The Last Time I Saw Ciudad Juarez

 

ElPaso and Juarez are much in the news lately.  The mayor of ElPaso has declared a state of emergency because of the influx of thousands of immigrants flooding across the border.  I've only been to ElPaso once, and only once to Juarez, its sister city across the Rio Grande.

My father passed away in March 1958 while I was in my first year of high school.  I was 14.  Newlyweds Jerry and Peggy were in California where he worked, and Peggy was very pregnant with their first child, Elizabeth.  Mom and I flew out to spend some time there and to help them pack up to come back east because Jerry had taken a job with GE in Utica, NY.  It was my first airplane trip; 4-engine TWA Constellation; it was a thrill.  We drove back east, the four of us, mostly along Route 66.  The next year, we took a train up to Utica for Elizabeth's birth.

I met my Aunt Marjorie (Meagher pronounced 'mar') for the first time ever later, but I'm not sure precisely when.  Marjorie was a teacher of special needs children, mostly hearing-impaired, in ElPaso TX which was appropriate since Marjorie herself was quite hard-of-hearing.  She swung by our Brooklyn home on the tail end of a vacation road trip from EP up the Pacific coast, across Canada west-to-east, and south to visit relatives before heading back to Texas.  She stayed with us at 441 for a day or two, convincing my mother during that time that she should visit ElPaso.

It may have been 1960 that we actually did the trip.  I recall seeing "North By Northwest" at a cinema in downtown ElPaso, so it could have been as early as 1959, but I doubt it.  Mom and I boarded a bus at the Port Authority terminal in Manhattan and spent three grueling days in 'coach' seating, rolling day and night.  I've spent 60 years trying to forget that trip and it's still with me.  Marjorie had always gushed over ElPaso and its wonderful climate, hot but bone-dry, and how much we were going to love it.  On the day our bus pulled into the ElPaso terminal, the temperature was expressed in three digits and the humidity was almost as high.  It felt like drowning.

The one thing I distinctly recall from that trip was that much of it was through the South.  At one point, we stopped at a terminal in God-knows-where, and I got out to use the restroom.  There were two: a white restroom and a colored restroom, and I wondered why one would choose a painted facility over an unpainted facility or vice versa.  It took some time before I realized that I could only use the white restroom.  Such things didn't exist where I was raised.

Marjorie loved to pack us all into her car and take us for a ride somewhere.  We went to White Sands; it was stunning.  We went to Carlsbad Caverns; it was breathtaking.  We went to Juarez.  On a few days, there was little to do (or little that would interest a 16-year-old) and I was left on my own.  That's how I managed to head downtown for a movie.

On our trip to Juarez, Marjorie drove across the International Bridge into Mexico, found a parking spot, and the ladies began to shop.  I, of course, was bored to tears.  At one point, the adults decided to stop into a cantina for some refreshment.  Inside, the walls were papered — literally — with centerfolds from prominent men's magazines.  To prevent me from being scandalized, I suppose, Mom slipped me a wad of cash and told me to see what the local shops had to offer.

I don't remember much of it, but I do recall buying a cheap switchblade knife for a few dollars.  I still have it, and it still works.  At a leather shop, I was admiring a beautiful black leather holster, intricately hand-tooled with swirls and flowers.  "Want to buy a holster?" a young Mexican boy asked.  "No," I told him, "I don't have a gun."  "Want to buy a gun?" he pressed.  I considered it, but back home in New York, the Sullivan Law would have sent me to prison for several years — just for possessing it — had I been caught with it.

We stayed with Marjorie for some time — a few weeks, perhaps — before doing the same trip in reverse.  For whatever reason, I have no memory (blessedly) of the return trip which could not have been much better than the first.  What I do recall from the trip is that each morning when we arose from sleep, the first task was to upend one's shoes and shake out any critters — especially scorpions — that might have crawled inside during the night.

 

Earth's Atmosphere

 

I just watched a YouTube video that touched on the composition of the Earth's atmosphere, and it caught me by surprise.  Our atmosphere is 78+% Nitrogen and a shade under 21% Oxygen.  Together, they account for 99% of the total.  (I thought it was 76-22, which isn't far off, but it's far enough off.)  I used to worry that if the climate alarmists got their way and sucked all the carbon dioxide out of the air, we might reach that magical boundary of 24% Oxygen where, it is said, Earth's forests would spontaneously combust.  Thankfully, there's no danger of that since atmospheric carbon dioxide represents a mere 0.04% of the total.  Phew!  Dodged a bullet there.

But wait...  atmospheric carbon dioxide is just 0.04% of our atmosphere?  And all terrestrial plant life gets by on that measely little sliver?  Of course, there's more carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans, perhaps quite a lot more, and that doesn't even get near the portion that's locked up as vegetation, including semi-fossilized forms (coal, oil, and natural gas).  I see a problem looming.  Can you?

Ultimately, everything we have in this existence is a gift of the Sun.  Plants rely on sunlight to photosynthesize carbon dioxide to grow and reproduce.  Animals (including human animals) consume those plants (and the animals that feed on them) as food.  If we reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we must perforce reduce the amount of plant life that we and our food animals subsist on.

I do not like where this train of thought is leading.

—==+++==—

Update 3/29/2024: I just watched a video that addresses the climate hoax.  Interestingly, I think the biggest take-away from the video is that CO₂ does not drive temperature, it's the other way around: temperature drives CO₂.

 

The Best Job I Ever Had

 

In 1979, I had stormed out of IBM White Plains in a huff, terminally miffed at being mistreated in ways that foretold (I supposed) the permanent end to my association with IBM.  In 1984, I rejoined IBM's National Service Division (NSD) in Tampa after about 5 years working for other companies.  I was hired by Judy Manowitz into her "Architecture" group that developed and enforced site-wide standards for the systems and operations staff.  It was really quite boring because it was mostly paperwork-related, but it gave me lots of free time to do stuff I actually enjoyed, like programming.  Since the early 70s, I had been developing an elevated fluency with a language called CLIST to the point that I could teach it better than the highly-paid technical staff that created it.  When the operations crew accidentally caused a horrible administrative catastrophe because someone forgot to update a particular control statement, they asked me if I had any way of preventing it recurring, and I solved it by writing a little snippet of CLIST that automated the update.  I developed a reputation as someone who could do wonderful things.

A year later, management concluded that there really wasn't much need for an Architecture Department since what we did amounted to "winding the clocks".  The Architecture department was disbanded and the staff reallocated to other managers.  Judy placed me with Bud Rowsey's newly-formed "Site Tools and Productivity Department" where my job was to write custom software to help the programming staff get through their work.  I was partnered with Karen McCloskey, and together we fielded requests from random staff members to automate this or that, and responded with CLIST-based processes that increased productivity across many functions.  I used to say that our real job was making programmers smile.  It was the best job I've ever had, and I still miss it.

Some time in 1988, some bean counter in Armonk (IBM Corporate HQ) discovered that while all the parts and manuals were warehoused in Mechanicsburg PA (and shipped from there) the software that ran the automated equipment that packaged and shipped parts and publications orders was all located in Tampa, and there was a real monetary cost to having software running in Tampa burning up the telephone lines to Mechanicsburg telling the warehouse gantries to fetch a packet of nuts and bolts and add it to an outgoing order.  They decided that all that software and the programmers who maintained it were to be relocated north.  The response from Tampa was a collective middle-finger.  It was said that Mechanicsburg made 141 offers and got six (6) acceptances, all from people who had been born in Pennsylvania.

Tampa management (in the person of Joe Rufin) found a project in another part of IBM that badly needed the kind of infrastructure that NSD was about to abandon — raised floors for mainframe computers and other devices, stand-alone power supplies, &c., and they agreed to requisition the entire crew of several hundred employees.  A team of senior logistics experts put together a plan to move all the NSD hardware from Tampa to Mechanicsburg aboard chartered 747 freighters, leaving the Tampa site ready to receive similar-if-not-identical ISSC hardware.  On December 5th, 1988, all of us changed our assigned division from NSD to ISSC, Innovative Systems Support Corporation, a wholly-owned sub of IBM.  The best job I ever had evaporated before my very eyes.

Because my skills had no defined spot within ISSC where they might be put to use, I, along with seven others similarly afflicted, were assigned to a spare department whose mission was to keep us busy and out of trouble.  Our new manager, Betty Ware who by that time already had over 35 years service with IBM, began to rent us out as fill-in employees assigned to random projects (often run by her many contacts within the company) where our particular skills would be useful.  All she asked was that the benefitting manager cover her salary costs.  In this way, she typically managed to use little-to-none of her annual budget for the eight of us.  I worked on projects in Poughkeepsie NY, Raleigh NC, San Jose CA, and Rochester MN over the course of the next few years until IBM offered a pre-retirement package that was just too good to pass up, and I left IBM for the last time in July 1992.

All my subsequent jobs have always included some portion of automation work that makes me more efficient — and that somehow make their way to other programmers who find my tools surprisingly useful.  I still like making programmers smile.

 

The Economics of Electric Vehicles

 

EVs are expensive because many of their parts are expensive, particularly batteries.  To make EVs appear affordable, governments subsidize their purchase, the subsidy being paid by everyone in the tax base.  Charging stations are likewise subsidized both as to their construction and installation as well as the actual rate per kilowatt-hour.

In contrast, fossil-fueled vehicles (FVs) are currently relatively expensive to operate because fossil-fuels are heavily taxed, the opposite of a subsidy.  Governments use the revenue from fossil-fuels to maintain the roads, but over time, that revenue will disappear as EVs displace FVs, and it will have to be made up from some other source, likely EVs and electricity.  At some point in the future, we can expect that all vehicles will be EVs, and their fuel, electricity, will have to be taxed at rates similar to that currently for fossil-fuels.  In other words, electricity is going to become very expensive.

Complicating that is the current push for 'renewable energy': wind and solar.  Barring some near-miraculous technological leap, it is clear to everyone who studies the available data that all renewable energy sources combined cannot supply enough energy to support even a 20th-century 1st-world civilization.  Failing to develop nuclear power, our standard of living is going to devolve drastically, perhaps to a standard that George Washington would find tolerable.  21st-century Americans will not like being pushed back 200 years.

So, if renewable energy can't handle even today's demand, where is all this electricity we're currently using coming from?  In large part, it's coming from coal and other similarly dirty fuels.  It may be that EVs are actually more polluting than FVs.

There is also the issue of facility availability.  People who own homes will have the option of having their own personal charging station, but renters, especially apartment dwellers, will probably not.  They will be forced to rely on public charging stations, paying a surcharge for the use of the facility and dealing with either long waiting lines or appointments.  While FVs 'recharge' in 5 minutes, EVs take hours.  This will also play heavily into the economics of 'road trips'.  Drive 6 hours, recharge for 3 hours.  That's a whole day of travel for some people.  A coast-to-coast road trip will take 10 days, 9 overnight stays in hotels along the way.  As of right now, long road trips are too expensive for EV owners, put aside the fact that recharging facilities may not be available where and when needed for such an adventure.

One proposed solution to the problem of "recharge time" is to make batteries easily swappable.  When an EV arrives at a recharge station, its battery is measured for charge, pulled, replaced with a fully-charged battery, and the driver pays the difference between charge levels, possibly with a fixed fee for labor to do the swap.  If the swap can be done reasonably quickly (less than 20 minutes) it gives the travelers time to visit the restroom, grab something to eat/drink, and get back to their car.  For this to be feasible, all cars will have to share a single interface to their battery.  There may be many manufacturers or brands of battery, but they all have to fit into the same space and connect the same way.

Along the way from here to there, we will have to maintain parallel service facilities, one for EVs and another for FVs.  The chain of gas stations we today take for granted took 120 years to develop, but we need the same thing for our EVs to be ready tomorrow.

Not going to happen.  It's especially not going to happen when the ordinary consumer realizes how much this is all going to cost.  EVs are going to prove to be economically unfeasible.

—==+++==—

Update 6/26/23:  It's starting.

 

How To Steal An Election

 

Over at The Conservative Treehouse a few days back, somebody posted a suggestion about how an election could be stolen, and I've been thinking about that from a systems standpoint. 

The way elections are run in Florida, to get a mail-in ballot, the voter must initially request a mail-in ballot.  Thereafter, all that's required is a check mark on the mailed-in ballot that asks to continue in that mode.  This year, I fudged my ballot — by using blue ink instead of black — and had to go vote in person.  At the polling place, I surrendered my mail-in packet in trade for a fresh ballot for my precinct after displaying both my voter registration card and my driver's license, filled it out, and then I fed it into the ballot-reading machine under the watchful eye of a poll worker.

Republicans won every statewide election, some by very wide margins.  Ron DeSantis beat Charlie Crist by 1.5 million votes, and that was known within an hour of the polls closing.

In Arizona, with a fraction of Florida's population, Democrat Katie Hobbs beat Republican Kari Lake by a few thousand votes after a full week of counting.  Maricopa County, with 83% Republican registration, split 50-50.  Unbelievable... literally.

So, if Secretary of State Katie Hobbs wanted to steal that election, how might she go about it? 

First, some assumptions:  every voter has a voter-id number.  It's on my voter registration card, and when my mail-in ballot arrived, the return envelope was bar-coded with my number.  I have to presume every state does something similar.  This enables the scanning equipment to know that this ballot came from a registered voter, and the state database can be marked to indicate "this voter-id voted by mail".  Presumably, when one votes in person, the poll worker inputs the number shown on the voter registration card and the equipment marks the state database to indicate "this voter-id voted in person".  The state database thus knows — in real time — which voter-ids have already been used, and which voter-ids have not been used, and can thus prevent any voter-id being used more than once.

Second, there may be registered voters who do not realize that they are registered voters.  This is the result of so-called "motor voter" laws whereby one can be quietly and involuntarily registered to vote because of some innocuous interaction with the state:  getting a driver license, opening a business, applying for a homestead exemption...  In some states, this can happen even if one is not a citizen — and thus ineligible to vote at all.  None of those newly-minted voter-ids are associated with either
(a) a photo id, or
(b) a signature.

Third, while the return envelope is marked to indicate my voter-id number, the ballot is not.  The ballot is identical for all voters in a given precinct.  There is nothing to indicate who cast this ballot.

Putting these facts together, we see that the state database not only knows who voted and who has not, but it can produce a roster of non-voters by precinct.  If you intend to steal an election, that's critical information.  With a roster of non-voters and a printer, you can print however many ballots are needed to make up the difference between the current winner and your preferred candidate.  All you need after that is a crew of ballot-markers who are given a list of voter-ids that have not yet cast a ballot, a stack of unmarked ballots, and time to produce the needed votes.  The ballot-markers fill in the appropriate spots on the ballot, and tell the state database "this voter-id voted".

As far as anyone can tell, all of those manufactured votes are legitimate.  Proof of wrongdoing simply does not exist, so there is no way to "prove the election was stolen".  It's the perfect crime.

How can this be prevented?  Certain pathways must be blocked to prevent their use. 

• mail-in ballots must be explicitly requested. 

  Sending ballots unsolicited must be forbidden.

• Voter registration must be limited to real persons who present proof of their identity. 

  This is why Democrats fight so hard against so-called "voter suppression" laws.

• Culling of voter rolls must be an ongoing process. 

  Voters who fail to vote in two consecutive elections must be culled from the registration lists.

• All ballots must be in the hands of the poll workers within some short time after the polls close. 

  Allowing days or weeks to pass, and allowing sudden discoveries of previously unknown stacks of ballots is exactly the thing that allows that perfect crime of stealing an election.  The critical ingredient is 'time'.  Whenever voting results are delayed, the outcome is a narrow victory, usually by a Democrat.  Same-day voting results are often characterized by huge margins of victory, often by Republicans.

All of these measures will be fought tooth-and-claw not because "they suppress voter turnout", but because they make it difficult or impossible to steal an election.  If you want to see honest elections going forward (and who doesn't?), we must get control of the process.  Failure to do that is the greatest threat to our democracy.

 

About "The Farside Chronicles"

 

Book One of "The Farside Chronicles" ("The Door") begins with a short anecdote wherein one voice, the inventor, outlines a way to solve the perennial problem of 'where shall I park the car?' using dimensional distortion.  The second voice, the other, remains skeptical of the feasibility of the method.

I recall being involved in just such a conversation during the year I spent at Manhattan College as a Physics major.  The first voice is that of one John Patrick Celenza, my classmate, and the second voice is mine.  The idea John planted decades ago germinated in my mind as a story-line that became, after voluminous re-work, The Farside Chronicles.

In the late 80s or early 90s, personal computers made it possible — no, made it easier — to write and edit material such as books and other treatises.  That was probably the start of what has become a publishing revolution on a par with Gutenberg.  It became feasible for someone with such an interest to actually write a book and have it published — for a fee, of course.  Since childhood, I had been 'a writer', often scribbling in pencil in one of those black-and-white marble-patterned notebooks my latest opus, none of which ever survived long enough to actually meet a typewriter.  Now in possession of my very own computer, I could write to my heart's content, saving my output onto 3½" floppy disks and revising whenever it seemed necessary or prudent.  My first serious effort beginning soon after I became a PC owner was, naturally, the story that eventually would become "The Door".  As with so many such tasks, it progressed fairly quickly to 95% complete, and remained there permanently.  Every now and then, I would open the file containing 'the book', reread it, and try to compose an ending that satisfied my heart.  Nothing worked.  It felt as though I had painted myself into a corner, and I could not even imagine how I might rewrite myself clear of it.  I put it aside and moved on other things.

About 2006, I observed that the nature of politics was undergoing a sea-change.  Everything about it was becoming much more adversarial and contentious.  Where once Nixon and Kennedy could have engaged in a reasoned debate on the issues, then shook hands when it was over, there was no more hand-shaking going on.  The major political parties weren't shooting at each other, but they were clearly 'at war'.  It seemed to me that we were within a stone's throw of graduating to actual gunfire.  I began to write a story about a gruesome school shooting that prompts a call for the repeal of the 2nd amendment, and leads to a second American civil war.  In 2011, I self-published "Tipping Point" via Author House, a vanity press headquartered in Indiana.

—==+++==—

It might be useful to know how book publication has changed over the past half-century.

As recently as 1985, an aspiring author would laboriously type (double-spaced) 'the book', often rewriting sections or chapters at the urging of amateur or professional editors, and send (the original or a Xerox copy) to Random House or Alfred Knopf or ...

The book would disappear into the bowels of the publisher's workrooms and would result in one of several outcomes:

1. a rejection letter (typically);
2. suggestions for changes (sometimes);
3. an acceptance letter (rarely).

If accepted, the publisher causes the work to be typeset preparatory to printing, delivers the galley proofs to one or more editors/proofreaders, who make sure the final product is ready for prime time.  Then the book is printed, typically in multiples of 10,000 copies, a quite expensive proposition.

If the book sells, royalties will be paid to the successful author and more printing will happen.  If the book doesn't sell, the publisher is on the hook for all those costs.

Successful books wind up at Barnes&Noble for $37.95 and everybody is happy.  Unsuccessful books wind up at Books-A-Million for $5, $2, or $1, and only Books-A-Million is happy, but not very happy.

That doesn't happen (much) anymore.

These days, an aspiring author may approach a well-known publisher, but these typically are no longer interested in unsolicited manuscripts.  Their unspoken rule of business is "Don't call us; we'll call you."

Instead, the author self-publishes by contracting with any of several vanity presses.  The services provided by the vanity press are centered around making a manuscript look like a book.  They do not care how well-written or poorly-written the manuscript is.  They will — for a fee — check spelling, punctuation, and grammar.  They are not taking any risk; the author is.

The cover art, the book's body text and illustrations, are sent as computer files to any of several on-demand-publishers, but mostly to Ingram in Tennessee, the world's largest.  Ingram is able to produce a book by separately producing the body text and the cover, and assembling the components in the right order.  Ingram can produce one book; they can produce 100 books; they can produce 10,000 books, on demand.

So, a prospective book buyer sees a book advertised on Amazon and adds it to their cart.  Amazon sends the order to Ingram and pays Ingram the agreed price.  Ingram produces a book as ordered, plus a mailing label, the book is boxed and handed over to USPS, FedEx, UPS, or equivalent, and Ingram pays the publisher the agreed price.  The publisher keeps their share and pays the author the agreed royalty.  It is possible that, for a given book, this never happens.

The cost to get to ink-on-paper is borne entirely by the author.  In rare cases, the author's phone will ring and someone from Random House will invite her to come to New York to talk about her next book.

—==+++==—

"Tipping Point" enjoys a small but steady popularity and provides a stream of royalties that is thin enough that it may never pay me back for what it cost to see the book in print.  I am, unsurprisingly, reluctant to do it again.

However, seeing "Tipping Point" finally launched took a weight off my shoulders such that I began to entertain the notion of finishing that mothballed book.  I re-read it and began to try alternative endings, finally settling on one that completely satisfied me.  Unwilling to press on toward publishing it, however, it went back on the shelf, finished at last, but only enough to satisfy my desire to have it done.

It was some time before it occurred to me that I had left that story in such a state that a sequel was possible.  I sometimes describe it as 'the book itself whining to me that it was lonely and needed company'.  Besides, I was, at that point, semi-retired and a stay-at-home pensioner, Nielsen Media having flushed me with my first-ever layoff.  With nothing better to do, I started writing 'book two'.  It was as if I could not prevent the words flowing onto the page.  Once you have opened the floodgates, as Thomas Sowell once observed, you cannot tell the water where to go.  Four months after starting it, "The Town" had taken its final shape.  I wrapped a metaphorical ribbon around the two volumes and stowed them both back onto their virtual shelf.

"No, no," they now called to me in chorus.  "Not done!  Not done!  You can't leave the story there!"

I began book three, then contract work interfered with progress as I found myself back in Texas living on 'bachelor status' and working long hours for Bank of America.  Eventually, "Farside Colony" joined its sisters on that virtual shelf, whereupon the first two taught the newcomer the theory and practice of wheedling.  Thus there is now a fourth book, "Farside Legacy", that effectively ends the chronicles.

The four are available via Kindle Direct Publishing.

 

Paul Pelosi

 

Normally, I would wait until the dust had a chance to settle before writing about current events, but the 'Paul Pelosi affair' is too weird to admit of any more than a single explanation.

To recap the events:  Paul Pelosi, husband of the Speaker of the House, called 9-1-1 at 2am to report an intruder that

• he didn't know
• named 'David'
• who was 'a friend'

according to the 9-1-1 dispatcher.  SFPD responded in record-short-time and were admitted by an unidentified third person, found Paul and 'David', both in a state of undress, struggling over possession of a hammer, ordered the two men to drop the hammer — which Paul Pelosi did — upon which, David smacked Paul in the head with the hammer.  SFPD then took David into custody and called EMTs for Paul.  Initial reports were that David broke into the house by smashing a window in and demanded to know "Where's Nancy?"

What's weird about this tale is that the house in question is the residence of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, the person third in line to the Presidency, and that it was (we are told) broken into.  Further, Paul Pelosi didn't know the intruder except that he was named David and was a friend.  The window was, by photographic evidence, smashed out, not in because the glass shards were on the outside.  SFPD was on the scene in two shakes of a lamb's tail.  This scenario does not pass the 'smell test'.

I estimate that there is approximately a zero percent chance that this house is not guarded every minute of every day from January 1st to December 31st inclusive — by SFPD.  In other words, nobody was inside that house absent an invitation.  David could not have gained entry whether in his underwear or otherwise without passing an SFPD sentry.  David could not have smashed a window in without alerting one of the policemen on guard.  When alerted by dispatch, SFPD was already on the scene.  Therefore, David had been invited in, and SFPD knew he was there.

Period.

Paul Pelosi, rumors say, has been spotted at gay bars downtown on numerous occasions.  David was thus not just 'a friend'.  David was a male prostitute, and Nancy's hubby is gay.

Talk about "an October surprise"!

 

Now, This Is Funny

 

A guy in Ohio put up a FaceBook page that looked suspiciously like what the Parma (OH) PD might have for their public-facing... umm... face, except that any such official page that contained the stuff that was on that page would have gotten the Mayor and the Chief of Police ridden out of town on a rail.

Naturally, the police arrested him for mocking them.  Judicial activity ensued.  Lots of judicial activity.  So much that it is now wending its way toward The Supreme Court of the United States™ ®U.S.Pat.Ofc.

It is now at the stage of a petition for certiorari, and thus there are amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs.

The Onion has weighed in on the issue with its own brief that you should go read.

The most serious part of the whole thing is this:

The petition for certiorari should be granted, the rights of the people vindicated, and various historical wrongs remedied.  The Onion would welcome any one of the three, particularly the first.

The rest of it is screamingly funny, and all of the citations and footnotes are true.

—==+++==—

Update Oct 29, 2022:  The Babylon Bee has added its voice to the hue and cry for a writ.  While not as funny (or as timely) as that of The Onion, It nevertheless makes some good points, especially that getting acquitted of such a criminal charge is both (a) "cold comfort", and (b) not guaranteed.

 

Free Speech

 

Recently, we have been witness to several instances where right-leaning speakers invited to address the student body at prestigious institutions of higher learning (Yale, Harvard, Princeton among others) have been shouted down by activist students to the extent that the speakers have been unable to do the task for which they had been invited.  In more than one case, police were necessary to ensure the safety of the speakers and whisked the visitors away from danger.  In response, this week a number of federal judges announced that they would henceforth not hire law clerks from the Yale population.  I suspect it's likely this prohibition will soon extend to other law schools as well.

Free speech is the sine qua non of a democratic society.  Without the ability to question dogma, progress halts.  This seems not to be a concept well understood by many current college students, and that flaw has not been eradicated by the faculties or administrations of those colleges.  One must assume, therefore, that the faculties and administrations share the activists' disdain for hearing opinions they find offensive.

If that is not true, those universities have precious little time left to salvage what remains of their reputations.  They may want to and yet be unable to imagine a path out of this swamp.  For any such institutions, here is a modest proposal for working your way clear:

1. Every student should be issued a picture-ID and be required to have that device visible on their person at all times while they are on campus, and to present it to campus police on demand.
   
   
2. No one can be admitted to any campus event without displaying their student ID or a visitor badge obtained for the purpose.
   
   
3. When campus police have to be called to the scene of a student riot — that's what these events are — the CPs collect the IDs of all the unruly participants.  Having your student ID thus confiscated must be seen as a prelude to expulsion.
   
   
4. Involved visitors should be cited for trespassing and permanently banned from the campus.

Until the management of these institutions make it clear that uncivilized behavior will not be tolerated, uncivilized behavior will occur.  It's as simple as that.  Colleges and universities must make the choice either to coddle their students or to preserve their reputations.

 

Economics

 

economics
ĕk″ə-nŏm′ĭks, ē″kə-
noun
The social science that deals with the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services and with the theory and management of economies or economic systems.

The above is a poor definition of 'economics' because it includes the misleading phrase "... and management ...".  No one can manage an economy.  Economists study the principles of economics in order that they may predict the result of this policy or that one, but their predictions are always guesses, and are often wrong to a greater or lesser degree.

Because economists (try to) predict economic outcomes, non-economists surmise that the process can be run in reverse: that we can start at the effect we wish and back into the policy that will deliver that effect.  It is an attractive fallacy, and we need no more proof than the hot messes and dumpster fires of failed economies that got where they are because some politician had sufficient hubris to believe that economies can be managed.  No one can manage an economy.  There is no person or group of persons, no matter their educational credentials, who can force an economy to behave as they wish.

The only way to 'manage' an economy is to get out of its way.  Any politician who tells you s/he can fix the economy's shortcomings is either lying or stupid.  If they don't themselves believe what they're saying, they think you're stupid.  If you believe them, you are.

Beyond that, economics is a 'social science'.  Social sciences are not sciences no matter the name assigned to them.  The 'scientific method' involves four major activities: observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and analysis.  Implicit in this is that the results are shared among other scientists who replicate the experiment(s) to ascertain that the published results are, indeed, replicable and not one-off flukes.  For most (if not all) social sciences, experimentation is difficult-to-impossible, and replication of results likewise difficult-to-impossible.  Social sciences thus fail the test of being actual science and so reside in the realm of theoretical pursuits.  Few, if any, economic nostrums can be guaranteed to work as predicted, and often fail spectacularly.

No one can manage an economy.

 

Mar-A-Lago

 

We're about 6 weeks out from the FBI raid on the Presidential dwelling on Florida's Atlantic coast, and it may be that all the dust that's going to settle — or most of it, anyway — has already done so.  Time to opine.

What we have here, net, are employees of the Executive Branch claiming the power to overrule their boss, the Chief Executive of the United States, the President.  Yes, we're dealing here with a former President who no longer has the authority to classify or declassify, but who once did.  Those employees of the Executive Branch now hold that any declassifications that happened on the former President's watch reverted to the status quo ante as of January 20th, 2020.  That's nonsense.

The Supreme Court has already come down on this issue in Navy v. Egan, and they were quite clear that the Constitution vests an elected President with far-ranging power over the classification status of both documents and persons.

"But," you object, "aren't there rules and procedures surrounding that topic?"  Yes, there are, and employees of the Executive Branch are required, as a condition of employment, to adhere to them.

The President, however, is not 'an employee of the Executive Branch'.  The President is the Executive.  The voters did that.  The Executive Branch exists to carry out the policies of the Chief Executive.  The Constitution did that.

The net effect, the 'takeaway' from all this, is that the President sets the rules, and everyone else follows the rules.  Because of that (in SCOTUS' words) 'Constitutional investment' of the President, it is a legal impossibility for any President, current or former, to be in possession of classified documents that existed at the end of that President's term of office.  The simple act of removing such from the White House ipso facto declassifies them.

It's also worth noting that the originals remain in the place where they were created, and only copies are distributed.  If a document required a Presidential signature, it is returned to its origin point after signing.  Therefore, Trump did not have any originals at Mar-A-Lago.  They were all copies, with the originals still residing in their permanent home.  The FBI wasn't there to reacquire irreplaceable fragments of American History.  They were there to deprive Trump of declassified documents that, absent some bizarre legal contortions, he was entitled to possess.  This seems intuitively obvious despite certain judges deciding that "separation of powers" doesn't really apply here.

In any case, Obama still has a warehouse full (really!) of documents he took with him on January 20th 2016, and there hasn't been any effort at all to reacquire those.  If the FBI were to apply whatever rules they're using here evenly across the board, there wouldn't be any such thing as 'a Presidential library'.  Why are the documents in Trump's possession so important that they can't be allowed into the Trump Presidential Library?  There are very few categories that plausibly fit the behavior we watched last August 8th.  Even voicing any of them risks being branded as a 'conspiracy theorist'.

The difference between 'conspiracy theory' and 'breaking news' is now about three weeks.  Pundits have already started suggesting that what the FBI wanted from Mar-A-Lago were documents related to the FBI's (active) involvement in the Russian Collusion accusations, documents that would prove the FBI to be irreparably corrupt.

Hell, who needs documents for that?

 

Strike Two

 

For six years now, the Democrats, the mainstream media, and the federal legal mechanisms (DOJ/FBI/others) have been hounding Donald Trump.  The obvious goal is to render Trump legally incapable of mounting another Presidential campaign.

Yet, we're assured that Trump was soundly defeated in 2020.  Literally every talking head, even those one might expect to be opposed to that cabal (DNC, media, and Deep State) use terms like "disgraced former President" or "debunked claims about the election".  We non-talking heads are faced with a most unhappy dichotomy:  either that last election was stolen or 81 million American voters thought it was a great idea to put an Alzheimer's sufferer in the White House.  One of those must be true, and I flinch from coming down on one side or the other.  They're both horrible options.  Whichever one chooses to believe, it's a losing move.

With each passing day, it becomes harder to deny that Trump is setting himself up for another run at the White House, and with each passing day, the Democrats' unbroken streak of unforced errors make it look more and more likely that Trump, if he runs, will win. The man still has enough juice to pack stadiums to overflowing.  As with the last election, the Dems are happy when the crowd amounts to 400.

Of course, the GOPe isn't too happy about that prospect, but they could find themselves holding a losing hand if a substantial number of Trump-backed newcomers win their elections this November.  Certainly, there aren't enough of those committed Trumpists to take over either the House or the Senate against the entrenched Never Trumpers, even combined with those already seated, but a big enough 'red wave' would send a very uncomfortable message to the rest:  get on board the train or be left at the station.

I've never been a Trump supporter.  I didn't vote for him in either 2016 0r 2020, and it's unlikely I will in 2024.  I absolutely reject the notion of voting for Republicans so that Democrats don't win.  In contests past, it has been hard to press the argument that the parties are sufficiently different that voting for one or the other is a sensible choice.  Last Thursday, Joe Biden put that notion to the torch.  True, both parties are corrupt as the natural end-game of such things must go, but the corruption of the Democrats is of a starkly different nature.  They seem to have gone full-totalitarian.  The only plausible counter-move is Sherman's March To The Sea.

The myriad federal agencies, nearly all of them Constitutionally insupportible, are the headquarters of what is commonly known as 'the deep state':  hordes of Civil Service hangers-on impossible to fire, yet most of them must be mothballed if the deep state is to be defanged.  The only way to do that is to defund them.  Luckily, this is not an impossible task as long as at least one house of Congress is held by a committed majority.

Deny the 'continuing resolution' that has been used for the last 15 years to avoid the (Constitutional) necessity for passing a budget.  No more Mr. Nice Guy.  Cut the budget.  Cut the budget so deep that Harry Browne would have gasped and reached for his nitroglycerine.  Pentagon -85%.  Any TLA not mentioned in Article 1 § 8 -100%. — I here mean FBI, CIA, and NSA.  Any TLA sanctioned by I§8 cut by enough that the top 4 management levels have to work for free in order to actually fulfill the agency's Constitutional mission — there are precious few of those.

Will this happen?  I sincerely doubt it.  Nobody either in office or contending for one has that much courage.

If it doesn't happen, of course, we're probably doomed to a very, very dirty hot civil war for which I'm certain I don't have enough ammunition.

 

Projection

 

I subscribe to a daily digest of politically and economically newsworthy articles compiled by Thomas Knapp and billed as the 'Rational Review News Digest' which readers here may or may not find enlightening.  A recent entry pointed at an article by Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic predicting what a Trump second term might portend.  I have my own views on the topic, but I wanted to see what a decidedly rabid anti-Trump outlet might have to say.

Specifically, Rauch is worried that

...a second Trump term could bring about the extinction of American democracy.  Essential features of the system, including the rule of law, honest vote tallies, and orderly succession, would be at risk.

How could this happen (according to Rauch)? 

• First, install toadies in key positions.

  Isn't that what every new administration does?  Traditionally, every department head offers their resignation to the new President.  A smart President accepts those offers and replaces every one of them.

• Second, intimidate the career bureaucracy.

  Given that 'the career bureaucracy' is what we typically refer to as 'The Deep State', it seems as though intimidating it would be exactly what the doctor ordered.  Presently, it is nearly impossible to fire most of these 'career bureaucrats'.  They don't care what orders their boss, the Chief Executive, gives them.  They can do as they please, fuck you very much.

• Third, co-opt the armed forces.

  ...as by purging from the ranks all who are insufficiently obedient to dangerous and probably unconstitutional orders to vax-or-else or who reject the tenets of CRT?  Welcome into the ranks a diverse mix of ethnicities, sexual orientations, and political persuasions regardless of their ability to function as a fighting force?  That sort of co-option?

• Fourth, bring law enforcement to heel.

  He's talking about the FBI that has already been thoroughly politicized and weaponized against the very person he fears might have a second term.  This shouldn't be fourth; it should be first.

• Fifth, weaponize the pardon.

  (Translation: free all existing political prisoners who have been waiting almost 600 days, many in solitary confinement, for daring to enter the U.S.Capitol building on January 6th, 2021, 'speedy trial' be damned, and clear the records of all who have been coerced into guilty pleas.  That kind of weaponization of the pardon.)

• Sixth, the final blow: defy court orders.

  Rauch here invests the Judiciary with the God-like power to overrule 'separation of powers'.  What the judiciary says goes, no ifs, ands, or buts as far as he's concerned.  Sorry, Jonathan, that's not how this works. 

The title of this post is 'Projection' because almost everything Rauch worries about in his article is already being done by the current administration.  He's worried about the status quo.

Rauch apparently thinks that 'the rule of law' is presently at work in these united states.  That's funny.  That could be the basis of a great stand-up comedy routine.  What is he smoking?  As to 'honest vote tallies', we Americans are all in the position of having to consider that either (a) the last election was stolen, or (b) 81 million Americans thought it was a good idea to send an Alzheimer's patient and a giggling bimbo to the White House.  Here in Florida, the Democratic contender for the Governorship says "Thank God for Joe Biden!"  I have to believe he adds under his breath "He makes the rest of us look like geniuses."

In fact, should Trump actually squeak through the gauntlet provided by The Deep State and get himself a second (lame duck) term, he should Schedule F the top four management layers at FBI, DOJ, CIA, NSA, and several dozen other federal departments and agencies, and then downsize them all.  It was Reagan's machete-like deregulation and tax reforms that goosed the economy into overdrive, a rocket-propelled boost that Bush and Clinton rode to the end of the century.  It was Trump doing much the same that pushed us into the enviable position of being a net exporter of petroleum (here deliberately overlooking his idiotic tariffs, the absence of which would have made his economy so much better).

The baseline problem, of course, is that both Republicans and Democrats hold the laughably inane notion that governments can manage economies.  They can't.  They never could.  The only way to 'manage' an economy is to get out of its way.  The career bureaucrats won't allow that, and that's why they have to be purged, something only Democrats and RINOs think would be a bad thing.

 

A Perfect Storm

 

Airlines are cancelling flights in record numbers, and delaying those that can't be cancelled.  The reasons given are almost entirely laid at the feet of ATC, Air Traffic Control.  That's not entirely a lie, but it certainly isn't "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" either.

Yes, ATC is having trouble with the typical raft of regularly scheduled flights — because there are very many regularly scheduled flights... and there is a shortage of Air Traffic Controllers, and when there isn't a controller available... cancellations and delays.  The other side of that coin is that we have a severe shortage of pilots to fly those regularly scheduled flights, and when there isn't a pilot available... cancellations and delays.

"Wait just a damn second!" I hear someone object.  "Just two years ago, there were cancellations and delays, but not on this scale!  What's going on?" 

Good question.  In the interim, we had a Covid-19 pandemic and a chaotic and poorly-thought-out response by many government agencies.  (I'm granting the government 'the benefit of the doubt' here because I don't want to verge into that argument.)  The result of that response was that many government employees (e.g.: Air Traffic Controllers) were told "take the vaccine (sic) or get fired".  Some took the shot and kept their jobs; others moved into other occupations or retired.  At the same time, government agencies leaned heavily on airlines to implement the same or similar policies.  Many pilots took the shot and retained their jobs; others moved into other occupations or retired.  The result, after all the dust settled, was that there were fewer trained, qualified ATCs and fewer trained, qualified pilots, but the number of regularly scheduled flights remained almost the same.

There is another aspect to the problem I haven't mentioned.  A side-effect of the vaccines (sic) is cardiomyopathy, a condition that negatively affects the heart.  ATC is a high-stress occupation, and a heart in good operating order is a virtual necessity.  Piloting is, likewise, a high-stress occupation, and a heart in good operating order is a necessity, no 'virtual' about it.  Unfortunately, many of those who took the shot are now finding themselves with cardiac problems.  For a pilot, that is a career-ending condition.  This further reduces the already-depleted ranks of pilots and ATCs, and the solution is easy enough to predict: the number of 'regularly scheduled flights' is going to be severely reduced.

Because much of an airline's costs are 'fixed' as opposed to 'variable', the airlines lose their 'economies of scale' when their schedule is shortened.  As a result, expect prices for flights to rise — and that's exclusive of any inflationary pressure — and there's plenty of that.  Then there's fuel.  Jet fuel is fossil fuel — kerosene, and we've seen what's happening to pump prices for refined fluids, haven't we?  Put it all together, and the flying public should expect a situation not much different than that pre-WW-II, where flying was almost exclusively for business purposes, and flying to the family vacation was reserved for the very, very wealthy.

Pfizer, however, is making out like a bandit.  Moderna and J&J, too.  I suppose it's an ill wind that blows nobody good.

 

Hallelujah!

 

Today, June 23rd, 2022, Justice Clarence Thomas, born on this day in 1948, delivered the majority opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, striking at the beating heart of New York's flagrantly unconstitutional Sullivan Act.

The Sullivan Act, passed in 1911, establishes strict gun control within New York State with particular application within New York City.  It guarantees that obtaining a personal firearm is going to be a long and costly bureaucratic nightmare.  Beyond that, obtaining permission to actually carry that firearm on your person is nearly impossible.  A few years back, I posed the question "How many concealed-carry permits are there in New York City?"  The answer I derived was '2,291'.  In a city of 8.8 million people, that is statistically zero.

Two New York residents who had 'possession' permits for their pistols (valid only at their home or business) wanted to carry those firearms concealed on their persons and were denied because, in keeping with the Sullivan Act, they were unable to demonstrate to the examiner that they had a need to be armed beyond simple self-defense.  Five other states (you can almost guess who they are, can't you?) impose similar or identical restrictions.  The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association funded the several lawsuits resulting from that denial, culminating at the Supreme Court as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.

Justice Thomas has several times in the past castigated his fellow justices for turning away 2nd amendment cases that were similar to Bruen, and it appears his complaining has finally borne fruit.  The 6-3 decision gave Thomas the pen since the 2nd amendment seemed to have been his pet project.  Finally, he has the ability to author a strong defense of the 2nd's original meaning.  The 135 page decision will take some effort, no doubt, but given Thomas' erudition, it will be worth every minute.

Thank you, Justice Thomas.  We have been waiting so long for this.  Happy birthday.

 

Update:  I have managed to actually read the official opinion (footnotes omitted) and there is something else in there that I didn't realize originally: NYSRPA v Bruen also explicitly instructs lower courts that when dealing with 2A issues strict scrutiny is the applicable level of judicial review.  That means that any new or existing law, when it appears before a lower court, the state must now make a compelling case that the law at issue is both compliant with the Constitution and necessary for the public safety.  When challenged, NYS will have to defend its $445 fee for doing a background check beyond that done (for free) by the federal government.  Good luck with that.  They will have to defend the overly intrusive 32 page questionnaire each applicant is required to complete.  Good luck with that, too.  Basically, the entire Sullivan Act is now at risk of being gutted like a perch.

 

Undoing The Gordian Knot

 

The current economic maladies gifted to us by the Biden administration have left the American people, by turns, angry, confused, and benumbed.  The largesse bestowed upon favored institutions — trillions of dollars backed by nothing — has triggered an inflation that seems not to have an end in sight.

The price of gasoline is up sharply, and inflation is only one cause.  The other cause(s) are centered around declining refining capacity due, largely if not entirely, to obsolete plants going offline and not being replaced with modern equipment.  They aren't being replaced because the government has to approve new refineries, and that isn't happening.  Old equipment is expensive to operate, and that has to be recouped at the pump.  We're told that the embargo on trade with Russia is (partly) at fault, although just a few years ago we were energy independent, a net exporter of petroleum products.

Food prices are also up sharply coupled with actual shortages, notably of baby formula, driven, we are told, by a shortage of truck drivers, higher prices for diesel fuel, and some owner-operators simply parking their rigs because it's too expensive to operate them given the existing rates available from shippers.  Supply-and-demand has not yet kicked in to establish a new equilibrium point.  California, the entry point for most Asian exports, is choking on container ships.  There aren't enough trucks to get the containers off the docks.  There aren't enough trucks because California won't allow a truck to enter the port facilities unless it meets California's overly-strict environmental requirements.  There are enough trucks.  There aren't enough conforming trucks.  Congress, with the power to regulate interstate commerce, doesn't see that this concerns interstate commerce, but regulating guns obviously does.

The pain felt by the man in the street is predicted to spell bad news for the Democrats come November.  Even those who voted for Biden (the live ones, anyway) are having second thoughts about the wisdom of installing an enfeebled septuagenarian in The Oval Office.  Unfortunately, that will probably translate to a Republican takeover of one or both houses of Congress in the next cycle, and that will translate to... no noticeable change, because the GOPe isn't going to upset the apple cart.  When they fail, once again, to correct the problems they were sent to Congress to correct, the Democrats will be able to make a plausible case for remaining in office in 2024, and the destruction of the American economy will proceed apace.

There are, to be sure, a bunch of fresh faces among the Republicans running for office this year, and some of them may actually have spines, unlike the stereotypical GOPe incumbent.  If there are enough of them, we may see some push-back against the current destructive policies.  Having control of even one house of Congress means that bad bills can be killed, and budgets can be butchered.  That's what it will take to regain control of our current death spiral.  Failing that, get ready for another Great Depression.

Let's hope that the new crop of GOP office-holders are bold enough to draw their swords.  That's the only way this knot will get undone.

 

The Problem With Inflation

 

Inflation in one form or another has always been with us.  Even during the 18th and 19th centuries, there was some inflation.  Inflation, however, really 'got its legs' beginning in the 20th century.  Two events gave it the boost it needed to become a household fixture: the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank, and the 16th Amendment (Income Tax).

The Federal Reserve Bank made it possible for the federal government to fund itself with deficit spending: 'borrow' money from the Fed and pay it back sometime in the future — maybe never.  Our 'national debt', the Keynesians told us, was no problem because 'we owe it to ourselves!'

The Income Tax made it appear that the federal government was actually 'paying' its way.  Well, actually you're paying its way, sort of...

Until the advent of COVID hysteria and the latest round of massive government spending bills, it was estimated that the value — the purchasing power — of a 1913 dollar had fallen to about five cents ($0.05).  Yes, inflated by a factor of twenty.  Since COVID, it has gotten much worse.  80% of all the greenbacks in circulation today were printed within the past 3 years.  Since (Milton Friedman warned us) 'inflation is everywhere and at all times a monetary phenomenon', that means that our hypothetical 1913 dollar is now worth approximately a penny.

Now, if you are a businessman or a wage-earner, your prices or wages will rise to accommodate the inflation.  Everything seems to adjust itself, to 'establish equilibrium'.  Generally.

If you aren't a businessman or wage earner, if you are living on savings, things are going to be somewhat different.  Your savings are static.  They don't automatically rise to establish equilibrium with the new prices for everything.  This is why AARP is always so concerned about their members, many of whom are on fixed incomes.  For them, everything is suddenly more expensive and their 401k's don't seem to be quite as lush as they felt last year or the year before that.

We are told by our politicians that this inflation is transitory, meaning it will subside within the planning future.  (Janet Yellen is lately 'walking back' that pronouncement.)  Even if it is, there's still a serious problem left unaddressed.

The real problem is this: once inflation subsides, prices will still be high.  Just because runaway inflation becomes less runaway, prices don't go down.  They stay at the elevated state the last runaway inflation left them at.  Things are still unaffordable; they're just not becoming more unaffordable.

What us senior citizens on fixed incomes really need is a little runaway deflation: prices retreating to levels not seen since 2018... or 1958... or 1918.

Is that going to happen?  Not likely.  For that to happen, the government would have to grow smaller and less expensive.  The Mint would have to collect greenback dollars and take them out of circulation — while not printing any replacements.  We would then have the situation of 'fewer dollars chasing the same amount of goods'.  We haven't ever seen that happen with the U.S. economy, so we don't know exactly how such a thing would work out, but it would be an interesting experiment, no?

 

The Right Path to School Safety

 

The dust has largely settled from the massacre in Uvalde, TX, and facts — what few we have gotten — can now be analyzed with the clarity of 20/20 hindsight.

Once again, local police who should have been able to confront a maniacal killer chose, instead, to 'play it safe' and wait until the shooting had died down before putting their own lives in danger.  In the end, it was actually a Border Patrol officer who engaged the shooter and ended the standoff.  Reliance on paid, trained professionals has once again proved to be the wrong path to school safety.

Some have suggested that combat veterans, having been in high-stress situations analogous to school shootings, ought be hired as school security guards.  The drawbacks to this should be obvious:  a fair few of the candidates may already suffer from PTSD, and might be more of a danger than a help and, as we have seen before, even paid, trained professionals are often "as useless as tits on a bull".

Allow me to offer a modest proposal:  While not all teachers will be able to act as first responders, to suggest that no teachers will be both willing and able to do so is, frankly, not borne out by the experience of many school districts across the country.  Therefore, I suggest that school districts be mandated to offer to all willing and qualified teachers and staff a "training and readiness stipend" not less than 6% of the employee's annual compensation, in exchange for which the employees will be expected to carry their own firearm (concealed) during their work day.  Whatever training the district deems necessary will be provided by the district at no cost to the employee.

It is clear that school shootings only occur in schools and districts where teachers and staff are prohibited from being armed in their own defense.  There are no countervailing examples.  There have been no school shootings at schools in districts where teachers and/or staff are permitted to be armed during their work day.  The solution to school shootings thus suggests itself:  no districts may be permitted to disallow self-defense by its teachers or staff.

We should expect that "school shootings" will become the stuff of legend, and the few that do still occur never rise to the level of "mass shooting" (4 or more dead per incident).  Anyone who objects to this plan has the obligation to put forward an alternative that, even if only theoretically, works.  Failing that, zip your lip.

 

Uvalde, TX

 

Well, it's happened again.  A mentally-deranged teenager has shot up another school, this time an elementary school in Uvalde, TX.  There seem to have been several warning signs that were handled, not surprisingly, inadequately by the authorities, nineteen 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-graders are dead along with two of their teachers and the shooter who was killed by a Border Patrol officer.  Thoughts and prayers, &c.

Texas, it turns out, allows school districts the option of letting their teachers be armed on the job.  This school district chose not to allow their teachers to be armed.  As a result, the 18-year-old shooter had no opposition after barricading himself in a classroom full of potential victims.

How long are we going to put up with this?  How long are we going to put up with ivory tower academics who are more concerned with the negative P.R. associated with teachers who are ready and willing to defend themselves and their charges?  How long are we going to be bullied by a gun-phobic bloc of teachers who threaten to quit and make a scene if any of their colleagues are permitted to pack heat in their classrooms?

How many dead children are we willing to put up with until we implement a real solution?

 

What Hath Roe Wrought?

 

In 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in the case Roe v Wade centered around the topic of abortion.  Up to that point, some states allowed it, others prohibited it, and still others regulated it.  The 7-2 decision in Roe was based on an implied right to privacy originating in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  The effect of that decision was that the law on abortion became uniform throughout the 50 states: permitted absolutely in the first trimester, regulated in the second, and prohibited in the third.

When Justice Lewis Powell retired from the court in 1987, President Reagan nominated Robert Bork to replace him.  This was the first of the contentious Supreme Court nominations, so ferocious that it spawned a new verb, to bork (v. tr.), defined as

"To defame or vilify (a person) systematically, esp. in the mass media, usually to prevent his or her appointment to public office; to obstruct or thwart (a person) in this way." 

The attacks on Bork were primarily based on his response to a question regarding Roe v Wade, specifically that he thought the Supreme Court should not have opined on the topic since it was clearly a matter of state jurisdiction (that is, the way it was prior to Roe).  Bork's nomination hearings set the pattern for all subsequent Supreme Court nominations, the most recent being those for Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Roe has generated intense controversy over the decades since 1973, virtually none of it related to the notion of "federal legislative authority".

Until now.

Comes now before the court Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that addresses a law in Mississippi banning abortion after 15 weeks (that Roe presumably permits).  JWHO sued because this was a contraction from the previous limit of 24 weeks.  A firestorm has erupted over the leak of a draft decision in the case that, were it the majority decision, would overturn both Roe and Planned Parenthood v Casey and return the entire issue into the hands of state legislatures as it was prior to Roe.

Article I section 8 of the Constitution begins: "Congress shall have power to..." and goes on to list 17 areas of concern that Congress shall have power to legislate in.  There is not a single one of those 17 that can be construed as providing federal jurisdiction over abortion or the states' methods of addressing that issue.

Bork was right, but Bork was an originalist.  He also, unlike too many Americans, too many American judges, and too many American Congressmen, understood the Constitution.

For reasons that are not at all obvious, we apparently now have a Supreme Court that is as smart as Robert Bork.

 

The Biggest Mistake

 

When the USSR, the Soviet Union, went out of business on Christmas Day 1991, President George H. W. Bush saw it merely as the United States having one fewer competitor.  It never occurred to him that a former competitor ought to become a valued trading partner.

Of all the mistakes that mistake-prone President ever made, that was the biggest.

A truly forward-looking leader would have immediately sent hordes of diplomats winging toward Moscow with instructions to kiss babies and hand out lollipops.  Bush didn't do that.  He congratulated himself on being the last man standing and let the opportunity pass to make friends with a country that was still a superpower despite having shrunk its territorial borders.

Opportunity, they say, only knocks once.  When it did, Bush the elder was busy.

 

I'm Tired Of Hearing About Russia And Ukraine

 

It's awful that Russia invaded Ukraine.  That's the end of that story.  Ukraine has no strategic value to the United States, and we are five times as far away from Ukraine as is Germany.  If Russia invading Ukraine is a serious political problem, it's five times as much of a problem for Germany as it is for us.  Before we get involved in another European Pissing Contest Among Cousins (see WW-I), I want to see several European countries get involved first.  Poland has already said "Thanks, we'll pass".

As punishment for their dastardly deeds, the U.S. is imposing sanctions on Russia, cutting them off from the international banking system.  Of course, the power elite in Russia, the political leaders and the oligarchs, are largely unaffected by the sanctions.  It's The Man In The Street who is most affected.  Idiot Americans think we're doing the Lord's work by bashing Russia.  What we're actually doing is confirming in the minds of ordinary Russians that we're a bunch of ignorant bullies.  That's largely true, but we don't have to confirm it daily, do we?

Meanwhile, the mostly-made-up conflict with Russia provides the perfect villain upon which our incompetent administration can blame the high price of gasoline.  Forget the fact that Biden's first official act as President was to kill the KeystoneXL pipeline.  Forget the fact that Biden's second official act as President was to ban fracking.  None of those had anything to do with the price of motor fuel.  How odd, then, that this week for the first time ever, we paid more than $4 per gallon for gasoline; $4.249 to be precise, and that's with a 5¢/gallon discount, so $4.299 for almost everybody else.  Energy independence?  Who needs that?

Almost everyone is now aware that inflation has infected the economy, but being economic illiterates, few understand why inflation has infected the economy.  Anyone even moderately conversant with the Austrian School of Economics knows the answer.  Since the Trump Presidency, the Fed has been issuing letters of credit to the U.S. Treasury, and the U.S. Mint has been printing greenbacks... $8Trillion worth.  80% of all the dollars in circulation have been printed... new... within the last two years.  The only surprise is that inflation has only hit a 40-year high and not a 90-year high (to account for the Great Depression.

Back in 2016, I predicted an oncoming economic crash, and I was very surprised that it didn't happen.  I predicted it in 2012, too.  Perhaps I was too much of a pessimist back then, but I have not seen anything that makes me feel optimistic about our country's future path.  My (Republican) Congressman, Gus Bilirakis (FL-12), gleefully reported today that he helped spend another trillion — for the children and for the troops!  And to reward them for all their good work, the 'emergency spending bill' also included a raise for members of Congress!

Really, as long as the bulk of voters insist on sending to Washington politicians who see their job as 'spending money as fast as possible' there's no way we're going to escape runaway inflation.

Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?

 

Fungible Commodities

 

There's this delusion making the rounds that buying Venezuelan oil is better than buying Russian oil.  The only people holding this delusion are those who fundamentally misunderstand economics.  In America, alas, that's 'nearly everybody'.

The notion of a 'fungible commodity' is that product from location A is largely replaceable by similar product from location B.  Let's use 'oil' as the base product for the sake of discussion — although the identical analysis is applicable to almost everything that fits within the ambit of 'commodity': diamonds, wheat, beef, silver, lumber, helium...

If we decide that we don't want to buy oil from place A, what happens?  We have created a local reduction in demand for A-oil.  This will cause the price to drop momentarily and other oil buyers will be drawn to it.  If those other oil buyers move away from B-oil and replace it with the now cheaper A-oil, this will cause the price of A-oil to rise as the price of B-oil drops.  We then swoop in to buy the now-available B-oil, driving its price back to equilibrium.  Everything is the same because the supply of oil (whether A- or B-) is the same, and the demand is the same.  Executing a preference for a fungible commodity from one place causes an automatic rebalancing of other people's preferences for a different place.

What causes the price of a commodity to change is imbalance in supply and demand.  If location A curtails the supply of oil but demand stays constant, the equilibrium price will rise.  If you're wondering why gasoline is suddenly getting more expensive, it's because supply has been reduced but demand has not.  The reduction in supply began when the U.S. government began making it harder for American refiners to obtain oil — by closing pipelines, by restricting certain production methods (e.g.: fracking), and other supply-chain-related causes.  President Biden has asked Saudi Arabia to pump more oil to backfill for the oil that U.S.-based pumps are no longer producing, and SA has declined because high prices are, to them, a good thing.  Now, Biden is trying to make a deal with Venezuela to buy their oil, but this, even if successful, won't change the equilibrium point.  Other oil buyers will simply get theirs from Russia.  The supply will still be low (and the price high) because we're no longer pumping.

There is a second cause for the high price of oil — the higher price for everything, actually — and that's 'inflation'.  We're seeing the same syndrome with inflation that we're seeing with oil: we're printing dollars that aren't backed by anything.  In effect, the supply of dollars is going up but the wealth that dollars putatively represent isn't rising at the same rate.  The value of each new dollar is zero, but paper money is a fungible commodity: you can't tell one dollar from another, so the average value of any given dollar is reduced until the total of all the dollars in circulation balances with the available product that they can be used to purchase.

This is what happens when you let people run your economy who don't actually know how to run an economy.

And here's the really bad news: nobody knows how to run an economy.  Only the economy can run the economy.

 

U.S. vs Guy Reffitt

 

(CNN) — The first trial for a January 6 US Capitol attack defendant won't have any members of the public, media or even the wife of the defendant in the courtroom to witness much of the proceedings, a federal judge decided on Monday.

Judge Dabney Friedrich decided not to allow any members of the public to witness the evidence presentation in person at the historic trial that's expected to last more than a week.  A few are being allowed to watch jury selection, which began Monday, and opening statements.
...
Friedrich cited space concerns due to stringent coronavirus protocols at the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, designed to ensure that jurors and witnesses at trials are spread out from one another.

Amendment 6

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

IANAL, but the text of the 6th amendment seems pretty plain to me:

• speedy and public trial — Refitt has been in the pokey nearly a year so 'speedy' this isn't, and it isn't going to be 'public', either, if the public won't be permitted to even see the 'evidence'.
• impartial jury — that hasn't happened in a federal court in well over a half-century.
• if the U.S. federal government's Judicial branch can't provide an appropriate venue for a trial, one that comports with the requirements of the Constitution, how is that an excuse for ignoring those Constitutional requirements?

It almost goes without saying that the defendant will not be permitted 'discovery' of the estimated 14,000 hours of video of the so-called insurrection.  These flaws alone are enough to ensure any conviction is overturned on appeal by anything like a fair court.

Then there's this: if such blatant injustice turns out to be the trigger for civil war, will Judge Dabney Friedrich object when his trial is likewise held in secret?  The Golden Rule tells us that how you treat others is how you, yourself, wish to be treated, so the judge can't have any objection to that, could he?

Will a Republican House and a Republican Senate, if that's the outcome of the 2022 election, have the intestinal fortitude to impeach and convict jurists like Friedrich, ensuring they never service (pun intended) the American people ever again?  Don't bet on it.

 

COVID Psychosis

 

We used to say about our parents (and some of our older siblings) that they had 'Depression Psychosis' as a result of having lived through such hard economic times between 1930-1947 that it warped the way they thought about how one goes about living.  Beyond doubt, those years were of such a nature that panic had to be an almost-daily experience.  It's the same syndrome that causes your dog to jump whenever a firecracker goes off on the 4th of July.  It's an automatic flinch when some event brings back bad memories.

Moderns don't suffer Depression Psychosis because they haven't experienced the kind of economic catastrophe of an earlier age, but we carry the training:

Use it up, wear it out. Make it do, or do without.

No, these days we have our very own psychoses, a relic of the insane push to get to 'zero-Covid' — which, it's probably worth pointing out, is unattainable short of sterilizing the planet of all traces of life down to the microbial level.

The Japanese have been inculcated to wearing surgical masks over their noses and mouths over a period lasting several decades.  This may be related to fears about radioactive contamination, but that's a guess.  I first noticed it as far back as the 1990s, but it might have been prevalent earlier.  For reasons that are not at all obvious, they 'mask up' when in the presence of others — especially outdoors.  That practice has now spread around the world, although people from most other countries only mask for indoor socialization.

In the United States, starting with the earliest days of Covid nuttiness, the CDC and Anthony Fauci at first advised that masks were largely unnecessary.  Later, they admitted that they had said this to avoid a run on PPE that medical professionals needed because — this is an important point — they dealt with sick people on a regular basis, and were thus at a heightened risk of exposure.  As soon as it was clear that adequate supplies of masks and the suchlike would be available, the CDC's advice changed to 'wear your mask at all times', then 'wear two masks', then 'maybe you don't need a mask outdoors'.  At no point did the CDC or Fauci say "We have these (peer-reviewed) studies that clearly show the benefits of masks".  They didn't say that because there are no such studies, and they would have been pilloried for saying it.

That is probably worth repeating:  There are no peer-reviewed studies showing masks as having any value as regards Covid transmission.  None.  There are studies that indicate masks may actually be detrimental, especially for children (who are, let's remember, at virtually zero risk of contracting or passing Covid).  Despite this, Teacher's Unions across the country demand that school children be masked at all times 'for the protection of the teachers'.  This is a nutty idea even by the standards of New Jersey and may constitute 'child abuse'.

Even so, those afflicted with Covid psychosis harangue the rest of us with constant demands that we wear useless masks for their protection.

Recapping:

1. 'Zero Covid' is unattainable.
2. Masks are essentially useless against Covid transmission.
3. Susceptibility to Covid is very highly correlated with age and co-morbidities.
4. National medical 'experts' cannot any longer be trusted.

Our grandchildren will probably snicker at us and our obsessions after we have passed on — just as we do to earlier generations — but they will understand what drove us.  Let's hope that Covid psychosis is not transmissible.

 

Even by the standards of New Jersey

 

On Tucker Carlson's show last night (1/28/2022), he referred to Congressman Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) as "not the sharpest knife in the drawer" and topped it off with "even by the standards of New Jersey."  I laughed so hard I was afraid I was going to have a bladder leak.  That is such a funny line that from now on, whenever I have to rip some stupid idea, I'm going to characterize it as such "even by the standards of New Jersey".

That opening monologue, by the way, was one of Carlson's best.  If you'd like to review it, it's at TCT 2022-01-28

 

Karl Popper on 'Tolerance'

 

"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.  If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

"In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies;  as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.  But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force;  for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument;  they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

"We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."