Shopping in Concord, Massachusetts: Bring your Mask

by philg

“In consideration of the health and safety of our employees and guests who have not been fully vaccinated, Masks are Required AT ALL TIMES Inside the Cheese Shop.”

Vaccinations have been widely available for two months here in Maskachusetts. There will always be those who aren’t vaccinated, however, either because they #DenyScience, have an unusual medical situation, are infants (though maybe the vaccine can be given right as a baby is coming out?), etc. Therefore, doesn’t this sign translate to “masks now, masks tomorrow, masks forever”?

#AbundanceOfCaution was the general rule for the shopping district. Although the governor’s 69 orders no longer require masks, the merchants have stepped in with their own unconditional mask requirements:

The ultimate expression of caution is to close the retail store altogether:

All photos from June 8.

A few sights on the way to/from this shopping experience… a group of preschool children, age 2 and 3, marching outdoors in masks. It was 93 degrees out. A neighbor with a zoning-minimum 2-acre lot (welcome the undocumented so long as they can afford a $1 million vacant lot on which to build a $1 million structure) riding a lawnmower… in a surgical mask.

Full post, including comments

Nobody wants to work, tinted window edition

by philg

I was chatting with a guy who runs an automotive tint film service with three employees. “I can’t hire anyone right now,” he says. What would someone expect to earn? “A high school graduate will make about $60,000 in the first year and $100,000 per year after three years,” he replied.

(Note that, at least with a family of 4, a household earning $100,000 per year is eligible for welfare (subsidized housing, subsidized health insurance) here in Massachusetts. So, technically, $100,000 per year is a poverty wage.)

Why does he need to hire people? If high school grads work their way up to $100,000 per year don’t they stay at the job indefinitely? “After a year or two,” he replied, “they lose their initiative. They don’t want to work on weekends. They don’t want to get up early. They don’t want to drive a long distance to a customer. They don’t have the commitment of a business owner. It was bad before the $600/week and now it is terrible.”

Full post, including comments

Nobody wants to work, coastal North Carolina edition

by philg

If you’re a devoted reader you might recall 20-hour Bonanza flight over the North Pole, in which I discuss a plan to fly to Beaufort, North Carolina with some sea turtles.

The good news for those who #FollowScience, in which the latest edition is that the vaccinated need not wear masks, is that nobody down there was wearing a mask. Not at the airport (contrary to Uncle Joe’s orders?), not government workers at a state park, not museum workers, not restaurant workers, not retail store clerks, not shoppers in retail stores, etc.

The better news for those who like to relax is that, apparently, nobody in North Carolina feels compelled to toil at a soul-destroying job. Restaurants are closed on certain days and/or telling customers to keep in mind that they’re short-staffed. A sampling:

A few days before Pride Month officially began, but the Turner Street Market sandwich shop is already “Proud to Celebrate Diversity”:

How is a sign like this supposed to work at a counter-serve sandwich shop? How would an employee be able to tell what kind of sexual activity is of interest to a customer ordering a sandwich? Is it for situations where a customer says “I need an extra shot of espresso because I was in a four-way last night with three partners with three different gender IDs and all of the sex really wore me out”?

As long as we’re talking about nominally sexual relationships…. “Marriage is a Workshop where the husband works and the wife shops”:

(Thanks to North Carolina family law, this division of labor can be extended indefinitely even after one spouse decides to terminate the marriage.)

How about identity politics, which we are told is new? This sign about the “first Jewish member of N.C. legislature, 1808”, in front of a waterfront house, dates from 2012:

(Zillow says that his descendants won’t be able to live here unless each one has roughly $2 million to spend on a house.)

How about the turtles, you might reasonably ask… We picked them up from KGHG (Marshfield, MA) in a NOAA-supervised operation at 7 am. The fuel stop was at climate change activist Bill Gates’s Signature Flight Support in Atlantic City (amazing hospitality from Stacy Suazo, the general manager). The corporate overlords enforce a moderate degree of coronapanic here. In case the CDC is wrong about COVID-19 not being spread via surface contamination, a sign on the fridge that formerly held water bottles for customers to grab with their filthy virus-covered paws:

Once we arrived at Beaufort (KMRH), the turtles were rushed into a waiting van and we drove 20 minutes to Fort Macon State Park. In Florida, it is illegal for ordinary folks to touch sea turtles. In North Carolina, however, we were able to get some training from the experts and then carry our passengers from a ranger’s pickup truck into the surf.

(Note my passion for all things LGBTQIA+: the T-shirt is from Tony Packo’s, the stated favorite restaurant of M*A*S*H’s Corporal Maxwell Klinger, who was seeking to be discharged from the Army as a consequence of gender dysphoria (evidenced by Corporal Klinger’s wearing of dresses).)

Some more images from the beach:

Related:

Full post, including comments

Jew-hatred in the Boston suburbs (school administrators of color to the rescue)

by philg

A parent at the Lincoln-Sudbury (Maskachusetts) high school received the following email:

Dear LS Students. Families, and Staff,

It is with profound dismay and disappointment that this past Friday a student reported seeing a swastika scraped into the back of a seat. Today administrators are addressing students in each of the classes who meet in that classroom about what was found to seek additional information and to offer support. Any students feeling in need of counsel due to this incident are encouraged to reach out to their counselors and/or Associate Principal.

It is without question that our society and schools should and can be free of hate symbols of any kind. LS stands for caring and cooperative relationships, respect for human differences and the importance of community. For this to happen when we have only recently been experiencing such joy at the opportunity to be back in school in person on the eve of a memorial day remembering those who died while acting in the service of our country adds greater salt to the wound.

For all who are feeling pained by this incident, be assured that we are way better than this incident might suggest. I have seen it in the many acts of caring and kindness extended toward each other and on the behalf of those needing aid. We stand together in support of the religious freedom of all our students, families and staff to be absent of bias, harassment, and hate.

In deep regard,

Bella Wong

A student who is upset at seeing a symbol of racial hatred will be comforted by talking to a likely white school administrator who made the affirmative decision to work in a nearly all-white town. (Mx. Wong him/her/zir/theirself previously chose to work in the all-white town of Wellesley, MA.)

What about the school bureaucrat herself? From diverseharvard.org:

Please state your views on affirmative action and race-conscious admissions.

As a person of color I cannot help but have thought about this throughout my life.

What does a “person of color” look like?

(from MetroWest Daily News, 2013)

Meanwhile, just to our south… “Elementary school project about Hitler causes controversy in New Jersey town” (ABC):

Maugham Elementary School in Tenafly says it is now investigating after teachers allowed a student to write a biography glorifying Adolf Hitler. … The assignment included that student dressing up as Hitler as well. “It’s appalling, it should’ve been stopped the minute this girl [c]ame to school,” resident Shimon Avrahami said.

A strong female (“girl”) taking the role of the 1938 TIME Man of the Year is not cause for celebration on the grounds of escaping gender norms?

From the 5-year-old’s kindergarten operation:

Celebrating Pride Month

Please join us in recognizing and celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community! As beautifully stated by our neighbors LexPride, “Every year we celebrate Pride month in June to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York. Led by transgender women of color, the Stonewall Uprising was a tipping point for the LGBTQIA+ rights movement. It helped energize the ongoing pursuit of equality.

While we celebrate with festivities, Pride month is also a time to recognize the impact that LGBTQIA+ people have had on history locally, nationally, and internationally. We honor members of the community who have been lost to HIV/AIDS and hate crimes. And we fight against oppression to make a better world for all.”

LexPride is run by the righteous of Lexington, Maskachusetts, previously featured in Our faith calls us to affirm Black Lives Matter…

Circling back to Lincoln-Sudbury, a follow-up email from Cara Endyke Doran, LS School Committee Chairperson:

It is with profound disappointment that I confirm there was an anti-Semitic symbol found in one of our classrooms. The School Committee was briefed and the LS administration is investigating the incident. The administration has sent a statement to our families and students acknowledging the incident and underscoring that this behavior will not be tolerated. Our associate principals addressed the incident with students affirming our promise to combat intolerance.

At Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School, we stand against discrimination and hate in all its forms. We celebrate the dignity of all individuals in our community and are committed to advancing equity and inclusion. Respecting human differences is one of our core values. L-S is “a place that values diversity in style and substance. Human difference includes all forms of diversity, such as racial, ethnic, religious, familial, economic, and sexual orientation. In addition, L-S honors differences of opinion and differences in learning styles.”

Due to open meeting laws, we must discuss this issue in an open forum. We will be addressing this incident during our upcoming school committee meeting.

Economic diversity is good, but an apartment building where people can live without paying $20,000 per year in property tax is bad.

And then another email from Bella Wong, the “person of color”:

I am writing to follow up on my message earlier this week about the discovery of a swastika in school. An investigation has been completed which included interviewing all students seated in the vicinity of where the swastika was found. Most students interviewed did not see the marking and none had any knowledge of how the swastika was created. The only students who saw the marking was the one who reported seeing it and the ones that student told what had been seen. We commend the student who initially saw it and recognized the need to report it immediately to a teacher.

Administrators tried to recreate what it would have taken to create the marking and found that it could not have been done without being observed if in class. Due to COVID restrictions students do not have free access to classroom space when not scheduled to be in that space. It is therefore entirely possible the marking was created at a much earlier time and only discovered at this time. If anyone has other information that could be helpful to determine how the marking was created please let an Associate Principal or myself know. … I reiterate that hate symbols in school are unacceptable. Thank you to all our students who responded promptly to our request to be interviewed. Thank you to Chief Nix, Town Manager Hayes, and religious and secular community members for your outreach and offers of assistance.

A stated LS core value is to respect human differences. I would like to say that at LS we also stand for the celebration of human differences. Differences enirches [sic] our lives, it inspires where sameness dulls. … To our students, families, and staff I have the utmost faith in all of you and all of us to be able to improve upon our interactions with one another in order for all voices and persuasions to be more freely and respectfully expressed.

I wonder how this “person of color” feels about hearing from “all voices and persuasions” regarding politics? Would it enrich Mx. Wong’s life to hear from someone who says “all lives matter” or that he/she/ze/they thought that Donald Trump was a better choice for president than Joe Biden?

Full post, including comments

Coronalogic: Obamacare saved lives by expanding Medicaid; the hospital shutdown of 2020 did not kill anyone

by philg

“Expanding Medicaid to low-income adults leads to improved health, fewer deaths” (Harvard School of Public Health, July 2012):

“The recent Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act ruled that states could decide whether or not they wanted to participate in the health care law’s Medicaid expansion. Our study provides evidence suggesting that expanding Medicaid has a major positive effect on people’s health,” said [[Benjamin Sommers]], assistant professor of health policy and economics at HSPH and the study’s lead author.

The results showed that Medicaid expansions in three states were associated with a significant reduction in mortality of 6.1% compared with neighboring states that did not expand Medicaid, which corresponds to 2,840 deaths prevented per year for each 500,000 adults gaining Medicaid coverage.

Each year in which low-income Americans had better access to office visits with physicians (not just the emergency departments of hospitals, which, of course, always had to take them in) resulted in saving the lives of 0.57 percent.

What about shutting down health care, including most hospital services, for 330 million Americans (or 350 million, depending on how many undocumented are among us)? Could that result in 0.57 percent of 330 million people dying? That would be 1.88 million or 157,000 per month of shutdown. I’m going to guess that the expert scientific consensus will be “no” and that, in fact, there were only minimal effects from shutting down the U.S. healthcare system that had previously been so important to prop up with $trillions of tax dollars.

So… opening up some doctors’ offices to more people saved lives bigly. Shutting down the nation’s entire hospital system, except for procedures considered to be emergencies, did not cost any lives.

Full post, including comments

Why are New York hotels expensive and mostly booked?

by philg

Tens of thousands of people with money fled to Florida. Broadway shows are closed until at least September. The Metropolitan Opera has turned itself into a TV channel featuring 200-year-old shows. Museums require onerous Web-based procedures to reserve tickets. The State of Liberty is closed (sometimes the best way to celebrate “liberty” is to prevent people from going where they want to go).

Why is it that a hotel room in NYC this coming weekend is $300-600/night and about half of the hotels are sold out?

(In prep for our flight to the Florida Free State, we’re going to show Manhattan to the youngsters who’ve never been there. We did actually manage to book a hotel via Orbitz. The hotel sent us a message:

… Our In-house restaurant … is currently still closed but we can direct you to nearly place to eat.

During these unprecedented times we have had to modify our operations for the duration of your stay:

• We have increased the frequency of cleaning our public areas and have continued the use of approved disinfectant.

• We have increased the deployment of hand sanitizers.

…

• Extra disinfection of high touch areas in guest rooms including light switches and door handles, remotes

• Increased cleaning frequency of public areas hourly

• Reduced paper amenities (like pads and guest directories) in rooms

For your safety and comfort, we will not be servicing your room during your stay.

So… as long as coronavirus is primarily spread via contaminated surfaces, we will be safe!

Full post, including comments

Kamala Harris tells migrants not to come to our party

by philg

Lately there has been a rash of American victimhood groups demanding that others stop hating them. I wondered how a strategy that would never be tried within a family (“if your brother hates you for breaking his LEGO, just tell him to stop hating you”) could work on a national scale. See “OC Jewish Leaders Speak Out Against Antisemitism After Rise in Hate Crimes”, for example:

Jewish community leaders across the U.S. are speaking out against what they say has been a recent surge in antisemitic attacks. … A Thursday virtual rally saw a host of national Jewish advocacy groups, like the Anti-Defamation League talking about the issue and demanding Congress curb the threat of antisemitism through meaningful policy.

Now it seems that our next president is working this strategy on a global scale… “Harris tells migrants: ‘Do not come, do not come'” (The Hill):

Vice President Harris on Monday pleaded with migrants from Central American countries to stay home in a speech in Guatemala during her first foreign trip.

The vice president was blunt in her message to Central Americans, repeating the line, “Do not come.”

“I want to emphasize that the goal of our work is to help Guatemalans find hope at home. At the same time I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States Mexico border: Do not come, do not come,” Harris said.

She said that the U.S. would invest in agricultural businesses and affordable housing and help support entrepreneurs in Guatemala. The White House said that it plans to invest $48 million over four years to boost economic opportunity in Guatemala, according to a fact sheet.

(the country that has an affordable housing shortage of 7 million units will teach the Guatemalans how it is done!)

Given that a migrant is entitled to free housing (“means-tested” public housing), free health care for life (Medicaid), free food (SNAP/EBT), and a free smartphone (Obamaphone), President Harris’s statement could be compared to a party disinvitation of the following form:

Don’t come to our party

Sting is performing by the pool

We ordered a mountain of “essential” marijuana from the finest dispensary in Massachusetts

We also ordered a briefcase full of cocaine, which we expect to similarly transition from “illegal” to “essential” soon.

There will be Château Margaux to drink, mostly 1995 and 2003 vintages

Robert Downey, Jr. and Will Smith should be here by 9:30

We’re not checking for invitations at the door, which will be wide open

But definitely don’t come

Full post, including comments

Is inflation already at 15-30 percent if we hold delivery time constant?

by philg

The government assures us that the U.S. inflation rate is 3 percent. Part of the magic of this statistic is that the actual cost of buying a house was removed from the basket of stuff that an American might purchase. So if houses have zoomed up by 50 percent that has no effect on the headline inflation number. The government postulates a hypothetical world in which every American is a renter, despite the fact that renting in the U.S. is not a substitute for owning a house (e.g., if you want a single family home with windows on all four sides you’re probably not renting from a big commercial landlord and therefore you’re always at risk of being kicked out if the owner wants to use the house, sell the house, etc.).

I wonder if another way to defraud the public is to look at prices without looking at delivery time. A new Cirrus SR20, for example, can be purchased for $500,000. That’s an inflation rate of 3.7 percent per year from 2005 when the airplane was $280,000. But the delivery time used to be at most 2-3 months after placing an order. Today it is 15 months. If you wanted to buy out someone else’s order and get a Cirrus within 2-3 months you’d likely have to pay $600,000.

Have the Apple AirPods and want to complete the Total Douchebag Package with a Tesla 3? Your luxury dog kennel is 8-12 weeks away, up from 0-3 weeks. Yes, the price is somewhat higher, but a market-clearing price for a Tesla to be delivered in 0-3 weeks would be substantially more.

Want to waste money on the water instead of on land or in the air? Line up! “New boats the latest item hit by a shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic”: Chad Chaney drove from Forney to Lewisville with his daughter just to check out a new boat similar to one he ordered back in January and still won’t get for a few more months. (Friends who own older boats say that the values for used boats are up 30 percent compared to two years ago.)

Since we’re stuck at home with no car, no boat, and no airplane, maybe we can play games on a new PC with an awesome graphics card. If we order an Alienware R12 today it will show up “with express delivery” on August 6 (a two-month wait for a device that is supposed to get better and cheaper every couple of months):

If we can’t play games on the computer for two months, maybe we can play games on a tennis court. The local tennis shop says that most balls are on back-order until August. The owner predicted immediate defeat for the U.S. if we ever were to go to war with the Chinese.

As part of our escape from Maskachusetts to the Florida Free State, a contractor is fixing up our already-sold house (condition of the P&S that we do the work we would have done if we had put the house on the market). Most of his materials estimates are turning out to be inaccurate if he wants to see the part, e.g., a picture window, this summer. We are paying 50 percent more for windows and other components, and, of course, 3X for lumber. (see “Sticker shock: Lumber prices up by more than 350 percent”) His costs for unskilled labor are 40 percent higher. Where he previously paid $18 per hour he is now paying $25 per hour to compete with Joe Biden and Charlie Baker. That’s if he can find someone. “Everyone who is worth hiring already has a job,” he says, “and the only people left refuse to work W-2 because they don’t want to lose their benefits. I’m too big to pay cash.” He says that he understands why $25 is the new minimum: “Nobody can live on $18 per hour anymore.” (The Massachusetts and U.S. governments agree; a family of 4 has to earn more than $100,000 per year to become ineligible for health insurance subsidies and over $130,000 to become ineligible for subsidized housing in our suburb.)

For the move itself, we found that the storage container-based moving companies had 2-4-week wait times for a container to be delivered.

Why don’t retailers just raise prices to market-clearing levels? My guess is that there is an expectation that shortages will ease and the market-clearing price will fall. Retailers don’t want consumers to remember them for “price-gouging”.

Readers: What items have you tried to buy lately and found that there were long lead times?

Full post, including comments

Why don’t the white saviors let the BIPOC take their jobs?

by philg

“White Brandeis Dean Kate Slater posts epic critical race theory rant: ‘I hate whiteness’” (New York Post):

A white Brandeis University administrator defended critical race theory in a social media post that included how she hated “whiteness.”

“Yes, all white people are racist in that all white people have been conditioned in a society where one’s racial identity determines life experiences/outcomes and whiteness is the norm and default,” Kate Slater, assistant dean of Graduate Student Affairs, posted on Instagram.

“That includes me!” added Slater, who describes herself on her personal website as a white anti-racist scholar and educator.

From kateslater.com:

Previously, she was the Associate Director & Manager of Programs at the Institute for Recruitment of Teachers, a nonprofit that promotes racial equity in the American educational sector. She is also a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire for the course Teaching Race, which explores the history of race and racism in America. Her doctoral research centers the experiences of underrepresented minorities students in higher education, and in particular, at predominantly White institutions.

I believe that a core pillar of racial justice work is the redistribution of resources to people of color. I donate 75% of all facilitation / training / writing fees to individuals, nonprofits, and mutual aid organizations that focus on the uplift of BIPOC communities.

Wouldn’t “the experiences of underrepresented minorities students in higher education” be improved if they could see administrators who looked like them? And wouldn’t “the uplift of BIPOC communities” be greater if Dr. Slater resigned and let the Brandeis bureaucrats replace her with a BIPOC?

It makes sense to me that there are white saviors. But white savior was not traditionally a paid role. I don’t understand how there can white saviors who say that they’re passionate about improving equity as measured by skin color and who simultaneously collect a paycheck that rightfully belongs to a person with darker skin.

Along the same lines, the Maskachusetts Senator Ed Markey, an old white guy, claims to be somehow an advocate for women and people of color. From March 8, 2020:

  • Gender based discrimination impacts all aspects of a woman’s life from the personal to the professional and the political. We will fight for social and economic justice and guarantee women’s rights and autonomy
  • Women still make 77 cents on average to a man’s dollar. Black women make 63 cents to a white man’s dollar. Latinas make 53 cents to a white man’s dollar. If we closed the gender pay gap, we could cut the poverty rate for working women and their families in half.
  • Women hold fewer than 25% of seats in Congress. And even though a record number of women ran for the presidency this year, we still have yet to elect our first female president.

From September 1, 2020:

  • Racial justice means dismantling the systemic and structural racism that is killing communities of color, and listening to and fighting alongside these communities to achieve true dignity and justice for all.

He says that he wants to “[dismantle] systemic and structural racism” and help Latinas and Black women earn more. Wouldn’t the most obvious first step be for him to resign on condition that Governor Baker appoint a Latina or Black woman to replace him?

Finally, let’s consider one of the oldest and whitest white saviors… Joe Biden. “Joe Biden Calls For U.S. To ‘Root Out Systemic Racism’ In Speech To Congress” (HuffPost April 28, 2021), for example. He also says that he wants to “empower women” (campaign site). Shouldn’t he resign in favor of Kamala Harris, who identifies as a woman of color?

Full post, including comments

Common sense gun safety

by philg

From the typical person’s perspective, the most reasonable interpretation of the Second Amendment is that it entitles him/her/zir/them to have a gun and prevents everyone else from having guns.

It seems that at least one of our top politicians agrees. “House Democrat says she sleeps with gun nearby after clashing with El Salvador’s president” (The Hill):

Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) said in a new interview that she sleeps with a gun nearby after receiving “hateful messages” for clashing with El Salvador’s president on Twitter.

Torres, 56, is the only member of Congress born in Central America and the co-chairwoman of the Central Americans Caucus. She spoke with the Los Angeles Times for a story published Thursday about trading barbs with El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele on issues of migration and human rights.

One tweet from last month included a photograph of a Salvadoran father and his young daughter who drowned attempting to cross the Rio Grande River into the U.S.

“This is a result of narcissistic dictators like you interested in being ‘cool’ while people flee by the 1000s & die by the 100s,” she wrote.

Bukele responded by calling on Latin Americans living in California’s 35th District to vote Torres out of office.

“She does not work for you, but to keep our countries underdeveloped,” he tweeted in Spanish.

Contrast to 2019, “Rep. Torres Calls for Common Sense Gun Control Policies” (official house.gov web page):

Congresswoman Norma J. Torres (CA-35) published an op-ed with the Inland Empire Daily Bulletin commemorating the four-year anniversary of the San Bernardino shooting, which claimed 14 lives, including two of her own constituents, on December 2nd, 2015.

“I’ve been on the other end of the line from gun violence,” Congresswoman Torres writes. “I’ve heard the earsplitting crack of a firearm going off, and experienced the horrific moment when a desperate voice on the other end screams in pain and then goes silent. I know exactly what the price is for Congressional inaction on gun violence, and I’m disgusted to see innocent people continue to pay for it with their lives.”

“The problem we have is access,” Congresswoman Torres continues. “We can’t legislate troubled thoughts out of someone’s head, but we can pass laws that prevent a gun from winding up in that person’s hands.

(Mx. Torres was referring to the jihad waged by Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik)

From 2016, “IE Congresswoman Norma Torres On The Future Of Gun Control” (NPR):

Inland Empire Member of Congress Norma Torres – a Democrat representing the IE’s 35th District – was among the representatives who participated in a member “sit-in” in the House chambers a few weeks ago. The sit-in participants were demanding that the majority Republicans in the House allow a vote on stalled gun safety legislation.

See also Giffords.org:

Torres has a demonstrated record of advancing lifesaving gun violence prevention measures and will never stop fighting to keep California communities safe from gun violence.

Related:

Full post, including comments