Howdy All, a few Interesting Items for your information. Enjoy –
In this issue –
1. Math
2. Trans
3. BATFE
4. Country
5. Net Zero
6. Salmon
1. Math. The equity train continues to roll through the government schools. Last week’s example was a MA school district shutting down advanced math classes to boost overall equity. The classes were a problem to the wokesters running the district because they attracted too many white and Asian students. Parental response? Tutors, though you can do the same thing with Kahn Academy and other online portals. As a review, equity is a current magic word mostly chosen because it sounds a lot like “equality.” Problem is that it doesn’t mean equality of opportunity. Rather, it means equality of outcome. Think of crabs trying to climb out of a bucket and you’ll be close. In the socialist world, equality of outcome means the vast majority of people are equally miserable while those in charge are quite well off while they get to make the Big Decisions (the feudal model).
2. Trans. One of the things that fell out of the COVID years was the near universal realization that all the scientific literature was garbage (or worse). With that in mind, I want to remind the readership of historic numbers for trans / LGBTQWTF, realizing these numbers may be as sketchy as Ray Epps Jan 6 charge. But as an opening bid to this discussion, why not? A JR Dunn column in American Thinker last week entitled Transgenders: Inside the Numbers was a reminder that the “… transgender debate has been careening across the public square in a completely fact-free manner” like COVID, global warming and radical feminism. The medical name for the newly identified malady is gender dysphoria. This is one of a cluster of similar disorders, one of the better known of which is body integrity dysphoria, a psychiatric condition characterized by a persistent desire to acquire physical disability (amputation or paraplegia). The sufferer is absolutely convinced that one or another of their bodily appendages are alien, doesn’t belong to them, and will harm them by remaining attached. Victims typically visit numerous doctors in an attempt to have the offending body part removed. Some mutilate the body part to force the issue. Research into this finds actual brain damage. Gender identity dysphoria is simply another version. How many body integrity dysphoria sufferers are there worldwide? Since 1977, 200 have been identified, about 3.6/per year. Yet when we are talking about gender dysphoria victims, the number of identified victims is somewhere between 750,000 – 1,500,000 and increasing like a rocket to orbit gains altitude and airspeed. Why so many? It is a hoax, a popular hoax, actively recruiting new victims to mutilate. The political left is superb at setting the grounds for any debate, and then using their media tools, forcing everyone else to respond on their terms and grounds. Happily, we may be approaching peak insanity. Sadly, there are going to be a lot of kids with their body parts permanently rearranged by medical malpractitioners in search of the next (or continuing) payday. In parallel, federal courts are playing along, siding with public school and public health malpractitioners to socially and eventually medically transition without any knowledge or support from the parents. The claim is that secrecy is necessary to keep the kids safe from their parents. At least one US Federal Judge (O’Bama appointee) went along with the public school, dismissing a lawsuit filed by parents. The judge claimed that the parents failed to explain how social transitioning at a public school had clinical significance as mental health care intervention. Ultimately, keeping the kid “safe” while putting them squarely on the path to medical mutilation and interventions was a safe thing to do, and trumped the interests of the parents. The parents have appealed the case to the First Circuit. A similar case in Cali before the Ninth Circus (Bush 43 appointee) was also dismissed. This sort of foolishness keeps up, and it won’t be long before outraged parents take the law into their own hands in an attempt to protect their kids. After that happens, it will be difficult to get a conviction against them for their action. And it should.
3. BATFE. As the rest of the Executive Branch runs wild (Energy, FBI, Do(In)J) don’t forget our old friends in the BATFE who are busily confiscating firearms and shutting down private dealers. The game is to target Federal Firearms License (FFL) holders, particularly those who operate out of their own homes, selling at gun shows for scrutiny. BATFE records keeping rules are complex and wonderful, and mistakes are made in the paperwork from time to time. The BATFE used those mistakes as an excuse to arrive like a cloud of black-clothed locusts and confiscate all firearms on the premises. There is usually a SWAT team involved because those are always fun. The Truth About Guns recommends against the Kitchen Table FFL. One such raid took place at a small home in SE OK. The dealer got a call from the BATFE in April who wanted to do an inspection at home. Two agents showed up and spent three hours looking at paperwork, taking photos with their cell phones (which turns out to be illegal). They returned a couple weeks later, having some concerns, questions about unreadable forms and a dyslexic entry or two. Three months later, the BATFE showed up with seven vehicles and a dozen BATFE agents, tactical gear and AR-15s. The dealer was cuffed, yelled at, and forced to give up his FFL. Once he gave up the FFL to the agents, they grabbed all his firearms, personal and business related, $50,000 – $60,000 worth of guns that he will never see again. The agent in charge told him they were shutting him down and were targeting all the gun shows and FFL holders who participate in those shows. He was told if he was willing to forfeit the seized firearms, the agent could make everything go away. Nice little business you have there, would be a shame if anything happened to it. Gangster government.
4. Country. A couple fun stories out of country music last week, both involving the wokesters and cancel culture. First comes courtesy of Luke Combs, who did a cover of Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car. Chapman released Fast Car on her debut album in 1988. It was a mega hit and she and her music were everywhere for years. It also turns out that Chapman is black, single, female and a lesbian, which didn’t seem to matter to anyone at the time. Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when Combs released his cover of the song. It was a similar smash hit, rocketed up the country charts, and stayed there for a while. In this, Combs did everything right. He contacted Chapman’s team for permission, got that permission, and a royalty’s agreement which earned Chapman at least half a million dollars over just a few weeks. For her part, Chapman is gracious, and quite pleased to be at the top of the country music charts, something she never expected. Great story, right? Two artists separated by 35 years doing the same music, both quite pleased with the result. Not so fast, moose breath, as the white country singer making money off the Chapman song was somehow cultural appropriation, minimalizing and marginalizing her and her talent according to the bomb throwing wokesters. In doing all this, they completely ignored exactly how big the Chapman boomlet was in 1988, themselves doing the marginalization.
The second story comes out of Country Music Telvision (CMT) which canceled Jason Aldean’s Try That in a Small Town video. Small Town is a not uncommon country hit, blasting away at anti-American things the singer doesn’t like. The Charlie Daniels Band and singer Charlie Daniels made a career for half a century doing these sorts of songs. As he sets up the song, he described all manner of urban maladies, complete with video of the mayhem, carnage and fires during the 2020 BLM / AntiFa riot season. After setting up the problem, he warns the perps not to try that in a small town. This was sufficient to get CMT to cancel the song from their rotation, which in turn via the Streisand Effect, pumped its popularity everywhere else. The singer started speaking out in support and in defense of his music. All the Usual Suspects went after it as racist, though as all the 2020 rioters wore hoodies and masks and it was night, it was difficult to say who was who during the festivities. Worse, the courthouse used in a couple background scenes in the video was ground zero for a (gasp!) lynching a century ago, though it shows up as background in a huge number of videos, TV and movies. Learning objective here is the wokeness now in charge of CMT.
5. Net Zero. Interesting piece in Spiked last week The human cost of Net Zero makes the case that the war on fossil fuels is far more dangerous than climate change itself. Most interesting to me is the author is an economic and political science prof at Webster University, Vienna, Austria. The piece starts off describing a boomlet surrounding a kinetic energy device that would extract energy from vehicles at stop signs. It was a complete fraud, but celebrated ad nauseum by Euro greens. From that he steps smartly off describing the wishful thinking that dominates the worldview of Western green elites and the politicians they have purchased. The notion is that the only thing standing in our way of a transition to clean, green energy are the evil fossil fuel companies. The problem is the transition will come at a huge human cost. Despite (or because of) the trillions spent on transitioning to renewables, the proportion of all electric production reliant on fossil fuels has barely changed over the last 40 years. Nuclear has declined while natural gas has increased. Rapid abandonment of fossil fuels will inflict misery and hardship on billions. Hydrogen required for production of fertilizers comes almost entirely from fossil fuels. 75% of all farm equipment in the US runs on diesel. The US dominated the entire farming supply chain worldwide. Every step of the proposed transition is dependent on fossil fuels and mining. Mining itself is dependent on fossil fuels. EVs require 6x more minerals than a conventional car. A wind turbine requires 9x more minerals than a natural gas fired turbine. The rise of renewables since 2010 has increased minerals needed by 50% without any change in amount of power produced. Finally, mining is energy intensive, producing huge CO2 emissions. As EV and renewables rise, so do CO2 emissions. The West is restricting mining permit approvals, pushing mining to the rest of the world (Congo cobalt mines). By clamping down on industrialization, the West is ensuring Africa and other parts of the undeveloped world will not industrialize nor raise their standard of living and individual wealth, not that they care.
6. Salmon. A couple weeks ago, I discussed the ongoing crash of salmon prices in Bristol Bay based on a piece by Craig Medred. It is two weeks later, and the question becomes how to get from where we are today to something economically tenable. A short review has Bristol Bay red salmon prices at around 50¢/pound, and there are still lots of frozen salmon in the processing plant storage. Bristol Bay reds are in, available for massive fishing for the next couple of weeks. Problem is that the prices are so low that it is not economically viable to chase them, so the boats are being parked rather than taken out this summer. This in turn presents a cash flow problem for everyone involved. And once cash flow gets small enough, businesses crash. The US, particularly western US is littered with abandoned mines, sawmills, logging, and other industrial detritus. It is also dotted with abandoned airfields, mostly used during WWII. They are more easily repurposed. Here in Alaska, we have our fair share of abandoned mining and logging equipment. They are massive, dinosaur-like iron relics of a time in the not-so-distant past. Resource development, particularly that which requires massive investment in equipment, is particularly vulnerable to changes in economics. Alaska commercial fishing helped create their current doom by artificially keeping worldwide salmon prices high following passage of their protectionist anti-fish farming legislation in 1991. That legislation allowed new international fish farming entrepreneurs in other nations enough time at high prices to figure out how to economically do it, and over time, how do to it more efficiently. Today, worldwide fish farmers produce nearly 80% of all salmon, creating a worldwide crash in salmon prices. So, the question becomes how to back out of this square corner / box canyon? There are several solutions that can help, at least a little bit, but nobody is publicly talking about them. Fish traps, fish farming, permit buybacks, are possibilities, though the failing / flailing commfish will be back before the congressional delegation / legislature with their hands out demanding cash to cover their economic failures and save them from oblivion. That is going to be a contentious discussion with a lot of arm waving and chair throwing. But we have to start somewhere.
More later –
- AG