Wednesday • September 27 • 2023
Vol.XV • No.XXXIX
Manchester, N.H.
The legislature passed the Clean Heat Standard (S.5) into law in the Spring of this year (over the governor’s veto) with a provision that Vermonters can start banking the so-called “Clean Heat Credits” – earned by installing heat pumps, insulating buildings, etc. – retroactive to January 1, 2023.
The program itself doesn’t go into full effect until 2025. So, the geniuses in Montpelier created a situation in which folks, in order to get their early credits, are supposed to somehow file paperwork that doesn’t exist with a bureaucratic entity that is not yet in place following rules that have not been written. What could go wrong?
And, yes, this is perhaps the dumbest thing ever.
The level of dumb was highlighted in a recent letter the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) sent out in reply to a request by the Vermont Fuel Dealers asking for instructions on how to apply for/claim their early action carbon credits. The PUC is the entity charged under S.5/Act 18 with writing the rules by which the Clean Heat Standard program is supposed to work. Their letter reads in part:
On August 4, 2023, the Vermont Fuel Dealers Association (“VFDA”) and the Heating and Cooling Contractors of Vermont (“HCCV”) filed comments requesting clarity on what documentation and other record keeping will be required to substantiate early action credits pursuant to 30 V.S.A. § 8124(c). VFDA and HCCV maintain that such clarity is essential to equitable implementation of Act 18 [aka S.5] and will help to incentivize early participation in activities that are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Section 8124(c) of Title 30 of the Vermont Statutes Annotated provides that beginning January 1, 2023, “clean heat measures that are installed and provide emission reductions are creditable,” and that “[u]pon the establishment of the clean heat credit system, entities may register credits for actions taken starting in 2023.” The Commission seeks feedback on the topic of early action credits, including what documentation and recordkeeping should be maintained to allow for verification of clean heat measures seeking early action credits, and any other information or suggestions participants may have on the topic of early action credits. Any comments on this topic should be filed by October 5, 2023, with reply comments due by October 19, 2023. SO ORDERED. 09/18/2023
In other words, we have no clue. SO ORDERED!
A couple of points to highlight here. The bill passed in April after significant testimony in both the House and Senate in which the PUC played a large role. They knew way ahead of time that this was something they were going to have to deal with. They had plenty of opportunity to object to the impossible nature of the requirement, and/or to ask the legislators for clarification about how they expected this aspect of the law they were passing might to function in the real world. They didn’t.
..
The PUC’s S.5/Act 18 funding ($825,000 of it) and authority came online on June 30/July 1. The Fuel Dealers and Cooling Contractors reached out in early August with their request for rule clarification and it took a month and a half (until September 18) for the PUC to even respond! And then with this lame, “We have no clue, you tell us what to do” farce. They plan on waiting until October 19th for suggestions to come in, at which point one assumes they will maybe start the process of figuring out how to bank early action credits – going on a year after people were supposed to be able to bank them.
None of this speaks well of the competency with which this program will be managed. And it is going to be exceedingly complicated.
The law (S.5/Act 18) states, ““Clean heat credit” means a tradeable, nontangible commodity that represents the amount of greenhouse gas reduction attributable to a clean heat measure [emphasis added].”
So, it’s not enough to document that one, for example, installs a heat pump. Someone from the PUC is also going to have to verify in addition to installation actually taking place, what system the heat pump is replacing, because depending upon whether or not it is a natural gas, propane, oil, or wood system the greenhouse gas reduction calculation – which is what the credit value is legally based on — will be different. Someone will also have to verify the intended use of the heat pump. If it’s primarily being used in the summer for air conditioning, for example, it’s likely adding to greenhouse gas output, not reducing it. Is the space it’s being installed into well insulated or not so much? We need to know this too.
Beyond these scientific factors, the law has “equity” components built into it as well, stating, “The Clean Heat Standard shall be designed and implemented to enhance social equity by prioritizing customers with low income, moderate income,” and, “each obligated party shall retire at least 16 percent from customers with low income and an additional 16 percent from customers with low or moderate income.” So, someone from the PUC is going to not only verify all the factors that impact the greenhouse gas reduction (or lack there of) regarding each clean heat measure, they will also have to verify the income status of the person/family/business installing the measure.
And lastly, how is the PUC going to verify who is claiming ownership of the credit? The installer? The Homeowner?
You can’t mess around with this because a “clean heat credit” is a financial instrument with a monetary value, and leaving their creation open to opportunities for fraud by making false claims will open someone(s) up to some serious legal jeopardy. The way the law is written makes every single clean heat measure is unique, and to meet the greenhouse gas reduction mandates under the Global Warming Solutions Act there must be literally hundreds of thousands of such measures falling under at least a dozen different categories of activities. This is a virtually impossible task.
So, if I were with the Fuel Dealers/Heating & Cooling Contractors, I would reply to the PUC with a reminder of what the law states a clean heat credit must be based on, and a list of every single factor they can think of that might impact on greenhouse gas emissions a clean heat measure can affect. Remind them that it’s the PUC’s job to figure out how to document and verify all this, not the dealers/contractors. And sign off with a hearty, “Good luck with it!” And, “PS, if you have any questions about how this is supposed to work, kindly direct them to the jackasses in the legislature who wrote the law the this way. Surely, they thought this all through before voting YES.” Right?
Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 20 years of experience in Vermont politics, including three years of service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free-market think tank. He is also a regular contributor to VermontGrok.
The post The Entity Charged With Implementing a Carbon Credit System Has No Idea How To Do It appeared first on Granite Grok.
Today’s clip is about where we were, where we are, what we are up against, and why we need to persevere as a nation under attack from without and within. It is a testament to the value and purpose of liberty—the why of the American Revolution and the American experiment.
Ben Domenech made these remarks on Fox News over two years ago. I saved the clip becasue it struck me as moving. One of those somethings we need to revisit every 6-12 months to remind us that the battles are worth fighting, the war worth winning. I have a list of them.
There are others, but let’s focus on this. The culture war, the border war, the war against free speech, religion, culture, and the rule of law. We are fighting rampant generational theft by unaccountable elites (to name but one timely issue given the shutdown theater), but America is worth fighting for, and Ben Domenech did a damn good job – in my opinion – framing why.
The post What Free People Do appeared first on Granite Grok.
Tucker Carlson talking about abortion in a way most anti-abortion politicians are afraid/unable to. Instead, these anti-abortion politicians come across as defensive and even apologetic about being anti-abortion. It’s even worse in New Hampshire … NHGOP “leaders,” desperate to hold on to power, think the way to do so is to appeal to the “swing voters,” i.e., the “sick voters.” Prime example: Sun-King Chris Sununu who is okay with aborting seven, eight and even nine-month old unborn babies.
Abortion has gone from being tolerated to celebrated. What kind of sick people would tell you that killing your baby is a pathway to joy? pic.twitter.com/ohaYtnITPr
— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) September 25, 2023
That said, I believe that incrementalism is the key. Move too far (in the minds of a majority of a particular State’s voters), too fast (in the minds of a majority of a particular State’s voters) … and you may very well end up with unrestricted abortion. Case on point: Ohio. But incrementalism does not mean NOT calling people like Chris Sununu who support unrestricted abortion what they are: SICK.
The post NHGOP “Leaders” … We Must Pander To The Sick People appeared first on Granite Grok.
The great H.L. Mencken reportedly said, “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” While it’s hard to believe he didn’t have the Biden family finances in mind, it still serves as an apt warning for another round of handwringing over the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Just last week, Americans were hit with a one-two punch from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as both agencies urged another round of booster shots “for all Americans ages six months and older.”
The same FDA (which has no business dispensing medical advice, only safety data) that took fifty years to figure out the decongestant phenylephrine doesn’t really work. But it can cause high blood pressure. Regardless, for Pfizer and Moderna, the new jabs for a never-ending stream of annual COVID-19 variants are called profit centers.
Yet, this time not everyone is going along. The public seems willing to buck the compliance conformity and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has thankfully decided to buck the CDC, citing a lack of “sufficient clinical evidence” for the latest shots in people under the age of 65. (RELATED: FORMER REP. JASON LEWIS: If The Special Counsel Can Indict Trump For His ‘Lies,’ Then Why Not The Partisan Press?)
And for good reason. The CDC itself has been forced to recommend that all doctors consider myocarditis in otherwise healthy patients who report chest pains and had prior mRNA COVID vaccinations. Meantime, Dr. Anthony Fauci is busy walking back history after smearing a host of epidemiological colleagues who were right all along about ‘herd immunity.’
“If you get vaccinated,” whispered Joe Biden, “you won’t get COVID.” An obvious lie that should have been put to rest when the octogenarian kept testing positive for the virus. Even Dr. Deborah Birx noted that “fifty percent of the people who died from the Omicron surge were all older, vaccinated.”
A stark reversal from coronavirus task force member Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, who had declared that “with the Omicron variant, kids are either going to get the vaccine or they’re likely to get a serious condition.”
You can see why the Biden administration is panicking. After all, it fully understands the hysteria over COVID, fueled by media malfeasance, got ‘ol Joe in the White House in the first place. I saw it in real-time and tried to warn folks in 2020 while running for the U.S. Senate.
Now comes a three-judge panel at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling Big Tech censors can’t follow the dictates of government ones without abridging First Amendment protections. Especially since the defendants not only “continued to take down content the officials flagged, and provided requested data to the White House, but they also changed their moderation policies expressly in accordance with the officials’ wishes” in order to show that “stronger demotions, in particular, should deliver real impact.“
The stinging rebuke highlighting what everyone knew to be true hasn’t dissuaded the Biden administration from using government coercion, however. It immediately demanded the high court block the appellate court decision.¹³ Then the White House Pretorian Guard sent out a media memo “urging news outlets to ramp up scrutiny of the House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Biden.”
Well, why not?
Literally, just about every news outlet imaginable carried water for the ‘new normal.’ They still are, ask Woody Harrelson. When the lefty actor brought up his sarcastic criticism of Big Pharma on Saturday Night Live, ‘progressive’ mouthpieces from Rolling Stone to the Daily Beast to Huffpost labeled their former comrade an ‘anti-vaxx conspiracist.’
Yes, the same ‘journalists’ who denied SARS-CoV-2 could have originated with a Wuhan gain-of-function “laboratory-associated incident.”¹⁶ Hell, you weren’t even supposed to call it a ‘Chinavirus,’ though geography was how we used to name them. The media mocked conventional off-label treatments, over-counted COVID-related deaths and promoted vaccines whose manufacturers were advertising on their programs.
The whole damn thing was one big Psy Op.
Nowhere was the incestuous relationship between government and the press more pronounced than in Minnesota. When a power-drunk Governor Tim Walz announced statewide mask mandates, the observable data was already accumulating on how ineffective, actually useless, the practice would turn out to be.¹⁸ Nevertheless, Walz’s economic development commissioner, Steve Grove, sent off sample letters to business leaders suggesting they submit the pro-mandate agitprop to newspapers, such as the Star Tribune.
“Your support for wearing masks,” wrote the former Google executive, “is critical toward ensuring adoption.” Steve Grove, in case you’re wondering, is now the CEO and publisher of the pro-Walz Star Tribune.
Hey, if we can’t sue the vaccine makers or Big Tech, maybe we should all bring a Section 1983 lawsuit charging the media for abridging our civil liberties by ‘defrauding the United States’ in their role as ‘state actors’ under the color of law.
Lockdowns and masking were more than drastic public health measures. As Justice Neil Gorsuch put it, “Since March of 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.” And the costs have been catastrophic.
A study at Johns Hopkins was one of over 400 that found “no evidence that lockdowns, school closures, border closures, and limiting gatherings have had a noticeable effect on COVID-19 mortality.”
They did have an effect, however, on overdose deaths, suicide rates and the “prevalence of persistent sadness among teenage girls in the U.S.,” which, according to the CDC, ironically enough, “hit an all-time high.” The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services now suggests routine screenings for ‘anxiety.’ (RELATED: MATTHYS: The CDC’s ‘Reset’ Shows Just How Dangerous Government Narratives Can Be)
Academically, the post-pandemic NAEP Report Cards confirm that the quarantining of elementary and secondary students was a calamitous disaster. Colleges and universities pulled a bait and switch that would have made Charles Ponzi envious. Administrators lured students back with full tuition rates and then, once they got to campus, shut down classrooms.
Now they’re flirting with it again?
But the damage far exceeded a student’s GPA. It was an inexcusable exercise in dystopia, and I shared my own frustration in “Party Animal, The Truth About President Trump, Power Politics & the Partisan Press“:
Imagine taking someone mired in loneliness and telling them to isolate in their rooms, left to the poison of social media algorithms so often used to traumatize young adults.
The lockdown lobby deliberately abandoned an entire generation for political gain. Who does this? How many formative years in high school and college were now forever gone? How many futures destroyed, how many dreams dashed? What these public health bureaucrats, politicians and media did to kids wasn’t a public policy mistake—it was a scandal.
God may forgive the ‘grown-ups’ who did this, but the rest of us won’t.
The latest push reveals the defining characteristic of the new fascist left. That is, they are not going to stop until someone makes them. It’s gaslighting on a level heretofore not seen in America. How else would you explain the farce of ESPN awarding tennis great and U.S. Open champ Novak Djokovic—who refused the jab and was subsequently banned from competing by shameless authoritarians around the globe—‘The Moderna Shot of the Day.’
But nothing’s absurd unless brave people say it’s so.
Former Congressman Jason Lewis is the author of “Party Animal, The Truth About President Trump, Power Politics and the Partisan Press.” He also writes at jasonlewis.substack.com.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack page, which can be viewed here.
Jason Lewis | Daily Caller News Service
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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The post Don’t Let COVID Hysteria Fool Us Again appeared first on Granite Grok.
As I have been saying for some time now, the Left and the Right have next to nothing in common. The debate, if you can call it that, is not about the means to the end, but about the ends. The Left wants a Police State … provided, of course, that they are the ones doing the policing. Of course, they don’t say that out loud … YET. For the time being it’s about “protecting” us from misinformation, disinformation, hate, blah, blah, blah. New Hampshire is about to have a closet-COMMUNIST as its Speaker of the House … and the GOP-“leadership” in the House is focused on attacking Trump and his supporters. Because stopping “mean tweets” is more important than stopping America from turning into North Korea?
Stunning numbers among Dems in RCOR's new poll on free speech and censorship:
47% of Dems say free speech should be legal 'only under certain circumstances.
34% of Dems say Americans 'have too much freedom'
75% of Dems say government has a responsibility to censor 'hateful'…
— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) September 24, 2023
The post They Are Not Our “Fellow Americans” … They Hate America appeared first on Granite Grok.
Just this week, it’s come out that one-time Hollywood darling turned anti-establishment psychopath Russell Brand is a serial rapist. Was a serial rapist a while back anyway. That is before he got re-married, lost his mind, and started shilling for the alt-right on the professional misinformation platform Rumble, which is around the time he raped me.
Brand first exposed himself to me when I was watching one of his diatribes on Bill Maher’s show, where he assaulted me and the entire audience that night with violent facts and logic about American hero companies MSNBC, Black Rock, and Vanguard. It’s too painful to repeat, but you can watch the entire ordeal here. Just ask Senator Bernie Sanders, who listened as Russell, “the hate muscle,” forced himself on all of us. Bernie…just…sat there.
After that, I was simply trying to scroll through my feed on YouTube when there he was again. Taunting me with his cleverly crafted click-bait headline about what “Bill Gates is doing to fruit now”, and I took the bait. I’m so stupid. He then proceeded to thrust his unwanted opinion into my brain no matter how much I yelled, “No! No! Bill Gates is a philanthropist! He would never do that to fruit!”
I was too scared to report the incident because Russell is so popular online now his following dwarfs even some of the mainstream media outlets, who I don’t blame for going after him and his rape-y misinformation tactics.
Luckily, this information came out before he could continue to ravage people with his wild conspiracy theories and anti-government propaganda.
Why did it take so long for the media to go and find out he was seriously serial? Because you can’t just make false claims about something as serious as sexual assault without investigating it for accuracy. The media knows better than to do that. That’s about as silly as claiming a woman would pay to make up a sex story in order to smear someone’s reputation. I am reminded of such courageous women as Anita Hill, Christine Blasé-Ford, Alice Sebold, and Potiphar’s Wife.
How many of Brand’s anonymous ex-girlfriends did they need to interview to expose this farce of a human being? Why aren’t there more elder statesmen like Howard Stern, a champion of a women’s right to dignity, who isn’t afraid to take political hypocrites like Lauren Boebert to task?
Lawyers, who are almost as trusted as the media in this country, finally overcame their stereotype of being lying money grabbers and did the right thing. They boldly took a high-profile case that would expose them to both public scrutiny and massive amounts of free mainstream advertising because all women need to be believed when dealing with a predator unless they’re from Florida. Don’t believe those skanks.
Thankfully, we have a media that understands the importance of reporting as a well-coordinated group. It’s incredibly important that all of the major media outlets are on the same page, with the same messaging, nearly verbatim, when dealing with a super-predator like Brand. It still shocks me they didn’t report on this earlier when they knew he was a Hollywood playboy but instead celebrated him. I suppose even the media makes mistakes. We can forgive them.
Brand, on the other hand, has stolen my chastity. Not only has he caused me to doubt my government and my medical community he has rendered asunder my worldview and discarded it like a middle school-issued condom. This is unforgivable.
Many have come to his defense with lame cries of “innocent until proven guilty” – blah, blah, blah. I was innocent, too, once. Now, I’m Branded for Life.
The post Bananas Exclusive: Russell Brand Raped Me – My Story appeared first on Granite Grok.
My kids, on their mother’s side, are likely Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution. They have relatives born in America going back to the early 1700s (including, possibly, Josiah Bartlett). Someone just needs to do the leg work if they care, but they may not want that.
The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) changed their rules a few months back. The updated charter requires confirmed applicants to be accepted if their birth certificate identifies them as female, even if they are male (and had it changed).
DAR leaders passed an amendment stating that membership cannot be denied due to “[characteristics] protected by applicable law,” according to Newsweek.
DAR president general Pamela Wright clarified during the organization’s annual meeting in June that men who have their birth certificates altered to indicate that they are female are eligible for membership.
The new amendment also revoked the right of local chapters to decide if an applicant is “personally acceptable” for membership.
If there was any outrage at the time, I must have missed it, but I have a few thoughts. First, instead of robbing women of something else meant for them alone, why not create the Sons as Daughters of the American Revolution? They could co-exist with the Daughters as Sons of the American Revolution and move seamlessly between them as if on some sort of revolutionary spectrum.
That all they/thems are created equal, or These are the times that try They/Thems souls. You get the idea.
My other thought was, how long until the Cultural Marxists take advantage of this opening [DAR’s embrace of women with pensis] to wrestle control and turn DAR into another Left-Wing mouthpiece dissing white colonialism and demanding government interventions?
A decade? Less?
The post Your Sons Can be Daughters of the American Revolution appeared first on Granite Grok.
One of the many HOAXES during Trump’s first term was that he called Nazis “fine people.” A total lie. He said there were fine people on both sides of the debate over taking down statues of Confederate Generals. Yet here we have Justin Trudeau … de facto DICTATOR of Canada … and the so-called Canadian “Parliament” giving a standing ovation to an actual Nazi. Because, apparently, if Canada could have a do-over do it would have supported Hitler against those evil Russians?
The Canadian Parliament along with Justin Trudeau and Zelensky, cheered on an actual Nazi SS officer.
These are the people who called the brave Canadian truckers Nazis and said “honk honk” was code for “heil hitler”https://t.co/i1Z6fiB68c
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 24, 2023
The post “Nazis Are Fine People” … Justin Trudeau appeared first on Granite Grok.
We have heard numerous times, too many to count, from the White House Keeper of the Binder (Formerly the Press Secretary) as she points at the Republicans and the existential threat they pose by shutting down the government. Well, it is time to prove her wrong and show Americans what a lying, gas-lighting piece of this corrupt administration she is.
This projection by KJP attempts to mask the damage her boss and fellow members of his team are systematically inflicting on our country. Every decision this administration has made has been wrong for America and contributed to the accelerating destruction of America. Domestically, whether social or economic, or Internationally, whether trade relations or our Defense, every decision has been wrong, and how pollsters can find 23% of those polled who still back the President is beyond belief and reason.
The White House continues to look to January 6th, and the Justice Department locks up protesters for decades. It is easy to prosecute and imprison these people as they don’t have the resources to fight the government. They are easy prey, and the Democrats think each prosecution works in their favor. Bob Menendez, Hunter Biden, and even Joe Biden reap millions while destroying our country. They will never be held accountable. The Dems keep pointing to 0106 and deflecting attention. It makes me sick. The spending must be addressed, but the Border must be closed.
There are not many options the Republicans have with a slim majority in the House, but they have a significant opportunity to get everyone’s attention if they choose to shut off the money spigot and shut down the Federal Government. Kevin McCarthy has to find the guts to make the big move. The media will have a field day, and Karine will blame the Republicans every afternoon, but we need to suck it up and shut it down. The Defense Department will be funded, as will Social Security and Medicare. The rest of the government can take a hiatus, and probably most people will not notice.
Biden and Congress have been spending foolishly and must be reeled in, but it will take a dramatic, painful move to see this happen. Biden continues to pledge unlimited money for Ukraine with no plan. “As long as it takes” is not a plan. There is no accountability for how Ukraine uses the money or supplies we send them. There are also rumors that some of the money we send Ukraine is funneled back to the Democrat Party and the Biden’s. This money laundering scheme has to stop.
The House Republicans have been pushing for each of the budget plans be voted on individually. This will not FFL with the Democrats who want to bundle the eleven spending bills into one large Omnibus plan. We know that when this happens, line items come from everywhere for pet projects or outright pork. This is how the government stays open historically. McCarthy cannot allow this to happen, and it will be a huge failure for the GOP if it does.
If the Dems refuse to play ball, shut it down, Kevin. Shut it down.
The post If Biden Will Not Close The Border, Shut The Government Down appeared first on Granite Grok.
This is the final article in the How the Shutdown Affected Student Performance series. This series was inspired by two recent statements made by Croydon Village School Principal Nicole Lackie to the Croydon School Board. First, she claimed the pandemic shutdowns caused poor student performance. Then, she stated that teachers don’t really know how to teach students to read. Our goal was to determine if either was true.
To that end, we reviewed and published student results on national and statewide standardized tests in New Hampshire and Vermont. We also asked how local elementary schools in VT and NH perceived student performance and taught reading.
Two things stood out
The first is that people didn’t seem to be aware of how bad things were, especially in their own schools, before COVID closed them. Because poor student test scores predated the pandemic shutdown, what the shutdown seems to have changed was awareness of how bad things really were. The silver lining of “remote learning” was that it let parents see behind the curtain.
The second is that the education establishment has been able to defend such a poor record for such a long time.
One method used to divert attention from poor test results is to focus on relative results. School superintendents and principals readily say “We’re doing as well as, or better than, most other states,” without mentioning that none of them have even half their students performing at grade level.
A second technique used is focusing on minor improvements in results. They’ll say, “With our new approach to reading, our test scores went up,” parenthetically adding “from 38% proficiency to 42%,” which is still poor. As the data shows, such “improvements” are short-lived. They’ll also use local “diagnostic” tests to show how students are “progressing,” with little or any acknowledgment that they remain unable to read at grade level.
One of the most visible tactics used is to blame poor test scores on insufficient funding, regardless of how much spending has increased overall, especially during these times of decreasing enrollment. These claims of insufficient funds are often coupled with condemnation of “the other party’s” policies, which are then condemned for “undermining” or “destroying” public schools.
A fourth practice of distraction is to draw attention away from the lack of competence by stirring up outrage. Parents who are upset about porn in libraries, boys in girls’ restrooms, or the Parental Bill of Rights don’t have time to get upset about the fact that more than half the kids can’t read.
Now for some specifics
In 2016, 61% of New Hampshire’s students scored proficient or above on the New Hampshire Standardized Assessment System (NHSAS) test. In 2019, the year before the pandemic shutdown, that number had fallen to 56%. In 2022, it stood at 51%. As the chart showed, the pandemic shutdown did not accelerate the downward trajectory.
On the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the percentage of NH students performing proficient or above has fluctuated between 33% and 45% since at least 1998, meaning that more than half to two-thirds of New Hampshire’s students haven’t been reading at grade level for 25 years.
In 2018, the percentage of Vermont’s students scoring proficient or above on its statewide assessment, the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) test, ranged from 50% to 55%, depending on the grade. Those scores slipped in 2019, before the pandemic. In 2022, they ranged from 43% to 45%, with some grades showing that the pandemic mildly accelerated their decline. The data indicates that about one student in 10 did worse in reading after the shutdowns, in addition to the more than 5 out of 10 that already weren’t proficient.
On the NAEP, the percentage of Vermont students testing proficient or better has ranged from 34% to 47% since 2002.
While the shutdown may have created a small problem for reading, it didn’t create the big problem that everyone seems to be ignoring, which is that more than half to two thirds of the students in both states are reading below grade level and have been for more than two decades.
Of the five elementary schools profiled in this series, the reading scores for three of them, the Croydon Village School, Killington Elementary School and Grantham Village School, increased or stayed the same after the shutdown. Washington Elementary School had a significant drop in scores. The Albert Bridge School had no school-level state score data available to review post-pandemic but their scores from 2016 to 2017 dropped dramatically. So, your “mileage may vary” from school to school. Therefore, parents need to pay attention to how well their own children are doing in their respective schools.
Why are the scores so low
One possibility is that state standardized tests are not a true accountability measure. The results have no effect on students moving from one grade to the next or graduating. It could be that students don’t take the test seriously and the scores don’t reflect what they actually know. Some believe that if the tests were “high stakes,” meaning their results somehow impacted their ability to progress in school, students would take them seriously. Legislation has been filed in New Hampshire to do this.
Another reason could be there is something about the nature of a school setting that interferes with a child’s ability to learn to read. It’s such a personal skill, maybe it has to be done one-on-one.
Perhaps children need to be developmentally ready to learn to read. If children aren’t ready to read, efforts to teach them are futile and may actually harm their ability to read.
One parent interviewed for this series said that everyone she knows in her affluent town (Grantham) gets tutors for their children; that the school has not succeeded in teaching their children to read. (This point is emphasized in the “Sold a Story” podcast, which is mentioned below.) It may be why rich kids get better scores than poor kids. This parent’s statement underscores what Croydon Village School Principal Nicole Lackie told the Croydon School Board in June, which is that schools don’t know how to teach kids to read.
Such a statement ignores decades of research on the science of reading. However, it does speak to the “wars” between proponents of “phonics” and those who advocate for “whole-word” and other “top-down” approaches to teaching reading. These wars started over a hundred years ago and continue to this day with the “cueing” method (explained in other articles in this series) now being used.
People have deep-seated beliefs about the best way to teach reading, and many don’t think phonics is the right way. But when 22 students out of 30 are performing at the lowest levels of reading, which we’ve reported is the case in Croydon, questions about a school’s approach are warranted. Even if “only” a quarter of a school’s students are reading below grade level, that’s 1 out of every four kids. Approaches need to be questioned, not just by teachers but by parents and taxpayers as well.
In 3 of the schools interviewed for this series, someone did question student reading performance. Because the methods used to teach reading in Grantham, Killington, and Washington weren’t working, educators took intensive training to understand the science of reading. The training is called “Language Essentials for Teaching Reading and Spelling” (LETRS). It explains the findings of reading research to teachers. The course shows teachers how to teach and assess knowledge of the sounds letters make in English (phonemic awareness), how those sounds represent letters that can create words (phonics), and how and why to teach word parts (morphology). It also covers spelling and fluency instruction.
Research that spans decades continually shows that children need to learn phonics in order to become good readers. Using brain scans and eye-tracking technology, researchers have continually found that good readers process virtually every letter in every word as they read. Some children catch on quickly. Others need to be taught how to do it directly. Phonics isn’t the only thing they need, but it provides the core for reading. The science of reading research is summarized in an engaging podcast series called “Sold a Story,” produced by Emily Hanford, an investigative education journalist at American Public Media.
The schools whose staff took the training are changing how they teach reading. Washington Elementary School is expanding dedicated phonics time from K-1 to include grades 2-3. Killington Elementary School is changing its curriculum. Grantham Village School is supplementing the cueing approach with other programming that focuses on decoding and phonological awareness.
Teachers in Croydon haven’t taken the training, nor have they changed their approach to teaching reading. Principal Lackie declined to be interviewed.
While promising, the changes being made by these few schools may not be a magic pill. While teachers start to understand how people learn to read, some studies show that they still don’t know how to teach reading. Much of their training has been with the now disproven Cueing Theory approach championed by Fountas & Pinnell.
In the history of public schooling, the education establishment has tried different approaches every few years for decades. Sometimes, there are small improvements. Other times, it’s like the tide, which comes in a few feet and then goes out a few feet, but there’s no permanent change. For more than half a century, reading proficiency, at best, has hovered around 50%.
The efforts made to contact schools
To write this series, it was necessary to interview a variety of elementary school administrators in NH and VT. Principals and superintendents were contacted via email or web forms on their websites. Some contact information was hard to find. Others, including the Fall Mountain Regional School District and Oak Grove School in VT, didn’t provide email addresses on their websites. Fall Mountain even made it hard to find out who the principal was.
As mentioned, Principal Nicole Lackie of the Croydon Village School declined to be interviewed about the school or her comments to the Croydon School Board in June, comments that inspired this series.
Cavendish Town Elementary School Principal Dale Mann, Ludlow Elementary School Principal Debra Fishwick, and Chester Andover Elementary School Principal Katherine Fogg were all new to their positions and could not speak to their school’s reading performance or teaching histories. Superintendent Dr. Sydney Leggett spoke about the Grantham Village School, but being new to the position, she was unfamiliar with the elementary schools in Cornish and Plainfield and unable to answer questions about them.
The following schools did not respond to email or webmail form requests to discuss their test scores or approach to teaching reading: Principal Stephanie Korb at John D. Perkins Elementary School in Marlow, NH; Principal Jill Pinard at James Faulkner Elementary School in Stoddard, NH; Superintendent Donna Magoon of Newport School District, NH; Superintendent Michael Tempesta of Claremont School District, NH; Principal Robert Clark of Richards Elementary School, Newport NH; Assistant Superintendent and Acting Principal David Cohn of Union Street Elementary School in Springfield, VT; and Principal Doug Kussius of the White River School in White River Junction, VT.
Principal Kelly Dias of the Academy School in Brattleboro, VT, and Principal Amelia Donahey of Ottauquechee Elementary School in Quechee, VT, responded to our emails, but we were not able to set interview times with them.
In total, four interviews were conducted out of 18 requests. This information is disclosed to provide our readers with an understanding of the efforts made to gather and present this information and encourage the curious to make their own inquiries about reading performance and teaching methods at their local elementary schools.
Prior installments in this series, which include all of the data referenced herein, were published in the Eagle Times on September 9, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, and 23.
This article originally appeared in the Eagle Times. Some minor edits were made in this version. You can find the entire series at the Eagle times and at Granite Grok.
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This headline has layers of meaning. First, referencing the preferred progressive definition, people whose relatives were here before ours are getting screwed by the Biden Administration’s energy policy. Its bureaucrats are reinterpreting statutes with the force of law.
“The cooperative provides power — at cost — to several small, predominantly indigenous communities located within the Tongass. IPEC [Inside Passage Electric Cooperative] seeks to build several hydroelectric and geothermal projects to replace the expensive diesel generation that these communities currently rely on. But the USDA’s prohibition on roads — including gravel and dirt roads — in the Tongass makes the construction and maintenance of these projects infeasible because they would be accessible only by helicopter,” the foundation reported.
On one hand, the Biden administration is trying to outlaw electricity generation with fossil fuels. On the other, the Biden Administration is prohibiting the “green” energy projects needed to replace what they are trying to outlaw. Native Alaskan populations are caught between the two and, without a resolution, will have no power at all.
“In the name of conservation, the USDA’s rules are keeping remote Alaska communities dependent on diesel for power generation when green alternatives are available,” charged IPEC’s Jodi Mitchell. “Diesel is one of the most expensive sources of power generation. As a result, these communities pay some of the highest electricity rates in the state and among the highest in the country.”
So, thanks for nothing, and here’s a lawsuit.
“Despite Congress’ manifest desire to allow roads in national forests as needed for reasonable public access and use, the department claims to have found authority to categorically ban roads in nebulous statutory language,” the complaint charges.
It is under that authority that the department imposed its roadless rule to “harm local communities.” ..
Even accessing “existing facilities, powerlines, and diversion pipes” is problematic under the USDA, the complaint said. Much servicing now is done by helicopter.
I’m sure the utility company is trying to cling to its monopoly on energy delivery, so it may not be entirely about the indigenous people, but their arguments are spot-on for everyone whose descendants started families in North America. The entire energy transition exercise is problematic under the regime’s priorities. And by problematic, I mean mathematically impossible.
Everyone will be harmed by this.
HT | The Liberty Daily
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An F-35 jet went missing this week when its pilot was forced to eject over the skies of South Carolina. This mishap created an embarrassing situation for our Military. The Marines, with all of the sophisticated equipment of our Military, could not locate the downed jet and went to the public for help finding the wreckage.
The F-35 is our newest, most complex, and expensive addition to our air command. This week’s event exposed a fact the Military would rather have kept under wraps. The entire F-35 program is on track to cost $1.7 trillion over the plane’s lifetime, and the Department of Defense plans to purchase nearly 2,500 F-35s from Lockheed Martin. The problem is the track record of the F-35, with almost half of the jet’s training missions aborted due to faulty components or systems. Unfortunately, the F-35 program is not the first to have disappointing results in recent years. It should alarm all Americans that we are losing our edge in producing a well-equipped and trained defense to protect us worldwide.
On November 22, 2016, while the world watched, the U.S. Navy’s newest, most complex warship ground to a stop in the middle of the Panama Canal, both propellers seized, leaving the ship dead in the water. The warship, the USS Zumwalt, DDG-1000, had to be towed out of the canal.
The Zumwalt Class destroyer was to be America’s most potent and versatile modern warship. The project failed as only 3 of the planned 32 ships were built.
In the case of the Zumwalt-class, the unit cost ballooned to $5.9 billion per ship in 2009, which was 81% more than initially planned.
The USS Zumwalt DDG-1000 also lacks various necessary defense features for any modern ship, such as anti-torpedoes, long-range air defense missiles, and anti-ship missiles.
Are these setbacks to our military preparedness the fault of the Defense Department, contractors, politicians, or a combination of all? There is certainly enough blame to pass around, including a lack of quality work by the workers themselves. The solution for Washington will be to throw more money at the problem, but that just fattens the pot for everyone to dip into. I am not a proponent of government studies as they usually are open-ended and fail to produce results. Still, a solution to this failure to equip our Military has to become a priority. We are not keeping up with the advancements of the Chinese Military. They may have already passed us on air and land superiority, and as our Navy is retiring ships without replacements, they will probably have an edge at sea, too.
Today, we are far too concerned with Ukraine and pledging our unlimited support with no endgame or plan. We are earmarking billions in aid and equipment we cannot afford to lose. We are bolstering what will eventually be a losing effort while sidetracking us from being ready to defend ourselves. This should not be a comforting thought for any American, and another reason that we have to remove Joe Biden from the White House. I believe in American Exceptionalism, and if there is one area in which it is most important, it is protecting our homeland. Our foes are not slowing their trek for world dominance, and the best deterrent to any aggression is a powerful United States Military. We do not have that deterrent today.
The post Lost Marine Fighter Jet Another Sign Of A Weakened Military appeared first on Granite Grok.
The so-called pandemic was a test, and a lot of Americans failed. From top to bottom, rights were sacrificed to medical tyranny over a global act of fraud. A fraud that was increasingly visible when the first few weeks of published COVID data went public.
We were locking up, down, and sideways. All for something almost no one needed to fear. And that truth only got clearer from there, and while America had few pockets of liberty and many places pushed back sooner than later, far too many went the other way, and outside the US, places like Canada and Europe were much worse.
EU+QRI’m unsure who is speaking, but the clip comes from the Mark Steyn Show. And for our purposes, when does not matter becasue then is now if we allow it.
In under a minute, the speaker clarifies how bad things were in Europe for individual rights and freedom in general—the digital equivalent of “papers please,” not just to authorities but anyone who asked.
We do not want people to forget how bad it was or, if they didn’t realize it, that this is the sort of thing for which those looking to scratch their totalitarian itch are looking.
It will come if we let it, and it won’t just be becasue of some flu or other fearmongered health scare, though given their previous success, that angle will play a part. Public Health Emergency might be the three words history reminds us we should if our society survives to have an honest telling.
If they can normalize this sort of control as part of our everyday way of life, we may be less than one generation away from losing what was handed down to us. It’ll be gone before those fanciful EV-mandated drop-dead dates they keep talking about.
The post QR Code Stasi appeared first on Granite Grok.
At some point, our society decided that protecting the innocence of children wasn’t a worthwhile endeavor anymore. It is wild how far and fast we’ve fallen. Ten years ago, you couldn’t have imagined that a librarian would get away with suggesting book porn to elementary school students under the guise of healthy sex and gender instruction.
Warning – this post includes unedited “adult” content, available in some schools and public libraries
Not only are they getting away with it, but the Biden administration and the other deranged actors on the far left are protecting them against parents who want it to end — the head of the U.S. Education Department, Sec. Miguel Cardona told the Associated Press he has no respect for the parents who passionately defend their students against these ideological attacks. “I don’t have too much respect for people that are misbehaving in public and acting like they know what’s right for kids,” Cardona said.
Secretary Cardona openly dismissed thousands of American parents who have been speaking out at school board meetings:
“I don’t have too much respect for people that are misbehaving in public and acting like they know what’s right for kids.” pic.twitter.com/QafoiKwAdB
— Nicki Neily (@nickineily) September 22, 2023
Adults who push “Drag Queen Brunch” or story hours at local libraries or stock elementary schools with sexually explicit materials are perverts. There is no sense in sugarcoating the obvious. It’s not hard to see that these people want to indoctrinate children into their weird sex cult. Why else would they have books about Timmy going down on Johnny in elementary school libraries or encouraging Rebecca to become Rob if not to sexualize children?
.@CCSDK12 is trying to hide the fact that they offer kids porn so they BLOCKED the libsoftiktok domain across their entire district.
They offer the pornographic book “Gender Queer” which depicts oral sex and masturbation to ELEMENTARY KIDS!
Story here: https://t.co/jtvZBsm46C pic.twitter.com/M8BHi1Ul1s
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 22, 2023
Our kids need to learn about building good moral character. Schools used to foster this in students by starting the day in prayer, saying the pledge of allegiance and sometimes reciting a school song. This routine grounded the students in faith and patriotism — teaching them to value God, their country and their community. (RELATED: ROOKE: Deion Sanders Epitomizes The Revival America Needs Right Now In Young Men)
Modern classrooms have an entirely different value system. If present at all, American flags are positioned in the far corner of the classroom. God, prayer and any form of Christianity were ripped out of school during the Free Love era. In its place, our students pledge allegiance to flags representing sexual preferences and fetishes outside of traditional life.
In a Sept. 12 Senate hearing, Republican LA Sen. John Kennedy read from two books — “All Boys Aren’t Blue” and “Gender Queer: A Memoir.” The words were so graphic Fox was forced to bleep almost every word of Kennedy’s monologue.
“I got a new strap-on harness today,” Kennedy read from “Gender Queer: A Memoir” by Maia Kobabe. “I can’t wait to put it on you. It will fit my favorite dildo perfectly. You’re going to look so hot. I can’t wait to have your cock in my mouth. I am going to give you the blowjob of your life. Then I want you inside of me.”
.@SenJohnKennedy reads passages from Bokmål All Boys Aren’t Blue and Genderqueer
“I put some lube on and got him on his knees and I began sliding into him from behind,” Kennedy read.
pic.twitter.com/AKxz6J50zC— Nicole Silverio (@NicoleMSilverio) September 12, 2023
This is the material children are encouraged to engage with. It helps to desensitize them to sex and provoke risky behavior. Parents would go to jail if they took their 10-year-old child to a strip club, but for some reason, our society sees no issue with them sitting in a bar watching grown men fling their genitals around in a mini skirt. Drag shows are performative sex acts. Anyone suggesting children would learn to be more inclusive by spending extended time with men pretending to be women does not have their best interest in mind.
What on earth is “It’s not gonna lick itself” supposed to be referring to in this drag performance with CHILDREN in the audience??
They still gonna claim this stuff is just to educate kids on different identities?
pic.twitter.com/oCMUDsTlOt
— Megan Basham (@megbasham) June 5, 2022
It’s time they felt humiliated again. Our children aren’t given to us to be used for their sexual pleasure. We have an innate responsibility to protect them. In any other context, arrests would be made, and trials by juries of their peers would sentence them to prison. Every person born on this Earth has human dignity that should be upheld, but that does not mean sacrificing our children so that deviants can avoid feeling shame when they act out their sexual fantasies in public.
Mary Rooke | Daily Caller News Service
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline, and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
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During WWII, when Germany was bombing England, C.S. Lewis narrated over the radio a series of letters called “The Screwtape Letters.” After the war, this series of allegories were combined in a book by the same name.
The devil, Screwtape, was writing to his nephew, Wormwood, with daily instructions on how to manipulate the human mind with demonic activity. In the last chapter of the book, Lewis tells of a scene in hell where Screwtape addresses an audience of graduating demons. During this speech, Lewis projects a hidden truth describing the nature of Public Schools today. How does he connect education with Democracy?
Lewis’s words are screaming from the past to warn the future of our Republic, the dangers of how majority rule, “democracy” creates the “abolition of education.”My understanding of the premise he based his thesis on: “I’m as good as you are.,” it is a natural thought process which in a democracy is exploited to gain popular support with promises of equality. When the majority rules under the false promise of equality, would-be dictators force equality on the people. Therefore, God-given free will is sacrificed on the altar of “I’m as good as you are equality” as the new norm. Lewis drew a vivid word picture with his far-seeing allegoric perspective. As equality in education grows, permeating every fabric of society with saturation by force, it lifts up mediocrity and discourages superiority by holding it down. This process is inevitable in a society where the majority rules.
His wisdom paints a dark picture where the Deep State does not want great men in democracies. Our Republic has been hijacked by what is taught in the schoolroom. Since WWII, we have had greatness in technology, but that is a product of one generation standing on the shoulders of previous generations. But how many great leaders have we produced? This is exactly how Marxist influence divides at the individual level. There is no room for the brilliant student to accelerate his education because that makes the rest feel inferior. This philosophy directly impacts the great middle-class foundation of our free nation. Look around; the decline in education to produce doctors, scientists, and mathematicians has created a market for foreign students to follow their high-achieving careers on our shores.
Free Public Education is the tenth step of the Communist Manifesto. Lewis knew this result of free education in a Democracy in the 1940’s. Today’s parents instinctively know true education doesn’t exist apart from God. Gone are the days of focusing on reading, writing, and arithmetic. Instead, a child’s curriculum is filled with CRT and hyper-sexualization agendas.
Concerned parents should keep September 28th open from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. The local Chapter of The John Birch Society will host a program featuring Shawn McBreairty covering these UNESCO/Department of Education curriculums; Shawn has appeared on Tucker Carlson, Faulkner Focus and the Ingrahm Angle, among many other programs. He also Hosts the Maine Source of Truth podcast. The event will be held at the Marion Gerrish Community Center at 39 W. Broadway in Derry, NH. All attendees must register RSVP at https://form.jotform.com/232328201086044. Or, Please call 207-391-0970 for further information.
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The Bangor Daily News (BDN) reports that Soros-funded non-profits were not funded to buy 22 Maine Newspapers in one fell swoop. They admit to supporting the group but claim they don’t tell them how to spend the money.
The foundation tied to Democratic megadonor and philanthropist George Soros denied Tuesday a report stating it donated money specifically to help a national nonprofit purchase Maine’s largest newspaper chain earlier this year.
The Open Society Foundations, which Soros began in 1979 and supports an array of liberal and charitable causes around the world, has long been publicly listed as a supporter of the National Trust for Local News, the nonprofit that purchased the Masthead Maine network of 22 newspapers in July for an undisclosed price.
BDN doesn’t try to hide the links between groups or individuals, but it does go out of its way to report on local interests associated with the takeover.
The national trust purchased the newspapers in collaboration with the Maine Journalism Foundation after Masthead Maine owner Reade Brower publicly indicated his intent to sell his media empire in March. The new group of sites is dubbed the Maine Trust for Local News.
Nothing to see here. Just move along. And I suppose we could, but Soros-funded groups have been buying up newspapers all over the planet. It has purchased newspapers in Poland, the UK, Spain, and likely elsewhere.
The Left has been pouring money into setting up “newspaper-like” web portals that publish sports and local content surrounded by progressive news and opinion.
Millions have been invested in helping local papers set up climate alarmism desks that focus on pimping the Climate Cult narrative.
In other words, the philanthropic billionaires on the political Left, who all happen to be anti-American globalists, are openly buying the news in America but not Maine.
Pardon me if I don’t believe you.
And not becasue you want to tilt them left; they were already there. You are buying them and propping them up so they don’t fail.
The post Who Bought 22 Newspapers In Maine – A Soros Foundation Denies They Did It, But They Lie … appeared first on Granite Grok.
Thomas Sowell has given us a penetrating criticism of the approach to justice taken by many political philosophers, especially John Rawls and his innumerable followers. He says that they construct an image of the way society ought to be but fail to ask whether their plans are feasible. His criticism is well-taken, although he does not offer an adequate account of the rights that people have.
He says about Rawls:
In much of the social justice literature, including Professor John Rawls’ classic A Theory of Justice, various policies have been recommended, on grounds of their desirability from a moral standpoint—but often with little or no attention to the practical question of whether those policies could in fact be carried out and produce the end results desired. In a number of places, for example, Rawls referred to things that “society” should “arrange”—but without specifying the instrumentalities or the feasibilities of those arrangements.
Later, Sowell remarks that “the exaltation of desirability and neglect of feasibility, which Adam Smith criticized, is today still a major ingredient in the fundamental fallacies of the social justice vision.”
Sowell agrees with Rawls that many inequalities in people’s conditions seem arbitrary and unfair if viewed as the outcome of a plan. But once we realize that in a free market, no such plan exists, it is evident that criticism of the market on the grounds that it permits unjust inequalities is misplaced. Life is just “like that,” and attempts to undo these inequalities will likely fail and have bad results.
Sowell’s argument follows Friedrich Hayek, about whom he says:
Clearly, Hayek also saw life in general as unfair, even within the free markets he advocated. But this is not the same as saying that he saw society as unfair. To Hayek, society was an “orderly structure,” but not a decision-making unit, or an institution taking action. That is what governments do. But neither society nor government comprehends or controls all the many and highly varied circumstances—including a large element of luck—that can influence the fate of individuals, classes, races, or nations.
As an example, Sowell cites studies that show first-born children tend to be more successful academically than children who have older brothers or sisters. Is this something that requires remedial action by the government? he asks. The very thought is ridiculous. We must, Sowell thinks, simply live and let live.
It is certainly true, as Sowell suggests that issues of feasibility severely constrain what those who seek “social justice” can do, but he has not shown that these issues reduce the space for action to nothing. At times, he implicitly posits a false antithesis between rejection of social justice entirely and acceptance of a comprehensive conception of social justice that he calls “cosmic justice,” which would attempt to redress all inequalities deemed undeserved. (I hasten to add that I reject social justice altogether, but to defend this position adequately requires an account of rights, which Sowell doesn’t provide.)
In support of his criticism of social justice, Sowell makes a dubious argument. People who support social justice often take as one of their prime examples the need for special programs to aid blacks because discrimination against them, both at present and in the past, has put them at a severe disadvantage compared to whites. But empirical evidence doesn’t support the claim that current inequalities in income between blacks and whites stem primarily from discriminatory treatment, he argues.
Sowell is a master of deploying evidence, and anyone who wants to challenge him about the causation of inequality faces a difficult, if not altogether impossible, task. But a supporter of social justice might argue that the requirement to redress discriminatory treatment isn’t an empirical claim about the sources of current inequality but a moral demand. People who hold this view might think that even if you are now doing very well, you are still entitled to compensation if you have suffered from discrimination. (Once more, I do not favor this view, quite the contrary, but an adequate response to it must involve moral theory.)
It’s more important, though, to bear in mind the strength of Sowell’s argument than its limits. Feasibility issues greatly limit the scope of social justice, even if they do not preclude it completely. And we can more unreservedly agree with another excellent point that Sowell makes. He says:
Ironically, many intellectual elites—then and now—seem to regard themselves as promoting a more democratic society, when they preempt other people’s decisions. . .Their conception of democracy seems to be equalization of outcomes, by intellectual elites. This would confer benefits on the less fortunate, at the expense of those whom these surrogates consider less deserving . . . [Woodrow Wilson] favored government by surrogate decision -makers, armed with superior knowledge and understanding—“executive expertness”—and unhindered by the voting public. Woodrow Wilson’s response to objections that this would deprive the people at large of the freedom to live their own lives as they saw fit, was to redefine the word “freedom.”. . . By simply depicting government-provided benefits—dispensed by surrogate decision-makers—as an additional freedom for the recipients, President Wilson made the issue of people’s loss of freedom disappear, as if by verbal sleight of hand.
Sowell has made a vital point. You are free if others do not aggress against your person and property; if they do so but give you benefits, you aren’t free. Sowell eloquently says:
The “complexities” of this Wilsonian definition of freedom are certainly understandable, since evading the obvious can become very complex. When Spartacus led an uprising of slaves, back in the days of the Roman Empire [Republic], he was not doing it to get welfare state benefits.
As Bishop Joseph Butler remarked long ago, “Everything is what it is, and not another thing.”
David Gordon is Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and editor of the Mises Review.
David Gordon | Mises Wire
Mises Wire We heartily encourage reprints and shares of Mises Wire articles. If you wish to reproduce an article in your blog, magazine, radio show, newspaper column, classroom material, textbook, discussion group, website, or any other venue, please do so. The original publication source must be included in an appropriate place.The post “Social Justice” Is Neither Social nor Just appeared first on Granite Grok.
China is building coal plants faster than a Democrat can stuff a ballot box, earning it the glorious distinction of being the world’s leader in CO2 and air pollution emissions.
But the usual suspects aren’t losing their minds. Greta has never protested there, and extinction rebellion is extinct.
China owns most of the mines, digging up rare earth metals to make the graven green idols of the new energy left. China is also a leader in ocean pollution and ocean plastic, but bringing any of that is Asian hate speech. A problem Cult stenographers at Reuters are addressing head-on. Yeah, China emits a lot of CO2, but it’s different.
It makes sense from an economic and geopolitical perspective to power China’s vehicle fleet using domestic electricity rather than imported crude oil.
The question is then whether China can meet its climate goals by switching increasingly to NEVs, which will be powered by a coal-heavy electricity grid for decades to come.
China used coal for about 63% of its electricity generation in 2022, with hydropower coming in second at 14%, and other renewable energies such as wind generating 9% and solar 5%.
China is also the world’s biggest installer of renewable power sources and is expanding its nuclear fleet as well, but coal is expected to remain the bedrock of electricity production, even as its share of generation gradually decreases.
But even using a predominantly coal-fired grid to charge NEVs is better from a climate perspective, insofar as an electric vehicle powered by a 60% coal-fired grid will produce lower lifecycle emissions that a similar ICE vehicle.
The author is crazy excited about China doing whatever it takes to reduce oil imports, even if it means burning tons of dirty coal. They’ve even done the math for us. An E need only drive 79,000 miles, even on coal, for the profile to reduce emissions. They then promise these vehicles will last to 170,000, so ta-dah, coal is better, and isn’t China wonderful?
As I understand it, China doesn’t use or require stack scrubbers. The author does not calculate the carbon cost of replacing the lithium pack, which will never make it to 170,000 miles and may even need ot be replaced twice to achieve that. There is no calculation for other realities like power loss, bleed, declining range, and how EVs are easily “totaled” from even the simplest of auto collisions.
Or that China will likely never shoot itself in the face by demanding EV embrace or anything approaching the electric future envisioned by Western progressives.
What it is doing is burning coal to shore up its military-industrial complex and commercial global dominance and using cheap, abundant energy to advance its global political agenda while selling the rope to the West with which its elites have chosen to hang us all.
And if you complain about that, I can only assume you’ll be called a racist, even though Democrats hate Asians almost as much as white Europeans.
HT | Real Climate Science
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The second GOP debate for the 2024 primary will take place this Wednesday, and not only will there be fewer people on the stage, but there will be a different sense of urgency about them.
The six candidates likely to be on stage are Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence, former U.N. ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, biotech investor Vivek Ramaswamy, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. To many, myself included, Ron DeSantis has been a surprise and disappointment. Perhaps the distraction of running a state and doing it very well has taken his eye off the prize, or maybe our expectations of his presence on the national stage were set too high.
He came into the race in a solid second place, only behind former President Trump, but has not connected with the folks of Iowa and New Hampshire and has dropped steadily in the rankings. Maybe not at the point of desperation yet, but DeSantis has to have a monumental night on Wednesday. His policies are sound, but his likeability numbers are dragging him down. He has to come out and convince viewers and voters that he is as Presidential as Gavin Newsom. There was talk of a made-for-TV debate between DeSantis and Newsom, and I think that testosterone-driven event would speed his decline.
Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy have been steady, and Vivek has moved into second in some polls. The others need to show why they are even in the game. Being in the single digits at this point should convince you that you may want the job, but America does not see you in the Oval Office. Pence and Scott are good men and have a message of hope and unity, but that message alone is not loud enough to make a difference. Chris Christie is not a good man, and his only purpose to be in the race is personal. He hates Donald Trump and wants to denigrate him at every opportunity. Many have tried that approach, asking the entire Democrat Party how that is working for them, but nothing seems to drag the polling numbers down; it only seems to bolster them.
In reality, do these debates have any importance in the 2024 Race? I think not. Unless the Democrats can find a way to legally keep Trump off the ballot and force Biden to the sidelines, it appears that America wants a rematch or a re-do. This scenario will be as ugly as an Ali vs. Frazier rematch. I do not think you will see Biden threaten to take Trump behind the barn this time unless it is to write initials in the snow. One thing that will be obvious if these two men stand on the debate stage together is what many of us have been saying for months: it is not age but acuity, and Trump will make Biden look like the feeble older man he is.
The debate will happen this week, and there will be more to come, but these sessions are not even an audition for a second spot on the ticket. If Trump is successful in surviving politically until the main event, I think he will snub all of the established possibilities for a running mate and surprise the world. I have no idea who it might be, but it will be worth tuning in for and probably more interesting than the debate.
The post The Second GOP Debate Will Have A Different Look And Feel appeared first on Granite Grok.
Black Democrat Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced he was switching to the Republican Party. It is a bold move in a city like Dallas, and if nothing else, the Democrat party is pissed, so at least one good thing came out of it.
But I’m not sure how a party jump will accomplish anything unless the goal is to prove a Republican mayor can oversee a crime-riddled urban plantation like Dallas. Look!, It’s not just Democrats wrecking American cities.
Time will tell, but Eric Johnson has sounded all the proper alarms and is saying the right things.
“The future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism,” Johnson wrote. “Our cities desperately need the genuine commitment to these principles (as opposed to the inconsistent, poll-driven commitment of many Democrats) that has long been a defining characteristic of the GOP.”
He added: “In other words, American cities need Republicans—and Republicans need American cities.”
Johnson’s announcement makes him the only Republican among the mayors of the 10 most populous cities in the US.
The ten most populous cities in the US account for the majority of poverty, crime, and illiteracy, and Mayor Johnson (snicker) was elected as a Democrat with 98% of the vote, according to CNN. Needless to say (this is where we repeat it anyway), the Texas Democrat Party is not amused.
“[T]he voters of Dallas deserved to know where he stood before he ran for reelection as Mayor,” the chair and vice-chair of the party said. “He wasn’t honest with his constituents, and knew he would lose to a Democrat if he flipped before the election.”
“This feeble excuse for democratic representation will fit right in with Republicans — and we are grateful that he can no longer tarnish the brand and values of the Texas Democratic Party,” they added.
The voters of Dallas deserve peace and prosperity, even if they can’t figure out how to vote for some of that.
Violent crime in Dallas is nearly double that of Texas and more than double the national median rate. Property crime is also roughly double that of the US average, with total crimes averaging 150 per square mile, 5.6 times greater than the US average. The poverty rate in Dallas is close to 18%. It’s everything you’d expect from systemic Democrat rule, but what can be done?
Mayor Johnson is saying the right things, but Dallas is a captured franchise of the Democrat political machine. Every office and every position of leadership is controlled by the (now) opposing party or its union representative. Nothing moves unless you move it yourself, which would begin with exercising whatever executive authority you have as Mayor to remove and replace people in key positions.
Can you? Wcritical you? And is there enough time to show progress before discovering how your party primaries you out when it is time for re-election? And remember that they will bring thugs to Dallas to make things look bad or worse. Antifa and BLM riots. General chaos and Mayhem.
The Left will set Dallas on fire to smoke you out of office, and being a black man will not protect you.
Having said all that, good on you for daring to stand up for the people of Dallas or at least saying things that need to be said. The Democrat party has destroyed America’s cities and stranded millions on their new urban plantation of crime, drug abuse, poverty, homelessness, and disease. But you have to do more than say you are a Republican.
We’ve got plenty of those already and they aren’t helping anyone but themselves.
The post You’ll Need to Do More Than Just Say “I’m a Republican” appeared first on Granite Grok.