California Apparently Has A “Criminal Tourism” Industry

By William Teach March 15, 2022 – 6:30 pm

Well, sure, why not? Their laws are extremely soft on crime, and unhinged leftist prosecutors will most likely let the perps go….but, there’s actually something else going on. The perps, if caught, will still be let go, though

“Criminal tourism” apparently plaguing well-off Northern California towns

Hillsborough, California — This quiet town has seen an increase in burglaries over the past four months and, reports CBS San Francisco, police say a specific group could be responsible.

Many of the sophisticated burglary crews are coming from South America for “criminal tourism” and targeting wealthy communities, according to a community alert sent Sunday.

Residential security video shows a suspect dropping to the ground before looking around at about midnight on March 11.

A getaway car pulls up as burglars carrying stolen property load up the vehicle. Police say the thieves also stole an SUV from the garage. Detectives announced Sunday they’d recovered the stolen car and processed it for evidence.

Did you catch that?

Police believe South American Theft Groups (SATG) often enter the U.S. legally and rotate members out of the country in a matter of weeks. Such crime rings were first investigated in Hillsborough in 2018. Suspects often use luxury cars to easily blend into their target communities, police said.

Because Democrats have made the border so easy to cross, so easy to enter the country, these groups come in, burglarize rich areas of California, and scoot. If caught, they can simply claim asylum, be released, and then leave the country. It is strange to blame them, though: that’s a long trip from South America to way up near San Francisco. Are they flying in? Driving across the border? Have any been caught? But, are all the groups from South America, or, just some? Could the rest be Americans looking to take advantage of the lax prosecution and “hate the rich” policies of the Democrats?

“I’ve been seeing more policemen driving around at night, people being more concerned recently; because I’m very young and drive a black van. Recently I was stopped by a woman thinking I was a burglar — thief — and asking me what I’m doing here,” said Hillsborough resident Matt Gouley.

And, because this is an affluent area (it’s just south of Poop City, er, San Francisco), there are more law enforcement officers deployed to the area.

Read: California Apparently Has A “Criminal Tourism” Industry »

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Green Push To Help Skyrocket UK Power Bills 14 Times Faster Than Wages

By William Teach March 15, 2022 – 3:00 pm

The green push isn’t 100% at fault, but, mostly at fault

UK Energy Bills to Rise 14 Times Faster than Wages Amid Green Push, Sanctions War

British energy bills look set to increase some 14 times faster than British wages in 2022, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has warned.

“[G]as and electricity bills are set to increase by 54 per cent when the price cap set by Ofgem is increased in April,” the umbrella organisation said at the weekend, referencing Britain’s Office of Gas and Electricity Markets regulator.

“[B]y contrast average weekly wages are set to rise by just 3.75 per cent per cent in 2022,” they added, suggesting that “record-high” bills could effectively wipe out people’s pay rises.

“[Y]ears of wage stagnation, and cuts to social security, have left millions badly exposed to sky-high bills,” commented the union body’s general secretary, Frances O’Grady.

“With households across Britain pushed to the brink, the government must do far more to help workers with crippling energy costs,” the trade unionist went on, suggesting a “windfall tax on oil and gas profits” and an increase in welfare benefits to tackle the crisis.

Britain’s oil and gas industry is not the cash cow it once was, however, with a notionally right-wing government increasingly obsessed with green policies and achieving “net-zero” having already allowed regulators to block the development of a major gas field in the North Sea.

So, of course the Progressives want to redistribute Other People’s money, rather than actually looking to fix the root causes.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson, going against his pre-premiership principles, has also continued the effective ban on the exploitation of Britain’s rich on-shore shale gas reserves instituted by fellow Conservative Party prime minister Theresa May — although Brexit minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has signalled that this may finally be reversed as the energy crisis worsens.

All the little people advocating that Government Do Something about the climate crisis scam should take a hard look, because this is what the policies lead to: sky high energy prices, which cause the cost of food, goods, and everything else to rise, while their wages and buying power decline.

Read: Green Push To Help Skyrocket UK Power Bills 14 Times Faster Than Wages »

Posted in Energy, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach March 15, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is a horrible, evil, no good fossil fueled grill, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Diogenes’ Middle Finger, with a post on the NY Times admitting how bad things are for Democrats and Brandon.

Doubleshot of the front side of the photo below the fold, check out Gates Of Vienna, with a post on the 5th Balkan war.

Read More »

Read: If All You See… »

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NY Times: The Whole Point Of The Constitution Was To Weaken The States, You Know

By William Teach March 15, 2022 – 10:35 am

I debated touching this one, because it is a long opinion peace by Excitable Jamelle Bouie, which would require a long, long post. One which attempts to rewrite the Constitution and the point in order to invest the federal government with all the power. One which you folks can figure out in a heartbeat

The Whole Point of the Constitution Was to Weaken the States

As millions of Americans see it, the Constitution was written to protect and extend the powers and prerogatives of the states. It established a “limited” national government and preserved, for state governments, any number of rights and responsibilities.

The whole point of the Constitution, in this view, is to restrain the federal government as much as possible. If there is one reason, beyond partisanship, that anyone is attracted to a plainly deficient idea like the “independent state legislature” doctrine (which I wrote about last week), it is that it’s in line with the widespread belief that state governments have pride of place within the American constitutional order.

It’s a cute start, but, the entire point of the Constitution was to invest certain powers in the federal government, in order to bring together all the states under one banner, something that was missing with the Articles of Confederation. With the AC you essentially had 13 separate countries thinking about doing their own thing. Let’s remember, the word “state”, at the time, really referred to nations. When they play Hail To The Chief, the chief of what? Of state. State meant nation. A new term came about because we called the former colonies states: nation-state. Well, the Constitution invested the power to raise an army, national monetary policy (rather than each state having their own), control of national borders, and more. But, they were limited and specific, with everything else left to the states.

And the People. All these leftist pundits forget about that.

But this is a misunderstanding. Even in the age when state governments were more independent and autonomous than they are today — the nearly 80 years between ratification and Appomattox — it was still understood that states were subordinate to the federal government. In turn, the federal government had considerable power to act on and influence the states. Why else would the statesmen of antebellum South Carolina develop a theory of nullification, if not to challenge the prevailing view that states were bound to submit to the will of national government?

But, only on certain things. Things laid out specifically in writing. The Senate was meant to be comprised of people who specifically represented the will of each state, as appointed by each state’s general assembly. They were ambassadors from the states, who weren’t concerned with the national parties.

Go back a little further, to the first years of the American republic, and you will see that one of the key goals of the Constitution was to curb the power of the states and leash them to the broader authority of a new national government led by a powerful legislature and an unusually strong elected executive.

You can see where Jamelle is going with this, right? That the federal government is the supreme everything, that it is the only rule that matters, no matter what the issue. That there should be this Centralized government which can dictate all things. Something the Framers really, really did not want, understanding that the governments of the states were much closer to the citizens, understanding their needs and wants, much better than people divorced from reality in tiny D.C.

Jamelle continues with his misreading for many more paragraphs, ending with

Remembering that the Constitution was written in significant part to weaken and undermine state governments is, I think, the first step toward asserting the power of Congress, not just over the states but over institutions, like the courts, whose power has run far ahead of our system’s checks and balances.

And this is how you create an authoritarian system. Idiots like Jamelle never seem to realize that this would negatively affect their own lives. But, go ahead and try, and see how fast the nation splits in two for real.

Read: NY Times: The Whole Point Of The Constitution Was To Weaken The States, You Know »

Posted in Constitution, Liberal World | 5 Comments | Trackback URL

Australian Climate Cult Kids See Court Win Overturned

By William Teach March 15, 2022 – 7:15 am

The shame here is that neither the government nor the court pointed out that the kids could practice what they preach

Children’s climate change case overturned on appeal as Federal Court dismisses government’s ‘duty of care’

Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley has successfully argued she does not have a duty of care to protect young people from climate change when assessing fossil fuel projects.

The ruling of the full bench of the Federal Court today overturned an earlier win by a group of eight children, who brought a class action on behalf of all Australian children that temporarily established the new common-law duty of care.

Experts say the children are likely to appeal against the decision in the High Court, but in the meantime, the ruling removes the duty of care that was established by Justice Mordecai Bromberg.

The class action, led by teenager Anj Sharma, argued that the environment minister had a duty of care to protect young people from climate change, and that this needed to be a consideration in the approval process for projects that would produce greenhouse gas.

The original class action also argued that digging up and burning coal would make climate change worse and harm young people in the future.

The earlier win, now overturned, led to headlines around the world. The world-first case relied on common-law principles to establish the duty of care, and so was relevant to other common-law countries including England, the United States and New Zealand.

And now, with the loss, you aren’t seeing many headlines around the world. Huh. The government should take away the use of fossil fueled buses and energy for the cult kids, see how they like that.

Read: Australian Climate Cult Kids See Court Win Overturned »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 1 Comment | Trackback URL

Democrats Have A Plan To Lower Gas Prices Or Something

By William Teach March 15, 2022 – 7:00 am

Unsurprisingly, the plan is about taking profits from companies and redistributing it

Dems push plan to tax oil companies’ profits, send checks to Americans during Russia-Ukraine price spike

unintended consequencesRep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse are pushing a bill they say will help bring relief from high gas prices to Americans – as energy industry critics argue it would do the exact opposite.

The proposal, which comes as Russia’s war on Ukraine delivers a shock to global energy prices, is called the “Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax.” According to Khanna, D-Calif., and Whitehouse, D-R.I., the bill would levy a tax on oil barrels sold by large producers “equal to 50 percent of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the pre-pandemic average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019.”

The money from that tax would be sent to consumers as a quarterly rebate, according to a description of the bill, with a cutoff for single people making $75,000 or more and families making $150,000 or more.  (snip)

The tax would only affect to companies that extract over 300,000 barrels of oil per day, applying to oil extracted both domestically and worldwide, according to a press release from Khanna’s office. That threshold would exempt “[s]maller companies accounting for roughly 70 percent of the domestic production… so oil giants like Exxon Mobil and Chevron cannot simply gouge consumers further without the threat of losing market share,” it said.

“We’ve seen this script before, and we cannot allow the fossil fuel industry to once again collect a massive windfall by taking advantage of an international crisis,” Whitehouse said. A press release from Whitehouse and Khanna said the increase in gas prices, “is not justified by increases in the cost of domestic production, but is driven by international markets controlled by fossil fuel cartels.”

Tell me you don’t know how the commodities market works without telling me you don’t know how it works. Oil companies are not setting the prices. They generally make around 10 cents on the dollar. And this bill would be immediately litigated, and the 1983 Ptasynski v United States may well be revisited on the constitutionality. Don’t think the oil companies will sit there atnd take it.

Energy industry representatives, however, are pushing back against the proposal, arguing that it may have the exact opposite of its intended effect.

“Policies like a so-called windfall profits tax are misguided and would likely backfire by further driving up energy costs for American families and businesses,” American Exploration and Production Council CEO Anne Bradbury said.

Well, this is what Democrats think is wise policy, and, really, they do not care if it drives prices up, because they get to redistribute money, gaining voters who are beholden to government.

Read: Democrats Have A Plan To Lower Gas Prices Or Something »

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Climate Doom Demands Same Attention As Ukraine Or Something

By William Teach March 14, 2022 – 3:00 pm

But, of course the climate cultists will continue to use Russia invading Ukraine to push their cult doctrine

Climate change demands same kind of attention, collaboration as war in Ukraine

Three serious dangers have confronted the world in recent years: COVID, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and climate change. Although the COVID death rate worldwide remains over 5,000 a day, international efforts to control it have met with considerable success. But the other two threats are rapidly worsening and need immediate and continued attention.

On Feb. 28, while the world was horrified by the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Vladimir Putin’s military forces, the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was published.

Hoesung Lee, chair of the IPCC, described it as “a dire warning about the consequences of inaction. It shows that climate change is a grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet.” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the report “a damning indictment of failed climate leadership.”

Unfortunately, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has largely crowded out other news in most of the world. The invasion, following the long, divisive battle to control COVID, has left people with frayed nerves, too burdened with worries to think about climate change. But the radically worsening climate cries for our immediate and continued attention. (snip)

The unwillingness of many Americans to do their part in controlling COVID raises the deeply concerning possibility that too many of us may also refuse to do what’s needed to stop the world’s temperature rise and the increasingly catastrophic weather events it causes. But our failure would allow a transformation of the world into one that humans have never known and in which we were not designed to exist.

Well, you know, cultists could be as intense as they were with Wuhan flu, wearing their masks everywhere when not required, double masking, going Karen on people Not Complying, and stop using fossil fuels. Make their own lives carbon neutral. They won’t, of course.

Working together, we can preserve much of the world’s climate that we have known, the range of temperature, precipitation, and dryness in which we evolved to best exist and flourish. We must admire Svitlana Krakovska’s unwillingness to surrender to Putin and share her hope that the world will also not surrender in building a climate-resilient future.

Humanity has survived warm periods, cool periods, even a glacial period. A minor uptick of 1.5F since 1850 is no big deal.

Read: Climate Doom Demands Same Attention As Ukraine Or Something »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach March 14, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…are horrible cow steaks which create carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Bunkerville, with a post noting that Russia’s attack on Ukraine has halted the production of half the world’s neon output for chips.

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

Oops: There Could Be A Big Problem With Brandon’s Test To Treat COVID Idea

By William Teach March 14, 2022 – 10:30 am

This sounded good, but, the Brandon admin apparently didn’t give it a good think nor ask pharmacies for their input

Test to Treat: pharmacists say Biden’s major new Covid initiative won’t work

A major new Biden administration initiative to facilitate access to Covid-19 antivirals will have a limited impact and fail to mitigate certain health inequities, major pharmacist groups argue, because pharmacists are restricted from prescribing the pills.

Announced in Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, the “Test to Treat” program is meant to address the maddening difficulty Americans have had in accessing Covid-19 treatments. The administration will channel newly increasing stocks of antiviral pills to major retail pharmacies that have in-house clinics, providing one-stop testing and antivirals access.

The program, which the administration aims to provide for free (in the face of fierce Republican opposition to new Covid-19 spending), is also slated to roll out in Veterans Affairs clinics, community health centers and long-term care facilities.

Major participants include some 250 Walgreens stores, 225 Kroger Little Clinics and 1,200 CVS MinuteClinics. CVS clinics in particular are staffed by nurse practitioners and physician assistants, authorized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to prescribe the two currently available Covid antivirals, Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics’ molnupiravir.

In a 9 March letter to Biden calling for pharmacists to be granted authority to prescribe these pills, 14 organizations representing pharmacies and pharmacists insisted Test to Treat’s impact will be compromised by the fact that such in-house clinics are relatively limited in number and largely in urban areas.

It surely doesn’t help that pharmacies are closing in major Democratic party run cities, due to rampant theft and danger to employees. This is a major blindspot in that, unless there is a nurse practitioner or PA, they cannot be prescribed. It looks like the Brandon admin said “here’s a great idea, let’s go with it!” without asking professionals.

Meanwhile, this is interesting, in that China is admitting a big outbreak

Covid-19 cases continue to rise in China’s worst outbreak since Wuhan

China reported thousands of new local Covid-19 cases Sunday amid the worst outbreak in the country since Wuhan in early 2020, according to the National Health Commission (NHC).

Health officials said 2,125 cases were reported across 58 cities in 19 of 31 mainland provinces, marking the fourth consecutive day China reported more than 1,000 daily local cases. More than 10,000 cases have been reported since the latest outbreak began in early March, the NHC said.

Saturday, the commission reported 3,122 local cases — the highest number of daily infections since the Wuhan outbreak and the first time new cases have exceeded 3,000 in a day, NHC data showed.

Throughout the pandemic, China has adhered to a strict zero-Covid policy that aims to stamp out all outbreaks and chains of transmission using a combination of border controls, mass testing, quarantine procedures and lockdowns.

Nearly half of the total infections in the latest outbreak have been reported in northeastern Jilin province, with 4,605 cases since March 1, when the first clusters of cases in Jilin’s border city Yanbian were identified, according to the provincial government.

Does anyone actually believe there have been no outbreaks since the initial one? And believe the numbers are not particularly high for such a populous country? It must be really bad if the ruling Chinese communist party are allowing this to be broadcast, and if it could threaten half their economy. It won’t be good for Apple fanboys

Foxconn Halts iPhone Shenzhen Site Due to Covid Lockdown

Apple Inc. supplier Foxconn is halting operations at its Shenzhen sites, one of which produces iPhones, in response to a government-imposed lockdown on the tech hub city.

The Taiwanese company, also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., has its China headquarters in the area and a key manufacturing site in Guanlan. It is suspending operations at the two campuses and has reallocated production to other sites to reduce impact from the disruption, the company said in a statement. Foxconn didn’t specify the length of the suspension. The measures from the Chinese government call for non-essential businesses in Shenzhen to halt until March 20.

I’m sure iPhone users will argue that the this is an essential business.

Read: Oops: There Could Be A Big Problem With Brandon’s Test To Treat COVID Idea »

Posted in Bat Soup Virus, Joe Biden | 9 Comments | Trackback URL

Nevada Climate Cultists Are Good With Action As Long As Nothing Is Done

By William Teach March 14, 2022 – 7:00 am

Like I’ve said, Warmists are all excited for action in theory. Once it comes to practice? There’s always a Reason

Climate change demands action, but Nevada activists say not at the cost of species and fragile ecosystems

In the Mojave Desert, Shannon Salter walks past creosote bushes and Mojave yucca, the plant’s spiky, dagger-like leaves sticking up toward the sky.

Wearing a heavy down jacket and a floppy hat, she comes up to a fence line and stares at the construction of a project she fought hard to stop.

Salter, a poet and part-time teacher, has been camping since October near the Yellow Pine Solar Project, about a 20-minute drive from Pahrump. She was a staunch opponent to the project, wanting to protect the more than 90,000 old-growth yucca and desert ecosystem.

Once it got approved, she decided to stick around to watch the bulldozers clear the 3,000 acres of land to make way for a large-scale solar field that will provide power for 100,000 homes in California.

“I’m there making a presence in the valley,” she said. “I’m keeping watch. I wanted somebody to bear witness to the destruction. … I don’t think people realize the enormity of it.

Once the projects get the green light, the Warmists/enviro-weenies always try and shut them down

Near Beatty, a town of around 900 residents about two hours away from Las Vegas, there’s a slew of proposed solar projects that the residents fear will alter the views and drive away tourists.

There are six projects around Beatty that would cover thousands of acres, said Erika Gerling, a Beatty resident and chair of the Beatty Advisory Board. Beatty, known as the “gateway to Death Valley,” has been working for 10 years to promote itself as a recreation destination, Gerling said.

“Tourism is a huge thing for us,” Gerling said. “It’s our bread and butter.”

Someone has to pay for this, right? Besides, I thought all these green projects would bring jobs and prosperity? No?

“It’s frightening,” Gerling said. The projects are in very early stages, having been submitted to the Public Utilities Commission. “We want to preserve the history and the nature of our area. That’s what we’re for.”

“We are not against renewable energy,” she said. “We are not against solar energy. We are just not in favor of the location of these projects.”

So, where do they want them?

The desert also sequesters carbon, and when heavy machinery disturbs and lifts the desert soil, that carbon is released back into the atmosphere, Cunningham said. And with many projects proposed in the Mojave Desert with gaps in between, conservationists worry the ecosystem will be fragmented.

“There’s got to be better alternatives than destroying these ecosystems,” Cunningham said.

Name it. Their support of renewables always hits a wall when it is in their own backyard. And the piece continues on and on with all the projects that these people are against. Surprise!

Read: Nevada Climate Cultists Are Good With Action As Long As Nothing Is Done »

Posted in Climahypocrites, Energy, Global Warming | 10 Comments | Trackback URL
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