NY State Senator Looks To Control Food Because Of Climate Crisis (scam)

In Political Theory 101, Socialism is part of the Democracy model, the left side of it (classical Liberalism is dead in the middle, and to the left means less Government power, to the Right more). There are three cores in the model, the Political, Moral, and Economic. In the Political, there is a lot of citizens voting. This is where you hear the phrase “direct democracy.” In the Moral, government stays out of our lives (does that sound like today’s self style Socialists?). It’s the Economic that defines it, though, with the Government controlling massive amounts of the economy, up to and including owning the means of production. Obviously, today’s Socialists are not, except for that last part. Hence why I call them Modern Socialists, because they are really way to the right, in the Authoritarian model

Greenhouse gas in food purchasing cuts proposed

New York’s food purchasing system could be going on a strict diet.

State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, D-Bronx, has introduced S.9082 in the state Senate to requiring the Office of General Services, in consultation with the Department of Environmental Conservation, to establish a way to estimate the greenhouse gas emissions of food and beverages purchased by state agencies to reduce the overall greenhouse gas emissions associated with state food and beverage procurement by 10% by 2024, 18% by 2027, and 25% by 2030. If approved, the legislation would only affect food purchased by state agencies, and not the shopping habits of state residents.

Well, for now. But, in doing this, it would force food producers to reduce their own (mythical) carbon footprints, meaning higher prices for non-government consumers.

“Modeled after legislation introduced in Maryland, this bill builds on New York’s environmental goals by requiring the Office of General Services, in consultation with the Department of Environmental Conservation, to track emissions from the State’s food and beverage procurement, and to reduce these emissions by 25% by 2030. This target is in alignment with the Paris Climate Agreement and the World Resources Institute,” Biaggi wrote in her legislative justification.

The Maryland legislation was introduced after the release of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that reportedly showed the entire food production system, with transportation and packaging included, accounts for as much as 37% of total greenhouse gas emissions. It calls for changes to land use practices, a change to diets with less meat, and elimination of food waste as areas that should be global priorities to combat climate change. The report also calls and end to deforestation, limiting greenhouse-gas-emitting fertilizers and raising crops in ways that add carbon to the soil.

So, if modeled on Maryland’s, sure looks like it would mandate all sorts of economic business practices, eh? Who wants Government controlling our food? You idiot climate cultists never seem to see the downsides of your cult. Even if the current warm period is caused mostly/solely by mankind’s greenhouse gas output, do these solutions seem good or authoritarian?

Who wants to bet that Biaggi hasn’t reduced her own carbon footprint?

Read: NY State Senator Looks To Control Food Because Of Climate Crisis (scam) »

If All You See…

…are wonderful trees sucking evil carbon pollution from the air, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Powerline, with a post wondering why all the COVID news is bad.

Read: If All You See… »

San Francisco Activists Happy To See Their Tax Base Leave The City

It’s all fun and games till you no longer have Other People’s money to agitate for your pet priorities

‘Good riddance’: Tech’s flight from San Francisco is a relief to some advocates

When Chirag Bhakta saw a headline recently that said tech workers were fleeing San Francisco, he had a quick reaction: “Good riddance.”

Bhakta, a San Francisco native and tenant organizer for affordable housing nonprofit Mission Housing, is well-versed in the seismic impact that the growth of the tech industry has had on the city. As software companies expanded over the past decade, they drew thousands of well-off newcomers who bid up rents and remade the city’s economy and culture.

He said the sudden departure of many tech workers and executives — often to less expensive, rural areas where they can telecommute during the coronavirus pandemic — reveals that their relationship with San Francisco was “transactional” all along.

“They used their capital to radically shift the makeup of poor, working-class communities,” Bhakta said. “We’re left with ‘for sale’ signs and price points that are still out of reach for most people.”

I’m rather doubting that was what they were trying to do. They just wanted a place to live in what used to be a pretty nice city, since all the tech companies were there. And, SF was pretty darned expensive even before they showed up. And then it got more expensive via government taxes and fees, and more dangerous because government not only refused to crackdown on crime, pooping in the streets, drug needles, violent homeless people, but actually enable this

Many urban centers have seen residents move out in large numbers since the start of stay-at-home orders in March, but the shift has been especially dramatic for San Francisco, a city that was already experiencing rapid change because of the tech industry.

Software engineers, CEOs and venture capitalists have chosen to jump from the Bay Area to places such as Denver, Miami and Austin, Texas, citing housing costs, California’s relatively high income tax and the Bay Area’s general resistance to rapid growth and change.

Unfortunately, these same leftists bring the exact same policies they escaped from, trying to get them passed in new states.

The scale of the departures is visible in vacant high-end apartments, moth-balled offices and quieter streets in neighborhoods popular with tech workers. And while no one is exactly celebrating, especially as Covid-19 has devastated the incomes of many people, some residents were ready to take a break from the rich.

“The gentrification pressure has been at least momentarily relieved,” said John Elberling, executive director of Todco, an affordable housing nonprofit that operates in the South of Market neighborhood alongside the shuttered headquarters of countless tech companies and startups.

Over the years, San Francisco residents tried a variety of tactics to protest the tech industry’s effects on the city: blocking corporate buses, halting expensive new condo buildings, proposing tax increases and even threatening to limit office cafeterias.

Well, gee, why would they stay? And, as the leave, they leave a huge tax hole. You aren’t going to fill that hole with community activist groups and non-workers and minimum wage workers. Have fun, folks!

“If all you care about is money, I suggest you go to Texas,” he said.

How does the city run without money from commerce taxation?

Read: San Francisco Activists Happy To See Their Tax Base Leave The City »

Net Zero: “Ambitions Tend To Remain Undisturbed By Realities”

Having ambitions are great, right? Making pledges is great, right? But, what if you don’t work to get them done? You might even have a plan, but, you don’t follow through to implement it, and said plan might not work correctly. And, if you’re a company, or government, you’re more concerned with looking good than actually doing something

The problem with zero carbon pledges

“Ambitions tend to remain undisturbed by realities.”

It was an observation first made in a work of science fiction by the author Frank Herbert 44 years ago. But it is arguably now borne out in works of science fact, by the corporate thought leaders of today. “Ambitions” to combat climate change, by reducing carbon emissions, are expressed in almost every company press release and annual report. On closer reading, though, some appear a lot more real than others.

For the wealth managers charged with ensuring clients’ shareholdings are aligned with their environmental principles, that is a problem.

Investors in HSBC, for example, were recently told of its “net-zero ambition” on carbon emissions. An announcement from the Asia-focused bank said it would reduce “financed emissions from our portfolio of customers” in line with the goals of the Paris Agreement on climate change. It used the word “ambition” or “ambitious” no fewer than five times.

However, climate campaigners said the reality was somewhat less inspiring, as HSBC gave no firm timeline for reducing its financing of coal, oil and gas projects before 2050.

“This is zero ambition, not ‘Net-Zero Ambition’,” retorted activist group Market Forces. Fund Our Future UK, a network of campaign groups, suggested it was “like saying you’ll give up smoking by 2050, but continuing to buy a pack a week, or even smoking more”.

The thing is, I’d bet that most investors care more about good rates of return rather than climavirtue signaling. They want investment companies who do their job, not be climate cultists. Investors will just take their business elsewhere. Hence why most companies are talking about Doing Something, but, not actually doing something.

And this boils down to the companies people invest in, like Microsoft, Nike, AT&T, and others, as mentioned later in the article, who mostly have ambitions for the future.

Computer hardware maker Logitech, pharma group Novartis and outerwear co-operative Recreational Equipment also provide the right answers to Whitman’s three questions on how they will reach their net-zero ambitions.

It’s all well and good, but, it’s a pipe dream, because they still need to ship their products using fossil fuels. Once one starts climavirtue signaling, one cannot stop.

Read: Net Zero: “Ambitions Tend To Remain Undisturbed By Realities” »

USA Today: SCOTUS Ruling For Religious Freedom During COVID Is Mean, You Know

Let’s have a thought experiment: what if government was restricting reporters from going out and doing their jobs (not that most seem to do more than sit at their desks and read Twitter and left wing outlets) during COVID, sued, and SCOTUS said “yeah, Freedom of the Press.” Do you think Democrats like Obama veterans Laurence H. Tribe and Michael C. Dorf would decry the ruling? What if government was cracking down on protesters (real ones, not the ones burning down black areas) and SCOTUS said “there’s a Constitutional Right to protest? Would they applaud the ruling, or say it was dangerous during Bat Soup Virus?

To this Supreme Court, religious freedom trumps public health — even amid COVID-19 plague

Balancing public health against the right to free exercise of religion poses a difficult challenge amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, when cases from California and Nevada reached the Supreme Court earlier this year, the justices deferred to the judgment of their governors, who are, after all, accountable to the people.

They didn’t defer: the Progressives (nice Fascists) voted against the 1st Amendment

But those cases were decided by narrow 5-4 margins before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September. The court changed its tune late Wednesday night, when her replacement — Amy Coney Barrett — and the four earlier dissenters formed a new 5-4 conservative majority that invalidated restrictions on worship services in hot zones designated by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Yeah, one who didn’t believe in the 1st Amendment was replaced by one who did

The ruling in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, brought by Catholic and Orthodox Jewish congregations, was especially notable because it was unnecessary. As Chief Justice John Roberts explained in his dissent, by the time the court ruled, the New York houses of worship were no longer “subject to any fixed numerical restrictions.”

Oh, it was necessary, to keep Government from attempting to do this again as COVID surges

Those comparisons are inapt. Government discriminates illicitly when it fails to treat like cases alike. One needn’t discount people’s spiritual needs to recognize that liquor stores, bike shops, groceries and pet shops differ from churches, synagogues and mosques with respect to public health. The risk of coronaviral spread is not merely a function of the number of people at a venue; it increases dramatically as they linger in a stationary position, especially when they speak or sing.

There’s no right to booze, bikes, and hamsters in the Constitution.

Moreover, the ruling’s majority didn’t appear to appreciate the challenge Cuomo faced. Any line the state draws in this realm is bound to be crude, but the alternatives are still worse: A blanket ban on all large gatherings with no exceptions whatsoever would be excessive; no restrictions on gatherings would have literally deadly consequences; highly specific determinations, focusing on, say, the duration or volume of songs, would entangle religious institutions with government.

And that’s why there is, specifically for this discussion, a right to practice religion without government interference, in both the federal and NY State constitutions. Because then there would always be “challenges” for which Government could do something negative to religion. If Cuomo was so concerned, perhaps he should have cracked down on all the protests, which he did not. You can’t support one Right without the other. Also, perhaps sticking sick people in nursing homes might not have been a good idea. Let’s skip to the end through their continuous whining and anti-Rights yammering

After introducing his foreign policy team last week, President-elect Joe Biden proclaimed that “America is back.” In important respects, that will be true come Jan. 20. But at the Supreme Court, America is increasingly unrecognizable. A court that affords no protection to unenumerated rights to bodily integrity and privacy, while simultaneously eroding the separation of church and state would look less like our familiar institution and more like the highest judicial authority of a place like Gilead — the theocratic and misogynist country in Margaret Atwood’s dystopian “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

So, the whole point of the screed is that the Supreme Court may very well rule on the side of the Constitution rather than Joe’s Modern Socialism. There is no separation of Church and State in the Constitution, and ruling that citizens and churches have Rights is exactly what the purpose of the Supreme Court is. To protect the Constitution and Citizens from the Legislative and Executive branches. And, if the Court is protecting Constitutional Rights, that’s dangerous for Joe Biden’s agenda? Think about that position.

Read: USA Today: SCOTUS Ruling For Religious Freedom During COVID Is Mean, You Know »

If All You See…

…is wine which will soon be grown in Norway due to climate change, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Weasel Zippers, with a post on North Korea executing people with COVID (no one tell Andrew Cuomo, giving him ideas).

It’s women in nature week.

Read: If All You See… »

Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup

Peter Dribben Patriotic Pinup

Happy Sunday! Another gorgeous day in America. The Sun is shining, the birds are singing, and it is almost December. This pinup is by Peter Dribben, with a wee bit of help.

What is happening in Ye Olde Blogosphere? The Fine 15

  1. Climate Change Dispatch covers climate cultists filing yet more anti-energy suits in Maine
  2. Green Jihad notes heart attacks being counted as COVID deaths
  3. No Tricks Zone highlights how green energy is making Germany the most expensive in Europe
  4. American Greatness discusses Trump’s nationalism vs Biden’s empire
  5. Bustednuckles: got food?
  6. Cold Fury wonders about appeasement then and now
  7. DC Clothesline: As Food Lines Grow, Gov’t Gives $140M in COVID Relief to Child Traffickers, Murderers, Rapists
  8. Dissecting Leftism discusses the definitive case that Trump won
  9. Doug Ross @ Journal has your color coded sheet of Democrat vs Republican policy positions
  10. Free North Carolina has an interesting math problem with Pennsylvania mail ballots
  11. Geller Report News highlights an interesting lawsuit on ballot machine code, thanks to Green Party
  12. hogewash features Hubble and black holes
  13. lmao notes to never let a moose lick your car
  14. Jihad Watch discusses Iran’s top nuclear scientist being whacked
  15. And last, but not least, Legal Insurrection notes even more bad news for Queen Pelosi, re: House elections
  16. And one to grow on: This ain’t Hell…. thought that social workers were the answer. No?

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.

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?

Read: Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup »

CNN: With A Supposed Biden Win, Things Are Totally Going To Get Better Or Something

See, here’s how it works for Democrats. When a Republican is president, everything is horrible and bad and Doomy and Democracy Is In Danger. Fascism and authoritarianism is right around the corner, if not happening right freaking now. The world hates the U.S. and so do the Democrats

When a Democrat is in office, everything is peachy keen, unicorns are flying around, everyone has sustainable, fair trade lollipops, the scent of roses is in the air, and the world loves the U.S. And Dems love the U.S.

Guess where we’re at now, per Frida Ghitis at CNN?

The reason we know it’s about to get better

Is it morning in America yet? Not quite. But there’s change in the air, and millions of Americans must surely be experiencing the unmistakable feeling that even if the worst is not over, it soon will be.

Optimism has long been one of the distinguishing features of the United States and its people. That sunny disposition clouded over for at least half the country after Donald Trump won the presidency four years ago. That era is now coming to an end, but not before converging with the most catastrophic public health crisis in a century.

Optimism from Democrats? Everything from them is about how horrible America is. Even Obama winning didn’t erase Dems telling us that America is racist and sexist and horrible.

Is it reasonable now for those of us who found the Trump presidency abhorrent to rekindle our optimism?

First, a confession: as much as I have written about the dangers posed by Trump, I spent the past four years telling my most pessimistic friends that I remained convinced American democracy, with its deep roots, would survive Trump’s onslaught. Another confession: I had more doubts than I let on.

What, exactly, did Trump due to harm “American democracy?” If results are to be believed, more people than ever voted in a general election. Who’s freedom was taken away? What freedom’s were taken away? Other than in areas mostly run by Democrats during COVID lockdowns, of course

Biden’s first cabinet choices bring qualified, decent, respected public servants back into government. After an administration that slammed America’s door to refugees, that separated migrant children from their parents and put them in cages, we will have a Department of Homeland Security, responsible for guarding the borders, led by a man who came to the United States as a refugee. Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban-born Jew, fled the communist dictatorship as an infant with his family. His mother’s family had fled the Holocaust.

Unity, folks! Forgetting that Obama built those cages. Who was VP then? Looks like Biden is just going to open the doors.

The President who became an idol to White supremacists, who found “very fine people on both sides” in clashes between protesters flashing Nazi salutes and chanting “Jews will not replace us” and those declaring that America stands against prejudice, is being succeeded by one who is bringing in capable public servants of all ethnicities and backgrounds into government. While Trump once made a cringeworthy spectacle of having his cabinet, one at a time, praise him on live television, Biden is nominating a director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, who announced to him and the world, that she will disagree with him and “speak truth to power.”

That fine people lie yet again.

After turning its back on much of the world and seeing America’s standing collapse, the Biden team is telling US allies, “America is back!”

See, only when a Democrat is president is America’s world standing great. Yeah, America is back to being squishy rather than America First. Jumping to the end

American democracy just survived what is arguably the most vicious attack it has ever faced. The American system held up. The American people, voters, patriotic public servants, made it happen. What could be a greater cause for optimism about the future?

Have you ever noticed that these screeds are always short on any actual evidence of Democracy In Peril, on what the system survived. Say, what does she mean by “patriotic public servants”? That they helped the cheat? But, hey, if Democrats want to be optimistic about higher taxes, higher cost of living, kowtowing to nations like China and Iran, government restricting their freedom and choice, well, they’re mentally deranged. And we know that they still hate America.

Read: CNN: With A Supposed Biden Win, Things Are Totally Going To Get Better Or Something »

Who’s Up For A 130 Mile Trip In An Electric Car That Takes 9 Hours?

The climate cultists at the UK Guardian try to put a rosy face on this, but, ‘taint working

‘Why did it take nine hours to go 130 miles in our new electric Porsche?’

A couple from Kent have described how it took them more than nine hours to drive 130 miles home from Bournemouth as they struggled to find a working charger capable of producing enough power to their electric car.

Linda Barnes and her husband had to visit six charging stations as one after another they were either out of order, already had a queue or were the slow, older versions that would never be able to provide a fast enough charge in the time.

While the couple seem to have been “incredibly unlucky”, according to the president of the AA, Edmund King, their case highlights some of the problems that need ironing out before electric car owners can rely on the UK’s charging infrastructure.

The couple, who love their new fully electric Porsche Taycan 4S, which has a range of about 250 miles, contacted the Guardian to describe how difficult it is to recharge a car away from home. Their journey would have taken two and a half hours in a conventional car, they say.

Must be nice. That car starts at $185,000. See, these very rich people don’t worry about giving up fossil fuels like the peons

“Electric vehicle consumers want more interoperability, more chargers, greater reliability and a contactless experience. To really help the revolution get to full power before 2030 we need a concerted effort from local authorities to take up the charging point grants – only one in six do, according to AA research, and for those premises providing chargers to ensure they work. Driving an electric vehicle is great fun and can save you money and save emissions. Let’s make sure the future network can help save range anxiety,” he says.

See, we need Government to really build all these charging stations and stuff, so the rich folks aren’t inconvenienced with their expensive toys

Read: Who’s Up For A 130 Mile Trip In An Electric Car That Takes 9 Hours? »

If All You See…

…is horrible almond milk which uses too much water which is bad for climate change, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post wondering if the Kraken is floundering.

Doubleshot under the fold to clear the folder, check out Blazing Cat Fur, with a post on Macron being right about Islamism.

Read More »

Read: If All You See… »

Pirate's Cove