Gina Raimondo Going To China

 americansingpac.org

US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo will be going to Beijing and maybe Shanghai in the immediate future to talk over the "rules-based order" and trade issues with the godless Commies. The 52 year-old former governor of Rhode Island is certainly a stealth candidate for the Democrats in the next US presidential election, should the current POTUS not run for re-election. Raimondo is the "designated survivor", an official that doesn't attend events that include the president, assuring a continuity of government should the unthinkable occur. Being in this position, among other things, makes her a significant figure in the Democratic Party.

A Harvard Law School grad, she was also considered for Secretary of Health and Human Services and Secretary of the Treasury during the last election campaign. She checks all the boxes for almost any position in the upper reaches of the federal menagerie, including president, except for her ethnicity. The staggering mediocrity of the current vice president enhances Raimondo's chances.

Raimondo is married, with two children, to veteran McKinsey Consulting firm operative Andrew Moffit.

Raimondo update:  The US Commerce Secretary made the trip to Shanghai. While she may have had discussions with important Chinese figures, the highlight of the trip was a stop at Disneyland Shanghai, an American amusement park that has invaded the Celestial Kingdom. It might be significant that an American version of "virtual reality" would be more or less unique in nuts and bolts China.

 

youitube.com 

What does it mean when the Chinese elite wear 19th century British business suits as well as American women? The Commerce Secretary's only deviation from masculine attire is the sensible lack of a tie and feminine shoes. Girls just wanna be guys.

More on the fashion subject:  The SCMP reports on  Julie Pelipas, a journalist who has created "Bettter", a company that makes expensive women's clothes from overstocked menswear. It looks like the adoption of male clothing by women is moving right along. 

Paul Feyerabend

 

pkfeyerabend.com 

Paul K. Feyerabend  1924-1994

I say that Auschwitz is an extreme manifestation of an attitude that still thrives in our midst. It shows itself in the treatment of minorities in industrial democracies; in education, education to a humanitarian point of view included, which most of the time consists in turning wonderful young people into colorless and self-righteous copies of their teachers; it becomes manifest in the nuclear threat, the constant increase in the number and power of nuclear weapons and the readiness of some so-called patriots to start a war compared with which the holocaust will shrink into insignificance. It shows itself in the killing of nature and of "primitive" cultures with never a thought spent on those thus deprived of meaning of their lives; in the colossal conceit of our intellectuals, their belief that they know precisely what humanity needs and their endless efforts to recreate people in their own sorry image; in the infantile megalomania of some of our physicians who blackmail their patients with fear, mutilate them and then persecute them with large bills; in the lack of feeling of many so-called searchers for truth who systematically torture animals, study their discomfort and receive prizes for their cruelty. As far as I am concerned there exists no difference between the henchmen of Auschwitz and these "benefactors of mankind".

Farewell To Reason, Paul K. Feyerabend, Verso, London, 1987 p. 313. 

More Gopher Government-Academia Hanky-Panky

The University of Minnesota has filled the position of executive director of government and community relations with Melisa Lopez-Franzen, one-time Democratic Farmer-Labor State Senator and head of the Senate Minority. The lady declined to run for re-election less than a year ago after a re-districting issue. She basically replaces J.D. Burton, who left to take a similar position at Washington Univ. in Missouri. She was paid $67,550 annually in her Senate spot. Engaging former government colleagues and others on behalf of the UofM will push her salary up to $250,000 per year.

 melisafranzen.com 

Originally from Puerto Rico, Lopez-Franzen has traveled the familiar path to a position in high-powered academia, a political science degree from the UofM, a law degree from St. Paul's Hamline University, and in this case an elected interval in the Minnesota Senate. A seemingly required tenure at retailer Target Corporation was also part of her CV, as is founder and boss of pr firm New Publica.

Her husband is Nathan Franzen, a vice-president of development at National Grid Renewables, a regional operation involved in wind, solar and other forms of anti-fossil fuel alternatives.  He's also an alumnus of the UofM and Hamline.

Since the UofM is a member of the American Association of Universities, Lopez-Franzen's new job will include attempting to convince government and private interests to finance research on various topics, sure to include fighting climate change, renewable energy, epidemic diseases and other problems actuellement.

Getting Rid of an Urban Freeway, Turning Back an Urban Clock

A thirteen mile stretch of Interstate I-94 connects the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. According to the Minnesota Department of Transportation I-94 traffic on an ordinary weekday will average about 160,000 vehicles going east and west under Snelling Ave.

Built between 1956 and 1968, the limited-access highway was installed in a direct line between the two downtowns and consequently required the acquisition and demolition of the homes and commercial property in its path. This has been the case with every such project in the history of the Interstate Highway System. The difference in this instance, if there is one, is that the new highway obliterated a mostly African-American St. Paul neighborhood called Rondo.

Other road projects in Minnesota have also changed the scenery and demographics of urban areas. A freeway built through Duluth erased much of the business area in the city's heart. A new bridge and highway over the St. Croix River eliminates an annoying trip through Stillwater for commuters living in parts of western Wisconsin. The business district of South St. Paul no longer exists since concrete now covers it. All three of these projects were limited access highway installations meant to speed traffic through the city. 

In rural America interstate highways connect major cities and pass by small towns. They also separate rural communities by pavement rivers with bridges miles apart. Farmers that once could walk over to the neighbor's place to visit must now make a 40 mile round trip car journey, which they no longer do. Little study has been done of this social negative and how it has affected rural culture.

Nobody seems to be talking about tearing these  freeways up and replacing them with pedestrian malls or the old two-lane blacktop of the past.

What's different about this busy stretch of I-94? It's that it was once a neighborhood of African-Americans. The effort to undo the freeway is being touted as a way to re-establish such a neighborhood after an interval of over 50 years. Many of the former residents have passed away or moved to a near-by area or across the country. Evidently the Rondo organization wishes to create a new and modern segregated society on top of the freeway based on an unpleasant historical situation. Perhaps the Dakota indigenous natives would have a similar desire but there's no discussion of it and certainly no accommodation by the Department of Transportation to even discuss the matter.

In the late 19th century St. Paul, like many other western US cities taking advantage of the boom in transportation and manufacturing, demolished its log cabins and tar paper shacks and replaced them with huge granite-clad structures. Nobody is suggesting that those buildings be bulldozed and replaced with the hovels that originally housed the residents and businesses of an earlier age.

Another participant in the process is Our Streets Mpls.,  a group of pie-in-the sky liberal college grads that don't live in what was once the Rondo neighborhood. The formation of an organization like this is made possible by social media, where a bad idea can spread like an invasion of locusts almost overnight. The NGO pressure groups seem to have completely ignored the fact that initiation of this project would commit to the spending of billions of dollars of public funds that could be better spent on other, more practical and beneficial projects. There are complaints about similar situations elsewhere.

The Twin City area is already in the throes of a financial disaster because of the Metropolitan Council's failed Southwest Rail project, bedeviled by enormous cost over runs and the abbreviated rail service to St. Cloud.  But these local affairs don't reflect similar situations over the country, such as the train to nowhere in California. 

While engineering and geological factors are an issue in some of these projects, the greater challenge has become the creation and manipulation of their funding. It might make more sense to convert existing and future freeways to toll roads, already common in many jurisdictions. But Yankees seem to think that the financial wizards that perch at the top of the country's totem pole of income earners can somehow arrange the completion of jillion dollar fantasies at little cost to the general public or themselves. The freeway to disaster is wide open for business.

 

 

 

Direct Air Capture. The Answer For Global Warming?

The Biden regime is betting much of their money, which once belonged to the American public, on an experimental method of withdrawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and hiding it away someplace forever or until it can be utilized. This is according to the Verge, a subsidiary of progressive webzine Vox.

In addition to the fact that this has never been done on a scale needed to change the make-up of the atmosphere and that the projected cost of the process is estimated to be over $600 for each ton of CO2 extracted. 

The Verge says:

"The first two DAC hubs to win funding from the DOE are each supposed to eventually capture at least 1 million metric tons of CO2 a year. Together, the emissions they capture annually would be roughly equivalent to taking 445,000 gas-guzzling cars off the road, according to the DOE. In the process, the effort is expected to create 4,800 jobs in Texas and Louisiana."

Two points: Capturing 2 million metric tons of CO2, if it's even possible, at projected prices would cost $1.2 billion annually. No one even knows for sure if that would have any effect on the climate. Is that a good value? 

Second, the EPA has been holding a hammer over the auto industry for years demanding increased efficiency and gas mileage for automobiles. They aren't the so-called "gas guzzlers" of the '60s. (The alliteration is hard to dispense with.) Obviously if the sentence is to make any sense, the 445,000 powered by internal combustion engines will need to be replaced by even more EVs, needed to accommodate current American drivers and the battalions of asylum-seekers wading across the Rio Grande and boarding buses for NYC. No doubt there will be a federal program to supply the immigrants with subsidized EVs or they won't be able to replace American workers.

Construction of DAC plants will require ancillary infrastructure that will also be $billion+, pipelines, pumps, injection facilities and sequestration caverns.

 

 pemedianetwork.com

This is a photo purporting to be that of a DAC facility being built now in the Permian Basin that will liquefy over a million metric tons of CO2 beginning some time in late 2024. Don't hold your breath. 

The Likelihood of Great Calamities

Sailors can not be too wakeful and cautious, when keeping their night look-outs; though, as I well know, they too often suffer themselves to become negligent, and nod. And this is of those accidents at sea; and many of them, perhaps, have been in ships that have suffered from them; yet, when you find yourself sailing along on the ocean at night, without having seen a sail for weeks and weeks, it is hard for you to realize that any are near. Then, if they are near, it seems almost incredible that on the broad, boundless sea, which washes Greenland at one end of the world, and the Falkland Islands at the other, that any one vessel upon such a vast highway, should come into close contact with another. But the likelihood of great calamities occurring, seldom obtrudes upon the minds of ignorant men, such as sailors generally are; for the things which wise people know, anticipate, and guard against, the ignorant can only become acquainted with, by meeting them face to face. And even when experience has taught them, the lesson only serves for that day; inasmuch as the foolish in prosperity are infidels to the possibility of adversity; they see the sun in heaven, and believe it to be far too bright ever to set. 

 

 tuobiographo.it 

And even, as suddenly as the bravest and fleetest of ships, while careering in pride of canvas over the sea, have been struck, as by lightning, and quenched out of sight; even so do some lordly men, with all their plans and prospects gallantly trimmed to the fair, rushing breeze of life, and with no thought of death and disaster, suddenly encounter a shock unforeseen, and go down, foundering, into death.

 

Redburn, His First Voyage, Herman Melville, 1849.

  

The Nancy Pelosi Federal Building

 

 

 freerepublic.com

 

When did naming public buildings after living politicians become the thing to do? This incredibly ugly structure at 90 7th Street in San Francisco has been named after one-time and possible future Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. The latest news indicates that employees working in the building have been advised to work from home due to the increasing level of crime in the city. 

The naming of a government asset after a living politician is actually a fairly common practice. Sen. Robert Byrd's name was attached to over 30 different roads and buildings while he was a senator from West Virginia. 

 

 waterstrainingcenter.org 

California representative Maxine Waters has an "employment preparation center" at 10925 S Central Ave, Los Angeles, bearing her name.

 

 abccolumbia.com 

A golf center in Columbia, South Carolina has been named after Democratic Senator James E. Clyburn.

There are many other examples. It's nice to see that these public servants will have left concrete evidence of their service to their constituents.  

 

US Steel Sliding Into Economic Irrelavance?

US Steel, founded in 1901 and one of the foremost corporations in United States history is now the target of a buy-out by other corporations. The motive is seen to be a dismantling of the firm and sale of some of its parts. Esmark has offered $35 per share for the company, Cleveland-Cliffs a similar amount with a share included. So far US Steel hasn't bitten.

Owner of mills in various locations across the country and of the mines producing the ore and coke needed to supply them, US Steel has been a symbol of American industrial power throughout the twentieth century. Times have changed.

The market capitalization of US Steel is $6.98 billion. That's the number of shares outstanding multiplied by the share price. In a world where billions are just another number, that doesn't seem like a lot for a company that makes the materials needed for a host of industrial and consumer products. It isn't. It's the 4th largest steel company in the US and the 17th in the world.

 

researchgate.net

In fact, as US companies go, it's tiny. On the basis of market cap, Amazon is the 5th largest company on earth with a figure of $1.42 trillion, with a market cap 200 times that of US Steel. And Amazon doesn't actually manufacture anything. It's a techno-version of 19th century phenomenon Montgomery Ward.

Another big operation that doesn't really make anything is Meta, market cap $776 billion. Visa, an outfit that simply shuffles money, comes in at $504 billion. 

Way down the list, Musk's X, apparently doomed to always be known as "the company formerly called Twitter", has a current market cap of $41.09 billion.

In what's possibly a negative omen, US Steel ranks below the 2500 mark in world companies. An indication of the direction the US economy has taken in the last few years.  

Cow Given Bad Name

A cow entered in the dairy competition at the Wisconsin State Fair in West Allis had a name that's unacceptable and the exhibitor and the cow itself were banished from the fairgrounds. The episode brings up some interesting issues.

What's the exact process in a word becoming a slur? A certain number of people must use and understand the word's slur characteristic in order for it to be a slur. How many would that be? Some words are argot, used within specific groups and, by design, meaningless to outsiders. Descendants of Sicilian mafioso in the eastern US referred to the old timers as "mustache petes". Maybe it would have been painful to call one of those fellows by that name but it's no longer in use and only those referred to ever cared anyway.

Anglo-Canadians called their French-speaking neighbors "frogs", US people called native Americans "redskins", even using the name for an NFL team until just recently. After making the change to "Commanders" team management has had to deal with outrage on the part of a native group that's upset with being ignored. The Florida State University athletic teams are allowed to be called the Seminoles because the school has paid them for that right.

  

breitbart.com

A tangled and acrimonious process resulted in the University of North Dakota athletic teams dumping the "Fighting Sioux" moniker in favor of the "Fighting Hawks." Oddly, no individual Dakota native arranged an agreement to serve as a personal Sioux with his own likeness.

The Edmonton team in the Canadian Football League is no longer known as the Eskimos, they're the Elks now. In that particular case the ethnic nickname doesn't seem to fall into the category of a slur, but the residents from north of the Arctic Circle are touchy about the name though it isn't part of their own language, either.

How long does a slur remain verboten after it falls into general disuse because it became a slur? It might take awhile for us to find out. Just the same, don't give your cow a name that might get her kicked off of the fair grounds. 

 

The History of Inflation in the US

 

 

  american enterprise institute

From the American Revolution until shortly before WWI there was literally no inflation in the US monetary system. Since the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 there has been an inflation of 3000%.

Carbon Capture

 

biofuelsdigest.com

Aside from the fact that using agricultural land to produce motor fuel rather than food has moral implications, capturing and sequestering carbon from ethanol production is nonsense on stilts.

Update: The North Dakota Public Service Commission has voted unanimously to deny a permit for the construction of a pipeline through the state intended to carry liquid CO2 from 32 ethanol plants in the Midwest to an underground storage site west of Bismarck.  None of the other states involved have granted permits for the $5 billion project. Minnesota has voted to study the project.

There are big arguments taking place in other states as well. Those lobbying for the pipeline complex are professional politicians looking to stick their thumb in the public financial pie. Their justification is that failure to sequester ethanol produced CO2 may lead to the closure of the plants and a decrease in the corn crop that results in less income for Iowa and Nebraska farmers. Like the many acres devoted now to corn for ethanol would be returned to pre-historic prairie. If less corn were to be planted then soy beans would simply take its place.

The Intersection of Government and Academia

The large, land grant University of Minnesota has just hired a new Vice President for University Services. She is Alice Roberts-Davis, who has come over from a similar position at the State of Minnesota, where she was the Commissioner of the Department of Administration. 

 

Image by Photo courtesy of Alice Roberts-Davis

As one might expect, Roberts-Davis has something that's increasingly required for any senior bureaucrat no matter what their duties might be, a law degree. 

Her movement from government to academia, even in the administrative sense, might well have been made easier by the fact that her new boss at the U, Myron Frans, was also her old boss at the state. This is a frequent path for government figures. Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm slid over to Cal-Berkeley, and then became the Secretary of the Department of Energy when the Biden-Harris regime took power. It might be expected that at some time in the future Roberts-Davis will be needed to fulfill some state function and she will be available just 8 miles west of the capitol.

There's another interesting aspect to the biography of Roberts-Davis. Before her move to the Minnesota state administration she had a similar position with big box retailer Target corporation. She was a leader in the retailer's failed expansion to Canada between 2011 and 2015, her last year with the company. The lady now occupies a significant position at one of the most prominent educational institutions in the country. Shouldn't the taxpayers responsible for her salary have some knowledge of her successes and failures? Her hiring doesn't seem to have generated any questions from an obsequious and incurious local press corps. But it's also obvious that the media is the third part of the triumvirate that includes academia and the government. That's the way it all works.

 

   

Climate Change And Democracy, Courtesy Of David Brooks

New York Times writer and east coast pseudo-intellectual David Brooks has this to say about climate change on "PBS News Hour":   

 “I’m old enough to go back to John McCain and Lindsey Graham 20 years ago, who supported — who proposed a big climate change bill. Back then, you had Republicans and Democrats both with climate change proposals. Back then, there was about a 20-point gap between Democratic views of climate change and Republican. Now, it’s a 50-point gap. And so, why is that? Well, one, everything’s more polarized. Two, Republicans are more manufacturing than they used to be. And, three, and I think most important, it’s just become a sign of political machismo that whatever polite opinion — if polite opinion says A, then we say Z. And so, drill, baby drill, is a way to offend the elites.”

He continued, “And the weird thing is, that, if you look at a bunch of other numbers — and I looked at some Pew data — three-quarters of Americans support global climate change treaties, 69% think we should be carbon-neutral, 66% support government subsidies for wind and solar. So, the Republicans who have taken this extreme position are not only, in my view, going against the science. They’re going against pretty large majorities on a bunch of these sub-issues.”

 

 fair.org

According to Brooks, if a majority of Americans have positive opinions about climate change it's time to do something about it. "Pretty large majorities" should be  the index on fighting climate change, it there even is such a thing, not falsifiable scientific research. It's interesting that Brooks casts the argument as one that can be sectioned into two political views. The Democrats want to save planet earth, the Republicans wish to destroy it. 

He mentions "going against the science". What's that supposed to mean? Only a few highly-specialized individuals have even a rudimental knowledge of climate science. Many of these scientists, including a Nobel prize-winning physicist, feel that the AGW existential threat is fantastically overblown.

In Yankee Land the democratic tradition of selecting leaders by a vote extends to decisions about scientific and economic matters. The US Federal Reserve admits that it doesn't know for sure if any of its policies are going to actually produce the results desired. Yet, they are allowed to experiment with the fortunes and lives of people to whom they have no particular allegiance. The very universal ignorance of the general population and its leaders has allowed charlatans to propose and conduct schemes that are in the best tradition of entrepreneurial capitalism, making a lot of money. This is the basis of solar power, CO2 sequestration, wind turbines and what will eventually add up to trillions of dollars in wasted money in futile efforts to create a world-wide climate where it's always 74F and it always rains 30 inches a year.

If the Pew survey majorities are in favor of international climate treaties, a carbon neutral economy and government subsidies for wind and solar power that must mean that common consumer products, clothes dryers, for instance, are being sent to recycling centers and sales for them have dropped dramatically. It's probably not the case, however.

"Drill baby, drill" doesn't offend the elites. It's impossible to offend them. It merely reinforces their opinion that what they believe is the truth.    

Net Zero By 2050

Princeton University's "The Report" goes like this:

 This Net Zero America study aims to inform and ground political, business, and societal conversations regarding what it would take for the U.S. to achieve an economy-wide target of net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050. Achieving this goal, i.e. building an economy that emits no more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than are permanently removed and stored each year, is essential to halt the buildup of climate-warming gases in the atmosphere and avert costly damages from climate change. A growing number of pledges are being made by major corporations, municipalities, states, and national governments to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 or sooner. This study provides granular guidance on what getting to net-zero really requires and on the actions needed to translate these pledges into tangible progress.

The Net Zero America program resembles nothing so much as the "5 year" plans developed by communist countries. Now the Russians have a plan for the future:  

  Addressing scientists from Russia and other countries including India, Australia, France and Germany, Putin declared an ambitious plan to transform his nation into a data-driven economy by 2030, in which quantum-powered computers, communication networks, sensors and satellites would play important roles in the country’s digital infrastructure.

The Soviet predecessor of the current Russian state issued its first 5 year plan in 1928. In many ways it was a success but capitalists have always pointed out that central planning was hamstrung by a lack of reliable statistical  information for making economic decisions. A total of 12 five year plans were made, ending with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. Some were accomplished, some were not.

The climate plans of the West seem to have a better grasp of the science involved but there's no real agreement about that among qualified climate specialists. The economic issues are even more divisive. Spending what amounts to trillions of dollars to perhaps limit planetary warmth to less than 2 degrees Centigrade is a steep price to pay for a dubious benefit if it is possible at all. 

Additionally, the time line of the plan means that those most central to its imposition will likely no longer be alive to observe or take responsibility for success or failure, except perhaps Greta Thunberg.