 20th Street. When police arrived, they found the woman with multiple stab and cut wounds to her neck in the second floor hallway of the home, Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Scott Small told reporters at the scene.

A large kitchen knife with a 10-to-12 inch blade that had blood on it was found feet away from the woman’s head, he said. The woman, whose name has not been released, was pronounced dead by a medic, police said.

The 16-year-old was found with blood on him and cuts to his hands, said Small. He was taken to Jefferson Methodist Hospital and was being treated as a person of interest.

The Inquirer story said that an arrest has been made, but that the police did not say who was in custody. However, Steve Keeley of Fox 29 News tweeted that the 16-year-old family member had been taken into custody.

This was not a typical gang-banger shooting, and, for some reason, it appears that the 16-year-old was trying to kill the owner’s cat, and the elderly woman died trying to save her cat.

The 2300 block of South 20th Street is not a terrible neighborhood. Primarily working-class rowhomes, Google Maps, at least as of September of 2019, does not show any houses with front porches barred in to keep out the bad guys, or steel bars on first floor windows. Zillow shows a guesstimated value of the home in question — yes, I know exactly which home it is — of $183,300, and some homes nearby have recently sold for more than $200,000. An obviously flipped rowhome, just a block further up South 20th Street, sold for $290,000 in January of 2021.

Yeah, most of Philly’s violence is in the combat zones, but not all of it. This could have been a kid who was already nuts, or a delinquent treated leniently by the system, or one hopped on drugs, or even just someone who, for some unknown reason, snapped; the information released to the public doesn’t tell us. But life is cheap in Philadelphia, and being in a decent neighborhood is not perfect protection.

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Does Mark Bailey think that getting raped is really not all that bad?

Twitter is a social medium in which you can find all sorts of unexpected things, and the screen capture of a tweet from Mark Bailey pretty much fits the definition of ‘unexpected.’ I do screen captures just in case the author decides that oops, perhaps he shouldn’t have tweeted that. and deletes it. But with [insert plural slang term for the anus here] like me around, the internet is forever!

There were all sorts of responses, the vast majority of which were expressing incredulity that anyone, anyone! would tweet something which could be read as saying that a woman about to be assaulted or raped would be better off just surrendering and taking whatever happened to her, and I will confess to having added a couple of them myself.

But then I asked myself, what was Mr Bailey really trying to say, so I asked him

You know what? I’ll bite and ask intellectually: what do you believe a woman should do if she is about to be assaulted, sexually or otherwise? Do you believe that it is somehow better that she just accept being beaten or raped (rather) than shoot, and possibly kill, the assailant?

Mr Baily hadn’t responded immediately, which is perfectl;y fine: he might not even be on Twitter at after 10:00 PM on a Thursday night. But I did find this from him as I went to his Twitter bio:

Now this is the first response to my posts that seems to understand my meaning. In New York City, you are persecuted if you take the law into your own hands and defend yourself. Walking around with a gun, opens the door to questions about why are you walking around with a gun?

Well, one thing is clear: New York City, and New York State, do not want people to be able to defend themselves against armed criminal assault, as they tried, fortunately unsuccessfully, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen, to defend the laws which mostly deny law-abiding citizens the right to carry concealed weapons. It should be noted that the Manhattan District Attorney, another George Soros funded ‘progressive’ stooge named Alvin Bragg, initially sought to try bodega owned José Alba, 61, for fatally stabbing Austin Simmons, 35, who attacked him after Mr Alba refused to accept short payment from Mr Simmons’ girlfriend for something. Eventually, the District Attorney’s office decided to dismiss the charge:

In the prosecution’s motion to dismiss, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Sigall said the district attorney’s office would not present the case to a grand jury. “Following an investigation, the People have determined that we cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not justified in his use of deadly physical force,” Sigall said in the court filing.

Translation: Mr Bragg wanted to lock up Mr Alba, but knew that no grand jury would indict him, and no petit jury would convict him; Mr Bragg knew that he was looking like a fool, and was trying to cut his losses.

Mr Alba didn’t defend himself by using a firearm, but it certainly brings up Mr Bailey’s second statement: if a New Yorker was carrying a firearm without a permit, and used that firearm to defend himself against an assault, sexual or otherwise, Mr Bragg and his minions might well try to charge him for using potentially deadly force to defend himself.

It was Thursday morning that The New York Times finally noticed the City of Brotherly Love, and published ‘Everybody Is Armed’: As Shootings Soar, Philadelphia Is Awash in Guns: More than 1,400 people have been shot this year in Philadelphia, hundreds of them fatally — a higher toll than in much larger New York or Los Angeles, the day after Mr Bailey’s unfortunate tweet. We have previously noted that Philadelphians are seeking concealed carry permits in record-setting numbers precisely because the bad guys have been on a rampage, killing people in the city at a record breaking pace.

Mr Bailey tweeted:

This all started out as a debate on having guns in public places, and you paranoid people have turned it into a referendum on rape. The premise of the argument originally was whether pulling a gun and trying to kill your rapist, is it worth losing your life if something goes wrong

and:

When all of a sudden, a gun is pulled, anything can happen to either party. The person who shoots could kill the so called rapist, or the rapist could somehow overpower her & use that same gun to kill her.Or she could be arrested & held for trial where she admits killing someone.

In one way, Mr Bailey is correct: if you have to pull out a firearm to defend yourself, it could still go very wrong for you. But Mr Bailey, in trying to make his point, has moved into silliness: while defending yourself against what he called “the so called rapist”, a phrase which certainly sets himself up for more criticism, could go badly for a potential victim, not being able to defend against an assault means getting assaulted. Perhaps he didn’t mean to make it sound that way, but many people, myself included, are reading this as him suggesting that getting assaulted or raped is just not so bad as to be worth risking whatever it is you are risking by defending yourself.

I will notify Mr Bailey, via Twitter, of this article, giving him a reasonable chance to respond.

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Several previously convicted sex offenders arrested in Lexington for parole violations.

We noted, on August 5th, the arrest of previously convicted sex offender William Wehking. It looks like Fayette County is working hard to enforce the laws under which convicted sex offenders must live:

Over a dozen sex offenders in Fayette County arrested for not complying with registry

by Christopher Leach | Wednesday, August 10, 2022 | 1:22 PM EDT | Updated: 3:31 PM EDT

A multi-day operation headed by local and federal law enforcement agencies resulted in the arrests of 13 registered sex offenders in Fayette County who weren’t compliant with the sex offender registry, the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday.

The sheriff’s office, along with the U.S. Marshals Service and Kentucky State Probation & Parole teamed up to carry out a Fayette County sex offender registration operation. The goal of the operation was to ensure supervised, registered sex offenders in Fayette County were compliant with the terms of their probation/parole and applicable laws.

The operation took place on July 26 and 27, according to the sheriff’s office. The coalition checked 78 sex offenders, 57 of which were deemed compliant, the sheriff’s office said. Of the remaining 21, eight were given sanctions and 13 were arrested for violating parole.

Martese Warner, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

One of the individuals arrested, Martese Warner, 31, was also charged with trafficking in marijuana, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of drug paraphernalia.

As of Wednesday morning, all of the 13 suspects arrested were still in custody, according to Fayette County Sheriff Kathy Witt.

“It is my hope that as we move forward that these 13 will have their parole and/or their probation, whichever one it is, rescinded or revoked, and it is my hope that they will have to serve out the rest of their sentence while incarcerated,” Witt said.

As always, the Lexington Herald-Leader chose not to include an offender’s mugshot, but the notion that doing so harms people who may, in the future, be acquitted, should not hold here: these people are all previously convicted sex offenders!

The U.S. marshals said that during the operation they seized 21 cell phones that were unreported or contained violations, three hard drives, two laptops, two “sexual devices/aids,” one knife, one hatchet, one loaded firearm, one box of 9 mm ammunition, 370.3 grams of marijuana, drug paraphernalia, two digital scales, and $700.

Jason Aldridge, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Unfortunately, the newspaper named only one of the offenders, and the information in the last quoted paragraph, while specific about what evidence was seized, tells us nothing about from how many of the arrested individuals it was taken. The WLEX-TV Channel 18 story showed some of the offenders listed: Jason Aldridge, George Cady, Likuan Clark, Justin Cook, and Kenneth Cook. All are charged with parole violation (technical violation), with no bond amount listed. Like Sheriff Witt stated, they should have their parole revoked and be kept behind bars until the very last day of their sentences.

George Cady, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Likuan Clark, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Justin Cook, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Kenneth Cook, photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

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When it comes to #VaccineMandates the maintenance of dictatorial power is far more important than the effectiveness of the vaccines!

On July 25th, The Wall Street Journal reported that “most people” have been infected at some point with SARS-CoV-2, the virus which causes COVID-19.

Geneticists and immunologists are studying factors that might protect people from infection, and learning why some are predisposed to more severe Covid-19 disease.

For many, the explanation is likely that they have in fact been infected with the virus at some point without realizing it, said Susan Kline, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota Medical School. About 40% of confirmed Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic, according to a meta-analysis published in December in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

More than two years into the pandemic, most people worldwide have likely been infected with the virus at least once, epidemiologists said. Some 58% of people in the U.S. had contracted Covid-19 through February, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated. Since then, a persistent wave driven by offshoots of the infectious Omicron variant has kept daily known cases in the U.S. above 100,000 for weeks.

As we have previously noted, this past winter, acting Food and Drug Administration head Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee that she expected that, eventually, almost everyone would contract the virus. Celebrity doctor Anthony Fauci said that COVID-19 would infect “just about everybody.” This was during the BA.1 variant’s primacy, and two months later, the American Medical Association warned that the then-new BA.2 subvariant could be “30% to 60% more transmissible” than BA.1. While playing Blondie’s One Way of Another, we noted that BA.4 and BA.5 are gonna get ya, get ya, get ya, get ya! Yale Medicine also said that BA.4 and BA.5 appear to be more transmissible.

But, as it has turned out, the latest variant — has there been one since BA.5? — hasn’t been leading to serious illnesses. Also from the Journal:

Colleges Scale Back Covid Precautions for Fall, Saying Pandemic Phase Over

Requirements for masking, testing, vaccinations and isolation decrease even as virus surges

By Isabelle Sarraf and Melissa Korn | Updated August 3, 2022 | 8:59 AM EDT

Colleges this fall are no longer treating Covid-19 as an emergency upending their operations, shifting to eliminate mask requirements and mandatory coronavirus testing and letting students who contract the virus isolate in their dorms with their roommates.

With easy access to vaccinations and low hospitalization rates among college-aged adults—even during the latest surge in BA.5 subvariant cases—administrators said it is time to lift or at least rethink restrictions and redefine the virus as endemic, not a pandemic. That means scaling back mass testing, removing bans on large indoor gatherings and preparing for a fall term that more closely resembles life before Covid.

Another issue driving the decisions is exhaustion, according to public-health experts and academics on several campuses. Students and staff have been subjected to two years of daily health checks, weekly trots to a testing center and a roller coaster of mask protocols.

“It really comes down to a change in mind-set,” said Ken Henderson, who was co-chair of Northeastern University’s Covid-management operations until the group disbanded in January. Citing clinical therapies and the reduced severity of current variants, he said, “We’ve pivoted significantly to more living with the virus.”

Simply put, the COVID panicdemic — and no, that’s not a typo; panic has been exactly the overreaction people have had! — is both something with which we will have to live, and is not as serious as the doomsayers have been crying. But that hasn’t led Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), who has presided over the City of Brotherly Love having already exceeded every single year’s homicide totals under his predecessor’s, Michael Nutter’s, two terms, and who is very vocally pro-choice when it comes to abortion, determination to enforce his choice when it comes to the COVID vaccines which neither prevent contraction of, nor the spreading of, the virus. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Nearly all city workers have complied with Mayor Jim Kenney’s vaccine policy, but 68 are getting fired

The 68 employees who are not in compliance with the policy and will be terminated soon include 39 who work in the Streets Department.

by Sean Collins Walsh | Tuesday, August 9, 2022

Philadelphia

Seal of the City of Philadelphia: Public Domain

Eight months after Mayor Jim Kenney’s vaccine mandate for city workers was supposed to take effect, the administration announced Tuesday that all but 68 of the city’s 22,000 unionized employees are now in compliance with the policy.

That doesn’t mean that almost all city employees are vaccinated against the coronavirus. Roughly 3,000 employees have obtained religious or medical exemptions from the mandate, and are required to test regularly to go to work.

The 68 employees who are not in compliance with the policy will be terminated soon, but dates will vary due to differing levels of paid time off, Kenney’s office said.

Fifteen city employees had already been fired for failing to comply with a vaccine mandate that took effect for the city’s 3,200 non-unionized employees in December 2021.

The Democratic mayor obviously doesn’t care that 68 people will lose their jobs over refusing to take a vaccine which has had some negative side effects in some people and which, while it appears to make illness caused by the virus less serious, doesn’t prevent contraction or spreading of it. The city is already below authorized staffing levels and has been having real difficulties attracting applicants. Philly has had such a serious shortage of lifeguards that it was able to open only 50 of the 65 community swimming pools this year, and had such a serious behavioral problem at one pool in Kensington that it closed the McVeigh Recreation Center for the rest of the year. The news reports did not say that the staff refused to work there any longer, but I’d bet euros against eclairs — my version of the oft-used dollars to doughnuts expression — that that’s what happened.

Tuesday’s announcement brings to an end a chain of events that began in November 2021, when Kenney said city workers had to be vaccinated by Jan. 14, 2022. The mandate was delayed for months as the administration struggled through negotiations with each of the four major municipal unions, ending when an arbitration panel in May ruled that the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 22, the staunchest opponent of the policy, had to comply.

I did suggest, on July 14th, that the firemen and emergency medical technicians should go on strike, at least for a day, to support their union brethren who were getting suspended for refusing the vaccine. The fireman’s union President, Mike Bresnan, stated that about 700 of the union’s 2,300 members had obtained exemptions, almost all of them religious. Roughly 15% of police union members also requested exemptions.

Kenney said Tuesday that “safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines remain the best way to protect Philadelphians and save lives.”

“We have reached nearly 100 percent compliance with our vaccination mandate for our represented workforce, and this success was possible because of the hard work and partnership between our City labor partners and our Administration team,” he said in a statement. “I am proud of our City’s workforce who, as public servants, bear a responsibility to mitigate the harm that would result from inadvertent transmission.”

I wonder how many of the city’s employees would have taken the vaccine voluntarily were their jobs not put at risk. How many would have freely chosen to get vaccinated, and how many simply yielded to force? And how many used the faked vaccination cards to keep their jobs to get around tyrannical dictates?

We were told that the vaccines would prevent contraction of the virus, but that has turned out not to be the case. We were told that the vaccines would stop the spread of the virus, but that didn’t happen either.

But refusal to take the vaccine does harm the mayor’s exercise of dictatorial power, and that’s what this is really all about.

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Congratulations to Jim Kenney!

Congratulations to Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney! He has just achieved more murders in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year than any full year in which his predecessor, Michael Nutter, held the office. George Soros-sponsored District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw certainly deserve credit as well!

Last night was a Monday night, not a weekend, but at a time in which you’d expect Philadelphia’s gang-bangers to slow down a bit, they haven’t. I’d point out that August 8th was a Sunday, end of the weekend, in 2021, the 32nd weekend of the year, and the same number of weekends have elapsed in 2022, so there’s no additional weekend bump in 2022.

Yes, math geeks like me notice things like that.

August 8th was the 220th day of the year. 337 ÷ 220 = 1.5318 homicides per day in Philly, which works out to a projected 559.107 killings in the city for the entire year. But wait: done another way, taking the percentage increase in homicides over last year, 4.0123, and multiplying that by last year’s 562 murders, we could also project 584.549 murders in Philly!

The difference? In 2021, the city actually saw a decrease in the rate of killings between July 9th and September 6th, the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend. That hasn’t happened so far this year, as July saw sixty homicides, while July of 2021 saw ‘only’ 48 murders.

The homicide rate picked up after the Labor Day weekend last year, from an average of 1.4578 per day — which projected out to 532 for the year — and the final 116 days of the year saw 199 homicides, an average of 1.7155 per day, which lifted the yearly average to 1.5397 per day for the year, and 562 murders. While last year’s mid- to late-summer lull hasn’t been seen so far this year, it has to be asked: will last year’s post Labor Day surge be repeated?

At least The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t ignore the most recent killings, or the surge:

Philly shootings leave 3 dead, including man slain in Popeye’s lot

No arrests have been made, and a motive remains under investigation.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Tuesday, August 9, 2022

One person was killed and two others were injured in a shooting late Monday night in the parking lot of a Popeye’s in Kensington.

Well, of course it was in Kensington!

Just after 11:15 p.m. Monday, officers responded to a call for a person with a gun on the 300 block of West Lehigh Avenue. When officers arrived, they found multiple people with gunshot wounds inside a red sedan. The victims had been shot in the parking lot of the nearby Popeye’s, 6ABC reported.

Police said that three suspects, all armed, came up to the sedan and fired 47 bullets into the car, 6ABC reported. After the shooting, the suspects took off on foot.

One victim, a man, had multiple gunshot wounds to his head and was pronounced dead shortly after at Temple University Hospital. Another victim, a woman, had several gunshot wounds to her body, and the third victim, a man, had multiple gunshot wounds to his back. They were taken to Temple University Hospital in stable condition.

North Orianna Street, via Google Maps, May 2022. Click to enlarge.

The Popeye’s Chicken restaurant is at the corner of West Lehigh Avenue and North Orianna Street. North Orianna Street in the blocks around West Lehigh Avenue is a neighborhood of older row homes, some with porches barred in to keep out the bad guys, vacant lots with concertina wire topping fences, and a generally poverty-stricken look.

One of the wounded, but not killed, victims, was an employee of the Popeye’s restaurant.

The Inquirer report stated that 47 shots had been fired, but that the police had no motive as of yet, but one thing is obvious: this was a targeted assassination. The newspaper also censored the fact, gleaned from the city’s shootings database, that all of the dead were black males.

Further down:

As of Sunday night, the city was ahead of last year’s pace for what ended in a record high number of 562 homicides for the year. By Sunday night, police reported that 333 people have been killed in Philadelphia so far this year.

There were 324 homicides by the same date last year.

Perhaps it’s a bit unfair for a math geek like me to point this out, but the Inky really needs to start looking at the numbers. I’d like to think that a former Pennsylvanian, now 635 miles away in eastern Kentucky, isn’t the only person actually running, and publicizing, the statistics.

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How can anyone expect government action on the economy to work when so many politicians are economically ignorant?

As I have previously noted in Welfare for the well-to-do, the economics proposals of the Democrats in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act are those of people who understand virtually nothing about economics. Well, now even The New York Times is noticing what I said ten days ago.

Electric Cars Too Costly for Many, Even With Aid in Climate Bill

Battery-powered vehicles are considered essential to the fight against climate change, but most models are aimed at the affluent.

by Jack Ewing | Monday, August 8, 2022

Policymakers in Washington are promoting electric vehicles as a solution to climate change. But an uncomfortable truth remains: Battery-powered cars are much too expensive for a vast majority of Americans.

Congress has begun trying to address that problem. The climate and energy package passed on Sunday by the Senate, the Inflation Reduction Act, would give buyers of used electric cars a tax credit.

But automakers have complained that the credit would apply to only a narrow slice of vehicles, at least initially, largely because of domestic sourcing requirements. And experts say broader steps are needed to make electric cars more affordable and to get enough of them on the road to put a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions.

Of course, most car buyers aren’t buying new cars anyway. In 2021, there were 58.4 million personal cars and light-duty trucks purchased in the United States, and 43.1 million of them, 73.8%, were purchases of used cars; only 15.3 million were new cars. In 2019, before the COVID panicdemic,[1]No, that isn’t a typographical error; the ‘panic’ part of panicdemic is entirely accurate. the numbers were 59.1 million total sales, with 42.4 million, 71.7%, being used cars. The vast majority of Americans cannot afford to buy new cars, plug-in electric or otherwise.

High prices are caused by shortages of batteries, of raw materials like lithium and of components like semiconductors. Strong demand for electric vehicles from affluent buyers means that carmakers have little incentive to sell cheaper models. For low- and middle-income people who don’t have their own garages or driveways, another obstacle is the lack of enough public facilities to recharge.

Haven’t I said that before? And haven’t we noted General Motors suggestion that people not charge their electric vehicles too close to other cars?

One would think that a New York Times writer would know that, in densely populated cities, it isn’t just “low- and middle-income people” who might not have private garages and/or driveways. Private garages and driveways are, for the greater part, luxuries of suburban and rural areas, where people have enough space on their property for such things. Alas! So many small town and rural areas, where people do have the room for driveways and garages are also areas of lower income. People may live just as well as in wealthier cities, because the costs of living are so much lower, primarily due to housing costs, but costs-of-living differences don’t affect new car prices; a 2022 Tesla Model 3 costs just much in Mt Sterling, Kentucky as it does in Rochester, New York.

There are, naturally, other costs. As it happens, I have the private garage, complete with separate electric service, and the Knowledge, tools and skill to install an electric vehicle charging unit, but how many other people do? If someone has to hire an electrician to install that device, it could easily cost $2,000. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis noted that, just prior to the catastrophic economic response to the COVID panicdemic, 36% of Americans would have difficulty paying an unexpected $400 expense, while another 11% wouldn’t be able to pay it at all. Where are such people going to be able to pay $2,000 for an electrician to install a 220 volt, 50 amp circuit to run an electric car charger?

The bottlenecks will take years to unclog. Carmakers and suppliers of batteries and chips must build and equip new factories. Commodity suppliers have to open new mines and build refineries. Charging companies are struggling to install stations fast enough. In the meantime, electric vehicles remain largely the province of the rich.

Also see: William Teach: NY Times: Say, These EVs Are Rather Expensive For The Middle And Lower Classes, Eh?

I will admit it: I am somewhat shocked that the Times would even tell the truth about the economics of the Inflation Enhancement Reduction Act.

Only a few years ago analysts were predicting that electric vehicles would soon be as cheap to buy as gasoline cars. Given the savings on fuel and maintenance, going electric would be a no-brainer.

Instead, soaring prices of commodities like lithium, an essential ingredient in batteries, helped raise the average sticker price of an electric vehicle 14 percent last year to $66,000, $20,000 more than the average for all new cars, according to Kelley Blue Book.

And there you have it: the “analysts” had gotten it wrong . . . again.

This has been the problem all along with economic legislation in Congress and from the Administration, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans were in charge: they never get it right! The economy isn’t a monolith, but 270 million economic actors taking literally billions of economic decisions every day, and those decisions are not always based on the things the professional economists believe they should be. Before I retired, I used to stop at a small bagel shop on my way to work, selected not because its prices were lower than the Dunkin’ Donuts a bit further down the street — they weren’t — but because it was on the right-hand side of the road and had an easy-in, easy-out parking lot, rather than Dunkin’, which was on the left-hand side, and in a somewhat more congested area.[2]Alas! That independent bagel shop is gone now, possibly due to the panicdemic, but I also attribute its closing to losing me as a customer. Economically, it was a bad decision — by a whopping 20¢ a day — but convenience-wise, it was the correct one.

This new legislation, which the left are cheering — even as many say it doesn’t go far enough — will fail to live up to its promises, because such legislation always fails to live up to the rosy promises made to pass it. The government simply cannot control the economy, and when it’s led by so many economic dummies, so many people who, despite their claims, have no flaming idea how most Americans live, there simply isn’t a prayer that the government will get it right. We don’t know how badly the Inflation Enhancement Reduction Act will fail, but we do know that it will.

References

References
↑1 No, that isn’t a typographical error; the ‘panic’ part of panicdemic is entirely accurate.
↑2 Alas! That independent bagel shop is gone now, possibly due to the panicdemic, but I also attribute its closing to losing me as a customer.
Posted on by

No sense letting this guy plead down; he obviously likes jail!

When a guy has ten separate mugshots listed in the Fayette County Detention Center, all since July 28, 2015, I think it’s fair to say that he just plain likes jail!

Lexington police find man dead while responding to a shooting call. Suspect later arrested

Sean Smith. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

by Christopher Leach | Friday, August 5, 2022 | 6:44 AM EDT | Updated: 11:02 AM EDTLexington police have arrested a suspect in connection to an overnight fatal shooting.

Police said Sean Smith, 53, has been charged with murder and wanton endangerment. Fayette County Detention Center records say Smith was booked in at 8:43 a.m. Friday and is being held without a bond.

The shooting happened around 1:50 a.m. Friday in the 1800 block of Augusta Drive, according to Lt. Joe Anderson with the Lexington Police Department. Officers were responding to a report of a subject down and found a dead male with a gunshot wound on scene, according to Anderson.

Anderson said Friday morning that police were still investigating the shooting and working to determine what led up to the incident.

It’s the city’s 28th homicide of 2022, which is nine short of the annual record set last year.

Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/crime/article264210241.html#storylink=cpy.

Sadly, this story is mostly unremarkable, except for the very last sentence. The article stated, “It’s the city’s 28th homicide of 2022, which is nine short of the annual record set last year.” What was not mentioned is the fact that the 28th homicide of 2021 occurred on October 5th, two full months later in the year. 28 murders as of 216th day of the year equals one homicide every 7.62 days, putting the city on track for 47 or 48 (47.31 actually) killings for 2022, in a city in which even the Herald-Leader has reported that Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Anna Red Corn has been “mediating” pleas and sentences in 19 out of 25 murder cases, allowing killers to receive sentences as light as ten years.

KRS §507.020 Murder is a capital offense, which, under KRS §532.030 carries possible sentences of:

  • death
  • imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole
  • imprisonment for life without benefit of probation or parole until he has served a minimum of twenty-five (25) years of his sentence
  • imprisonment for a term of not less than twenty (20) years nor more than fifty (50) years

KRS §508.060 Wanton endangerment in the first degree is a Class D felony, which, under KRS §532.060 carries a sentence of one (1) to five (5) years in the state penitentiary.

No need for Miss Red Corn to offer Mr Smith a sweetheart plea deal; since he obviously likes jail, might as well keep him in jail for the rest of his miserable life. At least that way he won’t be a menace to the innocent people in the city.

 

Posted on by

Telling the unvarnished truth about #Monkeypox verboten!

As we have previously noted, telling the people most at risk for contracting Monkeypox how to avoid it is just way, way, way too politically incorrect! Monkeypox, an infection that is being spread primarily, though not exclusively, by male homosexual sex, certainly worries the homosexual male community, but our public health officials are apparently very, very worried about not saying the wrong thing, lest they be deemed politically incorrect or, horrors! homophobic.

As Monkeypox Spreads, U.S. Declares a Health Emergency

The designation will free up emergency funds and lift some bureaucratic hurdles, but many experts fear containment may no longer be possible.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Apoorva Mandavilli | Thursday, August 4, 2022

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Thursday declared the growing monkeypox outbreak a national health emergency, a rare designation signaling that the virus now represents a significant risk to Americans and setting in motion new measures aimed at containing the threat.

The declaration by Xavier Becerra, President Biden’s health secretary, marks just the fifth such national emergency since 2001, and comes as the country remains in a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic. The World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over the outbreak late last month.

Mr. Becerra’s announcement, at an afternoon news briefing where he was joined by a raft of other top health officials, gives federal agencies power to quickly direct money toward developing and evaluating vaccines and drugs, to gain access to emergency funding and to hire additional workers to help manage the outbreak, which began in May.

“We’re prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus,” Mr. Becerra said, adding that “we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously, and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus.”

Mr. Biden has faced intense pressure from public health experts and activists to move more aggressively to combat monkeypox, which has infected more than 6,600 people in the United States. Lawrence O. Gostin, a health law expert at Georgetown University, called Thursday’s declaration “a pivotal turning point in the monkeypox response, after a lackluster start.”

Let’s see: 6,600 cases, out of a population of roughly 330,000,000, means that a whopping 0.002% of Americans have been infected by a disease which, while very uncomfortable, has led to exactly zero fatalities in the United States.

More than 99 percent of people infected with monkeypox in this country are men who have sex with men, which has posed a delicate task for public health officials communicating with the public about the threat. They do not want to stigmatize gay people, as happened in the early days of the H.I.V./AIDS epidemic, but neither do they want to downplay their particular risk.

Translation: political correctness is far more important than disease prevention!

And now the CDC have released their guidelines, Safer Sex, Social Gatherings, and Monkeypox

While CDC works to contain the current monkeypox outbreak and learn more about the virus, this information can help you make informed choices when you are in situations or places where monkeypox could be spread. Monkeypox is not considered a sexually transmitted disease, but it is often transmitted through close, sustained physical contact, which can include sexual contact.

How can a person lower their risk during sex?

OK, stop right there! “A person” is singular, while “their” is plural. Why wouldn’t the officious bureaucrat who wrote this, knowing that monkeypox is spread not just primarily, but almost exclusively, by homosexual male sex, not use “His” rather than the grammatically incorrect “their”?

Vaccination is an important tool in preventing the spread of monkeypox. But given the current limited supply of vaccine, consider temporarily changing some behaviors that may increase your risk of being exposed. These temporary changes will help slow the spread of monkeypox until vaccine supply is adequate.

Reducing or avoiding behaviors that increase risk of monkeypox exposure is also important when you are between your first and second shots of vaccine. Your protection will be highest two weeks after your second dose of vaccine.

Make a habit of exchanging contact information with any new partner to allow for sexual health follow-up, if needed.

Talk with your partner about any monkeypox symptoms and be aware of any new or unexplained rash or lesion on either of your bodies, including the mouth, genitals (penis, testicles, vulva, or vagina), or anus (butthole). If you or your partner has or recently had monkeypox symptoms, or you have a new or unexplained rash anywhere on your body, do not have sex and see a healthcare provider. In some cases, symptoms may be mild, and some people may not even know they have monkeypox.

I noted that while the illustration in the CDC’s document shows two men males in bed, there is not one word in the document which says or suggests that sexual transmission of monkeypox is almost exclusively among male homosexuals.

If you or a partner has monkeypox or think you may have monkeypox, the best way to protect yourself and others is to avoid sex of any kind (oral, anal, vaginal) and kissing or touching each other’s bodies—while you are sick. Especially avoid touching any rash. Do not share things like towels, fetish gear, sex toys, and toothbrushes.

Even if you feel well, here are some ways to reduce your chances of being exposed to monkeypox if you are sexually active:

  • Take a temporary break from activities that increase exposure to monkeypox until you are two weeks after your second dose. This will greatly reduce your risk.
  • Limit your number of sex partners to reduce your likelihood of exposure.
  • Spaces like back rooms, saunas, sex clubs, or private and public sex parties, where intimate, often anonymous sexual contact with multiple partners occurs—are more likely to spread monkeypox.
  • Condoms (latex or polyurethane) may protect your anus (butthole), mouth, penis, or vagina from exposure to monkeypox. However, condoms alone may not prevent all exposures to monkeypox since the rash can occur on other parts of the body.
  • Gloves (latex, polyurethane, or nitrile) might also reduce the possibility of exposure if inserting fingers or hands into the vagina or the anus. The gloves must cover all exposed skin and be removed carefully to avoid touching the outer surface.
  • Avoid kissing or exchanging spit since monkeypox can spread this way.
  • Masturbate together at a distance without touching each other and without touching any rash.
  • Have virtual sex with no in-person contact.
  • Consider having sex with your clothes on or covering areas where rash is present, reducing as much skin-to-skin contact as possible. Leather or latex gear also provides a barrier to skin-to-skin contact; just be sure to change or clean clothes/gear between partners and after use.
  • Be aware that monkeypox can also spread through respiratory secretions with close, face-to-face contact.
  • Remember to wash your hands, fetish gear, sex toys, and any fabrics (bedding, towels, clothes) after having sex. Learn more about infection control.

There’s more at the original, but it’s all the same thing: it is written with the underlying assumption that the stereotype of homosexual males being extremely promiscuous is accurate. The document doesn’t say that directly, of course, but it’s basically a wink-and-a-nod, yeah, we know what you reprobates have been doing.

One thing that is never suggested is something really radical like, oh, monogamy.