Monthly Archives: September 2022

Arizona Has a Chance to Lead the Way

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This fall, the good citizens of Arizona will be voting on, among other things, a State constitutional amendment that would make it more difficult to increase State taxes.

If passed it would amend the state constitution to require a 60% majority to raise taxes through any future referendum. Current law requires a two-thirds majority to raise taxes through legislation but only a simple majority to do so by plebiscite.

State Representative Tim Dunn (R), who led the effort to get this onto November’s ballot:

When you have something that you can’t change without going back to the voters, I think we should have overwhelming support.

Yewbetcha.

As The Wall Street Journal put it,

A 60% threshold ensures broad consensus before rates can be raised by referendum.
…
The point is to make it harder for Arizona to join states that raise taxes as a first fiscal resort rather than examine spending.

The Climate King

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King Charles III, who ascended the British throne in the aftermath of his mother, Queen Elizabeth II’s, unfortunate death, is a zealous climate activist.

He said less than a year ago in a speech in front of the UN COP26,

The scale and scope of the threat we face call for a global systems level solution based on radically transforming our current fossil fuel based economy to one that is genuinely renewable and sustainable[.]

Global systems level.

I have a couple questions.

When was the last time Prince Charles traveled to India or to the People’s Republic of China to…encourage…them to join this global system of his?

What was Prince Charles’ plan for helping the Third World to transition to this genuinely renewable and sustainable energy-based economy? Besides throwing other nation’s money at them, I mean.

What’s the schedule for King Charles’ trips to India and to the People’s Republic of China to encourage them to join this global system of his?

What is King Charles’ plan for helping the Third World to transition to this genuinely renewable and sustainable energy-based economy? Besides throwing other nation’s money at them, I mean.

And: is the scale and scope of the threat we face sufficiently dire that he will break with British royal tradition of being studiously apolitical and continue to espouse his climate activism?

This against the backdrop of the day-to-day, seasonal, and weather-driven extreme variability of the availability of solar- and wind-based energy, especially compared with the steady-state availability of fossil-fuel-based energy as new oil and natural gas wells come on line to replace depleting wells (which take years to deplete) and as new coal mines come on line to replace playing out mines (which take years to play out).

Never mind the larger backdrop of why we should care about atmospheric CO2, given the several epochs in our planetary history when temperatures were much higher than today, and life was lush, and the several epochs in our planetary history when atmospheric CO2 was much higher than today, and life was lush, and the fact that those two sets of epochs do not at all correlate with each other.

Never mind, either, that today, 11,000+ years after the last Ice Age, we’re still cooler than the geologic trend line of planetary warming, a trend driven by the fact that the sun is warming, and has been since it first fired up.

Racist Banks

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Bank of America is trying out a new program.

Bank of America announced August 30 that it is launching a trial program, called the Community Affordable Loan Solution, offering mortgages that do not require closing costs, down payments, or minimum credit scores. People in predominantly Hispanic or Black neighborhoods in Charlotte, North Carolina; Dallas; Detroit; Los Angeles; and Miami that meet specific income requirements will have access to the program.

JPMorgan Chase is following BAC down that walk of shame.

…expanded its grant program in February 2021 to offer $5,000 for closing costs and down payments to homebuyers purchasing homes in predominantly minority neighborhoods.

But other groups of Americans in other inner-city sections need not apply.

It’s not actually income that’s the determining criterion. It’s skin color.

These banks are behaving insultingly, too. BAC and JPM are telling blacks and Hispanics that they think blacks and Hispanics are incapable of competing, much less getting ahead, on their own capabilities, their own intelligence: blacks and Hispanics need special treatment from institutions.

Echoes of Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s infamous claim that blacks should be grateful for the protections of segregation.

These are two banks with which I will never do business.

A Burgeoning Economy

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According to President Joe Biden (D) and his Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen (D), our economy is burgeoning, prosperous, a Valhalla of growth, fairness, and optimism.

This is what the Progressive-Democrats’ Valhalla looks like in the real world:

  • US inflation reached 7.9% by February 2022 and had been…burgeoning…since fall 2021
  • US inflation currently is above 8%
  • before the pandemic, inequality was falling as wages rose faster for low-income workers than they did for the affluent amid healthy growth [note that after the pandemic has been the Biden reign]
  • the US economy contracted by about 1% of GDP in the first six months of this year, even as real wages were falling
  • real average hourly earnings declined 3% over the 12 months through July
  • real average weekly earnings declined by 3.6%
  • real average earnings have fallen 4.2% since Mr Biden took office

But wait—aren’t gasoline prices falling now? Sure they are, but they’re still very much higher than before Biden took office, and they’re falling because demand is falling: we can’t afford to drive as much as we did pre-Biden reign.

For Biden to call this terrific is for him to expound from his Newspeak Dictionary.

YGTBSM

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Another installment, this one from Canada—Vancouver, BC.

That city has a brand new fire engine. It’s all electric: not a drop of evil hydrocarbon in it for fuel or any other power. Never mind that it can’t function as a fire engine. It’s ALL ELECTRIC. Yay.

[T]he new e-truck will cost $300,000 more than a comparable diesel model, pump 40 per cent less water and have such a short range (30 km) because of its enormous weight that it will have to have backup diesel power in case it runs out of juice on the way to a blaze.
But, the city points out, it won’t give off diesel fumes and will be much quieter than existing diesel fire trucks.

Jayjuz.

They’d have done better with a horse-drawn, hand-powered pumper.

More here.

H/t Ralph Schwarz