If All You See…

By William Teach August 9, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible fossil fueled vehicle, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Legal Insurrection, with a post on wealth shaming Betsy De Vos.

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We’re Totally At A New Tipping Point, But We Can Do Something About It

By William Teach August 9, 2018 – 10:30 am

This has been huge among the Cult of Climastrology members over the past few days

Scientists warn of ‘hothouse’ tipping point

An international team of scientists released a new study this week warning that even if governments around the world meet the carbon emission reductions called for in the Paris Agreement, there is a risk of ‘no return’ towards climate change as Earth hits what they called a “hothouse” tipping point. The authors warn that the transition towards an emission-free world economy has to be accelerated before parts of the planet become inhabitable due to changes in climate and (the most pressing issue for the Cayman Islands) sea-level rise.

“Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene“, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, warns of a domino effect as natural phenomena currently storing greenhouse gases emit those gases in a warmer world.

So, essentially the same old doom and gloom, predicting tipping points that always fail to materialize, assigning causation to mankind while mostly ignoring nature, except, of course, when they say that mankind is simply making natural processes worse, and why are you questioning them, you darned deniers!!!!! Which leads us to Mother Jones on the same subject

Stop Despairing and Do Something About Climate Change

In all fairness, even writer Eric Holthaus notices the unhinged, breathless coverage of the scary prognostication from the media

Well, the authors say, it will be existentially difficult to adapt to a world with runaway permafrost melt, global forest die-offs, rapid sea level rise, and supercharged extreme weather. These aren’t just tipping points. The authors call them tipping cascades. That kind of world will make the current version of Earth look like paradise.

But the bottom line is, we have no choice but to press on through this fear. This is our actual planet we’re talking about, the only place in the entire universe capable of supporting life as we know it.

The next decade will almost surely decide our fate. That should empower us. It means every act has meaning; we have the chance to save the world as we know it every single day. In this scenario we now find ourselves in, radical, disruptive climate action is the only course of action that makes sense.

What, what acts are they?

Liverman and the other authors anticipated a defeatist response and published a multi-page document of possible solutions which, when combined with other research on the most important actions people can take, gives a blueprint for hope, not despair.

Well, that’s pretty much it. Stop despairing and do something which I won’t really tell you about.

Read: We’re Totally At A New Tipping Point, But We Can Do Something About It »

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Judge Hears Texas’ Arguments To End DACA

By William Teach August 9, 2018 – 8:58 am

On one hand, you have some judges supporting this unconstitutional and extra-legal program which was only supposed to be temporary but is really meant to give these illegals permanent standing. On the other, you have people who say “hey, we have laws”

(Texas Tribune) The state of Texas will continue to incur irreparable financial harm if an Obama-era immigration program isn’t halted immediately, attorneys for the state argued in Houston on Wednesday.

But lawyers representing nearly two dozen recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program countered by saying Texas sat back for six years and did nothing, and its attorneys have yet to prove the harm the state claims it has faced since the program was implemented in 2012.

Those were just two of the arguments presented to U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen on Wednesday after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Trump Administration in May to end the 2012 program, which protects immigrants brought into the U.S. as children from deportation and allows them to obtain a two-year work permit.

Hanen in 2015 halted a more far-reaching immigration program, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA, after he agreed with Texas and 25 other states that the initiative was too broad for the president to create on his own and that federal procedures were violated when it was implemented.

Assistant Texas Attorney General Todd Disher said Hanen’s prior decision should be applied to this current case because both programs were implemented by similar methods.

Regarding that prior decision

Hanen’s 2015 ruling, which was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court, was also cited as a reason that the 2012 program was a unilateral overreach of executive authority.

“The Fifth Circuit correctly held the [Immigration and Nationality Act] does not permit the reclassification of millions of illegal aliens.”

Essentially, what DACA did was offer “temporary” relief from being deported, yet, when does that end? The idea was that Congress would suddenly rush to legalize these “kids” who were “brought” here illegally. Yet, that did not happen. Because there are enough people in Congress who realize that coming illegally is against federal law and we should not be rewarding bad behavior that would entice others to come illegally. The DACA kids just expected to be given citizenship. They didn’t want to earn it, nor pay for it, as so many others do who go through the normal method.

Over at the USA Today, Texas AG Ken Paxton writes

“I am president, I am not king. I can’t do these things just by myself.”

“With respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that’s just not the case.”

Despite these statements, President Obama nevertheless proceeded with his notorious DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program. DACA unilaterally granted legal status to a whole class of illegal aliens without congressional approval. It therefore represents a dangerous exercise of executive power, which, if left unchecked, allows the President to set aside any duly enacted law. On Wednesday, as the attorney general of Texas, my office argued DACA’s unconstitutionality to a federal court.

Back in June 2017, I wrote a letter to President Trump urging him to follow through on his campaign promise to rescind DACA. True to his word, the President promised to cancel DACA by March5, 2018 if Congress did not amend federal law. When Congress failed to act and the president rescinded the original executive action, federal judges blocked him, issuing the logically inconsistent holdings that President Trump cannot unilaterally undo an executive action his predecessor had unilaterally undertaken in the first place.

Read the rest.

Read: Judge Hears Texas’ Arguments To End DACA »

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Paper Who Hired Racist: Values Over Rules Will Totally Save Twitter

By William Teach August 9, 2018 – 8:40 am

Over at the NY Times, the same paper which hired virulent racist Sarah Jeong to sit on their editorial board, tech writer Kara Swisher thinks she knows what Twitter really needs

Rules Won’t Save Twitter. Values Will.

This week, Alex Jones, the persistently mendacious conspiracy-theory spouter — yeah, that’s a real job in 2018 — finally became the ultimate swipe left of the social media age.

Apple, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Spotify and most other major internet distributors banished Mr. Jones, either permanently or for some unspecified star-chamber-determined amount of time, for hate speech and other violations.

But not Twitter. Instead, Jack Dorsey, the chief executive, founder and tweet inventor himself, took to his own platform to explain in the high-minded tone that one takes with small children that Mr. Jones wasn’t suspended from Twitter because he “hasn’t violated our rules.” (snip)

While principles and rules will help in an open platform, it is values that Mr. Dorsey should really be talking about. By values, I mean a code that requires making hard choices — curating your offerings, which was something Apple got made fun of for doing, back when it launched the App Store, by the open-is-best crowd.

Let me say that I have nothing but admiration for the long-suffering trust and safety team at Twitter, which has been tasked with the Sisyphean job of controlling humanity and scaling civility, armed only with some easily gamed and capriciously enforced rules. How are these people supposed to do that when the company has provided them with no firm set of values?

Values would require that Twitter make tough calls on high-profile and obviously malevolent figures, including tossing them off as a signal of its intent to keep it civil.

Who says people want to keep it civil? Who says people are against the wide open Twitter? Who says they can’t decide for themselves who they want to follow, who they want to interact with, and whom they want to block? If you want to read Alex Jones, that’s on you. Don’t like what he’s writing? Don’t follow. Is he tweeting nasties at you? Block him. We’re adults.

But, it can be a very slippery slope when we start using “values” based on whims. Whose values? Those of the far left?

Of course she jumps into what Trump does on Twitter, because Trump pretty much resided rent free in the heads of all Democrats, before moving to

All this is not to say that fixing Twitter will be easy; in fact, I think at this point it is nearly impossible. Add to that the fact that this is a global issue, making it hard to have any consistent rules that address the complexity of the world and, really, its deep and abiding ugliness.

But will Mr. Dorsey ever stand up to the uglies to protect the rest of us?

I’m an adult: I don’t need Jack Dorsey to protect me proactively. I’ll decide myself.

Interestingly, at the same time Bret Stephens has an opinion piece up defending racist Sarah Jeong

See, when we talk of “values”, again, whose? On one hand, they want to take down Alex Jones. On the other, they’re fine with protecting Jeong. We should also be wondering why a member of the Credentialed Media is advocating private sector censorship.

Read: Paper Who Hired Racist: Values Over Rules Will Totally Save Twitter »

Posted in Unhinged Tools, Wonky Media | 15 Comments | Trackback URL

CoC: The Best Time To Talk About Climate Doom Is During The Summer

By William Teach August 8, 2018 – 3:00 pm

One thing I notice during the warm months is an uptick in stories that mention global warming

From the screed

 “Domino-effect of climate events could move Earth into a ‘hothouse’ state” is how the Guardian described the findings of a study published this week Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The BBC went with “Climate change: ‘Hothouse Earth’ risks even if CO2 emissions slashed”

If you’ve followed the story of the changing environment at all in recent years, you’re likely not surprised by these headlines. The risks of climate change have been clear to us since at least the 1980s, and the predictions of environmental destruction to hit Earth have mostly gotten worse.

That said, there’s still a sizeable population on the planet that doesn’t care about climate change or, worse, denies it’s real. To turn those people around, some of the world’s most preeminent scientists have figured out it makes sense to publish global-warming studies when it’s hot outside.

It was the trick Jim Hansen, one of the world’s leading lights on climate change, used when he gave his now-famous testimony to the US Congress on a blistering hot day in June 1988. In a recent story for the New York Times, Nathaniel Rich shared how the testimony was timed:

In other words, they have to attempt to trick you to get you to believe their “science.”

Read: CoC: The Best Time To Talk About Climate Doom Is During The Summer »

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If All You See…

By William Teach August 8, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is horrible sea flooding because Other People use air conditioning, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post on an actress testing the value of the market.

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Surprise: Warmists Admit Carbon Taxes Are Jobs Killers

By William Teach August 8, 2018 – 10:30 am

This won’t get any airplay here in the U.S., nor most other countries, because it’s inconvenient

https://twitter.com/Blazingcatfur/status/1026989378743062528

The Blazing Cat Fur post leads to this piece in the Toronto Sun (for those not familiar, that’s Canadian PM Justin Trudeau to the left, Climahysteric Minister Cathering Mckenna (liberals were very upset that someone set up a parody account, and got it yanked. There is a new one. She’s also called Climate Barbie)

The Liberals have now admitted the carbon tax is a job-killer

Environment Minister Catherine McKenna admitted an inconvenient truth last week: the Liberal carbon tax would drive jobs out of Canada. The admission came in the form of a partial flip-flop on the issue.

The government quietly posted a document online indicating that 80%-90% of greenhouse gas emissions of large industrial corporations would be exempt from the tax. The reason? The government wants to avoid high costs that push industrial production out of Canada to places without carbon taxes.

But wait; McKenna has told us all along that the carbon tax would actually help our economy. Now she accepts it could simply move business, jobs and emissions out of Canada to more polluting countries where the emissions would ironically be higher. (snip)

So, if the Liberals really cared about the earth, they wouldn’t impose a damaging carbon tax on the world’s cleanest industries. Instead, they would admit the world needs more Canada, and keep industry and jobs here.

It is not clear if the Liberals have accepted this common-sense argument or if McKenna climbed down to avoid having the carbon tax lead to mass layoffs in the middle of the coming election year.

Whatever the reason, it’s problematic that the Liberals are not making similar exemptions for consumers who will pay the tax on 100% of their heat, gas and other fuels. If the Liberals cared as much about hard-working Canadians as they do about large industrial players, Minister McKenna would have offered them a break too. After all, we have to heat our homes. But, unlike industry, we don’t have the option of moving if we can’t afford Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax. So, industrial corporations get a break, but working families pay more. And the government won’t even come clean about how much more.

They don’t care about the average citizen, who would pay $1,000 a year (Canadian money) or more, because those people are stuck. Meanwhile, the same people who push this run around in fossil fueled vehicles and take fossil fueled flights all over, including to climate change conferences which complain about Other People using fossil fuels.

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Illegal Aliens Are Sad That The Detention Centers Are Kept Cold

By William Teach August 8, 2018 – 7:42 am

There’s a simple solution to this issue of what the Washington Post refers to as the “latest source of border controversy” on their web front page: stay home. Don’t come here illegally.

Amid migrants’ complaints of frigid holding cells, a battle for control of border thermostats

The tired and poor masses crossing the border illegally do a lot of huddling after coming to America. It’s the air conditioning.

So notoriously cold are the U.S. Border Patrol’s detention cells that those heading north are warned the first stop will be a hielera, or “icebox.” The shivering stay is a rite of passage, and at the busiest border stations, the floors and benches are crowded with detainees bundled in silver polyethylene sheets, the only blankets made available. Their shifting bodies produce a constant crinkling, like the sound of Christmas gifts being unwrapped for hours on end.

A fight for control of the temperature inside these facilities is the subject of litigation between the U.S. government and immigration advocacy groups who accuse the Border Patrol of using the thermostat as a tool to deter migration and gain leverage over those in custody. While these accusations stretch back years, the uproar triggered by the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” family separation policy has brought new claims of hypothermic misery.

In other words, this was happening under President Obama, but, fable teller Nick Miroff didn’t want to mention his name. Anyhow, yes, groups which support illegal immigration (who should be held responsible for enticing people to make long treks across Central America and Mexico, putting them in danger from the element, gangs, rape, starvation, dysentery, etc) are suing because it’s a bit cold in the detention centers. There’s another solution: catch and deport immediately.

Customs and Border Protection officials vigorously dispute allegations of mistreatment. Many of the migrants in custody are from rural parts of Central America, they note, and simply not accustomed to air conditioning, or what some Border Patrol officials refer to as “refrigerated air.” The agency says temperature settings are never used for punitive purposes and thermostats are checked regularly to ensure they are between 66 and 80 degrees, the range that CBP deemed reasonable under the terms of the Flores settlement.

I keep mine at 72. Most of these centers are in the desert areas of the American Southwest, which gets hot, and we’re used to AC. I’d rather out citizens be comfortable, rather than law breakers.

Driving the air conditioning dispute is the fact that two distinct groups must share the detention facilities — migrants and Border Patrol agents — and they have very different needs.

Our folks come first.

Stories of sleepless nights on concrete floors are repeated throughout migrants’ testimonies in the Flores suit, and the CBP official acknowledged that mats are not always available for adults. “There are facilities that do have mats. There are others that do not,” the official said. “At the larger facilities, there are mats for juveniles.”

Don’t like it? Don’t come.

The inspector, Henry A. Moak Jr., wrote in a June report provided to Gee that during his visits to eight detention facilities, he found only one instance of a temperature setting below the established range.

In most facilities Moak measured, the temperature ranged between 70 and 75 degrees. But in interviews with 38 detainees, many also told Moak they were cold, including one 4-year-old boy from Guatemala. Moak noted that the temperature in the cell was 76.4 degrees, but the boy’s father told him they had not received a blanket or mat after four hours in custody.

If they’re cold, stay in their nations.

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$42 Trillion Over 10 Years: The Cost Of Democratic Socialist Policies

By William Teach August 8, 2018 – 7:26 am

Those evil far-right extremists at Vox are doing their best to highlight how stupid it is to back the Democratic Socialist agenda (which is pretty much the Democratic Party’s agenda)

From the link

Democratic socialism is having a moment. Sen. Bernie Sanders mobilized millions of voters during the 2016 campaign, nominally as a Democrat but with many self-professed socialists in his bandwagon. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will likely bring her own brand of socialism to Congress next year, having knocked off New York Rep. Joe Crowley in a primary.

However, the democratic socialist agenda will face resistance not only from other lawmakers but from basic math. Their promises, which include free college, a single-payer health care system, guaranteed jobs, and more, would require astonishingly high expenditures that would cause the federal deficit to skyrocket. Once the costs become clear, most mainstream politicians and voters will surely balk. Making big promises is one thing; paying for them is another.

These involve policy proposals like Medicare for all, paying off the $1.4 trillion in student loan debt (which comes from the high cost of college run by Democrats for worthless degrees from Democrat run colleges), free college for all, a guaranteed job at $15 for all, and much more. And this is $42 trillion over the baseline spending by Los Federales

According to the left’s own sources, democratic socialism will cost $42.5 trillion in its first decade. How would the US pay for it?

Under the most generous assumptions possible, liberal proposals would cut $8.5 trillion on the spending side. To begin with, state governments no longer burdened with health care costs would save $4.1 trillion, according to the Urban Institute. The popular leftist goal of slashing defense spending down to Europe’s target of 2 percent of GDP, for which there is no plausible blueprint, would nonetheless save $1.9 trillion if achieved, according to CBO data. Charitably assuming that the jobs guarantee would reduce antipoverty spending by one-quarter would save $2.5 trillion.

Paying for the remaining $34 trillion would require nearly doubling federal tax revenues. Let’s examine three paths using data from CBO’s menu of budget savings:

Those three recommendations would be 1) taxing all “rich” people and companies. If you took 100% of their money, you’d get the $34 trillion. Second would be a value added tax (national sales tax). Wait, I thought all this stuff was free? Third would be a payroll tax of 37% on top of the existing payroll tax.

Taxing the rich is not enough. America would need to match, or even surpass, Europe’s enormous tax burden on the middle class. There is no evidence that American voters will accept this level of taxation.

Which is why “Democratic socialists are disingenuously cagey about the exorbitant tax burden they require.” Realistically, this isn’t the old saying by Margaret Thatcher about socialists eventually running out of other people’s money: they’re coming directly for your money right from the get go.

Let’s not forget that these are the non-partisan and liberal sourced numbers. When you get to the real numbers, they would be much, much worse.

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Bummer: Businesses Are Refusing To Hire Illegal Alien DACA Kids

By William Teach August 7, 2018 – 5:22 pm

This is shocking stuff, folks. Businesses are favoring Americans and those who are lawfully present under federal law over illegal aliens. No worries, Vox is on it!

Some businesses are refusing to hire DACA recipients. They are fighting back.

Daniel Marques would probably be working as a financial adviser for a big investment firm in New Jersey right now.

David Rodriguez might have landed an internship with Procter & Gamble in Miami.

Sandy Vasquez might be an engineering intern in Silicon Valley.

Ruben Juarez might have snagged a finance internship in Connecticut.

All four of them went to college and graduated with honors. And all four of them say they were denied jobs, even though they had valid work permits because they are part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA.

The Obama-era program began in 2012 and offers temporary work authorization and deportation relief to qualified undocumented immigrants under the age of 38 who grew up in the United States. In January and February, two federal courts ordered the Department of Homeland Security to continue renewing work permits for DACA holders after President Donald Trump tried to end the program in 2017.

Here’s the thing: even Obama said it was extra-legal and un-Constitutional. Furthermore, it was only meant to be temporary relief: at what point does it end? Anyhow, what are these entitled illegal aliens doing

As the legal battle over DACA continues to wind its way through the courts, a related legal battle is on the rise. DACA immigrants are suing US employers for denying them jobs because they aren’t citizens. Despite presenting valid work permits from US Citizenship and Immigration Services, recruiters at several large corporations told them they only hire US citizens or immigrants with green cards. Some said they only hire employees whose work permits don’t expire (DACA must be renewed every two years).

DACA workers say these actions are a form of citizenship discrimination prohibited under the Civil Rights Act of 1866. At least four DACA workers who were denied jobs in New York, New Jersey, Florida, and California are suing the companies that turned them away using that argument.

The outcome of these class-action lawsuits has huge implications for American companies, and for the estimated 700,000 immigrants with DACA status who are living in the United States. A verdict in favor of the workers could force businesses to change the way they treat job candidates enrolled in DACA, giving them the same chance to land a job as anyone else. It would also open the door to other groups of authorized workers who are affected by some of these hiring restrictions: refugees, asylum holders, and victims of human trafficking.

That’s right, they are suing, despite not actually being, you know, citizens. They have no actual standing under federal law, and, realistically, this could end up utterly backfiring on them if the rulings use actual federal law regarding these people being unlawfully present in the U.S. They could find out that not only are they not Entitled to a job, but that they shouldn’t even be in the U.S. and find themselves being deported.

And this just goes to the point that rather than be humbled and coming with their hats in hand, these illegal aliens are demanding that the U.S. and its citizens give them stuff, and they’ll sue to get it.

Read: Bummer: Businesses Are Refusing To Hire Illegal Alien DACA Kids »

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