Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Heather Long gets a promotion

Heather Long first came to my attention when she was an economics reporter for CNN. She wrote, on September 16, 2016:

Problem: Most Americans don’t believe the unemployment rate is 5%

by Heather Long | September 6, 2016 | 3:18 PM EDT

Heather Long

Americans think the economy is in far worse shape than it is.The U.S. unemployment rate is only 4.9%, but 57% of Americans believe it’s a lot higher than that, according to a new survey by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.

The general public has “extremely little factual knowledge” about the job market and labor force, Rutgers found.

It’s another example of how experts on Wall Street and in Washington see the economy differently than the regular Joe. Many of the nation’s top economic experts say that America is “near full employment.” The unemployment rate has actually been at or below 5% for almost a year — millions of people have found jobs in what is the best period of hiring since the late 1990s.

But regular people appear to have their doubts about how healthy America’s employment picture is. Nearly a third of those survey by Rutgers believe unemployment is actually at 9%, or higher.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has tapped into this confusion. He has repeatedly called the official unemployment rate a “joke” and a even “hoax.”

There’s more at the original.

I noted, at the time — in a post that is locked up, with so many others, in a file that’s stuck in my server somewhere when I got this site ‘fixed’ from some real technical problems — that what Americans believed, that unemployment was “actually at 9%, or higher,” was correct, if you looked at U-6 rather than the ‘official’ U-3 unemployment rate.

    • U-1: Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force
    • U-2: Job losers and persons who completed temporary jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force
    • U-3: U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate)
    • U-4: Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus discouraged workers
    • U-5: Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
    • U-6: Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.

NOTE: Persons marginally attached to the labor force are those who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months. Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached, have given a job-market related reason for not currently looking for work. Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.

The August, 2016 U-6 rate was 9.6%, which I said was right in line with American’s perception of it. Interestingly enough, with the current ‘official” unemployment rate of 4.8%, U-6 currently stands at 8.5%, while we have employers going begging for workers.

As it happened, Miss Long followed me on Twitter not due to any of my brilliant economic articles, but because I responded to one of her sunset over Manhattan Twitter photos with one of sunset between the olive trees in Tuscany. Hey, I’ll take that.

Search and rescue volunteer, Nate Lair, drives a boat through downtown Beattyville after heavy rains led to the Kentucky River flooding the town and breaking records last set in 1957. March 1, 2021
Alton Strupp / Louisville Courier-Journal

In February of 2017, while still with CNN, Miss Long wrote a series about Beattyville, Kentucky, a place called the “poorest white town in America” from 2008 to 2012. While I don’t live in Beattyville, I do live in the next county over, and my nephew, Nate Lair, lives outside the town and is a volunteer fireman and rescue worker there.

I did get some photos of the Beattyville Wooly Worm Festival last Saturday!

My younger daughter wanted me to get the baby goat. I didn’t.

But I digress.

One of the things I really liked about Miss Long was that, in reading her articles, I couldn’t tell what her political positions were. From a few of her tweets concerning the Defiant Girl statue, facing down the bull on Wall Street, I could tell that she was a strong supporter of more women moving into the financial and technical fields, but whether she is a Democrat or Republican (or independent), liberal or moderate or conservative, I really do not know. To me, that’s the mark of a good journalist, as opposed to journolist.[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

That’s about to change:

    Heather Long to join Washington Post Opinions as editorial writer and columnist

    By WashPostPR | Monday, October 25, 2021 | 12:10 PM EDT

    Announcement from Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt, Deputy Editorial Page Editors Karen Tumulty and Ruth Marcus, and Manager of Editorial Talent and Logistics Nana Efua Mumford:

    We are delighted to announce that Heather Long will be joining the Opinions section as an editorial writer and columnist, focusing on economic policy, the future of work and other topics. This is something of a homecoming for Heather, who was deputy editorial page editor of The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa., when the paper won a 2012 Pulitzer Prize for writing about the Penn State/Sandusky child abuse scandal.

    Since joining The Post in 2017, Heather has reported and written brilliantly on how economic trends and policies — and more recently, a pandemic — affect real people across the country. In 2020, she helped coin the “K-Shaped Recovery,” and in 2021, she recognized the “Great Reassessment of Work” taking place as the deep psychological impact of the pandemic caused people to quit jobs, retire early and seek something very different in their careers. She has won two SABEW “Best in Business” awards and twice been a finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for breaking news.

    As a member of the Post editorial board, Heather will become the lead writer on economics, business, inequality, labor and related issues, taking the place of Charles Lane, who assumed chief foreign-policy duties when Jackson Diehl retired in August. On our op-ed page, she will join Catherine Rampell (recent winner of first prize in commentary in the Online News Association awards), Megan McArdle and Helaine Olen to comprise one of the liveliest economic teams anywhere. In time we hope to take full advantage of Heather’s proven broadcasting skills as well.

    Heather grew up in Virginia and Pennsylvania, graduated summa cum laude in Economics and English from Wellesley College, earned two Master’s degrees as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and worked at an investment firm for a couple of years before joining the Patriot-News from 2009 to 2012. She was an opinion editor and columnist for The Guardian in 2013-2014 and senior reporter and editor for CNN from 2014-2017.

    Heather is finishing some reporting projects and hopes to join us Dec. 1.

And thus I will be able to discern whether Miss Long is a liberal or conservative, and how close to the ends of that spectrum she is. But even if it turns out that her political views are rather far from mine, knowing that she actually understands business and economics, will have me continuing to pay attention to what she writes. My congratulations to her.

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.
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Let’s go, Brandon!

Regular readers of this site — both of them — know that I use f(ornicate) rather than another word beginning with an ‘F’ when that other word seems appropriate. The also know that I use the formulation [insert slang term for the rectum here] to describe myself, and others, when the seven letter word is appropriate.

And it’s more than just how I write; that’s usually how I speak as well. A (somewhat) good Catholic boy, I actually do try to limit profanity. But I’m also a strong proponent of freedom of speech.

    Biden’s critics hurl increasingly vulgar taunts

    By Ashley Parker and Carissa Wolf | October 23, 2021 | 6:00 AM EDT

    BOISE, Idaho — On a quiet street south of downtown Boise, Michael Dick has festooned his front yard with homemade signs, including a large yellow placard that facetiously thanks President Biden for a growing list of grievances — $4-a-gallon gas, inflation, Afghanistan, covid-19. In capital letters in black marker, Dick, 59, recently added “dead civilians” and “dead U.S. soldiers” to his bill of particulars.

A photo of this appears in the Washington Post original.

    In another part of town, alongside a “No trespassing” sign, Michael Schwarz, 60, used black spray-paint to scrawl “Joe Blows” across an electric-pink poster board.

    And that’s mild compared to the sentiments some people — largely in conservative areas — are expressing in their front yards and on the signs they lug with them to greet Biden as he travels the country.

    On Wednesday, when the president visited Scranton, Pa., he was greeted at the corner of Biden Street by a woman holding a handmade “F— Joe Biden” sign, with an American flag as the vowel in the offending word. And back in Boise, Rod Johnson, a retired gunsmith, has hung a blue flag from the roof of his home that reads “F— Biden.” Underneath, in smaller letters, he added, “And f— you for voting for him!!”

Sadly, Lackawanna County, in which Scranton is the largest city and county seat, did give a majority of its votes to Joe Biden, 61,991 (53.58%) to 52,334 (45.23%) to President Trump, which wasn’t too much of a surprise, given that the odious Hillary Clinton also carried the county in 2016, a year in which Mr Trump won the state overall.

There’s more at the original, and the authors do make something of an attempt to note that Mr Biden is hardly the only American President who has been subjected to coarse insults:

    Boos, jeers and insults are nothing new for politicians, especially those who reach the White House. Former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as Trump, were all heckled, weathering protests along their motorcade routes and at some of their events. At one 2011 fundraiser in Los Angeles, a heckler called Obama the Antichrist; “F— Trump” graffiti adorned some walls in Washington.

President Bush was burned in effigy uncounted times, and the credentialed media treated it as normal, though the Lexington Herald-Leader’s Editorial Board described armed, but still peaceful, protests and the hanging of Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) in effigy as the work of “a bunch of armed thugs.”

As you’d expect in The Washington Post, the writers have decided to blame President Trump for what they see as increased vulgarity directed at Mr Biden. Perhaps that’s the case, in public signage and chants, but were they not paying attention to online communication and posts while Mr Trump was in office?

    Then there are the chants. In early October, a “F— Joe Biden!” cry broke out among the crowd at Alabama’s Talladega Superspeedway. Kelli Stavast, an NBC Sports reporter, was interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown live on air at the time, and she quipped, “You can hear the chants from the crowd, ‘Let’s go Brandon!’”

I’ve wondered: did Kelli Stavast really think that the crowd was chanting, “Let’s go, Brandon,” was she simply trying to suggest that what was background noise for her interview wasn’t the vulgarity that people heard to protect NBC Sports, or was she really trying to hide from the viewers the sentiments of the crowd at Talladega? Was it her original, or was it suggested to her, through an earpiece, from a director?

Regardless of what is the actual case, I absolutely support “Let’s go, Brandon!” as a substitute for “F(ornicate) Joe Biden!” And the chant, and expression, has caught on; it’s really a great meme.

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Wir müssen Ihre Dokumente sehen!

You don’t have to be as old as I am to remember when the horrible, evil, authoritarian dictator named Donald Trump was called a fascist by the left. Now that he’s no longer President, it seems that the left have no real problems with fascist and authoritarian control. Nicole Wyglendowski, a special education teacher with the Philadelphia School District is “passionate about the long-lasting effects education has on social justice,” so passionate that she thinks the order, “Ve need to see your papers!” is a great idea!

There’s more at the original.

How concerned is Miss Wyglendowski about COVID-19? In an OpEd published in The Philadelphia Inquirer on March 8, 2021, she provided a photo of herself teaching online, to an empty classroom, and she is, all by herself except for someone to take the picture, in an empty classroom, wearing a face mask!

The first several paragraphs of her newest OpEd piece express concern that the School District of Philadelphia is not doing enough to get booster shots to teachers, which is, I suppose, something a union member would demand, as opposed to going to a clinic or doctor’s office or Walgreen’s Pharmacy and getting on her own initiative.

But then there’s more. Miss Wyglendowski not only strongly supports the School District’s vaccine mandate, but wants to add to it, requiring that teachers get the booster shots now that they have been approved. Considering that, with her first paragraph, in which she stated “we will most likely need additional COVID-19 shots throughout our lifetimes,” it can only mean that the author wants a requirement that all teachers and other school personnel present their papers to keep their jobs.

Her statement was deemed important enough by the editors of the Inquirer that they enlarged it and put it in a text box, which I have screen captured to the left.

    The district acknowledges that the vaccine is a vital layer of protection for educators. It approved a vaccine mandate for its staff on Aug. 25, and staff who do not comply have to complete two COVID-19 tests per week. If the vaccine is so important that it is mandated (which has my full support), then why are boosters not also being mandated as they come out? Anything else is a show of thoughtlessness, a lack of follow-through, and a grim decision for the community.

What does she want, for school personnel to be forced to either get the shot every six months or have a nasal swab jammed up into their sinuses twice a week for the rest of their lives?

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, when asked by a reporter if she was creating two classes of people, with the vaccinated receiving special privileges, confirmed, “That is what it is, yep”. It appears that that is what Miss Wyglendowski believes the same thing.

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Two Capitol kerfufflers sentenced The January 6 'insurrection' was so serious that they received probation!

We have previously noted the tremendous, tremendous! seriousness of the January 6th ‘insurrection’ in our nation’s capital, what I have frequently called the Capitol kerfuffle.

And now we see the draconian sentence to which Thomas and Lori Vinson were subjected following their guilty plea three months ago:

    Kentucky couple who were part of mob that stormed the Capitol receive sentence

    By Karla Ward | Friday, October 22, 2021 | 8:22 PM EDT

    A Western Kentucky couple who participated in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol were sentenced Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

    Both Thomas and Lori Vinson were sentenced to five years’ probation, fined $5,000 and ordered to pay restitution of $500, court records show.

    U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton also ordered the Vinsons to perform 120 hours of community service, the Associated Press reported.

There’s more at the original.

Like the majority of the Capitol kerfufflers, Mr and Mrs Vinson were initially charged with four offenses:

  • 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(1) – Knowingly Entering or Remaining in any Restricted Building or Grounds Without Lawful Authority. Since the Vinsons were not accused of harming anyone or carrying a deadly weapon, the maximum punishment under (b)(2) is a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, in any other case.
  • 18 U.S.C. § 1752(a)(2) – Disorderly and Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds. Since the Vinsons were not accused of harming anyone or carrying a deadly weapon, the maximum punishment under (b)(2) is a fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than one year, or both, in any other case.
  • 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(D) – Disorderly Conduct in a Capitol Building: utter loud, threatening, or abusive language, or engage in disorderly or disruptive conduct, at any place in the Grounds or in any of the Capitol Buildings with the intent to impede, disrupt, or disturb the orderly conduct of a session of Congress or either House of Congress, or the orderly conduct in that building of a hearing before, or any deliberations of, a committee of Congress or either House of Congress; The penalty for violating 40 U.S.C. §5104(e)(2) is a misdemeanor conviction punishable by a maximum fine of $5,000 fine or up to six months in prison, or both.
  • 40 U.S.C. § 5104(e)(2)(G) – Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building; The penalty for violating 40 U.S.C. §5104(e)(2) is a misdemeanor conviction punishable by a maximum fine of $5,000 or up to six months in prison, or both.

The Vinsons were allowed to plead to only the fourth listed offense, which has been the case with almost all of the kerfufflers. The Vinsons said that they were very sorry for their actions, and the judge found their actions so serious that they were sentenced to spend exactly zero days in jail.

Attorney General Merrick Garland absotively, posilutely hates Republicans, because then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to allow the Senate to even consider President Obama’s nomination of then-Judge Garland to the Supreme Court seat left empty when Associate Justice Antonin Scalia died, yet even Mr Garland couldn’t find the ‘insurrection’ serious enough to seriously push felony charges against most of them.

Lori Vinson provided this photo of herself and Thomas Ray Vinson outside the U.S. Capitol to a local news station, according to the FBI. Photo via an FBI Statement of facts.

We have previously noted the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, and the Herald-Leader’s very biased choices in making exceptions to it. The paper decided against publishing mugshots of two black accused murderers on the loose, but has been perfectly willing to publish photos of white criminal suspects who are already in custody.

And so we have the photo to the right of Lori and Thomas Vinson. Yes, they have now been convicted, but the Herald-Leader published the same photo in their story of their arrest, before they were convicted of anything.

Marlon Griffin. October 19, 2021. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Still, the Vinsons have been convicted of a single misdemeanor count, sentenced to probation, and what my late best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal went ahead and used their photo, again. Yet the paper declined to post the mugshot of Marlon Griffin, 23, charged with eight felony counts for shooting two people on Endon Drive, and Mr Griffin is already a convicted felon with at least two prior arrests.[1]One of Mr Griffin’s prior arrests occurred just three months after he turned 18. Juvenile records are, of course, sealed, and while it’s not a matter of public record, I would say that … Continue reading

Why, it’s almost as though the only real newspaper in Kentucky’s second largest city, which covers most of central and eastern Kentucky, has an agenda or something!

Amusingly enough, the Herald-Leader is running a fund-raising campaign, saying:

    Your friends and neighbors — people across our communities — are seeking complete and accurate information as they navigate the news, their lives and the changes around us.

    And information is more complex than ever. That’s why we at the Lexington Herald-Leader are launching a new fall fundraising campaign to boost our coverage. We are asking for your support of our health reporting as well as Eastern Kentucky coverage in partnership with Report for America.

    Your tax-deductible donation can help make it happen.

    What this means for you, our readers: More eyes on issues that need more attention. More fair and measured coverage of all of our communities. A boost to our clear-headed watchdog approach.

    And we’re stronger when the voices of all members of our community are part of the conversation.

    Will you join our newsroom campaign to help support more local journalism in this critical area?

    Thank you for supporting our newsroom and the future of local journalism. And thank you for being a contributor to this community-funded effort on local reporting.

“More fair and measured coverage of all of our communities,” huh? It seems as though the newspaper’s coverage is anything but fair, exhibiting a distinct and documented, by me, lack of fairness.

I would love to see the Herald-Leader have some expanded coverage, but it needs to be fair coverage, unbiased coverage. I’m not seeing that yet.

References

References
↑1 One of Mr Griffin’s prior arrests occurred just three months after he turned 18. Juvenile records are, of course, sealed, and while it’s not a matter of public record, I would say that the probability of him having a juvenile record is not low.
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The cannibalism of the left They are eating their own!

I am not normally a fan of Andrew Sullivan, but he’s definitely got one thing going for him: he is a strong defender of freedom of speech and of the press, and he is willing to say what he thinks regardless of potentially being ‘cancelled’ by the left.

The Betrayal Of Our Gay Inheritance

How has the new trans left come to resemble the old religious right?

Activists hold banners and placards as thousands attend the Reclaim Pride march in London on July 24, 2021. (Guy Smallman/Getty images) Click to enlarge.

by Andrew Sullivan | Friday, October 22, 2021It was, as it turned out, a bit of a non-event. The walkout by transgender Netflix employees and their supporters to demand that the company take down and apologize for the latest Chappelle special attracted “dozens,” despite media hype.

But the scenes were nonetheless revealing. A self-promoting jokester showed up with a placard with the words “We Like Jokes” and “We Like Dave” to represent an opposing view. He was swiftly accosted by a man who ripped the poster apart, leaving the dude with just a stick, prompting the assailant to shout “He’s got a weapon!” Pushed back by other protestors, he was then confronted by a woman right in front of him — shaking a tambourine — and yelling repeatedly into his face: “Repent, motherfucker! Repent! Repent!”

“The scenes”, huh? While the image at the right was not taken at the “bit of a non-event” Mr Sullivan describes, it is the image that he chose to illustrate his article. While I do not normally use images from articles like that, in this case it falls under Fair Use guidelines, because it illustrates my point: Mr Sullivan is, himself, pointing to an image which is not going to gather a lot of support for the homosexual or transgender rights he supports, not among people who don’t already support such. While London can be a city of clowns when it comes to the anti-establishment population, the image Mr Sullivan chose is not one which is going to persuade a lot of normal people that homosexuals and transgenders are, themselves, normal, but which will leave people thinking that they are a bunch of clowns.

Remember, Mr Sullivan’s column is published on Substack, which means that he chose the image, not Substack editors.

Of course, if there are Substack editors, and they chose the photo to illustrate the article, then Mr Sullivan just might blow his top, because it wholly undercuts his positions.

This is the state of what’s left of the gay[1]As noted in The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not use the word “gay” to refer to homosexuals or homosexuality, but we also do not alter quotations from other people when … Continue reading rights movement in America. Judgmental, absolutist, intolerant, and hysterical, it looks to shut down speech it dislikes, drive its foes out of the public square, compile enemies’ lists of dangerous writers, artists, and politicians, and cancel and protest anything that does not comport with every tiny aspect of their increasingly deranged ideology.

The generation that now leads the movement does not seem to know the actual history of the gay rights movement, or the centrality of free expression to gay identity. They also seem to have no idea of the history of the movement against gay rights. Because if they did, they might be shocked at the ironies involved.

Anti-gay forces, hegemonic for centuries, were just like these trans activists. They were just as intent on suppressing and stigmatizing magazines, shows, and movies they believed were harmful. They too targeted individual artists and writers for personal destruction. They too believed that movies and comedy needed to be reined in order to prevent social harm. They protested in front of movie theaters. They tried to get shows canceled. And if you’d marched in any gay demo or Pride in the 1990s, you’d always be prepared to confront a grimacing Christianist yelling “Repent! Repent!” in your face.

In the 1990s, living in the relatively, though not thoroughly, conservative Hampton Roads region of Virginia, I never witnessed a homosexual rights march, so I certainly never saw what Mr Sullivan was claiming happened happen. But even if it did, it would not have been the marchers’ supposed-to-be allies who were doing so.

This was never, ever the spirit of the gay rights movement in the past. In fact, it was America’s guarantee of free expression and free association that made the gay rights movement possible. It was the First Amendment, and the spirit of the First Amendment, that was easily the most important right for gays for decades.

It’s also what allows the ‘transgender’ rights movement possible, but the ‘transgendered’, like much of the rest of the left, don’t like it when people exercise their freedom of speech to challenge their movements. We have already noted that Twitter, and the left in general, do not like Freedom of Speech. When it comes to the subject of ‘transgenderism,’ Twitter has already banned ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering.’[2]‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; … Continue reading The New York Times, which so strongly defended its right to Freedom of Speech and of the Press in New York Times Co v United States, 403 U.S. 713 (1971), gave space in the OpEd section to Andrew Marantz to write “Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence.” Mr Marantz, while exercising his First Amendment rights, clearly does not like the unregulated speech of others. The Times had earlier given OpEd page space to ‘transgender’ activist Chad Malloy to claim that Twitter’s ban on ‘deadnamimg’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promotes the Freedom of Speech.[3]Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their … Continue reading

And now? Twitter, Facebook and other social media are censoring or altering posts which question COVID-19 vaccinations and vaccine mandates, and sometimes suspending if not wholly banning people from their sites for pushing such views. The freedom of speech and of the press are under attack from the left, the people who used to be its most strident defenders.

As I noted in the beginning, I am hardly a fan of Mr Sullivan, or the homosexual and ‘transgender’ rights movements, but in this case, he is right: freedom of speech is too precious a thing to lose, and too necessary a right for all of our freedoms, and our individual liberty in general. It is a far less dangerous thing to allow those with whom we disagree to have their say than it is to allow the suppression of speech and ideas; to allow that is to allow other people, if they gain power, to suppress our own speech and ideas.

References

References
↑1 As noted in The First Street Journal’s Stylebook, we do not use the word “gay” to refer to homosexuals or homosexuality, but we also do not alter quotations from other people when they use it.
↑2 ‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; ‘misgendering’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by sex-specific terms referring to his biological sex rather than the sex he claims to be.
↑3 Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names and biological sex.
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Lexington shooter arrested A previously convicted felon with a gun; imagine my surprise

On October 10th, we reported on a double shooting on Endon Drive in Lexington, one in which the assailant fled.

Marlon Griffin. October 19, 2021. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Now a suspect has been busted: 23-year-old Marlon Griffin was identified by Lexington Police Officers the following day due to witness identification and video surveillance which caught the entire incident on tape. He was arrested by Lexington Police at a Motel 6 on October 19th.

Of course, the Lexington Herald-Leader declined to print Mr Griffin’s mugshot, but in searching the jail records, I found not just the one in the photo to the right, but two more, dated December 20, 2016 and April 18, 2017. He’s been a very naughty boy!

The mugshot taken on December 20, 2016? That was just three months and two days after he had turned 18; if Mr Griffin has a juvenile record, it is not publicly available.

The current charges against Mr Griffin are:

  • Assault, 1st degree (One count);
  • Assault, 2nd degree (One count);
  • Wanton endangerment, 1st degree (Five counts); and
  • Possession of a handgun by a convicted felon (One count).

How, I have to ask, could Mr Griffin had a firearm? As a previously convicted felon, it would have been illegal for him to purchase one, and we know that gun control laws work, right?

The newspaper declined to print Mr Griffin’s mugshot, but note: he is a previously convicted felon. I get it: the McClatchy Mugshot Policy says that publishing mugshots can harm people charged but never convicted, but Mr Griffin is a previously convicted felon.

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Killadelphia Black lives really don't matter in Philadelphia, or to The Philadelphia Inquirer

I noted, in a tweet Thursday morning, that under Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, Philadelphia’s 443 homicides as of 11:59 PM Wednesday put the city in fifth place, all time, for homicides in the year, and there were still 72 days remaining in 2021.

Well, the move into fourth place didn’t take long:

    Three men killed, four people wounded, including a 14-year-old boy, in separate shootings in Philly

    The fatal shootings occurred in West Oak Lane and North Philadelphia.

    by Robert Moran | Thursday, October 21, 2021 | 8:49 PM EDT

    Three men were killed and four other people, including a 14-year-old boy, were wounded in separate shootings late Thursday in Philadelphia, police said.

    Around 3:45 p.m., a 25-year-old man was on the 1500 block of West 65th Avenue in West Oak Lane when he was shot once in the neck. He was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police said they recovered a gun and had a person in custody.

    About 5:50 p.m., a 28-year-old man was on the 900 block of Cambridge Street in North Philadelphia when he was shot several times in his torso. He was transported to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:22.

    The 14-year-old was shot four times at the same location and was taken by police to Temple University Hospital, where he was listed in stable condition. Police reported no arrests in that case.

There’s more at the original.

Three people dead, plus a 21-year-old man shot five times in North Philadelphia, and a 20-year-old woman shot thrice in Hunting Park, listed in critical condition. Anyone want to bet that Mr Moran’s story won’t be found on the main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website on Friday morning?

This story posted at 9:45 PM EDT on Thursday, October 21st, and will be updated on Friday morning.

————————–

Update! Friday, October 22, 2021

Did someone recover from being dead? The Philadelphia Police Department reported on Thursday that 443 homicides had occurred as of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, October 20th. Robert Moran’s article cited above tells us of three homicides in the city on Thursday, but the morning report from the Police Department this morning states that the homicide total as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday was 445.

It’s possible that one of the previous homicides has now been ruled self-defense, and subtracted from the total, but I do not know.

Nevertheless, 445 is still ‘good’ enough to push 2021 into fourth place all time, with 71 days remaining in the year. At 1.5136 homicides per day, Philadelphia is on pace for 552 homicides for the year. At the current rate, Philly should tie the all time record of 500 in 36 days, on November 26th, appropriately enough, ‘Black Friday.’

A thorough scan of the Inquirer’s website main page at 8:18 AM EDT this morning verified what I had already guessed: neither Mr Moran’s, or anyone else’s story about the reported murders yesterday were visible on the site. Mr Moran’s story is still available at the embedded link in his headline above, but if you just read the Inquirer through its website in the morning, you’d never see it. But, as I’ve said many times before, black lives don’t matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer, unless, of course, they are taken by a white police officer.

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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.