Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

Category: Culture

Wisconsin is shrinking

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a slice:

We are going to return to a topic that this column broached several weeks ago because policymakers in Madison fail to appreciate the severity of what is to come. Wisconsin is losing population. This is happening in a time of national population growth and the negative consequences will be unavoidable. The time to act is now.

 

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States added 1.8 million, or 0.6%, people between 2020 and 2022. Over the same period, Wisconsin lost 3,372 people, or 0.06%, of its population. After counting all of the people who moved out of the state and subtracting all of the people who moved into the state, Wisconsin’s population is declining despite the fact that the nation, as a whole, is gaining population.

 

A deeper look into the data reveals an even more dire situation. In the prime working years between 25 and 59 years old, Wisconsin lost nearly 39,000, or 1.5%, of its people. This is the age group that fills jobs, pays the most taxes, and spends the most on things like houses, vehicles, groceries, and the rest that fuels the consumer economy. Even worse, men are leaving the state at a rate faster than women. Given that on average more men participate in the labor force than women, that means that the decline in the available labor force is more pronounced than the overall number suggests.

 

It gets worse. Coming up behind those working adults, Wisconsin’s population is declining even faster. Between the ages of birth and 19 years old, Wisconsin lost almost 41,000, or 2.8%, of its people. That means that there will be fewer people entering the workforce to replace those exiting.

 

The only age group that is increasing in Wisconsin is at the top of the age groups. Wisconsin gained almost 67,000, or a whopping 4.6%, people above the age of 60. This age group tends to be at the end of their working career and are drawing down their consumption as they enjoy their well-earned silver years.

Climbers Sprint Past Dying Man While Setting Ascent Speed Record

It almost seems like this is a metaphor for my column about why Socialism fails.

A well-known Norwegian mountaineer has denied accusations that her team climbed over an injured guide during a bid to break a world record.

The porter, named as Mohammed Hassan, had fallen off a ledge on Pakistan’s K2 – the world’s second-highest mountain.

 

Video on social media appears to show a group walking by Mr Hassan, who reportedly died a few hours later.

 

But Kristin Harila told the BBC she and her team tried everything to help him in dangerous conditions.

“It’s a tragic accident… here is a father and son and a husband who lost his life that day on K2. I think that’s very, very sad that it ended this way,” she said.

The Norwegian was heading for K2’s summit to secure a world record and become the fastest climber to scale all peaks above 8,000m (26,000ft).

 

[…]

 

“We saw a guy alive, lying in the traverse in the bottleneck. And people were stepping over him on the way to the summit. And there was no rescue mission.,” Mr Steindl told the BBC.

 

“I was really shocked. And I was really sad. I started to cry about the situation that people just passed him and there was no rescue mission

Mr Hassan was being treated by one person “while everyone else” moved towards the summit in a “heated, competitive summit rush”, Mr Flämig told Austria’s Der Standard newspaper.

Theory will only take you so far

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News on Tuesday.

If you have not seen the Christopher Nolan film “Oppenheimer,” you should. It is a visually exquisite, beautiful piece of storytelling with fantastic acting. The movie deals thoughtfully with immense topics like nuclear proliferation, antisemitism, McCarthyism, communism, patriotism, and the horrors of war interlaced with the personal story lines of love, hate, betrayal, vengeance, egotism, mental illness, and the wobbling trajectory of a life of purpose.

 

All good art sparks thoughts and emotions that are often in search of a language to express them. One of the many thoughts that continued to percolate in my brain long after the movie ended was the intersection of theory and practice.

 

Relatively early in the movie, Dr. Oppenheimer moves into his classroom at Berkeley that is next to the classroom of Dr. Ernest Lawrence. Oppenheimer meets Lawrence as the latter is constructing what I presume to be a version of the cyclotron for which Lawrence won the Nobel Prize. In conversation, Lawrence opines to Oppenheimer that, “theory will only take you so far.”

 

This thread returns several times throughout the movie as the scientists are confronted with the limitations of theory in the development of the atomic bomb. In one scene, Oppenheimer and other scientists at Berkeley are excited by the news that physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch had discovered nuclear fission in the experiments of nuclear chemist Otto Hahn. Fission was previously thought to be impossible, but Hahn managed to do it by bombarding uranium with neutrons.

 

In the movie, when Oppenheimer read the news, he reiterated that the feat was impossible and descended on his chalkboard to run the math to prove it again. Oppenheimer stood by his assertion that fission was impossible until Lawrence returned to tell Oppenheimer that they had duplicated the experiment. What was “proven” impossible by theory was proven possible by practice.

 

Is it not so with socialism? In theory, socialism should work. It is an economic system in which scarce resources are allocated by priority of need. The theory is that if everyone contributes according to their ability, and everybody consumes according to their need, then the society as a whole will achieve maximum efficiency and aggregate success, or, at least, aggregate satisfaction.

 

Socialism makes sense in theory, so why does it always fail in practice?

 

Socialism fails because it mistakes the fundamental nature of people. Socialism assumes that people are naturally altruistic and will act in good faith. In reality, altruism beyond one’s own family or community is a modern phenomenon. It has only been in recent decades, when food scarcity has abated (thanks to capitalism), that some people have lifted their eyes beyond their personal needs to care about the broader world. But even now, the vast majority of people are far more concerned about their personal self-interest and will behave accordingly.

 

So it is that in a socialist economy, people do not contribute according to their ability. They contribute as little as they must. And they do not consume according to their need. They consume as much as they can. To combat this, the system must be enforced by an ever more forceful central authority. The flawed, and often evil, humans who gravitate into the center of a socialist system tend to be those who are seeking to consume the most. The inevitable result is cruelty, cronyism, and collapse.

 

To preserve liberty in a political and economic sense is to not allow power to concentrate, because whenever power is concentrated, there will be cruel and corrupt people seeking to use that power for their own benefit. Our national founders fundamentally understood this, which is why they designed our federal government to divide and check power.

 

Every system of government is found along a continuum from complete decentralization of power to complete concentration of power. On one end we find anarchy. On the other end we find communism, monarchy, fascism, and other forms of totalitarianism. Socialism is the younger, more handsome, brother of communism while democracy is the older, less reckless, brother of anarchy. The United States has a republic, which seeks to protect individual liberties from the oppression from the majority (democracy) or the minority (totalitarianism).

 

No system is static. There are too many forces at play for it to be so. The tendency, in both economies and governments, is for power to concentrate. This is so because people of ill intent are pushing it in that direction for their own gain. As power concentrates, the progression accelerates until critical mass is reached, and destructive energy is released.

 

There is a reason why socialism is so often advocated by academics and opposed by those who have lived under socialism. Theory will only take you so far.

Legacy Admissions Come Under Fire

Meh. I don’t have any problem with preference for legacy families. It’s no different than a store offering a coupon or perks for frequent shoppers.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to ban the consideration of race in college admissions has put pressure on institutions to end another controversial practice: preferences for children of alumni.

 

In Wisconsin, few colleges and universities consider “legacy” status in admissions decisions, according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel review. And because most Wisconsin schools accept far more students than they reject, it’s likely many legacy students would have gotten in regardless of their family’s history of attendance.

 

But there’s another way in which legacy can benefit already advantaged students: Some schools offer scholarships specifically for students with a family member who graduated from there. At least 13 Wisconsin institutions do, according to the news organization’s review of 28 school scholarship websites.

Theory will only take you so far

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a taste:

In theory, socialism should work. It is an economic system in which scarce resources are allocated by priority of need. The theory is that if everyone contributes according to their ability, and everybody consumes according to their need, then the society as a whole will achieve maximum efficiency and aggregate success, or, at least, aggregate satisfaction.

 

Socialism makes sense in theory, so why does it always fail in practice?

 

Socialism fails because it mistakes the fundamental nature of people. Socialism assumes that people are naturally altruistic and will act in good faith. In reality, altruism beyond one’s own family or community is a modern phenomenon. It has only been in recent decades, when food scarcity has abated (thanks to capitalism), that some people have lifted their eyes beyond their personal needs to care about the broader world. But even now, the vast majority of people are far more concerned about their personal self-interest and will behave accordingly.

 

So it is that in a socialist economy, people do not contribute according to their ability. They contribute as little as they must. And they do not consume according to their need. They consume as much as they can. To combat this, the system must be enforced by an ever more forceful central authority. The flawed, and often evil, humans who gravitate into the center of a socialist system tend to be those who are seeking to consume the most. The inevitable result is cruelty, cronyism, and collapse.

 

To preserve liberty in a political and economic sense is to not allow power to concentrate, because whenever power is concentrated, there will be cruel and corrupt people seeking to use that power for their own benefit. Our national founders fundamentally understood this, which is why they designed our federal government to divide and check power.

 

Every system of government is found along a continuum from complete decentralization of power to complete concentration of power. On one end we find anarchy. On the other end we find communism, monarchy, fascism, and other forms of totalitarianism. Socialism is the younger, more handsome, brother of communism while democracy is the older, less reckless, brother of anarchy. The United States has a republic, which seeks to protect individual liberties from the oppression from the majority (democracy) or the minority (totalitarianism).

 

No system is static. There are too many forces at play for it to be so. The tendency, in both economies and governments, is for power to concentrate. This is so because people of ill intent are pushing it in that direction for their own gain. As power concentrates, the progression accelerates until critical mass is reached, and destructive energy is released.

 

There is a reason why socialism is so often advocated by academics and opposed by those who have lived under socialism. Theory will only take you so far.

Separate but Equal?

This is a mess.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday left in place a lower court ruling that invalidated a speeding ticket against a Native American man in Tulsa, Oklahoma, because the city is located within the boundaries of an Indian reservation.

 

The justices rejected an emergency appeal by Tulsa to block the ruling while the legal case continues. The order is the latest consequence of the high court’s landmark 2020 decision that found that much of eastern Oklahoma, including Tulsa, remains an Indian reservation.

 

Justin Hooper, a citizen of the Choctaw Nation, was cited for speeding in 2018 by Tulsa police in a part of the city within the historic boundaries of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. He paid a $150 fine for the ticket, but filed a lawsuit after the Supreme Court’s ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma. He argued that the city did not have jurisdiction because his offense was committed by a Native American in Indian Country. A municipal court and a federal district court judge both sided with the city, but a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision.

 

There were no noted dissents among the justices Friday, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a short separate opinion, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, in which he said that Tulsa’s appeal raised an important question about whether the city can enforce municipal laws against Native Americans.

I’ve been in Tulsa a couple of times this year for various reasons. It’s a mess. In speaking with friends who live there, the Native Americans are flaunting laws and the police are powerless to prevent it. What is most noticeable are the vehicles that should not be on the road but have Reservation plates. But behind the scenes, it is impacting the dual healthcare systems, neighborhoods, property values, crime, and so much more.

UW Sees Dramatic Drop in “non-underrepresented students”

Well, that’s an interesting stat.

UW System data indicates drastic enrollment drops by “non-underrepresented” students. They’re defined as students who are white, international students, or those with family heritage in Asian countries well-represented in the student body—such as China, Korea, and Japan.

 

Enrollment by those students fell around 20%, from almost 160,000 in the fall of 2010 to just under 130,000 in the fall of 2022.

Well, let’s see… over the last decade or more, the UW system has been actively biasing their enrollment criteria to favor underrepresented students while telling your average white or Asian Wisconsin kid that they are not welcome. UW administrators have carved out “safe spaces” for underrepresented students under the premise that they are needed because white and Asian kids as threats. Is it any wonder that when you spend years telling a group of people that they are terrible bigots because of the color of their skin that they might choose to go elsewhere for an education?

Controversy as Marketing Tactic

One of our faithful readers pointed this out to me. The author of one of the books that is being challenged in West Bend campaigned for the three liberal board members who were elected in April.

@dashkaslater

Do you live in the #westbendschooldistrict in #Wisconsin ? You can defeat #bookbanning and support the #freedomtoread by #voting on April 4. #The57bus

♬ original sound – Dashka Slater

While not denying that this author is a radical leftist who wants to indoctrinate children to her beliefs, this is also a rather smart marketing tactic. There is almost an unlimited number of books that a school district can choose to put in front of kids. By stoking controversy, this author is creating a group of passionate adults who are demanding that schools buy HER book.

Smart, eh?

Immoral people act immorally in all things

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a sample:

The West Bend School District is in the news again for promoting adult material to minors, but that controversy, while important, ignores the elephant in the classroom. Let us first discuss books and appropriate material for minors.

 

[…]

 

In most contexts, adults allowing access to, much less showing, graphic sexual material to children would rightly be considered deviant or predatory — like a creepy guy showing porn to his 10-year-old neighbor. In West Bend, as in other communities, there is now a passionate group of adults who insist that access and advocacy of such materials for children in school is paramount and any opposition to such is akin to Goebbels burning books before the Berlin Opera House in 1933. Such bombastic parallelism is the mark of a soft mind and softer morals.

 

With a near infinite amount of material to make available to our children, our government schools are obligated to curate content to the values and customs of the majority of their constituents. San Francisco will have a different perspective than West Bend — or so one would think. With the availability of school choice, parents of any economic means can and should be diligent about putting their kids in environments where the other adults are teaching values contrary to their own. If the school will not support parents, then the parents are obligated to take action in the best interests of their children.

 

While sex and books attract the ire of the community in West Bend of late, left unremarked is how the school district continues to spend the community into oblivion with absolutely no restraint or respect for the taxpayers. Let us consider just four important numbers: 6,623. 5,972. $87.5 million. $108.7 million.

 

According to the West Bend School District, in 2018, the district had 6,623 students and spent a total of $87.58 million. In 2023, they had 5,972 students and budgeted spending a total of $108.7 million (final audited numbers of what they actually spent has not yet been published).

 

That is a 10% decrease in students; a 25% increase in total spending; and a whopping nearly 42% increase in spending per pupil in just five years. During the period of a 10% student decline, spending on staff and on facilities increased. There has been no perceptible effort to reduce spending in proportion to the reduction in the number of students they serve.

Some Homeless People Reject Free Housing

It’s the lifestyle they like and they don’t want the rules.

Bass said she has been told that one reason for the departures is dissatisfaction with the rules in place at the program’s hotels and motels. At the L.A. Grand Hotel, which is in downtown Los Angeles and currently being used as temporary homeless housing, residents have been prohibited from having guests in their rooms, she said.

 

Others have left Inside Safe because of struggles with addiction or deteriorating mental health, Bass said.

Nazis in Watertown?

In what appears to have been an attempt by the FBI or ANTIFA (or some such group) to generate controversy and distract from the fact that there were kids attending a highly-sexualized drag show in a park, a bunch of dudes in khaki pants and black face coverings, showed up in Watertown chanting and waving Nazi flags. The response has been interesting.

First, let’s try to figure out why a photojournalist, from New York just happened to be in little Watertown, WI to stumble upon a bunch of alleged Nazis protesting a drag show. Odd, eh? Her video shows her staying at a hotel, so it doesn’t look like she was visiting family or anything. Then she was back in New York within 24 hours. Strange, eh?

Putting that aside, the reaction has been telling. People’s reactions fell into two basic camps. Leftist activists immediately jumped on the videos decrying Nazis and painting the picture that only Nazis would oppose drag shows in front of kids. This was the intended reaction of the alleged Nazis staging the event. Almost to a person, Righties immediately identified the alleged Nazis as fake – FBI or some leftist group – pretending to be Nazis in order to give Leftists an excuse to have reaction #1 above.

What’s the truth? I think that the alleged Nazis were fake. We have seen Nazi protests for my entire lifetime and before. They tend to be pretty proud of their bigotry and don’t mind showing their faces. They also don’t usually wear slacks, but they DO usually have swastika flags that are replicas from the Third Reich – not goofy black and white versions. So yes… this seems staged and just in time for the runup to a presidential election.

Am I cynical? You bet I am. Experience will do that to you.

 

s

Wisconsin School District Sued Over Hiding Actions

If they are afraid to tell the parents what they said, they why are they saying it to the kids? The fact that they explicitly said that it had to be verbal is a clear effort to keep it out of the reach of public records requests. And hiding behind a BS “investigation” is another well-worn tactic of governments to hide what they are doing. If there actually was an investigation, it would take all of about 15 minutes to investigate this.

And, separate from the issue of the content and children, this is another case of a meeting that could have been an email.

In June, Eau Claire Area School District [ECASD] students were allegedly “required” to report to a classroom where they found their orchestra teacher Jacob Puccio, a school counselor, and the ECASD Diversity, Equity and Inclusion director Dang Yang.

Students were allegedly told that Puccio would be undergoing a gender transition from male to female from a “scripted statement” that was read to several classrooms of elementary and high school music students throughout ECASD.

Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) alleges that the statement was crafted by ECASD to “ensure that students received information in a particular way.” Furthermore, WILL claims that parents are still not aware of what was read to students and want to know the details.

[…]

According to an email obtained by Fox News Digital, McCausland responded saying, “I briefly talked with and forwarded your email on to Dang Yang (the ECASD Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion); the district specified that the script I read on Monday needed to be a verbal presentation only and was not to be shared electronically. He should give you the info you need, but let me know if you need anything else. Thanks – [redacted] had a fantastic first year here in band, hope you all enjoy your summer!”

[…]

The complaint filed by WILL states that a Wisconsin statute requires that public entities comply with their duties “as soon as practicable and without delay” and that “no justification exists” for withholding the statement that was read to students.

“The District withheld the requested record despite it’s not being subject to any statutory or common-law exemption to the public records law. The District is therefore required by law to produce the record,” the complaint states.

Oppenheimer Review

I saw Oppenheimer today and thought it was a truly excellent movie. As is always the case when trying to cover so much in the confines of a movie, it left out some things and consolidated others, but it was very well done.

The treatment of the nuanced and weighty issues of pacifism, communism, MCCarthyism (go Wisconsin!), and the horrors of war was superb. Interlaced with those issues were the story lines of love, infidelity, bureaucracy, egotism, interpersonal conflicts, political swampiness, revenge, aging, bigotry, and massive accomplishment. It dealt thoughtfully with some of the controversial issues like whether or not we should have dropped the bomb, the Red Scare, and the nuclear arms race.

Go see it. It’s worth the three hours.

AI Mimics Dead Loved Ones

No. It strikes me that people would be far better off working through their grief than pretending that their loved one is alive through a bot. Death is the natural end of us all and it is unhealthy to pretend that it doesn’t exist.

What does the future of grief and loss look like? An AI company called You, Only Virtual is creating chatbots modeled after deceased loved ones, with its founder, Justin Harrison, telling “Good Morning America” that he hopes people won’t have to feel grief at all.

 

You, Only Virtual scans text messages, emails and phone calls shared between an individual and the deceased person to create a chatbot that composes original written or audio responses mimicking the deceased person’s voice and modeling the relationship and rapport that the two shared in life.

The company, founded in 2020, hopes to offer a video-chat option later this year, “and ultimately provide augmented-reality that allows for interaction with a three-dimensional projection,” GMA reported.

Texas A&M President Resigns

Huzzah to my fellow former students for trying to maintain standards of equality, merit, and excellence. Like every other large public university, Texas A&M is riddled with Marxists and leftist ideology, but the student body and the former students trend conservative and are trying to maintain the university’s integrity and identity amidst the onslaught.

The head of Texas A&M University has suddenly left her role amid “negative press” surrounding the hiring of a journalism professor.

President Katherine Banks said she took responsibility for the “flawed hiring process” involving former New York Times editor Kathleen McElroy.

 

[…]

 

Dr McElroy, a 20-year veteran of The New York Times, has previously conducted research on the role race plays in the media.

 

Texas A&M had originally hired her on a tenured track to revive the school’s journalism programme, which was later changed to a five-year and ultimately a one-year offer. She declined the offer.

 

The initial move to hire her was reportedly met with criticism from some staff members and members of the school’s alumni network.

 

In a resignation letter, Dr Banks said that “negative press” over Dr McElroy’s job had “become a distraction” at Texas A&M, which has a student body of about 70,000.

 

“The recent challenges regarding Dr McElroy have made it clear to me that I must retire immediately,” she wrote.

university statement added that Dr Banks suggested to colleagues Dr McElroy had fallen victim to “anti-woke hysteria” and “outside interference” in the hiring process.

 

[…]

In the case of Dr McElroy, the Rudder Association – a collection of current and former Texas A&M students and staff – said it had concerns that, in hiring Dr McElroy, the university was not embracing “egalitarian and merit-based traditions” and was instead turning towards the “divisive ideology of identity politics”. It objected to claims that alumni, donors and taxpayers constitute “outside influence”.

I will say that I liked a lot of the work that Dr. Banks had done for the engineering college and some other things in her short tenure. But I understand that she was not well liked by the students, the former students, or much of the staff.

A long stride on the path of racial equality

Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week.

In the United States Supreme Court’s landmark ruling Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College, the court prohibited universities from discriminating against prospective students because of their race. While the ruling is specific to racial discrimination by universities, it has much broader implications.

 

The brilliant Justice Clarence Thomas revealed the broad consequences of the ruling in his concurring opinion when he definitively wrote, “the Fourteenth Amendment outlaws government-sanctioned racial discrimination of all types.” In the majority opinion of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts definitively stated that, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

 

It does not get any clearer than that. Discrimination in favor of one race consequently discriminates to the detriment of another race. Equality can only exist when we actually treat people equally.

 

For this reason, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, Wisconsin’s most important private organization in defense of the Constitution, launched the “Equality for All Agenda,” in which they are calling for the repeal of all race-based laws and programs. WILL’s accompanying report highlights several examples of how various Wisconsin governments discriminate on the basis of race.

 

For example, the state of Wisconsin’s Ben R. Lawton Minority Undergraduate Grant Program gives grants to anyone who is a black American, American Indian, Hispanic, or people who hail from Laos, Vietnam, or Cambodia. This grant program specifically excludes white Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, Persian Americans, Indian Americans, non-Hispanic South American Americans, and all of the other races that make up the kaleidoscope of the American experience. The grant program is inherently racist.

 

In a throwback to the era of “separate but equal,” the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers racially segregated student housing, “to provide a living experience focused on supporting students and allies who self-identify within the Black diaspora.”

 

The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development launched the New Workforce Equity Grant program after the pandemic. These grants are awarded companies in southeastern Wisconsin that create training programs for underserved communities, which are defined as, “Black, Indigenous, and people of color, women.”

 

The University of Wisconsin’s School of Medicine gives grants to programs that, “focus on underserved and marginalized communities, including but not limited to, Asian, Black, Hispanic, Native American, rural, and low-income communities.” One can focus on underserved communities without segregating them into racial categories. Poverty, for example, affects all races.

 

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation runs a Diverse Business Development Program that only provides support to, “minority-, woman-, LGBT and veteran-owned businesses.” Once again, the program specifically discriminates on the basis of race and other factors that have nothing to do with the worthiness of the business.

 

The list goes on. The fact is that racial discrimination permeates our governments at every level. From the state of Wisconsin to our local government school districts, people of favored races are granted preferential treatment, opportunities, and money while people of disfavored races are excluded from these opportunities. This kind of racial discrimination was intolerable in 1860. It was intolerable in 1960. It is intolerable in 2023.

 

As Justice Thomas so eloquently put it in his concurring opinion, “the solution announced in the second founding (his reference is to the transformative 14th Amendment written after the Civil War) is incorporated in our Constitution: that we are all equal, and should be treated equally before the law without regard to our race. Only that promise can allow us to look past our differing skin colors and identities and see each other for what we truly are: individuals with unique thoughts, perspectives, and goals, but with equal dignity and equal rights under the law.”

 

Our nation has had a long road to racial equality. We have a long way yet to go. The Supreme Court’s ruling is a long stride in the right direction. Now it is up to all of us to see that the principles announced in our Declaration of Independence, written into the Constitution in the 14th Amendment, and affirmed in Students v. Harvard, are upheld by our government, our businesses, and ourselves.

A long stride on the path of racial equality

My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a part:

In the majority opinion of the court, Chief Justice John Roberts definitively stated that, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

 

It does not get any clearer than that. Discrimination in favor of one race consequently discriminates to the detriment of another race. Equality can only exist when we actually treat people equally.

 

For this reason, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, Wisconsin’s most important private organization in defense of the Constitution, launched the “Equality for All Agenda,” in which they are calling for the repeal of all race-based laws and programs. WILL’s accompanying report highlights several examples of how various Wisconsin governments discriminate on the basis of race.

 

[…]

 

The list goes on. The fact is that racial discrimination permeates our governments at every level. From the state of Wisconsin to our local government school districts, people of favored races are granted preferential treatment, opportunities, and money while people of disfavored races are excluded from these opportunities. This kind of racial discrimination was intolerable in 1860. It was intolerable in 1960. It is intolerable in 2023.

 

As Justice Thomas so eloquently put it in his concurring opinion, “the solution announced in the second founding (his reference is to the transformative 14th Amendment written after the Civil War) is incorporated in our Constitution: that we are all equal, and should be treated equally before the law without regard to our race. Only that promise can allow us to look past our differing skin colors and identities and see each other for what we truly are: individuals with unique thoughts, perspectives, and goals, but with equal dignity and equal rights under the law.”

 

Our nation has had a long road to racial equality. We have a long way yet to go. The Supreme Court’s ruling is a long stride in the right direction. Now it is up to all of us to see that the principles announced in our Declaration of Independence, written into the Constitution in the 14th Amendment, and affirmed in Students v. Harvard, are upheld by our government, our businesses, and ourselves.

Canada Legalizes Euthanizing the Mentally Ill

It’s a death cult, and it’s unconscionable.

An expansion of the criteria for medically assisted death that comes into force in March 2024 will allow Canadians like Pauli, whose sole underlying condition is mental illness, to choose medically assisted death.

Canada legalized assisted death in 2016 for people with terminal illness and expanded it in 2021 to people with incurable, but not terminal, conditions. The legal changes were precipitated by court rulings that struck down prohibitions on helping people to die.

 

The new mental health provision will make Canada one of the most expansive countries in the world when it comes to medical assistance in dying (MAID), according to an expert panel report to Canada’s parliament.

Killing a City

While the story blames the pandemic, we know it is much more than that when it comes to cities like San Francisco. Permissive vagrant and drug policies, lack of police enforcement, prioritizing the homeless over the people who pay taxes, the list goes on.

Data bears out that San Francisco’s downtown is having a harder time than most. A study of 63 North American downtowns by the University of Toronto ranked the city dead last in a return to pre-pandemic activity, garnering only 32% of its 2019 traffic.

 

Hotel revenues are stuck at 73% of pre-pandemic levels, weekly office attendance remains below 50% and commuter rail travel to downtown is at 33%, according to a recent economic report by the city.

 

Office vacancy rates in San Francisco were 24.8% in the first quarter, more than five times higher than pre-pandemic levels and well above the average rate of 18.5% for the nation’s top 10 cities, according to CBRE, a commercial real estate services company.

 

Why? San Francisco relied heavily on international tourism and its tech workforce, both of which disappeared during the pandemic.

 

But other major cities including Portland and Seattle, which also rely on tech workers, are struggling with similar declines, according to the downtown recovery study, which used anonymized mobile phone data to analyze downtown activity patterns from before the pandemic and between March and May of this year.

I’ve gone to San Francisco two to six times a year for the past decade or so. In fact, I was in San Francisco and went to a basketball game right as the pandemic began. It was my last business trip for a while. While the city had its bums and nasty areas, it was a vibrant, fun city. It was also relatively safe – as far as cities go. I once took a run from Fisherman’s Wharf, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and back through the city. I never felt any less safe than any other large city. I usually stayed in the financial district or by the wharf because I liked the restaurants.

I was in San Fran again a few weeks ago. I stayed two nights in Fisherman’s Wharf. The place was a ghost town and one of my colleagues had his luggage stolen from his rental car in a smash-and-grab. When he returned the car, they said that they have difficulty maintaining inventory because the cars come back with smashed windows so often. I went for a short walk and had to avoid bums and feces. It was gross and while I wasn’t threatened, the glares made me lament that I wasn’t carrying a weapon. I cut my walk short.

It’s a shame, but the city isn’t dying. It’s being killed.

Suspected Tylenol Terrorist Dies

He sparked a half century of annoyed people with headaches.

The suspect in the 1982 Tylenol poisonings that killed seven people in the Chicago area, triggered a nationwide panic, and led to an overhaul in the safety of over-the-counter medication packaging, has died, police said on Monday.

 

Officers, firefighters and EMTs responding to a report of an unresponsive person at about 4 p.m. Sunday found James W. Lewis dead in his Cambridge, Massachusetts, home, Cambridge Police Superintendent Frederick Cabral said in a statement. He was 76, police said.

 

“Following an investigation, Lewis’ death was determined to be not suspicious,” the statement says.

 

No one was ever charged in the deaths of seven people who took the over-the-counter painkillers laced with cyanide. Lewis served more than 12 years in prison for sending an extortion note to manufacturer Johnson & Johnson, demanding $1 million to “stop the killing.” He and his wife moved to Massachusetts in 1995 following his release. Listed numbers for his wife were not in service.

When Lewis was arrested in New York City in 1982 after a nationwide manhunt, he gave investigators a detailed account of how the killer might have operated. Lewis later admitted sending the letter and demanding the money, but he said he never intended to collect it. He said he wanted to embarrass his wife’s former employer by having the money sent to the employer’s bank account.

 

Lewis, who had a history of trouble with the law, always denied any role in the Tylenol deaths, but remained a suspect and in 2010 gave DNA samples to the FBI. He even created a website in which he said he was framed. Although the couple lived briefly in Chicago in the early 1980s, Lewis said they were in New York City at the time of the poisonings.

Archives

Categories

Pin It on Pinterest