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What a surprise! Lithium prices are increasing as countries push electric cars.

In the episode “Mudd’s Women” in the original series Star Trek, Harry Mudd and the three women he was taking to sell as wives to settlers are detoured to a planet inhabited solely by dilithium crystals miners. Captain Mudd tells the three women that they’ll now be wives to “lithium miners, rich lithium miners”. Who knew that this might actually be prescient?

As President Biden and his supervisors Administration push zero-emission automobiles, and have proposed to ban the sale of gasoline-or-diesel-powered personal vehicles by 2035, many people have said that this could only drive up the cost of such vehicles. 2035 is still a long (?) way off, but sales of electric vehicles in China are already having an effect. From The Wall Street Journal:

Electric-Car Demand Pushes Lithium Prices to Records

Driven by a surge in Chinese electric-vehicles sales, the sharp rise in a key commodity for batteries could slow adoption of EVs globally

By Joe Wallace and Hardika Singh | Wednesday, September 21, 2022 | 5:30 AM EDT

Surging prices for lithium are intensifying a race between auto makers to lock up supplies and raising concerns that a shortage of the battery metal could slow the adoption of electric vehicles.

Lithium carbonate prices in China, the benchmark in the fast-growing market, stand at about $71,000 a metric ton, according to price-assessment firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. That is almost four times as high as a year ago and just below the record set this March in yuan terms.

Lithium is an outlier in commodity markets that have broadly retreated in recent months, reflecting gloom over an economic outlook dimmed by the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate increases and stuttering growth in China and Europe. Brent crude oil and copper—commodities used throughout industry and transportation—have fallen about 15% and 7%, respectively, this quarter. Even European natural-gas prices, propelled higher for much of 2022 by Russia’s move to cut supplies, have dropped by 10% over the past month.

But lithium keeps rising, driven by a pickup in electric-vehicles sales in China, the world’s biggest market for EVs. Car purchases jumped after Shanghai eased Covid-19 lockdowns in June, juicing demand for lithium-ion batteries. The China Passenger Car Association forecasts six million new EVs will be sold in the country this year, double the 2021 level.

“Lithium is really following the Chinese EV market and that’s just taking off,” said Edward Meir, a metals consultant at brokerage ED&F Capital Markets. “This is a preview of what could await us in the U.S.”

Draining supplies further, power outages caused by a heat wave in central China curbed output of refined lithium carbonate and hydroxide, which go into battery cathodes. Suppliers in Sichuan province—which has a third of China’s lithium processing capacity—closed factories for several days and ran down inventories to meet their sales commitments, said Rystad Energy analyst Susan Zou.

There’s a lot more at the original.

The final quoted paragraph notes a temporary problem, though one which could always recur. But the steadily increasing demand for lithium, something the proposed policies in the United States will only exacerbate, is not going to be a temporary thing.

Plug-in electric vehicles are already expensive. In Economics 101 theory, increased demand generates increased production and supply, which should bring the costs of electric cars down, but that’s theory only. The basic theory does not account for shortages of essential materials for increasing production and supply, and the lithium shortage will not be the only one which will force the prices of electric cars higher. For example, as the demand for electricity greatly increases, and more transmission lines are needed to get the required power to homes across the nation, the price of the aluminum used in power transmission lines. The price of aluminum is already increasing, due to the increased demand for canned goods, and it can only go higher.

No one who knows the first thing about economics can be surprised at this, but it sometimes appears that the environmentalists don’t know that first thing. One thing is certain: they don’t actually care about the economics of what they want, and don’t care about how the costs of their proposals will affect Other people, especially the working-class people of this country.

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The Dummkopf from Delaware really doesn’t have a clue Enjoy paying your heating bills this winter!

We noted, on September 19th, that President Joe Biden said that we should put things in perspective, that the “inflation rate, month-to-month, was up just an inch, hardly at all”, that we’re in the position where for the last several months it hasn’t spiked, “we’re basically even.”

Well, our distinguished President doesn’t have to worry about paying his heating bills this winter, but most Americans do:

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

Here’s how much more you’ll pay to heat your home this winter

By Kelly Hayes | Tuesday, September 20, 2022 \ 11:41 AM EDT

Americans are likely going to pay more to heat their home over the winter months.

The average cost of heating a household is set to increase by 17.2% this winter, compared to winter last year, according to a forecast by the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), an educational and policy organization for federal programs that help low-income families pay their utility bills.

The article was illustrated with a nice, stock photo of a cheerily burning wood fire in a nice, upscale home fireplace, but I figured that, using my own photo from our previous home, was wiser for copyright purposes. Alas! Mrs Pico absolutely vetoed a wood-burning stove in our current house, because she says they make too much of a mess, so, to supplement the heat, and be a backup for when the sparktricity goes out — something not that infrequent here, and can be for several days out here in the country — we installed a propane fireplace.

The group expects the average winter heating bill to increase from $1,025 to $1,202, which would be the highest figure in over a decade.

U.S. residential electric bills are also forecast to increase 7.5% from 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s latest short-term outlook.

There’s more at the original.

Gas fireplace in my computer room/den.

Mr Biden is wealthy, and even if he did have to pay his own electricity and gas bills — which, for his private homes, he does — the increased costs would be an insignificant matter to him. But an extra $177 for the average working-class family? That’s a big bite. In the past, I’d have compared that $177 to a week’s trip to the grocery store, but now that’s barely half a week!

Let’s tell the truth here: for all of their protestations that they care about ordinary Americans, the Democrats really don’t understand us. The Washington elites have plenty of money, and the increases in energy costs simply don’t matter that much to them. Their proposals to fight global warming climate change will add thousands to people’s electricity bills, because so much new infrastructure will have to be built to support the greatly increased demand for electricity as people have to charge their Chevy Dolts at home. Phasing out reliable, fossil-fuel burning power plants and replacing them with solar and wind power generating facilities will cost big bucks.

By 2050, the US will demand nearly 90% more power than it did in 2018, in a scenario in which all new passenger vehicles sold by 2030 are electric and buildings and factories also aggressively electrify, according to an analysis by Nikit Abhyankar, a senior scientist at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Different scenarios will lead to a smaller increase in demand, but any changes which require more energy not from fossil fuels are going to lead to a huge increase in demand. Yet the projected increases in home heating costs are coming without any significant global warming climate change policies additions to current costs.

Perhaps President Biden doesn’t personally understand this, but his advisors certainly do, but that doesn’t matter: they just don’t care about what you have to pay, as long as they get their way.

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Killadelphia: A reason for hope?

We have previously noted, several times, that, at the end of the Labor Day weekend in 2021, the homicide rate in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia had dropped to ‘just’ 1.4578 murders a day, which would yield 532 murders for the entire year, if that average was maintained.

It wasn’t maintained, as the drug dealers and gang-bangers somehow took that as a personal challenge, and in the period after Labor Day, the City of Brotherly Love saw a murder rate of 1.7155 per day.

As of September 5th, the end of the Labor Day holiday weekend this year, 373 people had been sent untimely to their eternal rewards, yielding a homicide rate of 1.5040 killings per day, or a projected 549 murders for 2022; the mid-summer ‘lull’ that had happened in 2021 didn’t occur this year.

But there may be some hope that the post-Labor Day surge that happened in 2021 might not happen, or not be as bad, in 2022. While this wouldn’t seem to be a cause for celebration in more civilized places, there has been only one recorded homicide in Philadelphia since Wednesday, September 14th, and the homicide rate has dropped below 1.50, down to 1.4809 per day, which projects out to 540.53 murders for the entire year.

That’s hardly a great number, but at least it’s better than last year’s record-smashing 562.

At the end of the Labor Day holiday this year, there had been 3.324% more homicides than the previous year; as of 11:59 PM EDT on Monday, September 19th, the increase is down to 1.042%, as the killing rate last year was higher.

Yes, I am a numbers geek to some extent, and yes, it has been only two weeks since the end of the Labor Day holiday, so it’s really too soon to note a real trend here, but at least it’s a reason for hope.

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Clueless at the top

American television networks spent all morning covering the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, and if Her Majesty was just a figurehead, who reigned but not ruled, she still seems to have been more self-aware than President Biden:

The President tried to soft-peddle it, saying that, month-to-month, it was up “just an inch, hardly at all.” That would be great . . . if inflation hadn’t already been high. From The Wall Street Journal:

U.S. Inflation Remained High in August

Consumer prices excluding food, energy rose sharply, showing broad price pressures strengthened

By Gwynn Guilford | Updated September 13, 2022 | 7:17 PM EDT

U.S. consumer prices overall rose more slowly in August from a year earlier, but increased sharply from the prior month after excluding volatile food and energy prices, showing that inflation pressures remained strong and stubborn.

The Labor Department on Tuesday reported its consumer-price index rose 8.3% in August from the same month a year ago, down from 8.5% in July and from 9.1% in June, which was the highest inflation rate in four decades. The CPI measures what consumers pay for goods and services.

Here’s where the Journal’s paywall hits, but really, everyone who cares about economics should go ahead and subscribe to it!

And I guess that President Biden doesn’t read the Journal either, because in the 60 Minutes clip, because he didn’t know July’s inflation rate, either, saying:

It was 8.2, 8.2 before.

Clearly his supervisors hadn’t clued him in.

A President in command of the facts would have both expected the question about inflation, and would have said that yes, 8.3% is too high, but at least the inflation rate had dropped a bit.

Back to the Journal:

So-called core CPI, which excludes energy and food prices, increased 6.3% in August from a year earlier, up markedly from the 5.9% rate in both June and July—a signal that broad price pressures strengthened.

On a monthly basis, the core CPI rose 0.6% in August—double July’s pace. Investors and policy makers follow core inflation closely as a reflection of broad, underlying inflation and as a predictor of future inflation.

Let’s, as the President said, “put this in perspective”: the August 2022 inflation rate of 8.3% is on top of the August 2021 inflation rate of 5.3%

Skipping further down, we come to this stark paragraph:

The average household is spending $460 more each month to buy the same basket of goods and services as last year, said Ryan Sweet, senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics.

Assuming 22 workdays a month, and a loss of 20% to taxes and insurance withheld, that “average household” would need a wage increase of $3.136 per hour just to break even. Do you think that happened?

Real average hourly earnings decreased 2.8 percent, seasonally adjusted, from August 2021 to August 2022. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a decrease of 0.6 percent in the average workweek resulted in a 3.4-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period.

That’s for all workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics — same source — also broke it down for “Production and Non-supervisory Workers”:

From August 2021 to August 2022, real average hourly earnings decreased 2.4 percent, seasonally adjusted. The change in real average hourly earnings combined with a 0.9-percent decrease in the average workweek resulted in a 3.2-percent decrease in real average weekly earnings over this period.

It’s kind of amusing: the supervisors and managers saw a greater loss of real earnings, but the working-class people, the ones who feel the economic pinch more because they earn less, still lost 3.2% in real terms.

Inflation is a serious, serious problem, and it is making the American people poorer in real terms. Perhaps President Biden doesn’t realize it, now that he’s got the government paying for his seemingly every weekend trips to Rehoboth Beach, but the surge in inflation, which began almost as soon as he took office, has made life worse for the public. But hey, at least there are no mean tweets!

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Once again, The Philadelphia Inquirer does not cover a story that doesn’t fit Teh Narrative.

We noted, on Friday, how administrators at Central Bucks West High School have instructed teachers to use the names and sex indicated on a student’s records in the office, rather than go along with a ‘transgendered’ student’s chosen name and ‘gender’, unless the student’s parents discuss with and approve the use of the student’s preferred name and ‘gender.’ Robert Stacy McCain was kind enough to reference the previous article on his fine site.

Obviously, I appreciate the link! But, you know who hasn’t had anything, anything at all, about the school’s action? That would be our nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, the winner of twenty Pulitzer Prizes, and the regions “newspaper of record,” The Philadelphia Inquirer. I searched for such a story on Friday, when I added my previous article, but found nothing. Then, on Sunday afternoon, at 8:54 PM EDT, I once again used the newspaper’s website search function to look for “Central Bucks”, and found absolutely zero on the school’s decision.

But I did find this, in the Opinion section:

I’m a trans teen in Central Bucks. Here, it doesn’t ‘get better.’

The district has become an increasingly more unwelcoming and unsafe place for marginalized students. We’re worried about what this 2022-23 school year will look like for us.

by Lily Freeman | Updated: Thursday, September 8, 2022

I’m 16, and just started 11th grade at Central Bucks High School East, part of the Central Bucks school district. I’m a daughter, a sister, a friend, an artist, an actor — a typical teen. And I happen to be trans.

I’ve spent my whole life in this district. I live with both my parents, I have two amazing sisters and an adorable dog, Scotch, all of whom inspire me every day to be my most authentic self. I feel lucky to have this support network, because I know that not every trans student does.

Now, discriminatory policies are being implemented in our schools, taking books off of shelves and further preventing students like me from receiving the support we need to thrive.

Over the summer months, the district passed a contentious library policy against books with “sexualized content” — which is often code for books that tackle issues of race or racism, or feature LGBTQ characters or plot lines. When I heard about the new books policy, which was approved in July, I wasn’t shocked or surprised. My family and I knew this was coming. We saw it happen around the country, even in a neighboring school district. My mom spoke about the dangers of book censorship in front of the House Oversight Committee back in April.

My family and I have been fighting for years to get the schools in Central Bucks to create a more accepting environment for marginalized kids, specifically educating around gender identity. Instead, we’ve seen the opposite happening — the district has become an increasingly unwelcoming and unsafe place for students like me. This is disappointing and scary, to say the least.

It would seem, then, if young Mr Freeman’s[1]In accordance with our Stylebook, The First Street Journal always refers to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names, if known — and we have been unable to find “Lily” … Continue reading family have been “fighting for years to get the schools in Central Bucks to create a more accepting environment for marginalized kids,” that, were he a student at Central Bucks West, they’d agree to the student’s request to be called “Lily” and be referred to by the feminine pronouns.

There’s more at the original, but young Mr Freeman’s OpEd piece notes that he is a student at Central Bucks High School East, not West, and does not reference the Central Bucks High School West’s notice to staff.

Simply put, what I have frequently called The Philadelphia Enquirer[2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt. due to its biased journolism[3]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading apparently does not want its readers to know about the schools’ decisions, because they understand that a majority of readers would agree with the schools!

What, I have to ask, would young Mr Freeman see as “a more accepting environment for marginalized kids”? While it’s clear from the OpEd that his parents would agree to their son being called their daughter instead, would the Freeman family hold that other ‘transgender’ students should be referred to by the names and pronouns they prefer, even if their parents either disagreed or were not even informed that such was happening? Becky Cartee-Haring, an English teacher at Central Bucks West, said:

I physically felt sick in that meeting, listening to an administrator basically argue that we were going to protect ourselves by outting children . . . .

Translation: Mrs Cartee-Haring, who is already a legally-mandated reporter if it comes to suspected child or sexual abuse, believes that she has a right to withhold information about a child suffering from ‘gender dysphoria.’

In his OpEd, the writer stated that other students would make fun of him, that they said “all sorts of mean and harmful things,” was “harassed and threatened online,” and that he never felt safe other than when with “supportive teachers and friends.” And that leads to the obvious question: would the “more accepting environment” he seeks include requiring other students to use the names and pronouns he prefers, and to be punished in some manner if they did not?

Well, we don’t know how the junior at Central Bucks High School East would answer that question, because it wasn’t addressed in the OpEd, but we do know that the New York City Commission on Human Rights does require such, and can levy fines of up to $250,000 for violations. The city’s ordinance essentially tramples on the freedom of speech, and requires people who do not accept the notion of transgenderism to state things they believe to be lies.

Calling a boy a girl does not make him a girl, regardless of how much he may wish her were female. We can, and should, have some sympathy for those suffering from gender dysphoria, but having sympathy does not mean that we should just go along with their delusions.

References

References
↑1 In accordance with our Stylebook, The First Street Journal always refers to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names, if known — and we have been unable to find “Lily” Freeman’s real name — and biological sex, though we do not change the direct quotes of others.
↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but, reminiscent of the National Enquirer as it is, I thought it very apt.
↑3 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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Child rearing is the parents’ responsibility, not the teachers’.

Thanks to a tweet from Christine Flowers, I found this gem from WHYY, the National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting System stations for the Philadelphia area.

Central Bucks West tells teachers not to use students’ preferred names and pronouns without parent approval

By Emily Rizzo | Updated: Thursday, September 15, 2022 | 8:28 PM EDT

Administrators at Central Bucks West High School have introduced a new “Gender Identification Procedure” that many teachers say is discriminatory against LGBTQ students.

Teachers say they were told to not use a student’s preferred name or pronoun if it does not match with the information in the school’s database. They say they were told to inform school counselors about any student who requests a different name or pronoun. School counselors would then arrange a conversation with the student’s parents or guardians so they could approve their student’s name and/or pronoun change.

Let’s tell the truth here: while the Central Bucks (County) West School Board, which we have mentioned several times previously, appears to be at least somewhat conservatively oriented, in this they are protecting the School District. By setting up a system under which parents can ‘opt in’ to allowing their memtally ill ‘transgendered’ students to be identified by their ‘preferred’ names and pronouns, the District is also setting up a policy which allows parents to choose not to go along with that silliness, and thus protect the District from being sued into penury.

Though not mentioned in the article, if teachers are required to use the preferred names and pronouns listed in the school’s database, it would seem to also require teachers who disagree with the notion that people can change their sex to use the names and pronouns in the school’s database if the parents agree to the changes.

It’s easy to foresee problems here: what happens when the parents, especially divorced or divorcing parents using their kids as a weapon against each other, disagree? Eventually this will arise, whether in Central Bucks West or elsewhere.

But here’s where the problems really arise:

Administrators introduced the procedure at a faculty meeting six days into the school year; teachers said administrators cited protecting parents’ rights as the reason. Four teachers told WHYY News about the meeting and the unprecedented pushback from educators.

“A lot of us are distraught,” said Becky Cartee-Haring, who has taught English at Central Bucks West for 16 years.

“I physically felt sick in that meeting, listening to an administrator basically argue that we were going to protect ourselves by outting children … it’s heart wrenching … It’s just cruel.”

Teachers said administrators told them they have to follow parents’ or guardians’ wishes if they differ from a student’s.

“What the children wanted was completely irrelevant,” said David Klein, who has been teaching social studies at Central Bucks West for 26 years.

Klein said he’s not going to follow the new procedure.

“There’s no way I’m hurting a kid. Hell no. I cannot be complicit in harming children,” Klein said, raising his voice. “And I said this in the meeting … this is the most at-risk marginalized group of students, they need our support more than anyone else. No! Kid says, ‘Call me Tony,’ I’m calling them Tony!”

Klein and other teachers are unwilling to “deadname” a student in front of their peers, parents, or other school staff.

“Deadnaming” means to call Bruce Jenner, Bruce Jenner, and not his made up name “Caitlyn”. “Misgendering” means, to the left, referring to a ‘transgendered’ person by his real sex, not the one he claims to be.

Klein said even if he faces a parent who does not want their child to be called a name that the child prefers, he will continue to prioritize the student.

It would seem that Mr Klein has decided that he knows better than the parents how to rear their children. He’s certainly allowed to think that — we cannot penalize someone for their thoughts — but if he acts in the manner implied by his statement, and refers to the ‘transgendered’ student in variance with what the parents have specified, he will have personally opened the District, and himself personally, to a humongous lawsuit, a lawsuit they would very much deserve to lose. The public schools can’t even give students an over-the-counter medication without the consent of the parents; the idea that they could enable and reinforce ‘transgenderism’ without the parents’ consent is monstrous.

“My job is to educate your kids, to prepare them for the future, to make them feel safe, period. That’s my calling. Pardon me,” Klein said, choking up. “I’m calling you Tony because you need to feel safe in my classroom. How else are you going to learn? And if they want to fire me, that’s their business.”

Does Mr Klein believe that his “calling” outweighs the rights and responsibility of parents?

There’s more of the same kind of thing, from other teachers, at the original, but it’s pretty much more of the same, teachers who believe that they Know Better how to rear other people’s children.

The left have long insisted on body cameras for police officers, and there’s certainly a reasonable case to be made for that. Body cams exonerate cops far more often than they record bad behavior by officers. Well, we obviously need cameras in public school classrooms as well, but, of course, the teachers’ unions oppose that.

Why? It’s difficult to come to any conclusion other than they are afraid that recording what they teach will expose bad behavior on their part, and, at least in the Central Bucks case, would reveal them failing to honor the District’s policies.

We have compulsory school attendance in every state of the union, so our children are ordered, by the state, to attend school, and the vast majority of parents don’t have the ability to send their kids to private or parochial schools. Thus, we must have accountability, must demand accountability of the teachers who are put in charge of our children, accountability to prevent them from undermining parents. The Central Bucks School District is starting along the right path, but more needs to be done to ensure that parents’ guidance is not undermined by teachers.

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They’ve got a big job ahead of them

As we have previously noted, the Philadelphia Police Department is seriously undermanned, by some 1,300 positions.

Philly Police have 72 new officers. They’ll start amid a shortage of more than 500.

The class of more than 70 academy graduates is the department’s largest graduating class in three years.

by Anna Orso | Friday, September 16, 2022 | 1:24 PM EDT

The Philadelphia Police Department got 72 new officers Friday when its largest class of recruits in three years graduated from the academy, an infusion of personnel that comes amid a shortage of hundreds of officers.

Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw welcomed the graduates during a ceremony at Temple University, acknowledging that they’re joining the force as the city is simultaneously experiencing a staffing crisis and a surge in gun violence, saying: “It’s been a pretty difficult time to be a police officer.”

“The narrative over the past few years surrounding police hasn’t always been positive or supportive,” she added. “At a time when it could have been easier to pick a different profession … you chose to pick something that wasn’t so popular, because you answered your call to serve.”

The Philadelphia Police Department has faced a critical shortage of police officers for months. There are more than 500 officer vacancies, and hundreds more police are out on injury claims, meaning the force is nearly 1,300 officers short of its full complement of 6,380.

There’s more at the original.

The Police Department will need more recruits, a lot more recruits, but remember: the 72 new officers are all rookies, and will need to gain experience, a lot of experience, before they can really become effective.

One note about The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website: they’ve gotten rid of the san serif Arial font they had been using, and started using something more professional; it looks good.

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Jamie Gauthier stands with Larry Krasner! Trouble is, that also means she stands with the thugs, the gang-bangers, and the killers in her city

Republican members of the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives are considering the impeachment of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and City Councilwoman Jamie Gauthier (D-3rd District) — and please pardon me for assuming her gender — is incensed!

I stand in support of District Attorney Larry Krasner, and wholeheartedly condemn the unconstitutional, partisan attacks against his office.

Sadly, that also means she stands in support of the criminals, thugs, gang-bangers, and wannabes. The death toll since Let ’em Loose Larry took office is stark: at least 2,157 people have been murdered in the city: 353 in 2018; 356 in 2019; 499 in 2020; 562 in 2021; and 387 as of 11:59 PM EDT on Wednesday, September 14th of this year.

Last year’s 562 homicides didn’t just set the annual record for the city, it utterly smashed 1990’s record of an even 500 killings. Under Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Krasner, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw, the city has seen two of the top three homicide totals in its history, and is on pace for between 549 and 582 homicides this year.[1]The math: at 1.5058 homicides per day, multiplied by 365 days in the year, the math projects 549.617 homicides. Done a different way, taking the daily percentage increase from last year, 387 ÷ 374, … Continue reading

Unless there is a drastic and wholly unprecedented change, Messrs Kinney, Krasner and Miss Outlaw will wind up presiding over three of the four deadliest years in the history of the City of Brotherly Love. But Miss Gauthier stands with Mr Krasner!

The chart to the right I began that last year, and it includes only those years with 400 or more murders. It’s kept on my computer as a Microsoft Excel file, and I’ll be adding 2022 to it once the city hits 400 homicides, something I anticipate right around the equinox, September 22nd, plus or minus a day or two.

The call for DA Krasner’s impeachment was made by three Republican politicians who live hundreds of miles away from Philadelphia yet claim to be concerned about the gun violence in our communities. Evena casual observer can see that this is a thinly veiled political stunt, as these lawmakers have time and time again refused to pass common-sense gun control legislation that would promote the welfare and safety of everyday Philadelphians. These proceedings set a dangerous precedent and violate the rights of Philadelphia voters to choose who represents them in government.

According to Philly Crime Update, 51 Democrats voted for House Resolution 227, “A resolution finding that Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner is in contempt of the PA House of Representatives,” and which passed 162-38. It would seem that this action was bipartisan, not just an action by “Republican politicians”. More Democrats voted for it than against it.

If Republican State lawmakers truly cared about the well-being of Philadelphians, they would end this charade and pass new laws to get guns out of young people’s hands. Instead, they waste time on political theater, while countless lives hang in the balance.

Have you ever been to Philadelphia? Other than the Delaware River, the borders are just lines on a map, and the only way to know you’ve crossed into Bucks or Montgomery counties, that you’re in Liberty Hill rather than Philadelphia is a sign along Ridge Pike. Giving the city separate, stricter gun laws would be meaningless, because it’s just a drive down the road to get into or out of the city.

As we have reported previously, Pennsylvania’s firearms control laws are pretty much uniform across the Commonwealth; state law prohibits municipalities from imposing restrictions which are stricter than those provided for under state law. In 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.

It got worse last year: with 562 homicides in Philly, out of 1027 total for Pennsylvania, 54.72% of all homicides in the Keystone State occurred in Philadelphia. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, was second, with 123 killings, 11.98% of the state’s total, but only 9.52% of Pennsylvania’s population.

The other 65 counties, with 78.11% of the state’s total population, had 33.30% of total murders.

Of course, when it comes to the gang-bangers and wannabes, it’s pretty difficult to see how the 14-year-old who (allegedly) killed Tiffany Fletcher while firing a “ghost gun” with an extended magazine, during a gun battle with other bangers would somehow have respected stricter laws when he (allegedly) violated the existing ones. Even at 14, he knew that he was breaking the law.

Miss Gauthier, like so many others on the left, want to blame gun laws, and really, they want to blame anything other than what is really the problem, the culture in our cities which both enables and encourages teenaged and twenty-something boys, primarily black teenaged and twenty-something boys, to think the gangsta life is something to emulate, something to seek out to prove what tough men they are. Miss Gauthier doesn’t want to put any blame on the (frequently single) mothers and (often absent) fathers for not rearing their children right, but the urban culture which says that it’s perfectly OK for women to screw around and destigmatizes unmarried motherhood is a culture which enables the very things which produce broken children.

That will be denounced as sexist, but I really don’t care: it’s still the truth. Every society on earth of which we have any social knowledge developed marriage as a societal norm to contain human sexuality in a responsible form, one in which children could be supported and reared; it is only in the enlightened ‘wisdom’ of the late 20th and early 21st centuries that we have discarded this as so much garbage.

References

References
↑1 The math: at 1.5058 homicides per day, multiplied by 365 days in the year, the math projects 549.617 homicides. Done a different way, taking the daily percentage increase from last year, 387 ÷ 374, 3.4759%, multiplied by 562 killings in 2021, yields 581.53 projected killings.
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Bidenflation The American working class are primarily Republican voters, so you can't expect the Biden Administration to consider them, can you?

I was wryly amused to see these two editorial links together on the front page of The Wall Street Journal’s website front page Wednesday morning. As President Joe Biden wants desperately to reduce inflation, with the midterm elections just 55 days away, it demonstrates the lack of thought the Administration has put into its policies.

Another Inflation Jolt for Markets

Investors get a reality check about prices and Fed tightening.

By The Editorial Board | Tuesday, September 13, 2022 | 6:54 PM EDT

Biden Administration officials have been claiming so confidently that inflation is under control and falling that investors may have believed it. Bad idea. Tuesday’s report on the consumer-price index for August showed inflation has remained high and sticky, and markets promptly fell out of bed.

And we mean from the top bunk. The 3.94% tumble in the Dow Jones Industrial Average was the worst day since 2020, and the declines in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were worse. Investors apparently had believed the hopeful chatter that inflation was headed downward, and that the Federal Reserve wouldn’t need to raise interest rates so high as to court a recession. Investing lesson of the week: Never trust a politician.

Consumer prices overall rose 0.1% in August, after being flat in July. But the decline was almost entirely the result of falling energy prices. Gasoline fell 10.6% and fuel oil 5.9% in the month. That was a happy respite from the spring when gasoline prices averaged more than $5 a gallon nationwide, but prices at the pump are still up 25.6% in the last 12 months and still average $3.71 a gallon.

The larger problem is that the energy declines weren’t enough to offset price increases across nearly everything else. The 12-month inflation rate in August fell only to 8.3%, down from July’s 8.5%, but higher than the 8% to 8.1% that economists had expected.

Then there’s this, from Washington Post economics reporter and Editorial Board member Heather Long:

Hmmm: “Inflation has been eating up wage gains since April 2021 and shows little sign of significant easing.” People are getting poorer in real terms, and that has been the case really since Joe Biden became President.

Then there was this:

Biden Freezes Oil and Gas Leases

Calling Joe Manchin: Interior uses ‘sue and settle’ to suspend Trump-era approvals.

By The Editorial Board | Tuesday, September 13, 2022 | 6:53 PM EDT

Joe Manchin’s deal with Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer isn’t looking so good for the West Virginian, and the latest evidence is a Biden Administration settlement with green groups that stops previously approved oil and gas leases.

The Interior Department last week agreed to conduct additional climate reviews for five federal oil and gas lease sales held in 2019 and 2020 that were challenged by environmental groups. Activists claimed the Trump Administration didn’t sufficiently study the climate impact of the leases under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

Rather than defend the earlier environmental reviews, the Biden Administration surrendered to their progressive friends. According to last week’s legal settlement, the climate reviews will incorporate the “social cost” of greenhouse gas emissions that could result from the leases. This takes into account indirect global costs of emissions such as property damage from natural disasters, risk of conflict over resources, reduced agricultural productivity from drought, and more.

By including the social cost in the NEPA reviews, the Administration will be able to claim the leases have a significant negative environmental impact even when they don’t and then seek to cancel them. Alternatively, the Administration could try to force oil and gas producers to mitigate their emissions by helping fund its climate agenda.

While the settlement doesn’t outright cancel the leases, it will effectively freeze their development. Interior has agreed not to approve new drilling permits or rights-of-way on the leases until it completes the climate reviews. Even after those reviews are done and if Interior allows development, green groups will still be able to challenge the reviews and leases afresh in court.

There’s more at the original. The Wall Street Journal has a serious paywall, but even if you’re not a subscriber, you can get a couple of free articles a month.

The Biden Administration wants to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and the use of fossil fuels to do so, but freezing oil and gas extraction leases won’t do anything about that. It simply means that more oil-and-gas production will come from overseas, and less from the United States, which means more of United States’ workers money will be going to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela rather than staying at home. Even if you don’t like those evil oil corporations, it means that there will be fewer American oil company workers, workers who earn what the Biden Administration likes to call “good, union wages,” will have jobs while more men overseas will be drawing paychecks from American dollars.

All of this makes American workers poorer. The American oil rig worker who makes big bucks per hour, but is getting no hours isn’t helping his family, and isn’t helping our economy. The oilfield worker who is unemployed because the Biden Administration is throwing obstacles into American production isn’t spending money at Dunkin’ Donuts for a coffee and bagel on the work in the morning, is buying fewer clothes because his work clothes aren’t getting worn out as fast, and his lack of work affects a lot of other people downstream.

The economic measure I find most important is actually a simple one, the velocity of money. The velocity of money is the frequency at which one unit of currency is used to purchase domestically- produced goods and services within a given time period. In other words, it is the number of times one dollar is spent to buy goods and services per unit of time. The lower the velocity of money, the less positive impact a dollar has on the economy. If the gasoline you buy is extracted in Kuwait, it may cost the same amount as if it had been extracted in Texas, but the dollars spent on Kuwaiti wages disappear from our economy while the dollars spent on Texas workers stay here. The more gasoline and diesel fuel we produce in the United States, the faster he velocity of money in the United States, and the more benefits and wealth accrue to American workers and their families.

There is another part not being considered in all of this. If we assume that we can move away from an energy economy based on petroleum, as the climate change activists want, and we can power our homes and cars and economy on ‘renewable,’ non-polluting energy, the more petroleum we buy from overseas because we are producing less here during that transition, then the more of the value our natural resources we have just wasted, left in the ground with no value. We will be making ourselves poorer during the transition.

Of course, the Biden Administration’s climate change activists can’t see that part, because they never think things through, and never really consider the economic impact on American workers in their plans. But hey, the American working class are primarily conservative, primarily Republican voters, so you can’t expect the Democrats to consider them, can you?