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A stunning lack of self-awareness at The Harvard Crimson

I will admit it: The Harvard Crimson is not one of my first reads of the day, and I would not have spotted the article referenced below were it not for this tweet from my good friend Hube of The College Fix. It seems that the Editorial Board of the Crimson are just terribly, terribly upset at discrimination against Asians:

Anti-Asian Hate and Atlanta’s Aftermath

By The Crimson Editorial Board | April 5, 2021

Racism directed against Asian people in America is old and urgent. The recent murder spree carried out in Asian spas and massage parlors in Atlanta — in which eight people, including six Asian women, were shot and killed — is the latest horrific entry in the history of violence Asian American and Pacific Islanders have been subject to in the United States.

This violence sickens and shocks us, but perhaps our shock is a failure in and of itself. Asian Americans have been sounding the alarm on their lack of protection for over a year as attacks against Asian Americans have sharply risen. Covid-19, despicably dubbed “Kung Flu” and “the Chinese Virus” by former President Donald Trump, has triggered a wave of irrational violence against people of Asian descent. Between this piece’s publication and when our board first gathered to grapple with the Atlanta shooting, a woman of Filipino descent was brutally attacked in Times Square by a man spitting that she did not “belong here.” Yet even as the threat became more evident and pressing — even as New York reported a more than nine-fold increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, and an 84-year-old Thai man lost his life in San Francisco to a brutal attack his family describes as racially motivated — most of American society remained unfazed until Atlanta. It took a massacre for us to pay attention.

Would it be wrong of me to point out that the cities in which the incidents pointed out by the Editorial Board occurred, Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco, are heavily Democratic?

The suspect in the Atlanta shootings claims that he was not racially motivated; that his decision to shoot up three separate Asian-affiliated establishments was a reflection of his ‘“sex addiction” and desire to remove the “temptation” Asian spas presented. The sheriff in the county the crime took place seemingly sympathized, saying on the alleged perpetrator: “He was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope. Yesterday was a really bad day for him and this is what he did.”

This coddling and utterly absurd response underscore how racism and white supremacy shaped the course and fallout of the Atlanta shooting.

I do love how the Editorial Board, made up of matriculants at one of the most highly selective universities in the country, have managed to conclude that the accused killer’s motive was different from what he said it was. Ought we not to expect that such brilliant students would do something really radical like, oh, examine the evidence?

Have they interviewed the suspect? Have they talked to him? The Editorial board noted searches for Asian women are among the top hits on a pornographic site, and assumed that because millions and millions of (mostly) men search for such, that this one individual male must have an Asian fetish. If the left object to my pointing out that the anti-Asian attacks listed above occurred in heavily Democratic cities, that just because the cities are liberal in the aggregate does not mean that the perpetrators of individual acts couldn’t be evil reich-wing Trump supporters, then the logical fallacy of the Editorial Board’s statement becomes obvious.

We are a country with a rich history of coddling white, male mass murderers. Authorities and the media extend undue sympathy even when their crimes demonstrate an extreme disregard for human life. It’s a privilege we rarely afford other demographics; one we only seem eager to extend when victims, unlike the perpetrator, belong to a minority group: Cops buying mass murderer Dylan Roof Burger King comes to mind. The dynamic is symptomatic of how racist biases and misconceptions can shape our response to crime, and of how failing to understand their pervasive influence can mean completely misinterpreting the root of tragedies born from racial hatred.

Dylann Roof was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on South Carolina state charges, and received a capital sentence on federal charges. I’m not certain just what more can be done to him.

Of course, the Editorial Board seem to think that Mr Roof was coddled because the police brought him food after his arrest, when he said he was hungry. Not feeding Mr Roof, who told the police he hadn’t eaten for a couple of days, would have been a civil rights violation which could have tainted his arrest. It took me, with my baccalaureate degree from the not-so-selective University of Kentucky, about three seconds to find that information.[1]While UK has selective admissions now, when I matriculated there in the fall of 1971, any Kentucky resident who had been graduated from an accredited Kentucky high school was guaranteed admission. UK … Continue reading

Solidarity means focusing on our common societal goal of defeating white supremacy, whatever shape it takes. In doing so, we must avoid pitting urgently needed movements against each other; forcing them to prove their comparative validity. Oppression Olympics are counterproductive, particularly when the common, violent enemy looms as large as white supremacy. Stop Asian Hate must function as a rightful ally of its counterparts like Black Lives Matter; minority ethnic groups standing in solidarity against the lashes of white hatred and rage. As for white Americans: Start fighting white supremacy in your own communities.

Solidarity among marginalized groups counters white supremacy in and of itself by chipping at the model minority myth, used to pit Asian people against other minority groups and to promote the falsehood that anyone can succeed their way out of racism. The financial success of some Asian Americans has been weaponized to perpetuate the notion that other people of color could achieve the same success if only they worked hard enough. The model minority myth not only glosses over the huge income disparity that exists within the Asian American community but also ignores the historical injustices and systemic barriers that have been constructed to keep African Americans specifically in poverty. Expressions of unity are one way to dispel this insidious myth, alongside rejecting any stereotype that caricatures the incredibly diverse Asian American and Pacific Islander community as a monolith.

I have omitted much of the editorial, because I do not wish to plagiarize, and try to adhere to fair use standards. You can follow the link to the original, but at least when I read it, at 8:20 AM, there wasn’t a single word in it notiong that their own university, Hahvahd, has an admissions department which regularly discriminates against Asian applicants!

Not that it’s just Harvard. The Justice Department, under President Trump, brought a lawsuit against Yale University for the same thing, but the Biden Administration dropped it two weeks after coming into office.

Finally, to our Asian American peers: We see you, and understand that Atlanta is just the latest straw after a year-long onslaught of unjustified vilification and hatred. You deserve better than the response Harvard has given you, and more than what this editorial could ever offer. In the aftermath of Atlanta, we can offer no silver lining; only a reaffirmed commitment from this board to listen, learn, and use our voice to discuss and dismantle anti-Asian hate as best we know how.

If the Editorial Board see them, just how do the Board not mention, in their long editorial, that their own University discriminates against Asians. But, the Board, being beneficiaries of Harvard’s admissions processes, might not want to take that step. It is, after all, a reasonable question: if Harvard admitted strictly on academic achievement, how many of the Board would have been quoting Tom Cruise in Risky Business, “Looks like the University of Illinois!“[2]The Editorial Board could not have been unaware, given that the Crimson’s website lists as it’s fifth most read article Texas Files Amicus Brief Supporting SFFA in Harvard Admissions … Continue reading

References

References
↑1 While UK has selective admissions now, when I matriculated there in the fall of 1971, any Kentucky resident who had been graduated from an accredited Kentucky high school was guaranteed admission. UK made up for that with a high flunk-out rate.
↑2 The Editorial Board could not have been unaware, given that the Crimson’s website lists as it’s fifth most read article Texas Files Amicus Brief Supporting SFFA in Harvard Admissions Lawsuit. That article was published just three days earlier.
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Schadenfreude! The rampage of the #woke is trampling the woke!

I have been somewhat — OK, OK, maybe more than “somewhat” — disparaging of the #woke,[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading so a gleam appears in my beady brown eyes when I hear of yet another of the left getting destroyed by their own. We have previously noted the ‘turmoil’ at The New York Times, and that editorial page editor James Bennet was fired resigned, and deputy editorial page editor James Dao was demoted reassigned to the newsroom. We noted Bari Weiss Twitter thread that “The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same.” A few days later, Miss Weiss was gone, too.

Then, a couple of months ago, The Washington Post reported that Times “star reporter”, who had joined the NYT in 1976 as a copy boy, used the infamous “n” word, not in a statement he made but in quoting something from someone else, was history. The Post said that Mr McNeil “wasn’t fired, according to people with knowledge of the decision, but was essentially compelled to resign.”

And this morning, we have this gem, also from the Post:

Inside the Teen Vogue mess — which is really a Condé Nast mess

By Sarah Ellison | April 4, 2021 | 6:00 AM EDT

From the start, Alexi McCammond seemed an unlikely candidate to become a top boss within the storied Vogue empire — at least on paper.

Only 27, she had little editing experience and had never managed a staff before she was tapped as editor in chief for Teen Vogue early last month. A stranger to the world of glossy New York magazines, she had spent the past four years as a junior reporter at a news start-up in Washington, scrapping for incremental scoops and gritty campaign-bus assignments alongside scores of other young D.C. journalism strivers.

Yet in her short career, McCammond had acquired the rare sort of Washington currency that translates to Manhattan’s power centers: buzz.

It was a wave of buzz — her youthful reporting successes amplified by a high-profile celebrity dust-up and vivid and appealing national TV appearances — that helped put her on the radar of Anna Wintour, the legendary longtime editor of Vogue and top Condé Nast executive, who hired McCammond.

Shades of Ali Watkins, the New York Times reporter who kept her job even after it was revealed she had been sleeping with one of her sources, though the Times at least tried the fig-leaf cover of reassigning her to a different beat. Miss Watkins had buzz, don’t you know!

Alexi McCammond was hired as editor in chief of Teen Vogue after four years of covering politics in Washington. (Michael S. Schwartz/Getty Images)

“Alexi has the powerful curiosity and confidence that embodies the best of our next generation of leaders,” Wintour announced March 5.When it all fell apart within days — after a staff uproar over anti-Asian tweets that McCammond posted as a college freshman — some critics saw a parable about an unforgiving “cancel culture” in elite media. Others clucked over the irony of Condé Nast both hiring and firing a young Black woman in its flailing attempts to align with a renewed push for diversity.

Now, I have to admit it: when I looked at Miss McCammond’s photo in the Post, “young black woman” is not really what I see.[2]As noted in our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not go along with the politically correct foolishness of the Associated Press Stylebook in capitalizing ‘black’ when referring to … Continue reading

So at the start of the year, when New York Magazine poached Teen Vogue’s top editor — Lindsay Peoples Wagner, a 30-year-old who is one of the few Black women ever to helm a Condé Nast title — Wintour and Condé CEO Roger Lynch may have wanted to send a reassuring signal in picking a replacement. In McCammond, they found not only a journalist gaining notice for her work, but also a young Black woman with the stylish good looks of many Condé editors.

T J Ducklo and Alexi McCammond. Phots from Twitter and Instagram.

Guffaws! Condé Nast found a woman with enough ‘black’ in her to qualify as black — perhaps they were using the old “one drop rule“? — but those “stylish good looks of many Condé editors” certainly seem to come from some obviously Caucasian ancestors. Looking at Miss McCammond’s photo, I see a woman no darker a complexion than I have on a summer’s day. She very famously dated T J Ducklo, briefly a Biden Administration deputy press secretary, who got himself fired resigned after threatening a Politico reporter who was going to reveal that relationship.

Mr Ducklo sure looks white to me! A white boyfriend, a light complexion, mostly Caucasian-ancestry features, but Miss McCammond was hired at least in part because she was black? Shades of Rachel Dolezal!

I might have skipped the Post article entirely had I not previously noted Lauren Duca, previously a columnist and editor at Teen Vogue, who was used as a supposedly informed commentator by CNN. The very left wing Miss Duca has had her own problems with wokeness:

In May 2018, it was announced that Duca would be a visiting scholar at New York University’s journalism department.[32][33] In the summer of 2019, Duca taught a six-week course there entitled “The Feminist Journalist.” The class was taught under the NYU Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute and focused on intersections of feminist ideology and the practice of journalism, and was made up of high-school and college students.[34] Four weeks after the course, students sent a collective formal complaint to school’s journalism department regarding Duca’s conduct during the class, writing, “We are disappointed at the department and NYU for hiring a professor with more interest in promoting her book than teaching a group of students eager to learn.”[35] Students allege that Duca targeted an exchange student, writing that she “consistently targeted this student on the basis of a communication difficulty the student cannot change.[35][36]

The left have created a situation in which the 27-year-old Miss McCammond lost her new job because of a couple stupid tweets she made when she was a college freshman. Given that the left tried to torpedo the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh over wholly unproven and unprovable accusations from the 1980s, when he was a minor, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that their own wokeness is coming back to bite them in the ass. Schadenfreude!

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑2 As noted in our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not go along with the politically correct foolishness of the Associated Press Stylebook in capitalizing ‘black’ when referring to race. However, in reading the Post, it seems that the newspaper also capitalizes ‘white’ when referring to race, something specifically not done according to the AP Stylebook.
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Show me a bad kid, and I’ll show you rotten parents

I hadn’t heard of this story until I saw this tweet:

Yeah, that sounds kind of bad!

13-Year-Old Boy Who ‘Wanted to Become a Cop’ Is Killed by Chicago Police

Pilar Melendez | Friday, April 2, 2021 | 12:10 PM

The death of a 13-year-old boy, who dreamed of joining the police but was gunned down by a cop in an “armed confrontation” this week, has horrified the crime-weary city of Chicago, prompting demands for answers from the mayor on down.

The Cook County Medical Examiner confirmed to The Daily Beast that Adam Toledo died of a gunshot wound to the chest on Monday. His death, which occurred after a confrontation with Chicago police in Little Village, has been classified as a homicide.

The boy’s family, community leaders, and even Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot are demanding police release the body-camera videos of the incident. The officer involved in the shooting has been put on desk duty for at least 30 days pending an investigation.

“Adam was a seventh-grade student at [Gary Elementary] School, enjoyed sports, and was a good kid. He did not deserve to die the way he did,” the Toledo family said in a Friday statement.

Uh huh.

The family said Adam was killed “due to the unreasonable conduct of a Chicago Police Officer” and they would “seek justice for this reprehensible crime.” They added that they were only notified of Adam’s death two days after he was killed.

“We are confident that the Chicago Police Department and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability will conduct a thorough investigation, that there will be transparency, and that Toledo Family will find out the truth of what happened to Adam.”

Police said the incident began at around 2:35 a.m. on Monday when officers responded to a call of “multiple shots fired in the 200 block of S. Sawyer.” When they arrived, they found two males—later identified as Toledo and 21-year-old Ruben Roman Jr.—“in a nearby alley” and at least one was armed. Police said the armed person ran from the scene, prompting officers to start a foot pursuit that ended in an “armed confrontation.”

What, exactly, was a 13-year-old boy doing out on the streets at 2:35 AM on Monday morning?

There’s more at the original, and the Usual Suspects are trying to make this about politics, but two perps, running from the police at 2:35 in the morning isn’t exactly the type of situation in which the officers would have suspected that one was a 13-year-old kid. If the text of the story is accurate, Mr Roman did not flee the police, while young Adam Toledo fled while carrying a firearm. The story states that Mr Toledo was struck “in the chest” by the officer’s bullet; if he was not struck in the back, then it seems likely that he turned after fleeing and confronted the officer. If he confronted the officer with a weapon in his hand, then the officer was justified in taking the shot.

Eventually body camera footage will show the confrontation, but it would seem pretty clear to me: if young Mr Toledo was out at that hour of the night, and was carrying a pistol, then Mr Toledo is responsible for his own demise.

But Mr Toledo isn’t the only one responsible for his death. Where were his parents? Which adult was responsible for the supervision of a 13-year-old boy at 2:35 AM on Monday? Some adult, somewhere, failed in his responsibility, failed not only to have young Mr Toledo inside his home at that hour, and, to be very blunt about it, failed in his duty to rear the child properly.

Mr Toledo is dead, but his parents, or whomever was supposed to be caring for him, are just as responsible for his behavior, and his death, as was the young boy.

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Once again, the government is targeting religion during Easter Government has turned attending church into an act of political defiance as well as one or religious faith

St Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, where I attend Mass

On March 19, 2020 Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) unconstitutionally ordered all churches closed in the Bluegrass State. That order covered the Easter holiday, the most important day in the Christian calendar. When a couple of churches ignored the Governor’s order, he sent the Kentucky State Police to record license plates and vehicle identification numbers on vehicles in church parking lots, on Easter Sunday!

Two federal judges ruled against the Governor, allowing churches to reopen, but they did not rule until May 8, 2020.

Then, on July 24, 2020, he asked church leaders to suspend services for two Sundays, which most declined to do, and again on November 19th made another request that churches close, for “three or four weeks,” a request that would have taken them through Thanksgiving. Fortunately, that request was denied as well.

Now comes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and as Easter Sunday comes this weekend, the purportedly Catholic President Biden’s CDC wants us to miss Easter again:

Safer Ways to Observe Religious Holidays

Attending gatherings to observe religious and spiritual holidays increases your risk of getting and spreading COVID-19. The safest way to observe religious and spiritual holidays this year is to gather virtually, with people who live with you, or outside and at least 6 feet apart from others.

  • Enjoy traditional meals with those who live with you.
  • Practice religious holiday customs at home.
  • Prepare and deliver a meal to a neighbor.
  • Watch virtual religious and cultural performances.
  • Attend religious ceremonies virtually.

If you plan to celebrate with others, outdoors is safer than indoors.

With COVID-19 cases seeing a slight uptick again, I have to wonder if Governor Beshear will try similar stupidity.

Our country was founded in part on religious freedom; my earliest American ancestor, Richard Warren, risked death on stormy North Atlantic seas, to come to a savage and untamed continent on the Mayflower. The idea that the government can restrict our freedom of religion is wholly repugnant, but Governor Beshear got away with it for almost two months, and while his orders were invalidated, he incurred no punishment or penalty for it.

I was a pretty regular attendee at Mass before the unconstitutional shutdowns, but ever since we were so graciously allowed to return to church, I haven’t missed a single Sunday. Our repugnant Governor has managed to turn attending church into an act of political defiance as well as a religious observance.[1]Sadly, while the Governor’s orders were declared unconstitutional on May 8, the Governor had already issued guidelines for churches to reopen on May 20, 2020, and John Stowe, Bishop of … Continue reading

That should not be a good thing, but it is: we can, and should, and must show our defiance to the Democrats in power by attending church. Not just this coming Sunday, not just Easter, but on every Sunday. Faith in God is the most important thing in life, but the resistance of tyranny is a close second.

References

References
↑1 Sadly, while the Governor’s orders were declared unconstitutional on May 8, the Governor had already issued guidelines for churches to reopen on May 20, 2020, and John Stowe, Bishop of Lexington, went along with the Governor and did not allow the churches of his diocese to resume services until Sunday, May 24.
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President Biden wants to tax working-class people to subsidize new electric cars for their bosses Sadly, this headline isn't an April Fool's Day joke.

2020 Chevy Dolt Bolt.

President Biden, along with all of the other 2020 Democratic presidential contenders, promised to require that all new cars after a certain model year — 2035 for Mr Biden, 2030 for some of the others — would be ‘zero emission,’ which primarily means plug-in electric vehicles, all to fight global warming climate change.

Well, Mr Biden was elected, and he wants to try to put his promise into action, but even the liberal New York Times notes the problems:

Biden’s Push for Electric Cars: $174 Billion, 10 Years and a Bit of Luck

The president is hoping to make electric vehicles more affordable to turn a niche product into one with mass appeal.

By Niraj Chokshi | March 31, 2021

President Biden is a muscle-car guy — one of his most prized possessions is a 1967 Corvette that he got from his father. But he’s trying to make this an electric vehicle world.

So, his fossil-fueled Corvette is OK for he, but not for thee! Got it!

The $2 trillion infrastructure plan that he unveiled on Wednesday is aimed at tackling climate change in part by spending up to $174 billion to encourage Americans to switch to cars and trucks that run on electricity, not gasoline or diesel. That is a large investment but it might not be enough to push most Americans toward E.V.s.

Despite rapid growth in recent years, electric vehicles remain a niche product, making up just 2 percent of the new car market and 1 percent of all cars, sport-utility vehicles, vans and pickup trucks on the road. They have been slow to take off in large part because they can cost up to $10,000 more than similar conventional cars and trucks. Charging E.V.s is also more difficult and slower than simply refilling the tank at far more prevalent gas stations.

This is what prompted me to write on this article. Not only does the Times note that plug-in electrics are ‘niche products,’ but this is the first one I’ve seen from the liberal side of the credentialed media which has noted the problems with recharging the vehicles. The article noted that charging them was “slower” than filling your fuel tank with gasoline, though it was a journalistic failure to note how much slower. As we noted here, they can take the better part of an hour to charge at a high-capacity public station:

Charging an electric car at a charging station can take as little as 30 minutes or up to a day depending on a number of factors. The car’s battery size, your battery’s current state of charge, the max charging rate of your vehicle and the charger you’re using, and even the weather — all play a role in how quickly you’ll be able to fill up. A typical electric car like a Nissan Leaf (62-kWh battery) would take about 11.5 hours to charge from empty to full at home on a 240-volt Level 2 charger or could get to about an 80% charge in just 45 minutes if using a public Level 3 DC fast charger.

Then there was this:

Tesla Owners Wait in Long Lines to Recharge over Holidays

Institute for Energy Research | January 6, 2020

With over 400,000 Tesla vehicles on U.S. roads, Tesla’s Supercharger stations were overcrowded over the holidays and many Tesla owners faced an hours-long wait to recharge their electric vehicles. At one location in Kettleman City, California, a line of 50 or so Tesla vehicles awaiting a Supercharger stall stretched to about a quarter mile over Thanksgiving weekend. The station is located about halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Its 40 stalls were insufficient to accommodate the demand, and the simultaneous recharging of the vehicles lowered the rate of recharging, frustrating customers even more. It takes about 52 minutes to charge a Model 3 to 80 percent at a 120 kilowatt Tesla Supercharger.

How many times have you gone to the gas station, and had to wait behind a vehicle or two to get your turn to fuel up. When it takes around five to ten minutes to pump gasoline into a vehicle, it’s annoying enough, but what if there was just one vehicle ahead of you . . . and it took the driver 52 minutes to recharge his car?

Mr. Biden hopes to address many of those challenges through federal largess. He aims to lower the cost of electric vehicles by offering individuals, businesses and governments tax credits, rebates and other incentives. To address the chicken-and-egg problem of getting people to try a new technology before it is widely accepted, he hopes to build half a million chargers by 2030 so people will feel confident that they won’t be stranded when they run out of juice. And he is offering help to automakers to get them to build electric vehicles and batteries in the United States.

It will take “federal largess,” because, as The Wall Street Journal noted, consumers aren’t buying them because most consumers don’t want them. The plug in electrics are simply not as convenient as gasoline powered automobiles.

And American consumers want larger vehicles; that’s why trucks and SUVs dominate the American market. Plug in electric vehicles like the Chevy Dolt Bolt are smaller, because manufacturers need to reduce size and weight to increase range.

The federal government and some states already offer tax credits and other incentives for the purchase of electric cars. But the main such federal incentive — a $7,500 tax credit for the purchase of new electric cars — begins to phase out for cars once an automaker has sold 200,000 E.V.s. Buyers of Tesla and G.M. electric cars, for example, no longer qualify for that tax credit but buyers of Ford and Volkswagen electric cars do.

Mr. Biden described his incentives for electric car purchases as rebates available at the “point of sale,” presumably meaning at dealerships or while ordering cars online. But the administration has not released details about how big those rebates will be and which vehicles they would apply to.

Let’s be honest here: new car buyers are wealthier than most Americans. In 2019, the last year before the pandemic hit, there were 40.8 million used cars sold, versus 17 million new vehicles, because used vehicles are much less expensive. President Biden’s plan calls for, in effect, taxing lower-income earners more to give a financial benefit to higher-income people, taxing working-class people to help pay for their bosses’ cars. What an absolutely great idea!

There’s considerably more at the Times original, but it’s pretty much what I have been saying all along: a whole lot of people do not have garages or secure, dedicated overnight parking spots in which they can have their own vehicle charging stations. Naturally, the Times looks at it from the perspective of a wealthier urban area, but when I look around the poorer area in eastern Kentucky where I live, I see older, not-as-well-kept-up homes, many of which have inadequate, 100 amp electric service — and not a few probably still have old fuse boxes instead — and I see people who have little prospect of buying a new car, having to depend on used vehicles.

Siemens US2 Versicharge electric car charger

President Biden’s ideas suffer from the same thing as the rest of the climate change activists: they are the wealthier elites who have no flaming idea how poorer people have to live their lives, how poorer people have to struggle. When around 40% of Americans would struggle with an unexpected $400 expense, how can we expect them to spend $599 for a Siemens 30 amp, 240 volt car charger? If they don’t have the tools, knowledge and skill to install a NEMA L 14-30P receptacle on a 40 or 50 amp circuit themselves, how are they going to come up with the money to pay a real electrician to install that for them?

I’ve said it before: the Democrats, who have for generations purported themselves to be the party of working people, have no idea what a working-class life is like. The Patricians driving the climate change agenda aren’t the people who have to worry about having enough money to buy the kids new blue jeans because what they have are worn out, don’t have to buy cheap Kroger brand products at the grocery store because the name brands cost more, and don’t have to worry if the electric bill gets too high due to colder weather in the winter. It’s just so easy for the elites to say that something won’t cost the plebeians all that much when they don’t themselves have to worry if the price of milk has risen.

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Majority white schools reopening faster than in heavily minority districts

This, to me, is not a surprise. The public school teachers’ unions are strongest in our largest cities, the teachers’ unions just love ‘remote’ education, where they don’t have to deal with unruly students and some can ever ‘teach’ from home, and it is in our major urban areas where public school populations are more heavily minority. From The Wall Street Journal:

School Districts With Majority of Black or Hispanic Students Less Likely to Provide In-Person Instruction, Research Shows

By Jennifer Calfas

School districts with a majority of white students are more likely to be offering in-person instruction options than those with a majority of Black or Hispanic students, according to new research released Wednesday.

I tend to pay outsized attention to foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, where The Philadelphia Inquirer reported last week “Philly schools to distribute computers to students as coronavirus could force closure for the rest of the school year“.

The Philadelphia School District is planning to distribute computers to children who lack them, and aims to put a new distance learning plan in place by the second week of April, Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. said Tuesday.

“We’re going to get the technology out to any child that says they need the technology,” Hite said at a news conference.

The news came as advocates called on the state to require districts to provide education for all students, including English-language learners and children with disabilities, during coronavirus-outbreak shutdowns.

Pennsylvania schools are now closed through April 6. Learning has been optional in Philadelphia — school system officials had made online resources available to students, as well as paper packets, but because of state concerns that all kids have access to technology, no assignment could be graded or made mandatory.

The demographic breakdown is that Philly’s public schools are 48.08% black, 22.77% Hispanic, 14.31% white, 9.11% Asian, and 5.45% multi-racial. The city’s public ‘charter’ schools are more heavily black, 59.55%.

Of course, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers have been fighting return to school plans all winter and spring. Outside of Philadelphia, WHYY reported, on January 7, 2021, that “many schools have been open for weeks or months despite substantial community transmission.”

Back to the Journal:

The findings from the American Enterprise Institute and the College Crisis Initiative of Davidson College, which are tracking reopening plans across 8,600 school districts, show how reopening decisions are affecting children and communities differently and exacerbating disparities for students of color.

Three percent of school districts with a majority of white students were operating on fully remote schedules, compared with 24% of school districts with a majority of Hispanic students and 18% of districts with a majority of Black students, based on districts’ plans as of March 22. Seven percent of all school districts tracked by these organizations offered remote-only instruction, according to the findings.

About 10% of Black students and 20% of Hispanic students overall attended school districts with remote-only options, compared with 5% of white students.

The new findings, which are tracked and updated weekly based on changes announced on school district’s websites, echo similar disparities cited in surveys and studies from organizations, media outlets and the U.S. Department of Education over the past year. About 1 in 10 and 1 in 20 of the school districts tracked in the new research have a majority of Hispanic and Black students, respectively. About half of the districts have a majority of white students, said Nat Malkus, a resident scholar and deputy director for education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Let’s tell the truth here: private schools have been doing everything they can to reopen for in-person classes, and private school populations are heavily white. Roughly 69% of private school students are white, though non-Hispanic whites make up only about 51% of school-aged children enrolled in schools. So, when The Wall Street Journal reports that public school districts have been reopening faster in white-majority districts, the newspaper is actually undercounting the return of white students to the classroom.

As always, there’s more at the original, but one thing is clear: in majority white areas, the very liberal teachers’ unions are more in tune with the people and parents in their districts, and non-Hispanic white students have been getting back into the classroom faster than those ‘BIPOC’ students the left claim to serve.[1]BIPOC stands for ‘black, indigenous, and people of color.

References

References
↑1 BIPOC stands for ‘black, indigenous, and people of color.
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Applying For an E1 Visa

If you are coming to the United States as a trader or a senior employee of a company that resides within a trading country, you will need an e1 visa lawyer los angeles to help you through the process. There are a number of documents that you will need to have before applying for an e1 visa. And there is a process that must be followed.

The Documents That You Will Need to Have

The documents that you must have are:

  • Form DS-156E for nonimmigrant investor applications.
  • A copy of your passport.
  • Full-color facial ID.
  • Documents that show a year’s trade.
  • Evidence of trade between the two countries.
  • Your CV/resume.
  • Proof of employment.
  • Evidence of US remittance.
  • Evidence of residence with the United States.
  • Evidence of nationality.
  • Proof the company exists.
  • Form DS-160 for nonimmigrant visa applicants.

Formally Applying for the E1 Visa

You will need to take all the documents and work through all the paperwork. Once that is completed you will need to have your lawyer mail them to the address provided. Once the application is approved you will be able to have your interview and get your visa. The process can take some time, so it is best to have a lawyer help you prepare all the paperwork, so you do not have delays in the process.

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Political correctness in the Lexington Herald-Leader (Part 2)

As we noted in Political correctness in the Lexington Herald-Leader? something, something I attributed to being so #woke and #BlackLivesMatter and politically correct that the editors did not want to show the picture of a black man accused of murder, Juanyah Jamar Clay, because he is black. If there was another reason, I couldn’t think of it, because the Herald-Leader was willing to expend the bandwidth to include a useless article illustration of crime scene tape.

Well, Mr Clay has been apprehended, and, once again, the paper decided against posting his photo on their website:

Lexington teen arrested, charged with murder 1 day after police name him as a suspect

By Jeremy Chisenhall | March 31, 2021 | 8:55 AM EDT | Updated 9:07 AM EDT

Juanyah J Clay, from the LEX18 website. Click to enlarge.

A Lexington homicide suspect was arrested Tuesday after police publicly identified him just one day earlier.

Juanyah Jamar Clay, 19, was arrested and booked at the Lexington-Fayette County Detention Center Tuesday evening after police said he was wanted for the alleged murder of 26-year-old Bryan D. Greene. Greene was found shot to death in January inside his residence at Eastridge Apartments, police said.

Clay was concealing three handguns on him at the time of his arrest, according to an arrest citation. He also had nearly 3.7 ounces of marijuana, more than 10 Percocet pills, cash and a digital scale with him. The officer who filled out Clay’s arrest citation said all the items were indicative of drug trafficking.

According to jail records, Clay faces eight charges: murder, carrying a concealed weapon, giving an officer false identifying information, receiving a stolen gun, tampering with a prison monitoring device, trafficking in less than 8 ounces of marijuana, trafficking in opiates, and violating conditions of release.

Clay had previously been charged with burglary and violating conditions of release in 2019, according to court records. That case remained open in court, but Clay had been released on a $15,000 surety bond.

Translation: Mr Clay is a bad dude!

He was already out on bond, so he was already facing criminal charges. He knew that carrying illegal drugs, and a firearm — in this case, three handguns — and tampering with an ankle monitor were all additional crimes, but he did it anyway.

As in yesterday’s article, the current one has an illustration, albeit a different one, of a Lexington police officer stringing yellow crime scene tape. The Herald-Leader obviously had no concern with using the bandwidth for a photo, but, once again, chose not to use Mr Clay’s picture. The illustration added exactly nothing to the story, where using Mr Clay’s photo would have qualified as newsworthy. Given that I had notified both the herald-Leader in general and the article author, Jeremy Chisenhall, specifically, by Twitter, of the lapse of responsible journalism here, it doesn’t seem likely that this was a simple omission, but a deliberate decision.

I have previously noted that we should simply stop printing the dead-trees editions of newspapers, but if newspapers really want to survive into the digital age, they need to do something really radical like practice journalism. The Lexington Herald-Leader is failing to do so.

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Zeigen Sie uns Ihre Papiere!

We can see where Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) wants to go with this one! Our wannabe dictator tweeted:

The “^AB” at the end of the tweet indicates that it was written by the Governor himself, not one of his minions.

Note that the article from the Louisville Courier-Journal was entitled Kentucky Libertarian Party compares ‘vaccine passports’ to star IDs Jews wore in Holocaust. Vaccine passports, not the vaccine itself.

The Libertarian Party of Kentucky compared coronavirus “vaccine passports” to star-shaped identification badges people of Jewish descent were forced to wear during the Holocaust in a tweet this week, drawing outrage from across the nation.

The post, sent just after 5 p.m. Monday, compared “vaccine passports” – credentials that would show whether a person has received the coronavirus vaccine and would theoretically grant access to businesses and other spaces that will require proof of vaccination before entry – to “the stuff of totalitarian dictatorships” that the party considers a “complete and total violation of human liberty.”

“Are the vaccine passports going to be yellow, shaped like a star, and sewn on our clothes?” the party wrote on Twitter.

The tweet had been reposted more than 4,000 times as of Monday afternoon, with many reposts adding messages disavowing its message. Nearly 7,000 comments were left in response as well, including one from Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt that called the post an “ignorant and shameful comparison” and another from Jewish actor Seth Rogen, who (explicitly) suggested the party take its message elsewhere.

I had, of course, suggested something other than the sewn on yellow stars, something that couldn’t be mistakenly left at home.

Perhaps the Governor’s ideas would sound better in the original German: Zeigen Sie uns Ihre Papiere!

Governor Beshear’s tweet indicates what we might expect from him: he will probably try to issue executive orders mandating that people carry their vaccination records, and, with the General Assembly’s 2021 session ending on March 30th, and Democratic state judges willing to support his authoritarian dictates, Kentuckians will have little protection other than massive public resistance to this bovine feces.

Will you have to update your vaccine passport? The Washington Post noted on Monday that we do not know for how long the vaccine will be effective:

But based on clinical trials, experts do know that vaccine-induced protection should last a minimum of about three months. That does not mean protective immunity will expire after 90 days; that was simply the time frame participants were studied in the initial Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson trials. As researchers continue to study the vaccines, that shelf life is expected to grow.

In the real world, the protection should last quite a bit longer, though the length of time still needs to be determined with further studies, experts said. . . . .

Immunity could also depend on what happens with future variants. If a person were exposed to a variant capable of evading vaccine-induced antibodies, for instance, a vaccine might not be as effective as initially expected, said Lana Dbeibo, an infectious-disease expert at the Indiana University School of Medicine.

Although researchers do not yet have all the answers, previous knowledge of other coronaviruses, as well as emerging research about the current strain, may provide clues.

Looking at studies on natural immunity from the coronavirus, experts hypothesize that protective immunity from the vaccines will last at least six to eight months. And if immunity from SARS-CoV-2 ends up being similar to other seasonal coronaviruses, such as “common colds,” it is even possible the vaccines could provide protection for up to a year or two before requiring a booster, the experts said.

So, what? Should we have to have our booster shot record on the passports as well? How often? Six to eight months? Maybe up to two years?

But, what the Hell, it’s only one more bit, one tiny little bit, of government control over our individual lives, right?