Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Political correctness in the city of Lexington

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader apparently does not post photos of criminal suspects, — though an exception was recently made for a white suspect — even though the other city media do, and that McClatchy Company, which owns the Herald-Leader, apparently does not either.

Lexington Police Department shooting investigations chart; screen capture from city website.

Well, it seems that the Lexington city government is just as eaten up with political correctness as its newspaper. The unreadably small chart to the right, which you can expand by clicking on the image, is a screen capture from the city government’s Shooting investigations page, taken at 4:02 PM EDT on Monday, May 10th. If you expand it, you will see that it lists the victims’ sex, race and age, along with the suspect, if known. Of 31 shooting investigations, 24 of the victims are listed as black, 3 as Hispanic, and 4 as white.

Lexington Police Department shooting investigations chart; screen capture from city website.

But when you come to the city’s Homicide investigations page, on a different page of the same website — the two pages are linked — shown on the left, you’ll notice, if you click on the screen capture and expand it, the victims’ sex and race are not included. The Shootings investigation page excludes homicide victims.

I wonder why that is.

Now, you can get that information on the website original, in some cases, by clicking on the crime scene location. Nevertheless, I find it an odd omission, considering that the information is posted on the shootings investigations page; why exclude information that the police clearly have?[1]Note that the investigation of the shooting on January 31, 2021, on the 100 block of West Vine Street, has both a surviving shooting victim and the murder of Lonnie Oxendine. Are we to somehow think … Continue reading Why do the Lexington Police and city government censor information they clearly have? Why, if they are going to make the information posted for plain public view in the first place, do they deliberately withhold statistical information?

Well, I think that I can tell you. Lexington is, according to 2019 Census Department guesstimates, 74.9% white, 14.6% black and 7.2% Hispanic (of any race). If the city puts out too much information, then an [insert slang term for the rectum here] like me might look at the numbers and ask something like, ‘If the city is only 14.6% black, why are 77.4% of the shooting victims black? If the Lexington Police Department told us the race of the homicide victims, would we find a similar racial disparity?[2]According to the Homicide investigations page, all 15 of the listed victims — the page had not been updated with the most recent homicide — were killed by gunfire.

Lexington isn’t Chicago or Philadelphia yet, though sometimes it seems as though the criminal element there is taking that as a personal challenge. But if the city’s violence problems are ever going to be solved, they have to be solved by addressing the problem properly, by recognizing what and where the problem lays, and that’s something the city, and its newspaper, just won’t do.

References

References
↑1 Note that the investigation of the shooting on January 31, 2021, on the 100 block of West Vine Street, has both a surviving shooting victim and the murder of Lonnie Oxendine. Are we to somehow think that the Lexington Police recorded the race, sex and age of the surviving shooting victim but not that of the man who perished?
↑2 According to the Homicide investigations page, all 15 of the listed victims — the page had not been updated with the most recent homicide — were killed by gunfire.
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If only the global warming climate change emergency activists understood what they ask

My good friend William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove noted that some climate activists believe they may have to move away from strictly non-violent means to get the change they want. Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow up a Pipeline: Learning to Fight in a World on Fire,

absolutely rules out violence that harms people, but he wants the climate movement to include sabotage and property destruction in its plans.

If a natural gas pipeline is sabotaged, in a way in which no one is injured but the gas flow is cut off, I suppose that would meet Mr Malm’s criterion. But, if the flow of gas is cut off, that will mean that people wouldn’t have it available, to what, heat their homes in January, or have electricity for their workplaces and lose their jobs?

Natural gas is part of our infrastructure, something not a consumer item as much as it is a means of modern life.

48% of all homes in the US use natural gas for heat, while only 37% use electricity. Interestingly, the only region in which electricity is the primary source of heat is the Confederacy, in which winters are normally milder.

Today, natural gas piped directly into homes is the dominant source of heating fuel in every region but the South, where more than 60 percent of households used electricity in 2013. The South is also the region that has seen the greatest shift away from coal and toward natural gas for electric power generation.

The Midwest sees the greatest use of natural gas for heating, with more than 65 percent of homes there using gas.

But natural gas use for heating is declining. Every region in the U.S. except for the Northeast is seeing a slight drop in favor of electricity, according to an EIA report released Thursday.

More people may be using electricity for heating instead of natural gas because they may be moving into newer homes that use electricity, and use it more efficiently than older electrically heated homes, according to the EIA.

In the Northeast, the opposite is occurring, with the use of heating oil diminishing there in favor of natural gas. Heating oil is nearly unheard of outside the Northeast, which represents about 80 percent of all U.S. heating oil use.

More than 30 percent of all households in the Northeast used heating oil in 2005. That number dropped to less than 25 percent in 2013. Heating oil stocks have become tight in recent years with several Northeastern states, including New York, requiring heating oil to be marketed with lower sulfur levels.

The woodstove I installed in our house in Jim Thorpe. Not that I had installed, but installed personally. Click to enlarge.

It seems that the liberals in New York and New England love them some heating oil! My previous home, in the southern end of the Poconos, used heating oil, and I later supplemented that with a wood stove. Why? It gets cold there, and the wood stove, not only helping in a house with an older, one-zone system, was a back-up in the event of a power outage. (Heating oil furnaces still depend on electricity to run.)

The northeast was also the area of our fastest early population growth, and the densely populated northeast has a lot of older, more poorly insulated homes. What the warmunists don’t understand — well, part of what they don’t understand, because, really, they don’t understand much at all — is that it costs money to retrofit an older home with better insulation, and it costs money to change out existing heating systems for newer ones, and that it costs money to do all of the things they want, and the clerk working at the Turkey Hill in downtown Jim Thorpe or the concrete mixer driver living in Brodheadsville can’t afford to just do those things.[1]Mr Teach uses the term ‘warmist’ as a mocking reference to the global warming climate change emergency activists. Given their seeming insistence on government controlling everything and … Continue reading

The warmunists all seem to be the people who are already well off, the people who don’t have to worry about putting food on the table, the people for whom day-to-day survival isn’t quite so guaranteed. Not only are they not poor, they don’t seem to have grown up poor, either, and have no flaming idea what things can be like for those who aren’t well off. It’s easy for them to say that these things can just be done, because they can afford them when they come.

Well, I grew up poor. I know what it’s like to have spent a couple of months without running water because the pipes froze and my mother didn’t have the money to hire a plumber right away. I know what it’s like to have frequent meals of chicken livers, rice and spinach because it’s inexpensive food.

Of course, the warmunists think our homes should be all-electric, because CO2, but when we bought our current home, in eastern Kentucky, it was all-electric. It is a fixer-upper as well, and we knew I’d have to work on it.

My wife wanted a gas stove as we planned the kitchen remodel, which meant, out in the country, propane; there are no natural gas lines out here. But, that first winter here, of 2017-18, before we got to the kitchen remodel, we had what the Weather Channel called Winter Storm Hunter, an ice storm which hit eastern Kentucky. The power went out . . . for 4½ days, in January. Our heat-pump electric heat, which wasn’t all that great anyway during a winter in which we saw temperatures below 10º F, wasn’t going to heat anything without power. Mrs Pico went to Lexington, to stay with our daughters, but I had to stay here, to take care of the house and the critters.

Our remodeled kitchen, including the propane range! All of the work except the red quartz countertops was done by my family and me. Click to enlarge.

It got down to 38º F in the house by the end, and was that warm only due to a couple of sunny days. But, due to this, our remodeling plans changed: not only would we have a propane range, but we changed out the (old) electric water heater for one which used propane, and added a propane fireplace as well. Neither the water heater nor fireplace requires electricity to operate, though there is an electric blower on the fireplace to better circulate the heat. We can use the range top without electricity, though not the oven.

OK, OK, it’s true: I wrote this in a way to show off my mad skillz in remodeling. 🙂 But it is meant to point out that the global warming climate change emergency activists don’t know squat about how people in this country actually live. To say that I have to stop using utilities which use fossil fuels is to say that I have to freeze in the winter if the power goes out. Sorry, not sorry, but I don’t intend to make that sacrifice! To say that everybody has to go all-electric ignores the fact that the 63% of the American people, many of whom could not reasonably afford it, would have to change their heating systems. To say that we have to go to all plug-in electric cars ignores the fact that many (most?) people would not have the ability to charge such vehicles at home, overnight, but would have to spend hours each week just sitting at commercial charging stations.

Showing off another corner of the kitchen.

When you have people like presidential Climate Envoy John Kerry, net worth $250 million, married to Teresa Heinz, net worth $750 million to $1.2 billion, leading the way in global warming climate change emergency activism, you have people who have no flaming idea what it’s like to be poor, what it’s like to live, to use the words of Robert E Howard, with their lives nailed to their spines, who think that everything can and should be just so easy to do, if only we’d make the commitment to do it, because being able to throw money at their problems has never been a problem for them.

That most people can’t just throw money at their problems? That an unexpected $400 emergency expense would be difficult for about 40% of Americans to afford — a figure from before the economic dislocations caused by the reaction to COVID-19 — is something so far outside their paradigm that the warmunists can’t comprehend it? These things simply don’t occur to the activists. We need to stop listening to them.

References

References
↑1 Mr Teach uses the term ‘warmist’ as a mocking reference to the global warming climate change emergency activists. Given their seeming insistence on government controlling everything and forcing people to do as they wish, I’ve changed it to ‘warmunist,’ the etymology of which ought to be obvious.
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And another one bites the dust! Do black lives matter in Lexington?

There are no suspects yet, so I cannot fault the Lexington Herald-Leader for not posting their photos, but it does seem to be the newspaper’s policy specifically, and McClatchy Company’s policy in general, not to do so.

Teenager killed, two others injured in North Lexington shooting

By Karla Ward | May 8, 2021 07:57 PM EDT | Updated; May 9, 2021 | 10:20 AM EDT

Two men and a teen boy were taken to the hospital with serious injuries Saturday night after a shooting in a neighborhood off Georgetown Street.

The teenager, later identified as 17-year-old Mar’quevion Leach, died of his injuries at University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital, the Fayette County Coroner’s Office announced late Saturday.

Lexington police Lt. Chris Cooper said Saturday that officers were called to the 700 block of Florence Avenue just after 6 p.m. He said police received several calls about shots fired.

“Upon arrival, we did locate several individuals who had been injured by gunfire,” he said.

There’s a little more at the original.

Unless I’ve missed one, young Mr Leach would be the sixteenth person murdered in Lexington thus far this year. Saturday having been the 128th day of the year, that would put Lexington at one murder every eight days, assuming none of the other victims of what may have been a gun battle die. At that rate, Lexington would see 45 to 46 people murdered in 2021; the city set it’s records of 34 murders just last year, and that was four over the previous record of 30, set the year before.

Actually, 45 to 46 (the actual number is 45.625) is a better rate than just three weeks ago, when the city was on track for 51 homicides. But, if one of the other shooting victims succumbs, and becomes the 17th homicide victim, the projected total jumps to between 48 and 49 victims. A 17th would be fully half of 2020’s total, just 1/3 of the way through the year.

And the summer hasn’t started yet!

Do black lives matter in Lexington? It doesn’t really seem so, as young black men are being killed at record rates in a city which used to be fairly peaceful; I lived in the city from 1971 through 1984.[1]There is a Facebook page for a Mar’quevion Leach in Lexington, though the profile photo was posted ten years ago. I assume that this is the same person, as the name is fairly unusual.

The Herald-Leader reported that the police believe that the victims were “probably targeted.” At least to one person, Mr Leach’s black life didn’t matter, nor the lives of the other two victims.

References

References
↑1 There is a Facebook page for a Mar’quevion Leach in Lexington, though the profile photo was posted ten years ago. I assume that this is the same person, as the name is fairly unusual.
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What evidence has there been that the #COVID19 restrictions actually reduced infections?

From my good friend — can I call him a good friend if I’ve never actually met him? — Robert Stacy McCain:

Truth or Satire? It’s Getting Harder to Tell

By Robert Stacy McCain | May 8, 2021

January headline from The Babylon Bee:

 

CNN Unveils New Format Where Hosts Just Watch Fox News And Yell At It

 

This is awfully close to describing what’s happened to CNN in recent months. Once Biden was inaugurated, the network lost its raison d’être of producing anti-Trump propaganda. Ratings for CNN have evaporated since January and, unable to excite their audience with live performances of journalistic fellatio on Biden (metaphorically speaking), they devote hours every day to critiquing whatever is on Fox News.

So the other night, Tucker Carlson raised questions about whether the number of deaths from COVID-19 vaccine are being underreported. He didn’t advance any “conspiracy theory” during that segment, or make claims that could justify Sanjay Gupta’s unhinged reaction:

“What he’s done is he’s basically looked at these open-system adverse reporting systems and said ‘hey look, this suggests that 30 people a day are dying of the vaccine.’ Absolutely not true,” Gupta said on CNN’s New Day.

“The problem is that it continues to stir up this vaccine hesitance or outright vaccine reluctance . . .

Hey, Dr. Gupta: Maybe “vaccine hesitance” doesn’t really matter, but do you really care about Fox News viewers? No, I’m pretty sure you would be very happy if they all died tomorrow. So please spare us your concern-trolling. My thought all along has been that the draconian lockdown regimes and mandatory mask-wearing orders, at best, didn’t do much to stop the pandemic and quite possibly made it worse. Anyone can examine the state-by-state per-capita death rates and see that there is no clear correlation between the severity of the lockdown regimes and the relative safety of populations. Florida is doing just fine, despite all the hate directed at Gov. DeSantis by CNN and other liberal media outlets that prophesied a catastrophe in the Sunshine State.

There’s more at the original.

While I did not look at Florida’s numbers, I have concentrated on Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, ended the mask mandate and most other state restrictions on March 10th, to predictions of death and disease by the so-called ‘experts.’

Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) latest thirty-day renewal of the illegal and repugnant mask mandate expires on Thursday, May 27th, at 5:00 PM EDT, just before his other COVID-19 restrictions are scheduled to be weakened, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him issue that one again.

Reiterating that Kentucky will not be repealing its mask mandate anytime soon, Gov. Andy Beshear announced 1,068 new cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky on Thursday, as well as 28 virus-related deaths.

Earlier this week, Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi lifted coronavirus restrictions, repealing their states’ mask mandates and reopening businesses to full capacity. Kentucky will not do that, Beshear said.

“We’re going to continue to lose people until we’re fully out of the woods and everybody is vaccinated,” he said in a live update. “That’s the reason we’re not going to do what Texas or Mississippi has done. Those decisions will increase casualties when we just have maybe even a matter of months to go.”

Except, of course, those decisions did not increase casualties, the seven day moving average of new cases in the Lone Star state being down to 2,651 as of May 6th, the lowest figure since June 17, 2020, while Mississippi is seeing a seven-day moving average of 182 new cases per day, a number not seen since April 14, 2020.

That much, I reported yesterday, but I’ve since done more research. Texas currently has the lowest moving seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases since June of 2020, that average having dropped precipitously since the mask mandate ended. Texas, with a seven-day moving average of 2651 new COVID cases per day, and a population of 29.15 million, has a new case rate of 9.09 new cases per 100,000 population. Texas has no mask mandate and few restrictions. Texas has 29% of the adult populate fully vaccinated, and 39% have received first shot. Kentucky, with a moving average of 581 and a population of 4048 million, is seeing new cases at a rate of 12.97 per 100,000, despite having mask mandate, more restrictions, and a higher percentage of population vaccinated, 33% fully vaccinated and 42% having received one dose. Texas has slightly higher population density, 109.9 per mi² compared to Kentucky’s 107.4 per mi². Despite what the so-called experts claimed, ending the mask mandate in Texas did not lead to unparalleled death and disease. Based on empirical evidence, the capacity restrictions and mask mandates had no positive effect on infection rate.

The scientific method is to produce an hypothesis, and then test it to see if it is true. Actual real world testing of the restrictions has not borne out the hypothesis that our freedoms needed to be restricted, our constitutional rights needed to be violated.

What about Michigan? Governor Gretchen Whitless Whitmer has imposed some of the strictest COVID-19 restrictions in the nation. On May 6, the same date as the figures reported above for Texas and Kentucky, Michigan’s seven-day moving average was 3,317 new cases per day, 666 more per day than Texas’ 2,651. Yet Texas has almost thrice Michigan’s population of 9,966,555 people. Where Texas is seeing 9.09 new cases per day per 100,000 population, Michigan’s rate is 33.28 per 100,000, more than thrice that of the Lone Star State. Michigan has seen 35% of its adult population fully vaccinated, and 44% have received their first, dose, a rate higher than that in Texas, and even slightly higher than in the Bluegrass State. Michigan does have a significantly higher population density of 174 per mi².

But one thing is clear: Governor Whitless’ Whitmer’s restrictions have not helped.

Mr McCain mentioned Florida, but the Sunshine State only lifted all mask mandates five days ago, so there isn’t much difference from Michigan. At a moving seven day average of 4,317 new cases per day, in a population of 21.48 million people, Florida’s average of 20.10 per 100,00 population is just 2/3 that of Michigan’s, despite Florida’s more than twice as great population density of 397.2 people per mi². Michigan’s restrictions have, in general, been far stricter than Florida’s, but, there it is again, Florida is seeing fewer cases on a per population basis.

Again, the empirical evidence is that the greater restrictions don’t reduce China virus infection rates![1]See this as to why I am occasionally referring to it as the China virus.

We have gone through more than a year of authoritarian governors, mostly without the consent of their state legislatures, imposing restrictions on our freedoms and our constitutional rights, because it has been claimed to be necessary to protect us from the Wuhan virus. But once a few governors, all seemingly Republicans, recovered their nerve and started paying attention to our rights, the evidence jumped out at us: the restrictions didn’t help to protect us at all.

References

References
↑1 See this as to why I am occasionally referring to it as the China virus.
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Andy Beshear tries to finesse his #COVID19 orders to escape a state Supreme Court decision

As we have previously noted, the state Supreme Court has consolidated the cases against the General Assembly’s new laws restricting Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) ’emergency’ powers under KRS 39A, and a lawsuit against the Governor exercising those powers. The state Court then set June 10th, then eight weeks away and still more than a month away, to hear oral arguments in the cases. That means, in effect, that the Governor will continue to exercise authority the General Assembly denied him, for at least 3½ months after the state legislature took its action, and, in all likelihood, a couple of months after that.

Several lawsuits were filed in state courts last year to stop the Governor’s emergency decrees under KRS39A. On July 17, 2020, the state Supreme Court put a hold on all lower court orders against Mr Beshear’s orders and directed that “any lower court order, after entry, be immediately transferred to the clerk of the Supreme Court for consideration by the full court.” Three weeks later, the  Court set September 17, 2020, another five weeks later, to hear oral arguments by both sides.

The Court then waited for eight more weeks to issue its decision, until November 12, 2020, which upheld the Governor’s orders.

If the Kentucky Supreme Court, officially non-partisan but in practice controlled by liberals, follows the same pattern, a second eight week delay will mean a decision around the first week of August! Even if that decision supports the duly passed laws of the General Assembly, the state courts will have given the Governor half a year to exercise power that the General Assembly restricted.

And now? The Governor is trying to make most of the cases moot:

COVID-19 capacity restrictions lifting to 75% at most Kentucky businesses on May 28

By Alex Aquisto | May 6, 2021 4:57 PM EDT | Updated May 6, 2021 | 5:34 PM

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

Indoor and outdoor businesses in Kentucky serving fewer than 1,000 people can increase capacity to 75% at the end of the month, Gov. Andy Beshear said Thursday, as he announced 655 new cases of COVID-19 and six virus-related deaths.Capacity restrictions right now for these businesses are at 60%. Beshear also said people gathering indoors “for private gatherings and for business” no longer have to wear a mask, as long as “100% are fully vaccinated.” That change goes into effect immediately.

Additionally, for businesses and events serving more than 1,000 people outdoors, Beshear increased their operating capacity from 50% to 60%. Both capacity increases go into effect May 28. Beshear said he expects the state will have no coronavirus capacity restrictions by July.

Translation: by the time the state Supreme Court will probably rule, there will be far fewer restrictions in place, and the Governor will argue that makes the cases moot. The Court would like nothing better than to simply dismiss the cases as moot, and you can bet your last euro that the Court would notify the Governor before any decision is announced what it would be and when it would be issued.

Governor Beshear said that Texas decision to drop mask mandates “will increase casualties,” but COVID cases there have dramatically declined.

We noted on Thursday that Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) was lifting his restrictions on Memorial Day, May 31st, and asked why he was going to ruin 2/3 of the holiday weekend and then suddenly declare, on the final day, that no restrictions were needed. At least Governor Beshear recognized the silliness of that!

The Governor’s latest thirty-day renewal of the illegal and repugnant mask mandate expires on Thursday, May 27th, at 5:00 PM EDT, just before his other COVID-19 restrictions are scheduled to be weakened, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him issue that one again.

Reiterating that Kentucky will not be repealing its mask mandate anytime soon, Gov. Andy Beshear announced 1,068 new cases of COVID-19 in Kentucky on Thursday, as well as 28 virus-related deaths.

Earlier this week, Republican governors in Texas and Mississippi lifted coronavirus restrictions, repealing their states’ mask mandates and reopening businesses to full capacity. Kentucky will not do that, Beshear said.

“We’re going to continue to lose people until we’re fully out of the woods and everybody is vaccinated,” he said in a live update. “That’s the reason we’re not going to do what Texas or Mississippi has done. Those decisions will increase casualties when we just have maybe even a matter of months to go.”

Except, of course, those decisions did not increase casualties, the seven day moving average of new cases in the Lone Star state being down to 2,651 as of May 6th, the lowest figure since June 17, 2020, while Mississippi is seeing a seven-day moving average of 182 new cases per day, a number not seen since April 14, 2020. Regardless of what the so-called ‘experts’ have told us, the empirical evidence has been that ending the mask mandates has not led to more cases, but, hey, dictators gotta dictate!

If Governor Beshear does not extend the mask mandate past July, virtually all of the cases on the laws would turn moot, so the Governor would not have a decision recorded against him; the state Supreme Court would simply dismiss everything. But that leaves open the possibility that, in a future ’emergency,’ or if COVID-19 cases suddenly increase again, that our authoritarian Governor would once again try to restrict the rights of Kentuckians.

This Governor needs to be slapped down, and slapped down hard, but the only way that will really happen is at the ballot box, in November of 2023.

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Governor Tom Wolf to lift all #COVID19 restrictions . . . except the one which pisses off people the most

The most visible symbol of compliance with State orders is the facemask, and the Governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania doesn’t want to let go of that!

Pennsylvania will fully reopen on Memorial Day, lifting COVID-19 rules. Philadelphia won’t follow suit — yet.

Masking requirements will remain in place until 70% of the state’s 18-and-older population is vaccinated. Philadelphia said it will review the policy.

by Erin McCarthy and Justine McDaniel | May 4, 2021

Pennsylvania will lift its coronavirus mitigation measures on Memorial Day, state officials announced Tuesday, marking a milestone in the pandemic recovery and freeing businesses and patrons to prepare to fill restaurants, bars, and stores for the first time in more than a year.

Philadelphia, however, was not yet set to follow suit: The city will said it will review the state’s policy but retain its own restrictions. Officials are working on the city’s reopening plans.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health announcement keeps in place the requirement for Pennsylvanians to wear masks in compliance with state and CDC guidelines. It also gives residents an incentive to get COVID-19 shots: Masking will be required until 70% of the state’s 18-and-older population is vaccinated.

Gene Barr, president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, called the announcement “the long-awaited light at the end of the tunnel and a return to sense of ‘normalcy.’”

What, I have to ask, is so magical about Memorial Day that the restrictions can be lifted then, but not on, say, May 19th, or even today? Saying that the restrictions can be lifted on May 31st but not now, when we cannot know what the conditions will be on that day, means that the the decision was driven by politics, not science. Given that Memorial Day is the end of a three-day holiday weekend, why is Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA) waiting until the last day of those three, rather than Saturday, May 29th instead? How will conditions be different enough on the 31st from those on the 29th to justify ruining two of the three days of the holiday?

Of course, the Governor is keeping the most hated restriction in place, the mask mandate, with the threat promise that it will be lifted once 70% of the Commonwealth’s adult population has been vaccinated. He is trying to use the police power of the state to force people to take the vaccine.[1]Full disclosure: I am not an anti-vaxxer by any means, and received my second dose on Cinco de Mayo. But having chosen to take the vaccine myself does not mean that I believe that others should be … Continue reading

The state is trying to use Penn State head football coach James Franklin to push getting vaccinated, having him say, “I encourage everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated. The more people who are vaccinated, the better chance we have to get back to 107,000 strong here in Beaver Stadium.”

But the Commonwealth and the credentialed media are making it political, making it a Democrats vs Republicans issue:

As Pennsylvania pivots to a new phase of its coronavirus vaccination campaign, and focuses on persuading reluctant residents to get their shots, there’s one group that will be especially tough to win over — the scores of Republicans who say they don’t plan to ever get immunized.

Communications and public health experts say these skeptics need reassurance from the Republican elected officials they trust the most. But in Pennsylvania, all but a few GOP lawmakers are keeping quiet about the vaccine, and some of the ones speaking up are spreading misinformation or sending mixed messages about its safety and efficacy.

State Rep. Russ Diamond (R., Lebanon) falsely called the vaccine poison on social media and vowed not to get one. State Rep. Dawn Keefer (R., York) introduced legislation that would ban businesses or sports venues from requiring proof of vaccination. And State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R., Franklin) wants to block employers from forcing their workers to get the shot.

Doctors say this rhetoric could have deadly consequences.

How, I have to ask, is attempting to protect workers’ rights and individual rights, from having to carry proof of vaccination, a wrong thing?[2]After getting my second dose of the Moderna vaccine, the Estill County Health Department gave me a card, complete with the same type of plastic holder in which a lot of people get their automobile … Continue reading

At every turn, the political left have been trying to force compliance with Government Orders. Instead of asking people to wear masks, Governors across the nation, sadly including Republicans as well as Democrats, have issued orders to people to do so, and issuing orders is the surest way of which I can think to get pushback from people who will not be sheeple.

Despite the claims of the ‘experts,’ the empirical evidence is that the mask mandates do not make any difference.

The facemask is the most visible symbol of compliance, and thus is the one that Governors such as Tom Wolf and Andy Beshear (D-KY) want to keep in place the longest. But Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, lifted the state’s mask mandate on March 10th, and despite the gloom-and-doom predictions of the experts, the number of cases in the Lone Star State have fallen dramatically. We noted, a month ago:

Governor Greg Abbott (R-TX) eliminated the mandatory mask order in the Lone Star State, effective on March 10th; on that date, Texas’ seven-day moving average of daily new cases stood at 4,909. As of April 5th, that number was down to 3,007. The New York Times noted that while the moving average was down by 19% over the past fourteen days, the number of daily tests had increased by 8%. More tests, yet far fewer cases; how about that. Hospitalizations were also down, by 18%, and COVID-19 fatalities were down 38%.

Since then, cases have continued to decline. As of May 5th, the moving seven-day average of new cases in Texas is 2,830, the lowest it has been since June 18th of last year. Pennsylvania, which has also seen cases drop, has a moving seven-day average of 2,882, higher than Texas, despite having just 43% of Texas population.[3]Texas = 29.15 million; Pennsylvania = 12.78 million.

Despite the proclamations of the ‘experts,’ the empirical evidence is that the wearing of facemasks does not make a difference. Governor Beshear, in his latest (illegal) executive order, stated that the CDC “conducted a study of all 3,141 counties in the United States and found that those counties with mask mandates experienced a statistically significant decrease in daily COVID-19 cases,” but the evidence given in real life, in current data, so not show that. Texas, with its wide open status, is showing a greater decrease than half-way-closed Pennsylvania, and, in the Bluegrass State, cases have risen slightly.[4]To be fair, in my small, rural county, I have seen a couple of businesses clearly not going along with the mask mandates. I will not disclose which businesses they are, to keep the Commonwealth from … Continue reading

The mask mandates do not help, but Democratic governors just love to exert their authority, and the continuing mask mandates are the visible symbol to them that the sheeple have complied.

References

References
↑1 Full disclosure: I am not an anti-vaxxer by any means, and received my second dose on Cinco de Mayo. But having chosen to take the vaccine myself does not mean that I believe that others should be compelled to do so.
↑2 After getting my second dose of the Moderna vaccine, the Estill County Health Department gave me a card, complete with the same type of plastic holder in which a lot of people get their automobile proof of insurance cards, and the very cute nurse told me to keep it on my person. I will not comply with vaccine ‘passport’ ideas, and removed that card from my wallet when I returned home.
↑3 Texas = 29.15 million; Pennsylvania = 12.78 million.
↑4 To be fair, in my small, rural county, I have seen a couple of businesses clearly not going along with the mask mandates. I will not disclose which businesses they are, to keep the Commonwealth from trying to take action against them.
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A probably meaningless victory for property rights

It was August 12, 2014, when my wife and I toured the property that we decided to buy for our retirement home. Great location, a livable, if nevertheless fixer-upper house, and a fantastic price. However, we were not quite ready to retire, so, rather than leave the house sitting vacant, we rented it out.

In January of 2017, we gave our renters notice that we would be taking possession of the property on July 1, 2017. That gave them six months to find someplace else to live, and enabled their children to finish out the school year to finish out the school year.

But just imagine: what if I had retired in 2020 instead of 2017. With the eviction moratoria imposed by various levels of government, if our renters had simply decided to cease paying rent in April, and not to leave the property by the end of June, we could still be stuck in Pennsylvania, still waiting to take possession of our own property.

The Washington Post has a long, feature story on what has happened to rental property owners due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the covid economy of 2021, the federal government has created an ongoing grace period for renters until at least July, banning all evictions in an effort to hold back a historic housing crisis that is already underway. More than 8 million rental properties across the country are behind on payments by an average of $5,600, according to census data. Nearly half of those rental properties are owned not by banks or big corporations but instead by what the government classifies as “small landlords” — people who manage their own rentals and depend on them for basic income, and who are now trapped between tenants who can’t pay and their own mounting bills for insurance, mortgages and property tax. According to government estimates, a third of small landlords are at risk of bankruptcy or foreclosure as the pandemic continues into its second year.

There were bills we had to pay on our rented-out property: property taxes, some repairs, and, just a couple of months before the renters were to leave, to have the septic tank pumped out. The HVAC system needed to be serviced. Fortunately, this was before the virus struck, and we were still receiving our rent payments.

The Post story details the problems through which other landlords have had to go, but so many people see landlords as all being wealthy, all being Snidely Whiplash about to tie Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks.

Now a federal judge has thrown out the nationwide eviction moratorium issued by the Centers for Disease Control:

Federal judge vacates CDC’s nationwide eviction moratorium

Court rules agency lacks legal authority to impose it

By Kyle Swenson, Staff Writer | May 5, 2021 | 3:11 PM EDT

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday ruled that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention overstepped its legal authority by issuing a nationwide eviction moratorium, a ruling that could affect millions of struggling Americans.

In a 20-page order, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich vacated the CDC order, first put in place during the coronavirus pandemic under the Trump administration and now set to expire June 30.

“It is the role of the political branches, and not the courts, to assess the merits of policy measures designed to combat the spread of disease, even during a global pandemic,” the order states. “The question for the Court is a narrow one: Does the Public Health Service Act grant the CDC the legal authority to impose a nationwide eviction moratorium? It does not.”

The Biden administration has indicated it will appeal the decision. The ruling does not affect state or local eviction moratoriums. In Washington, D.C., for example, the city government’s ban on all evictions remains in place.

Translation: the ruling is very limited in scope. But here was the line that really got to me:

After Wednesday’s decision, tenants’ rights advocates called for the Biden administration not only to defend the policy but to step up legal protections that will keep people in their homes.

No, no, no, no, no! The eviction moratoria have not kept “people in their homes,” but kept people on other people’s homes!

In the wild and unthinking reaction to the virus, governments across the country, federal, state and local, have devastated our economy and turned individual American citizens into both slaves and agents of the government. The landlord who cannot collect his rent, yet not evict the squatters who are living in his property, has been transformed into an unpaid government housing agency, and has had his property effectively seized by the government for the private benefit of others. What was his is no longer his. The Fourteenth Amendment states that the government may not seize anyone’s property without due process of law, but unless due process of law includes government edicts, that constitutional provision has simply been waved away.

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Journolists: how the credentialed media are limiting reporting to change people’s minds

In my seemingly endless crusade against an irresponsible credentialed media, I have noted, several times, that the Lexington Herald-Leader has been mostly reluctant to publish photos of criminal suspects, even when a criminal suspect was still at large and it was possible that publishing his photo might help the city police to find and arrest him.

Researching the topic further, I found that the Sacramento Bee has done the same thing, and explained it:

Why The Sacramento Bee will no longer publish police ‘mugshots,’ with limited exceptions

By Ryan Lillis | July 9, 2020 | 2:08 PM PDT | Updated July 9, 2020 | 2:24 PM PDT

The Sacramento Bee announced Wednesday it will limit the publication of police booking photos, surveillance photos and videos of alleged crimes, and composite sketches of suspects provided by law enforcement agencies.

Now, I knew, as soon as I saw the story, that the Bee must be a McClatchy paper, just from the website layout. A search of the Herald-Leader’s website failed to turn up anything similar, but Wikipedia noted that the Bee is the “flagship” of the McClatchy papers.

Publishing these photographs and videos disproportionately harms people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community.

The policy is effective immediately and will be applied moving forward.

The obvious question is: how would publishing photos of criminal suspects “disproportionately (harm) people of color and those with mental illness, while also perpetuating stereotypes about who commits crime in our community” unless those photos showed a ‘disproportionate’ number of ‘people of color’ being arrested? How could such ‘perpetuate stereotypes about who commits crimes’ unless those stereotypes are accurate?

Of course, the Herald-Leader was perfectly willing to publish one recent mugshot, but, not to worry, that photo wouldn’t disproportionately harm a person of color.

Then we have Trudy Rubin, a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer:

As journalists worldwide face repression, GOP lies threaten U.S. media future

Around the world, journalists are killed with bullets, but in the U.S., Fox News undermines media with endless lies about COVID-19 and election fraud.

By Trudy Rubin | May 4, 2021

Monday was World Press Freedom Day, a United Nations-approved “reminder to governments to respect press freedom” that most nations ignore.

The 2021 World Press Freedom Index compiled by Reporters Without Borders reports that “journalism, the main vaccine against disinformation, is completely or partly blocked in 73% of the 180 countries ranked by the organization.”

Thirty-two journalists around the globe were reportedly killed last year. Already this year, in Afghanistan — in an episode enough to make one cry — three young women employees of a local TV station in Jalalabad were gunned down in March by the local Islamic State affiliate. That’s after a 26-year-old woman presenter at the same station named Malalai Maiwand was shot dead in December.

Can you imagine the courage it takes for young women (and men) to continue to work in journalism in Afghanistan, or civil-war-torn Myanmar or Belarus, or in many African nations? Or to keep trying to present real news in the handful of independent online or provincial outlets that still exist in Russia? (The many brave independent Chinese journalists who once functioned in print and online are almost completely silenced.)

Yet, today’s main threat to press freedom in the United States is more insidious than grisly murders. And it undermines the very future of our democratic system.

I refer, of course, to the growth of an alternative media universe, amplified by Donald Trump, that attracts a sizeable portion of the American public into their own news silo — and feeds them a constant and hypnotic “news” diet of outright lies.

This cuts to the heart of how we define press freedom.

This is almost laughable. Mrs Rubin is complaining that some credentialed media sources do not report things the way other credentialed media sources do, and has claimed that some of the reports are, gasp! false! But her own newspaper, the newspaper of record for Philadelphia, the sixth=most populous city in the country, a newspaper which began publication on June 1, 1829, decades before The New York Times or Washington Post, doesn’t even cover the murders in her city, 169 of which had rocked the city so far this year as of the end of Sunday, May 2nd.

Let’s tell the truth here: while Mrs Rubin is complaining that other media sources are pushing false stories, the credentialed media of which she approves are deliberately concealing information from the public. The truth is that the left in today’s media can’t handle the truth, because it would wholly upset their narrative.

Back to the Bee:

”The Bee has taken several recent steps to work against long-standing stereotypes. We have largely banned the use of the word “looting” – a term rooted in racism – and have sought to elevate the voices of emerging writers from communities we have long underserved through our Community Voices project,” said Bee President and Editor Lauren Gustus. “And building trust takes time. Our intention with this policy change is to take another step forward.”

The Bee and most other mainstream media outlets have routinely published police booking photos, commonly referred to as “mugshots,” for decades. The photos are typically provided by law enforcement agencies that arrest or charge suspects.

Their publication can have a permanent damaging effect on individuals and communities.

For example, it’s not always reported when a suspect arrested on suspicion of a crime is later released, acquitted by a jury or pleads guilty to a charge of lesser severity. Yet the mugshot of that person in police custody remains.

It’s certainly true that the mugshot will remain on the internet forever. But it is also true that the Bee and the Herald-Leader routinely publish the names of those arrested, even though those arrested might have the charges dropped, be acquitted in trial or perhaps plead guilty to a ‘lesser’ offense, and it is far easier to search for text, for a name, than it is for a photo. If, for example, Ryan Dontese Jones, is acquitted of the several charges against him, charges reported by the Herald-Leader, when he goes to apply for a job after all is said and done, any company with a responsible human resources department is going to do a Google search for his name, and they’ll find that story, even though the newspaper declined to include Mr Jones’ mugshot.

“Thank you for your application, Mr Jones. We will be in touch with you.”

The truth is that this has nothing to do with the suspects individually. Rather, it has to do with exactly what the Bee said it was: to prevent readers from drawing conclusions based upon the perceived race of suspects identified with mug shots.

The credentialed media are manipulating the news, and the Bee has admitted it. And now you know why I call them journolists.

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Political correctness in the Lexington Herald-Leader? (Part 4)

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like posting photographs of accused criminals, even when those suspects are still at large and publishing the photo might help the police capture him. Thus, we were somewhat surprised when the Herald-Leader did post a photo of an accused, but not convicted, criminal suspect. Was this an editorial change?

Apparently not.

Man shot by Lexington police accused of taking hostages inside home, firing shots

By Morgan Eads and Jeremy Chisenhall | May 03, 2021 | 3:11 PM EDT

A man who was shot over the weekend by Lexington police is facing multiple charges related to accusations that he held multiple children and adults in a home as hostages.

Ryan Dontese Jones, 21, is charged with first-degree burglary, four counts of kidnapping a minor, five counts of kidnapping an adult and nine counts of wanton endangerment.

Jones was set to be arraigned Monday, but he had been put in isolation in the Fayette County jail due to COVID-19 precautions and could not attend the remote proceedings. His arraignment was rescheduled for next week. His bond is set at $50,000, according to court records.

Lexington police said they were originally called to the 600 block of Marshall Lane for a report of shots fired at about 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. An officer who arrived was shot at by Jones and returned fire, striking him in the shoulder, police said. The officer was not injured.

Jones is accused of forcing his way into a home on Marshall Lane, and pointing a handgun and shooting at the people inside, according to his arrest citation. He is also accused of restraining multiple adults and children to use them as “hostages,” according to the citation.

Ryan Dontese Jones. Photo by Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center.

This is the mug shot of the accused suspect, but no, it wasn’t in what my, sadly late, best friend used to call the Herald-Liberal. It was published by Channel 36, WTVQ, and that’s where I found it.

The photo was provided by the Lexington/Fayette County jail; it is free to the media. Why, then, did the Herald-Leader choose not to use it?

In our previous articles on this subject, we noted that the Herald-Leader included illustrations in their articles that were on topic, but simply fluff illustrations, and thus there were no concerns about a photo of the suspect taking up too much bandwidth. To be fair, in this article, the herald-Leader included a photo which was of the crime scene itself, so whatever bandwidth concerns the newspaper might have had, if they have any at all, were used in a photo directly related to the event. Nevertheless, the photo is simply of seven Lexington Police cruisers, on the street, with crime scene tape. It is a too-common image which does not actually inform the reader of much at all, though we can tell that the neighborhood is one of what appears to be a decent-looking subdivision of brick single-family homes, in what seems like a ‘starter home‘ neighborhood.

So, why is the Herald-Leader so seemingly unwilling to publish mug shots of accused criminal suspects? If it is because the suspects have been accused, but not convicted, why did the paper include the photo of Ronnie Helton? If it is to protect those who have been accused but not convicted, why print the names of the suspects? Those, after all, are far more likely to be found in a Google search, and, if Mr Jones is acquitted of these charges, and then goes out job hunting, any responsible human resources department is going to do a due diligence Google search, and find that he was accused of a pretty serious crime.

What, then, is the point?