Category: Government

Hierarchy of victimhood from the CDC

by philg

Our celebration of Kwanzaa and the work of Professor Dr. Dr. Maulana Karenga, Ph.D., Ph.D., with and without toasters, begins today…

A Libs of Tiktok Tweet includes the following photo of a poster in a public school in Nashville, Tennessee:

Note the hierarchy of victimhood: The undocumented (listed first) are more important than Black students. Muslims are more important than those who identify as LGBTQ. Almost everyone is more important than the disabled.

Also, why does the school commit to celebrating Latinx culture, but not Muslim culture? What is stopping the school from celebrating what happens in Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Afghanistan, and Yemen?

Where does the money to research, develop, print, and post this hierarchy come from? Your federal tax dollars via the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

Here’s the glsen.org web site:

It looks like it is mostly a 2SLGBTQQIA+ organization, yet somehow they’re experts on other victimhood categories such as “undocumented” and “Black”. Their Form 990 for 2021 shows that they’re getting about $8.5 million per year in grants, perhaps part of “CDC allocated $85 million for grants requiring schools to start student-led clubs supporting LGBT youth” (The Center Square, 2022).

What if one wanted a victimhood poster without the hierarchy? How about a motorized wheel of victimhood in which the groups are arranged around the circumference? If the wheel rotates once every 7 hours, for example, that will make sure that students don’t see the same victimhood group on top every morning. I tried having my favorite artist put this together:

I’m not sure where ChatGPT got these bizarre spellings. I think that I spelled everything correctly in my prompt:

[after asking for a circular poster] Please change the poster so that the labels are only the following: Black, LGBTQ, Undocumented Immigrant, Muslim, Latinx, female, disabled

Are we seeing the HAL 9000 glitching following some circuitry removal?

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Gavin Newsom is the best-qualified governor to serve as U.S. President…

by philg

…. because he has experience with running a government at a structural deficit, something that states are theoretically not allowed to do.

California has been in the news lately for its forecast $68 billion budget deficit, about 30 percent of total spending by the state government and about $7,000 per significant taxpayer (in just one year) if we assume that only about 10 million Californians are earning enough to live an unsubsidized life. The report that is the basis for these media stories has a more interesting figure, though:

Like the federal government, the California state government is set up to spend more than it collects in tax revenue. California can’t print money the way that the Feds do. I’m wondering what their theory is for how they can run deficits indefinitely. Do they believe that the U.S. is in a huge slump right now and better economic times are around the corner once another 10 or 20 million undocumented cross the border? And that migrant-fueled economic boom will increase tax revenue to move the state back into surplus? In the previous version of this report, the analysts said that the budget had to be balanced every year (but reserves can still be spent to allow a deficit?):

What’s the near-term solution that the legislature’s analysts propose? Cutting spending on education! I can’t see a proposed long-term solution in these documents, though.

Oh yes, let’s also look at how good the best and brightest humans are at economic prophecy. The previous year’s report forecast a deficit for 2024-5… of about $17 billion.

Related:

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Immigrants can get U.S. passports in one day

by philg

For native-born U.S. citizens, it takes about three months, including mailing time, to get a passport if you pay extra for “expedited” service. From the State Department web page (retrieved end of October 2023):

As of October, they were saying that it would take 2 weeks to mail, then 5-7 weeks to “process”, then 2 more weeks to mail.

Friends who are immigrants have been reporting U.S. passport renewals in just a day or two. How do they do it? The U.S. government offers an emergency service. The immigrant uses Adobe Acrobat to create the required PDFs regarding the “life-threatening illness or injury” from which an immediate family member back in the old country is suffering. The American bureaucrats have no means of verifying these documents so entirely fictitious physician names and addresses work fine. The immigrant buys a fully refundable plane ticket back to the old country, makes an appointment, walks into a U.S. government passport agency.

Why can’t State Department clear the backlog, especially for simple renewals? What stops them from paying overtime to the existing staff to work nights and weekends until the processing time is back to something more reasonable? (or hiring Venezuelan asylees to assist? We are informed that 500,000+ Venezuelans who’ve joined us are eager to work and highly qualified) What’s “reasonable”? In 1971, when the U.S. population was 200 million, it typically took between 5 and 21 days to get a passport (New York Times) and when the backlog increased the government would add night shifts to clear it. In 1961 (US population 180 million), it took 3 days:

A native-born American might be able to work a similar process via the “urgent travel” channel. Buy a refundable ticket for travel within 14 days and then begin to work the phones and try to get an appointment and travel to a major city (a customer in Tallahassee, Florida would have to drive perhaps 6 hours to Miami or Atlanta or New Orleans).

Finally, why do we need to show passports when returning to the U.S.? The passport was already checked twice by airline personnel on the departure side. If the southern border is open to millions of new Americans who choose to walk in, why must we stand in line for a third check after an exhausting international flight?

Related:

  • “Airport travel delays after U.S. Customs computer outage” (NBC, 2019): International travelers were waiting in long entry lines at some of the nation’s busiest airports Friday … The outage affected New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport, Los Angeles International Airport and Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, among others. Images on social media showed travelers jammed into terminals at JFK and O’Hare as they awaited admittance to the United States.
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What’s property tax inflation in your area?

by philg

We are informed that inflation is at 3 percent. The various county and local governments here in Palm Beach County/Jupiter somehow did not get the memo. A “Notice of Proposed Property Taxes” that I recently received shows that the taxing authorities are increasing their budgets by about 9.5% on a per-resident basis. The notice shows the millage rates with and without the proposed budget increases.

(I don’t think that the budget increases can be explained by the lockdown-driven exodus from the Northeast. The county’s population grew by only 13,000 in 2022, less than 1 percent (Palm Beach Post).)

Note that the first $50,000 of value is exempt for full-time residents under the “homestead exemption” and the assessed value for a primary residence cannot go up by more than 3 percent annually (but there is no limit to increases for the millage rates?).

Readers: What’s happening to your property tax bills in our 3% economy?

One of our neighbors is an accomplished oil painter. Here’s a photo that I took of what I think is one of the nicer-looking houses in the neighborhood for her to use as the basis of a painting:

What I think is the same house, but in white:

(The truly custom houses in this area are reserved for the truly rich!)

While shopping for furniture that would help our senior golden retriever get up on the bed, I found this upsetting example of inflation:

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Seal off criminal-rich neighborhoods to tackle the public health emergency of gun violence?

by philg

CBS yesterday:

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday issued an emergency public health order that suspends the open and permitted concealed carry of firearms in Albuquerque for 30 days in the midst of a spate of gun violence.

Gun enthusiasts are saying that this is unconstitutional, but that’s irrelevant if there’s an emergency. KOAT:

“I can invoke additional powers,” Lujan Grisham said. “No constitutional right, in my view, including my oath, is intended to be absolute.”

It’s only for 30 days and it is intended to address what the governor has characterized as an “emergency”, so it is unclear why anyone could make a good faith objection to this order. The governor herself summarizes the situation succinctly (nytimes):

“I have emergency powers,” she said. “Gun violence is an epidemic. Therefore, it’s an emergency.”

Let’s look at some history and consider what might be a more effective approach to ending the gun violence emergency…

Prior to 2020, Americans believed that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed each of us the right to leave his/her/zir/their home to assemble, e.g., at work or school. However, it turned out that the Constitution did not prevent lockdowns of young healthy Americans on the grounds that there was a statistical chance that the lockdown could save the life of an old person somewhere.

That the societies with lockdowns had as-high or higher overall excess death rates compared to lockdown-free and mask-free Sweden isn’t relevant to this post. Even if no lives were saved, the idea was that lives might be saved and therefore the Constitution could be set aside. #BecauseEmergency

The majority of Americans, among the world’s meekest and most compliant humans, seem to be happy to have traded what had been their rights for the promise of safety. (Dutch friend at the time: “All of the rights that Americans fought and died in multiple wars to defend, they gave up in one governor’s press conference.”) Here’s part of a recent comment on Twitter, in response to a freedom-lover who complained about lockdowns, forced vaccinations, mask orders, etc. and asserted that they were unconstitutional:

Coercion is not the same as force and weakens your argument when you conflate the two. A majority of society agreed protect public health, that’s democracy.

Nobody was forced to get vaccinated. It is just that a person could have a job or be in a public place only if he/she/ze/they accepted the experimental injection. The lockdowns were okay because they were a product of democratic processes. My response:

Democracy undiluted by the Constitution sounds good. Freedom from crime is an important element of public health. What if a majority of Americans voted to seal the borders of any neighborhood in which the residents had committed more than a certain number of violent crimes? See below for how it could work in practice. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_13

Our democratically elected federal and state governments took away various freedoms based on statistical hopes and using an “emergency” as a justification. Do we have what we need to justify locking down neighborhoods from which we can expect criminal activity? From CNN:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, acknowledged Sunday that gun violence in the US is a public health emergency.

What would it look like in Detroit, Michigan, rated #1 in “Total Crime Index”? Referring to the map below, the neighborhoods in the darkest color (?!?) would be walled off as a reasonable public health measure. Residents could leave their houses only during certain daylight hours and only for purposes deemed essential, such as buying marijuana. (See this March 23, 2020 article: “Michigan marijuana shops may remain open during the COVID-19 coronavirus stay-at-home order issued Monday by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer”) There would be checkpoints at a few points in the wall where people could be screened for guns and drugs on the way in or out (in those situations where the governor was permitting residents to go in or out).

Is there any flaw in the above reasoning? Separately, if you haven’t seen District B13, I recommend it!

Related (loosely):

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Will NASA need to choose a new crew for Artemis in light of the recent Supreme Court decision banning race discrimination?

by philg

We were just at the Kennedy Space Center and learned that discrimination by race and gender ID is something to be proud of. NASA crows that the Artemis crew has been selected to include a person who identifies as a “woman” and another person who identifies as “of color”. From the project web site:

A different branch of government, however, has recently ruled that universities that get government funding shouldn’t be allowed to discriminate by race (see Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard). I’m wondering if NASA will now have to redo the hiring for the Artemis mission in a race- and, perhaps, gender-ID-neutral manner.

Here are some photos from the visit, which coincided with a SpaceX launch of the Europeans’ Euclid telescope…

Banners everywhere celebrated “40 years of women in space,” just in time for the term “women” to have become undefined:

Celebrating specific gender/race groups can be continued at home after a visit to the gift shop:

(An immigrant friend pointed out to his kids that “the real hidden figures were 1600 Nazi scientists”)

If Harvard can’t discriminate by race in admissions, how is NASA able to discriminate by race in selecting astronauts?

Related:

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If Rainbow Flagism is the state religion, why do individuals and businesses need to buy their own rainbow flags?

by philg

In Rainbow-first Retail (examples from Bozeman, Montana), I displayed photos of retail shops whose owners invested time and money to ensure that consumers wouldn’t be able to enter without paying obeisance to America’s state religion. But if 2SLGBTQQIA+-ism is our state religion and the trans-enhanced rainbow flag is our sacred symbol, why do private businesses and individuals need to organize worship?

Park City, Utah provides an answer to this question: “they don’t.” Here are some photos from last month in which we can see the city’s 100+ trans-enhanced rainbow flags, enough to adorn every lamppost in town:

Who agrees with me that it would be simpler for the government to handle annual and permanent Pride observance duties?

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How did the legacy admissions scheme last this long?

by philg

Nominally “private” colleges and universities get so much money from taxpayers that they are essentially part of the government. Taxpayers fund tuition grants that go straight into the colleges’ pockets. Taxpayers subsidize student loans that boost revenue by letting students pay more. Taxpayers fund research grants from which universities extract “overhead”.

The Equal Protection Clause:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

College admission isn’t exactly a “law”, but various cases have been decided in which this clause was applied to government programs generally, e.g., forcing states to allow same-sex marriage (and, eventually, throuples?). It wouldn’t be okay for the FAA to say “Your mom held a pilot certificate so therefore we’re going to let you have a pilot certificate at 35 hours instead of the usual minimum of 40.” Nor could the FAA say “We’re cutting you slack on the practical test because you paid $1 million in federal income tax last year.” Why is it okay for government-funded schools, such as Yale and Stanford, to say “We’re going to lower the bar for you because your parents attended and/or donated”?

Is the answer simply that no high-scoring-but-rejected-by-Yale applicant ever sued and obtained discovery showing that (1) second-rate legacy kids got admitted instead, and (2) Yale is firmly entrenched underneath a shower of government money?

Related:

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What if our National Parks charged Navajo prices?

by philg

Our National Parks get less than 10 percent of their budget from entrance fees. In other words, people who don’t go to the parks are subsidizing people who do go to the parks. A 2015 report found that visitors paid $186 million in fees directly and $85 million via concessions (food and hotels) while the Park Service spent $3.1 billion.

Part of the reason for this is that prices are low. Not quite as low as in 1938, when the parks were free:

But an annual pass that enables 8 people in a minivan to spend 3-4 weeks in the parks is $80. I had already purchased a pass for the Vegas/Pahrump trip (Death Valley, Sheri’s Ranch to try to meet up with Hunter Biden, Corvette School, etc.) so it cost us $0 in fees to spend 3 weeks in the National Parks in June. Even if we had paid $80 that would have been less than the cost of housekeeping tips ($5 is the new $3).

Let’s assume a family of 4. What do the Navajo charge for them to look at something interesting? We took a one-hour tour of Antelope Canyon and it worked out to $100 per person. Here’s a photo from that excursion:

Let’s assume that a typical family won’t be able to pay $400 per hour every hour, but $100 per person per day is the “Navajo rate” for what could reasonably be charged. The National Park Service budget is up to $3.6 billion in Bidies. For the agency to be fully funded by visitors, therefore, they’d have to host 36 million person-days. Is that practical? State-sponsored NPR says that 312 million people visited in 2022. It is unclear if they’re counting how many days each person spent in the park and, of course, visitation would fall if Navajo pricing were established rather than give-away pricing, but it seems clear that the Park Service could easily fund itself from entrance fees.

For reference, the Chileans charge foreigners $35 per adult to visit their signature national park for one day. Even at Chilean prices it would seem that the NPS could easily be self-funded.

What about families where nobody has worked for 4 generations? How are they going to enjoy the Grand Canyon? As with museums, anyone with a SNAP/EBT card could be admitted for free.

What’s wrong with the current system? Nothing, if you’re a member of the elite! Since the NPS isn’t charging anything for park entry, the people who own hotels and restaurants in the parks (i.e., the cronies) can charge higher prices. It ends up costing about $1000/day to visit the parks in any degree of comfort, so the visitors themselves tend to be elite.

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