Will Brandon Admin Rely On Snitches To Enforce Workplace Mandate?

By William Teach November 12, 2021 – 6:45 am

Hey, remember when Dementia Joe was all about #Unity, bringing Americans together, not dividing us? How’s that working out?

Biden Admin to Rely on Workplace Whistleblowers to Enforce Vaccine Mandate

The Biden administration will rely on workplace whistleblowers to enforce its new vaccine mandate for companies with more than 100 employees, given that the U.S. Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) does not have nearly enough inspectors to check in on every company impacted by the rule, which will effect an estimated 84 million employees, according to a new report.

A federal appeals court in New Orleans last week issued an injunction temporarily halting the Biden administration’s vaccination requirement for large employers, citing “grave statutory and constitutional issues.” However, if the policy goes into effect — requiring workers to be fully vaccinated by January 4 or be tested weekly and wear a mask on the job — the Associated Press reports that it is concerned employees who will largely be responsible for helping OSHA enforce the mandate.

Debbie Berkowitz, a former OSHA chief of staff who is a fellow at Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor, told the AP that there is “no army of OSHA inspectors that is going to be knocking on employers’ door of even calling them.”

“They’re going to rely on workers and their union representatives to file complaints where the company is totally flouting the law,” she added.

Obviously, this is not the Let’s Go Brandon admin saying they will do this, but, the article points out that 20-25% of OSHA inspections are due to complaints. How many Vaccine Cultists will file complaints against their own companies? How many of them will be Demanding that they be told who is unvaccinated and who’s supposed to be tested on a constant basis? Information they are not entitled to? Think they won’t? This is 2021, people demand information they aren’t entitled to all the time these days.

Meanwhile

(Business Insider) Two businesses with just under 100 employees have told The New York Times they’re wary about hiring more staff as the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate looms.

The Times reported that Apex/Rentco Trailer Sales & Service, of Jeffersonville, Indiana, employed 98 people and was seeking to fill open positions.

Christie Thompson, head of human resources, told the publication it would be a “nightmare” if her company had to comply with the vaccine mandate. Thompson estimated that three-quarters of the company’s employees were unvaccinated, per The Times.

Dawn Stanhope, president of Boys & Girls Clubs of Manatee County, in Florida, told The Times that she “might lose a quarter of our staff” if the vaccine mandate applied to her company, which employed 96 people and had struggled to hire additional workers. “It’s easier not to have the conflict and potential of losing people,” she added.

How many more will limit hiring? Also, I’ve missed it, but, what about part timers? Do they count towards 100?

(ABC News) Pamela Millwood isn’t against getting vaccinated. But at the federal prison where she works in Jesup, Georgia, many of her coworkers are skeptical or downright opposed to getting a shot.

The result, she predicts, will be an exodus of some 30% to 40% of staff this holiday season, when prison employees will fall under a sweeping mandate that requires the nation’s 2 million civilian workers to become fully immunized against COVID-19.

Who’ll staff prisons, particularly in low vax areas where they’ve just been living with COVID? Northeast liberals? California liberals?

Read: Will Brandon Admin Rely On Snitches To Enforce Workplace Mandate? »

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COP26 Wind Farm Paid To Turn Off, Costing UK Taxpayers $670K

By William Teach November 11, 2021 – 3:00 pm

It’s a nice scam if you’re making cash off of it (via Jo Nova)

From the link

Bill-payers have forked out more than £500,000 to make Cop26’s official wind farm switch off their turbines so far during the summit.

The Griffin wind farm in Perthshire is powering the climate summit at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow.

SSE officials have claimed that all mains energy being used by delegates at the venue is 100% being generated by the turbines in Perthshire.

However, it has been revealed that the wind farm is creating too much energy because it’s too windy, meaning that the government are paying them to switch off the turbines.

Between the start of Cop26 on November 1 and November 7, the owners of Griffin wind farm were paid £519,778 to switch off.

The cost is then added to domestic electricity bills, which means the bill payers across the country will have to foot this.

That’s insane. And, since COP26 signed up to use Griffin, it means they are sticking the taxpayers with a big bill.

Read: COP26 Wind Farm Paid To Turn Off, Costing UK Taxpayers $670K »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach November 11, 2021 – 1:00 pm

…is a wonderful greenspace in the middle of a big city full of fellow Warmists, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Climate Depot, with a post on Warmists Jeff Bezos buying a beachfront mansion.

Read: If All You See… »

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Federal Judge Blocks Texas’ Mask Mandate Or Something

By William Teach November 11, 2021 – 10:30 am

So, let’s see, government can mandate masks, but, cannot mandate that government not mandate masks?

Judge rules Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s ban on school mask mandates violates federal law

A federal judge in Texas ruled Wednesday that Gov. Greg Abbott’s executive order banning mask mandates in schools violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, setting the stage for school districts in the state to decide whether they want to impose mask rules.

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel wrote in a 29-page ruling that the ADA, a federal law enacted in 1990, supersedes Abbott’s July order banning facial coverings in schools.

“The spread of COVID-19 poses an even greater risk for children with special health needs. Children with certain underlying conditions who contract COVID-19 are more likely to experience severe acute biological effects and to require admission to a hospital and the hospital’s intensive-care unit,” Yeakel said. “This includes children with conditions including, Down syndrome, organ transplants, lung conditions, heart conditions, and weakened immune systems.”

Yeakel added, “The evidence presented by Plaintiffs establishes that Plaintiffs are being denied the benefits of in-person learning on an equal basis as their peers without disabilities.”

The plaintiffs can wear masks voluntarily, right? No one is stopping them. Besides the fact that masking barely makes a difference, even if worn correctly, which most people, including those in the Mask Cult, do not. This is the problem with the Big Federal Government laws: what seems common sense, the ADA, is used in ways it was never intended. People, including courts, continuously find new ways to use it, when most everything should be the responsibility of the States, per the Constitution. Hence, things that should stay in states are pushed into federal court. Why would a federal court be involved in a dispute within a state? This is not a Constitutional issue.

“Governor Abbott’s executive order clearly violates federal law, and Attorney General Paxton’s enforcement of the order against school districts is now stopped,” said Kym Davis Rogers, an attorney for the group, in a statement.

“As the court found, Texas is not above federal law, and state officials cannot prevent school districts from providing accommodations to students who are especially vulnerable to the risks of COVID-19. We are thankful that school districts can now take the steps necessary to protect these students. No student should be forced to make the choice of forfeiting their education or risking their health, and now they won’t have to.”

Here’s a question: what if a school doesn’t want to implement a mask mandate, and one or two parents lose their minds? Will they force all the kids to do so with a lawsuit? At a point where schools are removing their mask mandate, and, heck, a goodly chunk of Europe did not have mask mandates for kids. If masks work, why do we keep seeing the Elites playing mask theater? Here’s Pelosi, one of the latest.

At this time, there is no word for Greg Abbott or AG Ken Paxton on whether they will appeal. Meanwhile

Highly-vaccinated Vermont has more COVID-19 cases than ever. Why is this happening?

As Vermont reports higher than ever COVID-19 case rates, state health officials have been trying to understand why.

How can a state that did so well during the first part of the pandemic — even garnering national recognition — be doing so much worse now?

“There is not one simple answer,” said Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine during a news conference Tuesday. “But, there are clearly factors that have come together to create the situation that we’re in now.”

Positive cases have been climbing in Vermont in recent weeks despite the state’s having one of the highest vaccination rates against the virus in the U.S. Cases rose last year around this time as well as people spent more time indoors, but the state still enjoyed one of the lowest case rates in the country then.

Cases in Vermont have increased by about 55% over the last 14 days, according to a modeling report by Financial Regulation Commissioner Mike Pieciak. Some recent days have seen daily cases spike above 400 — the highest Vermont has seen since the beginning of the pandemic.

Vermont is an easy Democrat state. They voted 66% for Let’s Go Brandon. So, even though there’s no mask mandates, you can bet the mask fetishists in the Dem party are wearing them everywhere. So, strange that COVID is rising, eh?

Read: Federal Judge Blocks Texas’ Mask Mandate Or Something »

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Does Anyone Know How Developing Countries Are Spending That Sweet, Sweet Climate Cash?

By William Teach November 11, 2021 – 7:24 am

Starting with the “historic” Paris Climate Agreement (historic apparently means “almost none following their pledges), countries were agreeing to send lots of their taxpayer money to developing nations with zero strings attached, because 1st World nations owe 3rd world nations for being great or something. How’s that working out?

No one knows how $80 billion in climate financing was spent in 2019

Over the past decade, rich nations and private enterprises have raised at least $500 billion to help developing countries cope with climate change. This financing plan, hatched in 2009, was supposed to build to an annual mobilization of $100 billion by 2020, and was designed to offset the unfairness of climate change—of poor countries suffering because rich countries had already emitted their way to wealth.

Developed countries, as we’re finding out now, have missed that $100 billion target. Just as importantly, though, it turns out that no one—no individual, no government, no multilateral agency—knows precisely how all this climate funding is being spent, or even if it’s being spent at all. Even the best such database, maintained by OECD, is a broad-brush one and has many gaps—not least in the details of private financing. The very term “climate financing,” in fact, has often proved to be slippery and malleable, defined by parties according to their own need or convenience.

At the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, scheduled to end on Nov. 12, ever-bigger climate financing numbers are being proposed: $130 trillion from a private sector consortium, an annual $1 trillion demanded by India, an annual $1.3 trillion demanded by African nations. But without a way to track how this money is used, these larger numbers “feel like greenwashing,” said Liane Schalatek, associate director of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung, a policy think tank headquartered in Berlin. “It isn’t just, ‘Tell me the number,’ it should also be, ‘Show me how the number is computed,’ otherwise it’s a fig leaf.”

Hilariously, this is being Blamed on the 1st World nations as “greenwashing” (more on that here)

Greenwashing is the process of conveying a false impression or providing misleading information about how a company’s products are more environmentally sound. Greenwashing is considered an unsubstantiated claim to deceive consumers into believing that a company’s products are environmentally friendly.

Might this be the fault of the U.N., which fails to track where all that money is going and what it’s being used for? We know that 3rd world shitholes are simply going to keep aid money for the leaders, rather than actually doing what was intended for the money. And spend it on other things, like buying coal power plants from China.

Insofar as some funds are more important than others, these climate financing funds are among the most important quantities of money in the world; human civilization itself hinges on whether these funds are raised in full and spent well. The absence of a detailed, publicly available account of this financing, said Schalatek, risks all sorts of omissions: donors mislabelling their funding, or money being misspent, or an under-estimation of the true volume of money required. Which, in turn, risks leaving the world far less prepared for climate change than it needs to be.

Hinges. What a joke.

The data available on these funds, Schalatek said, resembles an onion. At the core are projects for which the most details are available: those financed through multilateral agencies. Schalatek’s team tracks a portion of these, “covering the most important multilateral climate funds,” she said, “although we don’t know what fraction it is of the overall multilateral funding.” In the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung database, for instance, grants can be found:

They know a little bit, but, not much, and, really, the projects aren’t really much of anything. Let’s just keep giving more and more money to other nations for a scam.

Read: Does Anyone Know How Developing Countries Are Spending That Sweet, Sweet Climate Cash? »

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Happy Bidenflation! Fastest Rate Since 1990

By William Teach November 11, 2021 – 6:44 am

Some of you might remember 1990. Joe Biden had already been in the U.S. Senate for 17 years. He hadn’t anything by that point, and didn’t do anything after. Which is perfect, because he’s still doing nothing

Consumer Prices Soar 6.2%, Fastest Rate of Inflation Since 1990

Consumer prices rose at their fastest rate in decades in October, data from the Department of Labor showed Wednesday.

The Consumer Price Index rose 0.9 percent in October from September, exceeding expectations for a 0.6 percent rise. Compared with the prior October, prices are up 6.2 percent, exceeding expectations for a 5.8 percent rise and the highest annual rate since 1990.

Excluding food and energy, two categories of goods that are central to the cost-of-living to households but are so volatile that economists look beyond them to see underlying inflationary trends, and prices rose 0.6 percent on a monthly basis and 4.6 percent annually. Both exceeded expectations.

Earlier this year, inflationary pressures were largely concentrated in a few areas of the economy, leading Fed officials and others to expect inflation to taper off when temporary supply bottlenecks cleared up and demand surges related to the reopening of parts of the economy subsided.

Instead, the tide of rising prices has accelerated, broadened, and become stickier. The Department of Labor described October inflation as “broad-based, with increases in the indexes for energy, shelter, food, used cars and trucks, and new vehicles among the larger contributors.” Energy prices rose 4.8 percent in the month, with gasoline prices rising 6.1 percent compared with the prior month. The food index rose 0.9 percent in the month and 5.3 percent over 12-months, with food at home rising one percent on a monthly basis and 5.4 percent annually.

Let’s be fair, a goodly chunk of this has nothing to do with Biden or his Democratic Comrades: we should be blaming China for releasing COVID19. Much of this could have been happening if Trump had won re-election. The difference is, Trump wouldn’t have done everything possible to exasperate the problems caused by COVID like Biden. Other countries are dealing with so many of the same issues, yet, their leaders are not working hard to make them worse, they’re working to help solve them. Which is what Trump would have done. Biden is in Clueless Land.

And Democrats are still trying to pass the Build Back Better bill, which will make things even worse. They will supposedly vote on it Friday.

In all my years, I cannot remember a poll with that question.

Read: Happy Bidenflation! Fastest Rate Since 1990 »

Posted in Democrats, Economy, Joe Biden | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: Warmists Who Won’t Practice What They Preach Say Draft Agreement Not Strong Enough

By William Teach November 10, 2021 – 3:00 pm

Must be nice to take a long fossil fueled trip to tell Other People how to live their lives

Activists, experts say draft U.N. climate change agreement isn’t strong enough

The first draft of an agreement to combat climate change being negotiated at the U.N. Climate Change Conference was released early Wednesday morning, and while certain provisions represent landmark progress in the effort to avert catastrophic climate change, activists and experts say it still falls short of what is needed in several key areas.

“This is not a plan to solve the climate crisis,” said Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, at a Wednesday morning press briefing at the climate summit, also known as COP26. “It won’t give the kids on the street the confidence they need,” she added, referring to the mostly young activists who have been marching during the conference in Glasgow to demand stronger climate action.

“The text is not as strong as the political direction given last week,” said Alden Meyer, who studies U.S. climate policy for European think tank E3G, at the Wednesday briefing.

“This draft COP decision text is too weak,” said Tracy Carty, head of Oxfam’s COP26 delegation, in a statement. “It fails to respond to the climate emergency being faced by millions of people now who are living with unprecedented extreme weather and being pushed further into poverty.”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: why don’t they starting living the Net Zero life themselves? It’s easy, right? But, this is not about climate, not about science, it’s about authoritarian government, and the little idiots pushing this don’t seem to understand that these laws and rules will impact their own lives negatively.

Obama on climate change: We can’t afford anyone on the sidelines

Former President Barack Obama comments on international cooperation to end climate change at the COP26 international climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

From the guy who took a fossil fueled flight from his fancy, 1%er beach front house.

Ocasio-Cortez in Glasgow: ‘America is back’ as a leader on climate change, and this time ‘it is different’

At the U.N. Climate Change Conference on Tuesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said that “America is back” as a leader on climate change and predicted that the Biden administration’s Build Back Better plan and its wide-ranging climate provisions would soon be passed into law.

“America is back at COP, on the international stage as a leader on climate action,” the Green New Deal co-author said at an event alongside other Democratic lawmakers. “One thing that I think is so exciting about this time is that when we say that the United States is back, it’s not just that we’re back in the way that the United States was pursuing climate policy before,” she added. “It is different.”

Is that the same GND she never pushed to be passed? Who paid for her flight to Glasgow? Was it commercial or private? Why would an elected Socialist want to implement so many governmental controls on citizens, yet, refuse to do much of anything in her own life?

Read: Bummer: Warmists Who Won’t Practice What They Preach Say Draft Agreement Not Strong Enough »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach November 10, 2021 – 1:00 pm

…is an inland sea created by carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Chicks On the Right, with a post on the state with the highest vaccination rate (Vermont) seeing a big surge in COVID cases.

Read: If All You See… »

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Use A Payment App? The IRS Will Now Require It To Disclose Transactions

By William Teach November 10, 2021 – 10:30 am

Obviously, it’s more than young folks who use lots of these payment apps, but, they compromise the biggest chunk. Of 10.2 million users (2017 numbers, can’t find anything newer), 7.4 million are under 34. A lot of these younger folks are about to get a big lesson in government intrusion

If you use Venmo, PayPal or other payment apps this tax rule change may affect you

If you’re among the millions of people who use payment apps like PayPal, Venmo, Square, and other third-party electronic payment networks, you could be affected by a tax reporting change that goes into effect in January.

Payment app providers will have to start reporting to the IRS a user’s business transactions if, in aggregate, they total $600 or more for the year. A business transaction is defined as payment for a good or service.

Prior to this change, app providers only had to send the IRS a Form 1099-K if an individual account had at least 200 business transactions in a year and if those transactions combined resulted in gross payments of at least $20,000.

The expansion of the reporting rule is the result of a provision in the American Rescue Plan, which was signed into law earlier this year. The ultimate aim of the provision is to clamp down on unreported, taxable income. (snip)

The rule change also does not make other transactions suddenly taxable. For instance, your friend sending you money on Venmo to reimburse you for their half of last night’s dinner tab will not become taxable.

The biggest change is the increased visibility the IRS will have into business income transactions, both those that have always been reported by the income recipient and those that haven’t been.

The IRS is now going to have an easier view of the transactions of most people who use these apps, because most will surely hit the $600 threshold. Remember when Democrats told us that they wanted to go after The Rich, not everyone else? How’s that working out, younger folks who voted Democrat?

In theory, the only people who should be worried about the rule change are those who weren’t reporting all their business income in the first place. In other words, “those who are tax evaders, who violated the self-reporting rules and utilized the old thresholds to avoid paying taxes,” said Scott Talbott, spokesman for the Electronic Transaction Association.

Yeah, so, going after low hanging fruit.

But in reality, tax experts say, the threshold change could mean some administrative hassles for many tax filers who use payment apps, whether or not they’re engaged in business transactions.

“These third-party settlement entities may not know for sure if they are dealing with a business or an individual or if they are dealing with a payment for goods or services, or a non-taxable transaction. It is going to be up to the taxpayer, if they receive a 1099 in any form for a nontaxable event, such as splitting rent among roommates, splitting a dinner bill, or even selling something on eBay for less than you paid for it, to explain to the IRS that the 1099 was received for a non-taxable transaction,” said Mark Luscombe, principal analyst for tax publisher Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting.

Is it any wonder why Biden’s agenda includes way more funding in order for the IRS to hire a lot more agents? The reconciliation bill would reportedly add 87,000 new agents. Which seems a crazy number, when the IRS only has around 74,000 employees now. So, let’s do something we do in the the sales world: cut it in half. Let’s say it’s only 43.5K. Too much? 21.75K. How’s that number work for you? Think they’re just going after rich folks?

Read: Use A Payment App? The IRS Will Now Require It To Disclose Transactions »

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Thomas Friedman: Why Won’t You Peons Just Allow Government To Force You To Make Lifestyle Changes For ‘Climate Change’

By William Teach November 10, 2021 – 8:24 am

The NY Times’ Thomas Friedman is very afraid, you know. But, has failed to note what lifestyle changes he’s made personally, along with what changes the NY Times has made at their corporate office

The Climate Summit Has Me Very Energized, and Very Afraid

I spent last week talking to all sorts of people gathered for the U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, and it left me with profoundly mixed emotions.

Having been to most of the climate summits since Bali in 2007, I can tell you this one had a very different feel. I was awed by the energy of all the youth on the streets demanding that we rise to the challenge of global warming and by some of the amazing new technological and market fixes being proposed by innovators and investors. This was not the old days — everyone waiting for the deals cut by the priesthood of climate diplomats huddled behind closed doors. This was the many talking to the many — and I am buoyed by that.

Hmm. He took a long, fossil fueled flight over to Glasgow for a conference on killing off fossil fuels?

But for me, there was one question that hovered over every promise coming out of this summit: When you see how hard it’s been for governments to get their citizens to just put on a mask in stores, or to get vaccinated, to protect themselves, their neighbors and their grandparents from being harmed or killed by Covid-19, how in the world are we going to get big majorities to work together globally and make the lifestyle sacrifices needed to dampen the increasingly destructive effects of global warming — for which there are treatments but no vaccine? That’s magical thinking, and it demands a realistic response.

Interesting. He sees the resistance from people in wearing masks, which barely work to prevent the spread of the Chinese coronavirus, the resistance to Governmental force. The above photo is from the article. That’s a lot of people gathered closely together without masks, eh? Sure, they’re outside, but, every government recommends wearing masks when outside in large groups. Those are all the type of people who would normally Cooperate with the dictates of government.

Further, and more important, how many of them took long fossil fueled trips to Glasgow? How many of them, the True Believers, the foot soldiers of the Cult of Climastrology, have made lifestyle sacrifices voluntarily? No more fossil fueled travel (whoops, too late), live in a tiny home, make their own clothes, stop eating meat, etc and so on? Giving even more of their earned money to government? Giving up their liberty and freedom?

Really, this is Friedman letting the cat out the bag in noting that people will have to give up their modern lifestyles. We are constantly told that Doing Something about ‘climate change’ won’t require much if anything. Next thing you know we have Warmists like Friedman telling us the truth.

Good news, Gen Zers: You won the debate on climate change. And thanks for that. Both governments and business are now saying: “We get it. We’re on it.” The bad news: There is still a huge gap between what scientists say is needed by way of immediately reducing use of the coal, oil and gas that drive global warming and what governments and business — and, yes, average citizens — are ready to do if it comes to a choice of heat or eat.

Oops. We can eat or heat. Are you sure you want to continue this, Thom?

We need to stop deluding ourselves that we can have it all — that we can do foolish things like close down nuclear plants in Germany that provided massive amounts of clean energy, just to show how green we are, and then ignore the fact that without sufficient renewables in place, Germany is now back to burning more of the dirtiest coal. This moral preening is really counterproductive.

On, that, he makes a good point. Good luck trying to sell that to other climate cultists. Because doom is coming, and if government doesn’t Do Something, like limit your lifestyle, we are doomed, as the rest of his piece notes

Two planets are talking to each other. One looks like a beautiful blue marble and the other a dirty brown ball.

“What on earth happened to you?” the beautiful planet asks the brown one.

“I had Homo sapiens,” answers the brown planet.

“Don’t worry,” says the blue planet. “They don’t last long.”

Read: Thomas Friedman: Why Won’t You Peons Just Allow Government To Force You To Make Lifestyle Changes For ‘Climate Change’ »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Climate Cult, Global Warming | 5 Comments | Trackback URL
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