Business and industry – Page 2

It’s not “Let’s Go Brandon” anymore?

Leave it to the Astroturf group to demand top-down, executive level solutions.

I haven’t commented on our friends at Indivisible for awhile because, quite frankly, everything they touched in this Congressional session turned to crap thanks to the bipartisan overtures of Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. We didn’t have to endure Bilk Back Better or the election theft act because Indivisible couldn’t convince a majority of Senators to do away with their filibuster rules – although Lord knows they tried (and probably spent seven figures or so of dark money in the process.)

But, it is said, where there is a will there is a way and the group that prides itself on grassroots action is demanding top down with a new initiative called, “Let’s Go Joe!” As they describe it, the new idea is “to cheer on President Biden and encourage him to take action on the issues that will most impact everyday Americans.” Unfortunately, by that I don’t think they mean putting a permanent curb on the “Green New Deal” or getting a handle on government spending, even though those would help.

I suppose I will allow them to describe this further:

We’re going to use all the tools in Indivisible’s playbook to encourage Biden to take action. That means public events. It means behind-the-scenes lobbying. It means tweets at the White House. It means digital ads. It even means (you guessed it) calls to members of Congress. We’ll be asking President Biden to do something very simple — use the power that the American people invested in him to take action on some of the top issues of our day: things like student debt, lowering prescription drug prices, climate change and more.
“New Program: Let’s Go Joe!” – Indivisible e-mail, February 16, 2022.

(As you can tell, I held on to this awhile. This post was promoted from an upcoming odds and ends post.)

As has been the case all along, one asset of the Indivisible movement that was often missing from the TEA Party (because the TEA Party was truly grassroots at its heart) was an explanation of the marching orders, and this is no exception. Based on the scripts they’re pushing on their shiny new Let’s Go Joe website, their first two pet issues are declaring a climate emergency and wiping out student debt.

Needless to say, Brandon doesn’t need a whole lot of help to do this if he was so inclined. But while Indivisible is shouting in one ear, the Democratic Party brass is whispering in the other and showing him polls that the party is going to get shellacked in November unless gas prices come down and inflation is reined in. And no, the solution is not going hat in hand to the Saudis, the Venezuelans, or the Russians because what we’re experiencing now is a preview of life under the Green Raw Deal.

Moreover, while he may gain a few votes among the Millennial crowd for cancelling student debt, the Democrats already have made sufficient inroads among that group so it would be a case of diminishing returns compared to the number of Gen X, Generation Jones, and Boomer voters who would be pissed off that they had to work their way through college or paid the full freight while little Austin, the barely-employed social science major who has plenty of money to maintain his man bun and nose ring because he’s still hanging in his parents’ basement, got his $80,000 in debt paid off with the stroke of someone else’s pen. (Myself included: it took me fifteen years and a couple refinances but I paid my student debt.)

Right now the group that based itself on the TEA Party is seeing how we on the conservative side felt after we had a weak Republican candidate not necessarily of our choosing lose in a Presidential election that a Reaganesque candidate would have won easily. In essence, five years after their Astroturf founding, Indivisible is working in the much the same situation the TEA Party was in 2014, five years after its formation: a majority (albeit much more slim) in the House and a working minority in the Senate. While Indivisible ostensibly backs Joe Biden, you know that in their heart of hearts they really wish they could have cheated Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders into the job. (If it weren’t for a far more compliant press, Indivisible wouldn’t even have the one thing the TEA Party couldn’t get until a few years later, the Oval Office.)

But it’s not a bad idea to put a bug in the ear of our elected representatives that we really don’t want what Indivisible’s Astroturf is pushing. Here in Delaware it may not do a lot of good directly, but they should know this state isn’t as squarely behind their adopted occupant of the Oval Office as one may believe.

Remembering the last pump price crisis

With gas prices seemingly going up on the regular, I decided it would be an interesting exercise to revisit the last time we saw this sort of surge at the corner station. When I see this topic discussed on the happy-talk show Delmarva Life this afternoon, we know it’s on people’s minds.

The time was 2008, which was an election year but under different circumstances. Our so-called “war for oil” over in Iraq was on somewhat shaky ground, but the bigger culprit in the uncertainty was the Great Recession we were enduring at the time, culminating in the financial panic that caused GOP candidate John McCain to temporarily go off the campaign trail and staining further the legacy of President George W. Bush.

It was in April that I first noticed the issue, as I added gas prices to a occasional series of posts I did at the time called the market basket. At that time, the pump price in Salisbury was $3.419, which seems reasonable compared to today, but remember most people were still making less than $15 an hour back then. (Minimum wage increased to $6.55 an hour that summer.) Then the next month I commented on a piece by energy writer Hans Bader and later on I noted in passing that Newt Gingrich had become involved, back when he was more relevant as a political force and not a commentator. (Bonus reading from fourteen years ago: my three part series on a better stimulus. See how it stands up in this era.)

Back then I posted a lot more, so here’s something resembling a two-part series on pump prices and how the Left saw them. Some things never change. And then I talked about Chuck Norris saying his piece – amazing the video is still there – and how it was affecting our Congressional race. Also, back then I commented a lot more on commentary like this.

And then we got Nozzlerage. You have to take my word for it now that the video is gone, but that was hilarious. Too bad the idea behind it was the unsound one of flex-fuel cars, which would only lead to creating more ethanol. And years later I found out the push to keep Congress in Washington over the summer to address the oil issue came from a person who would be an early TEA Party leader a year later. I even had more Newt, despite the fact prices were finally coming down, and refutations of comments I received on the site.

As it turned out, I was right in that drilling for our own oil and using fracking technology to extract more natural gas drove prices down to more acceptable levels. We got to a point just a couple short years ago where we became a net energy exporter, and we made Newt’s dream of $2.50 a gallon gas come true – in fact, in some places we beat his expectations by over a dollar.

So if I was right last time around, don’t you think we need to go back to the tried and true? We know there’s plenty of good technology in the energy field, so let’s drop the lease moratorium and let energy companies explore in new places, too. That would be a start. And let’s stop siccing Fedzilla on these companies – that’s a phrase I was reminded of on this trip down memory lane.

But I’ll conclude with a much newer phrase: let’s go Brandon.

Take two: Patriots for Delaware again meet at Range Time

This time, the circumstances were different but the crowd was about the same. Because it was held indoors in a place that was probably among the most dangerous in Delaware just hours before – the firing area of a shooting range – I opted not to make this a multimedia event, aside from the below photo, taken at a location outside the line of fire. (I will say the building is quite nice as it also features a couple classrooms that were just too small for the event and several axe-throwing lanes as well as the target practice area for shooting.)

The Patriots for Delaware still have some interesting swag, and that didn’t even account for the signs.

The concerns were a little more pointed this time than they were last time I went in April of 2021 as well. We’ve now been through a year of the Biden regime and national concerns seemed to outweigh state concerns at this meeting, for obvious reasons.

So after reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and getting an invocation, the meeting began with P4D speakers Bill Hopkins and James Davison getting some words in. While reminding us that government doesn’t always have our best interests in mind, Hopkins exhorted us to do more than “just be a good American” because, in his estimation, “we’re really in deep.” He set us up for Davison, who spoke about the need for good candidates for the upcoming Delaware school board elections as well as following up on the work of P4D’s election integrity team, which was releasing a statement announcing their formal complaint contending hundreds of deceased voters are voting in Delaware.

Another interesting thing Davison brought up was the ongoing migration from Facebook to less biased forums like Gettr and Truth Social. Patriots for Delaware is apparently having issues with Facebook that parody sites like “the even more patriotic Patriots for Delaware” aren’t having.

Yet the subject on everyone’s mind was the upcoming Freedom Convoy. Our local one is being plugged by P4D, which has set up three rendevous sites around the state – the closest for folks like us is in Bridgeville – along with dropoff points for supplies to keep the truckers driving. While they need volunteers to organize and be points of contact, we found out Range Time agreed to be a dropoff point for this effort.

While the idea is sound, I’m hoping Patriots for Delaware doesn’t get too sidetracked on a concept which is already sort of being addressed by events. We don’t have it as bad as Canada does in this respect, and although a trucker’s convoy is a tactic that will get attention it’s my hope that the attention doesn’t go negative, particularly since our media won’t give it a fair shake whatsoever. Perception is reality, and although we have had plenty of issues with COVID enforcement I feel we need to keep our powder dry.

Being that we were at a shooting facility, we also spent some time listening to Mike Jones of the USCCA, and Larry Mayo of the Institute on the Constitution also spoke briefly on the need to learn “the law that governs the government.” But I was most surprised and excited to hear from my two-time monoblogue Accountability Project Legislator of the Year and the holder of the all-time best term score in Delaware history, Representative Rich Collins of the 41st District. (Range Time is in his district, lucky folks.)

Rich wistfully noted that, right now, “I have no more power than you do,” and cited four changes in his lifetime that had eroded things to our current state.

The first was the eliminination of the old Senate system where each county had five Senators. As I have said before, that was an offshoot of the incorrectly decided Reynolds v. Sims decision since Delaware had previously addressed the issue of equal representation with a House whose members were allocated by population.

Secondly, Collins bemoaned the rise of what he called the cabinet form of state government – simply put, unelected bureaucrats are making most of the state’s decisions by writing regulations. It’s why the government is now the state’s largest employer.

Third was an overreliance on “emergency” regulations, such as those addressing the CCP virus. “Covid will fade,” said Collins, “but what will be the next crisis?”

Lastly, the issue of one-party rule. Forty years ago, as I’ve also explained, this state was a singular shade of purple that comprised a true “swing state” even with just three electoral votes. Fast forward to the present day and, aside from pockets of Sussex and Kent counties, we are stuck with (generally very statist) Democrats.

Now that we are at this stage, continued Collins, the fact is that “money talks.” Not only should we financially back candidates we believe in, he advocated that Patriots for Delaware secure an attorney on retainer and establish a legal defense fund as part of their charge. One other thing he mentioned was that there’s an advocacy group called Delaware United that ranked him last in their legislative ratings. (While their methodology is different, their scorecard is basically the inverse of the monoblogue Accountability Project. In their case, to properly interpret their results it’s a lot like golf: the lower score, the better.)

That part was great. But I also attentively listened to the words of a current Delaware National Guard member named Butch Harmon, who spoke last. Speaking about the onerous CCP virus regulations, he said he was about to lose two good technicians because they chose not to get the jab. “We need to vote these folks out of office,” said Harmon. And rather than worry about the border of Ukraine, he continued, perhaps we should consider our southern border. (Worth mentioning: this meeting occurred before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which may or may not have changed some opinions.)

As for their other subjects, the various school board elections will likely be the subject of a post next week. Now all we need is for Patriots for Delaware to figure out a venue for meeting in the Laurel/Seaford area so that some of these folks can see how this other half lives.

Is Delaware going to pot?

Recently I received a missive from the Delaware House Republican Caucus that went like this. Normally I try to keep blockquotes to a minimum but my editor’s eye saw all of this was vital information.

A bill to legalize recreational marijuana in Delaware has been quietly released from a House committee and is now eligible to be placed on the House Agenda for a vote.
On Thursday, the House Appropriations Committee released House Bill 305 (the Delaware Marijuana Control Act) by “walking the bill” — a process where a majority of the committee members sign a document to release a bill for further consideration. This method does not require a committee hearing or public notice.
House Bill 305 had earlier received a hearing in the House Health and Human Development Committee.
The action taken by the four Democrats on the six-member House Appropriations Committee – State Reps. Bill Carson, David Bentz, Stephanie Bolden and Kimberly Williams – potentially positions the legislation for immediate action in the House Chamber when lawmakers return to work next month.
House Bill 305 contains several highly controversial elements, including one designating a significant number of licenses established under the legislation as “social equity licenses.” These licenses include those that would be needed to operate a marijuana retail store, testing facility, cultivation facility or product manufacturing facility.
Qualifications to obtain a social equity license include being “convicted of, or adjudicated delinquent, for any marijuana-related offense except for delivery to a minor.”
Social equity license applicants could also qualify if they resided for at least five of the preceding ten years in a “disproportionately impacted area.” The legislation defines a disproportionately impacted area as census tracts “having high rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration relating to the sale, possession, use, cultivation, manufacture, or transport of marijuana.”
Additionally, the bill seeks to create a Justice Reinvestment Fund that would be financed with a portion of the state’s marijuana tax revenue. According to the authors of the bill, the fund would “be used for projects to improve quality-of-life for communities most impacted by the prohibition of marijuana and ‘War on Drugs’ era policies.”
Because the bill seeks to establish new fees, it will require a 60% super-majority vote (3/5ths) to clear each General Assembly chamber (25 votes in the 41-member House, and 13 votes in the 21-member Senate).
The General Assembly is currently in recess for budget hearings. Lawmakers return to work on Tuesday, March 8.
E-mail from Delaware House Republican caucus, February 18, 2022.

Indeed, HB305 was released from the Appropriations Committee “on its merits” by the four aforementioned members. No members voted for it or against it. Back in January it advanced out of the Health and Human Development Committee with six in favor and three “on its merits” with the other six members not registering a vote. Since nine of the 15 members of the HHDC are Democrats, it’s likely they were the votes that passed it out of their committee. In fact, the composition of the Delaware General Assembly ensures this could pass without a GOP vote, as the House is 26-15 Democrat and the Senate 14-7. (Ironically, the Senate Democrats defeated their two best candidates for bipartisanship at the last election as they gained two seats over very moderate Republicans.)

According to this helpful article at the Delaware Live website, though, there was an important reason the bill was revamped.

In order to decrease the number of votes required for the bill to pass, Rep. Ed Osienski, D-Brookside, removed a proposal for a social equity loan fund.
The social equity loan fund would have directly paid for loans and grants for prospective marijuana growers and sellers who have, in the past, been negatively affected by the disproportionate prosecution of cannabis-related crimes.
That component of the bill was designed to redress what many in the legislature — and their constituents — view as historical wrongs in the area of criminal justice.
But because it would have directed public funds to businesses, the Delaware Constitution would have required it to receive 75 percent of the legislature’s approval.
Charlie Megginson, “Recreational marijuana bill heads to House floor,” Delaware Live, February 18, 2022.

I also found it interesting that the House leadership shuttled this bill, which serves as a successor to the heavily amended HB150 from last year’s portion of the session, from the HHDC to Appropriations instead of taking it to the floor.

(After starting this post, I found out from the above article that the reason was the amount dictated a Fiscal Note, and those bills automatically go to Appropriations. Moreover, the funding for HB150 was already in the budget. It’s different than the Maryland procedure I’m used to, where sending a bill to two committees is often done to pass an otherwise controversial bill.)

The new bill integrated most of the HB150 amendments, including provisions for Big Labor, along with the Justice Reinvestment (read: slush) Fund. Perhaps they were hoping that Appropriations would amend the bill to get a little bit of Republican support because, in principle, there’s nothing wrong with a state decriminalizing and taxing marijuana in the same manner as tobacco as it has become a de facto legal substance despite prohibition by the federal government.

I do object to the prohibition on people growing their own supply, at least on a limited basis for personal use. To me, it would be akin to not allowing people to create their own beer or wine and I’m sure some do. Heck, if people could grow tobacco in Delaware maybe they would to avoid the onerous cigarette taxes – and taxation is the largest part of what this is really about. (However, it seems that growing tobacco isn’t the hard part, curing and aging tobacco is. It’s probably more cost-effective for smokers to swallow the buck or two.)

But there’s also the “social equity” aspect that bothers me. Why are we watering down standards for one group that’s supposedly been oppressed for its existence? When I see a success story like Dr. Ben Carson, who raised himself up (with the assistance of his mother and his faith) from grinding poverty, as opposed to the trainwreck – despite his silver spoon upbringing – that is Hunter Biden, I realize that people put a lot of limits on themselves, creating the perception that we need “equity” which encourages big daddy government to step right up.

Basically, because the Democrats have complete control of the state, they can use bills as playthings to address their usually imagined grievances. So they’re layering on a lot of garbage to mess up a bill that would, on its surface, work in the right direction aside from the prohibition to “grow your own” as the government hates competition.

Once again, it’s not about what the people want, it’s about how the hand of government can pick winners or losers. Since we’ve become a nation that selectively enforces law anyway, we may as well leave the current system in place until we get a stripped-down proposal that does what needs to be done and doesn’t play favorites.

A blogging return

Back when I was part of a small but thriving Salisbury blogging community, one of the sites I enjoyed reading was called The Gunpowder Chronicle.

I say “Salisbury” based on where Tim Patterson grew up, not where he lived at the time he wrote the blog, up in northern Baltimore County (the “Hereford Zone”) in the basin of the Gunpowder River. But he often wrote about Salisbury affairs, and it was worthwhile reading for the three years or so that he regularly did the blog – it sort of faded from the limelight around 2010, although this internet archive shows he last posted in 2013.

So I was a little surprised to see on social media that The Gunpowder Chronicle was reborn in a different venue, Substack. Reading the initial post: yeah, he’s the same guy. (I originally typed “sane” – Freudian slip?) If I see a couple more posts in the next week I’ll place him back on the blog list he once occupied with his version 1.0 (check out this old view and see what I used to contend with.)

It also got me to thinking, though: is Substack the modern-day upscale version of Blogger? I hadn’t really heard of the site until Erick Erickson started his own Substack (after The Resurgent was bought out) but the difference is that many of those on Substack have a subscription base that pays $5 – 10 a month to read their work. (Erickson is one who I subscribe to, for the low end of the scale.) I also realized that I’m subscribed to a publication that in the process of moving, AND Magazine. They’re dropping their domained website to go to Substack because they’re worried about censorship.

So I got on the social media horn to welcome Tim back and asked why the change?

“Substack is committed to freedom of speech. I cannot say the same thing about Google/Blogspot,” he said, adding, “A secondary reason is I think the Substack model shows more promise going forward.” The former is indeed a valid concern, as Patterson also stated, “I am really unhappy with what Google has done with YouTube in terms of banning/cancelling/demonetizing people.”

On the other hand, that secondary reason does have potential for some – there weren’t many of us who properly monetized our sites when blogs were the thing, though, which is why we still have our day jobs. Longtime readers may recall I’ve had some advertisers and sponsors along the way, but they basically made my website a break-even enterprise at best. So I don’t hold out a lot of hope on that one.

All this got me to thinking, though: is it time to make a change, or expand?

In looking into Substack, it appears they deal with WordPress blogs; however, I only have a WordPress base while monoblogue is my domain. Said domain, though, is on at least its third server owner since I began with midPhase back in 2005 – they were bought out by someone who in turn was the little fish swallowed up by some other company that I believe operates out of the UK. I would love to be with a local entity but there’s not one I am aware of that would handle my site. Obviously I worry a little that my “barely left of militia” worldview may not comport with ownership but I don’t have the wherewithal to be my own server.

One answer may be to begin a Substack for the political but retain some of my features here, such as my news stories, Shorebird of the Week, its tracker, and the SotW Hall of Fame. Nothing imminent – right now it falls in my “something to pray about” file – but in this era it’s not a bad idea to have options.

In the meantime I think I’m one of Tim’s initial subscribers. Give him a look and maybe you will be too.

Odds and ends number 109

Because I did quite a bit of e-mail list pruning over the holidays – it was easier than shedding those holiday pounds, which are still there – it took a little longer for me to find compelling items I wanted to spend anywhere from a couple sentences to a couple paragraphs on. So here we go again.

A cure for insomnia

You may not have noticed this while you were putting on pounds and using your gas-guzzling vehicle to drive around and buy holiday gifts, but Delaware now has a Climate Action Plan. Of course, it involves the folly of minimizing greenhouse gas emissions – as if our little state will make much of a difference on that front – and actions they term as “maximize resilience to climate change impacts.” They fret that “Delaware has already experienced over 1 foot of sea level rise at the Lewes tide gauge since 1900. By midcentury, sea levels are projected to rise another 9 to 23 inches and, by 2100, up to an additional 5 feet.” These are the people who can’t tell you if it will snow in two weeks but they’re sure of this one. Moreover, these assertions were easily swatted out of the park.

The only climate action plan we need is to first follow Virginia’s lead and ditch the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, since that’s simply a wealth transfer mechanism from middle-class pockets to utilities to government to entities they deem as those in need of “equity.” After that, it’s time to repeal every last renewable energy mandate and get back to reliable power, not dependence on arbitrary and capricious wind and sunshine for our electricity. The dirty little secret is that we need those fossil fuel plants as backup anyway so we may as well get our use out of them. Don’t believe me? Well, the Caesar Rodney Institute agrees:

Did you know Delaware has been mandating wind and solar power in addition to providing subsidies for both for over a decade? In 2021, the mandate required 21% power from wind and solar, increasing to 40% by 2035. So far, 90% of the wind and solar mandate is being met with out-of-state generation, with only 2% of electric demand met by in-state solar. At night, when it’s cloudy, and in winter, when solar power drops 40% compared to summer, reliable power is needed for backup.
“What Delaware Needs in State Electric Power Generation?”, Caesar Rodney Institute, December 26, 2021.

So we are subsidizing other states. Unfortunately, we are probably in the same boat for awhile but, rather than muck up the shipping lanes entering Delaware Bay with useless wind turbines or put hundreds of acres out of use for agriculture with ugly (and generally Chinese-made) solar panel farms, we could just build a series of natural gas generating plants with a minimal infrastructure investment in additional or expanded pipelines. It’s the better way.

Losing the hand

If you recall the 2010 election, the Beltway pundits bemoaned a missed opportunity in Delaware because Mike Castle lost in the Republican primary to TEA Party favorite Christine O’Donnell. (Some guy wrote part of a chapter in a book about this.) After their favored candidate lost, the Delaware GOP establishment took their ball and went home, resulting in a schism that still occasionally pops up to this day.

Well, Mike is back in the news as he was recently selected to be part of the board at A Better Delaware. As they describe it:

During 40 years in public office, Gov. Castle served two terms as governor, from 1985 to 1992, before he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for nine terms. While in Congress, he served on the Financial Services Committee and on the Education and Labor Committee and was a strong advocate for fiscal responsibility and working across party lines to build bridges and form coalitions to find pragmatic, bipartisan solutions to some of the nation’s most pressing problems.
“Former Gov. Mike Castle Joins A Better Delaware Board,” January 18, 2022.

What do we get when we reach across party lines? Our arm ripped off and beaten with it. Democrats in Delaware have zero interest in working with Republicans (let alone the conservatives who need to be in charge) so I don’t see the use of this relic who exemplifies everything that frustrates common-sense Delawareans about the Delaware GOP. If you want A Better Delaware, you need to elect people vowing to do whatever it takes to undo the forty years’ worth of damage done by the Democrats. They can shut up and sit down for awhile.

But it would be cool if Christine O’Donnell took a job there.

Tone-deaf

Anymore I use part of my odds and ends to pick on that crazy one from South Dakota, Rick Weiland. (You thought I would say Kristi Noem?) Just two weeks ago he wrote, “It has never been more important for the Biden administration and Congress to go bold and make sure everyone has enough high-quality masks to protect themselves and others.” Weiland was advocating for some boondoggle called the Masks for All Act.

Of course, we all know that two weeks later mask mandates were being dropped all over the blue-state country by Democrat governors who claimed to be following the science, and they did… right up to the point where the “science” affected their chances of holding on to any sort of power. It’s all about power, folks, and don’t you forget it.

But Weiland is the same nut who rails on about “insurrectionists” in Congress and deplatforming Fox News because it, “consistently downplays the seriousness of the pandemic, while amplifying risky treatment alternatives like ivermectin (and)is allowed to spew disinformation directly into the homes of millions of Americans 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.” Yet people take this stuff seriously. I just thought you needed a good laugh.

Invading the Shore

Speaking of crazy people…

It took awhile, but now we seem to have a branch of Indivisible of our very own on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. “We are IndivisibleShore,” they write, “and are here to help you help progressive candidates win elections in Maryland, specifically The Eastern Shore and Eastern parts of the Western Shore.”

Well, that’s about the last thing they need – talk about an invasive species. Besides the Zoom training sessions, they also promise, “We have phone banking, door knocking (when safe) and postcard writing available. We also will be sponsoring music events and get togethers when safe.” One out of five ain’t bad if the band is halfway decent, as I’m quite aware that most musicians are on the opposite side of the political spectrum.

This guy gets it

Now we can come back to sanity.

One thing I recommend reading (or hearing, since it’s a brief weekly podcast) is the Castle Report. While Donald Trump was a fine president, I think Castle would have been Donald Trump on steroids when it came to trimming the government back to Constitutional levels (provided he had a like-minded Congress.) He’s the reason I joined the Constitution Party here in Delaware. (And somehow I’ve managed in one article to talk about two different guys surnamed Castle. Odd. Or maybe an end.)

This week he talked about the Canadian truckers’ convoy and it’s one of his best. One thing to ponder from his piece – ask yourself who this sounds like:

So, who is this man, Justin Trudeau, and what are his qualifications to hold the office of Prime Minister of Canada? Other than the fact that he was elected by a majority of Canadian voters, he has only one qualification and that is he is the son of the former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Pierre was of military age during World War ll but declined to serve. He built his fortune and his political career at home while Canadians were dying on the battlefields of Europe. Pierre was apparently a devout communist and never met or even heard of a murderous, dictator he didn’t love. He went to the Soviet Union to participate in the great achievements of Joseph Stalin. He wrote glowing praises of Mao’s regime in China. He had a friendly relationship with Castro and visited with him in Cuba. Some of the praise he heaped on Stalin was of new Russian cities built from the rubble of the great war, but he never mentioned the many thousands of slaves who died building those cities.
Justin seems to have nothing to recommend him to Canadians except he follows in his father’s communist footsteps. What, I wonder, is his own merit or his own achievement? He has no scholarly achievement, no publications to his name, no business experience, but he is an accepted legacy, member of the global ruling elite and, therefore, protected.
For example, as a young man, he often appeared in blackface and sang the Harry Belafonte classic, The Banana Boat Song. He now says he considers that racist but no resignation, and no groveling apology. He is also free to call the truckers racists because one truck flew a Confederate flag.
“Unacceptable Views”, Darrell Castle, The Castle Report, February 11, 2022.

It’s worth mentioning that the Canadians are just the first, as other nations have gotten into the act. But imagine this: thousands of everyday Canadians lined Canada’s main highway east from British Columbia to cheer these truckers on, in subfreezing weather. It was a little bit like a Trump rally in terms of enthusiasm, but instead of a political figure these folks were there for a political statement and not the opportunity to glom onto celebrity. That’s a key difference. Let’s pray for their success.

Play ball!

While the major leaguers are locked out and almost certainly won’t begin spring training on time, our Delmarva Shorebirds are on track to begin their spring training on February 28 and begin the regular season April 8, as they are unaffected by the lockout. There are lots of reasons to go to the ballpark already, but the Shorebirds have an interesting promotional schedule worth checking out.

It’s a good way to bring this 109th edition of odds and ends to a close.

The bite of inflation

Let’s begin 2022 by talking about an issue that has bullied its way into our national consciousness in the past year, inflation. All of us are paying more for various items, but in my case it’s measured with a quirky but useful yardstick.

I have a Friday lunch routine that began a couple years ago. In my “real” job I work four nine-hour days Monday to Thursday and have a four-hour Friday, meaning my weekend generally begins at lunchtime on Friday. So to start my weekend I go to Chick-Fil-A and order the same thing each week: a spicy deluxe meal with a side salad in lieu of the fries and a diet Dr. Pepper. (In and of itself, that’s a routine because it’s about the only time I drink Dr. Pepper. The one thing I don’t like about Chick-Fil-A is that they pour Coke products and I’m a Pepsi guy from way back.)

Because I always get the same thing, I know exactly how much it will cost before they ring it up. Thus, I was surprised a few weeks back when the number increased for the second time this year – sure enough, a look at my old bank statements confirmed this. Back in April that combo set me back $8.93, and over the summer it went up to $9.29, which was the number I was expecting. Instead, they told me it was $9.89!

Doing some hasty public school math with my phone’s calculator, the first increase was 4.03% while the second was 6.46%. Combined, in the space of about six or seven months, the price for my meal went up 10.75% – that’s pretty steep, because I don’t recall my income going up 10.75%. (I did get a raise in 2021, but not that much.)

Of course, there are costs involved, and the restaurant wants to stay profitable. So the increase has to be passed along to the consumer somehow, and since CFA hasn’t been cutting corners on the food they’re forced to charge more for it.

First and foremost, the smiling lady behind the Chick-Fil-A counter almost certainly has a higher wage now than she did when the year began, as do all her behind-the-scenes helpers. More importantly, the cost of the raw materials have gone up as chicken isn’t so cheap anymore, nor is produce or bread for the bun. It costs more to power all the food service equipment required to bring my sandwich and salad to my waiting hands.

But our nation got used to inflation that ran maybe 1-2%, meaning we might see just a modest increase every year. Now that we have so much funny money floating about, however, we got saddled with two significant hikes in six months. (And yes, I realize all this started with the last president. But he only did one stimmy, in reaction to the forced shutdown of “non-essential” businesses and complete revision of the service model for restaurants like CFA. In and of itself that was a gross overreaction, but I digress…)

Obviously I’m diving into the anecdotal here, but as a busy family we eat out a lot: usually three to four times a week for dinner. So we are attuned to the steady rise in prices that’s seemingly accelerated since the CCP virus began to take its toll on the restaurant industry and its players almost two years ago. It doesn’t matter if they’re chains like Chick-Fil-A or Texas Roadhouse or local restaurants such as Laurel Pizzeria, Pizza King, or La Tolteca in Salisbury – every time we go there it seems some of the prices have gone up a quarter here and 50 cents there. We get that costs are going up and food service is a brutal business model right now, but there has to be an end somewhere.

Perhaps if we stop with this artificial stimulation of the economy where valueless dollars are printed, we can eventually get back to that nice, predictable, and steady 1-2% annual increase (and bring back the period of not so long ago where wage increases were faster than inflation.) Otherwise, my over/under on my Friday lunchtime meal by the end of this new year is $11.50. Any takers?

We can make a partial course correction in 10 months. Hopefully some inspiring candidates for said change will step forth in the interim here in Delaware.

Digging out of the archives

This could have been saved for the next odds and ends post, but instead I decided it was a nice post for a slow time of year anyway. And, believe it or not, the information is actually useful for my blogging purposes.

This was the e-mail I received a few days ago. I couldn’t quote the whole thing because WordPress is funny about blockquoting lists, so judicious editing was applied:

Hello Michael,
I trust you and your loved ones are healthy and safe at this most unusual time.
I’m writing because you cited (a website, not the one he’s pitching for) here on Monoblogue.
(snip to excise list)
You can learn more (at a site, which I will get to.)
Do you think Monoblogue readers would find our guide helpful? If so, would you please insert a link for your readers?
Either way, thank you for your consideration, Michael.
Best wishes,
Joel
Yes, another e-mail beseeching me to do something I may or probably don’t feel like doing. This guy was lucky.

Joel almost blew it when he laid it on oh-so-thick:

PS. (our site) was recently featured on Huffington Post & CNBC, and it’d make my day to see it on Monoblogue, too 😉
Yes, that’s his postscript.

Besides the fact that I’m being mentioned in the same breath as Huffington Post and CNBC, the reason I had to laugh was the post he cited. It’s a piece I wrote a decade ago during the 2012 presidential campaign as one of my endorsement selection posts. While this isn’t a #TBT, just for the fun of it here is what I wrote at the time about the eventual GOP nominee:

Mitt Romney shrewdly addresses energy independence in his “job creation” category. But terms like “government must be a partner,” “facilitate,” and “address market failures” don’t convince he wants a conservative, small-government solution. We see what kind of “partner” government has become, and it’s not government’s job to interfere with the market. And believing climate change is caused by mankind is a nonstarter. I’m deducting three points.
“For President 2012: Energy independence,” July 10, 2011.

At the time I was torn between endorsing Michele Bachmann and the late, great Herman Cain. Anyway, if Joel Foster is reading this, and despite the fact I appreciate his patronage of my site, I have to think he needs a hobby.

Yet in all this dross there was a little bit of gold. Joel wrote me on behalf of commodity.com, which is a little bit like another site I feature here called ammo.com – they sell a product or service, but also feature lots of reading material in their blog. And the story he pitched has an angle that concerns Delaware, thus succeeding in piquing my interest.

In it, I learned that certain states use more renewable energy than others. In fact, ultra-liberal Vermont should be proud of themselves because they receive 99.9% of their electricity from renewables. Now, before you imagine the charming fall landscape of Vermont littered with solar panels and wind turbines, it’s worth mentioning that hydroelectric generation is also counted as renewable and that’s where they receive most of that 99.9%. In fact, that’s the source for the top six states on the list, with seventh-place Iowa checking in with 59.4%, predominantly from wind. (I actually posted on situations that helped create this wind energy figure several winters ago.)

On the other hand, guess which state is at the very bottom of the list? Yep, that would be the First State, with a measly 2.5% of electricity created by renewables and the fifth-slowest growth rate in the last five years. Expressed in megawatt hours, Delaware produces the least by a factor of four behind the second-lowest generator (Rhode Island) and less than one-tenth that of the 48th ranked state in terms of production, Connecticut. Like a lot of states at the bottom, our leading contributor is biomass. (And the geniuses in Dover think they can get to some figure like 40 percent by 2035 or whenever? Dream on.)

A look at each leading source is interesting. Six states, including Delaware, have biomass as their leading renewable source, while 18 states are listed as hydroelectric, seven as solar thermal and photovoltaic, and the remaining 19 as wind. If you looked at it on a map, the Midwest is pronounced wind country, and hydroelectric rules the northwest, northeast, and Tennessee River valley. Meanwhile, solar rules the southwest and Florida but surprisingly picks off a few other states along the Atlantic coast, including New Jersey and Massachusetts.

Before I summarize the information at hand, I have a comment about the commodity.com blogsite. Unfortunately, while the blogging content on ammo.com comes primarily from a single, talented writer who works with a pro-liberty mindset like mine, a lot of what goes on commodity.com is writeups based on lists like the one I cite – a list of states and ranks in a particular area of interest, expanded to a paragraph or so on the top ten or fifteen states, including the list at the end. It’s the sort of work for which a content mill gives the article author a few dollars if he or she is lucky. (Or, even worse, they do it for “exposure.” That and five bucks will get you five bucks.) In looking at their author list, they seem to be a collection of small-time writers who may have other day jobs, or perhaps wish they did. It’s like paint-by-numbers for the written word.

As for Delaware, I guess it’s our lot to be at the bottom of the renewable list. We have too much cloudiness and haze during the year to be consistent solar producers and not enough steady wind onshore for wind energy. (Offshore wind has to be mindful of shipping lanes into Delaware Bay.) Unless we can make wattage out of chicken poop, we are basically stuck where we are – and that’s okay, because all those sources cited as renewable come in an arbitrary and capricious manner. (Hydroelectric is probably closest to reliable unless we have a severe drought.) I wouldn’t mind them doing the seismic exploration off the Delaware shore to site a couple test wells for oil or natural gas, but that’s not going to happen with our shortsighted state government insisting we depend more and more on unreliable sources of electricity. We can also see if there’s anything to having natural gas in the Delmarva Basin below us, but the anti-fracking zealots won’t allow that either.

Finally, one other interesting tidbit: at the end of the e-mail I found out this is a Delaware-based company – at least legally, since the address cited is that of Registered Agents Legal Services, LLC. It’s in an otherwise non-descript office building in the suburban area of Wilmington. Chances are their energy isn’t coming from a renewable source.

China as the Pandora’s box

This was the piece I alluded to in my odds and ends post that was promoted. As you’ll see, it’s more than a few paragraphs’ worth of thought.

A few weeks ago I was reminded of something by a familiar group, the Alliance for American Manufacturing. Their missive that day was that China was about to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its ascension into the World Trade Organization, and needless to say AAM didn’t see it as an occasion worth celebrating. Quoting their longtime President Scott Paul:

It’s pat nowadays to point out how badly America’s political elites got China’s entry into the WTO wrong. But it’s astounding to reflect on just how wrong they were.
We were told that China would open its market to U.S. companies to sell their products. Instead, China has largely left its market closed, and those who are able to do business there must hand over their intellectual property in return.
We were told that China would play by the rules of global trade. Instead, time and time again, China has broken those rules, largely without consequence, costing millions of American jobs.
We were told that China would liberalize, moving from a planned economy and authoritarian state to a free market and a democracy. Instead, China has used central economic planning to dominate global industries and is now exporting its totalitarian model around the world. People are arguably less free in China now than they were 20 years ago, something that is certainly true in places like Hong Kong and Xinjiang, where China’s government is overseeing a genocide.
Yes, it was a mistake for the U.S. to vote to allow China to join the WTO. But, while we can’t go back to 2001, we can begin to right the wrongs of 20 years ago.
Scott Paul, President, Alliance for American Manufacturing

If you thought it was bad twenty years ago, imagine the fateful decision made fifty years ago to allow President Nixon to visit China. At the time, though, Nixon’s visit (the first by an American President to the People’s Republic of China) was more about keeping peace, since the Vietnam War was ongoing and Korean War wasn’t all that far in the rearview mirror.

Getting to know each other better will reduce the possibility of miscalculation and that we have established, because we do have an understanding. And I know them, and they know me. And, I hope that would be true of whoever happens to be sitting in this office in the future. That means that there will be talking and rather than having that, that, uh, inevitable road, uh, of suspicion and miscalculation, which could lead to war. A miscalculation which, incidentally, led to their intervention in Korea, which might have been avoided had there been this kind of contact at that time.
Richard Nixon, February 29, 1972

Somewhere in the next decade or so, though, China began to realize that one way of improving their standard of living (and keeping hundreds of millions of peasants out of starvation) was to adopt a limited amount of capitalism by becoming the world’s manufacturer. Their three key assets were very cheap labor, a willingness to build factories to suit overseas interests without the need to worry about those pesky domestic environmental laws, and reasonably-priced shipping to the American market. A few years later, the hollowing out of American manufacturing was well underway as a stream of manufacturing jobs flowed across the Pacific from Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Erie, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Flint, Milwaukee, and other Rust Belt communities. In essence, Paul’s indictment of China is correct.

Yet while some amount of manufacturing has indeed left China for greener pastures around the globe, they remain the predominant widget maker for the world. You pretty much can’t shop for anything anywhere without running across a product bearing those three infamous words, “Made in China.” Not only that, they’re tightening the noose on the rest of us because they’ve cornered the market on a number of valuable rare earth commodities, including those we left behind in Afghanistan – they quickly filled that vacuum, as they have in a number of other places where they’ve taken advantage of Third World debtor nations. Just like when a Mafia don does a favor for you, someday that deed will have to be repaid with a lot of interest.

And since I have an aversion to dealing with nations that point missiles at us, I’ve made it a priority on this site to promote “made in America.” Why else would I keep tabs on a group backed by the steelworkers’ union?

(There’s a bit of good news on the “Made in America” front, though – we may have one of the world’s largest deposits of lithium within our shores, if the environmentalists don’t find a way to derail its mining. Battery manufacturers would like that.)

I used to be a free trader, and perhaps at some distant time I may become so again. But that day will only come when everyone plays by the same rules and can be trusted, and China fails both those tests. In short – and it’s definitely against my nature to think and say this, but it has to be said – they’re lying Communist sacks of shit who would like nothing better than to stab us in the back and should be treated accordingly.

Perhaps if we hadn’t opened that Pandora’s box a half-century ago, China would still be struggling to feed their hungry, we might not be dealing with the Wuhan flu, and there may still be thousands of American factories in operation. But short-sightedness and greed seems to have won the day, much to our detriment.

Odds and ends number 108

It’s an end-of-year special on my e-mail box as I go out with the old and in with the new. You know the drill: I give you a paragraph or three on subjects that pique my interest enough to write on but not enough for a full post.

The two-tier Delaware system

I’m going to start out this one with part of an e-mail blast I received several weeks back from District 36 representative Bryan Shupe, the opening paragraphs of which read:

The debate over whether indicted State Auditor Kathleen McGuiness should resign or take a leave of absence from her post highlights a larger systematic failure on the issue of government accountability and transparency in Delaware.
Over the last 18 months, we have seen five Delaware elected officials accused of misconduct. While every citizen should find this disturbing, almost as troubling is that each case has been treated differently. As it stands, legislators pick and choose which colleagues will be held accountable and which ones will be subject to a lesser standard.
I do not believe justice is something that should be decided on an arbitrary sliding scale, based on the personal whims of legislators or the political affiliation of the accused. There should be clear protocols for handling all cases of official misconduct involving elected officials in an equitable fashion.
“Reform is needed to rebuild public trust,” State Rep. Bryan Shupe, October 28, 2021.

Indeed, the double- and even triple-standard is troubling, but all of the circumstances are different, too. In the case of McGuiness, the accusations are damning but she hasn’t had her day in court yet, either. (And to be honest, these charges aren’t really on a Cuomo level. Ask yourself just how many Democrats somehow finagle taxpayer-paid sinecures for their family and friends.) And the rumor has been floating around out there that this batch of dirt was dug up on her because her auditing is getting too close for comfort for those who have taken full advantage of the Delaware Way, if ya know what I mean – wink wink, nudge nudge.

You may also recall Shupe was the sponsor of a voting bill that got left on the cutting room floor after Republicans came to their senses and bounced the Democrats’ mail-in balloting bill last spring. Shupe’s common sense bill was intended to eliminate a practice where, in some municipalities (including Laurel) the voter registration for town elections is separate from those of state and federal elections – so people who think they are registered get shut out of the process. I had never heard of such a thing so this proposal made sense and deserved support, not a three-year-old’s tantrum.

Bad information

About the same time I got Shupe’s assessment of a two-tiered justice system, I got wind of a two-tiered media system.

A piece by Michael Watson of the Capital Research Center discussed the Good Information project, an attempt by far-left entities to open new media markets with websites that claim to be “non-partisan” but will provide a steady diet of pro-Democrat news. (Just like every other “mainstream” media outlet.) Here’s the money paragraph:

As part of the creation of Good Information, the group is acquiring McGowan’s former liberal agitprop network, Courier Newsroom. Courier Newsroom was a front for ACRONYM, operating what the left-leaning OpenSecrets called “a network of websites emulating progressive local news outlets. Courier has faced scrutiny for exploiting the collapse of local journalism to spread ‘hyperlocal partisan propaganda.’”
Michael Watson, “Onetime Disinformation Donors Back Left-Wing Propaganda Targeting Disinformation,” Capital Research Center, October 28, 2021.

I took a look at Courier Newsroom and it’s actually a professional-looking site that links to eight subsites – all in swing states: Arizona, Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Florida. Their tagline is that they’re “Building a more informed, engaged, and representative America” but in order to do that they need to pull themselves off the left gutter and move over about 20 boards. (A little bowling lingo there. Sometimes straighter IS greater.)

Meanwhile, shouldn’t this be something someone on the right side of the spectrum would be doing? People actually believe these propaganda sites.

Another great piece by Watson appeared in The Daily Signal in November and should be required reading for my friends at Patriots for Delaware because it talks about how the unions elect school board members.

Hitting me where I live

This one comes ohsoclose to being promoted to its own post, but I think I can condense like Readers Digest. Here’s the key pull quote from a story I saw back in October.

On Sept. 16, 2021, Delaware lawmakers unveiled a plan to address a much-needed infrastructure improvement project – implementing high-speed broadband across the entire state. This $110 million investment was made possible with funding from the American Rescue Plan Act and if completed will make Delaware the first in the nation to make wired broadband available to every home and business in the state.
(snip)
With the proper guidelines in place, getting to 100 percent connectivity is a reasonable goal. The strategic plan estimates that the number of Delawareans without access to high-speed broadband could be brought down by approximately 87 percent if providers were to extend their existing networks just half a mile from their current cutoff points. This approach is called “edge-out.” This approach lends itself to utilizing multiple means of connecting through cable, fiber, fixed wireless, mobile, wireline DSL, and satellite broadband. The plan also suggests using the funding to replace old and failing equipment to ensure that the investment is something that will benefit all Delaware residents for years to come.
Kathleen Rutherford, “The Last Mile: Can Delaware Deliver?”, A Better Delaware, October 29, 2021.

We are a family who is in a broadband desert. Currently I oscillate between a cellular tower-based service provider and phone hotspot depending on time of day and conditions – in the evening the hotspot tends to be faster. We live too far from a Bloosurf tower for it to be viable and, to be honest, our friends who live near their tower say their service is about worthless anyway.

Prior to this move, we had wired service through a cable provider, paying for it as part of a bundle. But there is a wrinkle out here in that we have Delaware Electric Co-Op as our electricity provider and I found out that Choptank Electric Co-Op, which has a similar customer makeup two miles from me across the border in Maryland, offers “broadband over fiber optic connections directly to the home.” So I asked my state representative, Tim Dukes, about this and so far I have no answer.

As far as I’m concerned, for a home internet setup “fixed wireless, mobile, wireline DSL, and satellite broadband” is trash. If you want to spend the $110 million wisely, let DEC (which primarily serves a rural area) wire our homes like Choptank is doing.

The merger

Longtime readers of mine probably know more about iVoterGuide than the average person. The group, which rates federal and state candidates for office from a Biblical perspective, recently announced it was merging itself with American Family Association Action. Debbie Wuthnow, President of iVoterGuide, explained that, “The need for voters to know accurate information about candidates on their ballots has never been greater, and the merger will allow iVoterGuide to immediately expand our coverage to include federal, statewide, and state legislative races in 35 states for the 2022 Primary Elections. And we’ll continue to grow our coverage of judicial and school board races in key districts.”

As I found out a few years ago in helping them out – a “neat experience” – iVoterGuide is very thorough in their assessment of candidates and they do a reasonably good job of pegging where they stand on the political spectrum. So I wish them the best of luck with their merger, and if they need someone to help assess their Delaware candidates I’m happy to be of assistance.

More advice

I’m sure I have told you about ammo.com since their content pops up on this site from time to time, usually as an odd or an end. So I guess I have an imitator, at least according to this e-mail I’ve now received twice.

Monoblogue,
I came across your blog while doing a little research on a couple of Maryland’s gun laws, and your blog popped in my newsfeed. I appreciate many of your political views. As a Trump supporter, I thought (redacted) would be a good resource for (my site). The recoil score it provides is pretty cool. Haven’t seen it before. Do you shoot? I appreciated your content.
More fun e-mail.

Jordan, yes, I received your e-mail. Twice.

I’m glad you appreciate many of my political views, but I don’t think the resource is really something I can use. Now if we’re talking paid advertising or sponsorship from the overarching site, well, that’s a different conversation. (Since I’m probably not in line for that Soros money discussed by Michael Watson above.) And to answer your question, I do shoot off my mouth (rhetorically) all the time.

So since I have closed up the e-mail box now (it’s much more streamlined) I can tell you there is one other item in it, but that one is getting a coveted promotion to a full post because I think I can do it further justice. That may be one of my last items of the year before I figure out my annual Christmas message and compile the year in review – can you believe it’s that time?

With that, I bring this odd year of odds and ends to an end.

An idea for Black Friday

I’ve talked about this many times in the past, so much so that it’s become a holiday tradition of its own. But Black Friday is always a good time to bust out this sampling of Made in America gifts from each state, courtesy of the Alliance for American Manufacturing.

For the eighth year in a row, AAM has put out this list of American-made products.

Obviously you’re not going to get the big-screen TV or cool electronic gadget from these small companies, but there is an array of stocking stuffers and specialty items that can be useful year-round, most of it hand-crafted by individual entrepreneurs. In fact, this year’s Delaware offerings fall into the jewelry category, featuring what’s called “wire-wrapped jewelry around stones, sea glass and other beach treasures” as well as a bonus company that sells “a large catalog of eye-catching rings.”

It’s a statement I’m going to play with in a moment, but AAM President Scott Paul reminds us that, “This (supply chain) crisis is a reminder about why it’s so important for our national and economic security that the United States is able to make stuff right here at home. Buying your holiday gifts from this guide is a good way to support companies doing the right thing – and show others they can make money manufacturing here at home, too.” They’re even doing a Cyber Monday webinar featuring a few of these artisans, although it’s not really conducive to working stiffs, being that it’s a mid-day webinar.

The parent term Black Friday has become so ubiquitous to retail that it’s spawned several new variations – we have Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday now. Except for the latter, which is devoted to charity, each of these terms most likely describes the companies defined in the Holiday Gift Guide – small businesses that do most (if not all) their business online and depend on people’s gift giving for their livelihood. (Let’s face it – aside from the satisfaction quotient, do you really need jewelry? I own one piece, and that’s my plain wedding ring.)

Since the AAM began soliciting ideas for their Holiday Gift Guide back in October, though, there are some places for whom the concept wouldn’t work as personalized gifts require longer lead times. As one example, Brent Zockoll is a good friend of mine – locals to the Salisbury area are most likely familiar with his company, Zockoll Pottery. And while he has a collection of available items, a lot of his work is contract work, made in batches, so he’s not the best fit for the Guide. But he is a small businessman, making stuff in the rural environs of Parsonsburg, Maryland – which, last time I checked, was part of America – whose livelihood has become slinging clay, not keeping a bricks-and-mortar shop open. (Once in awhile though, and especially around the holidays, his studio becomes a retail outlet – check his social media for details.)

I look at it this way: the more things we produce and buy in America, the less we have to depend on nations who maybe can’t stand our freedom because their religion prohibits it or countries who have nuclear missiles pointed our way. Yes, we live in a world dependent on trade, but I’d rather be the one in the most powerful position so we can maintain our freedom. That’s the biggest gift of all.

Odds and ends number 107

This will be a little shorter than some, but I thought it was a good time to clear out the mailbox and give you some good reading.

All solar and wind is all wrong

Recently I got an e-mail from the Caesar Rodney Institute that told me:

Proposed legislation nationally and in some states would establish a requirement 100% of electricity be generated from “renewable” sources such as wind and solar power. This policy will lead to unacceptable electric price increases and blackouts.
“100% Wind and Solar. 100% WRONG.” Caesar Rodney Institute, October 8, 2021.

This goes in the category of “duh” for me, but apparently some states are thinking they can pull this off – and in principle, perhaps they can. But there is a big problem with the reality, to wit:

When we look at states from Virginia to Maine, with some of the most aggressive requirements for wind and solar power along with taxes on emissions from power plants, we see two disturbing trends. One is more reliance on imported power. The Virginia plan drops reliable power generation from 95% now to 45% in 2035, and imports from other states grow from 25% to 40%. The RGGI states have increased imports from 5% in 2008 to 17% in 2019. Electricity exporting states are also under pressure to reduce conventional power generation. Pennsylvania’s Governor Wolf would like to cut generation by 30% by 2030, which would end exports. Massachusetts is importing 57% of its power, Delaware 50%. It is likely there will be very little export power available, requiring each state to generate 100% in state.
Ibid.

The second part is the government-created market for so-called “renewable energy credits” (read: mechanism for wealth transfer.) I like looking at farm fields, not 600-foot tall wind turbines (that would make all of us sick from the low-frequency noise) or acres of solar panels that might power a few hundred homes at peak efficiency, not twenty years down the line.

If I store a tankful of natural gas or a lump of coal for a time, it works pretty much as well as it would have when I put it there, at a cheaper price point. Let’s ditch these phony market mandates, shall we?

A Made in America call

My friends at the Alliance for American Manufacturing alerted me to this irony: those who created the CCP virus and allowed it to come to our shores are benefitting from dumping cheap N95 masks on our shores while American companies suffer.

At least that’s how James Wyner, the CEO of the Shawmut Corporation tells it. “We worked hard to create an American-made product that wasn’t dependent on foreign governments like China. We labored around-the-clock to get things up-and-running in 120 days, and created hundreds of new jobs in the process. Our masks received rave reviews for comfort and protection. Now Made in China imports are back.”

Interestingly, the tariff suspension was put in place by the Trump administration in March 2020 to deal with the spot shortage of PPE, but no one from the Biden regime has reinstated it. Wonder why?

One can say Wyner is living up to his name because there was always this risk, but we can substitute a lot of things for N95 masks that we should be making – including the aforementioned solar panels that are often made in China.

And since I’m talking about AAM, it’s worth reminding readers one of their annual programs is the Made in U.S.A. Holiday Gift Guide and it’s time for suggestions. Now that Halloween is just about in the rear view mirror, it’s time to start the stampede to Christmas. (Thanksgiving? What’s that?)

WTF is he thinking?

So did you know that AT&T is “by far the largest single funder of One America News”? Me neither. Just looking at it as an observer, maybe it has something to do with DirecTV, which AT&T owned until recently. And when I checked into the story, I found out it was true.

Okay, this is a problem why? (And full disclosure here: we are DirecTV subscribers and my package includes OANN. Can’t recall the last time I watched it, though – maybe immediately post-election?)

Well, the reason I bring this up is because Rick Weiland – miserably failed political candidate and my semi-correspondent loony leftist from the otherwise sane bastion known as South Dakota – sent me an e-mail demanding AT&T cut ties with OANN. Get a load of this rubbish:

Listen, the bottom line is clear: AT&T has not only been helping to spread disinformation about everything from the 2020 election to public safety during the pandemic, it’s also been instrumental in the success of Donald Trump’s favorite cable news channel while it continues to whitewash what happened on Jan. 6th.
AT&T needs to take bold action and join the fight against deadly disinformation — by cutting all ties with OAN. And (sic) your name to demand action now!
Unless AT&T hears from us — it will continue to fund the network that has fueled an insurrection, dozens of voter suppression bills, and the proliferation of disinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“WTF is AT&T thinking?”, Rick Weiland, October 11, 2021.

Now I’m not crazy about DirecTV – it’s one of the few options I have for TV watching out here in God’s country – but when you consider the Reuters “investigation” comes down to a entrepreneur creating a product to address a market need, I shrug my shoulders on this one. I think Merrick Garland is doing far more to whitewash what happened on January 6th and Weiland isn’t asking us to kick him out of office.

And next week I expect an e-mail from Weiland condemning a recent attack on a federal building. Should I hold my breath for the call on people to drop their funding? Thought not.

If I want to watch the partisan media, my satellite brings me CNN, MSNBC, and so forth. Maybe we should do more to encourage a variety of viewpoints instead of shutting down those we don’t agree with. However, AT&T did hear from me recently: I sent in another month’s bill.

This one worries me a bit

I think this is more because I’m on a mailing list than being anything resembling a power blogger anymore, but I guess at least someone was thinking of me and it’s worth a few lines.

To avoid going all tl:dr on you, I’m just going to link to the Executive Summary of the 2022 Index of U.S. Military Strength from the Heritage Foundation. While I obviously have an interest in our nation remaining free and independent, I also have an interest in having several young men our stepdaughter knows from being classmates (in the same class as well as a few years ahead or behind) stay on this side of the grass as enlisted men. So judge this one for yourself.

Sunday evening reading

This is more for a particular author than for individual articles. And it all began with selling a book.

You may recall last year during the pandemic that I introduced people to a site called ammo.com. While they sell ammunition, I look at them now as a provider of a different kind of weaponry: potent arguments for limiting government and history you don’t find anywhere else. Where else can you find a retailer that sees deplatforming, righteousness, and the decline of civil society as topics worth discussing? (Being a former league bowler from a Rust Belt bowling town, the latter hit me where I live.)

It’s an alternate view of history and society complements of a writer named Sam Jacobs. If I were to bring back Ten Questions or do a podcast, he would be a subject because I’m curious how he got to a political point not all that far off of mine. They never told me how they liked Rise and Fall, but I do like hearing from their website each Friday.

Speaking of Friday, a programming note: I pushed it back a week because of website issues I was having, but the return of Weekend of Local Rock is now scheduled for the coming weekend. I may get a post in midweek if the mood strikes me (particularly with the offyear elections on Tuesday.) We will see.

But this should do for now, right? Mailbox is clean as a whistle.