Category Archives: Uncategorized

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Democrats Reintroduce Universal Background Checks Bills In House And Senate

Surprisingly, this is not as bad as you’d expect from Democrats, which should make people think “what’s the catch?” even if there is no catch

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy introduces universal background check law

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is reintroducing legislation Tuesday that would require universal background checks on the sale or transfer of all firearms. Universal background checks are largely supported by Americans but have not gained traction in Congress.

Murphy’s bill, the Background Check Expansion Act, would extend a background check requirement to unlicensed and private firearm sellers before selling a firearm. Current federal law doesn’t require unlicensed sellers to do background checks before transferring firearms.

Polling from gun reform advocacy groups Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords finds 93% of Americans support a background check requirement for all gun sales. In 2019, the House passed a comprehensive background check bill, but it died in the Republican-controlled Senate. Democratic Congressman Mike Thompson of California will introduce the House version of the Senate bill on Tuesday. (snip)

Democrats hoping to pass gun safety laws have a champion in the White House, and President Joe Biden last month called on Congress to pass gun control legislation, including background checks. However, the legislation still requires 10 Republican senators to vote with Democrats to advance the bill, a significant obstacle to passage.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, who is cosponsoring the legislation, is hopeful that this time may be different.

“My conversation with Republicans indicated they get it,” he told reporters Tuesday. “The American people are responding to a political movement that has resulted from Parkland, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas — the shorthand of tragedies that have caused this political movement to be a force that has met this moment of reckoning.”

This legislation was killed in the Senate last November because Murphy asked for unanimous consent and Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith objected, wanting more time to consider and debate. As far as it goes, it is very simple (link to the legislation here), requiring a background check on all firearm transfers, with exceptions being “transfers between law enforcement officers, temporarily loaning firearms for hunting and sporting events, providing firearms as gifts to immediate family members, transferring a firearm as part of an inheritance, or temporarily transferring a firearm for immediate self-defense.” There doesn’t seem to be any tricks in it. There are no requirements to register a firearm with Los Federales or any government agency, or create a public registry, or tell government where you keep your guns, like Sheila Jackson Lee’s bill.

“The overwhelming majority of Americans support ensuring background checks on all gun sales. And for good reason; the loopholes in the current system make it too easy for guns to end up in the hands of those prohibited by law from buying them. It is far past time that Congress answers the call to better protect our communities from senseless gun violence by passing the Background Check Expansion Act,” said Durbin.

Raise your hand if you think criminals will request background checks when giving their criminal friends a firearm. Or when they are stealing one. Raise your hand if you think this will make any difference in criminals shooting each other in places like Chicago. Raise your hand if you think this will make a difference in shootings, because many of the mass shootings were committed by people who passed a background check.

So, if it passes and fails to make a dent in criminals shooting each other, what will the Democrats demand next? It might be worth passing, because then the GOP and 2nd Amendment supporters can say “hey, we just passed a backgrounds check, we need to give it 5-10 years to see if it makes a difference before pushing something more extreme” when Dems try pushing something like Jackson Lee’s bill.

You do have to wonder about poison pills, because the Senate version has exactly zero Republicans as cosponsors. The House version has 2 Republicans, so, of course the media will call this “bipartisan.”

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Nate to the rescue!

From what I used to call the Curious-Journal:

Beattyville one of many cities hit by flooding in Kentucky

35 Photos | March 2, 2021 | 3:14 PM EST

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

Note that Mr Lair is piloting that boat down one of the main streets in Beattyville. Last I knew, there wasn’t supposed to be deep water in the middle of the street.

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met her! — Heather Long wrote a series about Beattyville, Kentucky, when she was still with CNN, a place called the “poorest white town in America” from 2008 to 2012. These floods are the last thing the people of Lee County and Beattyville need.

It’s been a few years now, but Beattyville is still poor . . . and the next county over from where I live. The Kentucky River has flooded my property as well, with water into the crawlspace, and, sadly, 3½ feet into my shop/garage, but it stayed in the concrete block foundation area, and didn’t get into the wooden sills, beams and floor joists of the house. I’m sure that my furnace, which is in the crawl space, is shot, but it was 20 to 25 years old. I may have to rip out and replace some of the insulation between the joists, but I can do that work myself. The main thing is: we didn’t lose our home, something too many people around here — and one is too many — can’t say. My thanks to William Teach for contributing articles to this site, because I wasn’t sure that I’d have sparktricity through all of this.

The river gauge closest to my house, in Ravenna, got stuck, and the last reading was from 5:30 PM yesterday. The water definitely got higher than the 38.11 feet registered then, cresting at my house at sometime around 10:00 this morning. It’s starting to recede now.

And it’s been neighbors helping neighbors. Steve, a guy as poor as a church mouse, brought me two electric heaters to use to warm the place up. Chad, a volunteer fireman, brought two kerosene heaters, one for my (only) neighbor and one for me. Since I now have the two electric heaters, I told David, the neighbor, to keep them both for now. Tomorrow, I’ll (probably) be helping David set his propane tank right.

Main Street in the city of Beattyville sits underwater following heavy rains which caused the Kentucky River to flood, Tuesday, March 3, 2021. Alex Slitz / Lexington Herald-Leader

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Our Betters believe COVID-19 restrictions are being eased too quickly

The vaccines are out, and some states are loosening their (mostly unconstitutional) restrictions, so naturally the left are worried:

The positive signs come with caveats. Though the national statistics have improved drastically since January, they have plateaued in the last week or so, and the United States is still reporting more than 65,000 new cases a day on average — comparable to the peak of last summer’s surge, according to a New York Times database. The country is still averaging about 2,000 deaths per day, though deaths are a lagging indicator because it can take weeks for patients to die.

More contagious variants of the virus are circulating in the country, with the potential to push case counts upward again. Testing has fallen 30 percent in recent weeks, leaving experts worried about how quickly new outbreaks will be known. And millions of Americans are still waiting to be vaccinated.

Given all that, some experts worry that the reopenings are coming a bit too soon.

“We’re, hopefully, in between what I hope will be the last big wave, and the beginning of the period where I hope Covid will become very uncommon,” said Robert Horsburgh, an epidemiologist at the Boston University School of Public Health. “But we don’t know that. I’ve been advocating for us to just hang tight for four to six more weeks.”

The director of the C.D.C., Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said at the briefing on Monday that she was “really worried” about the rollbacks of restrictions in some states. She cautioned that with the decline in cases “stalling” and with variants spreading, “we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained.”

And the plateauing case levels “must be taken extremely seriously,” Dr. Walensky warned at a briefing last week. She added: “I know people are tired; they want to get back to life, to normal. But we’re not there yet.”

There’s more at the link.

Let’s face it: disease control experts would like for us to wear face masks and practice social distancing for the rest of our lives. After COVID-19 is over — if it’s ever over — they’ll insist on masks every flu season.

CDC: COVID-19 Wiped Out the Flu Around the World This Year

Community mitigation measures halted the other pandemic here and abroad… but winter is coming

by Molly Walker, Associate Editor, MedPage Today September 17, 2020

Flu numbers in the U.S. were historically low during COVID-19 in the spring, with deep declines also occurring in the recently completed Southern Hemisphere flu season, CDC researchers found.

Influenza positivity rates in specimens tested (a standard metric of community flu activity) fell 98% in 2020 during March 1-May 16 relative to Sept 29, 2019-Feb. 29, 2020, plummeting from a median of 19.34% to 0.33%, reported Sonja Olsen, PhD, of the CDC in Atlanta, and colleagues.

Indeed, circulation of influenza in the U.S. hit historic lows in summer 2020, with a median of 0.20% positive tests from May 17-August 8 versus 1%-2% from 2017-2019, the authors wrote in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. A graph indicated that influenza positivity rates dropped off sharply, approaching zero by early April — a time that, in previous seasons, it hovered around 15%.

Olsen and colleagues noted they used March 1 as a benchmark because it was closest to when the U.S. declared COVID-19 a public health emergency, and when “widespread implementation” of community measures such as school closures, social distancing, and mask wearing started around the country.

Because influenza is less transmissible than SARS-CoV-2, these measures “likely contributed to a more substantial interruption in influenza transmission,” according to Olsen and colleagues. “Although causality cannot be inferred from these ecological comparisons, the consistent trends over time and place are compelling and biologically plausible.”

So, if the draconian measures imposed to reduce transmission of COVID-19 brought transmission of influenza to almost a halt, and we have allowed elected officials to impose those measures due to COVID-19 and get away with it, what is to prevent them from imposing the same restrictions every flu season? After all, we are being told, it worked, didn’t it?

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Maybe gun ownership isn’t the problem?

As always, I check the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, and I found that the City of Brotherly Love had seen 77 homicides through the end of February, compared to ‘just’ 60 on February 28th last year. 2020 was in second place, all time, for Philadelphia, with 499 homicides, and it looks like the good people of Philly have taken beating the record of 500, set in 1992, as a personal challenge.

Then I came across this interesting map. You can click on it to double its size.

It seems that Philadelphia, with its population of 1,579,000 has a murder rate of 31.60 per 100,000 population, all in a state in which 37.1% of the people own firearms. Meanwhile, in Lexington, Kentucky, a city of 320,601 people, there were 34 homicides all of last year. That makes Lexington’s homicide rate 10.60 per 100,000 population, yet 42.4% of the people in the Commonwealth of Kentucky own firearms.

If the problem is too many guns, why is Philly thrice as dangerous as Lexington?

If you look at that map, you’ll see that some of the real murder capitals in our country — Chicago, Baltimore, St Louis and anyplace in New Jersey — are in states which have lower rates of firearms ownership.

How can that be?

The left seem to think that restricting the rights of people who have not committed any crimes will somehow reduce the violent crime rate, but the numbers don’t appear to bear that out. And while it could be argued that the map does not account for people who have firearms illegally, that completely undercuts any arguments that restricting legal gun ownership will reduce crime.

The only thing that will do is make crime victims more helpless.

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Way to promote that “unity,” Lexington Herald-Leader!

I have previously noted how the Associated Press surrendered to political correctness on language, saying that, when referring to race, it will capitalize “black” but leave “white” in lower-case.[1]Note that while the Associated Press and many media outlets will capitalize “black” but not “white”, The First Street Journal maintains its own published Stylebook, and does … Continue reading

After changing its usage rules last month to capitalize the word “Black” when used in the context of race and culture, The Associated Press on Monday said it would not do the same for “white.” The AP said white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color. Protests following the death of George Floyd, which led to discussions of policing and Confederate symbols, also prompted many news organizations to examine their own practices and staffing. The Associated Press, whose Stylebook is widely influential in the industry, announced June 19 it would make Black uppercase. In some ways, the decision over “white” has been more ticklish. The National Association of Black Journalists and some Black scholars have said white should be capitalized, too. “We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore these problems,” Daniszewski said. “But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”

I found the whole thing not only obviously silly, but poor grammar. The use of “white” or “black” is simply shorthand for large racial groups, Caucasian and Negro, which are properly capitalized. Irish or French should be capitalized, as they refer to the inhabitants of countries as well as ethnic groups, while white should not be. Similarly, I would capitalize Kenyan or African, but not black. That the Associated Press would treat the words differently is just not very bright.

So now we come to the Lexington Herald-Leader, a McClatchy publication, and this sentence in a story about extending the COVID-19 vaccinations to Tier 1C:

Seventy-seven percent of people vaccinated are white, 6 percent are Black, and only 2.3 percent are Hispanic.

“Black” is capitalized, and “Hispanic” is (properly) capitalized, but “white” is left in lower-case. Yeah, I know: that’s the Associated Press Stylebook in action, but I cannot be the only person who noticed how the Herald-Leader has treated races differently. I have no idea how many readers of the paper will be familiar with, or even heard of, the AP Stylebook, but if the readers match the city’s demographics, 75.7% of them are white, and I would guess that some of them will have felt that they were slighted. Given just how out-of-touch the editors of the Herald-Leader are with their readership, perhaps those readers who feel slighted by that one sentence will have been right about how the editors feel about them.

Then again, anyone who notes that 77% + 6% + 2.3% = 85.3% might be wondering more about the math of the Beth Musgrave, the article author, and whichever editor checked her story before publication! 🙂

The newspaper does still have editors, right?[2]Well, maybe not, given that McClatchy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a year ago, and Chatham Asset Management now owns the McClatchy newspapers. The Herald-Leader’s Contact page … Continue reading

The left have spent the last five years decrying Donald Trump, claiming that he is very divisive and a racist, the editors of the Herald-Leader among them. But in going along with the Associated Press Stylebook in the manner they have, they are promoting the same “racial . . . intolerance” about which they complained concerning Mr Trump.

References

References
↑1 Note that while the Associated Press and many media outlets will capitalize “black” but not “white”, The First Street Journal maintains its own published Stylebook, and does not go along with such divisive foolishness.
↑2 Well, maybe not, given that McClatchy filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection a year ago, and Chatham Asset Management now owns the McClatchy newspapers. The Herald-Leader’s Contact page lists 15 non-sports reporters, deputy editors for digital, presentation and accountability, an executive editor and general manager, an editorial assistant and a news assistant. From those titles, I’m not sure that anyone actually reads and corrects reporters’ news stories. The days of the blue pencil are long gone, and there are times I think that editing itself has departed as well.
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Prison is for more than just keeping bad guys off the streets Prison is also for punishment of their crimes

I follow Reason magazine on Twitter because it frequently has some interesting articles from a libertarian perspective, but this one just plain missed the boat:

What Happened When Life Sentences Got Out of Control

The prisons are filled with aging inmates who no longer pose a public threat.

By Sonny Mazzone | February 25, 2021 | 3:40 PM

A new study shows that the number of Americans sentenced to life in prison has more than doubled since the early 1990s, even though violent crime declined for the bulk of that period. And before you try to argue that crime was declining because of those stiff sentences, examine the numbers: The drop in crime began well before sentence lengths started skyrocketing.

The report was authored by Ashley Nellis, a senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project. It found that one in seven U.S. prisoners—roughly 200,000 people—are currently serving a life sentence. This includes those sentenced to life without parole, life with parole, and virtual life (50-plus years). That is more than twice the number of people handed life sentences than when violent crime peaked in 1992.

“The unyielding expansion of life imprisonment in recent decades transpired because of changes in law, policy, and practice that lengthened sentences and limited parole,” writes Nellis. “The downward trend in violence in America that continues today was already underway when the country adopted its most punitive policies, including the rapid expansion of life sentences.”

There’s more at the original, but it seems that Mr Mazzone, the author, has ignored the purpose of prison. Yes, part of the purpose is to protect society from criminals, but that isn’t all of it. Prison is also supposed to punish offenders for their crimes and, hopefully, teach a lesson to those who will eventually be released from prison that maybe, just maybe, they might not want to do things which will get them sent back to prison.

Mr Mazzone addresses the increase in the life-sentenced prison population, and noted that, as criminals age, they become less likely to reoffend after release. He noted the increased costs associated with eldercare in prison, and that the spread of COVID-19 “disproportionately jeopardizes the lives of older Americans in prison”.

Daniel and Maureen Faulkner on their wedding day

But those sentenced to life in prison were sentenced to that due to the horrible and violent natures of their crimes. Where Mr Mazzone argues that there is some inefficiency in keeping the elderly in prison, for budgetary reasons and the lowered risk of reoffense, he completely ignores the aspect of punishment for crime. Perhaps Wesley Cook, just two months shy of his 67th birthday, would be unlikely to commit another crime if released, but Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner will never be released from his coffin, the coffin to which he was sentenced by Mr Cook, two weeks shy of his 26th birthday.

Officer Faulkner did not deserve to die in the streets of Philadelphia:

On December 9, 1981, at approximately 3:55 a.m., Officer Danny Faulkner, a five year veteran of the Philadelphia Police Department, made a traffic stop at Locust Street near Twelfth Street. The car stopped by Officer Faulkner was being driven by William Cook. After making the stop, Danny called for assistance on his police radio and requested a police wagon to transport a prisoner. Unbeknownst to him, William Cook’s brother, Wesley (aka Mumia Abu-Jamal) was across the street. As Danny attempted to handcuff William Cook, Mumia Abu-Jamal ran from across the street and shot the officer in the back. Danny turned and was able to fire one shot that struck Abu-Jamal in the chest; the wounded officer then fell to the pavement. Mumia Abu-Jamal stood over the downed officer and shot at him four more times at close range, striking him once directly in the face. Mumia Abu-Jamal was found still at the scene of the shooting by officers who arrived there within seconds. The murderer was slumped against the curb in front of his brother’s car. In his possession was a .38 caliber revolver that records showed Mumia had purchased months earlier. The chamber of the gun had five spent cartridges. A cab driver, as well as other pedestrians, had witnessed the brutal slaying and identified Mumia Abu-Jamal as the killer both at the scene and during his trial. On July 2, 1982, after being tried before a jury of ten whites and two blacks, Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of murdering Officer Danny Faulkner. The next day, the jury sentenced him to death after deliberating for four hours. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania heard the defendant’s appeals and upheld the conviction on March 6, 1989.

Mr Mazzone quoted Ashley Nellis, a senior research analyst at the Sentencing Project, whose “report suggests capping sentences at 20 years ‘except in rare circumstances based on individualized determination’ — with the determination based on the individual’s behavior in prison.” Under that ‘suggestion,’ if Mr Cook had behaved himself in prison, he would have been released no later than July 2, 2002, when he would have been just 48 years old, with decades left to live and love and laugh at the fact he was out of jail while Officer Faulkner was still stone-cold graveyard dead.

So, no, these brutal criminals should not be released, should never be released. They have been locked up for life because they took away life and health and hope away from innocent people; a restoration of health and hope should not ever be in their futures. Not just no, but Hell no!

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The Philadelphia Inquirer finally publishes a story about a murder victim

Of course, that victim was apparently not a gang banger, so I suppose it was seen as unusual.

A 16-year-old was killed outside a 7-Eleven after looking at a man who took it the wrong way, police say

Police released surveillance video of the suspect, who had gone into the 7-Eleven store with a female companion.

Kahlief Myrick, 16, was fatally shot outside a 7-Eleven store in Southwest Philadelphia on Feb. 18. Police are searching for the gunman. Photo by family, given to The Philadelphia Inquirer

By Julie Shaw | February 24, 2021 | 7:15 PM EST

Police are searching for a gunman who they say killed a 16-year-old outside a 7-Eleven in Southwest Philadelphia last week because the teen looked at him in a way that made him feel disrespected.

“What are you looking at?” police say the man asked the teen when the two encountered each other inside the store.

“What are you looking at?” Kahlief Myrick responded, according to his family.

The man, believed to be in his mid-20s, waited outside for the teen to leave the store and then shot him in the chest, police said.

Police released surveillance video of the alleged gunman inside the store with a female companion. In the video, the suspect could be seen casually picking out potato chips just moments before the shooting.

The victim’s grandparents, Norman and Crystal Boyce, said their grandson was visiting relatives and went to the store with a 19-year-old cousin. The cousin, who they said was too upset to talk to a reporter, told them what happened. The teens did not know the gunman, the family said the cousin told them, and grew upset over a simple glance.

There’s more at the original, including a discussion of the ‘street code,’ and how a perception of disrespect can lead to violence or death.

But what got me was that while the Inquirer was happy enough to publish a photo of the victim, you had to follow the link to the released surveillance video to see a picture of the (alleged) killer. Surely, one would think, that adding that extra link would mean fewer people would see the photo of the (alleged) killer, meaning fewer chances that someone could identify him and report it to the Philadelphia Police.

I, of course, have no compunctions at all about publishing the video on the front page! I wonder why the Inquirer did.

So, assuming this (alleged) killer is caught, and assuming that Philadelphia’s criminal-loving District Attorney, Larry Krasner, actually prosecutes him, and assuming that the (alleged) killer is convicted, he could spend the rest of his miserable life getting three hots and a cot in Graterford, courtesy of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, where at least he won’t be out on the streets hurting other people.

If he hurts other people in prison, well, I might not care all that much.

But murder is not normally an entry-level crime. My guess is that, once we find out who the (alleged) killer is, we will read that he has a long rap sheet, and could have been behind bars on February 18th, when he sent young Mr Myrick to his eternal reward.

Was the (alleged) killer out on the streets because District Attorney Krasner didn’t do his duty? We don’t know that yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

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And another one bites the dust!

I have previously noted that The Philadelphia Inquirer does not really take much notice of shootings or homicides unless the victim is a cute little white girl. I do not know if the victim in this case is white, but the story made the website because one of the victims isn’t known to be a gang-banger.

Girl, 15, in critical condition after double shooting in West Philly

The shooting happened in the 6200 block of Chestnut Street.

By Robert Moran | Tuesday, February 23, 2021 | 4:43 PM EST

A 15-year-old girl and was hospitalized in critical condition after being wounded in a double shooting Tuesday afternoon in West Philadelphia, police said.

Just before 3:20 p.m. in the 6200 block of Chestnut Street, the girl and a 20-year-old man were both shot in the head, police said. The girl was taken by private amubulance to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center. The man was taken by police to the same hospital and was listed in stable condition.

Police reported no arrests or other details.

As of 11:59 PM EST on Monday, February 22, 2021, the City of Brotherly Love had counted 75 homicides, in 53 days of the year. On the same date last year, in which Philadelphia saw 499 killings, just one short of the all-time record, there had been ‘just’ 53, to yesterday’s totals were a 41.5% increase. It looks like Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw are doing just an outstanding job, doesn’t it?

Maybe I’m too early with the headline, but if I am with the victim in the Inquirer story, it’ll be true enough of someone else in Philly.

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You did know that the #ClimateChange activists would be coming for your lifestyle, too, right?

Joanna Gaines’ kitchen set, with its $60,000 range.

My daughters — when they’re here — and my wife tend to watch cooking shows like The Kitchen, The Pioneer Woman, and Giada in Italy, though, admittedly, Giada in Italy is watched as much for the Italian scenery as anything else. Joanna Gaines has just started her own cooking show, Magnolia Table, and she has the ultimate, a La Cornue Chateau range, a hand-crafted gas appliance that starts at $60,300, not including shipping and delivery. It’s simply the most expensive version of what it seems that every cooking show has, and every cook wants: a gas stove.

Molly Yeh in her set kitchen; note the old style electric range.

The notable exception is Molly Yeh’s Girl Meets Farm, where the hostess uses, unexpectedly, not only an electric range, but an older style one, with the spiral heating elements.

While I don’t spend an inordinate time in front of the boob tube, I do like to watch the various house hunting shows like Living Alaska, Restoring Galveston, and Building of the Grid. And one frequently noted request of the prospective homeowners is a gas range. Gas is on instantly, and is much more easily adjustable.

But that’s not what the global warming climate change activists think you should have . . . or be allowed to have! From The Washington Post:

The battle over climate change is boiling over on the home front

Municipalities want new buildings to go all electric, spurning gas-fired stoves and heating systems. The gas industry disagrees

By Steven Mufson | February 23, 2021 | 7:00 AM EST

A new front has opened in the battle over climate change: The kitchen.

Cities and towns across the country are rewriting local building codes so that new homes and offices would be blocked from using natural gas, a fossil fuel that when burned emits carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. New laws would force builders to install heat pumps instead of gas furnaces and electric kitchen stoves instead of gas burners.

When we moved to our retirement fixer-upper in July of 2017, it was total electric. In January of 2018, a snow and ice storm hit, and knocked out the electricity. Since we’re out in the country, at pretty much the far end of Jackson Electric Cooperative’s service area, we’re among the last people to get power back, and it took 4½ days. My wife went to Lexington, and stayed at our daughter’s apartment, but I had to stay here, to care for the critters, and the plumbing.
It got down to 38º F in the house.

Gas fireplace in my computer room/den.

As I said, our house is an eastern Kentucky fixer-upper, and it certainly isn’t done yet, but we decided that we would have gas in the remodel, because Mrs Pico wanted a gas range. Thus we now have a new gas (propane) range, water heater and the fireplace installed. If we lose power again, we’ll still be able to keep the house warm, cook and take showers.

Without that fossil fuel, the place would become a not-very-much-fun place in the winter when the electricity goes out.

Local leaders say reducing the carbon and methane pollution associated with buildings, the source of 12.3 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, is the only way they can meet their 2050 zero-emission goals to curb climate change.

But the American Gas Association, a trade group, and its members are campaigning in statehouses across the country to prohibit the new local ordinances. Four states last year adopted such laws, and this year similar legislation has been introduced in 12 more.

“Logically the natural gas industry does not want to see its business end, so it’s doing what it can to keep natural gas in the utility grid mix,” said Marta Schantz, senior vice president of the Urban Land Institute’s Center for Building Performance. “But long term, if cities are serious about their climate goals, electric buildings are inevitable.”

What people want is what the climate control activists do not want people to have.

Of course, the timing of this article is interesting, considering the electricity outages due to the severe cold snap in the Lone Star State. The problems have been serious there, in part because of Texas’ large population, and because the state is simply not used to temperatures near 0º Fahrenheit. That the state has solidly Republican leadership has simply added to the impetus of the credentialed media to place blame.

But here in the Bluegrass State, we’ve had similar problems, just ones which haven’t gotten as much national media attention. From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

KY couple without electricity after ice, snow storm apparently froze to death
By Bill Estep | February 22, 2021 | 5:04 PM EST

A couple found dead in Laurel County Sunday apparently froze to death, Sheriff John Root said in a news release.

Autopsies conducted Monday on James Duff, 62, and his wife Dinah Duff, 63, of Laurel County determined their apparent cause of death as hypothermia, according to the release.

A person who knew the couple found them Sunday about 10:30 a.m. and called police. Officers from the sheriff’s office responded.

James Duff was lying in the yard of his home on Pine Hill — Brock Road, about five miles east of London. Dinah Duff was inside the house, according to a news release.

The house had no electricity for some period before the couple was found because of damage to power lines from ice and snow that hit the area earlier in the week, said Deputy Gilbert Acciardo, spokesman for Root’s office.

Tens of thousands of people in Kentucky lost power recently after trees and limbs weighted by ice fell and knocked down lines.

Mr and Mrs Duff had apparently attempted to build a fire in their fireplace, but the home had no secondary heating source. The article does not tell us what the primary heat source for the house was, but it was apparently dependent upon electricity to run.

Our house in Jim Thorpe.

On Christmas Day of 2002, our first in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, the town received 14″ of heavy, wet snow in the beautiful white Christmas about which Bing Crosby so wonderfully sang. It also knocked out the power at 11:30 AM.

Our house in Jim Thorpe had steam radiators powered by a heating oil boiler, but the boiler required electricity to start and run. By the time the sparktricity came back on, at about 6:00 PM on the 26th, it was around 50º F inside.

Because the house did have a chimney for a wood stove installed by the previous owner, we later bought a wood stove, but never went through another prolonged power outage there again.

An anecdote? Perhaps, though, despite the protests of some, the plural of anecdote really is data! That episode pointed out to me that Mr and Mrs Duff could have had a primary heating source that wasn’t electric, but it still depended upon electricity to run.

A cheery fire in our wood stove in Jim Thorpe, December 18, 2016.

As it happens, we get our electricity from Jackson Energy as do many other people in eastern Kentucky, but we’ve been fortunate during the recent series of ice and snow storms: other than a couple of flickers, our electricity stayed on, and our house was nice and warm. My good blogging friend William Teach cross-posted some of his articles here, upon my request, because I didn’t know beforehand whether we would lose power. Being at the far western end of Jackson’s service area — just a couple miles up the road, power comes from Kentucky Utilities — when the power does go out here, it can stay out for days.

But, as noted above, because we have a secondary heat source of which the Patricians disapprove, if it had gone out, we wouldn’t have suffered Mr and Mrs Duff’s fate.

The socialist nature of the argument comes from the Post article originally cited:

“The average American likes choice and doesn’t want to be told what kind of fuel to use in their homes,” said Karen Harbert, chief executive of the American Gas Association. “Municipalities cannot take away that choice.”

“The natural gas industry frames it as a choice issue; we frame it as a choice issue,” said Johanna Neumann, a senior director at Environment America, an environmental group. “The industry frames it as a choice for people who want to use natural gas. We see it as a choice for a community to decide its energy future.”

One group want to leave your choices up to you; the other want to have the “community” dictate your “choice” to you. Of course, for the longest time the left have been pro-choice on exactly one thing.