(CNN)The Florida State Board of Education has sent an order to Broward and Alachua counties’ school board officials stating that they have 48 hours to comply with the state’s wishes to allow an opt-out option for masks or the state will begin withholding funds, according to copies of the orders shown to CNN.
Month: August 2021
People Want Open Schools
The framing of this story is very, very slanted. Here’s the headline:
Many Wisconsin School Boards, Overwhelmed By 18 Months Of Community Pushback, Aren’t Taking Up Mask Issue
One could also say, “Schools Boards Respond to Community Demands to Not Require Masks for Kids.” But no… when people push back on liberal initiatives or the nanny state, the story is framed as if those who oppose such things are radicals. Just notice the word choices:
School board members around the state who supported phased returns to the classroom and disease mitigation efforts like masks and social distancing have faced vitriolic school board meetings, recall attempts, election challenges and threats over the past 18 months.
Now, as COVID-19 is again surging around the state and hitting kids harder, many boards aren’t putting any mask requirements or precautions into place, to the distress of some parents who are worried their kids will get sick — and despite clear guidance from state and federal agencies that say universal masking is the best way to keep students safe and prevent schools from having to shut down.
People who support masking kids when the science is clear that it is almost worthless in terms of mitigating the spread of the virus but incredibly damaging to kids are simply “supporting phased returns” and “disease mitigation efforts.” Those who oppose those things are “vitriolic” and engaging in “threats.” And school board that aren’t abusing kids by unnecessarily masking them are doing so “despite clear guidance.”
The good news is that, thankfully, the public is speaking up and at least some school boards are listening. It’s taken a lot of hard work and organizing, but representative government is working.
Bill Introduced to Modernize Car Sales
Wisconsin is one of approximately 16 states with a law prohibiting car buyers from purchasing a car directly from the manufacturer, including online. Instead, consumers must go through a third-party dealership. Originally meant to protect dealerships in the mid-twentieth century, this law has rapidly become obsolete.
As Wisconsin consumers move into the future, this law limits consumer options and keeps our automobile market stuck in the days of wood-paneled station wagons and T-tops.
That’s why we recently introduced a proposal in the Legislature (Senate Bill 462 and Assembly Bill 439) that would allow consumers to purchase electric vehicles directly from the manufacturer without the requirement that they go through a traditional dealership.
Under this bipartisan bill, any manufacturer that produces an all-electric-powered vehicle could sell those vehicles directly to the consumer, both online and at manufacturer-owned dealerships. While traditional vehicles would still be subject to the traditional rules, this bill moves car buying one step into the future.
Taliban Yes. Trump No.
At the same time, the ability of the Taliban and its supporters to operate substantially within the rules of companies such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube has left Silicon Valley vulnerable to intensifying political crosscurrents: U.S. conservatives have been demanding to know why former president Donald Trump has been banned from Twitter while various Taliban figures have not.
The answer, analysts said, may simply be that Trump’s posts for years challenged platform rules against hate speech and inciting violence. Today’s Taliban, by and large, does not.
“The Taliban is clearly threading the needle regarding social media content policies and is not yet crossing the very distinct policy-violating lines that Trump crossed,” Katz said.
Taliban is Purging Enemies
We have unleashed a level of brutality that few Americans can even comprehend.
But there are fears the Taliban have changed little since the brutal 1990s.
The warning the group were targeting “collaborators” came in a confidential document by the RHIPTO Norwegian Center for Global Analyses, which provides intelligence to the UN.
“There are a high number of individuals that are currently being targeted by the Taliban and the threat is crystal clear,” Christian Nellemann, who heads the group behind the report, told the BBC.
“It is in writing that, unless they give themselves in, the Taliban will arrest and prosecute, interrogate and punish family members on behalf of those individuals.”
He warned that anyone on the Taliban’s blacklist was in severe danger, and that there could be mass executions.
Wisconsin’s Unemployment Rate Sits at 3.9%
Who in their right mind thinks that we need to continue to give enhanced unemployment benefits and other extraordinary bennies when we are at full employment with plenty of jobs available?
In brief, the seasonally adjusted data shows:
-
Place of Residence Data: Wisconsin’s labor force participation rate in July was 66.4, 0.1 percentage point higher than June’s labor force participation rate, and 4.7 percentage points higher than the national rate of 61.7 percent. Wisconsin’s unemployment rate in July was 3.9 percent, while the national unemployment rate was 5.4 percent in the same month.
-
Place of Work Data: Wisconsin added 12,400 private-sector and 13,100 total non-farm jobs in July 2021.
Biden Extends Mask Mandate for Public Transportation
Ugh.
Reuters first reported that President Joe Biden would announce an extension of the administration’s mask mandate on public transportation early Tuesday. Major U.S. airlines were reportedly briefed on the extension by officials from the TSA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); a call between government officials and aviation unions is scheduled for Wednesday, per Reuters.
Biden in January issued a flurry of executive orders that, in part, mandated masks on all forms of public transportation, including airports, commercial aircraft, trains, public maritime vessels and ferries and most bus services.
The TSA first imposed the mandat from February through May, later re-upping the requirement with an expiration date of Sept. 13. A spokesperson for the agency said in an emailed statement to Spectrum News that the TSA has extended the directive through January 2022.
“TSA will extend the directives through January 18, 2022. The purpose of TSA’s mask directive is to minimize the spread of COVID-19 on public transportation,” the spokesperson wrote.
Fisker Wants To Be Able to Sell Direct in Wisconsin
This is a law that has needed changing for a long time. There is no reason for the government to enforce a distribution model. For some manufacturers, the dealer/distributor model is great (this applies in all areas of business). In other areas, the producer may want to take on the distribution themselves. There is no doubt that car dealers provide a valuable service, but there’s no reason to think that manufacturers couldn’t do it themselves if they want to spend the money. Either way, the government should let the businesses and market decide.
Fisker said Foxconn has discretion of where it will build vehicles in North America for his eponymous company. But, the ban on direct sales makes Fisker less excited about the cars that will bear his name being put together in the Badger State.
“The one sticking point for Fisker — now, this is still Foxconn’s decision — but the one sticking point for me would be that I don’t want to start producing a car in a state where I can’t sell my car direct,” Henrik Fisker told Alan Ohnsman of Forbes. “If they change those (rules) I think they will be in the lead, but right now they’re not.”
Simon Sproule, senior vice president of communications for Fisker, told the online progressive news outlet UpNorthNews regarding the issue: “We are going to be investing with Foxconn a lot into this project, and we want to be building cars in a state that will allow us to sell those cars.”
Defenders of the law, including the Wisconsin Auto & Truck Dealers Association, say the ban on direct sales opens up more job opportunities and protects pre-existing automobile dealers.
Beware of governments that keep lists
My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. Here’s a taste:
Wisconsin’s Open Records Laws are generally very strong and favor the release of all information held by government unless there is a compelling reason to not do so. In this case, there are several reasons to deny public release. The release of the information would unfairly damage Wisconsin’s small businesses and potentially damage the effort to combat this and future pandemics.
The public disclosure of businesses where employees have had COVID-19 or have been exposed to someone who did would cause undue harm to those businesses. The mere disclosure of the information gives the false impression that somehow the businesses were at fault, or at least complicit, for the spread of COVID-19, but no such connection can rationally be made. The employees might have contracted COVID-19 anywhere, but only their employers would be listed.
While not a fair conclusion, Wisconsin’s small businesses that show up on that list might lose potential patrons who think that the businesses are unclean, infection-spreading, hot spots. This lumps in businesses who followed every rule or advice issued from health agencies (however wrong they were) with those businesses that took little or no precautions. The fact that one employee contracted COVID-19 or encountered someone who did puts all of those businesses on the same unfair list.
Furthermore, employment is fluid. There is no guarantee that an employee with COVID-19 last May still works at the same employer. All the list would show is that an employee had COVID-19 sometime in the past. It is not current or actionable data. Wisconsin’s small businesses have suffered enough and do not deserve one more hit from Governor Evers by having their names thrown into the public space.
Afghan Refugees Head for Wisconsin
Welcome. This is an opportunity to defend America’s honor and fulfill our promise to take care of our allies and friends. Let’s welcome them with open arms and encourage them to adopt America as their new home with a full respect for individual rights and freedoms. Who’s in charge of integrating them?
Fort McCoy, a U.S. Army installation near Sparta, is preparing to accept an unknown number of refugees from Afghanistan who are fleeing in the wake of the collapse of the Afghanistan government to the Taliban.
As the United States ends its mission there, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and other outlets have reported that Fort McCoy is preparing to accept special immigrant visa applicants, but few other details were available.
“We have been notified that we will be receiving these special immigrant visa applicants,” Fort McCoy spokesperson Tonya Townsell told the Journal Sentinel. “I don’t know when these guests of ours will be arriving exactly, but anytime it can turn.”
A McCoy spokesperson later declined a request for comment and referred the Wisconsin State Journal to the U.S. Department of Defense.
A DOD spokesperson confirmed that Fort McCoy is under consideration as a site to provide temporary housing for Afghan special immigration visa applicants and their families.
West Bend Common Council Decline to Move Ahead on Pay Raises
But are setting aside the money anyway. They are waiting for a quieter moment to slip this in when nobody notices. But, at least, it beats passing it.
August 16, 2021 – West Bend, WI – After more than an hour discussion the West Bend Common Council took no action regarding a decision to move forward on a cross-the-board staff pay raise.
After much discussion the council took no vote but indicated it would follow up on issuing a request for proposal to hire an outside consultant to conduct a salary study.
Discussion also included possibly placing $450,000 in a separate account in the next budget so once the salary study is complete the earmarked money would be available should the council move forward with the consultant’s recommendation on possible pay increases.
Bill Proposed to Make Unemployment Available to Those Who Quit Over Vaccine
MILWAUKEE – A Wisconsin Republican lawmaker on Thursday, Aug. 12 introduced legislation that would allow people to get unemployment benefits if they quit a job due to not wanting to comply with an employer’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement.
The proposed legislation would also apply to people fired for failing to comply with an employer’s vaccine mandate. Additionally, workers who quit or were fired for not providing proof of vaccination would be eligible for unemployment benefits.
According to a news release from Rep. Ron Brooks, who introduced the measure, current state law stipulates that people fired from or who quit a job are ineligible to receive unemployment until a certain amount of time passes.
Right now the guidelines are very clear for unemployment eligibility. If you quit, you aren’t eligible – irrespective of the reason you quit. We do not want to open the door to government making value judgments for “good” and “bad” reasons to quit. I can totally see, for example, that future Democrats would expand the list of “good” reasons to include things like perceived racism, wage disputes, or political differences. This will create havoc on businesses trying to keep employees and drive up the cost of business and government.
Leave this alone. It really stinks that some people are being forced to make the very hard choice of their job or getting a vaccine, but this is not the cure.
Schumer Calls for Crackdown on Fake Vaccine Cards
So the same people who want to empty prisons, defund the police, and are cool with fake papers for illegal aliens want to throw you in federal prison if you get a fake vaccine card. I guess that says where we are…
NEW YORK — The Senate’s top Democrat says federal law enforcement officials need to crack down on fake COVID-19 vaccination cards being sold online.
Sen. Chuck Schumer’s announcement Sunday comes after The Associated Press reported how people are cheating the system and buying counterfeit COVID-19 vaccination cards online, worrying officials at colleges and universities across the country that are requiring proof students received the vaccine to attend in-person classes.
Schumer is demanding U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the FBI team up with officials from the Department of Health and Human Services to launch a crackdown on the counterfeit cards and start a campaign to make clear that forging the cards could land people in federal prison.
Afghanistan Falls
A strategic withdrawal in the face of the enemy is one of the most difficult maneuvers to pull off. We did not succeed.
The Taliban has said they will declare an Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan from the Presidential Palace in Kabul as militants posed in the office and the country’s president fled for Tajikistan, with thousands of Afghan nationals now racing to Pakistan to escape Islamist rule.
Taliban fighters stormed the ancient palace on Sunday and demanded a ‘peaceful transfer of power’ as Kabul descended into chaos, with US helicopters evacuating diplomats from the embassy in scenes echoing the 1975 Fall of Saigon which followed the Vietnam War.
US-backed Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country for Tajikistan, effectively ceding power to the Taliban in a move signaling the end of the 20-year Western intervention begun after the September 11 attacks, while thousands of Afghan nationals rushed to the Pakistan border.
I continue to think that ending the war in Afghanistan was the correct policy choice. I do think we could have maintained a force there for some time – like in South Korea or Germany – as a means of keeping active in a global hotspot for our own security. But the absolute debacle of this withdrawal and the speed at which the Taliban took power is the manifestation of bad policy and bad leadership. From the White House to the Chiefs of Staff, they blew it. Completely and utterly. And America bears the shame of a lost war and the sacrifice of our local allies. We will feel the reverberations of this for many, many years to come.
Differences in Education Impact Decision to Get COVID Vaccine
People with a PhD are the most hesitant when it comes to getting the Covid-19 vaccine, according to a paper by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.
Researchers surveyed just over five million US adults in an online survey, with 10,000 reporting that they were educated to PhD level.
The report showed a surprising U-shaped correlation between willingness to get a Covid vaccine and education level – with the highest hesitancy among those least and most educated.
Hot Pockets (with apologies to Jim Gaffigan)
I thought this was a pandemic of the unvaccinated?
Two-thirds of Americans in highly vaccinated counties now live in coronavirus hot spots, according to an analysis by The Washington Post, as outbreaks of the highly transmissible delta variant – once concentrated in poorly vaccinated pockets – ignite in more populated and immunized areas.
COVID Jumps the Shark
I saw this in a museum gift shop today. That’s it… I’m done.
And this in an exhibit:
Texas Gets Closer to More Secure Elections
While Wisconsin’s governor is supporting cheating, Texas is getting closer to better elections.
Democrats, who acknowledge they cannot permanently stop the GOP voting bill from passing because of Republicans’ dominance in both chambers of the Texas Legislature, responded to the warrants with new shows of defiance. One turned up in a Houston courtroom and secured a court order aimed at preventing him from being forced to return to the Capitol.
The NAACP also stepped in on behalf of the Texas Democrats, urging the Justice Department to investigate whether a federal crime was being committed when Republicans threatened to have them arrested.
Refusing to attend legislative sessions is a violation of House rules — a civil offense, not a criminal one, leaving the power the warrants carry to get Democrats back to the chamber unclear, even for the Republicans who invoked it. Democrats would not be jailed. Republican Travis Clardy, who helped negotiate an early version of the voting bill that Democrats first stopped with a walkout in May, said he believes Democrats can be physically brought back to the Capitol.
State Rep. Jim Murphy, who leads the Texas House Republican Caucus, said while he has not seen a situation like this play out during his tenure, his understanding is that officers could go to the missing lawmakers and ask them to come back.
“I am hoping they will come because the warrants have been issued and they don’t want to be arrested,” Murphy said. “It is incredible to me that you have to arrest people to do the job they campaigned for, for which they took an oath of office to uphold the Texas Constitution.”
Legislature Debates Teaching Racism in Schools
Don’t you kind of wonder why this isn’t already the law? Or, at least, the policy in every district in the state? And why, pray tell, are the Democrats fighting so hard to prevent the prohibition of teaching racism in schools? They are fighting anti-racism racism like they did in the 1960s.
The legislation would require teachers to post their syllabuses online and districts to provide copies of curriculum under the state’s open records law, without charges or delays, and would establish a complaint process for parents, staff or groups who object to the materials being taught.
[…]
Under the bills, violations include teaching that one race or sex is superior to another; a person is inherently racist by virtue of his or her race or sex; a person’s moral character is determined by race or sex; a person should feel guilty for past acts committed by people of his or her race or sex; and systems based on meritocracy are racist or sexist or designed to oppress people of another race.
Evers Supports Voter Fraud and Intimidation with Vetoes
Evers vetoed several Republican bills that would have made our elections more secure. In doing so, he is working hard to make it easier for his supporters to cheat on his behalf next year.
One of the bills would have ended a photo ID exemption for indefinitely confined voters in Wisconsin
[…]
Another bill would have limited the period of time an indefinitely confined voter could automatically receive absentee ballots to one year. Current law allows that to happen for an indefinite period of time.
Other bills vetoed by Evers on Tuesday would have:
-
Made it a felony to falsely represent yourself as indefinitely confined or falsely affirm someone else’s indefinitely confined status.
-
Limited communities to a single site outside the clerk’s office for absentee ballot drop-offs.
-
Barred the Wisconsin Elections Commission from automatically sending absentee ballot applications or absentee ballots to voters.
-
Required clerks to post hourly updates with absentee voting statistics on the evening of Election Day.
-
Required administrators at nursing homes and assisted living facilities to notify families when certified voting assistants will visit their facility to help residents with voting.
-
Made it a felony for nursing home or assisted living facility staff to “influence” a resident’s voting behavior.
-
Required observation areas for recounts to be no more than 3 feet from the area where ballots and other materials are being examined.
-
Barred election officials from adding missing information to absentee ballot envelopes, even if they are able to get the information from official state documents.
-
Required communities that provide live broadcasts of election proceedings to keep the recordings on file for at least 22 months.