Apparently, Illegally Dumping Garbage, Medical Waste, Dead Bodies, Is a Civil Rights Violation

By William Teach July 25, 2022 – 6:00 pm

There’s so much silly with this story it’s hard to know where to begin

Federal prosecutors target illegal dumping in Houston, saying it’s a civil rights issue

The Justice Department said Friday it is investigating illegal dumping in Houston, including dead bodies and medical waste, that officials said is plaguing Black and Latino neighborhoods in the nation’s fourth-largest city.

First of all, why is the federal DOJ involved in what is a city issue? Perhaps having the state involved, but, not Los Federales. It just goes to show that the feds are way, way to involved in our lives. Also, what’s up with the dumping of dead bodies? Sounds more like murders

The investigation will be led by the department’s civil rights division and will examine whether city police and other departments discriminate against Black and Latino residents in violation of federal civil rights laws. Besides bodies, items dumped in majority Black or Latino neighborhoods include appliances, furniture, tires, mattresses and even vandalized ATM machines, Assistant Atty. Gen. Kristen Clarke said at a news conference Friday.

Huh? How is it the fault of the police if crap is being dumped in these areas? Also, did they consider that maybe most of this stuff is being dumped by the black and Latino residents? From the link from Kristen Clarke

The investigation is prompted by a complaint sent to the Justice Department from Lone Star Legal Aid. The complaint alleges that the City of Houston engages in race and national origin discrimination against a predominately Black and Latino area in Northeast Houston — Houston’s Trinity/Houston Gardens Super Neighborhood 48. The complaint set forth complaints by residents in the upper Neighborhood 48 who frequently make calls complaining about the illegal dumping of household furniture, mattresses, tires, medical waste, trash, dead bodies, and vandalized ATM machines and other items dumped and abandoned in their community. The complaint alleges that the City’s denial of services, failure to enforce municipal codes and permit restrictions, and failure to adequately and equitably respond to illegal dumpsite concerns and service requests threaten the health and safety of Black and Latino people in Houston. These alleged acts also devalue the real property of Black and Latino Houstonians in violation of Title VI.

That’s a pretty damned big stretch. What will she announce when they realize that it’s mostly the locals doing the dumping?

“Illegal dumping is a long-standing environmental justice issue, and like many other environmental justice issues, it often disproportionately burdens Black and Latino communities,” said Clarke, who heads the department’s civil rights division.

The investigation is the first publicly announced environmental justice action since Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland created an office of environmental justice within the agency in May. The new office is focused on “fence-line communities” in Houston, New Orleans, Chicago and other cities that have been exposed to air and water pollution from chemical plants, refineries and other industrial sites.

Will they prosecute the locals when they find out most of the trash is from the locals? Under what statute, since this occurred within a state boundary?

Illegal dumpsites not only attract rodents, mosquitos and other vermin that pose health risks, but they can also contaminate surface water and make neighborhoods more susceptible to flooding, Clarke said. They also can lower property values, harm quality of life and even reduce expected lifespans, Clarke and other officials said.

So, maybe the locals should stop dumping all that stuff.

Turner, who is Black, said the city makes it a priority to combat illegal dumping, “a practice that we agree disproportionately plagues Black and brown communities in Houston and many municipalities throughout the country.” The city has spent millions of dollars to fight illegal dumping, Turner said, adding that the problem is overwhelmingly caused by third parties who do not live in the affected neighborhoods.

Really? So outside third parties just go around dumping bodies, furniture, etc, rather than bringing it to the recycling centers? Like “hey, let’s drive all the way over their and dump it”?

During the first six months of the year, Houston residents called the city’s 311 line more than 5,400 times to complain about illegal dumping, the Houston Chronicle reported. That’s nearly as many complaints as recorded in all of 2021, the newspaper said.

Democrat run cities problem

“It’s a huge problem across the entire city,” City Council member Martha Castex-Tatum told the paper. Castex-Tatum blamed much of the illegal dumping on landscaping and construction crews or landlords clearing out recently vacated apartments. Besides tires and mattresses, other items frequently dumped include air conditioners, water heaters and major appliances, she said.

So, they just drive this stuff over to the poor sections and dump it? In all fairness, they could probably use a few more recycling centers, and they do charge a fee for certain stuff. There are more in the county, though. Why do we not have the same issue in the Dem run city of Raleigh? Heck, in the uber-Dem city of Durham they don’t have this same problem.

Still no reason for the feds to be involved nor to blame the police.

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Associated Press Seems Surprised That High Diesel Costs Increases The Cost Of Most Goods

By William Teach July 25, 2022 – 2:00 pm

Well, hey, this is what the Cult of Climastrology wants, right? What Biden and all his Comrades want, right? It won’t really effect the rich folks, but, it will hose the middle and lower classes, and should be a big warning that all this green agenda stuff is bad for their lives

From the article 

When long-haul trucker Deb LaBree sets out on the road to deliver pharmaceuticals, she has strategies to hold down costs. She avoids the West Coast and the Northeast, where diesel prices are highest. She organizes her delivery route to minimize “deadheading” — driving an empty truck in between deliveries.

And if a customer’s load is too far away or they can’t pay more for fuel? She turns the job down.

“It breaks my heart because I either have to say, ‘No, I can’t afford to,’ or ’I can, but you’re going to have to pay some of my fuel to get me there,’ ” LaBree said. “I hate doing both of those things because it’s not the customer’s fault. It’s not our fault.”

The price of diesel fuel has skyrocketed in recent months — much more even than regular gasoline — especially after Russia invaded Ukraine in February. Moscow’s attack led numerous nations to spurn Russian fuel, removing from the market a major source of oil, the main component of diesel fuel, and driving prices drastically up.

For months, motorists have felt the pain of high gasoline prices. Many may not know that they’re also absorbing the impact of much costlier diesel fuel. That’s because the goods consumers buy — from cereal and orange juice to Amazon deliveries of diapers — are delivered by trucks, trains or ships that run on diesel. Those inflated prices are then passed on from company to company until they reach consumers in the form of costlier goods.

“People pay less attention to diesel prices because people aren’t going to the pump and using it,” said Matt Smith, lead oil analyst at Kpler, a research firm. “But diesel has a more far-reaching impact and is already having a real big impact across the economy.”

Playing the Russia card, eh? Except, diesel prices were already going way up before Russia invaded Ukraine. It just made the issue worse. Consumer prices were already going up up up in part due to the higher fuel costs. Do the climate cultists think truckers are going to work for free or at a loss? How about the grocery stores? The stores that sell TVs, laptops, and other electronics? There have been two spikes in auto costs this year, from $300-$700 each time, and a goodly chunk of that is fuel costs. There was a time early in the year when we had a tough time getting our vehicles, because we couldn’t get them off the trains, because a division of the company that owned the depot refused to pay truckers more, so, there was no space on the lot.

This is what the nation looks like with all the Watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) stuff being pushed.

High gasoline prices have eased somewhat in recent weeks. But diesel has remained chronically high, with American refineries operating near capacity. Unless prices ease, the ripple effects of high diesel fuel could worsen because the costs are deterring some truck companies from accepting jobs unless they can persuade their customers to pay more for fuel.

And Joe and his Comrades are doing what? Oh, right, working to make it worse.

*that’s an old graphic, but, does show what the Democrats were doing even back then.

Read: Associated Press Seems Surprised That High Diesel Costs Increases The Cost Of Most Goods »

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 25, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is a very hazy day from carbon pollution driven Bad Weather, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Evil Blogger Lady, with a post on the girls of summer.

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Hot Take: The Supreme Court Is Out Of Order For Requiring All Illegals Be Treated The Same

By William Teach July 25, 2022 – 10:30 am

This is a cute little piece from the NY Daily News editorial board, which misses a rather important point, namely, that Biden’s version of implementing priority enforcement completely blows off deportation of most illegals

Supremely out of order: Supreme Court order on ICE guidelines violates tradition

illegal alien DemocratIn the span of a month, the Supreme Court overturned a half-century-old abortion right, knocked down a century-old New York concealed firearm carry law, made it much harder to hold law enforcement accountable for constitutional violations, frustrated the EPA’s ability to regulate emissions and eroded the wall between church and state, a series of activist rulings in the name of constitutional conservatism.

Yet our highest court exercises its power in other ways, primarily through procedural orders. Last week, in a 5-4 decision largely along ideological lines (Justice Amy Coney Barrett broke from her usual bloc, joining Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson), the court refused to stay a lower court injunction that had prevented the Biden administration from enacting ICE enforcement guidelines issued last year. The court said it would hear the merits of the case at the end of this year.

This leaves in place an untenable situation: A single federal district judge in Texas is forcing the entire federal immigration enforcement efforts nationwide to have absolutely no prioritization whatsoever. Biden’s Department of Homeland Security had sanely sought to concentrate its energies on detention of recent border crossers and those posing a threat to public safety or national security. The judge thwarted that policy choice, which means now a hardworking undocumented mother raising her U.S.-born kids in Queens must be targeted exactly the same as an admitted terrorism supporter or child sexual offender.

First of all, the same Leftists didn’t care when Trump was in office and a single federal judge from (insert leftist state) was jamming up the works, say, with travel bans from terrorist nations. They were cool with allowing terrorists in if it thwarted Trump, right? Going after the bad guys and gals is fine as a priority as long as the others who aren’t isn’t ignored, because they’re all in violation of U.S. federal law. That hardworking illegal alien mother shouldn’t be here in the first place

Every single law enforcement agency in the history of the United States — local, state and federal — exercises discretion daily. The government does not have the resources to go after the 11 million undocumented people in communities around the country, and even if it did, doing so would cause us social, economic and moral ruin.

Well, how about shutting the border down as much as possible? Regardless, when government agencies learn about an illegal, they need to place them in deportation hearings. They need to investigate if this person is breaking other laws, such as identity theft, which can significantly impact actual Americans. Under Biden’s policy, the average illegal is simply ignored. Law enforcement is almost barred from going after them. And, it’s not like they’re doing a great job in getting the really bad ones, since the border is wide open and more and more come in.

Here’s the biggest thing: the Supreme Court is tasked with upholding the Constitution, and whether laws are Constitutional: prioritized enforcement as stated by Biden’s order is not.

Read: Hot Take: The Supreme Court Is Out Of Order For Requiring All Illegals Be Treated The Same »

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Climate Anxiety Causing Warmist To Swear Of Flying Or Something

By William Teach July 25, 2022 – 7:00 am

They say they’re swearing off, but, are they really? Or just climavirtue signaling?

People are swearing off air travel because of climate anxiety

Staci Montori always considered herself to be eco-conscious. But four years ago she finally faced a grim reality: The two or three round-trip flights she was averaging per year had a massive carbon footprint.

“I have a lot of climate grief and anxiety,” Montori, of Lincoln, Mass., tells Yahoo Life, explaining that a carbon footprint calculator showed her flights to have a CO2 equivalent output — the way of measuring atmosphere-damaging greenhouse gases — of roughly 3.5 metric tons, which is equal to about a quarter of an average American’s entire carbon footprint (already much higher than the global average).

In response, the massage therapist and mother of three made a huge, proactive decision: She joined the growing number of people pledging to go flight-free.

“How could I not,” she asks, “when I read the grim statistics and see it happening now?”

Though the choice to completely give up plane travel might sound like something reserved for radical environmentalists and those with an extreme fear of flying, Montori’s choice to do so is actually in step with a growing movement: Flight Free USA, the stateside arm of a popular U.K. campaign that urges people to take a no-fly pledge.

Is there proof that all the people making these pledges stopped flying for real? Or even that most of them did that?

“Between the two, which is better depends on the distance traveled,” she writes, noting that for moderate-distance trips, such as those less than 600 miles, or a domestic flight within the U.K., “then flying has a higher carbon footprint than a medium-sized car.” If the distance is longer than 600 miles, then flying, she says, “would actually have a slightly lower carbon footprint [per mile] than driving alone over the same distance.”

But better than either, say experts, is choosing train travel.

Amtrak, the U.S. system of rail travel, produces 83% less emissions than driving and up to 73% less than flying, depending on which line is being traveled, according to a recent press release.

Well, prove that you’re doing this. Have at it. A lot easier in Europe that the U.S.

Is it just me, or does the photo look entirely staged and fake? It’s daytime in the desert, yet, that light is not coming in? Sure, it’s possible that it’s real. Probably not

Read: Climate Anxiety Causing Warmist To Swear Of Flying Or Something »

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Biden’s America: One In Three Say Government Is Corrupt And Are Willing To Take Up Arms

By William Teach July 25, 2022 – 6:45 am

This is what happens when the federal government continuously takes on more and more power. It didn’t just happen overnight, it’s a process that has been going on for quite some time, but, truly exploded with the passage of the 17 Amendment in April 1913, removing the power of the Senate from the hands of the State general assemblies, allowing the the unchecked power of the federal government to flourish. It truly exploded in a massive partisan manner under Obama and Biden

Nearly one in three Americans say it may soon be necessary to take up arms against the government

A majority of Americans say the U.S. government is corrupt and almost a third say it may soon be necessary to take up arms against it, according to a new poll from the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics.

Two-thirds of Republicans and independents say the government is “corrupt and rigged against everyday people like me,” according to the poll, compared to 51 percent of liberal voters.

Twenty-eight percent of all voters, including 37 percent of gun owners, agreed “it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government,” a view held by around 35 percent of Republicans and around 35 percent of Independents. One in five Democrats concurred.

Well, hey, Democrats, this is what you asked for in voting for the leftist insanity, wanting to invest all that power in a government that is unresponsive to the plight of the average American, forcing all sorts of insane beliefs on you. But, you didn’t think the bad parts would apply to you, right? Well, that was stupid. So, you 51% need to shut up and suck it up

Why are they upset? It’s what they supported. Turning Portland into a 3 on the Neighborhood Scout ranking. 100 is safest. That’s worse than Chicago.

Read: Biden’s America: One In Three Say Government Is Corrupt And Are Willing To Take Up Arms »

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 24, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is an Evil carbon pollution infused beer, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Flag and Cross, with a post on Disney being the place to brawl.

It’s cleaning the folder week.

Read: If All You See… »

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Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

By William Teach July 24, 2022 – 9:47 am

Patriotic Pinup David Uhl

Happy Sunday! Another fine day in the Once and Future Nation Of America. The Sun is shining, the hummingbirds are humming, and I’m getting a whole new AC system Tuesday. This pinup is by David Uhl, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Moonbattery covers masking being back
  2. Legal Insurrection notes Twitter to ban use of the word “groomers”
  3. Jihad Watch notes Islamists storming a facility and killing a lot of stray dogs
  4. IOTW Report covers the NY Times thinking there’s a time and place for cannibalism
  5. Gen Z Conservative features Victoria’s Secret stock crashing 50% after they went Woke
  6. Geller Report covers Kalamazoo decriminalizing peeing and pooping in public…what could go wrong?
  7. DC Clothesline highlights the death rate in Canada from the vaccinated
  8. Chicks On The Right discusses pronouns in the workplace
  9. Blazing Cat Fur has a very interesting CDC job posting
  10. American Greatness cover sexual “liberation” in public schools
  11. Watts Up With That? notes how Aussies are dealing with the Green future
  12. No Tricks Zone discusses the latest warming pause
  13. Not A Lot Of People Know That compares the current UK heatwave with 1976
  14. Weasel Zippers highlights Democrats blocking a bill blocking the sale of oil to China
  15. And last, but, not least, The Other McCain covers crazy people being dangerous

As always, the full set of pinups can be seen in the Patriotic Pinup category, or over at my Gallery page (nope, that’s gone, the newest Apache killed access, and the program hasn’t been upgraded since 2014). While we are on pinups, since it is that time of year, have you gotten your Pinups for Vets calendar yet? And don’t forget to check out what I declare to be our War on Women Rule 5 and linky luv posts and things that interest me. I’ve also mostly alphabetized them, makes it easier scrolling the feedreader

Don’t forget to check out all the other great material all the linked blogs have!

Anyone else have a link or hotty-fest going on? Let me know so I can add you to the list. And do you have a favorite blog you can recommend be added to the feedreader?

Two great sites for getting news links are Liberty Daily and Whatafinger.

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NY Times Says ‘Climate Change’ Is Not Negotiable Or Something

By William Teach July 24, 2022 – 8:11 am

Not sure about you, but, I’m still waiting for the big shots on the Editorial Board to announce that not only have they given up their own use of fossil fuels for travel and home energy, but, that they are going to push the NY Times to stop using fossil fuels for their operations. To turn keep the AC no lower than 78 and heat no higher than 65. Stop allowing meat in the building. Use renewables. Plus, send big checks to the government

Climate Change Is Not Negotiable

It’s a very silly climate cult NY Times graphic with temperature compared to toast

The American West has gone bone dry, the Great Salt Lake is vanishing and water levels in Lake Mead and Lake Powell, the two great life-giving reservoirs on the Colorado River basin, are declining with alarming speed. Wildfires are incinerating crops in France, Spain, Portugal and Italy, while parts of Britain suffocated last week in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Yet the news from Washington was all about the ability of a single United States senator, Joe Manchin, to destroy the centerpiece of President Biden’s plans to confront these very problems — roughly $300 billion in tax credits and subsidies aimed at greatly expanding wind, solar, electric car batteries and other clean energy technologies over the next decade. Had it survived, this would have been the single biggest investment Washington had ever made to combat the ravages of a warming climate.

This was more than another setback for Mr. Biden, who had already seen his climate ambitions threatened by the Supreme Court and rising oil and gas prices. It undercut American competitiveness in the global race for cleaner fuels and cars, and made a mockery of Mr. Biden’s efforts to reclaim the leadership role on climate change that Donald Trump squandered.

If those cannot survive and thrive without massive subsidies from the government at the expense of the taxpayer, then they’re doing it wrong. Of course, the problem with the legislation was that it forced American citizens to pay a whole lot more for energy and was an attempt to force them into expensive electric vehicles. Even the hyper-Warmist Miami Herald has noticed that this would be a raw deal for Americans (except for the rich), and that the government should slow its roll

In the long run, efforts to slow global warming will cause massive disruptions around the world and, especially, in the lives and lifestyles of the many Americans for whom the automobile means freedom.

So, to keep Mother Earth habitable and prevent Miami from being engulfed by the Atlantic Ocean, the climate goal now — and as the technology evolves — must be a soft landing achieved by moving at a pragmatic pace that gets the job done with the least harm done.

Back to the Times

Mr. Biden made bold promises to America and the world in his early months in office, designed to honor, at long last, America’s commitment at the Paris climate summit in 2015 to keep global temperatures from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. That is the threshold, scientists believe, beyond which wildfires, floods, biodiversity loss, rising seas and human dislocation become significantly more devastating — and just a few tenths of a degree hotter than the world is today.

Interestingly, the NYTEB fails to recommend that Biden stop using so much fossil fuels himself for what is essentially personal travel almost every weekend. That he put up a ton of solar panels on the White House, and put some of the smaller sized wind turbines on the grounds.

The NYTEB then makes all sorts of recommendations which will increase the cost of energy for Americans, which will increase the cost of food and everything else. Increasing CAFE standards will increase the cost of vehicles, which are already high, and cause problems with the supply chain more. Ending with

That, as they say, is not nothing, but it’s nowhere near enough to meet Mr. Biden’s pledge to the world. For that, we will need a huge infusion of federal money, which in turn means a concerned and engaged Congress. The threat posed by climate change to Americans’ lives and livelihoods is urgent and severe, and it requires significantly more commitment from those who are elected to protect them.

Well, see, Senators are supposed to represent their states, as Joe Manchin did, putting their wishes over party and outside interests. Representatives are supposed to represent those in their districts, not the national party and all those outside interests giving them money. If their constituents are against this stuff, that’s the way they vote. That’s how the system works. If all these Big Companies like the Times want a huge infusion of money, why don’t they spend their own?

Meanwhile, also at the Times

Yup, they care more about the mythical anthropogenic climate change than sick kids.

Read: NY Times Says ‘Climate Change’ Is Not Negotiable Or Something »

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USA Today Suddenly Discovers The Urban Heat Island Effect

By William Teach July 23, 2022 – 3:00 pm

The reality of the Urban Heat Island effect, along with land use, are actually huge drivers of the notion that the world is a lot hotter than it actually is. Step out of those cities, and the temperature drops quickly

Urban heat islands are why it can feel 20 degrees hotter in different parts of the same city

Does it feel sweltering in your neighborhood, yet pleasant at the park a few blocks away? You might be living on an urban heat island.

The effect happens when neighborhoods in highly developed cities like New York and New Orleans become 15 to 20 degrees hotter by mid-afternoon than surrounding areas with fewer buildings and more vegetation, according to the National Integrated Heat Health Information System.

“If you walk into Central Park, it’s going to feel cooler most likely in the summer than standing on the black pavement just outside the park’s boundaries,” said Joan Casey, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.

The hell you say! I was hiking in Hillsborough yesterday, and it was cooler in the forest, especially at the top of Occoneeche state park, about 370 feet. As soon as I left and got back into the more suburbanized areas it felt warmer. Go from Raleigh out to the more rural areas of Wake County and the temperature will go down.

Extreme heat remains the most deadly weather event, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and research suggests high temperatures affect lower-income communities the most.

Here’s what to know about the impact of urban heat islands.

Aaaaand they turn it into a race thing. Because it’s a cult based on far left beliefs.

Opting for reflective or permeable cooler pavements, planting more trees and installing vegetation-covered green roofs are some ways communities are fighting the heat, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Heat Island Community Actions Database suggests. It tracks city and state extreme-heat mitigation measures.

Those are actually not bad ideas.

Some legislators have proposed bills to combat extreme heat impacts, like the Preventing Health Emergencies And Temperature-related (HEAT) Illness and Deaths Act, which was reintroduced in 2021 after its initial proposal in 2020.

Senators Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Alex Padilla of California said the act would strengthen and expand interagency efforts to address high temperatures, provide $100 million in financial aid for community projects to reduce extreme heat exposure and issue recommendations for federal action on heat-health issues.

Stop putting everything in the hands of Los Federales. Let cities and states deal with their own issues.

Read: USA Today Suddenly Discovers The Urban Heat Island Effect »

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