A recent study of Burmese pythons concludes that snake meat is more efficient to produce than traditional livestock, making it a viable protein alternative to cows or pigs. Given the primeval human aversion to snakes, this menu item may be a harder sell even than crickets or faux-meat nuggets. However, the omissions and biases inherent in the study’s conclusions reveal much larger impediments to snake burgers than diner aversion.

Snake Bait and Switch

The study of Thai and Vietnamese farms offers some interesting data about reptilian biology, and certainly, snake as a specialty meat product is a perfectly sensible menu item – as is alligator, turtle, or eel. However, the suggestion that humanity should convert from tens of thousands of years of symbiotic animal husbandry to an ophidian diet is a fantastical and unworkable “replacement theory.”

The plug for snake meat smacks of snake oil. A hint is offered in the deceptive statement by proponent Daniel Natusch from consulting firm EPIC Biodiversity, who proclaims that “no other livestock species studied to date possesses the same credentials or rates of production as pythons.”

Natusch, whose academic expertise is in reptile biology, does not conceal his ideological bias, revealed in articles such as “The fatal flaws of compassionate conservatism” and his founding and leadership of the Australian charity People for Wildlife. Dr. Natusch premises his claim that snakes are superior to other farm animals on the study’s measurement of the conversion of energy into meat by the Burmese Python:

“According to the study, the dry mass of the food the pythons were fed was 1.2 times that of the dressed carcass, compared with 1.5 for salmon, 2.1 for crickets, 2.8 for poultry, 6 for pigs and 10 for beef.

“The dry mass of the protein fed to the snakes was 2.4 times that in a snake carcass, compared with 3 for salmon, 10 for crickets, 21 for poultry, 38 for pigs and 83 for beef.”

Neither a climate scientist nor a biologist is required to readily perceive a mismatch here: Snakes are carnivores that eat a high-protein diet of other animals that consume yet other animals and plants, whereas traditional “livestock” are mostly herbivores – mammalian ruminants who dine solely on protein-weak grasses and other plant forage.

What a Waste (of Breath)

When pressed about this “apples and oranges” analytical perversion, Dr. Natusch offered an equally specious excuse: It isn’t the efficiency of food conversion that makes snake meat sustainable, but the fact that snakes are fed on waste meat like trapped rodents and stillborn pigs. “Livestock fed on plant protein sourced from a crop monoculture where a natural habitat once stood … is far less sustainable than capturing rodent pests or using waste protein to feed pythons,” he said.

Dismissing his own study’s argument that snakes are grand for their food conversion, the snake doctor here pivots to a bold claim that trapped rodents and stillborn pigs can somehow compete with grass at scale and a strawman conclusion about livestock that ignores rotational grazing that nurtures the natural landscape. He also bypassed the fact that cows are fed agricultural waste products on a massive scale that would not be palatable to his pet pythons: fruit peels and pulp, corn refuse left over from the ethanol industry, spent brewery grains, almond hulls, etc. These are removed from a landfill destiny, where they prevent gaseous emissions from rot, reducing the output of crop waste by an estimated 60%, according to Gizmodo. Perhaps he will propose shipping this to Vietnam to feed wild rats?

Cows require 83 times the dry mass of protein because they extract it from plant matter, with very low concentrations of protein relative to rat or piglet sausages. Globally, humanity allegedly consumes about 350 million tons of meat annually. That is not just a lot of Burmese Pythons – by Natusch’s calculations, that equates to 840 million tons of dead rats and piggies – plus whatever they ate. (Someone, please send him a calculator!)

Rotational grazing is obviously far more sustainable, and it eliminates the chemical-dependent grain crops that destroy soils and pollute groundwater not just in monocultures for livestock feed but in plant-based diets (including synthetic meats) made from unsustainable (vegan) grain crops. Rats don’t eat grass – they eat grains. What will they be “sustainably” fed? We are not told by the snake charmers.

A Moral Argument?

Natusch dangles yet another savory tidbit of balderdash: the moral “case” for munching snake flesh in lieu of fried chicken or yummy bacon. Dr. Natusch again resorts to serpentine reasoning when plugging pythons over bovines: “For the vegans out there, in my experience, there would likely be more animals suffering from sowing crops into the soil each year than are killed to feed a python.”

He also argues that farming snakes is more ethical than farming birds or mammals since serpents lack the cognitive capacity of the other two and are more likely to remain inactive in small, confined spaces when they don’t need food. Both of these assertions fall to the ground on inspection. Whatever he means by “animals suffering from sowing crops” (the trope that farm animals lead unhappy lives, which is just not true of grass-fed cows and free-range chickens), it is hard to imagine that more cows and pigs are slain each year than the billions of rats his snakes need for sausages. Certainly there aren’t enough piglets, despite California’s Proposition 12, which ensures more piglets will die every day.

As to the moral argument, it seems there has been another twist in logic – Natusch admitted snakes aren’t really that efficient, switched to “they eat waste meat” (an impossibility at scale), and now turns to a moral persuasion that is divorced completely from the sustainability premise upon which the study was based. Far-left field is where all the climate shenanigans end up hitting their nutty balls.

Serpentine Food Security?

Perhaps most fantastical yet, Natusch finishes this tasty smorgasbord of weak assertions with the biggest Pinocchio of all: that snakes will increase food security because “most of the snakes chose to go for periods of up to 127 days without eating, yet lost just a few percentage points of body mass at most,” which “means that farmers can stop feeding them for weeks or months if there are global shocks that interrupt supply chains.”

Cows on grass are immune from such threats. Perhaps when global supply chains from Thailand and Vietnam (where shrimp farming is decimating the ecosystem) are disrupted, Americans won’t be able to import snake fare. Snakes may be content without food, but humans don’t do so well on 127-day fasts. Cows are kept locally, often on pastures unsuitable for growing plant crops. Rotationally grazed cows sequester more carbon than they emit, feed depleted soils with manure, and convert grasses to protein without the intervention of disease-carrying rodents. That is the current food security Natusch advises humanity to abandon in the name of snake food insecurity.

Or was it efficiency? Or sustainability? Or morality? Or preventing global warming? Or recycling waste?

Sensible minds prefer reliable, grass-fed, locally sourced beef and lamb. For those who buy into the reptilian argument that cows hurt the planet, perhaps we should just “Let them eat snake!”

 

John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And Regular Contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.

The post Climate Farming Dreams are a Nightmare for Diners appeared first on Granite Grok.

State Governments top heavy with progressive thinkers have been looking for excuses to pass laws banning “militias.” Vermont, to my geographic and ideological left, used a gun range with a few unpermitted buildings to ban Militias statewide, and Vermont only exists because of a militia. Maine just followed suit.

Vacationland legislators used the rumor that a prominent neo-Nazi and white supremacist, Christopher Pohlhaus, was looking to open a training center as an excuse for the new law. I don’t know who Pohlhaus is or what he believes, but the government thought enough of whatever picture they’d painted of him to ban “paramilitary” “training” statewide. I’ve not read the bill, so I’m not going to pretend to know what they mean by that. Still, according to this reporting, “Without the new law, [Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey] said, he had no way to bring a criminal case against someone using military training to create civil disorder, as authorities say Pohlhaus sought to do.”

Did you catch that?

Polhaus may or may not be a despicable racist, but he has yet to use military training to do anything, let alone create civil disorder. All we have is the presumption that this is his or anyone else’s intention, which is all that is needed to bring a criminal case. If you and some friends like to go to the range to practice gun safety together, the State’s assumption about your intentions might be enough to get you and the range brought up on charges.

Again, I’ve not seen the bill, but it sounds like any gathering of lawfully armed individuals for any purpose has become a breeding ground for anti-second Amendment enforcement. And how does that work? The State gets a tip. They follow up. One of the attendees is discovered to have shared something on social media that the government thinks it can use along with this new law to shut down otherwise law-abiding behavior.

Maybe a few of them show up in the same tee shirts. Is that a uniform? Are they a militia? It doesn’t take much to make law-abiding citizens look like criminals.

You can pretend it won’t happen, but New Hampshire is about as friendly to rights and liberty as you can get in the Northeast. The AG of our Live Free or Die Republican governor has tried to use State and Federal Civil Rights laws to silence free speech because they don’t like the speech. The case, much like with Maine’s new anti-militia law, started with a local white supremacy group which, had the AG succeeded, would have put a chilling hand on all free speech and likely cost millions as lawsuits wound their way to the US Supreme Court where the State would have lost. This fishing expedition was dismissed, but the AG is back from another angle. His office has filed another suit, this time pretending Hate Speech is not protected – they are still fishing, and we’d be right to wonder why. Shouldn’t the AG be protecting speech?

Maine’s new mission is not much different in my head than that, except that its legislature passed a law someone will have to be charged with violating before it can be challenged on the anvil of the constitution by another branch of the government with a spotty record of reading the constitution in ways unpopular with people looking to infringe on rights.

I’m not advocating for military training whose specific purpose is to disrupt public peace, but crafting legislation that allows the police state to decide the intentions of others absent any crime for prosecution, while not new, is fascist and authoritarian.

Mainers deserve better than that.

The post Maine Follows Vermont Down Another Disarmament Rabbit Hole appeared first on Granite Grok.

The votes are tallied, and the readers who voted have crowned our latest comment of the week winner. Congratulations to Publius!

Publius, if you are so inclined, please reach out to me, steve@granitegrok.com, so that I can get a shipping address.

Here is the post, commenter, and winning comment as voted by you!

The Post:  G.E.T. R.E.A.L! – E: Education Reform
The Commenter: Publius

The schools aren’t perfect and share a portion of blame for sure, spending all their spare money on additional useless admin that don’t discipline, don’t give classroom support, don’t do their job of iep compliance, just sit there and try and enforce DEI and useless PD rather than trying to attract the best and brightest teachers with attractive salaries.

But we can’t forget to blame what we know to be the largest driver of student success.

Parents

Parents aren’t reading to their kids anymore, they aren’t fostering a love of learning, a sense of discipline, and a sense of respect

The parents plop their kids down in front of a screen for hours at a time, the almighty tablet has become their one stop shop for entertainment on demand. They then get a smart phone with all the quick-dopamine hits that give them easy highs and terrible lows when comparing themselves to everyone else. This constant connection to everything enables round the clock bullying too, and not to mention how that affects their attention span in the classroom, where they are truly addicted to the screen.

It’s an old comic at this point demonstrating the generational gap where a kid gets bad grades and the older generation asks the child what they did wrong, where the modern generation asks the teacher what they did wrong.

The covid years showed us how many parents don’t even care about the school teaching their kids anything but so many just care about it being free daycare.

As a society we once greatly valued education, but that has slowly been chipped away to ensure a generation of obedient, mindless slaves.

The post Comment of the Week Winner: Publius appeared first on Granite Grok.

(white) goldstandard-04-18-24-S.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-04-18-24-S-y.pdf

The post Senate Gold Standard – April 18, 2024 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

In a previous article, I noted that I thought Attorney Celia Leonard was being coached by Attorney Bolton and his hired legal Dream Team on Wednesday, 4/10.  The next day, I looked for a camera in Courtroom 3, as Mr Buckmire, the head of security advised me to mention in my request for footage.

I just called the number given to me, (855) 212-1234, and wound up frustrated. It was the same variety of frustration I experienced when Attorney Lehmann said that emails to and from individual members of the legislature are NOT subject to 91A, Gmail, or NH dot gov addresses alike.

Frustration has many varieties, though not necessarily 57 of them. One of them is being told to pound sand by the stewards of information being sought.  I also mentioned how the police academy’s 10/13/21 raw video footage’s availability to the defense counsel was delayed for almost 20 months, even though Attorney Gens requested it.

My frustration was similar in that I was essentially denied also, but such frustration was compounded with my follow up questions being thwarted with repeated interruptions by the person on the other end of the phone. I will explain.

My call was answered by Pat, who introduced herself by name only.  It was one of those countless cases, public and private, where the caller tells the long, detailed story to the call answerer only to be “cold transferred” to a coworker chosen by the answerer as the one most fit to field the request.

I did not have Laurie Ortolano’s PARTICULAR case number handy, my bad, but I offered the dates and other information Pat might find helpful, considering Laurie has/had multiple cases.  I even said I would like to write the case number down so I could reference it in the future when asked.  Unfortunately, I was unable to get that information despite repeated attempts to get it from both Pat and the person Pat cold transferred my call to. Neither of them was interested in what customer service experts call “identification and acknowledgment of the customer’s request.”

A whole separate article could be written on how such expert consultants would advise the CSR to let the customer finish explaining the reason for the call/visit.  Then the CSR reiterates back to the customer what the problem or request is, thus establishing an understanding of the customer’s objective in the encounter.  I’m aware that we’re all human beings who often do things less than perfectly, but such training would benefit both the public and the people employed to handle calls made to (855) 212-1234.

My ex-BF, an electrical engineer, would always say that the more moving parts there are to something, the more opportunity there is for malfunctions. While I hate to point out that a man was right, especially him, he was indeed right, no matter how many trees were falling in the forest at the time.

There were too many moving parts to my unproductive phone call to discuss and still keep this article short, so I will only focus on a few. One of them was the second person I spoke to relentlessly interrupting me. A few times, I had to resort to interrupting her back with a “pardon, I would like to finish, please” to answer her question, steer her back to the nature of why I called, or properly clarify my follow-up question(s).

The second person thought I WAS Laurie Ortolano. That mistake was on one or both of them, not me, and I politely pointed out that I was not.  She also thought I was talking about another case with Laurie as the plaintiff.  When she mentioned the Supreme Court, her error was obvious.  She told me several times that there were several cases involving Laurie, but she obviously wasn’t listening when it was my turn to talk because I acknowledged several times that I was aware of there being multiple cases.

As noted earlier, I expressed interest in the one that was in court last Wednesday and would like to write down its case number.  Deaf ears were definitely on full display throughout the call, so I ultimately took the high road and ended the call with a “no sense in barking up the wrong tree, but thanks for the information you gave me and have a good day” instead of complaining about her attention being a real “moving target” during my line of questioning.  I will confess that I did throw in an “I think I’m done here” with my parting comment, but I stand by it. Let’s get to the takeaway item I learned.

I was told that they don’t just give out camera footage to anyone requesting it, media or otherwise. The request has to be filed as a motion by one of the parties involved in the case, and Judge Temple has to approve it. Laurie has another case on Thursday, 4/18, which is about the City’s misuse of New Market Tax Credits, so I’m not going to bog her down with my suggestion to motion Judge Temple while she’s preparing for it.

A reader might ask why I wrote this, and I have a few thoughts. One of them is that I have a greater appreciation for Frank Staples insisting on doing all his own courtroom recording. Another is that I’m glad to have heard during the robo greeting that my call was being recorded (presumably and hopefully for training purposes) when I called (855) 212-1234.  And lastly, it’s another example of the RTK frustrations our government creates all by design. Consider this another reminder to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that HB 1002 is a bad bill and needs to be killed.

The post Celia Isn’t the Only One Breaking My Heart appeared first on Granite Grok.

Maksym Krippa is a renowned figure in the Ukrainian business landscape. AMCU approved the acquisition of the Parus business center through Ola Fine LLC, a company under the umbrella of ARS Capital. This development, endorsed by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, not only marks a significant milestone in Maksym Krippa’s investment journey but also reflects broader trends in Ukraine’s business ecosystem, potentially influencing foreign investors’ perceptions of the country’s investment climate.

This is known from information published on the 7day website.

The agreement brokered between Parus Holding’s principal stakeholders, Vadym Stolar, and his ex-wife, Inna Maistruk, signifies a pivotal shift in ownership dynamics. With Stolar’s ownership of 80% of shares through the Genesis fund and Maistruk’s 20% ownership via the Stream Investment fund, the transition of control to Krippa heralds a new chapter for the Parus business center.

Situated in the heart of Kyiv, the Parus skyscraper stands as a beacon of modernity and sophistication, boasting impressive architectural features and amenities tailored to meet the needs of corporate tenants. Its status as one of Ukraine’s tallest buildings between 2005 and 2008 underscores its significance within the urban landscape, retaining its allure and appeal to discerning occupants.

More about the skyscraper

Key features of the Parus business center include its towering height of 133.1 meters, augmented to 149.5 meters with the antenna, spanning across 33 floors of premium office space. Noteworthy attributes such as floors capable of withstanding loads of up to 250 kg/m² and two conference halls accommodating 40 and 100 delegates, respectively, highlight the center’s commitment to functionality and versatility.

Moreover, the presence of dining facilities on various floors, including restaurants on the fourth and thirty-first floors, adds to the convenience and allure of the Parus business center. Its strategic location, mere minutes away from the Klovska metro station and the Palace of Sports, further enhances accessibility and connectivity for tenants and visitors alike.

What is known about the new owner of this skyscraper?

Maxim Krippa entrepreneurial prowess extends beyond the realm of real estate, with notable investments in diverse sectors including IT, esports, and software development. His ownership of NAVI esports team and GSC Game World exemplifies his strategic vision and commitment to driving innovation across multiple industries, cementing his status as a prominent investor and business leader in Ukraine and beyond.

The post NAVI Investor Maksym Krippa Buys BC Parus appeared first on Granite Grok.

Whereas the practice of slavery enslaves the body, the dogma of apostasy ensnares the mind. Whereas slavery is a shameful practice of the past, some shameless religionists still use the doctrine of apostasy to intimidate and severely punish people who elect to choose their own beliefs.

Islam is extremely possessive of its subjects. It is a religion that admits anyone into its fold by the person simply uttering a one-sentence statement of faith, shahada: I bear witness that there is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger. By so saying, one becomes Muslim for life and surrenders the right of ever leaving it. Anyone who leaves the Islamic fold is murtad (revert), apostate.

The notion of apostasy is best understood within the overall Islamic dogma. Islam forms a binding covenant with the believer. Once a person is Muslim, he and his issues are considered Muslim forever. In this covenant, Islam promises to bestow its beneficence on the faithful conditional on the person’s total and unquestioned surrender to it in all matters. Some of the rewards offered by Islam to the truly obedient believer, particularly the privileged males, are of this world as well as a great deal more promised to him in the next. If a Muslim faithful does not reap the rewards of his devotion in this world, Islam assures him of his inestimably cherished and limitless compounded rewards in the next world.

Islam demands the subjugation of the individual’s will to that of Allah and permeates the thinking, actions, and speech of Muslims by prefacing commitments they make contingent on the will of God (inshallah)

This total surrender and submission to Allah’s will and decree also absolve the individual from taking full responsibility for his conduct or honoring any commitments he may make, for Allah has the unquestioned authority to consummate or contravene any action or promise made by a faithful.

Within this overall framework of complete acceptance of Islam as the perfect living charter for the believer, the rules pertaining to apostasy can be better understood. Islam considers an apostate as a person who unilaterally breaks the covenant he has made with the faith. An apostate is condemned as guilty of turning his back on Allah’s immutable, eternal religion. Anyone who is born to Muslim parents and leaves Islam is stigmatized as murtad fitri (natural apostate) in the sense that he was born genetically Muslim and had rejected his gift of birth. Anyone who converts to Islam and later leaves it is condemned as murtad milli (a person who has turned his back to the Ummah)

The severe stricture against leaving Islam is consistent with other main principle beliefs of the religion. Islam is a faith of surrender and not that of free will. A Muslim is to surrender his freedom of thoughts and actions to the will and dictates of Allah. The very principle of freedom is alien to the Islamic belief system.

With regard to apostasy, the two main branches of Islam, the Sunni and the Shiite, are in considerable agreement. The great majority of Muslim scholars of both major camps agree that the Quran stipulates death for the apostate.

Islam, by its very nature, is an all-encompassing belief system that prescribes every detail of a person’s and society’s conduct. Sharia law, a comprehensive code of Islamic jurisprudence, purportedly is based on the Quran and the Hadith (the reported enunciation of Muhammad and his conduct).

Furthermore, Islamic societies rule by the Islamic laws of Sharia. Any new societal legislation must be harmonious with those of the Sharia, which are conclusively anti-democratic. Sharia law is in explicit contradiction and violation of the foundation of democracy. Sharia law places the dictates and rules of Allah over the sovereignty of the people. It discriminates against non-Muslims to the extreme of disenfranchising them from their rights of citizenship of Baha’is, barring them from jobs, higher education, worship, etc., not only in Iran but also in Saudi Arabia and even Egypt. It is blatantly discriminatory against women, Muslim or not. Men have a greater claim to inheritance, their testimony in the court of law is worth twice that of women, and they may marry multiple women at the same time. It stipulates even different rules and privileges governing free Muslim men as opposed to slave Muslims, implicitly condoning slavery. Saudi Arabia, the flagship of Islam, was finally forced by the free world to abandon slavery, I believe, only in the late 1960s, but it has been reported that it has not been completely abandoned.

Apostasy is defined both in the Quran as well as the Sharia and its punishment is clearly stipulated.

“Those who blasphemed and back away from the ways of Allah and die as blasphemers, Allah shall not forgive them.” [Qur’an 4:48]

Islamic law does not allow the freedom to choose one’s religion.

“Let there be no compulsion in the religion: Clearly the Right Path (i.e., Islam) is distinct from the crooked path.” [Qur’an 2:256]

The Quran also specifically addresses the issue of murtad milli:

“But those who reject faith after they accepted it, and then go on adding to their defiance of faith, never will their repentance be accepted; for they are those who have (of set purpose) gone astray.” [Qur’an 3:90]

The Hadith further restates the Quran’s provision regarding the apostate’s punishment.

The Sharia law stipulates that any Muslim who turns his back to Islam should be given a chance to revert to the religion. For an un-repenting male apostate, death is the punishment and life imprisonment for a female apostate.

“Kill whoever changes his religion.” __Sahih al-Bukhari 9:84:57

“The blood of a Muslim who confesses that none has the right to be worshiped but Allah and that I am His Apostle, cannot be shed except in three cases: In Qisas for murder, a married person who commits illegal sexual intercourse and the one who reverts from Islam (apostate) and leaves the Muslims.”__ Sahih al-Bukhari 9:83:17

At present, apostasy is illegal in most Islamic countries. Although execution of the apostate is not common, it takes place occasionally by frequently buttressing the “crime” with additional charges. The Islamic Republic of Iran, for instance, often adds the charge of mohareb (one who wars with God) to legitimize its execution of apostates further. A case in point pertains to the treatment of the religious minority Baha’is by the Islamic Republic. A number of Baha’is have been charged as apostates and mohareb, executed, and some secretly buried in unmarked graves.

The late Ayatollah Khomeini in his Tahrir al-Wassilah adjudicates how a person’s apostasy is established: “Apostasy is proven in two ways: First, the person himself confesses to his apostasy twice. Second, two and truthful men bear witness to the person’s apostasy. But women’s testimonies do not prove apostasy in any case; either they bear witness individually, in a group, or beside a man.”

The misogynistic nature of Islam is once again evident in Ayatollah Khomeini’s blanket disqualification of women’s testimony solely on the basis of gender.

“Apostasy — or the formal renunciation of religion — is already punishable in Iran with death. But now, Iran wants to make the death penalty for apostasy part of the penal code. The European Union is concerned and has asked Iran to reconsider.” Who is an apostate according to the legislation? Anyone in the world, not just Iranians, born to a Muslim parent; also, any convert to Islam who leaves it. Only one parent needs to be a Muslim at the time of conception for Islam to own that child for life. Islam is Ummahist. Islam doesn’t recognize nationalities and national boundaries. And these Islamist zealots are very serious and have no sense of humor. Some say they have no sense at all, and they may be right. What they certainly have is a thirst for blood, particularly for the blood of infidels and apostates.

It is noteworthy that Islam considers the world as its Ummah and overarches national boundaries. Hence, Islamic clerics feel free to issue fatwa and other adjudications regarding any person, group, or nation anywhere in the world. A celebrated case of this practice was the fatwa of Ayatollah Khomeini against the British author Salman Rushdie for his book The Satanic Verses. Hence, individual Muslims anywhere in the world take it upon themselves to carry out fatwa issued by Islamic high divines. In another high-profile case, the killing of Theo van Gough, a Dutch film director, and the recent attack on the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard clearly demonstrates this primitive practice that runs counter to the civilized world’s due process and has a seriously intimidating impact on the freedom of expression.

Free people and nations should not sacrifice their God-given liberty to please the Islamists by muzzling dissenters and even endangering their safety and their lives.

The concept and practice of apostasy is a shameful stain on the conscience of humanity. It is despicable for any belief system to stubbornly cling to the dehumanizing anachronism of apostasy while its counterpart, slavery, is already buried in mankind’s graveyard of past infamy.

The post Night Cap: Islam is a Faith of Surrender and Not That of Free Will appeared first on Granite Grok.

The announcement of a “model” international building code might understandably elicit yawns. However, the 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) is cause for Americans to bolt upright and pay close attention. The vain imaginings of corporate and NGO “stakeholders” who propose to completely dominate American housing construction in the name of saving the planet promise to drive up housing costs and mandate dangerous grid dependency that erases longstanding constitutional liberties.

The 2024 plan would dramatically expand regulations for both residential and commercial construction, possibly including both new and existing homes.

Building Codes That Demolish Liberties

According to the code’s executive summary, “concern is growing around the world about the impacts of climate change” and “consumers are seeking more energy efficient and sustainable homes.” This assertion excludes those who have concerns about overblown climate fearmongering and consumers accustomed to free market choices in an already overpriced housing market. Behind this shallow justification are special interest groups who feign to speak for all consumers, whose liberties are extinguished in favor of a compelled code rather than rules freely chosen by We the People.

The executive summary lists the expanded plans of control:

“The [2024] IECC will continue to be updated on a three-year cycle and each edition will increase efficiency over the prior edition; The code will include pathways leading to the achievement of zero energy buildings presently and by 2030; The code may include non-mandatory appendices incorporating energy efficiency and greenhouse gas reduction resources including for electric vehicle charging, electrification and embodied carbon; The code’s minimum efficiency requirements will be strengthened each edition based on a balancing test supported by energy efficiency advocates and the building industry and passed by both the U.S. House and Senate; The development committees will be informed by insight from a newly established Energy and Carbon Advisory Council made up of public and private sector leaders. Governments continue to have the ultimate say on whether to adopt or amend model codes.”

This outsourcing of vitally important regulatory authority is unusual, diminishes the role of voter “stakeholders,” appears to promulgate policies that enrich corporate interests and advance pseudo-scientific climate alarmism. The usual invocations of protections for “marginalized communities” are absent here, and these plans will escalate housing costs dramatically. Like Biden’s EPA noose-tightening of vehicle emissions standards, compulsory appliance manufacturing standards, and “wartime powers” to subsidize heat pumps, the IECC’s “three-year cycle” will doubtless transition “non-mandatory” provisions to the “shall” column.

Disenfranchised Homeowners

According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the 2024 rule-making process has shifted:

“In years past, the energy code was developed through a process in which the final decisions were determined by the votes of government officials.

“Beginning with the development of the 2024 IECC, the ICC board of directors changed the procedure so it now follows a standards development process where final decisions rest with consensus committee members who represent a wide range of stakeholders.”

The NAHB has a stakeholder seat at the policy table; the consumers who foot the bill are out in the proverbial cold, though they can post comments. The glowing “testimonials” of other profit-making or politically biased stakeholders sitting at this elitist table display an ideological smorgasbord of piranha-like feasting and even fishier propaganda. The American Society of Interior Designers (most all of whose products and services pollute more than they save) gushes that it “has complete confidence in the ICC consensus-based standards development process as a well-grounded framework that connects open and inclusive stakeholder participation.” The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) boasts “a long history of constructive collaboration to promote decarbonization … and efficiency of buildings … many of which are required or permitted in the family of I-codes, … [and] will continue to be unwavering advocates for adoption and enforcement in every state and jurisdiction in the nation.”

BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association) International has a special seat. RESNET (Residential Energy Services Network), whose website proclaims it is “Leading the Path to Net Zero Energy Homes,” has a seat at the table, from which it dictates that it will “ensure future editions of the IECC are developed using a consensus-based process that is fair, open, transparent, and based upon science.”

Forced Homelessness?

But where are the citizens who will be controlled in this “fair, open, transparent” cabal of profitmaking? The Solar Energy Industries Association chirps in neo-Marxist unison about “this new process to move new buildings toward zero net energy and zero net carbon with the full suite of options, including solar.” Any conflict of interest here? Another plug is from Nu-Wool Co., Inc., which “manufactures environmentally friendly cellulose insulation materials,” fattened, no doubt, by its virtue-profiteering.

But what of real wool? Actual sheep’s wool, long used to insulate homes, is presumably not permitted under this globalist building code. What of straw-bale homes? These are extremely efficient, can last for hundreds of years, and do not require chemicals and manufacturing facilities. What of existing construction, remote homesteads, or rusting 1960s trailers in which millions of Americans are forced to live because of skyrocketing food, vehicle, and energy prices? It appears that they are excluded from the table, the wool wrapped tightly around their eyes and handcuffing their basic rights.

Per the NAHB, the 2024 IECC is considering (and the following measures are quoted directly):

• Requiring on-site solar panels

• Requiring electric vehicle charging capability or readiness

• Increasing the stringency of insulation, windows, and building and duct tightness

• Requiring energy-recovery ventilators (ERVs)

• Imposing a penalty on houses larger than 5,000 square feet

The NAHB approvingly stated: “[T]he final decisions rest with consensus committees, not governmental voting members.” But the alleged consensus is of one ideological ilk. Jennifer Amann, a senior fellow at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, told Fox News Digital:

“The model building energy code before the International Code Council represents a consensus agreement among builders, building code officials, and energy efficiency advocates, It will cut energy waste in new homes, lower utility bills for homeowners, and reduce pollution.

“The International Code Council’s board should approve this commonsense proposal and not bend to special interests representing polluting industries.”

Are straw bales and sheep’s wool “polluting industries”? What of people who want to reside in an off-grid cabin and burn wood? Is the affordability, feasibility, or forced grid dependency of these provisions to be excluded from consideration in this “commonsense” totalitarianism? Perhaps Amann would similarly usurp Americans’ “special interests” to pursue homeownership as part of their “life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.” The IECC appears to be run by unelected profiteers, demolishing the American Dream in the name of building.

 

John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And Regular Contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.

The post New ‘Green’ Building Code to Dominate Housing Construction appeared first on Granite Grok.

One thing that did not get defunded after the George Floyd/BLM Summer of Love was cop shows. There is no shortage of police or detective dramas extolling the intellectual agility of some quirky investigator with a physical or social disability. Or a team of racially and sexually diverse members who adroitly unravel complex conspiracies ripe with misdirection.

Liberal scriptwriters, story-boarders, actors, directors, and producers make an above-average living telling positive tales of good versus evil in a workplace that is supposed to be systemically racist, and, in its own way, it is.

Recurring themes involving people of faith, militias, sovereign citizens, and even Republican politicians portray them as backward, boorish, mean, criminal, or just uncivilized. Corporate titans are evil abusers of a system they bribe to serve them even though (in the real world) many of them donate to BLM, have gender and diversity officers, and give almost exclusively to Liberal candidates and causes.

And maybe they watch cop shows where “The Department” could do a lot more for the community if not for flint-fingered cheapskates and budget cuts – without ever admitting the systemically racist city they pretend to represent has been run by Democrats since before Kennedy was assassinated.

We are talking about television fiction, which fits hand in glove with the fictitious end game of their political agenda. That one party, unhindered by natural rights or the constitution, can, in time, create a society more wealthy and free than any before seen on earth. The fact that no one who has tried has ever accomplished it is no reason to stop trying (or so they say). Nor are the results of those efforts a reflection of future efforts.

Crime, poverty, chaos, and despotism are necessary ends if the people can endure enough of them while their leaders—who live in luxury, free from having to think about how they’ll get through the day—work diligently to get them to the other side.

We do not know if there is another side, but we do know you’ll need at least 100 years to get there. 100 years of the police state treating everyone the way George Floyd is portrayed as having been treated. George was the product of decades of Democrat rule. He took up crime as a way to get by and drugs as a way to get along with that. It killed him, drugs killed him, and the Left blamed it on cops they don’t really hate.

You can’t get from here to utopia without a police state, and everyone paying attention knows it.

 

 

The post 100 Years of Being Treated Like George Floyd, For What? appeared first on Granite Grok.

There are a handful of systemic barriers to maintaining a healthy weight, but most involve cramming more food into your face than your system can handle. From to much food to food that’s bad for you, less of that is not a bad idea no matter what you weigh, but some public health experts are pushing in the other direction.

It is old-fashioned to think of weight as something to be managed with diet and exercise. What if it wasn’t? I worked with a cardiac nurse who says she eats more and weighs less after meeting with someone who is an expert on food and human health. Your primary care physician is probably not that expert, and they are not permitted to ask you about your weight,  at least not until you have a serious health complication caused by that weight.

Instead of connecting people to people who can help them with their diet, the next best step is drugs and surgery.

My diet was never great, but my work always included a level of activity that allowed me to eat nearly anything.  I burned it off so quickly that weight gain was never an issue. At some point, after both my job and I became less vigorous, I discovered that unknown to me, one of my hobbies was collecting plaque in my arteries. After an ambulance ride and two stents later, my diet got a lot better. I lost some extra pounds I didn’t need (though I was never even technically overweight), and at the age of sixty, I’m in a place I’d likely never have been had my body not shouted at me about it.

Staying in that place demands my attention, so the idea of everyone’s doctors being instructed to bail on the more traditional exercise, less food, and better food schemes for weight loss is disturbing. While cardiac issues might not be a foregone conclusion for the overweight and obese (unless they got jabbed twice or more), a host of other issues (around 200 of them) are more popular than ever. Type 2 diabetes is all the rage. If you have diabetes, you are at increased risk for heart disease, so that’s one way to get there from here. Is it too much to expect your patients to find the discipline to eat less or eat better and move more?

What are the odds they’ll be any more mindful of the need to take the medications you prescribe them, or are you even allowed to care?

Have you ever tried to take medication or injections regularly for the rest of your life? It’s not as easy as it sounds; it is also a lot more expensive, but that’s the new formula for weight loss success. Instead of adopting better habits, you need to remember to take the pills they prescribed you.

People in developed countries will no longer have severe or complex obesity in the future because of medical advances – but telling people to eat less and move more is not a treatment, a leading expert said yesterday.

Professor Donal O’Shea told doctors they must change their messaging to obese patients

Professor Donal O’Shea told doctors they must change their messaging to obese patients. “Eat less, move more is not the treatment of obesity – get over it,” he said. “Prevention is different from treatment.”

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), Prof O’Shea said there are 198 determinants of obesity and they fall in to seven groups – five of which are outside people’s control. …

The only line patients feel is acceptable from doctors is: “Is it OK to discuss your weight today?” said Prof O’Shea, who runs the obesity service in Loughlinstown Hospital, Dublin, and is the HSE lead on obesity.

Doctors could say: “Where are you on your weight journey?”

And no, he’s not thinking about Ozempic. He is looking past that to bigger and better chemical treatments for the chronically overweight. These are choices that will likely be incredibly expensive – at least initially – with some unwanted side effects. Much like it is with many meds, the argument will be that the good outweighs the bad. Maybe don’t use the word outweighs. It’s insensitive. Whatever the words you use, one of the known side effects is enriching big pharma. The mRNA platform taught us that. Medically unnecessary complications are necessary to ensure compliance and profits.

Kickbacks don’t kick themselves back, right Tony Fauci?

Alternatively, we could point ourselves back toward a culture that values hard work, exercise, and a bit of dietary discipline over a quick fix that lets you keep eating pizza on the couch. If things go sideways, it’s a short trip from where we are back to those values. Learn to farm and fight or die—size matters, not.

And no, I’m not averse to solutions to obesity for people who have a rare genetic disposition or even ‘addicts’ who need some short-term help. Still, the majority of overweight folks are victims of bad advice from food experts in the government and regulations that make it cheaper to mlousy bad food than good, alongside a culture that lionizes excess at the expense of everything else. I like couches and pizza, but had I known I was an artery plaque hobbyist; I’d have made changes before my heart tried to kill me and saved myself a lot of money and bother on maintenance medication.

Deciding that obesity is a disease and not just a bad habit and that drugs and surgery are the better solution to this burgeoning health crisis smells more like marketing than medicine. Although to be fair, there is a reasonable argument that this is also true of how they treat heart disease.

 

The post Obesity: Eating Less is Out – Drugs and Surgery Are In appeared first on Granite Grok.

A thread (eleven in all) from Marco Rubio on X well worth reading. In my words, not his … we are a country, not an economy. This is heresy to free-market ideologues like the Koch-bots, who believe that the “free market” is the end, NOT the means to an end … that end being a stronger, more prosperous country for ALL Americans, not just for Wall Street and Big Tech and the corporatist/globalist class.

It seems my recent articles on industrial policy in @PostOpinions and @NationalAffairs have ruffled some feathers. @JonahDispatch @veroderugy @ericboehm87 @cpgrabow

A short on how free-market fundamentalists go off the rails. 1/11

— Senator Marco Rubio (@SenMarcoRubio) April 12, 2024

Unrolled Thread

It seems my recent articles on industrial policy in @PostOpinions and @NationalAffairs have ruffled some feathers. @JonahDispatch @veroderugy @ericboehm87 @cpgrabow

A short on how free-market fundamentalists go off the rails. 1/11 

First, as a re-cap, my argument is that markets are efficient, but don’t always work in the best interests of our country – especially when adversaries like China skew global markets in their favor with theft and subsidies. That’s not good for America. 2/11  None of the critics offer a solution to this. They seem not to be bothered by America’s dependence on Communist China for everything from our medicines to the electronics we use in our missiles. They also seem to think America’s industrial base, and our workers, are basically fine. 3/11  No, really. As one of my critics put it, the “supposed” decline of American industry “is an imagined problem.” Tell that to the millions of American workers who lost their jobs after free traders let China into the WTO. 4/11  But let’s address the criticisms. How is our industrial base really doing? Output has stagnated the past decade and a half. Productivity has declined. Employment has plummeted. And America’s share of the world market for key goods, from cars to steel, has cratered. If that’s health, I’d hate to see sickness. 5/11  The critics claim industrial policy can never work. One says “if anything can go wrong, it probably will.” If that were really the case, then Neil Armstrong never would have walked on the Moon. But industrial policy worked then, just as it has in many other cases the critics refuse to acknowledge. 6/11  Can industrial policy go wrong? Of course. But doing nothing means letting nationless corporations and foreign adversaries dictate the terms of our economy. Only the federal government has the ability – and duty – to check those forces. 7/11  All the Founders understood this. The first bill they passed was a tariff. Ronald Reagan understood it, too. He hiked tariffs to stop Japan from destroying the American auto industry via subsidized export dumping. 8/11  In the end, free-market fundamentalists are a lot like progressives, because they are more subservient to ideologies (free-trade ideology on the one hand, climate-change and DEI ideology on the other) than they are to the national interest. 9/11  Deindustrialization has wreaked havoc on the working class, made us less resilient, and corrupted our culture. I welcome debate on how best to strengthen our national security and economy. 10/11 

The post Marco Making The Fwee-Marketeers Big Mad appeared first on Granite Grok.

Last week, the Dover City Council did its part to support world Peace. I’m sorry. What I meant to say is that it posed and postured in a meaningless dance with no relevance to the business of the people of that city. Wait.

Sorry again.

Many in Dover are just as woke as those they elect, so there was meaning. Liberals in government voted to make sure liberals outside the government know they opposed whatever the hell is happening in Gaza as if that had meaning.

It was a bifurcated City Council meeting this week, part debate, part regular meeting. More than half of it was taken up by the contentious Gaza ceasefire resolution. The rest was advancing routine, non-controversial city business.

CEASEFIRE: Councilors April Richer and Robbie Warach sponsored the resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. I moved to remove the ceasefire resolution from the agenda as not germane to city business, but that attempt failed for lack of a second. During public forum, eight people spoke in support of the resolution and five spoke against. Comments were civil. Council discussion of the resolution took 27 minutes. Every councilor addressed the issue. The vote to pass the resolution was 7-1 by a show of hands – not a recorded roll-call vote as is customary (see picture above). I was the only councilor to vote no. (One councilor was absent.) Dover is now an outlier on this. The only other NH city that adopted a similar resolution was Lebanon, where three of seven members abstained. Manchester voted 14-1 against taking it up. Portsmouth voted 7-2 against considering it. All other cities have refused to put it on the agenda, including Nashua, Concord, and Rochester.

I didn’t look, but I expect that Dover stands with Ukraine, supported BLM, and the seasoned criminal who overdosed on Fentanyl, Saint George Floyd. Dover knows it isn’t easy on taxpayers, being green (and doesn’t care about the cost), and in their schools and public libraries, they defend allowing kids to have access to pornography.

I’m sure they think elections aren’t rigged except when Democrats insist or that J6 was actually an insurrection despite the lack of organized military leadership and the absence of any weapons.

Dover likes pride flags more than the American flag, has a growing distrust of free speech, loves mask mandates and lockdowns, and thinks everyone should get vaccinated (and maybe still does).

And they support a ceasefire in Gaza.

It is the first time I can recall them ever resolving that Hamas should stop launching rockets into southern Israel, even though that’s not what they mean. I’m also wondering if they will resolve that the United States should stop funding wars in the Middle East. Dover-Like Liberals were very much against that sort of thing when Republicans ran the government. Perhaps they could resolve that one way to ensure a cease-fire is for American Taxpayers not to have to pay for the ordinance necessary not to cease firing.

Or not. This is Dover.

The post Dover, New Hampshire Calls for Cease Fire in Gaza appeared first on Granite Grok.

There is no sound evidence that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones improve mental health. “The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.”

This is one of the conclusions of The Cass Review, conducted by National Health Services England (NHSE) under the direction of Dr. Hillary Cass in the wake of concerns about the sudden increase in referrals to gender services, especially among females with autism, mental health issues, and trauma.

The Cass Review was commissioned to make recommendations on how to improve NHSE gender identity services and ensure that children and youth receive high-quality care. The Review’s conclusions flatly contradict Dartmouth Health’s written testimony, which asserts that “all gender-affirming care is safe, age-appropriate, medically necessary, and well-researched.”

Related: Dartmouth Health Ignores the Evidence

“The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health,” the Review states. “The effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains unknown.” Puberty blockers aren’t a “temporary pause” to give children and parents time to think, as Dartmouth Health claims. On the contrary, the “vast majority of young people started on puberty blockers proceed from puberty blockers to masculinising/feminising hormones.”

As a result, the NHSE is banning puberty blockers as a treatment for gender dysphoria for new patients, until and unless a safe research protocol is established. “The option to provide masculinising/feminising hormones from age 16 is available” the Review notes.  But it recommends extreme caution. “There should be a clear clinical rationale for providing hormones at this stage rather than waiting until an individual reaches 18.” Dr. Lim-Liberty dismissed the watch-and-wait approach as “outdated and harmful, denying resources needed to explore gender identity.”

Other highlights of the report:

Gender affirmation, including hormonal interventions, doesn’t prevent it. “Suicide risk appears to be comparable to other young people with a similar range of mental health and psychosocial challenges. Some clinicians feel under pressure to support a medical pathway based on widespread reporting that gender-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk. The above systematic review did not support this conclusion.” This conclusion directly contradicts Dartmouth Health’s claims that “rates of suicide are as high as 40% in transgender youth,” and that “banning surgical care to care is harmful and, according to the data, is life-threatening.

Although the report doesn’t use the term Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), it recognizes social media and peer pressure as contributing to the recent spike in teens identifying as transgender, especially among teen girls after puberty. In a recent op-ed, Dr. Francis Lim-Liberty, head of Dartmouth Health’s pediatric transgender program, dismissed concerns about ROGD as “politicized misinformation” used on social media to “discredit the decisions and life experiences of trans people.”

The Cass Review warns against socially transitioning children at schools with new pronouns, names, and clothes because of the “clear risk of creating persistence of an identity that would in all likelihood have resolved by itself. We hope the government will use this information to end the practice of social transition in schools by untrained adults. The impact on other children of adults pretending a child has changed their sex is outside the terms of reference for this report, but it is something the government must address.” This is in sharp contrast with New Hampshire public schools’ practice of socially transitioning children in secret.

"Puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones have zero mental health benefits." Last night I asked the Nashua Board of Aldermen to stop promoting gender ideology in light of the Cass Review. https://t.co/88tAbA2fwL #NHPolitics pic.twitter.com/oiIvqTSa6H

— Sidewalk Steve (@Sidewalk_Steve) April 10, 2024

The post England Finds No Evidence for Transing Kids. Will Dartmouth Health Listen? appeared first on Granite Grok.

One of the most prescient, intelligent, passionate voices defending rural lands and rural agriculture has been lifelong Democrat Wendell Berry (though Wendell will tell you that he has no allegiance to any one party). The current Democratic Party appears to have no use for the considered wisdom of this Kentucky farmer, just as it has abandoned Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Jefferson, and the Kennedy legacy.

(It appears that the Biden Administration wishes Robert F. Kennedy dead rather than permit him breathing room in public discussions: Biden refuses to provide him with Secret Service protections.)

It is ironic that conservatives are now dismissed as racists for invoking King, vaccine deniers for heeding Kennedy’s cautions against Big Pharma, and as a threat to democracy for standing on the (liberal) Supreme Court precedents about race, free speech, equal protection, and other long-standing fundamental liberties. In this “what was good is now evil, and what was evil is now good” atmosphere, the conservationist voice of farmer Berry has been neglected in favor of fear, increased government domination, and subsidizing corporations to “save” humanity.

This, too, was forecast by the iconic Berry, who warned that totalitarian industrialism would devour an uninformed, complacent population that abandoned local culture and agrarian distributism in favor of zoo-like “consumerism” and techno-dependency. Wendell particularly cautioned against trusting Big Ag and processed foods with our health and food security. One need not be a farmer to see that Americans are addicted to cheap, sickening, highly-processed “foods” from which rodents walk away after a quick sniff of disdain.

The Left has not heeded the herald Berry; he has essentially been canceled in a bizarre ideological scourge of national self-contempt. But his words stand ever more strongly every day the nation moves toward that complete dependency on grid, government, and goons against which he raised a strident-if-ignored alarum. Consider Wendell’s wisdom, in contrast to the so-called “progressive” rescue of the nation through environmental histrionics and Draconian Green New )Marxist) Deal strangulation.

On Rewilding

Mr. Berry criticizes the “moral assumptions of the culture of exploitation,” noting in his essay The Conservation of Nature and the Preservation of Humanity, that “The most persistent and dangerous of these is the assumption that some parts of the world can be preserved while others are abused or destroyed.”

Vermont in 2023 enacted legislation that embraces this exact folly. The “Community Resilience and Biodiversity Protection Act” sets a goal to ‘conserve’ 30% of all land in the Green Mountain State by 2030, and 50% by 2050. Small wonder land prices have nearly doubled, increasing homelessness and dashing the dreams of the young – from which Vermont progressives will ‘rescue’ them by taxing property and income to construct ‘affordable’ housing that costs taxpayers a fortune.

Vermont is merely aping President Biden’s “30 by 30” Executive Order, which “put[] the climate crisis at the center of United States foreign policy and national security.” The Order urgently expands industrial manufacturing of (polluting) renewable energy gadgetry, while “empowering workers by advancing conservation, agriculture, and reforestation.”

Neither workers nor agriculture are empowered when land is withdrawn from agrarian stewardship for so-called ‘conservation and reforestation.’ The President’s plan calls to set aside 30% of the country’s land by 2030. He claims this is “acting on science,” but Wendell Berry offers a more rural-informed perspective:

“If in order to protect our forest land we designate it a commons or commonwealth separate from private ownership, then who will care for it? The absentee timber companies who see no reason to care about local consequences? The same government agents and agencies who are failing at present to take good care of our public forests? Is it credible that people inadequately skilled and inadequately motivated to care well for the land can be made to care well for it by public insistence that they do so?

“The answer is obvious: you cannot get good care in the use of land by demanding it from public officials…. The idea that a displaced people might take appropriate care of places is merely absurd. ….If we want the land to be cared for, then we must have people living on and from the land who are able and willing to care for it….” (“Private Property and the Common Wealth,” delivered as a speech at a conference on “The Forest Commons” on March 31, 1995.”

The soil science is clear: well-managed, rotationally-grazed cows nurture the soil microbiome, prevent erosion, retain precious water, and sequester far more carbon dioxide than forests – permanently, and without peddling ‘carbon credit’ pollution indulgences to corporations. The argument for rewilding is “merely absurd.”

On “Renewable” Energy Technology

A persistent admonition in Wendell’s writing is to measure the ‘externalized costs’ of consumption, yet that is exactly what has been avoided like the bubonic plague by climate ‘science’ advocates. All things measured in carbon dioxide (“net-zero”) ignores water and soil pollution in mining operations for rare earth materials (lithium), the coal plants constructed in China to create solar panels and EVs, or the disposal costs of all these taxpayer-subsidized boondoggles. Ignored also by elitist academics is the steadily growing dependency for heat, travel, and electricity that these carbon-centric plans entail.

Berry’s jeremiads caution always against trusting the very same technologies that have erased small farms from the landscape and enslaved Americans – to poisoned food, pharmaceuticals (to counter the illnesses caused by toxic foods and packaging), drug addiction, urban squalor, suburban alienation from the land, etc. – to deliver them from this predicament by way of yet more polluting technologies. GMOs toxify and kill soils, and increase erosion and water loss, but the climate cult’s horns are instead aimed at cows and other livestock that can feed us without the intercession of Bill Gates, John Kerry, or Klaus Schwab.

Foreshadowing massive government outlays for EVs, solar panels, and heat pumps, Wendell observed thirty years ago:

“We can safely predict that for a long time there are going to be people in places of power who will want to solve our local problems by inviting in some great multinational corporation. They will want to put millions of dollars of public money into an “incentive package” to make it worthwhile for the corporation to pay low wages for our labor and to pay low prices for, say, our timber. It is well understood that nothing excites the glands of a free-market capitalist as the offer of a government subsidy.

“But before we agree again to so radical a measure, producing maximum profits to people who live elsewhere and minimal, expensive benefits to ourselves and our neighbors, we ought to ask if we cannot contrive local solutions for our local problems, and if the local solutions might not be the best ones.” (From Conserving Forest Communities, delivered as a speech at the Kentucky Forest Summit, 9/29/1994

Rural Americans will be impoverished by renewable energy as energy costs rise and their traditional self-reliance is dismantled. They are being impoverished now: EVs and solar panels are regressively financed on the backs of low- and middle-income taxpayers, justified by claims that these innovations will “help the poor.” The serpent is in the Garden: that rural Kentucky farmer warned us to close our ears.

Climate Alarmism

Wendell Berry does not believe that grand government plans will ever do more than create grander government-seeded calamities. An outspoken critic of the Green New Deal, his words in The Art of Loading Brush (2019) caution humanity against precisely the climate fear-mongering that is paralyzing critical thought today:

“A multitude of people, including scientists and other experts, have devoted themselves exclusively to the threat of climate change. It is a great “movement.” I am not a climate change denier…. But I certainly am a critic of the climate change movement, and for what I consider good reasons.

“My foremost reason is that when so many people are devoted so exclusively to a single fear, the movement ceases to have the quality of prudence or provision, and takes on the character of a fad. ….The great question now needing to be asked is how to move from protest, fear, anger, or guilt to the actual accomplishment of good work.

“The problem with prediction, no matter how scientifically respectable it might be, is its power to bring on first a fear and then a movement that can be popularized into a fad. But of all the bad motives none may be worse or more hopeless than fear. Nobody, I think, has ever done good work because of fear. Good work is done by knowing how and by love. Love requires faith, courage, patience, and steadiness, none of which can come from fear. Also it appears to be impossible to sustain for very long even the most reasonable fear of a future catastrophe.

“….I believe we have got to understand how the great, one-cause, fear-motivated climate change movement, for example, can become a major distraction, not only from better ways of problem solving and better ways of working and thinking, but also from the local causes of climate change—which has, after all, only local causes.” (pp. 70-72)

Voices of reason are too often eclipsed by voices of doom. Al Gore was, and remains, precisely the headless-chicken alarmist to scold Americans into slow death and quick enslavement. The supply of food, like the causes of pollution, has always been best grounded in local, widely distributed plots under intergenerational stewardship and individual responsibility. Neither “local” problem will be cured by despotic rule.

A global famine will soon displace climate change as the “one-cause, fear-motivated” distraction to corral yet more of humanity into total industrial captivity. If only Wendell Berry’s words were heeded, humanity might have averted the unfolding terrors of which he was a preeminent harbinger.

John Klar is an Attorney, farmer, and author. Mostly farmer… And Regular Contributor to GraniteGrok and VermontGrok.

The post Climate Fear, Rewilding, the Green New Deal, and Other Absurdities appeared first on Granite Grok.

It is almost as if there are two Speaker Mike Johnsons. The Speaker Mike Johnson on X who calls out and criticizes the Biden-Regime … and the other Speaker Johnson, THE ONE THAT MATTERS, who passes and fully funds the Biden-Regime’s noxious, anti-American agenda, the very agenda that he claims to oppose.

But the GOP is playing a game of pretend and expects its voters to pretend that Speaker Johnson is “doing his best,” “doing what he can with the slimmest of majorities,” blah, blah, blah. Well … not all of them. A handful of GOP Senators are showing some courage and refusing to go along with the GOP’s tired all-talk-never-any-action act, refusing to pretend that Speaker Johnson is opposing and not enabling the Regime. One of these is Rand Paul:

.@SpeakerJohnson was incredibly wrong to vote w/ Dems against the 4th amend. when he killed the FISA warrant requirement and wrong to give in to the Dems spending demands. As I see it now, I'm not so sure there's a difference between him being in charge and Dems being in charge. pic.twitter.com/NoyRhUrvRM

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) April 14, 2024

The post Rand Paul Has The Courage To State The Obvious … No Difference Between Speaker Johnson And The Democrats appeared first on Granite Grok.

I am taking a break from politics today to reminisce about something we may not think about much until they are silent. I am talking about the voices that narrated some of the great moments of sports that gave us incredible memories throughout our lives.

I can still remember vividly some of the moments I shared with my Dad, which revolved around sports and music. My Dad was a Jazz fan, primarily the Big Bands. I remember the Boston Globe and Newport Jazz Festivals and listening to Duke Ellington at Cranes Castle in Ipswich, Massachusetts. I remember my first Patriots game when they played at Fenway Park, and going onto the field to stand in front of the Green Monster after the game because that is where his hero, Ted Williams, played for so many years. And there was the night we listened to Jose Feliciano’s Light My Fire at Harvard Stadium. We didn’t have much growing up, but damn, we have great memories. We lived better than the wealthy.

Growing up in New England, we were spoiled with some of the greatest voices of radio and TV, who brought our sports heroes into our living room or bedroom, and I went to sleep with their voices in my head. There were so many of the early pioneers of play-by-play. Curt Gowdy was the voice of the Boston Red Sox and the early years of the AFL. Many a fall Sunday, I spent with Gowdy and Pat Summerall, hoping for a Patriot win. There was Johnny Most of the Celtics and Fred Cusick of the Bruins. They were familiar voices that were part of our sports journey. These were the early days when the game was the story and the “voice” was the supporting cast, unlike today when it is often reversed. I wrote a couple of years ago about the man I thought had the best job in the world, Jim Nance. I am listening to him call the final holes of The Masters as I write this article. My opinion of Nance has not changed. His voice is like the violin to an orchestra. He is integral to the event.

Two legends said goodbye today as they signed off on their last broadcasts. Mike Gorman, who has been the TV voice of the Celtics since the Larry Bird era, and Verne Lundquist, who has been calling the 16th at Augusta since before Tiger Woods picked up a club, signed off today for the last time.

We celebrate these men for the careers they have enjoyed and the joy and memories they have given us. They are the voices you hear, and you are transported back to a moment in time and a memory that brings a smile to your face or a tear to your eye. Sports do not have the importance in life it did when we were younger, but I am thankful for so many memories. The voices that brought us those moments, whether early on via radio or on TV, are as memorable as a Carlton Fisk home run in the twelfth inning in ’75 or a Billy Rohr near no-hitter in 1967. To Curt, Ned, Johnny, Gil, Fred, and Jim Nance, thanks for the incredible memories I will cherish until my final breath.

The post The Soundtracks Of Our Lives appeared first on Granite Grok.

Large US Cities have been plagued by a host of problems I’ve repeatedly proven can be solved if residents stop voting for Democrats. Crime, homelessness, systemic mismanagement, and, lately, a rise in business closures and departures are all directly connected to government policy decisions.

That’s what’s so amusing about this great idea from San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Dean Preston. Grocery stores shuttered without any notice is unfair to the locals, and he’d like a law that requires them to provide at least six months notice. There are a host of loopholes but that’s not the funniest bit. This is.

The bill would also require that grocery stores “meet and work in good faith with neighborhood residents” and the OEWD to find a workable solution to keep groceries available at the location. Those solutions could include identifying strategies and resources to allow the store to remain open, helping residents organize and open a cooperative and identifying another grocery store operator to take over and continue grocery sales at the location.

Strategies like, oh, I don’t know, arresting and prosecuting shoplifters?

San Francisco, to its credit, ousted a previous DA from the Soros Chaos Coaching tree, but not much has improved. With drugs, homelessness, and the infamous poop map, it is a city in rapid decline. Third-world diseases long eradicated from American shores have returned thanks to its long-running status as a sanctuary city that invited them back).

Getting rid of cash bail and ignoring crime was as much a progressive lurch to the left as it was a capacity problem. Like many post-BLM summer cities, San Francisco made sure the same cops they’d been in charge of for decades knew they did not have their back. With the justice system and the city against them, hiring and retention became difficult by design.

In other words, this is San Francisco’s fault, and the solutions are to reverse policy or – since that seems unlikely – replace “leadership (even less likely).

Yes, San Francisco is screwed whether the meddling grocery store idea finds its legs or not.  Business owners will hire lawyers to get them through the loopholes to avoid prosecution because “Under the legislation, any person affected by a grocery store’s failure to comply with the requirements could initiate legal proceedings for damages, injunctive relief, declaratory relief, or a writ of mandate to remedy the violation. ”

They will secure an exit strategy that does not require them to help find some sucker to replace them, not that anyone, knowing the risks the rules create, would open a business there. The solution is just as much a reason not to do business on the Streets of San Franciso. This leaves the people the City has screwed with declining options, much like the departure of other stores from CVS and Walgreens to Wal-Mart, Amazon, and others.

The people the City said it was helping suffer, so I have to wonder if San Fran will propose an idea similar to the one by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson—socialized grocery stores. Policy drove them out, and policy kept them away, so why not just take over? 

All Chicagoans deserve to live near convenient, affordable, healthy grocery options. We know access to grocery stores is already a challenge for many residents, especially on the South and West sides. A better, stronger, safer future is one where our youth and our communities have access to the tools and resources they need to thrive. My administration is committed to advancing innovative, whole-of-government approaches to address these inequities.

There is (of course) no mention of how the government created the inequities.

“The city of Chicago is reimagining the role government can play in our lives by exploring a public option for grocery stores via a municipally owned grocery store and market,” Pawar said. “Not dissimilar from the way a library or the postal service operates, a public option offers economic choice and power to communities.”

If they run it like the post office, are you warning taxpayers that they will be subsidizing the systemic losses to keep food prices within reachable range for these communities? And the more important question, will  “the city-owned stores tolerate the rampant unprosecuted shoplifting that drove other businesses away?” If not, how do you stop it without arresting brown people and since it is a government facility, is there a way to label it as insurrection?

The post Night Cap: If You Needed More Proof That San Francisco is Run by Idiots … appeared first on Granite Grok.

Whether from the gallery or on video, if you’ve watched the senate for enough hours and minutes, you know that the one with the gavel regularly asks the rest of the body “are you ready for the question?”

As the one bragging to have the longest time with possession of the gavel, former Senate President Chuck Morse is now on the receiving end of that question(from me) because he’s coming to stump locally at Sky Meadow on May 8, which is 3 weeks from now.

I was planning to submit this piece closer to that date, but between Kelly Ayotte and Chuck Morse, it was just a matter of time before one of them would unleash the first attack against the other, a campaign decision not made lightly, I am sure.  For the record, I’m not here to judge either one of them for taking that initiative or not.  It’s just that considering Kelly already had her turn to stump locally and Chuck firing the first shot last week, now is a good time.

Video and recording is forbidden as per NRCC rules, but I expect a room full of witnesses to be paying attention, even though many of them are likely tired of me mentioning Chuck’s 11/19/21 crime against NH that should never be ignored.

As I pointed out earlier, I take Sharon Carson’s January 4 in-person words on good faith that Chuck will answer my question and I therefore expect to be called on.  Oh, and I still plan to be polite, which I should reaffirm for the record.

However, as to not double dip, I’ve prepared a few suggested questions for others to ask.  They are not meant to discourage people from asking their own questions, but to encourage people to take it upon themselves to get him to go on record with regard to important matters receiving less campaign trail attention.  The enemy camp is in love with the word “underserved.”  Let’s just use that word to describe the amount of attention Adam Sexton is giving the following questions:

1) Will you renew the appointment of our current attorney general, and why or why not?
2) Will you sign HB 1093(school mask bill, previously vetoed)?
3) Will you sign HB 1414(Gunstock audit) if it comes to your desk in the future?
4) Will you sign HB 1002(RTK Tax) in its current form?
5) What is your opinion of commuter rail(something very bad for Nashua) coming to NH?
6) What is your level of knowledge of the youth center atrocities over the years and your plan to address it?
7) Will you promise not to repeat the same Mask Madness imposed on NH on 11/19/20, right after the Damn Emperor was reelected to a 3rd term?

I will end with the following disclosure that Kelly Ayotte already had her local stump event at the same place on February 8 and she was asked about HB 1002 and the youth center.  However, the other questions listed certainly apply to her also.  If you have questions to add to the list that are outside of the usual questions, kindly put them in the comments.  And, of course, between her and Chuck, a criticism of one of them is NOT necessarily an endorsement of the other.

The post Chuck Morse, “Are You Ready for the Question?” appeared first on Granite Grok.

(white) goldstandard-04-18-24-S.pdf
(gold) goldstandard-04-18-24-S-y.pdf

The post Senate Gold Standard – April 18, 2024 appeared first on NH Liberty Alliance.

Manchester NH House Rep/Lobbyist Alissandra Murray has occasionally attracted the attention of our authors and commenters. Last week, she is reported to have used the block feature on her X account, which is as good a time as any to revisit this.

If you communicate the people’s business there, can you block people whose responses you dislike or with whom you disagree?

According to both circuit court and a unanimous Supreme Court ruling, “officials who post about work-related topics on their personal social media accounts can be held liable for violating the First Amendment rights of constituents by blocking their access or deleting their critical comments.”

Work-related means political communications.

I’ve issued similar warnings in the past that include not just Dems but Republicans and Libertarians. This was inevitable, and this latest 9-0 first amendment decision sets the groundwork. Suppose you discuss your political agenda on measures, bills, issues, or other business of a town, county, state, or federal office. In that case, the public must be able to comment, or you are violating their First Amendment rights.

Rep. Murray, while not the only offender, is using this platform for political communication.

In Murray’s defense, political activity (speech) is not the means by which a potential violation of constituents’ rights is measured. Alissandra is still a free person and citizen with the same rights as the rest of us. She can speak as an individual and is not required to let just anyone engage her content. She could remark frequently and at length on a wide range of topics, especially on groups “owned” and moderated by others, without the moderator being obligated to allow the speech of dissenter others or ensuring they have access to respond.

How do we know the difference?

After a more detailed review, the Court’s standard measures whether “the official both (1) possessed the actual authority to speak on the State’s behalf on a particular matter, and (2) purported to exercise that authority when speaking in the relevant social media posts.”

It seems reasonable to suggest that Murray has no real authority, even as a House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee clerk. Still, she does have a vote in both the body and the committee. The opportunity to speak with authority on matters of interest to the state is not impossible.

This is also true for every other elected or appointed individual, especially at the county or local level, where their position makes them the executor or manager of policy that directly affects citizens and taxpayers.

It is not about whether you think you have authority but whether someone else can convince a court of it; in this case, the safest path is to allow the communication and ignore it or respond to it at your discretion.

In a free society with a First Amendment, your inconvenience (or umbrage) is the lesser concern than the right of others to engage you in political debate on matters where you have influence.

Unless the state can use force (because of the content shared), meaning it violates some existing law or statute (not the ones that exist in your head), my advice is to shut up and take it. I get that this won’t be popular with anyone. Leaving certain content has the appearance of consent or allowing them to use your platform for their speech.

So what?

If you’re right and they are wrong, ignore them. If you can’t do that, prove them wrong or get a proxy to engage them and move along. If they are unhinged, screen grab it, put it in a folder, and use it against them or the people they support.

Blocking people may not explicitly violate their First Amendment rights, but it makes you look like an incapable, incompetent coward.

I know, hours in the day. You don’t get paid to deal with this crap, but Alissandra does. She gets paid a salary by a third-party activist group.

She’s just being a coward.

 

The post To Alissandra Murray and Everyone Else in Office Blocking People on Social Media … appeared first on Granite Grok.