Author Archives: Dana Pico

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The government spying on bank accounts isn’t going after billionaires; it’s going after Trump voters!

My good friend William Teach noted this article:

    Biden admin backs down on tracking bank accounts with over $600 annual transactions

    by Sarah Kolinovsky and Trish Turner | Tuesday, October 19, 2021 | 5:37 PM

    The Biden administration on Tuesday backed down on a controversial proposal to direct the IRS to collect additional data on every bank account that sees more than $600 in annual transactions, after widespread criticism from Republican lawmakers and banking industry representatives, who said the tax enforcement strategy represented a breach of privacy by the federal government.

    Instead, the administration and Senate Democrats are proposing to raise the threshold to accounts with more than $10,000 in annual transactions, and any income received through a paycheck from which federal taxes are automatically deducted will not be subject to the reporting. Recipients of federal benefits like unemployment and Social Security would also be exempt.

    The IRS would collect the total sum of deposits and withdrawals from bank accounts with more than $10,000 in non-payroll income. Information on individual transactions would not be collected. . . . .

    The changes would exempt millions of Americans from the reporting requirement, and help the IRS target wealthier Americans, especially those who earn money from investments, real estate, and other transactions that are more difficult for the IRS to track.

    “Under the current system, American workers pay virtually all their tax bills while many top earners avoid paying billions in the taxes they owe by exploiting the system. At the core of the problem is a discrepancy in the ways types of income are reported to the IRS: opaque income sources frequently avoid scrutiny while wages and federal benefits are typically subject to nearly full compliance. This two-tiered tax system is unfair and deprives the country of resources to fund core priorities,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

There’s more at the original.

Mr Teach didn’t use the illustration that accompanied the article, but I will, under Fair Use guidelines, because it illustrates the true nature of the proposed surveillance, which the reporters actually recognized, even if they didn’t say so. It isn’t a measure to go after millionaires and billionaires, but after the poorer people who like to deal in cash.

$10,000 in annual transactions is nothing; that would include everybody but the most destitute. What they are looking for is waitresses depositing tips received in cash, commission salesmen who have to do their own taxes, and any businesses that take in cash for payments. The idea that this is going after landlords is ridiculous: they normally get paid via checks, and that becomes documentation. The ‘billionaires and millionaires’? Their tax returns get closely scrutinized, if not completely audited, every year.

Investment income? Almost always in the form of checks or electronic fund transfers.

Of course, the solution to this is simple: if you receive cash, keep it in cash, and spend it in cash.

Let’s imagine, say, a pole building company, that charges you $10,000 to build a garage. You ask if there’s a discount for cash, and the owner says, “Sure, it’ll be $9,500 for cash.”

So, you pay the guy the $9,500 in cash, and he pays his workers for eight hours on the books, but the overtime in cash. Still looks good to the Infernal Revenue Service, right?

But now, he’ll have two choices:

  1. Not accept cash, charge $10,000, plus 6%, or $600, in additional sales tax, and pay his workers entirely on the books, or
  2. Take the $9,500, and pay the workers entirely in cash. He’ll have to be careful that his expenses can be covered by other jobs that are on the books.

Good for the government. The guy who has to pay $10,600 for a garage he could have gotten for $1,100 less? Not so much.

This isn’t any measure to go after billionaires; they aren’t buying things with cash or paying people in cash. Their accountants are paying with checks or EFTs, their businesses being paid with checks or EFTs.

Of course, much of President Trump’s support came from the less well off voters, the people who are far more likely to deal in cash, to pay cash, to ask for discounts for cash. The Democrats are going after Trump voters!

Mr Teach wrote:

    The fact sheet says, “Imagine a taxpayer who reports $10,000 of income; but has $10 million of flows in and out of their bank account. Having this summary information will help flag for the IRS when high-income people under-report their income (and under-pay their tax obligations). This will help the IRS target its enforcement activities on those who are actually evading their tax obligations—decreasing costly and burdensome audits for the vast majority of taxpayers who pay what they owe.”

    Yes, but, it will mean banks have to report your private financial data to the IRS. It won’t say what you purchase, just the overall cash flow.

For the government to delve into your personal finances to see if you are cheating on your taxes, they must have ‘probable cause.’ This surveillance is now going to flag income from which taxes have not been previously deducted as probable cause, when it is nothing of the sort; no one can know whether this stuff will be reported as income on tax forms until the person’s taxes are actually filed, and, in fact, no crime can have been committed until those taxes have been filed.

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They can’t handle the truth!

Sometimes journolists[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading — and no, that’s not a misspelling — make a mistake and tell the truth, but, not to worry, they correct themselves as quickly as they can!

I spotted it through this oh-so-#woke[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading tweet from WJLA-TV, Channel 7, the ABC affiliate in the Metropolitan Washington, DC, area. It seems that they did something really radical like tell the truth, and then had to change it:

    Capitol Hill neighborhood sees rise in murders, violent crimes

    by Sam Ford | Monday, October 18th 2021

    WASHINGTON (7News) — In the past two weeks in one Capitol Hill neighborhood, there have been two homicides on the same block and at least two carjackings.

    The local ANC (Advisory Neighborhood Commission) Commissioner, Kirsten Oldenburg, Sunday found her living room window had been shot out the night before, presumably during the homicide of a Maryland man in front of her house.

    Oct. 7, around the corner, a flag football game on the Watkins School field ended with one player shooting to death another, after an argument. That was right across the street from DC Council Chairman Phil Mendelson’s home.

    “I’ve lived in the Capitol Hill neighborhood for five years. This is the first time there have been homicides in the immediate neighborhood,” said Mendelson in an interview, “I don’t want to be alarmist, I don’t think the city is more dangerous, but it shows that violent crime can occur anywhere.” . . . .

    A long-time DC resident, Oldenburg said this was the first time her home has been hit by a stray bullet, but she lamented there are some residents in other neighborhoods who worry about stay bullets coming into their homes, “24/7” she said.

There’s more at the original, but there was this gem at the bottom of the story:

Editor’s Note: After reviewing an earlier version of this story, we realized the tone did not accurately reflect our reporting concerning crime. The headline and lede have been updated.

Their offense? They ‘implied’ that “wealthy neighborhoods should have less crime.” But the truth is that wealthy neighborhoods do have less crime, and everybody knows that they have less crime.

And being the [insert slang term for the rectum here] that I am, I’ll continue with the part they really couldn’t say: But the truth is that wealthy white neighborhoods do have less crime, and everybody knows that they have less crime.

WJLA’s editorial management knew that “white” was implied with the term “wealthy neighborhoods”, and that just had to go.

Journalists tell the truth, the unvarnished truth, and let the chips fall where they may; journolists have to massage the message so as not to offend anyone, or disturb liberal notions, or upset the woke.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Irony is so ironic Wesleyan University professor uses First Amendment, and the internet, to argue that Second Amendment should be regulated by 1791 technology

Under what conditions did newspapers labor following the American Revolution? From Wikipedia:

Many of the papers, however, which were kept alive or brought to life during the war could not adapt themselves to the new conditions of peace. Perhaps only a dozen of the survivors held their own in the new time, notably the Boston Gazette, which declined rapidly in the following decade, The Connecticut Courant of Hartford, The Providence Gazette, and The Pennsylvania Packet of Philadelphia, to which may be added such representative papers as the Massachusetts Spy, Boston’s Independent Chronicle, the New York Journal and Packet, the Newport Mercury, the Maryland Gazette of Annapolis, the Pennsylvania Gazette and The Pennsylvania Journal, both of Philadelphia. Practically all were of four small pages, each of three or four columns, issued weekly. In 1783, the Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first American daily. The next year, the Pennsylvania Packet was published three times a week, and the New York Journal twice a week, as were several of the papers begun in that year. There was a notable extension to new fields. In Vermont, where the first paper, established in 1781, had soon died, another arose in 1783; in Maine, two were started in 1785. In 1786, the first one west of the Alleghenies appeared at Pittsburgh, and following the westward tide of immigration the Kentucky Gazette was begun at Lexington in 1787.

Conditions were hardly more favorable to newspapers than during the recent conflict. The sources of news were much the same; the means of communication and the postal system were little improved. Newspapers were not carried in the mails but by favor of the postmen, and the money of one state was of dubious value in another. Consequently, circulations were small, rarely reaching a thousand; subscribers were slow in paying; and advertisements were not plentiful. Newspapers remained subject to provincial laws of libel, in accordance with the old common law, and were, as in Massachusetts for a short time in 1785, subject to special state taxes on paper or on advertisements. But public sentiment was growing strongly against all legal restrictions, and in general the papers practiced freedom, not to say license, of utterance.

As we have previously noted, The Philadelphia Inquirer, established in 1829, is the third oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States, exceeded only by the New York Post, established 1801, and the Hartford Courant, first edition in 1764.

Newspapers and books were rare in the late 18th century, with the news often slanted, and a lot of inaccuracies published, especially as the sources of news were more distant.

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

What became our First Amendment, which stated that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” was passed by the First Congress on September 25, 1789, and submitted to the states for ratification. It, along with the other nine amendments now referred to as the Bill of Rights, became part of the Constitution on December 15, 1791.

Now comes Jennifer Tucker, an associate professor of history at Wesleyan University, in an OpEd published by CNN:

Now that guns can kill hundreds in minutes, Supreme Court should rethink the rights question

Opinion by Jennifer Tucker | Updated 7:31 AM ET | Wednesday, October 20, 2021

This fall, the US Supreme Court will decide New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Kevin Bruen, a case that may result in vastly expanded rights to carry firearms in public. In doing so, the Court will need to grapple with a key question that, until now, has been left unanswered in the Second Amendment debate: Are there any limits to the type of firearm that can be carried outside of the home?

Dr Tucker has erred from the first paragraph: that is not the question before the Supreme Court. Rather, under the Sullivan Act of 1911, New York state has required permits to carry firearms outside of the home, and has given localities discretion on the issuance of such permits, and New York does not issue permits for self-defense unless the applicant can demonstrate a non-speculative need for such; a neighborhood simply being unsafe is not sufficient. The case before the bar is one which holds that such discretion is not constitutional.

In the pivotal 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller — which recognized the Second Amendment as an individual right to own a gun at home for self-defense — the Court admitted the existence of different categories of weapons, while conceding that “dangerous or unusual weapons” could be regulated. But it did not define what constitutes a “dangerous or unusual” weapon, nor recognize that there are different degrees of danger within the category of firearms.

Dr Tucker continues to document the increased lethality of firearms since the flintlocks of 1791, holding that the Court must take that into account and limit our Second Amendment rights accordingly. You can follow the link to read her arguments yourself.

But, to me, there’s an obvious irony. Dr Tucker is using the virtually instantaneous world-wide transmission of her views in an effort to persuade people, while the ‘press’ the First Amendment protects was only that of poorly printed and locally sold and distributed newspapers. If she believes that the Supreme Court should recognize and take into account changes in firearms technology and thus limit our right to keep and bear arms, would not her arguments also apply to the freedom of speech and of the press? There were no microphones and amplifiers for public speech in 1791, nor photography, nor the ability to publish the photos which did not then exist. There was neither radio nor telegraph to transmit information over long distances, no television, no CNN, and no internet. Using her own arguments, the government ought to be able to regulate and restrict all media save the four-page newspapers available in 1791.

One could argue that there’s a qualitative difference, that freedom of speech and of the press cannot kill anyone, while firearms can. That, frankly, is nonsense: al Qaeda, Da’ish, and all sorts of other groups which bear us only ill will have used the internet, have used social media, have used modern communications to set in motion acts which have directly killed people. Modern communication has served to radicalize people into Islamist ideas, to turn people who may have been leading vaguely unsatisfying lives into monsters who only wish to kill others.

It isn’t even just the Islamists. People have been using the internet and modern communications to vilify Israel, to persuade (purportedly) intelligent Americans to anti-Semitism through constant attempts to turn Americans against Israel. People have been using the internet and modern communications to inspire racial hatred, to try to frustrate law enforcement, to make martyred saints out of thugs and convicted felons — and I refer not only to George Floyd, but Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and others — and to encourage anti-social and risky behavior, including the ‘hook up’ culture and the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases.

Sure, I’m conservative, and have my biases in that direction, but the left make the same complaints, about the internet being used to promote conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections and COVID-19 and vaccine mandates . . . and they have actively been trying to censor such things. The left have been trying to ‘cancel’ people like comedian Dave Chappelle and Harry Potter author J K Rowling for not being fully on board with ‘transgenderism.’ Virtually every credentialed media source in American, in referring to Richard Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services who claims to be female and goes by the name ‘Rachel’, and his recent promotion to Admiral in the United States Public Health Service, and anyone who challenged the cockamamie notion that he is female, or used the masculine pronouns to refer to him, would be subject to whatever scorn and ‘cancelations’ the left could muster.

Using Dr Tucker’s logic, the United States could regulate such communication, by the left and the right, virtually out of existence, and she is using that First Amendment protected media of broadcast and internet transmission to spread her ideas. The good and highly educated professor doesn’t even seem to have recognized the irony of her position.
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You know that the #COVID19 #VaccineMandates are nothing but politics when they won’t allow medical exemptions

DeAnn Stephens Cox has been a television reporter for WKYT-TV for 27 years, a long time to be at one station in local news, but, as of now, she’s toast.

THE highlight of my professional career has been my genuine love for the people of Kentucky! YOU make my work every day feel like an expression of friendship. Every day I have been “Out & About” has brought me the honor of meeting some of the kindest Kentuckians!

DeAnn Stephens Cox, from her Facebook page.

But I am writing this post in response to inquiries I have received over the last several hours and an announcement by WKYT-TV, Gray Television that some of you have heard.

Gray required all employees to be vaccinated against COVID. Unfortunately, due to my medical history, my physician has told me I am NOT a candidate for the Covid Vaccination. I have explained my medical history and provided my doctor’s records and her opinion to Gray.

But sadly Gray has terminated my employment instead.

This is NOT about being FOR or AGAINST vaccinations! This is about following my Doctor’s recommendation to NOT get it because my past medical history and current medical issues.

Here’s where I stand: If you want to get the vaccine and you feel that’s best for you and your family, then I say get it!

I also feel that those, like me, should also be accommodated.

Out of respect for everyone’s differing views, I will not be responding to comments on any social media platform.

So after 27 years with WKYT, that’s a WRAP!

But don’t forget, the radio comes in loud and clear on 98.1 The Bull AND you will definitely be seeing me ‘Out & About!’

I’ve been so incredibly blessed by all of your love and support over the years!! Thank you for that!

‘Trust in Jesus with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your paths.’ Proverbs 3:5

I’m listening Lord!! I’m listening!!

I love you guys so very much.

Now, why would Gray Television discharge Mrs Cox for not taking the COVID-19 vaccine when her doctor told he that she was not a safe candidate for it, and she provided her physician’s records to her employer? She wasn’t a public, or even private, anti-vaxxer, but someone with a valid medical reason, and the documentation to prove it. That can’t be anything but political mindlessness, because Gray’s lawyers must surely have warned them that they were making themselves vulnerable to a lawsuit.

Given that all other employees were vaccinated, it would have been simple to provide Mrs Cox with what the law would refer to as a reasonable accommodation. Mrs Cox needs to file a multi-million dollar lawsuit against her former employers.

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The witnesses who sat by and did nothing should be publicly identified and publicly shamed A woman is raped on a SEPTA train, and not one other passenger had the courage to stop it or even call 911

My good friend Robert Stacy McCain is incensed:

From the New York Post:

Passengers do nothing as woman is raped on Philadelphia train, cops say

By Eileen AJ Connelly | October 16, 2021 | 2:39 PM EDT Updated 5:06 PM EDT

A homeless man raped a woman this week on a commuter train in suburban Philadelphia in full view of other passengers –who cops said didn’t lift a finger to help, or even dial 911, reports said.

The attack at around 10 p.m. Wednesday was captured on surveillance video that showed other people in the train car, according to Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt of the Upper Darby Police Department.

“Were they watching? I don’t know. Again, we’re still going through the video but there was a lot of people, in my opinion, that should’ve intervened. Somebody should’ve done something.,” Bernhardt said, Philadelphia’s CBS-3 reported.

“It speaks to where we are in society; I mean, who would allow something like that to take place? So it’s troubling.”

Bernhardt said it was a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority employee who called the cops to report that “something wasn’t right” with a woman aboard the train.

SEPTA police waiting at the next stop were able to “apprehend the suspect in the act,” an agency spokesman said in a statement, according to NBC-10 Philadelphia.

They arrested Fiston Ngoy, 35, who is believed to be homeless, the station reported.

Ngoy was charged with rape, aggravated indecent assault and related counts, police said.

He remains behind bars in lieu of 10% of $180,000 bail, Philadelphia’s ABC-6 reported.

Bernhardt said he is known to both SEPTA and Upper Darby police.

The woman, who did not know her attacker, was taken to a hospital. Bernhardt called her an “unbelievably strong woman” who provided police with a lot of information, The Associated Press reported.

“She’s on the mend,” Bernhardt said. “Hopefully she will get through this.”

SEPTA issued a statement calling the attack a “horrendous criminal act.”

“There were other people on the train who witnessed this horrific act, and it may have been stopped sooner if a rider called 911,” the authority said.

Or maybe it would have been stopped sooner if people had the courage to intervene physically. Were there no men on that train at all? We may eventually find out that there were some males on that train, but it’s obvious that none of them were actually men.

The Philadelphia Inquirer had an article on the assault, but, of course, the Inquirer would never publish the (alleged) rapist’s mugshot:

SEPTA reports rape on Market-Frankford Line, says no one called 911

A rape occurred Wednesday night but riders did not report it, SEPTA said.

by Stephan Salisbury | Saturday, October 16, 2021

A woman was raped on the Market-Frankford Line on Wednesday night in a car with other passengers but none called 911.

Their failure to do that was noted by SEPTA in an unusual statement — and condemned by the police chief in Upper Darby, where the attack took place.

“There was a lot of people in my opinion that should have intervened, somebody should have done something,” Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt said. “It speaks to where we are in society and who would allow something like that to take place. So it’s troubling.”

In the statement Friday, the SEPTA agency said that “anyone witnessing an emergency” needed to report it immediately.

Report it immediately? How about take action to stop it?

Frank Herbert, in Dune, noted fear, and how fear had to be overcome. But our governments, federal and state and city, have spent the last year and a half trying to instill fear into the public, and it looks like they have succeeded: a train car full of people, and no one of them had the courage to intervene, to stop a rape being perpetrated right in front of them.

“The assault was observed by a SEPTA employee, who called 911, enabling SEPTA officers to respond immediately and apprehend the suspect in the act,” the agency said. ”There were other people on the train who witnessed this horrific act, and it may have been stopped sooner if a rider called 911.” . . . .

Bernhardt said the assault was caught entirely on surveillance video. Bernhardt said they are reviewing the footage, in part to look at the passengers.

Good, and I hope that tape is revealed, and every passenger, especially every male passenger, in that railcar is identified, by name and by photograph, and their information published, widely published, so that everyone knows who they are, and what they were too cowardly to do. I noted that neither story indicated that the (alleged) assailant was armed, with a knife or a firearm.

All it would have taken was one man, just one, to rally the other passengers to intervene and stop the assault, but no one did. Those people need to be publicly shamed, publicly humiliated, and the men males divorced by their wives.

The alleged assailant had been previously convicted of drug possession in 2015, and had been arrested both last year and this in both Philadelphia and Delaware County on charges that included public drunkenness, resisting arrest, and scalping tickets. The Defender Association of Philadelphia, which provides lawyers for people too poor to hire one, had been providing him with representation on the ticket scalping charge.

This crime happened not in Philadelphia, but in Delaware County, and if there’s any good at all in this, it’s that Mr Ngoy won’t be prosecuted by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, who would give him a serious, serious! slap on the back of the hand, and maybe even a stern talking to.

There was a time in which, had this occurred then, the other men on that train would have rushed to the victim’s defense and beaten the assailant to a bloody pulp. But fear, fear! was upon them, upon a population cowed into masks and isolation and indifference.

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The #ClimateActivists don’t care what you want, or need, they just want to impose their will

Molly Yeh Hagen, from the Food Network’s Girl Meets Farm. Click to enlarge.

One of the channels that’s on television with some frequency at the Pico household, especially when my daughters come to visit — which is almost every weekend — is the Food Network, Channel 231 on DirecTV, and one of the shows is Girl Meets Farm, starring Molly Yeh Hagen. She’s a very pretty and personable cook, working in what appears to be a small kitchen on the family farm with her husband Nick Hagen.

Unlike Joanna Gaines, and her imported $53,000+ La Cornue Chateau range, if you’ll look in the lower right hand corner of the photo, Mrs Hagen uses an old electric range. Not even one of the newer, glass-topped stoves, but one with the curlicue electric heating elements.

She’s also unlike most of the people that you see on the various house hunter and remodeling shows on HGTV, the DIY Network and others, in which it seems that everybody wants a gas range.

We did, too. So when we remodeled our kitchen in 2018, we installed what Mrs Pico wanted, a gas — propane in our case, being out in the country beyond natural gas lines — range, replacing the old electric one that came with the house when we bought it.

We had other reasons, as well. Our house was all electric, and our first winter here was miserable. It got colder than usual for a winter in central/eastern Kentucky, and the electric heat pump just wouldn’t keep up very well. Then, when we lost electricity for 4½ days in an ice storm, it was decided: we would not depend just on sparktricity for heat, cooking and hot water. We added a propane fireplace and water heater as well, so if we lose electricity again — and we’re pretty much at the end of the service line, last ones to get service restored out here — we’ll still have heat and hot water and can cook.

Yes, my wife and I remodeled that kitchen all by ourselves, with help from my sisters and, occasionally, a nephew, but no ‘professionals’ were involved. The plumbing, the electrical, the drywall, the floor and backsplash time, the cabinet installation, the wallpaper, the window installation, everything you see — and you can click on the image to enlarge it — with the exception of the quartz countertop installation was done by us. Pardon me while I pat myself on the back.  🙂

Well, we might like a gas range, and most homebuyers want gas ranges, but it seems like the climate change activists don’t think you should be allowed to have one. From National Review:

The Democrats’ War on Gas Stoves Is a Slap at Cooking Cultures

By Judson Berger | October 17, 2021 | 6:30 AM EDT

“No way in hell you are going to put a wok on an electric stove.”

That was Steven Lee, a San Francisco official and restaurant investor, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle last year after the city’s Board of Supervisors voted to outlaw natural gas in new buildings.

Nevertheless, they persisted. Per the Sierra Club, the quickening campaign to phase out natural gas recently notched its 50th city-level win in California alone. (Take a bow, Encinitas!) No. 50, as with some others, has “situational exemptions” for restaurants and the like, but the overall push to compel an all-electric design for homes and commercial buildings understandably has had chefs and home cooks worried, roughly for the reasons articulated by Steven Lee.

Berkeley was the pilot light of this movement. The city was the first to ban gas connections in new buildings in 2019, something the California Restaurant Association is still fighting in court. The speed at which other municipalities followed, from Seattle to New York to other cities across California, only underscores how the culture of lawmaking often is the culture of fads.

Berkeley was the “pilot light” of the movement?  Guffaws!

There’s more at the original, an no, it’s not hidden behind a paywall.

I wonder is self-proclaimed foodie Amanda Marcotte uses a gas range in her South Philadelphia apartment.

Chefs aired similar concerns in a Wall Street Journal piece published over the summer. The Journal detailed how some cities include carve-outs for gas stoves in their natural-gas restrictions (after all, it’s the heating of homes and water, not stoves, that gobbles up most natural gas around the house) but noted that advocates still see full electrification as the end goal.

That’s just it: gas for cooking is something of a luxury, a luxury that a lot of people want, but the heating of homes and water isn’t a luxury; it’s a necessity. Those 4½ days we were without electricity in January of 2018? Mrs Pico went to stay with our daughters in Lexington, where there was plenty of heat, but I had to stay here, to take care of the critters, and the plumbing. Staying in a house that got down to 38º F just before the power came back on wasn’t a whole lot of fun!

Of course, when the power did come back on, here in central/eastern Kentucky, it was coming from a fossil-fueled power plant!

As I noted in a tweet on Saturday, the show This Old House was featuring the remodeling of an 1879 home in Newton, Massachusetts. The homeowners, even in very liberal, very ‘blue’ state Massachusetts, has a natural gas fueled modern heating system installed, in a show first broadcast in 2018, and even “a wood-burning stove.” It seems that in cold, snowy New England, homeowners care less about climate change than they do about keeping warm in the winter.

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California wants to close traditional power plants due to #ClimateEmergency Too bad they don't have the wind and solar plants in place to replace them!

The Pyrite State is forcing the closure of a nuclear and some natural gas powered electric power plants, but, surprise, surprise, they don’t have the solar and wind power generating capacity to replace them! From The Wall Street Journal:

    California Scrambles to Find Electricity to Offset Plant Closures

    State contends with coming loss of gas-fired power plants and its last remaining nuclear facility in transition to renewable energy

    By Katherine Blunt | October 16, 2021 | 2:50 PM EDT

    California is racing to secure large amounts of power in the next few years to make up for the impending closure of fossil-fuel power plants and a nuclear facility that provides nearly 10% of the electricity generated in the state.

    The California Public Utilities Commission has ordered utilities to buy an unprecedented amount of renewable energy and battery storage as the state phases out four natural-gas-fired power plants and retires Diablo Canyon, the state’s last nuclear plant, starting in 2024.

    The California Public Utilities Commission has ordered utilities to buy an unprecedented amount of renewable energy and battery storage as the state phases out four natural-gas-fired power plants and retires Diablo Canyon, the state’s last nuclear plant, starting in 2024.

An amusing statement, given the pile-up of container ships of the left coast that can’t be unloaded quickly. Right now, the batteries needed for electric storage are primarily manufactured in Japan, South Korea, and China. President Trump’s Department of Energy “wanted a secure domestic manufacturing supply chain that is independent of foreign sources of critical materials” in place by 2030, but there’s little progress toward that.

    While the companies are moving quickly to contract for power, the California Energy Commission and the state’s grid operator have recently expressed concern that the purchases may not be enough to prevent electricity shortages in coming summers.

    The order requires companies such as PG&E Corp. and Edison International’s Southern California Edison to bring more than 14,000 megawatts of power generation and storage capacity online in the coming years, an amount equal to roughly a third of the state’s forecast for peak summer demand.

    California has already been strained to keep the lights on this year. Wildfires have disrupted power transmission and a severe drought has crimped hydroelectric production throughout the West. Those involved in developing the new energy sources say they anticipate significant challenges in moving fast enough to ensure adequate supplies.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: ‘Containergeddon’: California Emissions Law Caused the Supply Chain Crisis

“Significant challenges,” huh? Perhaps, just perhaps, they should build whatever new power facilities they intend before they take old ones out of service?

Wildfires and drought are no new things for California; wildfires happen every single year, and drought has been frequent. But even without a drought season, California doesn’t get a lot of rain. Easterners might not really appreciate that. Pennsylvania, for instance, averages 44 inches of rain and 38 inches of snow per year, Massachusetts 49 inches of rain and 47 inches of snow, Kentucky 48 inches of rain and 11 inches of snow, and Georgia 50 inches of rain plus an inch of snow. California gets just 22 inches of rain and 7 inches of snow. Missing three inches of rain is no big deal in the east; in California, it’s a serious problem.

    The state’s dilemma underscores the difficulties of rapidly transitioning to cleaner power resources, as the U.S. and many countries are now pledging to do in response to concerns about climate change. A California law passed in 2018 requires the state to decarbonize its power grid by 2045.

There’s a lot more at the original, but our most liberal state is already feeling the effects of the green policies it wants to impose, and those things have just barely begun.

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The Patricians like Will Bunch really don’t understand reality

It was the photo accompanying the column by The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Will Bunch that really caught my eye. Mr Bunch, very much a leftist who has “some strong opinions about what’s happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government,” according to his own Inquirer biography blurb, lamented that so many of the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators of 2020 were well-off white people:

Black Lives Matter marches of 2020 were surprisingly white and educated. Is that why results have been so mediocre?

We’ve never seen anything like the George Floyd protests that gained momentum 16 months ago — but that could be exactly why progress has stalled.

By Will Bunch | Thursday, October 14, 2021

Megan McNamara (right), 19, of Wayne, walks up Lancaster Avenue during The Main Line for Black Lives protest in Wayne, Pa. on June 4, 2020. David Maialetti, Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Photographer. Click to enlarge.

George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. Over the next weeks, as the world watched the video of his death, the reaction was stunning and without precedent. Literally millions who saw the images of Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck felt it was impossible to remain silent.

But what was most remarkable about the June 2020 marches was how far they spread beyond Minneapolis and other big cities with histories of police brutality. In Norfolk, Nebraska, a small overwhelmingly white town of 24,000, some 300 people gathered on a street corner to voice their outrage. A march in a city with similar demographics — Sioux City, Iowa — triggered a confrontation with pepper-spraying police. In the Philadelphia suburbs, thousands of mostly white people — some pushing babies in strollers — marched down Lancaster Avenue through affluent Main Line suburbs, carrying signs like “White Silence is Violence.”

“I was shocked to see so many white kids out here,” Walter Wiggins — a 67-year-old Black man who’d been attending protest marches in his native D.C. since his parents took him to hear the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington — told the New York Times, at a protest that researchers confirmed was majority white. “Back then, it was just Black folks.”

That remarkable spring, the same phrase was on many people’s lips: The world had never seen anything quite like this. And yet, more than 16 months later, the world also hasn’t seen dramatic changes from a global protest movement in which it is estimated some 15 to 26 million Americans took part by marching in solidarity.

Emphases in the original, and there’s much more if you follow the embedded link.

Normally, I don’t include photos from the Inquirer, due to copyright concerns, but this one, I believe, is an exception under Fair Use standards. It is just wildly amusing that Mr Bunch, or, more probably, an editor, selected a photo not just of white marchers, but of a red-headed, extremely fair white woman, showing off plenty of skin on that warm June day, to illustrate Mr Bunch’s point about so many BLM marchers being white. 🙂

Mr Bunch is disappointed that few of the radical police reform measures were passed, and that while some police department budgets were cut, most departments not only had their budgets restored, but “budgets for traditional policing are actually increasing.”

Why? Well, one reason might be that the homicide rate in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia continues to skyrocket. As of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, October 14th, the Philadelphia Police Department reported that there had been 435 murders in the City of Brotherly Love, tied for the eighth highest year on record, with 2½ months, 78 days, left in the year. The city is seeing an average of 1.5157 homicides per day, which, if that average holds, works out to 553 dead bodies littering Philly’s mean streets in 2021.

While the Police Department’s figures do not break down the victims by race, The Philadelphia Tribune, a publication for the city’s black community, reported that, in 2020, black victims accounted for about 86% of the city’s 499 homicide victims, and 84% of the 2,236 shootings. If there has been a serious uptick in the number of white victims this year, the Inquirer hasn’t reported on it.

The visceral, extreme reactions to the Floyd video, which inspired the rallying cry of “Defund the Police” amplified by a news media that prefers shorthand over nuance, ran into more complicated views on crime and law enforcement in the neighborhoods where — unlike for many of the marchers — policing is a day-to-day issue. Ground Zero has been Minneapolis itself, where in the immediate aftermath a supposedly veto-proof majority of city councilors pledged to end policing as we know it, to be replaced by a new department of public safety.

That hasn’t happened, in part because of pushback from middle-class Black homeowners concerned about rising crime. Last month, the Minnesota Poll of city residents found that while police reform is generally popular, a whopping 75% of Black Minneapolis voters do not want to see fewer police officers (the comparable number for white voters is 51%).

That’s hardly a surprise:

Surge in Minneapolis violence includes over 900 rounds fired from automatic weapons in 2021

by Jay Kolls | September 30, 2021 | 8:39 PM CDT | Updated: 10:21 PM CDT

The Minneapolis Police Department updated the Minneapolis City Council with new violent crime statistics Thursday, and the numbers show violent crime — including gun crimes — has continued to rise throughout the first three quarters of 2021.

Scott Wolfert, an MPD crime analyst, told city council members that 503 people have been injured by gunfire so far this year, which is an increase of 26% over last year. Homicides are up 16%, robberies are up 5% and aggravated assaults are up 2.6%, but the biggest surge has been the number of rounds fired by automatic weapons.

“So far, in 2021, there have been 78 ShotSpotter activations of automatic weapons with 935 rounds detected,” Wolfert said. “Compared to this same time in 2020, there were just five activations for automatic weapons and only 42 rounds fired through the end of September.”

Wolfert said the total number of detected gunshots fired so far this year is 20,611 — which is a 28% increase from 2020. And, Wolfert said, there have been 355 carjackings, up 35% from this time last year.

There have been 75 homicides in Minneapolis through October 15th, a city of 429,954, and puts the city on pace for 95 murders for the year. At the current pace, the city would see a homicide rate of 22.10 per 100,000 population . . . a rate which makes Philadelphia laugh, and say, “Hold my beer!”

Philly’s homicide rate stands at 34.49 per 100,000!

North Water Street near Clearfield Street, Google Maps streetview.

This is North Water Street, near East Clearfield Street in North Philadelphia, and if you click on the image to enlarge it, you’ll see how some Philadelphians have to live, with their rowhouses barred in, to protect themselves from intruders and thieves. Mr Bunch noted how the BLM protesters were overwhelmingly white, and overwhelmingly college-educated. The simple fact is that the BLM protesters mostly did not live where the crime problems are most serious, and it’s easy to be for fewer police when your contact with the police is almost exclusively in getting a speeding ticket rather than reporting a robbery, a break-in, or a shooting.

Mr Bunch concluded:

But the crisis that inspired the George Floyd protests — U.S. killings by police officers — has hardly abated. The Washington Post tracker of such deaths shows 654 so far in 2021, at a pace only slightly lower than previous years. After 16 months, it seems reasonable to ask: If the largest protest in American history only barely moved the needle, what on earth would?

Really, 654? As of October 15th, according to the Chicago Sun-Times, there have been 639 homicides in the Windy City alone, and Chicago’s homicide rate of 29.93 per 100,000 population is lower than Philadelphia’s.

Mr Bunch, who to judge by his Inquirer photograph, is very much a white man himself, laments that so many of the BLM protesters of 2020 were white, and wonders if that has contributed to the lack of movement toward their professed goals. But it also points out that Mr Bunch is himself quite probably very insulated from the way most black Philadelphians live their lives. A 1981 graduate of Ivy League Brown University, he’s lived the elitist’s urban dream, ten years a reporter for New York Newsday, and, for the past 26 years, with the Inquirer/Philadelphia Daily News. I don’t know his address, and wouldn’t publish it if I did, but it seems unlikely that he lives in Kensington or Strawberry Mansion or any of the other combat zones of the City of Brotherly Love.

We have noted it so many times: black lives really don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, given that the newspaper barely reports on them when a black person is killed. We have previously noted what I called the racism of the Inquirer, and have noted, many times, that unless a murder victim is an ‘innocent‘, someone already of note, or a cute little white girl, the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is not news.

It’s easy to be a liberal when, to paraphrase the words of Robert E Howard, your life isn’t nailed to your spine, and, unless he has chosen to live near 52nd Street in West Philadelphia, Mr Bunch’s life clearly is not. If he did, he would be gobsmacked by the reality that working-class Philadelphians, white and Hispanic and black and Asian live with, every day. He just might have a different perspective if he lived and moved among the people he claims to champion.

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Anna Orso does not like being questioned! The Philadelphia Inquirer sure isn't happy with its journalism being examined

I can be on the critical side when it comes to the professional journalists, but I believe it only proper to let those journalists know when they have been mentioned, and thus I included Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Anna Orso in a tweet when I examined her article in yesterday’s Inquirer. A screen capture of the tweet is to the right. While I can embed tweets in my articles, screen captures work better, because people can delete tweets.

Miss Orso did not particularly like my tweet, and responded, via Twitter, “get a life”. I responded:

    Oh, I have one. I examined your story, and the flaws were obvious. These were things that should have been asked and examined.

    You are a professional journalist; do some actual journalism.

I don’t know Miss Orso, never having met her, and no longer living in the Keystone State, the chances would seem to be vanishingly small that I ever will; there is no reason for me to have anything personal against her. All that I can see is her written words, and what I saw was a story with some real flaws in it.

The First Amendment to the Constitution protects our freedom of Speech and of the Press. Those freedom include, to be blunt about it, the freedom to lie, and the freedom to shade the truth. Most journalists do not actually lie, but when it comes to The Philadelphia Inquirer, “the third oldest surviving daily newspaper in the United States in its own right,” publisher Elizabeth Hughes has already told us that the Inquirer was taking many steps to become that “anti-racist news organization” she wanted it to be, including:

  • Producing an antiracism workflow guide for the newsroom that provides specific questions that reporters and editors should ask themselves at various stages of producing our journalism.
  • Establishing a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime.
  • Creating an internal forum for journalists to seek guidance on potentially sensitive content and to ensure that antiracism is central to the journalism.
  • Commissioning an independent audit of our journalism that resulted in a critical assessment. Many of the recommendations are being addressed, and a process for tracking progress is being developed.
  • Training our staff and managers on how to recognize and avoid cultural bias.
  • Examining our crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media.

Translation: Mrs Hughes wants the Inquirer to shade the truth if the unvarnished truth might ‘stigmatize’ certain ‘Philadelphia communities.’

In her story on the impact that the murder of Marcus Stokes had on E Washington Rhodes School, Miss Orso wrote, very specifically, that young Mr Stokes “was fatally shot in North Philadelphia on his way to school“, but the evidence, as printed in the Inquirer, indicates that he was not actually on his way to school. He was sitting, with five other young people, in a parked, and possibly disabled, car, many blocks away, fifteen minutes after he was supposed to be in his homeroom at school.

Miss Orso knew those facts; she is listed as either the sole or one of two authors in each of the articles I have cited. Did no one, including she, ever ask themselves any questions about why these young people, “including other Rhodes students“, were sitting in that car, ask themselves what they were doing there?

Miss Orso isn’t a stupid woman. She was graduated from Pennsylvania State University, a highly selective college, that doesn’t accept dummies. She isn’t inexperienced, having worked in journalism for seven years now, including four with the Inquirer.

Normally, an experienced editor would review a reporter’s story before the story was published. With all of the cutbacks through which the Inquirer has gone, perhaps that wasn’t the case in this instance, but with three major stories[1]At least three that I have seen; it is always possible that I have missed one, though I have been diligent about looking. published now on the killing of young Mr Stokes, it seems very unlikely that no supervising editor at all has read those stories. Yet all of them have made it through the process and been published, and no one there has raised serious enough questions to change things.

How does that happen?

One way it could happen is if no one at the Inquirer was paying anything more than glancing attention, and just wrote and passed on a story without any sense of inquisitiveness. That’s kind of difficult to believe, given that this writer, a 68-year-old retired fellow living three states away, whose last journalistic experience was with his collegiate newspaper, was able to spot the discrepancies from the very first story on the killing.

But another way it could happen is if the Inquirer was trying to engage not in reporting but propaganda. Miss Orso’s story has the effect of making young Mr Stokes out to be a wholly innocent victim, and perhaps that’s exactly what he was. But if he was a completely innocent victim, someone at the Inquirer should have been asking the questions and getting the answers as to why he was sitting in a car which was targeted in a deliberate assassination attempt; no one fires at least twelve rounds — “officers found 12 shell casings at the scene” — by accident. While it is possible that the shooter targeted the wrong vehicle completely, the Inquirer has not reported that, nor would such be consistent with the story that at least ten shots were fired at a vigil for the young victim. Mr Stokes might not have been the individual who was targeted, but the obvious conclusion is that at least some bad guy was involved.

The Inquirer has expended enough bandwidth on the story that someone there needs to start digging more deeply, someone needs to ferret out the whole story. That story might not be one that the Inquirer’s reporters and editors would like, but that is the difference between propaganda and news, between journolism[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading and journalism.

References

References
↑1 At least three that I have seen; it is always possible that I have missed one, though I have been diligent about looking.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.