Author Archives: Dana Pico

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In Killadelphia, the beat goes on!

Just twenty-one days into the year, it’s a little bit early to tell. Checking the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page has been all over the board. Some days, 2021 has been behind the running total of homicides from 2020’s disastrous year, and some days ahead.

Philadelphia finished Inauguration Day with 32 homicides, 3 ahead of the same date in 2020, for a rate of 1.60 per day. That’s slightly higher than how Philly finished up in December, 1.45 per day.

I wrote earlier that Philadelphia had 502 homicides for 2020, but the Police Department revised its figures, coming up with a total of 499 for the year. What, did three people recover from death or something?

Is the City of Brotherly Love getting ready to leave 2020’s 499, and 1990’s 500 killings in the dust? It’s a little bit early to make a statement like that, with just twenty days gone and 345 days remaining in the year. But one thing is certain: Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw have failed, failed, failed in their jobs.

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Speaking truth to power means telling the truth I will not tell lies just to not hurt someone's feelings

I found this on Twitter:

It would not surprise me that Richard Levine, a mentally ill male who thinks he’s a woman and calls himself “Rachel,” wanted to do that, but it appears that the Associated Press has retracted the article:

AP Retracts Article About Biden’s New Assistant Secretary Of Health Declaring “Hostile Misgendering” A Mental Illness

By Clover Chronicle | January 20, 2021

An article that was reportedly posted by mainstream news media outlet Associated Press (AP) revealed how Rachel Levine – President Joe Biden’s pick for Assistant Secretary of Health – is vowing to make “hostile misgendering” a mental illness under his administration’s new health guidelines.

Title: Biden’s pick for Assistant Secretary of Health vows to make “hostile misgendering” a mental illness under administration’s new health guidelines

Summary: Rachel Levine, herself a Transgender women [sic], has been appointed as assistant secretary of health and has vowed to save America’s Trans kids from misgendering

It has to be conceded that the whole thing could have been faked. Some enterprising hacker could have put the whole ting together and inserted it on the AP site. But, as we have previously noted, Joe Biden wants to ‘normalize’ transgenderism, and The New York Times, which so vigorously protected its own First Amendment rights in New York Times Co v United States, wants to limit the freedom of speech for other people and, more specifically, supports bans on ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering.’[1]‘Misgendering,’ as used by the credentialed media, means referring to a ‘transgender’ person with pronouns or other forms of address which claim that person to be his … Continue reading

Let me be clear here: while some claim that going along with a ‘transgendered’ person’s preferred pronouns and name is simply a matter of being polite, to me it is an attempt to coerce people to lie. More, by pushing people to lie, the credentialed media are attempting to turn a lie into accepted truth.

I will not participate in such.

Dr Levine has been Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health under Governor Tom Wolf (D-PA), and, with the coronavirus outbreak, has been in the news rather a lot for the last ten months. While The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Commonwealth’s ‘newspaper of record,’ noted Dr Levine as being ‘transgender’ in the stories about his appointment by Mr Biden, due to the ‘historic nature’ of it, in stories not related to the appointment, Dr Levine is simply referred to by his assumed name, and referred to with the feminine pronouns.

While the AP story about Dr Levine wanting to define “hostile misgendering” as a “mental illness” might be a fake, he might well consider it to be:

Pa. health secretary denounces transphobic attacks: ‘Our children are watching’

by Sara Simon | July 28, 2020

HARRISBURG — Pennsylvania’s top health official on Tuesday denounced a recent series of transphobic attacks against her, saying she felt compelled to personally address the discrimination.

“While these individuals may think that they are only expressing their displeasure with me, they are in fact hurting the thousands of LGBTQ Pennsylvanians who suffer directly from these current demonstrations of harassment,” Health Secretary Rachel Levine said at a news briefing.

“I have no room in my heart for hatred,” she said. “And frankly, I do not have time for intolerance.” . . . .

In her remarks, Levine expressed the need for Pennsylvanians to “work towards a spirit of not just tolerance, but a spirit of acceptance and welcoming,” and told LGBTQ youth, “It is OK to be you.”

“Our children are watching,” she said. “They are watching what we do. And they are watching how we act.”

Yes, our children are watching, and Dr Levine knows that if parents go along with the cockamamie notion that a person can change his sex, just to be polite, it will subtly educate their children to believe that ‘transgenderism’ is normal, positive and real.

This is Orwellian Ministry of Truth stuff. If the credentialed media repeat the lie often enough, if the New York City Commission on Human Rights can force people to use the ‘transgendered’s’ preferred forms of address, it is normalizing the notion to try to turn a lie into the truth.

In the year 2525, if man is still alive following a nuclear holocaust, some enterprising anthropologist, trying to find clues as to what society was like back in the 21th century, is going to come across the grave of Dr Levine. Exhuming the remains, he will do detailed measurements of the skeleton, the soft tissue having long ago decayed away, and state, from the hip structure, “The subject was male.” Going further, this scientist will be able to extract some DNA from the remains, run an analysis, and state, having found the subject had XY chromosomes, “The subject is confirmed as having been male.”

In the year 3535
Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today

It seems that Zager and Evans were overly optimistic that it would take so long; Twitter, The Philadelphia Inquirer, really all of the credentialed media, the government of New York City, all want to be the pill that governs everything you think, do, and say.

Well, Dr Levine and Bruce Jenner and Bradley Manning can call themselves whatever they want; that’s their right. But it is my right not to go along with their delusions, and I will not. I will do as I always have done; I will speak the truth.

References

References
↑1 ‘Misgendering,’ as used by the credentialed media, means referring to a ‘transgender’ person with pronouns or other forms of address which claim that person to be his biological sex rather than the sex he claims to be. At The First Street Journal, misgendering is referring to a ‘transgender’ person by the sex he claims to be rather than his actual, biological sex. ‘Deadnaming,’ according to the credentialed media, means referring to a person by his given name at birth rather than the name he claims to be following ‘transition.’ The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth rather than the name he claims.
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Governor Beshear vetoes bills limiting his power The General Assembly will override those vetoes on February 2nd

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) had promised all along that he was going to veto the bills limiting his ’emergency’ authority under KRS 39A; I wonder why it took him so long. Perhaps he thought that with the inauguration tomorrow dominating the news, people wouldn’t notice his vetoes?

Beshear vetoes five bills limiting his power. Republicans likely to override him.

By Daniel Desrochers | January 19, 2021 | 5:42 PM EST | Updated: 5:57 PM EST

Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed five pieces of legislation Tuesday that attempted to limit his executive powers, saying they would “significantly hamper the important steps” he has taken to slow the spread of COVID-19.

Beshear vetoed House Bill 1, Senate Bill 1, Senate Bill 2 and House Bill 5, all of which would shift power from the executive branch to the legislative branch when dealing with emergencies, such as the coronavirus pandemic. He also vetoed House Bill 2, which would give the Attorney General authority over enforcement of abortion laws.

“Issuing a veto is my constitutional obligation as governor,” Beshear said. “And it’s my job to issue those vetoes with veto statements when I don’t think something is constitutional, when I think something will harm Kentuckians.

Citing a poll conducted by a consortium of universities and medical schools, Beshear claimed an overwhelming majority of Kentuckians supported his previous orders calling on people to stay home and avoid gathering in groups, limiting restaurants to takeout and shutting down K-12 schools to in-person classes.

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

Of course, in the only poll which matters, the one taken on election day, Kentuckians increased the Republicans’ majority in the state House of Representatives from 61-39 to 75-25, and in the state Senate from 28-10 to 30-8. Republican candidates had been campaigning on, among other things, reining in an out-of-control governor, and voters in the Bluegrass State bought that message.

As we’ve previously noted, Republicans hold not only veto proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly, but those margins are so substantial that the GOP could lose several Republican votes and still override the Governor’s vetoes.

Mr Beshear has said that, if his vetoes are overridden, he will challenge the laws in court. Authoritarians don’t like their authority challenged!

Beshear also vetoed Senate Bill 1, which, among other things, would call the legislature into session to approve emergency orders that last beyond 30 days. Had such a rule been in effect during (2020), Beshear said lawmakers would have been called into special session at least 10 times at a cost to taxpayers of more than $3 million.

Uhhh, no. What it would mean is that the legislature would have had the option of granting extensions for longer than thirty days at a pop. What the Governor really meant is that the legislature would not have approved all of his orders.

The General Assembly reconvenes on February 2nd, at which time the override votes are expected.

Perhaps, just perhaps, if the Governor had cooperated with the legislature last year, as they asked him to do, the General Assembly wouldn’t have passed the bills limiting his power now.

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Joe Biden wants to normalize transgenderism

We already knew that Joe Biden planned to reverse President Trump’s executive order which reversed an Obama Administration federal rule that extended Title IX protections to ‘transgender’ students, allowing them to use bathrooms and locker rooms according to their perceived gender identities rather than their actual sex.

And now, he’s gone even further down the path of ‘transgender’ insanity:

Pa. Health Secretary Rachel Levine tapped to be Biden’s assistant secretary for health

by Erin McCarthy | January 19, 2021

Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel (sic) Levine may soon have a new top boss: Joe Biden.

On Tuesday morning, a day before Biden is sworn in as the 46th President of the United States, he appointed Levine, from his native Pennsylvania, as Assistant Secretary for Health. She (sic) would be the first openly transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate and serve in federal office.

“Dr. Rachel (sic) Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond,” Biden said in a statement. “She (sic) is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration’s health efforts.”

Levine’s friend and colleague Adrian Shanker, executive director of Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center in Allentown, said he was “ecstatic and beaming with pride” upon hearing of Levine’s appointment.

There’s more at the original.

Richard Levine is a male who decided, after marrying a woman, Dr Martha Peaslee,. and siring two children with her, he decided that he was a woman, and ‘transitioned‘ in 2011. He and his wife divorced in 2013.

Now there is no particular reason to have chosen Dr Levine for this position; there are many others just as, if not more, qualified for the position. But Joe Biden selected him as part of his ongoing attempt to normalize ‘transgenderism.’

The cited article is from The Philadelphia Inquirer, and, as Pennsylvania’s (supposed) newspaper of record, it has run many, many articles mentioning Dr Levine, especially since Governor Tom Wolf’s (D-PA) draconian orders to deal with COVID-19. And while the cited article above mentions that Dr Levine is ‘transgendered,’ the vast majority of them uncritically refer to him with the feminine pronouns, and just blithely go along with his delusions concerning what he is.

This is how media bias works! By the Inquirer’s, and other credentialed media sources, continual references to Dr Levine and people like him as being the sex they claim to be, rather than what they actually are, they provide a (not so) subtle push that the ‘transgendered’ actually are the sex they claim to be. We have previously noted that Twitter has banned “deadnaming” and “misgendering”, not allowing any discussion of whether the ‘transgendered’ really are the sex they claim to be rather than their biological sex, and that The New York Times gave space to “Parker” Malloy[1]Mr Malloy is another male who claims to be female. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook specifies that we will always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth name and biological … Continue reading to claim that Twitter’s ban actually promotes freedom of speech.

In the year 2525, some anthropologist researching what the 21st century was really like, before the nuclear holocaust which wiped out most of mankind, will stumble upon the grave of Dr Levine, and exhume his body. Taking it for study, he will measure the remains, and conclude, from the hip structure, this individual was male. Fortunately, there will be some DNA left, which the anthropologist will analyze, and again conclude, this individual was male.

Why? Because the anthropologist will be reaching objective conclusions, based on actual, measured data; he will not be swayed by the subjective claims of the long-dead individual, because he will never have heard them.

The left love to yell, “believe the science!” when they think that the science somehow supports their political positions. But the science tells us that someone with XY chromosomes, someone born with a penis and testes is male.

Every bird, every reptile, and every mammal has the innate ability to distinguish between the sexes of its own species. Only human liberals have managed to ‘educate’ this ability out of themselves. But we must fight against the normalization of their stupidity, and resist going along with their language and terminology.

References

References
↑1 Mr Malloy is another male who claims to be female. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook specifies that we will always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth name and biological sex, but I am uncertain of Mr Malloy’s proper name. I did see one source which claimed it was Chad, but I have some doubts as to whether that is accurate.
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Something I never thought I would see.

I took this photo on June 19, 2016, in Rome:

Italian soldiers on guard near the Arch of Constantine, Roma, June 19, 2016. Photo by Dana R Pico; may be freely used, with attribution.

Then there was this photo, on Twitter, from Michael Tracey:

National Guardsmen, Washington, DC, January 18, 2020.

Mr Tracey said, “Asked the Guardsmen why they are standing around with unloaded rifles. “I don’t know, I’m just doing what I’m told””

Then we had Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN), saying that we just can’t trust anyone who might have voted for Donald Trump:

Had a Republican said something like that about soldiers who voted for a Democrat, the left would be up in arms. But when a Democrat says it? Crickets.

This is the reaction of the left after a couple hundred idiots, out of thousands upon thousands of demonstrators broke into the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

It was only a few months ago that President Trump said he might send federal law enforcement agents to Philadelphia to protect federal property from the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrators, whose Mostly Peaceful Protests™ resulted in curfews in 40 cities, hundreds of buildings looted, vandalized and burned. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, on July 21, 2020:

Mayor Jim Kenney on Tuesday dismissed Trump’s stated concerns about public safety as disingenuous given the administration’s inaction in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, which hit urban centers hardest.

“If the Trump administration wanted to help cities, they would have gotten off their rear ends back in March and April,” Kenney said. “This is a game he’s playing to divert attention away from the many crises that are facing this nation, and we’ll oppose it with everything we have.”

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner compared Trump’s threat to fascism.

“My dad volunteered and served in World War II to fight fascism, like most of my uncles, so we would not have an American president brutalizing and kidnapping Americans for exercising their constitutional rights and trying to make America a better place, which is what patriots do,” he said in a statement. “Anyone, including federal law enforcement, who unlawfully assaults and kidnaps people will face criminal charges from my office.”

U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) dodged the question of whether Trump should send federal officers to Philadelphia and instead joined in attacking the city’s Democratic leaders.

“The rioting, violence, and lawlessness in Portland is a disgrace, and I hope it does not happen in Philadelphia,” Toomey said. “One way to ensure that it does not is for Philadelphia’s mayor and district attorney to actually support the police, enforce the law, and hold criminals accountable.”

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) said Trump’s “secret police are kidnapping and holding citizens without charges for exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed rights.”

“This is totalitarianism,” Casey said. ”Law enforcement should protect the people — not the president’s self-interested political motives. … This unconstitutional paramilitary force has no place anywhere in a healthy democracy and, considering Philadelphia’s historical significance as the birthplace of our Constitution, it would be especially disrespectful and insulting here.”

Yet Democratic Governors all across the country have closed their Capitol buildings, and put up barriers and National Guardsmen, and for what? The pro-Trump rioters who broke into the Capitol assaulted some Capitol police officers, one of whom was killed when struck by a fire extinguisher, but unless I have missed something, the only actual shots fired were by the Capitol police! The rioters broke some windows, trashed a couple of offices, and apparently stole a laptop from Nancy Pelosi’s office. Somehow, this all seems an overreaction.

The Inquirer wound up reporting that In Harrisburg and Trenton, ‘a collective sigh of relief’ as few pro-Trump loyalists show up following FBI warning:

Despite a stark warning from the FBI that state capitals could be targeted by far-right extremists or armed protesters this week, just a handful of demonstrators appeared at government buildings in Harrisburg and Trenton on Sunday as throngs of law enforcement patrolled.

“We are breathing a collective sigh of relief,” Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora said Sunday afternoon. “It appears there are more skateboarders than protesters here.”

The relief rippled across a nation on the edge, still reeling from the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that left five dead and set off a massive law enforcement response from coast to coast ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s Wednesday inauguration. Last week, the FBI warned that at least one group that backs President Donald Trump called for supporters to “storm” government buildings, and authorities said some far-right personalities indicated they’d begin their demonstrations Sunday.

In preparation, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf activated hundreds of members of the National Guard, the Capitol was closed, and police fortified the building with barricades. Streets were shut down in Harrisburg and Trenton, and residents hunkered down in their homes.

It turned out that both cities were quiet Sunday. In Harrisburg, a few demonstrators appeared, as did a couple counterprotesters, including one who approached police and denounced white supremacy while clutching his lunch in a Styrofoam container. The largest gathering near the Capitol was likely a scrapbooking convention at a nearby hotel, made up of mostly women armed with scissors and creativity.

The calm was largely the case at state capitals across the country over the weekend and in D.C., where much of the city is being patrolled by about 25,000 National Guard troops, including some from Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Tall fencing surrounds the Capitol, and the National Mall is closed to the public in an unprecedented lockdown of the nation’s capital.

Of course, the left will claim that it was this determined show of force which kept the demonstrations from happening in the first place. We have to wait until January 20th, to know for certain what demonstrations will occur, but the Democrats sure didn’t react like this during the Summer of Fire and Hate.

The Democrats have been trashing our First Amendment rights ever since COVID-19 broke out, trying to deny the right of the people peaceably to assemble. They gave last summer’s demonstrators plenty of leeway to loot and burn in our major cities, but now, when the protesters are conservatives, they have automatically assumed that any demonstrations will not be peaceful, and they’ve deployed thousands of troops to stop them.

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Selling our birthrights for a mess of pottage

Don’t think that the American left don’t believe this! From Breitbart:

UK Police Chief: ‘Now Is Really Not the Time’ for Freedom of Speech, Right to Assembly

by Jack Montgomery | January 15, 2021

The chief constable of Dorset Police has urged lockdown protesters to accept that “now is really not the time” for freedom of speech and the right to assembly.

Chief Constable James Vaughan was speaking after the controversial arrest of two women for, seemingly, being recorded leaving home more than once and “sitting on a bench”, in an incident the police now allege was “stage-managed” by lockdown protesters, as one of the women is a Covid sceptic — although she denies any pre-planning.

“We appealed to them [the protesters] last weekend to say: ‘Look guys, we respect your right to freedom of speech and right to assembly but now is really not the time, it is too dangerous. Please don’t come, we have got other things we need to do,’” said the chief constable in comments to The Telegraph.

“Instead of giving us a break this weekend they decided to change their tactics and it just smacks of civil disobedience, really,” he complained, saying that he was “a bit angry and frustrated with these protesters on Saturday” and claiming that his officers “were acting with utter courtesy and restraint”.

Chief Constable Vaughan’s zero-tolerance attitude towards protesters differs markedly from that shown by British police leaders towards Black Lives Matter activists, who have been allowed to break lockdown rules largely unmolested throughout the pandemic — in part, London Police Commissioner Cressida Dick admitted in June, because officers are afraid to enforce the law against them.

There’s more at the original. The Breitbart article is not behind a paywall, but their internal references to the UK Telegraph are.

The sad thing is that I’m seeing the same arguments from good American citizens, some of whom at least used to be conservatives. Several state Governors, including Andy Beshear (D-KY), Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Tom Wolf (D-PA) suspended our First Amendment right to peaceable assembly — except when it came to the #BlackLivesMatter demonstrations last spring, summer and fall, with Governor Wolf actually joining one such demonstration, despite it breaking his own gathering rules — and our right to the free exercise of religion.

When Chief Constable Vaughan said, “we respect your right to freedom of speech and right to assembly but now is really not the time, it is too dangerous,” he was telling people that he did not respect their “right to freedom of speech and right to assembly,” not as much as he respected his own police power.

Her Majesty’s subjects do not, of course, have as strongly guaranteed rights as we have in the United States, but many, many Americans seem to have forgotten that we are free of the British Crown specifically because our ancestors came to these shores because their own rights, their own freedom of religion, was being stifled by the British Crown and the official Church of England, because our ancestors risked their lives and fortunes and sacred honor to fight for our freedom.

Esau Sells His Birthright for Pottage of Lentils, a 1728 engraving by Gerard Hoet.

Genesis 25:29 When Jacob had cooked a stew one day, Esau came in from the field and he was exhausted; 30 and Esau said to Jacob, “Please let me have a mouthful of that red stuff there, for I am exhausted.” Therefore he was called Edom by name. 31 But Jacob said, “First sell me your birthright.” 32 Esau said, “Look, I am about to die; so of what use then is the birthright to me?” 33 And Jacob said, “First swear to me”; so he swore an oath to him, and sold his birthright to Jacob. 34 Then Jacob gave Esau bread and lentil stew; and he ate and drank, and got up and went on his way. So Esau despised his birthright.

So many of our citizens are willing to sell their birthrights, as Americans, for their mess of pottage.

The Germans, free Germans, in free elections, sold their birthrights to Adolf Hitler, because times were tough. Free Venezuelans, even when times were not too tough, sold their freedoms to Hugo Chavez for the false promises of socialism, and now look where they are.

Freedom surrendered, rights given away, can be lost easily, but one must fight to get them back. It is better to bear the risks that come with retaining your rights than the death which can fall upon you in the struggle to regain them once lost.

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Bidenomics will depress, not increase, American workers’ wages

My good friend William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove notes some of the stuff that’s coming with the [shudder!] Biden Administration:

Biden Priorities: Amnesty, $15 Minimum Wage, Boys In Girl’s Bathrooms

By William Teach | January 17, 2021 | 7:51 AM EST

Hey, #NeverTrumper, you voted for this with your Trump Derangement Syndrome. This is what you agitated for by telling everyone to vote for not just Joe Biden, but Senators and Representatives. No crying. No whining. No complaining. Own it.

Big Business: Joe Biden’s Amnesty for Illegal Aliens Is a Legislative Priority

by John Binder | January 16, 2021

The big business lobby is cheerleading President-elect Joe Biden’s massive amnesty plan for the 11 to 22 million illegal aliens living in the United States, calling the initiative one of their many “priorities.”

Biden floated the amnesty plan with a number of open borders and business lobbying groups during a meeting this week. Some executives with the groups are calling the amnesty “the most aggressive” plan they have seen while working on Capitol Hill, suggesting it includes not only legislation, but executive orders to legalize most of the illegal alien population. (snip)

Today, 18 million Americans are jobless, and another 6.2 million are underemployed, all of whom want full-time jobs with competitive wages and good benefits. Their chances of securing higher wages and more job opportunities are crushed by the mass inflow of illegal and legal immigration.

There’s more at the original.

The Democrats were big on touting “good, well-paying union jobs” throughout their campaigns. But the obvious question is: why are union jobs well-paying? It’s simple: unionization uses the economic law of supply and demand, by restricting the supply of workers vis a vis demand for workers. If a company is forced to hire only unionized workers, then the supply of those workers is restricted by the number who are in the union.

It’s not just unions: any jobs which require professional licenses or certifications — doctors, nurses, teachers, commercial drivers — are inherently limited in the supply of available workers. Other skilled trades offer such certifications — electricians, plumbers — but their jobs don’t always require people to hold such paperwork.

But the vast majority of American workers do not hold such licenses or certifications, and the computerization of manufacturing has reduced the need for highly trained welders and the like. Most American jobs now require only a minimum of on-the-job training.

However, we have another restriction on supply when it comes to the supply of workers: citizenship or permanent residency status. To be in compliance with employment laws, employers must have copies of the documents which show that a prospective employee can legally work in the United States: a birth certificate, naturalization form or ‘green card.’ This keeps some illegal immigrants from getting jobs, at least with businesses which obey immigration laws.

But if the incoming Biden Administration passes some form of blanket amnesty, then multiple millions of currently illegal immigrants become legal immigrants, eligible to work in the United States, and rapidly increasing the supply of available legal workers.

So what happens? The economic pressures for employers to pay higher wages decreases dramatically. Economics has been called the dismal science because it is, well, dismal, because it is a science that describes people but is based on statistics, and numbers don’t care about people.

Along with this are the proposals to raise the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour, $7.75 an hour above the current federal minimum wage. If that’s done, what will happen?

If a worker earning $7.25 an hour gets raised to $15.00 an hour, that will be a 106.9% raise! Pretty good, huh? But let’s say a worker is already making $12.00. To get a 106.9% raise, he would need to get a raise to $24.83. Why would an employer give a raise to $24.83 to a worker who had been producing at a rate which justified $12.00 per hour? He would have to give that worker a 25% raise, to $15.00 per hour, which I suppose the worker would appreciate, but that previously $12.00 an hour worker would now be a minimum wage employee. Why would an employer give an employee a greater raise than necessary?

Would a worker already making $25.00 an hour, a concrete mixer driver, for example, get a raise? It wouldn’t be required, but now a guy doing a hard, dirty job in all kinds of weather would now be much closer to the minimum wage.

This is the economic effect that Bidenomics would create: downward pressures on wages due to a rapid increase in the supply of available legal workers, along with a pushing of non-minimum wage jobs closer to the minimum. When you have ‘social justice’ driving your economic thinking — and I use the term ‘thinking’ very loosely here — you wind up with policies which result in more, rather than less, poverty and income disparity.

Eventually, a minimum wage increase of that magnitude will trigger price inflation, as employers have to pay more money to the lest productive workers in our economy. The economy will rebalance itself, because that is simply how things work. Inflation will eat away at the wage increase, until the increase is meaningless in real terms, but with more workers pushed closer to the minimum, hourly workers will wind up poorer overall.

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But, but, but, I thought it was absolutely vital to get President Trump out of office as soon as possible

Well, maybe not as vital as we were led to believe. From CNN:

Pelosi expected to send article of impeachment to Senate next week

By Jeremy Herb, Clare Foran and Jamie Gangel, CNN | Updated 2:19 PM ET | Friday, January 15, 2021

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is expected to send the House’s impeachment article to the Senate next week, according to a source familiar with her thinking, which will kickstart the beginning of the trial, though Pelosi would not say publicly Friday when she will do so.

Pelosi’s decision on when to formally transmit the impeachment resolution to the Senate comes as Democrats on both sides of the Capitol and in the incoming administration wrestle with how to balance the impeachment trial with President-elect Joe Biden’s agenda. It’s not clear which day Pelosi will send the article, and she didn’t offer any hints when asked at her news conference on Friday, a sign that the situation is fluid.

According to a spokesman for Pelosi, no decision on timing has been made.

“In terms of the timing, as I mentioned, one week ago, on January 6th, there was an active insurrection perpetrated on the capitol of the United States incentivized by the President of the United States,” Pelosi said Friday. “One week later, Wednesday to Wednesday, that President was impeached in a bipartisan way by the House of Representatives. So urgent was the matter they’re now working on taking this to trial, and you’ll be the first to know when we announce that we’re going over there.”

Today is January 15, 2021. Assuming that by “next week” Sunday is excluded, the earliest the Speaker could transmit the Article of Impeachment to the Senate is Monday, January 18th . . . and President Trump’s term ends at noon on January 20th.

The Senate isn’t in session, and is not scheduled to be until Tuesday, the 19th. If it was so terribly important to get President Trump out of there, why didn’t the Democrats demand that the Senate resume business, and march that Article straight over there on the afternoon they were approved? Why didn’t the Democrats demand that the Senate start that trial right away?

The answer is simple: even for the Democrats, the impeachment isn’t that vital. It’s a parting shot at President Trump, because they’ve hated his guts since he had the temerity, the unmitigated gall, to defeat Hillary Clinton, but that’s all that it is.

The Democrats didn’t even take it up on January 7th, the day after the Capitol riots, despite all of their posturing, because they knew it wasn’t really serious.

So now, they’re going to have an impeachment trial of a man no longer in office, in which the only penalties are removal from office and, possibly, being barred from holding federal office in the future. Since Mr Trump will already be out of office, Republican senators, many of whom really don’t like the President, and some of whom might be expected to vote for removal, now have the easy answer that the whole thing is moot, and vote against conviction. Since any Republican senator who votes for conviction will guarantee himself what he wants the least — a primary challenge in his next election — having that reason to vote against conviction ought to mean that the 1/3 of Republican senators, 17 out of 50, needed for conviction should not be available.

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Governor Beshear keeps playing politics with COVID-19

The minions of Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) tweet stuff like this every day:[1]Only those tweets signed ^AB are from Mr Beshear personally.

As we’ve previously noted, the Governor has held off on issuing more executive orders while the General Assembly has been in session. My guess is that he is trying to make nice to the legislators, in the hope that they will not override his promised vetoes on legislation to curb his emergency authority under KRS 39A, but I’m not a mind reader.

The Governor announced 4,084 new cases of the virus, and 51 more COVID-19-related deaths, the third highest daily death total since the pandemic began.

We are suffering more casualties than in most wars we’ve ever fought. Let’s treat it like it.

Yet the Governor is not treating the virus as strongly as he did before the legislature began its session on January 5th. I wonder why (he says, sarcastically.)

Through its partnership with the state, Kroger will set up a series of “high-volume drive-thru vaccination centers” across different regions of Kentucky that, once they open the week of February 1st, will be accessible to anyone in the top three priority groups, including essential workers, anyone age 60 and older, and anyone over the age of 16 with certain health issues.

Beshear said he expects the partnership to radically expand the state’s ability to get doses of the vaccine out to residents quickly, especially as hundreds of thousands more people become eligible for their first dose in the coming weeks.

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY)

For a Governor who used his power to shut down schools, ban large gatherings and even force churches to close, he won’t take that kind of action now. There are still two weeks before the Kroger “high-volume drive-thru vaccination centers” open, and while tier 1a and tier 1b vaccinations have begun, the vast majority of Kentuckians have not yet has their opportunities, and are not yet eligible. Yet most private and public schools are open for in-person instruction, and their sports teams are playing, with unmasked athletes very much not engaged in ‘social distancing.[2]Fayette County, which includes Lexington, the Commonwealth’s second largest system, is not yet open for in-person instruction, and will not until at least February 1st, but the Fayette County … Continue reading

As we previously noted, even when the Governor’s executive order closing all schools to in-person instruction was in force, because it was too dangerous to allow in classroom instruction despite plexiglass barriers, desks set further apart and mandatory mask-wearing, the Governor allowed the high school football playoffs to continue.

Under Senate Bill 1, which was passed and sent to the Governor, he retains his ’emergency’ power to do most of the things he has done; that power is simply limited to thirty days without the General Assembly approving an extension. That bill isn’t law yet, as the Governor has neither signed nor vetoed it yet, and he has six days, until January 21st, before he must take action or allow the bill to become law without his signature. If he vetoes it, the legislature would hold its veto override session on February 2nd, which means he could still issue an executive order which would extend until March 2nd before it either expired, or the legislature approved an extension.[3]If the bills are passed over his veto, the Governor has promised to challenge them in court.

What Governor Beshear has previously said and done, which he said was absolutely vital for the safety and well-being of Kentuckians, he isn’t doing anymore,[4]He did renew his mandatory mask order for thirty days, beginning on January 2nd, before the legislature opened its session. He could renew it before the legislature meets for a veto override vote. … Continue reading despite several recent records in test positivity and deaths. Has he decided that those so vital that they cost thousands upon thousands of people their jobs, and drove thousands of businesses out of business weren’t really that vital, or is he just playing politics with COVID-19?

References

References
↑1 Only those tweets signed ^AB are from Mr Beshear personally.
↑2 Fayette County, which includes Lexington, the Commonwealth’s second largest system, is not yet open for in-person instruction, and will not until at least February 1st, but the Fayette County schools athletic teams are playing.
↑3 If the bills are passed over his veto, the Governor has promised to challenge them in court.
↑4 He did renew his mandatory mask order for thirty days, beginning on January 2nd, before the legislature opened its session. He could renew it before the legislature meets for a veto override vote. And while it is not guaranteed, the mandatory mask order is the one which the legislature would be most likely to approve for an extension.