Raleigh To Charge Un-Vaxxed Employees $50 A Month Health Surcharge

By William Teach April 5, 2022 – 10:30 am

Wait, I thought we were done with this silly stuff. These types of mandates. What’s the point of COVID is mostly over? The city has no mask mandates or any others. They’ve already threatened employees to block their promotions (which would result in lawsuits), and been threatened with lawsuits for “discriminatory COVID policies.”

City of Raleigh implementing $50 surcharge for unvaccinated employees on its healthcare plan

The City of Raleigh announced Monday that a surcharge will be applied on its healthcare plan for unvaccinated employees starting in January of 2023.

The City said it would be implementing this $50 monthly surcharge or employees, retirees, GoRaleigh employees and covered spouses who are unvaccinated.

The City said this serves as a COVID-19 prevention strategy.

“In accordance with the City of Raleigh’s duty to provide and maintain a workplace that is free of known hazards, we are adding this requirement to safeguard the health of our employees and their families, our customers and visitors, and the community at large from infectious diseases that may be reduced by vaccinations,” said The City of Raleigh in a press release.

January 2023. Sure, there’s some fear mongering about an Omicron subvariant that’s hitting Europe hitting the U.S., but, it seems we’re pretty much done with this. At worst it’s endemic. Those employees either had Chinese flu already and have antibodies or managed to make it through 2+ years without getting it. How, exactly, is forcing employees to get the shot by January 2023 going to help? Expect lawsuits.

New COVID-19 variant XE identified: What to know and why experts say not to be alarmed

A new COVID-19 variant has been identified in the United Kingdom, but experts say there is no cause for alarm yet.

The variant, known as XE, is a combination of the original BA.1 omicron variant and its subvariant BA.2. This type of combination is known as a “recombinant” variant.

“Right now, there’s really no public health concern,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor. “Recombinant variants happen over and over. In fact, the reason that this is the XE variant recombinant is that we’ve had XA, XB, XC, XD already, and none of those have turned out to be any real concern.”

Weird. Someone at ABC News was allowed to broadcast non-apocalyptic COVID news. Meanwhile, in NYC

Read: Raleigh To Charge Un-Vaxxed Employees $50 A Month Health Surcharge »

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Scientists Fight Climate Doomsday Talk Or Something

By William Teach April 5, 2022 – 7:00 am

I don’t think the vast majority of “climate scientists” have gotten the memo that things aren’t apocalyptic

No obituary for Earth: Scientists fight climate doom talk

It’s not the end of the world. It only seems that way.

Climate change is going to get worse, but as gloomy as the latest scientific reports are, including today’s from the United Nations, scientist after scientist stresses that curbing global warming is not hopeless. The science says it is not game over for planet Earth or humanity. Action can prevent some of the worst if done soon, they say.

After decades of trying to get the public’s attention, spur action by governments and fight against organized movements denying the science, climate researchers say they have a new fight on their hands: doomism. It’s the feeling that nothing can be done, so why bother. It’s young people publicly swearing off having children because of climate change. (snip)

Doomism “is definitely a thing,” said Wooster College psychology professor Susan Clayton, who studies climate change anxiety and spoke at a conference in Norway last week that addressed the issue. “It’s a way of saying ‘I don’t have to go to the effort of making changes because there’s nothing I can do anyway.’”

Ah. So they are not above pitching doom and gloom, they just don’t want all the people internalizing the doom and gloom that’s being pitched to stop trying to Do Something, to say “nah, it’s over, we’ll just live our lives. We don’t need all the taxes and fees and liberty taking government laws and rules.”

Gill and six other scientists who talked with The Associated Press about doomism aren’t sugarcoating the escalating harm to the climate from accumulating emissions. But that doesn’t make it hopeless, they said.

“Everybody knows it’s going to get worse,” said Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist Jennifer Francis. “We can do a lot to make it less bad than the worst case scenario.”

Is it any wonder that so many, especially the Gen Z’s, are just saying “the hell with it?” The Cult of Climastrology scientists and such have scared them so much, have pimped the climate apocalypse so much, that many just see no point in acting. If you’re being told that the company you work for is in horrible shape and there’s zero way to save it, would you fight to save it, even if you love the company? Would you just move on?

“It’s not that they’re saying you are condemned to a future of destruction and increasing misery,” said Christiana Figueres, the former U.N. climate secretary who helped forge the 2015 Paris climate agreement and now runs an organization called Global Optimism. “What they’re saying is ‘the business-as-usual path … is an atlas of misery ’ or a future of increasing destruction. But we don’t have to choose that. And that’s the piece, the second piece, that sort of always gets dropped out of the conversation.”

Perhaps, but, the climate cult has sold the doom so hard that few pay attention to that second piece. And, how many have figured out that the second piece requires all the taxes, fees, and surrendering of liberty and life choices? It seems really popular in theory, but, not practice. You can’t be the leaders in a doomsday cult and not think people will not think the worst. They reap what they sow.

Read: Scientists Fight Climate Doomsday Talk Or Something »

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NY Times Notices New Laws Push Red And Blue States Further Apart

By William Teach April 5, 2022 – 6:45 am

Obviously, the Times sorta takes the side of the Blue states, but, does play much of this straight (you can also see at Yahoo News if the paywall gets you)

Flurry of New Laws Move Blue and Red States Further Apart

After the governor of Texas ordered state agencies to investigate parents for child abuse if they provide certain medical treatments to their transgender children, California lawmakers proposed a law making the state a refuge for transgender youths and their families.

When Idaho proposed a ban on abortions that empowers relatives to sue anyone who helps terminate a pregnancy after six weeks, nearby Oregon approved $15 million to help cover the abortion expenses of patients from out of state.

As Republican activists aggressively pursue conservative social policies in state legislatures across the country, liberal states are taking defensive actions. Spurred by a U.S. Supreme Court that is expected to soon upend an array of long-standing rights, including the constitutional right to abortion, left-leaning lawmakers from Washington to Vermont have begun to expand access to abortion, bolster voting rights and denounce laws in conservative states targeting LGBTQ minors.

The flurry of action, particularly in the West, is intensifying already marked differences between life in liberal- and conservative-led parts of the country. And it’s a sign of the consequences when state governments are controlled increasingly by single parties. Control of legislative chambers is split between parties now in only two states — Minnesota and Virginia — compared with 15 states 30 years ago.

“We’re further and further polarizing and fragmenting, so that blue states and red states are becoming not only a little different but radically different,” said Jon Michaels, a law professor who studies government at UCLA.

Well, yeah. On one side you have states which do not want parents and teachers to force the trans agenda on kids who really do not know better. Which want to limit killing the unborn, especially since Dems seem to treat abortion as contraception. Restricting teaching CRT, which demonizes white kids, and even Asians and Latinos. Giving parents control over what their kids are taught. Stopping the insane climate cult stuff. Upholding 2nd Amendment Rights (maybe a bit too much, IMO. I’m all for permits for concealed carry. That’s a long explanation). And so much more. Dems want the opposite, adding on huge taxes and fees, authoritarian government over citizens, and more.

With some 30 legislatures in Republican hands, conservative lawmakers, working in many cases with shared legislative language, have begun to enact a tsunami of restrictions that for years were blocked by Democrats and moderate Republicans at the federal level. A recent wave of anti-abortion bills, for instance, has been the largest since the landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.

They call these restrictions, and they’re right: except, most are restrictions on government and government employees, with the others mostly protecting citizens, especially the most vulnerable, like children

Many, however, send a strong cultural message. And divisions will widen further, said Peverill Squire, an expert on state legislatures at the University of Missouri, if the Supreme Court hands more power over to the states on issues like abortion and voting, as it did when it said in 2019 that partisan gerrymandering was beyond federal jurisdiction.

Some legal analysts also say the anticipated rollback of abortion rights could throw a host of other privacy rights into state-level turmoil, from contraception to health care. Meanwhile, entrenched partisanship, which has already hobbled federal decision-making, could block attempts to impose strong national standards in Congress.

“We’re potentially entering a new era of state-centered policymaking,” said Karthick Ramakrishnan, a professor of public policy and political science at the University of California, Riverside. “We may be heading into a future where you could have conservative states and progressive states deciding they are better off pushing their own visions of what government should be.”

The Conservative vision of government is that it is limited, empowers Citizens, and is based on the Constitution. The Democrat vision is that government is Great and should be huge and control everything, with parents having little control of their children and abortion should be whenever for whatever till birth, and sometimes after. Citizens should be disarmed, at the beck and call of government. That citizens earnings are the government’s money. Dissension is not allowed, on pain of cancellation. Comply, Comrade!

But no state has been as aggressive as California in shoring up alternatives to the Republican legislation.

The state with high taxes, high cost of living, high housing, and massive restrictions on citizen freedom and life choices? The one people and companies are abandoning? And lets not forget about all the high crime in California and other Progressive meccas.

The question now becomes “are we moving to a Big Split”? And, if so, will it be amicable, or war?

Read: NY Times Notices New Laws Push Red And Blue States Further Apart »

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‘Climate Change’ Could Cost US Budget $2 Trillion A Year By 2100 Or Something

By William Teach April 4, 2022 – 4:15 pm

We can fix this with a tax, though. And you giving up your fossil fueled travel, along with freedom, liberty, and life choices

Climate change could cost U.S. budget $2 trln a year by end century -White House

Flood, fire, and drought fueled by climate change could take a massive bite out of the U.S. federal budget per year by the end of the century, the White House said in its first ever such assessment on Sunday.

The Office of Management and Budget assessment, tasked by President Joe Biden last May, found the upper range of climate change’s hit to the budget by the end of the century could total 7.1% annual revenue loss, equal to $2 trillion a year in today’s dollars.

“Climate change threatens communities and sectors across the country, including through floods, drought, extreme heat, wildfires, and hurricanes (affecting) the U.S. economy and the lives of everyday Americans,” Candace Vahlsing, an OMB climate and science official, and its chief economist Danny Yagan, said in a blog. “Future damages could dwarf current damages if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.”

The analysis file:///C:/Users/8003938/AppData/Local/Microsoft/Windows/INetCac he/Content.Outlook/T0DU0FIQ/OMB_Climate_Risk_Exposure_2022.pdf found that the federal government could spend an additional $25 billion to $128 billion annually on expenditures such as coastal disaster relief, flood, crop, and healthcare insurance, wildfire suppression and flooding at federal facilities.

Is anyone surprised that OMB found the exact outcome Brandon wanted?

The president’s “Build Back Better” bill, which contained hundreds of billions of dollars in funding to fight climate change and support clean energy, has been stalled in the narrowly-divided Senate by Republicans and West Virginia’s conservative Democrat Senator Joe Manchin, the founder and partial owner of a private coal brokerage.

Biden late last month submitted a $5.8 trillion budget plan to Congress with a focus on deficit reduction in an apparent overture to Manchin has said he could not vote for the bill because it would worsen deficits. Biden’s budget plan calls for nearly $45 billion to tackle climate change in fiscal year 2023, an increase of nearly 60% over fiscal year 2021.

OK, so, let’s say we do all this. Who’s held responsible if it makes zero or barely any difference?

Read: ‘Climate Change’ Could Cost US Budget $2 Trillion A Year By 2100 Or Something »

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If All You See…

By William Teach April 4, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is a wonderful low carbon form of transportation, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Legal Insurrection, with a post on how many Palestinians support violence against Israel and destroying the country.

Read: If All You See… »

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NY Times Scoop: Chinese Coronavirus Hit Those With Diabetes Hard

By William Teach April 4, 2022 – 10:30 am

You know which groups were hit hardest by COVID? Those 55 and up. Those in nursing homes (perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea to stuff seniors with COVID in nursing homes, eh, Gov Cuomo and a few others?). And those with pre-existing conditions, like diabetes

Covid and Diabetes, Colliding in a Public Health Train Wreck

(Starting out with a human interest story)

After older people and nursing home residents, perhaps no group has been harder hit by the pandemic than people with diabetes. Recent studies suggest that 30 to 40 percent of all coronavirus deaths in the United States have occurred among people with diabetes, a sobering figure that has been subsumed by other grim data from a public health disaster that is on track to claim a million American lives sometime this month.

People with diabetes are especially vulnerable to severe illness from Covid, partly because diabetes impairs the immune system but also because those with the disease often struggle with high blood pressure, obesity and other underlying medical conditions that can seriously worsen a coronavirus infection.

“It’s hard to overstate just how devastating the pandemic has been for Americans with diabetes,” said Dr. Giuseppina Imperatore, who oversees diabetes prevention and treatment at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Diabetes patients hospitalized with Covid spend more time in the I.C.U., are more likely to be intubated and are less likely to survive, according to several studies, one of which found that 20 percent of hospitalized coronavirus patients with diabetes died within a month of admission. Though researchers are still trying to understand the dynamics between the two diseases, most agree on one thing: Uncontrolled diabetes impairs the immune system and decreases a patient’s ability to withstand a coronavirus infection.

Um, we rather knew this at the beginning of Wuhan flu: that older folks and those with conditions like diabetes were in the most danger. So, what did government do? Lock everyone down. Create stay at home orders. Tell everyone what they can and cannot do, where they can and cannot go. If they are an essential or non-essential worker. To wear masks. That they can’t be out on the ocean on a paddleboard all alone. They can’t buy gardening supplies and seeds. They can’t be in their front yards. No gym. Can’t go to their vacation house out of the city. No matter your age or health. Everyone Will Comply.

So, this isn’t exactly a revelation. The only thing really new is the exact numbers.

Like the pandemic, which has had an outsize toll on communities of color, the burden of diabetes falls more heavily on Latino and Black Americans, highlighting systemic failures in health care delivery that have also made the coronavirus far deadlier for the poor, said Nadia Islam, a medical sociologist at NYU Langone Health. “It’s not that diabetes itself makes Covid inherently worse but rather uncontrolled diabetes, which is really a proxy for other markers of disadvantage,” she said…..

Of course they had to drag raaaaacism into this.

…Compounding the concerns, some studies suggest that a coronavirus infection can heighten the risk of developing type 2 diabetes, a disease that is largely preventable through a healthy diet and exercise.

So, let’s shut down the gyms, limit the ability to be outside exercising, and so much of the food production so people can eat healthy, right?

Over the past two years, doctors have also reported a sharp rise in young people being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, an increase that many believe is tied to the drastic spike in childhood obesity during the pandemic. “We’ve seen kids coming in so sick and dehydrated that they sometimes require I.C.U. care,” said Dr. Daniel Hsia, a diabetes specialist at the Pennington Medical Research Center at Louisiana State University.

Keeping the kids locked up inside helped, right, authoritarian politicians and bureaucrats? Perhaps schools, when they reopened, should have spent more time on physical fitness than social justice BS. Speaking of kids

Pandemic has delayed social skills of young children, says Ofsted chief

An increasing number of young children have been left unable to understand facial expressions after having fewer opportunities to develop their social and emotional skills during the pandemic, the education watchdog for England has said.

Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector, said the worst affected were the most vulnerable children, with those living in smaller homes without gardens typically spending more time on screens during successive lockdowns, which also resulted in delays in learning to walk and crawl.

Something that people against the extreme COVID measures said would happen.

Read: NY Times Scoop: Chinese Coronavirus Hit Those With Diabetes Hard »

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There Could Possibly Be Hundreds Of Underwater Cities Around The World

By William Teach April 4, 2022 – 7:15 am

Well, this could be very interesting

There Might Be Hundreds of ‘Atlantis’ Around the World

In the 14th century, a small port near Holderness, England, vanished into the sea. The town, Ravenser Odd, had been ravaged by two floods: the first overwhelmed the town’s abbey, leaving the streets full of human remains. The second, according to eyewitnesses, caused a “towering wall of water” to surround the village and swallow it. The residents fled, and Ravenser Odd was never heard of again. Now, scientists from the University of Hull have a plan to uncover “Yorkshire’s Atlantis.”

Daniel Parsons, a professor in sedimentology, was on a family beach trip when he first heard about the town. He told The Guardian that while talking to historian Phil Mathison, he learned that local fishermen scouting for lobsters had seen disturbances on the surface of the water at low tide. This initial conversation sparked Parson’s interest in the sunken town and its location. As a geoscientist he was just the person to try to find it.

Parsons’ idea is to use high-resolution sonar systems—which he usually utilizes to study the movement of sediment—to locate the town. Last year’s excavation surveyed about 10 hectares off Spurn Point. It was unsuccessful, but Parsons believes that their next expedition will produce results: “Given the stories we’ve had from the folks on the lobster vessels,” he said, “I’m pretty confident we will find something [next time].”

There’s all sorts of interesting things under the seas. Like Pavlopetri, reportedly the oldest sunken city, off the coast of Greece. You have cities sunken in the Caribbean. Lots more in the Mediterranean, off the coast of Egypt, and even a stone circle, similar to Stonehenge, off the coast of Scotland. I do find this all pretty cool, but, there’s something else to this story

Parsons has good reason to feel confident about his chances of locating the once prosperous town. Comparable studies of towns destroyed by weather-induced coastal erosion in the Bay of Naples reveal that towns aren’t simply washed away; they leave evidence of their presence on the seabed. For Parsons, who heads the University of Hull’s Energy and Environment Institute, this is a prime opportunity to learn from the past. He told Mark Brown, “I think it is a fantastic way to start conversations with people on the impacts of climate change long into the future by using these stories from the past.”

These people. Many of the cities were put underwater due to earthquakes and volcanic activity. Look at where so many reside. There’s lots of plate tectonics in the Med, Caribbean, and India, among others. Others because the seas actually rise about 6-8 inches per year over the last 8,000 years.

Anyhow, moving beyond that bit of Climatourettes, if the idea of all the sunken cities interests you, read the rest of the piece, which moves on from the stupid cult stuff, and is rather interesting.

Read: There Could Possibly Be Hundreds Of Underwater Cities Around The World »

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There’s A Wee Bit Of A Problem With Lost Federales Decriminalizing Marijuana

By William Teach April 4, 2022 – 7:00 am

All the legalize marijuana advocates out there might be in for a rude surprise (again, I couldn’t care less one way or the other about it being legal)

The real problem with U.S. marijuana regulation ‘not from federal illegality,’ WeedMaps CEO says

The House voted to decriminalize marijuana and remove it from the list of banned controlled substances at the federal level on Friday. Now the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act will move to the Senate, where it is unlikely to attain the 60 votes needed to pass.

And while the passage of the MORE Act would certainly expand cannabis markets in the U.S., Weedmaps CEO Chris Beals thinks that a bigger obstacle lies in the 37 states where the substance is already legal for adult use.

“The single biggest issue facing legalized cannabis markets… is that there’s just not enough licenses,” Beals told Yahoo Finance Live (video above), adding that consumers are still choosing the illicit market over the legal one “by a four-to-one ratio.”

As a result, “a lot of the harm that’s being inflicted is not from the federal illegality,” Beals said, “It’s from states not issuing enough licenses because the biggest correlating factor to these high illicit market rates is you have to drive too far or there’s not enough robust competition on pricing or product selection.”

Did you get that? This whole thing is really based on needing states giving out licenses to vendors, and increasing those numbers and having lots and lots of vendors, rather than all the illegal growers. And even federal licenses. Why? I usually hate using Wikipedia, but, it’s put succinctly

  • Creates cannabis tax and grant programs funded by a 5% tax on cannabis products (excluding prescription medications derived from cannabis)
  • Community Reinvestment Grant Program providing services for “individuals most adversely impacted by the War on Drugs“, including job training, health education, mentoring, literacy programs, and substance use treatment programs
  • Cannabis Opportunity Program providing funds for eligible states to make loans to assist small businesses in the cannabis industry that are owned and controlled by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals
  • An Equitable Licensing Grant Program providing funds for eligible states to develop and implement equitable cannabis licensing programs that “minimize barriers to cannabis licensing and employment for individuals most adversely impacted by the War on Drugs

It’s all about the money. States already have their own tax and fee programs in place, and keep raising them, hence why there’s a pretty active black market. Now, the feds want in on the sales. I mean, I don’t blame them, but, how many products have a federal sales tax? There are some, like tobacco, airline tickets, and alcohol, for which the feds made a cool $100 billion.

Sure, there’s some element of Democrats trying to give a boon to their base, but, that’s a sidebar: it’s mostly about the money. Most of their base will have zero idea. It’s rather cynical.

BTW, if states do not want to decriminalize it, they don’t have to. Same with states who will keep it legal for medical only.

Read: There’s A Wee Bit Of A Problem With Lost Federales Decriminalizing Marijuana »

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Biden Invokes Defense Production Act For EV Battery Mining

By William Teach April 3, 2022 – 5:30 pm

Brandon is fine with mining for the materials for EV batteries, which actually often leaves a nice environmental mess, to be able to build vehicles which the average American won’t be able to afford, but, not OK with drilling for oil and natural gas

Biden invokes Defense Production Act for EV battery materials: How it impacts automakers

President Joe Biden said Thursday he will invoke the Defense Production Act to boost domestic mining and production of key minerals used in electric vehicles, a big move to help the Detroit automakers transition to EVs.

It was part of a broader announcement addressing gasoline prices.

The move means that battery materials will be added to the list of items covered by the 1950 act, which former President Harry Truman invoked to make steel for the Korean War and which President Donald Trump called on to boost mask production amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We need to end our long-term reliance on China and other countries to supply the inputs” used in U.S. electric vehicles, Biden said.

By invoking the Defense Production Act to provide incentives for companies to mine and process more minerals for EVs, it will help the U.S. tackle climate change and it will lead to the creation of new jobs.

“It will also save your family money,” Biden said, citing studies that indicate a typical driver will save about $80 a month by not having to pay for fuel.

First, Brandon is correct that the U.S. needs to produce our own materials, instead of depending on China and other nations. We should be doing that with oil and natural gas.

Second, technically you would save money by not having to pay for gas, it’s just that you’ll pay a heck of a lot more for the vehicle, so, those savings will be way, way wiped out.

Third, you can bet that the enviroweenies will sue, protest, blockade, have sit ins, etc, to stop the mining of the metals. Because that’s what they do.

Bailo agreed that Biden’s move will likely create jobs as more mining companies spring up. It will also bring down the cost of shipping, but compared with the cost of raw materials, logistics expenses are “a drop in the bucket.”

That means the sticker price on EVs won’t go down for car buyers in the near term.

“It makes sense on paper to control the supply chain, but it doesn’t mean it’ll help the consumer,” said Joe McCabe, CEO of auto industry advisory firm AutoForecast Solutions. “It’s going to help lower the manufacturing costs, which will help the profit margins of the electric vehicle manufacturers. But we’re still trying to convince a consumer to spend $50,000 and much more on electric vehicles.”

Doesn’t matter: the enviroweenies will get a friendly judge to block this, and it’ll be tied up in litigation for years.

*Info on Biden’s fossil fueled limo, which would be accompanied by around 18 other fossil fueled vehicles.

Read: Biden Invokes Defense Production Act For EV Battery Mining »

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If All You See…

By William Teach April 3, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is a river that will soon! rise up over the banks and flood the city from ‘climate change’, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post on a sucker punch.

It’s leather and latex week!

Read: If All You See… »

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