California – Page 3 – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

January 3, 2024January 14, 2024

It Stinks to High Heaven

Wind-solar hybrids in India: Windmills and solar panels used together can maximise renewables ... — Solar panels and windmills in India. The scene is familiar in the USA, especially California.

Tired of shocking unexpected electricity bills? Go Solar! — Utility bill shock thanks to “sustainable” energy

King Claudius: “O, my offense is rank, it smells to heaven. It hath the primal eldest curse upon it. A brother’s murder.” — Hamlet, William Shakespeare

TBT: Rethinking Zeffirelli’s Hamlet (1990) — King Claudius in Zeffirelli’s “Hamlet” from 1990

Claudius’s lament was over the festering memory of his murder of his brother to gain the throne. Today, similarly, we have much to lament. People who should know better, but don’t, are our bane. It’s unsettling as we watch the barbarous takeover occurring before our eyes. The religio-ideology of environmentalism and genderism is poisoning us as Claudius did his brother King Hamlet.

The offenses to good order are mounting daily. In some west coast states (Washington, California for example), mental health professionals are forbidden by law to use any other approach to gender dysphoria than acceptance of a teen’s declaration of their new sexual identity. For the parents, they are straitjacketed into only assent to juvenile whims. Any other response is treated as criminal child abuse. It’s a command for fully irreversible teenage mental and genital mutilation. In some states, even famously conservative ones, voters have approved in clever wording an open license to expunge the next generation. People are tramping to the polls to give individuals the power to end human life from conception to the moment of exit from the birth canal, and maybe after as well. Don’t be fooled with the feigned “health of the mother” check since it’s been interpreted out of existence. On the eco front, climate-change is the cudgel to brow-beat people into a depreciation of their own and their children’s prosperity. Disfigured children, abortion mills, and a completely fabricated and permanent mass decline in the standard of living could be our lot if we continue down this path.

Massachusetts to cover gender-reassignment surgery — Sex change operation. Massachusetts mandates insurers cover sex-change treatments.

A mass propaganda push ensues to manufacture broad compliance with this dystopia. Search engines are in the vanguard. Try a Google or Bing search for “states who ban alternatives to gender affirming care”. You’ll get the opposite: states who ban gender affirming care, not those who banned alternatives. It’s the wrong end of the telescope. You have to come up with the partisan jargon employed by the revolutionaries against their opponents to get an inkling, albeit a distorted one, of the proper state of play. For instance, the rhetorical contrivance “conversion therapy” must be employed, which in actuality is talking therapies to help a person come to grips with their birth gender, but is now freighted with sinister connotations throughout most of the search offerings.

Likewise, the campaigns of illogic and ideological activism litter the search results on climate change. “Criticisms of climate change ideology” in Bing actually listed criticisms of the critics of climate change ideology. In third place, right behind the left-wing Guardian’s “’Word salad of nonsense’: scientists denounce Jordan Peterson’s comments on climate models” and ExxonMobil’s PR-kowtowing to the hysteria, was David Vetter’s piece in Forbes, “5 Big Lies About Climate Change [from critics], And How Researchers Trained A Machine To Spot Them” (see below). I’m amply familiar with the arguments having taught college-level Physical Geography for years.

David Vetter is an architype of the activist journalist with some exposure to science, actually an ideologically-laden version of science, not “science” as such. His LinkedIn page tells the tale. He matriculated through Cardiff University to a masters in International Journalism, and then he’s off to Oxford for a masters in Science – not anything approaching Physics, mind you, but the science of “Sustainability, Enterprise, & Environment”. It’s a little bit of science, only enough to buttress the activism, and a whole lot of ideology.

David Vetter (Forbes profile pic)

His article immediately produced the poker tell of non-science masquerading as science. In the very first sentence he gave away the store: “the science is settled”. What? The science of something as complex as our climate is “settled”, settled in the sense that we can move immediately to hammering in the coffin nails to our personal prosperity, justifying an end to cheap, reliable energy? Understanding the relationships between the many elements of our atmosphere and the natural and human injections into it is a perpetual scientific enterprise. “The science is settled” doesn’t cut it. It’s the pitch of the activist, not the scientist who wants to be respected as a scientist.

The sleight-of-hand of “the science is settled” leads to attempts to make the chicanery seem unassailable. One way is to construct a black box which will conjure condemnations of their critics. Vetter in his piece uncritically describes exactly that. Politicized scientists devised software to tar opinions that they don’t like. They’ve come up with a way to artificially make their opinions superior to those of their critics without having to scientifically prove it. It’s more sleight-of-hand to hide the initial sleight-of-hand. Garbage in, garbage out.

Target #1 for the hysterics like Vetter is the grid. Prepare yourself for vast stretches of the landscape and seascape consumed under huge blankets of solar panels and forests of mammoth windmills stretching over the horizon, and intermittency, brownouts, blackouts, and bankrupting energy bills. Target #2 is your car.

Your car must fit into this central planner’s dream. That’s no easy task. Today’s common vehicle with its internal combustion engine (ICE) was the result of decades, a century and a half, of trial-and-error and interplay of many generations of tinkerers, producers and consumers. Now, the economics of organic development are to be suddenly replaced by the central commands of politicians and their government bureaus. Out of politics – for government is politics and politics is government – come the central planners’ edicts in the form of numerical quotas on date certain. Collectivists of all stripes love blunt commands to bring everyone into line. It’s the mental fingerprint of totalitarians. Stalin loved his Five-Year Plans. The CCP loved their one-child policy and forced abortions on a grand scale. From today (2023) to 2050, the plan is for all of us to be shoehorned into their choice for us.

Soviet Plan — Extolling the virtues of central planning in the Soviet Union

Would you fly on a plane designed in a confab between technocrats of the Department of Commerce and the staff of Bernie Sanders? Count me out. The electric vehicle isn’t that much different. Oh, the cabal won’t engineer the thing from the ground up. They don’t have to. Stalin’s potentates in Gosplan (Soviet central planning agency) and the politburo didn’t. They just ordered the heavy-manufactured thing into existence like God in Genesis, but left the dirty details to less-than-benighted underlings. In America, failure is rewarded in unionization and civil service protections, something called tenure. For Stalin and the gang, failure in living up to the fancies of the junta means show trials for “wreckers”, zek-status in the Gulag Archipelago, or a mass grave in Kurapaty Forest.

Our ruling over-caffeinated simpletons are following a movie script, “Field of Dreams”. The farmer Ray in the movie hears a voice telling him, “If you build it, he will come”. It’s the activists’ voice in the heads of Gov. Gavin Newsom, his super majority of totalitarian utopians in the state legislature, everywhere the donkey party is in power, and the entire Democratic Party ensconced in DC. Translation: “Build the EV, and we’ll force the others to buy it.” But the thing ordered into mass production, and the forced scuttling of the second largest family investment, is a mass incoherency.

As a golf cart in a Florida planned-unit-development, it’s a great concept. Try selling the thing to anyone travelling a couple of hours to do their once-a-month Costco shopping, visit grandma, or road-tripping to Yellowstone. Try selling the idea to anyone responsible for distributing the tonnage from port to Amazon warehouse to your suburban doorstep waiting for thieves to take it. Not everyone lives in the tightly packed confines of our urban hellscapes. Not everyone lives within reach of California’s coastal Highway 1. The EV is designed for pampered urbanites living in mild climates, and close to the frequently vandalized charging stations – much like everything else vandalized in our cities – which are tied to a grid made unreliable by the same geniuses forcing you into the EV. Does any of this compute?

The ridiculousness of it all is intensified by the flight of the middle class from our decaying cities. It seems that people with kids don’t appreciate over-taxation, skyrocketing housing costs, a cost of living made unsustainable by those things labeled “sustainable”, the crime and broad urban dysfunction, the Soviet-style schools, and the horrible thought that once your kid is infected with the social contagion of gender confusion, they’ll fall into the clutches of those who are striving to permanently scar their minds and bodies, and you won’t be able to do anything about it. Imagine it: H.G. Wells’s “Island of Dr. Moreau” made real.

Of course, the advocates of dystopia will face declining congressional representation each new census. But, wait, the activists in and out of government have an answer for this new unintended consequence of coercing others to live the activists’ dreams. They’ll just open the immigration floodgates to the global poor. Then, these teeming hordes will be shuttled in sufficient volume to fill the vacuum left by the skedaddling middle class in time for the next census.

Still, more of the taxpaying middle class will be scattered over flyover country, in places unsuitable for the bi-coastal, urban zeitgeist of EV-love. The weather doesn’t cooperate, and the long distances can quickly turn the EV into a death trap. Oh, well, they’ll vote Republican; so, who cares? Right?

Electric Cars In Cold Weather: Tips For Caring For Your EV This Winter | ZenAuto — Stuck in an EV in winter waiting for a charge

The whole incongruency – in exchanging what works for what doesn’t – glares at you in the face. When it comes time to get rid of the EV, there isn’t much of a resale market for it (see below). Once used, who wants it, because who knows how those delicate batteries were treated? Not staying within the optimal charging window of 20%-80% and frequent fast-charges permanently sap it. Has anyone religiously followed the strictures in charging their cellphone, or anything for that matter run on a rechargeable battery? What makes you think that it’ll be any different with the Biden-car? You can’t order an end to quick-charging if you want to sell the thing to anyone with a life, nor will mandatory gizmos to prevent over-charging be any more effective. You’ll have to perform the mental trick of 80% becoming 100%. 300 miles of range is actually 240; but long before that, systems start shutting down to preserve power to the wheels. Playing it safe by over-charging is the norm. And do you think that people in the resale market don’t know this? If they don’t, they’ll soon discover it.

Electric car cemetery in France - Imgflip — Our future?

Let’s put numbers to the absurdity. The numbskulls in central planning realize that everyone, including the unwashed masses trying to get to work and the kids to school and soccer practice, must be in an EV to create the illusion of mass acceptance of the contraption. The rich can afford anything, including Elon Musk’s latest offering, with or without a government bribe, er, subsidy, er, rebate, er, fully refundable tax credit. So, the bribes ($7,500) are concocted with income ceilings: $300,000 for married couples filing jointly, $150,000 for individuals (see below). And you won’t have to wait to file your taxes to get it.

To keep leasing within the totalitarian fold, it’s even easier to garner the bribe since the dealer and you don’t have to worry much about the red tape of the domestic content and manufacture folderol of an outright purchase.

The problem is, with leasing and rentals, they’re swelling the used-EV supply. But dealers and rental companies can’t get rid of them. They’re stuck with something quickly losing its value. EVs are the worst segment in the used car market, their value collapsing nearly 50% in five years after purchase. Rental companies are limiting their purchases and some such as Sixt SE won’t buy any more Teslas. And to think that the zealots in power want you to buy the thing where it’ll occupy half the floor space in your garage next to the thing that works, the thing for which you are holding onto in a death grip – your good ‘ol fossil-fueled sedan. Indeed, the central planners’ dream stinks to high heaven, while collecting dust among all the other junk in your garage.

To hide the disruption and devastation in the automobile industry, the euphemism “transition” will be applied and a host of subsidies, kickbacks, tax largesse, and domestic-content favoritism will be showered on Detroit. Meanwhile, as lunch-pail Joe shows solidarity with UAW strikers, his administration is bribing and coercing their employer into reducing the payroll. The planners’ forecast of growing employment in the EV’s “battery belt” to replace losses elsewhere should ring hollow to UAW members since America’s “belt” is mostly in the non-union South. Still, net jobs in the industry could very well be negative. Hints abound of things to come. Stellantis, parent of Chrysler, announced in December 2023 that they plan to cut 3,600 jobs in the unionized Midwest due to California’s increasingly draconian fuel-efficiency standards. Mandatory EV sales targets as a percentage of all sales and these blunt mpg targets encourage compliance by not necessarily increasing production of EVs, or expanding total production, but lowering production across the board. It’s a side effect of California zealotry, and, after all, Biden’s and Schumer’s DC is California, Jr.

Where California goes, the donkey party’s national potentates follow. It’s said of California that lately the only thing that it produces in abundance is refugees in an imitation of Marxism-Leninism behind the Iron Curtain. Wrong. It’s bad ideas. CARB (California Air Resources Board) has ordered into existence something that doesn’t exist: “zero-emission” locomotives (see below). First, the CARB authoritarians have ordered the train companies to squirrel away money in preparation for their 2035 deadline when all new locomotives will be, magically, “zero emission”.

Of course, if you throw enough money at any Salvador Dali-like adventure into surrealism, reality can be forcibly contorted to fit the vision, but who wants to live in the result? Who can live in the result? The things carrying the freight will likely be battery-powered with less toque and horsepower, less range, less hauling capacity. It’s the same approach in the state’s edicts for tractor/trailers, the trucking industry. The consequence is batteries, batteries everywhere, and diminishment of your well-being. Shortages, jumps in distribution costs, and mounting difficulties in getting anything for producers and consumers will translate into you living poorer. The average person will get smacked, and royally.

The reality of California’s battery-powered locomotive?

But your well-being is beside the point for utopians drunk with power. Without a doubt, this is state tyranny as obvious as slavery in the ante-bellum South. A state in the grip of lunacy shouldn’t be allowed to drag everyone else into its self-imposed quicksand, which is the current state of affairs. Clearly, ports, trucking, and trains are the stuff of interstate commerce, and the feds in the Constitution govern it (Art. I, Sec. 8, Cl. 3). Also, clearly, California is interfering with it, obstructing it. Any state action so egregiously injurious to interstate commerce should be brought to heel. Existing Supreme Court case law affirms the Constitution’s plain language in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), Wickard v. Filburn (1942), Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (1964), Katzenbach v. McClung (1964), et al.

So, the power is there; why isn’t it exercised? Our federal government is crippled by two evenly matched and irreconcilable sides. One is in the grip of neo-Marxism and the other, the antidote, is consumed in a repulsive cult of personality. Much of the blame for this sorry deadlock lies with the electorate, for they are equally befuddled by two unpalatable options, or they’re boosters of the nonsense. They won’t, and maybe can’t, give the antidote the requisite overwhelming majorities in Congress and the executive branch to right the ship. We end up muddling through with California idiocy pulling the rest of the country into a morass.

It’s all so worrisome as we inch closer to a government-engineered suppression of our personal prospects.

More could be said of California’s inspiration in the federal government’s latest assault on the ubiquitous electric motors used in all American manufacturing. It’s more of the same ilk. They want to onshore manufacturing while they pummel manufacturers with an additional cost of $20,000 per employee in new regulations. It’s like the EV and batteries, batteries everywhere. Something stinks to high heaven; or, more accurately, it’s as toxic as phosgene or chlorine gas wafting over WWI battlefields. King Claudius has nothing on these dunces.

Low Battery

RogerG

Sources:

* “5 Big Lies About Climate Change, And How Researchers Trained A Machine To Spot Them”, David Vetter, Forbes, 11/19/21, at https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidrvetter/2021/11/19/5-big-lies-about-climate-change-and-why-researchers-trained-a-machine-to-spot-them/?sh=9d2a24349f47

* “2023 Study Shows Electric Vehicles Are Worst for Resale Value”, Marc Wiley, MotorBiscuit, 11/14/23, at https://www.motorbiscuit.com/studies-show-electric-vehicles-worst-resale-value/

* “Top 25 Cars That Hold Their Value the Best – and the 25 Worst: Electric vehicles are the worst at holding their value, while hybrids, sports cars and trucks depreciate the least”, ISeeCars, 11/6/23, at https://www.iseecars.com/cars-that-hold-their-value-study#v=2023

* “The $7,500 tax credit for electric cars will see big changes in 2024. What to know”, Camila Domonoske, NPR, 12/28/23, at https://www.npr.org/2023/12/28/1219158071/ev-electric-vehicles-tax-credit-car-shopping-tesla-ford-vw-gm

* For a horror story with a rental EV: “Car-Rental Companies Are Ruining EVs: Good luck charging your surprise electric rental car.”, Saahil Desai, The Atlantic, 6/16/2023, at https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/06/electric-vehicle-rental-cars-hertz-chargers/674429/

* “No one wants to buy used EVs and they’re piling up in weed-infested graveyards”, Monica Raymunt and Bloomberg, Fortune, 12/22/23, at https://fortune.com/2023/12/22/no-one-wants-to-buy-used-ev-piling-weed-infested-graveyards-tesla-bmw-vw/amp/

* “California Kills Auto Jobs in Toledo: Stellantis warns of layoffs in the Midwest owing to the Golden State’s electric-vehicle mandate.”, The Editorial Board, The Wall Street Journal, 12/11/23, at https://www.wsj.com/articles/california-kills-auto-jobs-in-toledo-electric-vehicle-mandate-15c44a5c?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

* “California Mandates Green Trains That Don’t Exist”, Dominic Pino, National Review, 12/28/23, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/california-mandates-green-trains-that-dont-exist/

December 29, 2023December 30, 2023

They’re Still Leaving as of Friday, 12/29/23

Local Moving Labor | U-Haul

In “Poltergeist II”, the little girl stares into the snow of the TV screen and announces, “They’re baaaaack!”. Who’s back? The ghosts, of course. For those chronicling the decline of California, the iconic declaration must be reworked. A person staring at their daily news feed comes away with stories of people leaving the state saying, “They’re leeeeeeeeeeaving!” This time, it’s Time magazine in “Americans Are Fleeing Los Angeles More Than Anywhere Else for First Time” (see below).

May be an image of 1 person and blonde hair — The little girl from “Poltergeist II”

And I quote from the story: “Los Angeles was not at the top of the list [of places to move to], instead becoming the area residents were most likely to move away from.” According to a Redfin report, “That marks the first time on record [LA] has been the number one place homebuyers are leaving, and the first time in over two years the Bay Area has dropped out of the number one spot.”

A dubious distinction for the not-so-Golden State. LA occupies the top spot, but the rest of the list is a who’s who of American urban dystopia, all of them Democratic Party satraps. San Francisco, New York City, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Denver are kryptonite to businesses and the middle class. People are voting with their feet as they have for millennia. Hell on earth is not a magnet.

May be an image of 7 people and text — A common strip of homelessness in Los Angeles

May be an image of 5 people, train and railroad — Litter from the chronic mobs of thieves along rail lines in Los Angeles

Welcome to urban America, and for the globe-trotting foreign traveler, reconsider that visit to the City by the Bay or Disneyland. Unless you’re a member of a major bowl game broadcast crew like the ESPN team reporting from the floor of the Rose Bowl, who’ll speed from the airport to hotel to the Rose Bowl in a limousine, you’ll risk face-to-face encounters with urban dysfunction.

For Californians, get out. For visitors, stay away.

business exodus people leaving california

RogerG

Source:
* “Americans Are Fleeing Los Angeles More Than Anywhere Else for First Time”, Suzanne Blake, Time, 12/29/23, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/americans-are-fleeing-los-angeles-more-than-anywhere-else-for-first-time/ar-AA1md8sC?ocid=msedgntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=483db5997a504d34a10fb00840ed94db&ei=52

December 14, 2023December 30, 2023

Ideas Have Consequences. Case in Point: San Francisco Giants Difficulty in Signing Free Agents

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'FBM' — SF failure to sign: then-Los Angeles Angels designated hitter Shohei Ohtani reacts during the seventh inning at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Calif., June 29, 2023. (Gary A. Vasquez/USA TODAY Sports via Reuters)

People are fleeing California and especially San Fransisco. San Fransisco is the tip of the spear in our current progressive-inspired wave of broad social decay. The fallout stretches from crime-ridden streets to ubiquitous disorder to business flight to join the residential variety — and in the difficulty in attracting promising young free agents, according to Buster Posey, recently retired player extraordinaire and part-owner and member of the team’s board of directors.

May be an image of 1 person and text — Buster Posey, Giants part-owner and member of the Board of Directors

Posey on the team’s difficulties: “Something I think is noteworthy, something that unfortunately keeps popping up from players and even the players’ wives is there’s a bit of an uneasiness with the city itself, as far as the state of the city, with crime, with drugs. . . . But as far as a free-agent pursuit goes, I have seen that it does affect things.”

Dan Lurie, throwing his hat into the ring for mayor, in an X post agrees with Posey. He posted,

“Players like Buster Posey have brought so much joy to San Franciscans, but now our city’s problems are affecting our ability to attract new generational stars. Our city should be a draw for players, not a reason to avoid our sports teams.

Current city leadership has let down the people who live and work in San Francisco every day. It’s time to call in the replacements and end the perception that lawlessness is an acceptable part of life in San Francisco. Then we will start our comeback.”

May be an image of 1 person — Dan Lurie, Levis heir and mayoral candidate

Yep, ideas have consequences, and probably the only real lasting consequences. The Lefty worldview is a disaster, and the calamity filters into everything, even my SF Giants.

May be an image of map and text — San Fransisco poop map made famous by Gov. Ron DeSantis in his debate with Gov. Gavin Newsom

RogerG

* Dan Luries’s X post at https://twitter.com/DanielLurie/status/1735026315244528018?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1735026315244528018%7Ctwgr%5Ea4ecb030bd3537b9539ce9c7b19ade7f8ed3ca56%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nationalreview.com%2Fnews%2Fsnl-mocks-antisemitism-hearing-with-university-presidents-in-new-skit%2F

December 1, 2023December 2, 2023

Newsom-DeSantis Debate To Be Sponsored By U-Haul (from the Babylon Bee)

** Read the full story at https://babylonbee.com/news/newsom-desantis-debate-to-be-sponsored-by-u-haul

May be an image of 2 people, the Oval Office and text that says 'Brought to you by UHAUL Need to get out of California? Call us today!'

November 19, 2023December 2, 2023

USC 20, UCLA 38; Five Losses Over the Last Six Games

May be an image of 4 people, people playing football and text

Once again, USC proved that it doesn’t have much of a functioning defense. And that incapacity has disheartened the offense. Caleb Williams and company had a bad day from the offensive line with the sacks to the receivers with the dropped passes to the running backs with a total of 3 yards rushing. Losing is a downer and the team is beaten. It shows.

The team has quality players, by all accounts, but maybe not enough of them. Yes, poor alignments, delinquent adjustments and strategy, poor coaching play a huge role. But I’m wondering if at least some of the problems can be traced to California’s changing population. California is becoming more feudal each decade. The state may not be producing as many of the 5-star recruits in all positions, particularly the ones that require the big, burly types: d-line, o-line, linebackers. I’m not an expert. I’m just wondering.

All I have to go on is personal anecdote. I taught and coached in a California Central Valley high school and went to high school in another one of those Central Valley secondary schools. By the time I am working through my career as a teacher and coach, I began to notice the gradual decline of the towering, big, and burly teens in the student body. It reflected the shrinking portion from African Americans and the descendants of European immigrant families, far different from my personal high school experience and my early years in teaching and coaching.

It’s not simply a matter of race. The relationship between the social environment and biology is only beginning to be understood. We do know that over time, maybe generations, new groups take on the characteristics of the surrounding and prevalent groups. Point: things change and blend.

But, for the purposes of recruitment today, the pool has changed. There are indications that some in the coaching ranks allude to the fact.

I’ve monitored online forums, social media threads, and web reports on the state of play in college athletics, especially USC. Head coach Lincoln Riley naturally has been the brunt of criticism for the team’s performance. One of the recurring complaints is the relatively mediocre recruiting classes, especially if you want to compete for national championships. Related to that is the charge that he hasn’t recruited enough local talent (LA area, California broadly), like from powerhouses like St. John Bosco (Bellflower, Ca.) and Mater Dei (Santa Ana, Ca.). It is true but that the talent pool is plucked clean by programs from all over the country; though, this fact doesn’t detract from the possibility that the amount of highly rated athletes is incrementally shrinking leaving an intensifying feeding frenzy for what’s left each succeeding year.

May be an image of 1 person, playing football and text — USC coach Lincoln Riley

May be an image of 5 people and text — UCLA coach Chip Kelley celebrating

So, when Riley responds to questions about mediocre recruiting classes, particularly locally, he’s quite right in saying that the local pool may not give you what you need. And, like everyone else, USC is in need of big, burly, fast, and smart. They surely can be found in California, but it’s unrealistic to expect USC to rake in the vast majority of them. And the problem worsens over the long term as California’s persistent outflux and influx change its population and athletic talent pool.

I’m wondering if California is demographically doomed. Somehow, USC and the other big California schools will have to increasingly try and convince athletes from a national pool to come to the land with the highest rate of poverty and homelessness, expensive everything, violent and property crimes galore, gangs, blight and filth from the urban core to exurbia to small towns to the fields and orchards.

The weather, beautiful coastline, and the Sierras may not be enough.

RogerG

November 2, 2023

The Doom Loop

Ten million Californians may go dark in the biggest blackout yet | The ... — Los Angeles blackout, 2020

You might be tired of my constant criticism of California, but there’s a reason for it. The state is in the vanguard of trends that are weakening the nation. Many of the ideas that prove to be harmful emanate from the state, while the state is without doubt in a doom loop. There’s no need to sugarcoat the reality.

Let’s start with population projections for the state. For at least a decade, people have been fleeing the state at a pace that might conceivably accelerate. The census that determines apportionment (the number of representatives in the House of Representatives for each state) has not been kind to California and is likely to get worse. After the 2020 numbers came in, California lost one seat (53 became 52). Now, as reported by Decision Desk HQ, California’s representation could very well shrink by an additional 5 by the time of the next census count in 2030 (see below).

Why the decline? Point of fact, the state is so poorly governed. Lefty ideation, which dominates the one-party state, is poison to the health of any community. Annually, bills are passed and signed that are making the state a living hell. Parents are losing control of their kids as soon as the kid steps onto the school grounds. State taxpayers will be on the hook for treatments and surgeries for any teen and tween from anywhere demanding to alter their birth sex. Call it an underground railroad for America’s version of teenage genital mutilation. Government workers in their unions control the state and many local governments driving them into insolvency. Filth, squalor, crime, drug abuse mar public and private spaces. And, let’s not forget, lefty environmental utopianism is destroying an entire way of life. With all that, why not get out?

One barometer of a community’s overall health is prices. High taxes on nearly everything jack up the cost of living, but it’s more than that. The state is a regulatory nightmare, mostly due to a labyrinth of laws and rules in pursuit of a “carbon-free future”. The state is busy administering a lethal injection to the fossil fuel industry and the plentiful natural gas fields in the state. The result? You guessed it; the people get hosed in exploding utility rates. And what should really be driving you bats is the fact that CO2 will still accumulate in the atmosphere since few people on the planet are as looney as the people elected to run the Golden State.

Watch the video below of a deep dive into one aspect of your California utility bill: your assessment for natural gas usage. It’s scheduled to jump. The sacred cows of windmills, solar panels, and EVs are a joke and making life a poor imitation of that lived generations before. Now, watch as your gas bill more than doubles . . . while prices fall nationally. It’s what happens when utopians taking on the role of central planner monkey around with the basic stuff of life.

My 8.23 cents/kilowatt-hour keeps looking better and better each time I read about the lunacy in my state of birth.

RogerG

Read more here:

* “California on Track to Lose Five House Seats in 2030 as Residents Leave”, Ben Wilson, The Washington Free Beacon, September 20, 2023, at https://freebeacon.com/latest-news/california-on-track-to-lose-five-house-seats-in-2030-as-residents-leave/

* See X, “California is now predicted to lose 5 congressional districts in the 2030 reapportionment cycle. What happened to its historically fast growing population?”, September 19, 2023, at https://twitter.com/DecisionDeskHQ/status/1704155907150733503

August 15, 2023August 21, 2023

It’s the People, Stupid

More than half the voters at San Francisco City Hall registered on Election Day - ABC7 San Francisco — San Francisco voters at the polls

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…” Winston Churchill in the House of Commons, 1947

But, dear Winston, what happens when the people vote for lunacy, or vote into power an autocracy of the self-important who happen to be the missionaries of the lunacy? It stays and never seems to go away until the place becomes a ghost town. Such is the bane of our times.

To borrow another line from the demagogic James Carville in 1992, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Rework it a bit and you would uncover another truism: It’s the people, stupid. The civilizational rot in our deepest blue places did not originate in a foreign lab. It was homegrown by our citizenry voting for lunacy and lunatics. No coup put into power in Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Albany, practically the entire Bos-Wash corridor, such a homogeneous grouping of the daft. They were freely chosen by the residents who decided to show up at the polls in those jurisdictions-turned-asylums.

We know it to be lunacy because . . . just look around. It’s littered all over the ground in these places, in the abandoned store fronts, empty commercial buildings, the gauntlet of the homeless/needles/feces, business flight, the lawlessness, the eviscerated economy from the eco-fanaticism. Of recent note, here’s a few examples of the dégringolade (civilizational decline).

The people of California, in the grip of the decarceration schtick of the Obama years, passed Prop 47 in 2014. It tweaked the state’s criminal code to reduce many felonies to misdemeanors, under the moniker “nonviolent”, especially property crimes with damages under $950. Probably, the only benefit from the change is that it improved the math skills of some of the state’s worst students. Understandably, rushing down the aisles of Nordstrom grabbing everything hither and yon and being able to produce a running – literally running – total of under $950 will sharpen anyone’s math intellect.

“Smash and grabs” have become the latest thing for many urban youths in the Golden State. Watch the ransacking below of a Nordstrom in Topanga, Ca., Saturday, August 14. Brazenness has become commonplace in the post-Prop 47 world of California. It (Prop 47) was billed as a sensible response to overzealous prosecutors. Instead, it produced A Clockwork Orange. All of it democratically chosen.

Don’t think that’s the end of it. Up and down the state, the mania is sweeping high-end shopping centers. That venerable mouthpiece of “decarceration”, NPR, in a rare sign of awareness of reality, stated, “Saturday’s robbery was the third Nordstrom heist in California in less than two years.” Days before, an Yves Saint Laurent store in Glendale was hit. San Francisco is famous for it.

Walgreens, San Francisco, chains their freezer boxes. Convenience shopping at a Walgreens or CVS is harder to come by since many have closed. One shoplifter at a SF Walgreens when asked by a reporter why he didn’t pay, as he nonchalantly walked out of the store, responded casually, “It’s San Francisco, Bro.” Watch the ABC 7 report here:

Seattle turned itself into a basket case. Remember CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone – ergo, no cops allowed) from that 2020 summer of riotous “fun”? In a recent Household Pulse Survey, Seattle residents’ disapproval of their own city ranks it ahead in the misery index of such metropolitan disaster zones as Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York City. 600,000 residents were queried and half cited “rent increases” while a quarter of them pointed to “unsafe neighborhoods”. Not a good look if you’re trying to keep or attract people. And the policymakers that made it all happen were duly elected, and may get elected again.

Oregon, in the grip of the inmates of the Willamette Valley urban asylums, passed with a 60% majority Measure 110, drug decriminalization and stepped-up treatment programs. Drug decriminalization occurred, but the measure’s treatment programs grotesquely floundered, so much so that the program’s director, Angela Carter, resigned one year later. The state is a druggies’ haven with overdose deaths and crime skyrocketing and the public square filthy and littered in homeless encampments.

A self-described “left of center” Portland resident and restaurant owner, Lisa Schroeder, expressed her regrets, “If I could turn back time and repeal Measure 110 tomorrow, I would do it.” Some are trying. Clackamas County Board of Supervisors, which encompasses some of Portland’s suburbs, approved a resolution requesting the state to do just that. Don’t expect that to happen any time soon. Other popularly elected representatives stand in the way.

At root is the prevalence of a mindset – left, right, and center – that an individual’s problems are somebody else’s fault, or the costs of their misbehavior will be borne by an abstracted “other”, not by them. They are not their own fault . . . when, in fact, they are!

This mentality is growing on the right. The anti-racists’ “privileged” (whites) are not so privileged – look at the opioid and meth deaths among poor whites – and these destitute whites are acquiring the outlook that they too are victims of faceless, nameless “others”. The lack of agency is as profound as the ingrained excuse-making among the youths rampaging a Nordstrom in California and their left-wing abettors in positions of power. The it-can’t-be-my-fault is resplendent in Oliver Anthony’s “Rich Men North of Richmond” tune. It’s gone viral. Some lyrics:

I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away

Sorry, but here’s a guy who needs to get off his ass. Bull**** pay? You know, he may have to walk around the homeless encampments, but he could go to school and pick up a skilled trade rather than fret about “bull****” pay while he “drown[s] [his] troubles away”. Watch the full ditty:

That’s the problem: too many people have bought into system-mongering. The “system” is said to be working against them, whether the panderers are talking about blue-collars in depressed areas or the deepest blue precincts who see a racist under every rug. You see, it’s the “people” who believe in things that aren’t true. In a democracy, a deranged people create a deranged government. It’s time that we put the blame where it belongs – on the people – and stop the pandering.

RogerG

Read more here:

* For an excellent compendium of Churchill quotes: Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations, Richard Langworth editor, 2008 edition

* Southern California thefts, including the Toganga one, here: “’Savage’ mob robbery at Topanga Nordstrom sparks outrage, beefed up LAPD patrols”, LA Times, August 12, 2023, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/savage-mob-robbery-at-topanga-nordstrom-sparks-outrage-beefed-up-lapd-patrols/ar-AA1fgJJO

* “SF Walgreens puts chains on freezers as shoplifters target store 20 times a day, employee says”, Luz Pena, ABNC 7 News, July 18, 2023, at https://abc7news.com/san-francisco-retail-theft-sf-walgreens-shoplifters-geary-boulevard-17th-avenue/13520154/

* “Seattle tops major metros for people feeling unsafe in their neighborhood”, Gene Balk, The Seattle Times, August 2, 2023, at https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/seattle-tops-major-metros-for-people-feeling-unsafe-in-their-neighborhood/

* “Oregonians Turning against Drug-Decriminalization ‘Mistake’ amid Record ODs, ‘Dystopian Nightmare’”, Ryan Mills, National Review Online, August 15, 2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/oregonians-turning-against-mistake-drug-decriminalization-amid-record-ods-dystopian-nightmare/

June 22, 2023

Does America Care About Its Reputation? America’s Leadership in Teenage Genital Mutilation

May be an image of 3 people and text — Transgenders going topless at the White House recently

Iran’s ruling class of fanatical mullahs regularly bashes the United States as the Great Satan. The question is, are we at this juncture trying to prove the rabid imams right?

American embassies display the LGBTQ+ flag throughout the world, including societies who maintain millenniums-old proscriptions on homosexual and other unconventional sex-related behavior. Such norms are deeply, culturally embedded and thus resistant to change by embassy flag waving or ambassadorial pronouncements. U.S. government interference in domestic affairs will probably be met with a native-born counter revolution. An Ibo tribesman walking the streets of Lagos might not give much thought to the rainbow flag on the U.S. embassy building, but once informed, chances are, he’ll meet the flag’s meaning with disfavor, and, by so doing, begin the long mental process of seeing America as the enemy of his way of life.

LBGTQ rainbow flag flying at US embassy to the Vatican for Pride Month — and backlash is swift ... — The pride flag on the US embassy to the Vatican, of all places

The view of the United States in these traditional societies may emerge as one resembling Babylon in much traditional Christian eschatology. Babylon symbolizes evil. God’s wrath awaits it in the last days. Similar apocalyptic scenarios exist in Islam. Certainly, discrimination, execution, and torture of homosexuality is an affront to decency, but don’t expect societies with little in common with San Francisco to be so gung-ho in embracing our sexual revolution.

Are we alienating more than the vast majority of the world’s population who live in traditional societies? On many fronts such as pushing pernicious pedagogy, glamorizing our hedonistic cultural revolution in our movies, the propagation of our faddish neo-Marxist “equities” nonsense (the woke stuff), greenie extremism, etc., America is at the tip of the spear. And, now, we have staked out the most extreme position on transgenderism and “gender affirming care” (GAC), far beyond where our European colleagues in western civilization are willing to go.

Consider: gender dysphoria is the only branch of health care in which a self-diagnosis is the basis of treatment. More commonly, your doctor’s most requested input from you is, “It hurts there.” Then, he would apply his training, knowledge, and experience. In many places today, anyone, a kid or adult, can come into a health care facility and express disenchantment with their gender and from there it could easily be a quick path to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and reassignment surgery – the so-called “gender-affirming care” (GAC). It’s the kind of logic-jumping that one associates with an ideologue, for that is what transgenderism is. How do you turn the self-diagnosis of “I feel” into objective, physical, empirically-validated truth? It’s nonsense. It’s simply the possession of a strongly-held belief and it’s off to radical action. Caution, alternatives, and disagreement cannot be tolerated, the true signs of an ideology at work.

As one would expect, California has its fingerprints all over America’s newfound sexual extremism. As is true with all extremists, there’s no room for other views, which leads the radicals to try to control the state in order to criminalize disagreement. “Gender-Affirming Care” (GAC) is all the rage for America’s progressive ruling class. The treatment formula is simple: GAC = drugs and surgery, with a little psychological push known as “counseling” for good measure. Those who disagree may even lose their kids. California is busy passing laws to lay the long arm of the law on parents who dissent from the California legislature’s party line.

More about California in a moment but one thing must be made clear: unsurprisingly, many of its most enthusiastic proponents come from people who’ve “transitioned” or parents who encouraged their own children to embark on this irreversible course. The transgender Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine is the current US Assistant Secretary of Health, and vocal advocate of doing to kids what he/she did to himself/herself. To keep justifying his decisions to himself, and seeking solace in making it easier for others to follow the same path, he engages in outright lies when he says, “. . . there is no argument among medical professionals about the value and the importance of gender-affirming care.” Anything goes for an ideologue. The lie is obvious, as you’ll see in a bit.

Rachel Levine on Facing Transphobia: “I Am Really Able to Channel That Emotion Into My Work” | them. — US Assistant Secretary of Health Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine

Such arrogant and condescending overconfidence is displayed by California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson. So strongly does she seek reaffirmation for her encouragement of gender transition for her own child that she wrote AB 957. Her choice, her opinion of “gender affirming care”, is written into the bill, and parents who favor a different approach could lose custody of their children in divorce proceedings. If it’s such a good idea for custody battles in cases of divorce, there’s no obstacle to its application to all families. Previously, the California Department of Social Services issued a mandate for fealty to “gender-affirming care” (drugs and surgery) for foster-parent applicants. Anything goes for an ideologue like Wilson and California regulators. These zealots reside in a state whose governing class thinks – or, more honestly, wishes – that the issue is settled when most clearly it is not.

Assemblywoman Lori D. Wilson Adjourns in Memory of Actress Nichelle Nichols - YouTube — California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson

Wilson’s legislative monstrosity is the latest in a line of California-sponsored extremism on transgender experimentation, with our kids as guinea pigs, sometimes over the protests of the kids’ parents. Residing in another state is no protection. If your child in Florida is bombarded with hints of gender dysphoria on TikTok and is anxious about his or her parents’ reaction, that anxiety can find a release without parental consent or knowledge in an underground railroad to California under SB 107 (2022, effective Jan.1, 2023). Your kid arrives in California, God knows how, the state takes your kid into “protective custody”, the child can undergo “transition”, and the Golden State’s authorities are prohibited from notifying the parents if the offending state restricts the medicinal and surgical mutilation of adolescents.

In an act of life imitating art, California has turned itself into H.G. Wells’ “Island of Dr. Moreau”, a place where a Dr. Moreau creates hybrid animal/humans by vivisection. California has turned itself into an island where hybrid boy/girls with an irreversible chromosomal composition in almost every cell of their body will now be subjected to puberty blockers, constant and life-long infusions of cross-sex hormones, and extensive reconstructive plastic surgeries to create XY girls or XX boys. Call it human gender vivisection.

The Island of Dr. Moreau: Evil in Adaptation #TBT — A scene from 1977 film adaptation of “The Island of Dr. Moreau”

Of course, the zealots need a crisis to stampede an unknowing public into accepting these drastic measures. An alleged epidemic of teen suicide fits the bill. There simply is no credible evidence that anything pushed by Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine or Lori Wilson – their “gender-affirming care”- has any positive effect on the suicidal tendencies of self-proclaimed gender dysphoric teens. Historically, the crisis-of-the-moment tactic is a favorite of radicals wishing to rationalize their extremism. But if you strip away the rhetoric, stare at the issue with strict rationality, it’s horrific.

A warning label should be affixed to California: “Warning: this state is dangerous to your mental and physical health.” One California State Senator, Scott Wilk of Santa Clarita, put it succinctly on June 13, 2023, in referring to Wilson’s bill, “If you love your children, you need to flee California.” Los Angeles resident and journalist Abigail Shrier, who is facing social persecution for not adhering to the party line, advises parents with children in schools afflicted with a transgender social contagion, “The moment you hear that [your child’s friends are transitioning or using “non-binary” language to describe themselves], get your kids out of that school!” To effectively do that, you may have to go state-shopping.

SCVNews.com | Wilk Says New State Budget Invests in Newsom’s ‘Short-Term Political Future’ | 07 ... — California State Senator Scott Wilk (R, Santa Clarita)

California has become a threat to the nation and world because what you see passing through the state legislature and across the governor’s desk is also the official outlook of the state’s fellow travelers running the show in the federal government. It’s going national. The loyal opposition is cornered in a narrow majority in one half of Congress. The executive branch and its ruling donkey party ape the donkey party’s super-majorities in the California legislature. And what they are doing is swimming upstream as our cultural amigos in Europe are having second thoughts about the transgender zealotry.

Clearly, for many in the European continent’s health care establishments, this rush to malform a child’s body has become deeply troubling. While formerly in the forefront of “transition” therapies in “gender-affirming care”, lately they have decided to pull back. In the UK, the brakes were put on it by a lawsuit. 23-year-old Keira Bell sued the National Health Service (NHS) and its Tavistock Centre gender identity clinic for improper care and treatment of her gender dysphoria beginning at age 16. Other young victims are waiting in line to take their crack at the country’s medical malpractice.

Cambiare sesso a 16 anni e pentirsene: la storia di Keira Bell che ha deciso di denunciare la ... — Keira Bell, as a boy after transition (r) and now after detransition

An independent investigation by pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass chronicled practices at the clinic like the hurried and inordinate use of puberty blockers – by the way, originally used for chemical castration – which were prescribed for Bell after only three visits. In a report, the BBC’s Alison Holt wrote of Tavistock, “Former staff at the clinic have raised concerns that teenagers who want to transition to a different gender are being given puberty blockers without adequate assessment or psychological work.” It’s been a persistent complaint going back to at least 2009. A year of puberty blockers for Bell was followed by three more years of male hormones and a double mastectomy (breast removal). Indeed, “without adequate assessment” appears to be the nature of “gender-affirming care” at Tavistock and elsewhere, and the core complaint of the suing victims. Bell won. In the end, after the Cass report, the July 2022 obituary for the Tavistock Centre was announced by the UK’s National Health Service.

NHS gender clinic, the Tavistock Centre, could face legal action over alleged 'failings in care ... — The Travitock Centre in London

Scandinavia, long a pioneer in transgender treatments, is having serious second thoughts and is making a mockery of Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine’s boast of one mind among “experts” in lockstep support of drug and cutting-induced changes to a child’s body. The Dutch let loose the tiger of “gender-affirming care” (GAC) for children in the 1990’s, but now are saying “Whooooaaaaa”! They are in the process of revising their earlier enthusiasm for what later came to be called “The Dutch Protocol”. As Dutch researchers Jan Kuitenbrouwer and Peter Vasterman wrote in their report on “The Dutch Protocol” about the use of puberty blockers, the first medical intervention in “transition”,

“More and more is becoming known about the long-term side effects of puberty blockers. They interfere with physical sexual development, hinder the development of the bones, can cause anorgasmia and infertility and interfere with the ability to make rational decisions.”

The Swedes, Finns, and Norwegians haven’t ignored the mounting evidence by 2022. A Finnish review of “gender-affirming care” recommended restrictions and a preference for talking therapy. Sweden’s medical authorities warn that the risks of GAC “currently outweigh the benefits.” Norway’s health care regulators expressed similar caution. French medical authorities chimed in with much the same worries. As it turns out, America stands out as the “wild west” in nearly unrestrained teenage genital mutilation in service of a radical ideology.

The appearance of a rising number of detransitioners and a growing recognition of a social contagion in gender dysphoria is making the contentions of Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine preposterous. Many young people regretting the hash that people like Levine have made of their lives will end up ranking “gender-affirming care” right up there with the race theories of Dr. Walter Gross, Hauptstellenleiter of the National Socialist Office of Racial Policy. Studies of detransitioners are all over the map but one U.S. study found that nearly 30% of transitioners stopped and reversed their medical interventions within 4 years, this in spite of the great social pressure to go through with it. For the push for transition, we don’t need droplets to spread a virus since the cell phone will do quite nicely.

undefined — Dr. Walter Gross, Hauptstellenleiter of the National Socialist Office of Racial Policy

How Norman Spack transformed the way we treat transgender children - Lifestyle Features — Norman Spack of Boston’s Children’s Hospital and an early enthusiast of “gender-affirming care”

The social pressure comes in the form of a social contagion. Unlike COVID-19 whose vulnerable are older adults, the vulnerable are the impressionable, the young who are digitally getting the gender dysphoria virus. All of a sudden, it’s tween and teen girls, instead of boys, who are overpowering the stats according to Lisa Littman, formerly of the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and currently Director of The Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research. How did this happen? The culprit rides in that rectangular device planted in your teen’s pocket. Social media on that screen plays to the comorbidities of gender dysphoria such as teen girls’ insecurities, mental conditions like autism, an exaggerated sense of envy, etc. Gender-affirming care’s reliance on teen self-diagnosis skips over the real problems. The mask is mistaken for the real face and off we go into the mutilation of children.

Any adult worth his or her salt, particularly those who raised kids, would know that kids aren’t very good at medical analysis. But the official policy of the U.S. is to not know any better than a teen as we push the rest of the world to join us in treating children as lab rats. Worse: practice gender vivisection to create hybrid boys and girls out of our offspring. Imagine America as the avatar of teenage genital mutilation. I’m sorry but that’s not a good look.

May be an illustration of text that says '2 世 ഗDD The BIDEN ADMINISTRATION TRATION MOVES to ALLOW ANSGENDERS to COMPETEM GIRLS' SPORTS... U.S.S.R. &EASTERN BLOC WOMEN'S OLYMPIC SCANDALS Sports MUSEUM YOU SEE YURI, WE DIDN'T CHEAT. WE WERE JUST AHEAD of OUR TIME. NITINOM 23D aIvINN @Ramireztoons michaelpramirez.com'

RogerG

Read more here:

* California Assemblywoman Lori Wilson’s AB 957 can be accessed at https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB957/id/2698894/California-2023-AB957-Introduced.html

* California’s SB 107 is described at “Newsom signs bill to make California a refuge for transgender youth and families”, Brooke Migdon, The Hill: Changing America, 9/30/22, at https://thehill.com/changing-america/respect/equality/3668922-newsom-signs-bill-to-make-california-a-refuge-for-transgender-youth-and-families/. The bill can be read at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220SB107.

* An examination of gender dysphoric suicide can be read at “Does ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ For Trans Kids Actually Prevent Suicide? Here’s What The Data Say”, Jay P. Greene, Ph.D., Heritage Foundation, 6/15/2022, https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/does-gender-affirming-care-trans-kids-actually-prevent-suicide-heres-what-the

* Scott Wilk’s comment on the danger that California poses for the state’s children can be found at “State Senator Warns About New Gender-Affirmation Law: ‘If You Love Your Children, You Need To Flee California’”, Real Clear Politics, 6/15/23, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/06/15/california_state_senator_warns_if_you_love_your_children_you_need_to_flee_california.html

* The story on Keira Bell and the UK’s Tavistock gender identity clinic:
• “Tavistock transgender clinic could face mass legal action ‘from 1,000 families of children who claim they were rushed into taking life-altering puberty blockers’ weeks after NHS shut it down in wake of damning report”, Martin Beckford, The Daily Mail, 8/11/2022, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11101661/Tavistock-transgender-clinic-facing-mass-legal-action-1-000-families.html
• “UK court rules against trans clinic over treatment for children”, Rachel Savage, et al, Reuters, 11/20/2020, at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-lgbt-transgender-trfn-idUSKBN28B3AV
• “NHS gender clinic ‘should have challenged me [Keira Bell] more’ over transition”, Alison Holt, BBC News, 3/1/2020, at https://www.bbc.com/news/health-51676020
• “Shuttering the Tavistock”, Bernard Lane, Quillette, 8/5/2022, at https://quillette.com/2022/08/05/closing-the-tavistock-is-an-important-step/
• “Courage of the parents, patients and whistleblowers who refused to be silenced is revealed as controversial Tavistock children’s transgender clinic is to SHUT after damning report warned it was ‘not safe’”, Martin Beckford, The Daily Mail, 7/29/2022, at https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11059641/Courage-parents-patients-whistleblowers-revealed-Tavistock-childrens-clinic-SHUT.html

* National Review has been forthright is presenting counter-arguments to the ones advanced by transgender activists:
• “California Is Losing Its Mind”, the editors, 6/14/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/california-is-losing-its-mind/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second
• “The World Is Turning against Gender Experiments on Children”, the editors, 6/13/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/06/the-world-is-turning-against-gender-experiments-on-children/
• “The U.S. Is an Outlier in ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ for Minors”, Madeleine Kearns, National Review Magazine, 5/25/2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2023/06/12/the-u-s-is-an-outlier-in-gender-affirming-care-for-minors/

* The Dutch are beginning to recognize caution in regards to “gender-affirming care”: “The Dutch Model is falling apart”, Rose Kelleher, Genspect, 1/2/23, at https://genspect.org/the-dutch-model-is-falling-apart/#:~:text=The%20decision%20of%20the%20well-respected%20Dutch%20newspaper%20NRC,and%20impairs%20their%20future%20ability%20to%20have%20children.
• The Dutch rethink about GAC began with a report in the Dutch newspaper NRC: “Trans Care Must Also Meet Medical-Scientific Standards”, Jan Kuitenbrouwer and Peter Vasterman, NRC, 12/30/22, at https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2022/12/30/ook-transzorg-moet-aan-medisch-wetenschappelijke-standaarden-voldoen-a4152945

* A review of the issue of detransition, though generally supportive of transgender treatments but acknowledging the persistent presence of large numbers of people who regret their “transition”, can be read here: “Take Detransitioners Seriously”, Daniela Valdes and Kinnon McKinnon, The Atlantic, 1/18/23, at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/detransition-transgender-nonbinary-gender-affirming-care/672745/

* Lisa Littman’s groundbreaking report on rapid-onset gender dysphoria can be read at “Parent reports of adolescents and young adults perceived to show signs of a rapid onset of gender dysphoria”, Lisa Littman, PLOS ONE, 8/16/2018, at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0202330

* More on rapid-onset gender dysphoria can be read in “Study of 1,655 Cases Supports the ‘Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria’ Hypothesis”, Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), 3/30/23, at https://segm.org/study-of-1655-cases-lends-support-to-ROGD

June 2, 2023June 2, 2023

Papering Over Insanity: The Green Energy Charade, Cap-and-Trade, and the Assault on Trucking

esla unveils its new electric semi truck at a presentation in Hawthorne, Calif., in 2017. (Alexandria Sage/Reuters)

I begin with a tripartite revolution, of which the charade is a manifestation.

The sudden onset of a cultural and political revolution is bedeviling us. It’s a three-legged revolution. One leg is the “woke” revolution with its reverse pogrom against the vast majority of the population and the entire civilization itself. Think of it as the reverse of the sanctioned riots – pogroms – against Jews, a small minority in imperial Russia. Currently, a resurrected cadre of Red Guards (of Maoist infamy), defames, and defaces our cherished institutions, beliefs, customs, and commemorations, and are on the hunt to eradicate a mystical and vague “privilege” of “whiteness” or the “rich” or whoever they wish to pillory as their enemy. The parallel with Mao’s carnage is stunning.

That’s not all. With the assault of the “woke” comes the second leg: an intensified zealotry for the battle against “climate change” and a newfound veneration of the pagan goddess Gaia. A suddenly intense and fanatical war on man-made carbon is the tip of the spear of the revolution. States like California are leading the way into what will probably result in a decline much like the descent into Medieval times. One of the chief vehicles to undermine our quality of life is the loosely-defined “green energy”, and that means a love affair with “renewables” and electric everything. In the end, it can only produce a broad, sustained misery.

The third leg is the erection of a monster state to make it happen, for without it, the dreams of utopia will not be realized. This turns the struggle into a war against human nature, the existence of which they have brushed aside in congeries of rhetoric in order to reimagine people as fully malleable to their designs. It’s a calamity at the end of the day. Think of it as a full-court, state-sponsored destruction of prosperity.

The vocabulary of “sustainable” or “renewable” is a chimera and an evisceration of our quality of life. Solar, wind, geothermal, and small hydro is the mantra but their enfeebled productivity is the reality. Lenin’s Bolsheviks toyed with the elimination of a financial system (money, banking, etc.), discovered that it only produced chaos, and settled on state-ownership of the economy. In the end, that system collapsed under the weight of its own internal contradictions. The same fate awaits this latest copy of dreams supplanting reality.

In Bolshevik Russia, a vast array of commissariats was found to be necessary to oversee the state-manipulation of ordinary life. Human beings don’t naturally behave in ways complimentary to the official utopian template. In California and other greenie states, and now the Biden federal government, similar government impositions are required to turn inherently deficient “renewables” into the energy backbone of a state and nation. A flim-flam is necessary to hide the truth, much like the paper-shuffling in the Soviet Gosplan (state economic planning agency). California has AB32 – the official, legally mandated set of commandments for greenie energy – CARB and an assisting regulatory labyrinth of support agencies. Biden has his EPA and the entire federal Leviathan to make the incoherent appear coherent.

Open letter of apology from UCSF Professor John Balmes, MD, to the Bayview Hunters Point ...

Communist Party of the Soviet Union — Soviet politburo under Gorbachev

How incoherent is the whole scheme in California? One need look no further than the spinoffs and unintended consequences of the greenie energy campaign. To paper over the scant production and the fact that “sustainables” can’t meet energy needs, certificates – Renewable Energy Certificates (REC’s) and Environmental Attributes – are issued to solar, wind, and hydro producers in an elaborate carbon-credit scam who then peddle them, independent of their source, to purchase “dirty” power to make up for the abundant shortfalls. “Dirty” instantly becomes “green” with an REC or Energy Attribute pasted over it.

The energy deficits are real because renewables are chronically untimely and deficient in their production – solar spikes at around 3-4 pm and rapidly declines after, which doesn’t coincide with actual usage; wind only contributes when there’s wind; and hydro adds only when there’s sufficient stream flow. This certificated wallpaper is peddled by Investor Owner Utilities (IUO’s) – PG&E, Southern California Edison, etc. – and a new organizational Frankenstein called Community Choice Aggregators who are smaller energy collectives mostly composed of counties who virtue-signal their commitment to 100% pure renewables (Community Choice Energy), which isn’t, to their chagrin. In the end, after all the gamesmanship, just as much carbon is released into the air as before, just with more bureaucracy, middle men, and paperwork to turn the simple provision of energy into a more expensive shell game.

Got it? If not, you are not alone. Just remember one thing: all of us would benefit from the acknowledgment of a simple facet of the real world – trade-offs. More resources in time, resources, and capital spent on one thing means that they are not available for other things. Greenie energy is more costly in so many ways. How much have we unwittingly given up in new medical cures, inventions to make life easier and more productive, and greater prosperity as we spin our wheels in pursuit of a costly mirage? This is what declining civilizations do.

Royalty Free Woman Looking At A Maze Pictures, Images and Stock Photos - iStock

So, the effort to make crippled electricity everything gave us the PR stunt of Biden tooling around in a parking lot in an electric F150 and extolling its alleged virtues. It absolutely makes no sense. Without the internal combustion engine, the categories of utility vehicles and freight haulers (18-wheelers) would never have come into existence in the first place. Commerce and ranch work would revert back to the Middle Ages without it. Imagine the food supply more dependent on local production and the return of local famines as natural disasters periodically lay waste to the nearby food supply. The supermarket is inconceivable without the internal combustion engine.

The electric vehicle is a tony appurtenance for people who plan a life in a pampered urban cage, a life lacking in self-reliance and reveling in hedonistic indulgence. It’s a tailor-made booster of totalitarianism, whether of the soft or hard variety, since a cooped-up population is easier to control. It’s easier to make people greenie-compatible and keep them that way. Say goodbye to a real functioning citizen republic.

California, of course, is leading the way to this bleak future. The advances in fossil fuels and power efficiencies from better lubricants, tighter manufacturing tolerances, improved materials, fuel injection, solid-state ignition, and emission controls are now to be junked in an overnight leap into lithium batteries. It’s a disaster-in-waiting.

Think about all the “don’ts” you’ll have to anticipate. Don’t charge the ev overnight. It degrades the battery, without which, junk the $60,000 thing in a few years. Don’t buy one if you live in the routine path of hurricanes. Those batteries ignite if submerged in water. Don’t throw luggage into the trunk at the start of that long-anticipated road trip to Yellowstone. You might have to spend the night in the car waiting to be rescued – charging stations being quite sparse outside your urban cocoon. Don’t mindlessly grab that charging wand at some defaced public charging station. Think of the kilovolts passing through the wires just millimeters from your fingers. Insulation breaks down, especially when exposed to weather, vagrants, thousands of careless users jamming the things into their charging ports, and roving bands of teenage delinquents. The utility companies constantly warn us not to touch or go near downed power lines. What’s the difference? At least with gasoline, you’re safe so long as you don’t play with fire while filling up.

And then there’s the weight of the thing – the battery, that is. Weight matters a lot when getting from point A to point B, and when hauling anyone or anything. The family sedan has a thousand-pound one; the Ford F150, 1,500 pounds; the Hummer, 5,000, the weight of a light tank. The more weight, the less you can haul and the less distance you can haul it, making the trip through flyover country an anxiety-plagued, white-knuckled adventure as we are swallowed up in a geographical vacuum of charging stations.

14.5Kwh High Energy Electric Vehicle Battery Packs For Pick Up Truck — Batteries for an electric pickup

The asylum-by-the-coast called California is showing the world additional ways to muck things up. Along with shoe-horning soccer moms into ev’s, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state’s preeminent greenie commissariat, is doing the same thing to truckers. It has declared that all new drayage trucks (the ones used around ports) are to be emission-free by 2026. By 2035, all trucks must be. So, getting freight from ship to warehouse could turn into a real comedy skit. No practical alternative to diesel exists to do it.

Better yet, avoid California ports entirely – and while you’re at it, the entire west coast. Gulf Coast governors are waiting to welcome you in open arms. Trucking companies might very well be joining the middle class in fleeing California.

Have you seen the battery-powered 18-wheeler? Tesla has a prototype – MAN, Scalia, Triton, Freightliner, and Volvo too. But what are we giving up as we bow to the climate-change Inquisition? Answer: money (lots of it), reduced hauling capacity, the need for more trucks to make up for the smaller hauls, a vast increase in hauling time, the added expense of a specialized fleet of trucks impractical for anything but specialized use (drayage).

You’ll experience sticker shock at the price of that electric 18-wheeler. Try doubling the price of a new diesel one (around $185,000). A price jump of that nature will limit the number of companies financially capable of competing in a freight hauling market now artificially skewed to the big, big capitalized boys. An already distorted market will be further mangled beyond recognition.

Guess what? That battery powering the contraption makes an ev hauler about 5,400 lbs. heavier than the diesel version. Given the fact that the legal total weight of truck and freight can’t be over 80,000 lbs. without crumbling the roads and bridges, the load in the trailer must be smaller. More hauls, more trucks to do it, and jacked up prices for everything delivered by Amazon and to every brick-and-mortar store. Expect sparser offerings on the shelves and inflation at the register. Out the window goes Amazon Prime’s 3-day shipping and its current price tag.

Trucker collapses historic bridge, causing up to $1M damage - Bring Me The News

The whole concept of refueling takes on a new meaning. A diesel truck takes about 15 minutes; the battery-powered behemoth takes hours. The very people driving their trendy Nissan Leaf to Whole Foods will notice the attendant price increases and shortages. Given their pattern of partisan proclivities, the residents have voted to turn their world upside down. Last I checked, Manhattan, or inner-city anywhere, wasn’t famous as a verdant agricultural region or node of food packing and processing. Everything must be trucked into the hipster lair. I wonder how carefree is their lifestyle when scarcity turns from being more than theoretical background noise to real deprivation. Rents may become cheaper since people no longer want to live there, and all of it as a byproduct of hours-long refueling and trucks crippled in their carrying capacity.

Photo: Empty produce shelves at Whole Foods Market, Longmont, CO, March 13, 2020; Compass Natural — Empty produce shelves at Whole Foods Market, Longmont, CO, March 13, 2020

People adjust, and in ways not foreseen by CARB central planners. Their greenie ukases will push the population into crippled transportation and onto a crippled grid. California will have to generate 11.5 gigawatts of more electricity from sources that are already strained to the breaking point to meet the 2026 deadlines. Where’s that coming from? Not from inside the state. More limited and spasmodic energy from wind and solar won’t cut it. I suspect more of the paper flim-flam to disguise the reliance on “dirty” sources. It’s the truth that can’t admitted in polite company.

The state is already experiencing blackouts. Watch produce and other perishables rot as the state scrambles to reenergize the lines. That won’t be the end of it. The ultimate result is a descent by baby steps into a way of life that doesn’t work as well as our grandparents’. The green movement is a social suicide pact.

And to think that I haven’t even mentioned the monumental task of disposing of the batteries, spent solar panels (a lifespan of 10-15 years), and wind mills and their parts. Recycling only eats up more of the grid and consumes other scarce resources. All the toxic materials run the risk of seeping into our ground water. Think of it: we are making such humungous efforts to move our pollution from the air and into the ground, and our way of life will get hammered as never before. Our water supply might end up like the Salton Sea (Remember the MTBE scare? Look it up.). Whew, what a mess.

Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832): “Oh what a tangled web we weave when at first we start to deceive.”

May be pop art of 1 person and text

RogerG

Read more here:

* For an account of California’s drayage truck mandates: “California’s latest environmental regulation may have unintended consequences for truckers”, Rachel Premack, FREIGHTWAVES, 5/25/2023, at https://www.freightwaves.com/news/californias-latest-trucking-emissions-regulation-may-have-unintended-consequences

* Thanks to Dominic Pino for his piece of 5/25/2023 in National Review Online, “Electric Trucks Are Worse than Diesel Trucks”, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/electric-trucks-are-worse-than-diesel-trucks/

* For an account of the new electric big rigs: “Semi-truck maker Freightliner has a test fleet of 40 rigs, with availability in 2022”, Mark Vaughn, Autoweek, 5/21/2021, at https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a36506185/electric-big-rig-semi-trucks/

* More on the reduced hauling capacity of electric 18-wheelers: “Electrifying trucking will mean sacrificing critical weight for heavy batteries, eating into already-slim margins”, Bianca Giacobone, Business Insider, 2/2/2023, at https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-trucks-longhaul-batteries-tesla-heavy-cargo-weight-problem-2023-2

* Here’s a little synopsis of the MTBE scare: “MTBE controversy”, Wikipedia, at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTBE_controversy

May 7, 2023May 7, 2023

“It’s Not My City”

Out of options, SF police union endorses Alioto in mayor’s race — Angela Alioto

I have no plans to ever return to California for a visit or otherwise, absent a necessity involving a dear friend or relative. Every visit after my relocation to Montana has only reminded me of the reasons for my departure in the first place, and it’s only gotten worse.

Concerns for the state of my birth are not limited to me. Traditional Democrats of many generations, such as the Alioto family of San Francisco, are shocked by the descent of their city into lawlessness. They have yet, though, to come to grips with San Francisco being the canary in the coal mine. Large swaths of the state are sliding into the same dystopia. The problem is more than San Francisco.

For Angela Alioto, ex-member of the SF Board of Supervisors and Board president and daughter of the famous two-term mayor Joseph Alioto, she exclaimed that “It’s not my city” in a recent interview. You can watch it below. Pay close attention to her description of the near-death experience of a retired SF Fire Commissioner confronting violent homeless drug addicts on the request of his elderly mother just below her window and doorstep. He was more than assaulted. He was maimed with a crowbar and left with probable brain damage.

Not every city in the state has fallen into such despair, but they all experience the decay to some extent. Filth and mayhem, like smog, seldom respects boundary lines on a map. One thing’s for sure: no Californian can escape the state’s predilection to decriminalize various social pathologies, remove vagrancy laws off the books, tax and regulate their residents to high heaven, expunge entire criminal statutes through flagrant non-enforcement, etc., etc. When a person is more likely to face hard time for driving an unsmogged car than repeated smash-and-grabs, you know that a majority of the state’s electorate has edged closer to delusional.

Californians won’t get a better run state until a more well-balanced electorate shows up. One must face up to the fact that this state of affairs wasn’t an accident. It was voted into office. Please grab a cup of coffee and watch the interview. It might influence your decision to pay a visit to the City by the Bay.

RogerG

Watch it here:

* If you have difficulty viewing the video, that’s because it went “private”. It happened after I initially linked it on Facebook.