Ann Arbor’s Mayor Totally Up For Million Dollar Tax Increase

By William Teach July 8, 2021 – 3:00 pm

Christopher Taylor, the mayor of Ann Arbor is a Democrat. “Ann Arbor currently has a 90%-Democratic City Council and a Democratic Mayor. Some look skeptically on this fact, noting that two previous Democratic Party-identified Council-members, Marcia Higgins and Stephen Rapundalo, ran for office as Republicans, and Jane Lumm the current independent Council member also ran as a Republican.” I think we can easily assume that the city leans overwhelmingly Democrat, right? So, they would have no problem paying more in taxes themselves, right?

Ann Arbor’s mayor seeks 1-mill tax increase to fight climate change

Ann Arbor’s mayor is seeking to battle climate change by proposing an ambitious 20-year tax increase plan to help the city transition to carbon neutrality and renewable energy.

Mayor Christopher Taylor presented the Community Climate Action Millage plan to city council members on Tuesday evening, indicating the 1-mill property tax increase plan would raise between $130 to $150 million over the life of the millage. An estimated $6.5 million would be raised in the first year.

If approved by the city council, the millage would be placed on the Ann Arbor ballot in November. The proposal seeks to follow President Joe Biden’s lead on tackling climate change issues that have caused flooding, increased tornadoes, hurricanes and erratic weather patterns, Taylor said Wednesday.

“Achieving carbon neutrality is a moral imperative, and we need to do everything that we can and do our part,” he said. “We also need to provide new programs and services to everyday residents that respond to the climate change that is already here and the climate change that’s going to be accelerating if we don’t take meaningful action as a society.”

If it’s a moral imperative, surely the city council will pass it and the citizens will approve it, right? If so, what’s your guess on how many move outside the city limits to avoid paying it? And will the mayor and city council members move? Or, just exempt themselves?

“Climate change is the critical issue of our time. It is an existential issue that we are facing as a human race,” said Ann Arbor council member Jen Eyer, who supports the plan. “It’s going to take a big investment in order to implement it. In order to do that, we need to have the funding to do it.”

I’ve added an event to my calendar to follow up and see if this passes in November. Also, if it’s so critical, why are they not banning fossil fueled vehicles in the city? Funny how Warmists love to jump to taxes.

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 8, 2021 – 1:00 pm

…are horrible guns necessary because ‘climate change’ causes war, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Green Jihad, with a post on a study saying you cannot have capitalism and stop climate change.

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You Know How We Can Solve “Gun Violence”? With Lots Of Money Or Something

By William Teach July 8, 2021 – 10:30 am

It’s totally proven to have worked in the past, you know. So they say

There’s a Proven Way to Reduce Gun Violence in America’s Cities. We Just Need to Fund It

More than 141 people were shot in our hometowns of Oakland, Chicago, and New York City over the July 4th weekend. The shooting victims included a 6-year old girl and her mother in the West Pullman neighborhood of Chicago, a 16-year old boy shot in the head from nearby celebratory gunfire in Oakland, and a 38-year old man checking his car for a flat tire in Queens, New York.

This staggering weekend of violence isn’t an outlier; based on an already difficult year and the violence trends we’ve seen, this could be one of the deadliest summers on record for gun violence. These tragedies and the certainty of more to come prompted Governor Cuomo of New York to declare a state of emergency around gun violence on July 6. It’s no exaggeration to say our country is in crisis. But to meet this moment, America can’t simply police our way out of the bloodshed, as the current national conversation on violence seems to suggest. Instead, we should learn from past failures and—as President Biden said in his recent speech on gun violence earlier—invest in what works: community violence intervention (CVI) programs that actually address the cycle of intergenerational poverty, violence, and trauma that drives gun violence.

The weird part is how this is all happening in areas in Democratic Party run cities. In Oakland, every single council member is a Democrat. In Chicago, every one is a Democrat except for four independents. In New York City, all but three of fifty one are Democrats (2 districts are still vacant). The mayors are all Democrats. And this has been like this for over 50 years.

The pandemic has exacerbated this vicious cycle. With economic instability on the rise, mental health and substance use struggles skyrocketing, and Americans increasingly disengaged from school and work, homicide rates in our biggest cities increased by 30%. As with COVID-19, this gun violence has taken a disproportionate toll on Black and brown communities. Even before last year, gun violence was the leading cause of death for young Black men, claiming as many lives as the next nine causes combined; now, it’s likely more.

The leading cause for the deaths of young black men are other young black men, let’s be utterly clear about that, since the article from Time Magazine left that part out. Why was this not happening in white areas? Why is it not happening in the suburbs and areas run by Republicans, who certainly have a lot of legally owned guns and ammunition?

For years, the enforcement-first policing and punitive criminal justice policies currently being proposed have hurt the same Black and brown people most affected by gun violence, leading to high rates of incarceration and excessive uses of force. Rather than reducing violence by building trust between law enforcement and residents, these policies reinforce it by hollowing out communities of economic opportunity, family supports, and a sense of safety.

Uh huh

https://twitter.com/anon_detective/status/1408549075616665600

Maybe don’t go soft on criminals. How about corporal punishment? How about making the criminals do hard time, whereby they don’t get to sit around in jail all day but are taken out and put to work on road gangs and such? How about looking at the conditions in Democratic Party run cities which lead to all the crime. These young men are not worried about family. And there’s little to no economic opportunity in the reservations Democrats have created in their cities. Unless we’re talking about looting Walgreen’s, Targets, Neiman Marcus, and other stores. With no worry about being arrested.

There’s a better way. If we want to stop gun violence, we can’t just turn the wheel back to the enforcement-first playbook of the past, we have to break the cycle of trauma that’s driving it. Based on our combined decades of experience working on this issue, here’s what we know: the most effective way to do that is by funding CVI programs that reduce violence and the harms of the criminal justice system at the same time.

They haven’t worked well in the past, and, don’t want to be harmed by the criminal justice system? Don’t commit a crime. Regardless, Democrats switched from their use of the KKK, property covenants, Jim Crow, and open segregation to sticking blacks in urban plantations, saying they are helping them with food stamps, government housing, etc. Just a different form of racism from Democrats.

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Your Fault: Almost 10% Of Global Deaths From Climate Crisis (scam) Or Something

By William Teach July 8, 2021 – 7:15 am

Thanks for taking all those fossil fueled trips post lockdown and eating meat during your vacation meals. This is on you

Climate Change Linked to 5 Million Deaths a Year, New Study Shows

The extraordinarily hot and cold temperatures that are becoming more common as climate change accelerates are responsible for 5 million deaths globally every year.

Extreme weather accounted for 9.4% of all deaths globally between 2000 and 2019, according to researchers who on Wednesday published the first study linking changes in temperatures to annual increases in mortality. While most deaths have been caused by exposure to the cold, the trend is likely to reverse as the planet warms, they said.

“In the long-term, climate change is expected to increase the mortality burden” as heat-related deaths rise, said Yuming Guo, one of the report’s authors and a professor at Monash University. Hundreds of people have already died from heatwaves sweeping across the Northern Hemisphere this summer. (snip)

Researchers at Monash in Australia and China’s Shandong University estimated that there were 74 excess deaths from abnormally cold or hot temperatures for every 100,000 people. The paper, published in The Lancet Planetary Health, analyzed mortality in 43 countries across all continents. It also concluded that cold-related deaths fell 0.5% from 2000 to 2019, while heat-related deaths rose 0.2%.

The Lancet, eh? This is the same organization that came up with that utterly bogus statistical study claiming 655000 Iraqis were killed from 2003-2006, which led to pure moonbattery from the Bush43 haters. Now, maybe the 9.4% is correct, but, they are Blaming this all on Mankind for ‘climate change’. Bunch of unhinged, cultish lunatics. And, see, even though most are from the cold, that is Soon going to change to deaths from heat.

Read: Your Fault: Almost 10% Of Global Deaths From Climate Crisis (scam) Or Something »

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CNN: It’s Time To Make COVID Vaccinations Mandatory

By William Teach July 8, 2021 – 6:54 am

Of course CNN is fear mongering on the Delta variant

Delta variant is ‘Covid-19 on steroids,’ expert says, with cases increasing in nearly half of US states

Twenty four states have seen an uptick of at least 10% in Covid-19 cases over the past week as health experts and the federal government keep pressing for more people to get vaccinated.

The rapid spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus has only ratcheted up the pressure.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday that the variant, first identified in India, has accounted for more than half of all new Covid-19 infections in the country.

“We should think about the Delta variant as the 2020 version of Covid-19 on steroids,” Andy Slavitt, a former senior adviser to Joe Biden’s Covid Response Team, told CNN on Wednesday. “It’s twice as infectious. Fortunately, unlike 2020, we actually have a tool that stops the Delta variant in its tracks: It’s called vaccine.”

See, now this may be true. It may be something to be concerned with. But, after all the lying, over-hype, scaremongering, and authoritarianism since February 2020, I’m going to look at this with a jaded eye. How about you?

Enough: It’s time to make vaccinations mandatory

It is time to impose vaccine mandates and passports. The Covid-19 vaccines continue to perform extraordinarily well, but the rate of infection is worsening in unvaccinated populations. The Delta variant is offering a sobering reminder that the pandemic has faded in much of the country but certainly not ended.

Both political parties have made the mistake of framing vaccines within the tradition of individualism. Even President Joe Biden, who has demonstrated his comfort with a muscular role for government, keeps appealing to individuals to make the right and patriotic choice when it comes to receiving their jabs.

Governors are imploring residents of their states to vaccinate soon. For many, the goal has been to keep making it as easy as possible for persons to have quick access without being too overtly pushy. Incentives, from multimillion-dollar lotteries to baseball tickets to a shot and a beer, have all been thrown in as part of the package. The message has been that the government will keep making vaccines as easy, accessible and attractive as possible.

It’s not enough. Easy, accessible and attractive are important; nobody should face barriers toward receiving vaccines. But citizens must also not see this as an optional inoculation.

Biden and other political leaders need to start thinking about the good of the collective and not just the rights of the individual. Doing so is not some sort of move toward socialism, as conservative critics inevitably argue. Thinking of the common good is as American as apple pie

Totally not a move towards Socialism. Not by Political Theory standards. More like dipping into the Authoritarian model. Because that’s where Progressivism lies. Nice Fascism. The nice not meaning “they are good people and this stuff is good”, nice meaning “this is for your own good, suck it up and deal with it.” Rather like your parents forcing you to eat stuff that you hate that’s supposed to be good for you. Banning you to your room. Forcing you to get a tattoo that shows you were vaccinated.

This won’t happen. Even Joe Biden isn’t that dumb to attempt to push this for real, nor the craziest governors like Gretchen Whitmer and Andrew Cuomo. You aren’t seeing this in countries with a heck of a lot less freedom, like England, Germany, and France. India, Japan, Russia. But, you can bet that CNN’s “political analyst” Julian Zelizer isn’t the only hardcore leftist thinking this or proposing this.

Read: CNN: It’s Time To Make COVID Vaccinations Mandatory »

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Your Fault: Dragonflies Are Losing Their Wing Colors

By William Teach July 7, 2021 – 3:52 pm

You just had to take that fossil fueled trip to get an Evil burger, eh? Thanks

Dragonflies are losing their wing color because of climate change, study shows

As the planet warms, a study found that male dragonflies are losing a crucial feature they typically use to attract female mates: the ornate black patterns on their wings.

The new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that male dragonflies are adapting to a warming climate by shedding more of their darker wing patterns.

Researchers worry that female species may no longer recognize their male counterparts without their intricate wing patterns and, thus, won’t be able to reproduce as temperatures get hotter.

“Our research shows that males and females of these dragonfly species are going to shift in pretty different ways as the climate changes,” Michael Moore, lead author of the study and an evolutionary biologist at Washington University in St. Louis, told CNN. “These changes are going to happen likely on a much faster timescale than the evolutionary changes in these species have ever occurred before.”

What did dragonflies do during the previous Holocene warm periods, several of which were warmed and no one was driving fossil fueled vehicles?

“This is evolution and adaptation in real time, but will they be able to adapt quickly enough?” Black, who is not involved with the study, told CNN. “The climate crisis is happening at a speed that is really unprecedented in human history. It’s all of these animals potentially adapting to be able to move to a climate or habitats that are able to support them.”

 

 

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 7, 2021 – 1:00 pm

…is a hazy day from too much carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Not A Lot Of People Know That, with a post on ‘climate change’ to threaten Wimbledon. Soon!

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Miami’s Heat Officer Gets To Work On Climate Justice Or Something

By William Teach July 7, 2021 – 10:30 am

I briefly mentioned Miami’s Heat Officer, let’s check in, shall we?

City Heat is Worse if You’re Not Rich or White. The World’s First Heat Officer Wants to Change That

Jane Gilbert knows she doesn’t get the worst of the sticky heat and humidity that stifles Miami each summer. She lives in Morningside, a coastal suburb of historically preserved art deco and Mediterranean-style single-family homes. Abundant trees shade the streets and a bay breeze cools residents when they leave their air conditioned cars and homes. “I live in a place of privilege and it’s a beautiful area,” says Gilbert, 58, over Zoom in early June, shortly after beginning her job as the world’s first chief heat officer, in Miami Dade county. “But you don’t have to go far to see the disparity.”

A mile or two inland, in lower income, mostly Black and Latino neighborhoods like Little Haiti, Little Havana and Liberty City, tree cover can be as little as 10%, compared to around 40% in upscale coastal areas, according to Gilbert. Residents wait for buses on unshaded benches. Many can’t afford to buy or run an AC unit. “You can’t be outside for more than five minutes without feeling faint because there’s no shade. Then inside a lot of homes, the buildings haven’t been fixed up in a very long time, so you get holes in the wall and mold,” says Stibalys Gomez, a 24-year-old community organizer and amateur boxer. “We have a lot of older people here, older Hispanics with respiratory problems, including my grandmother. I’m really worried about them this summer.”

Wait, wait, back up, she lives in a swanky area near the coast? Why isn’t she moving inland in order to avoid sea rise? It couldn’t be because it is a bunch of mule fritters?

Gilbert’s job is to redress those imbalances in Miami and get all areas of the local government working towards a cooler county. Working under Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, she’ll plant new trees, create better infrastructure for heat emergencies, and inform people about their needs and rights during the heat.

So, spend a lot of money, involve the city in people’s lives whether they want it or not, and just be a general nag.

When Gilbert relocated to Miami from the northeast in 1995, the tropical heat was “a big part of the draw,” she says. She grew up in Connecticut and studied environmental science at Barnard College in New York. But after graduating in 1987, she quickly realized her “system just does better” in warmer climes, and spent several years doing work around Central and South America, first as an assistant producer on a documentary series about solutions to deforestation, and later as a consultant assessing environmental health risks. She made her home in Miami, and spent two decades working in human rights and community development, before becoming Miami Dade’s first chief resilience officer in 2016, overseeing efforts to adapt the county to climate change..

So, she’s not worried about sea rise and doom from heat?

Yet heat has failed to compete for media and government attention with Miami’s other major climate challenge: sea level rise…

And she lives right on the coast? Huh. Anyhow, the article goes on to demonize air conditioning. Will it be removed from all the public buildings for Miami?

In Miami, Gilbert will co-chair a Climate and Heat Health Task Force made up of local health experts, business figures and academics, among others, that will study the health impacts of heat across the county. Based on their work, the city will come up with campaigns to inform residents about the symptoms of heat-related illnesses. They will also reach out to outdoor workers and businesses to make sure they understand both the legal right to a safe workplace and solutions to heat: keeping drinking water available, taking shade breaks, or changing work schedules. Across the city, Gilbert will create “resilience centers” where residents can go to cool off and hydrate during heat waves, particularly when there are power blackouts at the same time.

Campaigns? In Miami? Like people don’t already know this? How much is she getting paid to do this silly stuff?

Climate experts have long warned that the impacts of climate change—driven by the high-emitting activities of wealthier people and countries—would fall most heavily on poorer people and countries that don’t have the resources to deal with them. In Miami, activists like Gomez and Cruz have fought to convince local authorities to pony up resources to adapt to the climate issues that most affect vulnerable groups. Their efforts finally appear to be paying off. “I think we’re starting to see that shift. I think Jane’s appointment probably starts to mark the change in the tides,” Cruz says. “Pun intended, I guess.”

Show us the money.

Anyone getting the idea that the people who push this don’t really believe it, and are just using it to push for free money and all sorts of left wing policies?

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Bummer: ‘Climate Change’ Will Create Two Classes Of People

By William Teach July 7, 2021 – 7:10 am

Would this be the class of scientists who aren’t shady and the ones who fraudulently obtain documents? That would be Peter Gleick, who authors this piece on climamoonbattery

The climate crisis will create two classes: those who can flee, and those who cannot

A few years ago, after I gave a talk on water and climate change, I had an Arizona rancher come up and ask me if there would be enough water in the future for their livestock or if they should sell out and move north. This week, I received an email from a retiring doctor, who, acknowledging both their privileged economic situation and the personal nature of the decision, nevertheless asked if it “would it be more advantageous/safe to consider moving to coastal Oregon or Washington, rather than staying in southern California” because of rising seas, extreme heat and the growing threat of wildfires. At an Independence Day party this weekend, a couple asked me if they should move from Colorado to Michigan because of growing drought and water shortages in the western US.

I get these questions regularly and am both encouraged and dismayed by them. Encouraged because it suggests that the message about climate risks is finally getting out and people are beginning to reflect on the personal implications of those risks. Dismayed by the realization that the climate crisis is going to produce two classes of refugees: those with the freedom and financial resources to try, for a while at least, to flee from growing threats in advance, and those who will be left behind to suffer the consequences in the form of illness, death and destruction.

Sherman Potter Bull Cookies

Worldwide, nearly 700 million people now live in low-lying coastal zones vulnerable to sea-level rise and coastal storms. That number could reach a billion by 2050. Island nations like the Maldives, Seychelles, Kiribati and others could be completely wiped out by rising seas and storms. Even a rise of only a meter (39in), almost certainly unavoidable now, will displace millions of people in Florida and along the Gulf coast, causing trillions of dollars in damages and property loss.

Weird how so many big shot Warmists continue to move near the coasts, eh? 39 inches is, of course, over 3 feet of sea rise, which Gleick is alluding to happening in 30 years, when we haven’t had that in over 150 years of the Modern Warm Period. This is what they call “science”.

How bad will it get? I don’t know because I don’t know how long our politicians will dither before finally dealing with the climate crisis. I don’t know because there are natural factors that could slightly slow or, more likely, massively speed up, the rate of change, causing cascading and accelerating disasters faster than we can adapt. But we know enough now to invest in reducing the emissions of climate-changing gases and to begin to adapt to those impacts we can no longer avoid. These changes are coming and the costs, especially to those left behind, will be beyond anything our disaster management systems have had to deal with in the past.

Doooooooom! Wankers.

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COVID Today: Washington Post Calls For Lab Leak Investigation, Biden’s Coming Door To Door For Vaccination

By William Teach July 7, 2021 – 6:55 am

I do remember the Washington Post editorial board, along with many opinion writers and opinion pieces disguised at straight news, slamming anyone who thought the COVID19 bug came from a lab leak

WaPo urges US to ‘get serious’ on COVID origins after calling Wuhan lab-leak theory ‘debunked’ ‘conspiracy’

The Washington Post editorial board is calling on the US to “get serious” about the origins of the coronavirus pandemic after the paper previously declared the Wuhan lab-leak hypothesis a “debunked” “conspiracy theory.”

surprise surprise surprise“An impressive roster of political leaders and experts in science and public health have called for a comprehensive investigation of the pandemic’s origins and potential future dangers… Now is the time to turn all the talk into action,” the Post editorial board began its piece on Tuesday, listing President Biden, the G7, the Senate and the World Health Organization’s director-general among them.

The Post called the WHO’s first investigation into the origins “highly unsatisfactory” in part because of China’s “manhandling of the probe” and insisted that Biden’s ordered intelligence review is “hardly enough,” urging him to support an “independent commission” that Congression should join.

“The WHO is working on a Phase 2 investigation plan with its global partners. The WHO is a member organization and lacks muscle but has expertise and relationships. China’s intransigence is not going to disappear. But the WHO should try again,” the editorial board wrote. “It might usefully draw from the world’s best and brightest specialists, and seek to engage China at the level of science first, perhaps wrapped in a longer-term project to create a structure and incentives for global disease tracking and cooperation.”

The board continued, “If China continues to resist, then independent investigations should proceed without it. The more time that passes, the harder it will be to find the truth. No opportunity should be missed to draw lessons from a global catastrophe that has taken nearly 4 million lives.”

The Post previously had demeaned Tom Cotton and all those who were saying that a lab leak makes way more sense than someone eating a bat in a wet market. Funny how the WP has now changed their tune, eh?

Biden admin launching ‘door-to-door’ push to vaccinate Americans, sparks major backlash

The Biden administration is launching a new “door-to-door” effort to vaccinate Americans after falling short of its Fourth of July goal of having 70 percent of the adult population with at least one shot of the coronavirus vaccine.

Amid the administration’s ongoing concerns of a surge of the more contagious Delta variant of the virus, President Biden pitched his plan to boost the vaccinated population during remarks he made on Tuesday.

“Now we need to go community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood and often times door-to-door- literally knocking on doors, to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus,” Biden said.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki also referred to the “door-to-door” effort while listing the five objectives of Biden’s COVID response earlier in the day at Tuesday’s briefing, citing “targeted community door-to-door outreach” to “get remaining Americans vaccinated by ensuring that they have the information they need on how both safe and accessible the vaccine is.”

Well, that’s not going to go over too well, will it? Sure, it’s not as nefarious as it originally sounded, but, who wants some nag coming uninvited to their front door to yammer at them to get vaccinated? Do they think having some activist yahoo yap at them will change their mind? Also, where will they get the data from? Wouldn’t that rather be against a whole raft of laws? Does the state have the legal authority to share the data on the vaccinated with the federal government, whereby the federal government uses that list to determine which US citizens are not vaccinated? That does seem shady, and a massive breach of trust, does it not? A massive overreach of the Biden administration, eh?

Read: COVID Today: Washington Post Calls For Lab Leak Investigation, Biden’s Coming Door To Door For Vaccination »

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