Weekly Roundup

A couple of short observations, none of which is enough to gather a longer post

The SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule successfully undocked from the International Space Station in the early morning (2:32 AM East Coast time), fired its reentry burn and splashed down off NE Florida at 8:45AM, bringing the Demo-1 test flight to a successful conclusion.

There are undoubtedly reams of data being gone over, but this was a test flight testing many systems.  We don't get to look at the books and see how they get graded, but it appears to be a successful test flight.  Were 90% of the major goals achieved?  100%?  80%?  We don't get to know for now.  The Crew Dragon docked autonomously at the ISS Sunday morning (March 3) and then stayed docked for five days while tests and measurements were made - videos from last Sunday show astronauts from the ISS checking the atmosphere of the Crew Dragon for contamination while wearing protective hoods and respirators.  The capsule undocked at 2:32 a.m. this morning, survived the fiery descent through Earth's atmosphere, deployed its parachutes and splashed down gently into the Atlantic's rolling waves, about 230 miles (370 kilometers) off the Florida coast.

From here, it seems this puts us one step closer to Americans lifting off from American soil to the ISS.  I think they also set a performance bar for Boeing's tests flights; their equivalent of this mission could come in April. 

Speaking of the docking, the best video I've seen is in this one from SciNews.  They put the video onto a soundtrack of Strauss' Blue Danube Waltz, and the overall reminiscence of Kubrick's 2001 struck me so deeply, I found myself tearing up, something I've never done before.

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Over the years of this blog, I've had two nicknames for Michael Bloomberg.  Either "the most dependable asshole in American politics" or "that nasty, fascist prick".   Bloomy has been in sole possession of those titles since I opened shop in 2010.

Today, we find there is intense competition.  Maybe not for both, but there is a spirited competition to wrest the title of "Most Dependable Asshole".  It's a three way between representatives Ilhan Omar, (D - Minnesotastan) for her virulent antisemitism, Rashida Tlaib (D- Detroitistan) for her, "I'm gonna impeach that motherf***er", and everybody's favorite nitwit, AOC (D - NYFC - Do you have a problem?) for, well, basically every sentence that leaves her mouth.  They all wear that "I'm a victim of everything!" intersectionality cloak, they're all under investigation for campaign finance violations, they're all insufferably full of themselves.  Which is a long-winded way of saying, they're all assholes.

Trying to out-asshole Bloomberg is tough challenge.  If nothing else, he gets extra points by funding all the gun grabbing, outlawing 32 oz drinks, warning about salt consumption while personally putting salt on everything, and creating laws to ensure people never get enough pain medication and suffer as much as he can make them.

Think of the old "Real American Hero" jingle commercials Budweiser used to do, just substitute "Real American Asshole". 

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Florida had an extremely rare event, a minor earthquake the night before last (Wednesday night/Thursday morning).  The quake registered 2.6 on the Richter scale, which I understand is barely enough to feel.  The epicenter was near the city of Century in extreme northwest Florida.  Century is virtually on the Florida/Alabama state line, due north of Pensacola.  Bing Maps tells me it's 515 miles from here, and at least an 8 hour drive (+ some).  That's just a few miles closer than as far as one can drive and still be in Florida.  You'll change time zone to central time during the drive across the panhandle.

The biggest quake in Florida over the last few years was a 3.7 in Daytona Beach; which is much closer (about 90 minutes from me).  That one was " triggered by U.S. Navy testing that involved a man-made explosion" so hardly qualifies.  There was one in the Gulf of Mexico back in 2006 that was pretty strong, 5.9, but well offshore.

Ariane Announces a New, Reusable Booster - Copied From SpaceX

Last Summer, I reported about how competition from SpaceX was hammering virtually everyone in the launch business, especially the Europeans and the Russians.  In the space of five years, from the first appearances of SpaceX as percentage of worldwide launches in 2013, the launch business went from being essentially Russia and Europeans to being SpaceX and the Dwarfs.  SpaceX had the majority of launches (2/3), the ESA and Russia split the remaining third with the Russians having less than 10%.

The ESA, working on the next generation of their successful Ariane series, Ariane 6, had said they didn't care about reusing boosters to minimize costs, saying the market is too small.

Seems they had a change of heart.

Last month, Ariane Group and the French space agency CNES announced the creation of an "acceleration platform", called ArianeWorks, to speed development of future launch vehicles.  It sounds like a Skunk Works in concept.  In the announcement:

... the organizations released a promotional video for the group's first step—a so-called Themis demonstrator. The goal of this project is to build a multiple-engine first-stage rocket that launches vertically and lands near the launch site. The rocket will be powered by Europe's Prometheus engine, a reusable liquid oxygen and methane engine that may cost as little as $1 million to build.

The new video is striking because of how similar the Themis demonstrator of "breakthrough technologies" looks to SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. Even the engines, with a thrust of 100 tons each, are similar to the output of the Merlin 1D that powers the Falcon 9 rocket. (One difference is that the Merlin 1D engine uses kerosene fuel instead of methane).

The promotional video shows a rocket taking off and then jumps to a landing, complete with four landing legs. A new rocket then takes off as another one lands—similar to concepts SpaceX has discussed for its next generation-rocket and Starship.

Why, yes, it sure does look like the Falcon 9's landing structure.

To be fair, the Europeans aren't shy about saying they're copying SpaceX.  Everybody's doing it.  

During a presentation last year, the head of the French space agency's launch vehicle program, Jean Marc-Astorg, was asked about the similarities. As part of its development program, Ariane and CNES are also planning a "Callisto" hopper vehicle that is similar the Grasshopper test vehicle SpaceX flew in 2012 and 2013 to demonstrate vertical landing capabilities.

"Callisto is Grasshopper," Astorg said at the time. "The Chinese are also building a similar prototype, I have no problem saying we didn’t invent anything."

To be honest, I think this is how the high-tech world has been working for the last, I don't know, forever.  I'm betting everyone at SpaceX has been expecting this.  The first company to develop a new technology gets to be first in the market and in smaller things, like computer accessories or personal electronics, they make more money by being first on the market than by patenting everything and suing everyone who infringes the patent.  Six months or a year later, someone else figures out how to do it and drops one on the market at a lower price point.  The first company is now the big name in the field, so they cut prices to just about match the upstart and continue to reap more sales.  When the next companies come out with another clone, the process repeats.  At some point, someone develops the Next Big Thing and the pattern starts over.

This is an interesting time for space flight.  The Themis booster and Prometheus engine that Ariane is talking about here aren't likely to be flying until 2028 or 2030.  By that time, the Chicoms should have their equivalent going, and SpaceX will be flying their next generation, bigger Starship.  Don't count out Blue Origin, our new neighbors up the road.  They should have considerable experience with their reusable New Glenn rocket.  

Speaking of which, I haven't talked about the current big mission SpaceX is flying as I type - because I didn't want to jinx them.  Early last Saturday morning, we got up at 2:40 for the 2:49 scheduled launch of the first test of the Crew Dragon spacecraft that is slated to carry astronauts to the ISS.  This was an unmanned test flight, and they had a list of milestones that were to be achieved including autonomously docking the Dragon with the ISS, then undocking, and return to earth - it's supposed to land offshore Friday morning, under parachute like the old Mercury/Gemini/Apollo capsules. 

The sky conditions were perfect and it was the first time we've been able to see the returning first stage rocket burns.  The booster landing drone is well offshore, over a hundred miles, so the landings are below the horizon and we can't see the first stage burns during the day.  As it is, the deceleration rocket burn was close to the horizon, no more than 10 degrees above it, and barely above the houses when the engine turned off. 

Shop Update

It has at least a month since I've done one of these, so I thought I'd talk about what has been consuming my thoughts lately.

First, though, a detour.  Back in October, I posted about upgrades I was working on.

• Build a new front onto my enclosure replacing the bifold doors, and more importantly, allowing me to get to the machine's table without scraping the top of my head on the aluminum rail
• Resurrect the ability for my CNC Lathe to cut threads.  
• Look at improvements to the spindle on my big mill, the G0704.  This is aimed at a few things:
• Ability to start, and stop the spindle from the CNC code - this is fundamental in the real world.
• Ability to set the spindle speed from the CNC code.  The GCode command exists for this and I think most all of the "real" machine shops do it.  
• Together, these mean a new motor.  I will do this with an eye to roughly doubling the speed of my spindle.  Which will require new bearings for spindle
• After this, I'm considering being able to tap (thread) holes under CNC control.  This one, frankly, isn't super important to me, but it looks like the I can accomplish that without adding much cost to the motor and controller improvements that do the first two.  

Of these three, I've gotten the second one (my CNC Lathe) virtually completed.  There are other types of threads I'd like to be able to cut, but it does pretty well at what it does.  I haven't actually bought Mach4 which I think gives me those other things (multiple start threads, Acme threads to name a couple).  What stopped me was filling out the "contact us" form on their website about a question I had and waiting for an answer.  Since I've long since forgotten the question, I suppose it doesn't matter.
 
I have the raw materials for the frame (lots of 1x2 and 1x4 lumber) but have done nothing and am thinking nothing might be the thing to do (I'll eventually use that wood for something else).  Why the change?  I guess a combination of that I've gotten more adapted to bending over to not hit my head when I go to the mill and not being sure the design is solid enough to do once.  I might still change the enclosure.   
 
The last one, the biggest project research-wise (and potentially rebuilding everything I have-wise), has had very little attention.  Probably 10% of what I need to do. 

What I've been paying attention to is picking the next project.  In my New Year's post, I mentioned it would probably be a simple internal combustion engine called a Webster (after the designer).  I have the downloaded prints and started putting together a materials list, but I got distracted by the call of making something bigger.

YouTuber Pat Pending's Webster engine, a build fairly faithful to the prints.  There's a lot of variation in the way builders implement this.

The prints will produce an engine that displaces 3/4 of a cubic inch.  A rule of thumb I've known for virtually all my life is that an IC engine is doing real well in power if it can make 1 horsepower per cubic inch.  I'd like to do something that generates more useful power than that (possible) 3/4 hp. 

What does "more useful power" mean?  One horsepower is defined as 750 Watts, meaning the Webster might generate as much as 560 watts.  What does that mean?  Let's assume you're in average health; that is, you don't work out in a gym and you don't do heavy lifting all day for work (no "roofercise"), but you move around with no problems, do routine housework, gardening, house-related tasks.  If we put you on a bike driving a generator, you'd probably generate around 100 to 125 watts and you could keep that up for a while.  If you're fit, you can put out more like 250 Watts - prolonged steady output - without getting exhausted.  A professional cyclist can put out 400 W for hours, and some put out well over 1000 watts for a peak effort. 

In Florida (and many other places) a 49 cubic centimeters (cc) displacement motor on a bike can be street legal and doesn't require a driver's license.  49cc is 3.00 cubic inches and the same rules of thumb tell me a "49er" could generate 3HP or 2250 Watts.  That sounds like a practical power level to shoot for; somewhere close to 3HP.  Mowers for small yards have much bigger engines than that.  With proper interconnections, it could drive a generator to charge batteries, or a water pump, or something else I might need to run after a storm or in an extended power down situation. 

To give sense of sizes, the bore and stroke of the Webster are 0.875" bore (piston diameter) and 1.25" stroke.  I've seen references to 49cc engines with 1-9/16" (1.563") bore and stroke.  The biggest hurdle stopping me from taking on the project like the bigger 49cc engine is not being able to find plans I can buy.  The biggest advantage is that there are literally tons of them on the market and I can buy some parts for less than it would cost to buy the bar stock to build the parts.  Mind you, I could buy a complete running engine for less than $80 on Amazon.

The Open Secret No One Talks About - Renewables Can't Provide Our Needed Energy

Donald Sensing over at Sense of Events has great little article about the physical impossibility of the Green New Deal.   It's called "The Green New Deal - a unicorn and butterflies dream factory", and opens with a question that I haven't seen on the news.

But if renewables are going to put fossil-fuel companies out of business, then why have oil and gas investors,

... made a political alliance with renewables companies, and why oil and gas companies have been spending millions of dollars on advertisements promoting solar, and funneling millions of dollars to said environmental groups to provide public relations cover.

The answer is simple: for a few reasons (some of which I bet you know), it's not possible with any known technology that current renewable energy sources can provide the world's energy needs.  Everyone in the energy industry or following the subject knows it.  The folks working in renewables know it and the people in the oil and gas industries know it.  The oil and gas companies spend money on "advertisements promoting solar" to try and get some of the that sweet gubmint money that will flow to the solar and wind energy companies.  The solar companies will need power generation for when the sun doesn't shine; not just night but during cloudy weather (I understand many of you call that "winter").  There either needs to be massive energy storage or fast-reacting energy production systems.  Massive energy storage technologies don't exist and those fast-reacting production systems tend to be oil or gas based.

Better yet, Don links to "Why Renewables Can't Save the Planet", by Michael Shellenberger, an author with genuine cred to the greenies.  He's a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment,” and president of Environmental Progress, an independent research and policy organization.  In many ways, this reads like a personal story of how he came to his conclusions, more than just a recital of those conclusions.  I really think it's worth your time to read.  As usual, I'll excerpt some parts here to whet your appetite.

In 2002, shortly after I turned 30, I decided I wanted to dedicate myself to addressing climate change. ...

I thought the solutions were pretty straightforward: solar panels on every roof, electric cars in every driveway, etc. The main obstacles, I believed, were political. And so I helped organize a coalition of America’s largest labor unions and environmental groups.
...
The first [trouble they ran into] was around land use. Electricity from solar roofs costs about twice as much as electricity from solar farms, but solar and wind farms require huge amounts of land. That, along with the fact that solar and wind farms require long new transmissions lines, and are opposed by local communities and conservationists trying to preserve wildlife, particularly birds.

Another challenge was the intermittent nature of solar and wind energies. When the sun stops shining and the wind stops blowing, you have to quickly be able to ramp up another source of energy.

Shellenberger has met reality and been slapped around by that stone-cold bitch.  Wind farms kill birds; not the small, plentiful birds like the billions of sparrows, jays and other common birds that house cats kill around the world; wind farms kill large, rare and endangered birds like hawks, eagles, owls, and condors.  Wind or solar farms require large, high-voltage transmission lines and towers that cross from the remote sites to power substations.  One of my wife's favorite stories is when she found that a group of environmental protesters were shocked to find their wonderful wind turbines needed transmission lines - power lines - to connect to the grid; they had simply never thought how the electricity got from the turbines to the users.  It just magically appeared at their outlets.

The reason for the large solar and wind farms is that both forms are energy are dilute in area (which is good, or they'd kill us).  Solar energy is only available at a concentration of roughly 1100 Watts per square yard, and with photovoltaic efficiency considerations you can figure 300 Watts per square yard - maybe less.  You can see how a solar farm big enough to produce megawatts would take enormous amounts of space.  Shellenberger puts it this way:

You can make solar panels cheaper and wind turbines bigger, but you can’t make the sun shine more regularly or the wind blow more reliably. I came to understand the environmental implications of the physics of energy. In order to produce significant amounts of electricity from weak energy flows, you just have to spread them over enormous areas. In other words, the trouble with renewables isn’t fundamentally technical—it’s natural.

In a move that might get Shellenberger declared a non-person by his green colleagues, he comes to the conclusion that the only reasonable answer is nuclear power.  He points out that contrary to most peoples' expectations, wind turbines kill many more people than nuclear power.

His final words in the article:

I think it’s natural that those of us who became active on climate change gravitated toward renewables. They seemed like a way to harmonize human society with the natural world. Collectively, we have been suffering from an appeal-to-nature fallacy no different from the one that leads us to buy products at the supermarket labeled “all natural.” But it’s high time that those of us who appointed ourselves Earth’s guardians should take a second look at the science, and start questioning the impacts of our actions.

Now that we know that renewables can’t save the planet, are we really going to stand by and let them destroy it?

I would let those be the final words to this article, but I like the words of Patrick Moore, former president of Greenpeace, to everyone's favorite green twit.

Yes I realize that to some greenies killing off billions of people is a feature, not a bug.  I've only been writing about it since 2011.  It's just that they're not all totally FN and not willing to learn new things.  This guy doesn't sound like he thinks the anti-civilization people are the model to follow.

Horses to bring food to the people?  People cutting down every available tree to heat their homes and cook their food?  Maybe Ms. Occasional Cortex could use to read my 2011 piece "When Gasoline Saved the World From Pollution".

The Skyscraper Curse

I mentioned in passing back in December that I've been reading the book "The Skyscraper Curse", an obscure economic observation that became a theory.  The full title of that book is "The Skyscraper Curse: And How Austrian Economists Predicted Every Major Economic Crisis of the Last Century" which tells you a bit more about it.  It's largely a look at economic crisis prediction of Austrian economics vs. the dominant Keynesian economics that has come to rule the world. 

Here we are more than two months later and I haven't finished the book.  In fact, it's only in my sitting around the ER with my wife and then a doctor's office that I've increased my reading and gotten past the midpoint of the book. It's not so much that it's a bad book, it's not, it's just that the first half really seemed like 10 pages of ideas jammed, crammed and packed into about 110 pages. 

Here's the observation: whenever a world record-height skyscraper is built, the world goes into a crisis and recession.  The explanation is pretty simple.  Go back a couple/three years to the days the skyscraper is being conceived of, planned, financed and construction started and you're very close to the peak of an economic bull market.  Interest rates are artificially low (because that's what Keynesians do) and the demand for office space is so high it's for far more than can be provided in the cities.  Skyscrapers get the most office space out of a parcel of land by going vertical. 

To butcher Horace Greeley's quote, "go up young man!"

By the time the skyscraper is completed, the market peak is reaching its end.  The business cycle is petering out.  Then comes the recession. 

This is a correlation, not causation, and it's actually a pretty good correlation.  For nearly 150 years that skyscrapers have existed, only a couple of times when a new record skyscraper was opened did the opening not coincide with an economic crisis, and (author) Mark Thornton comes up with believable extenuating circumstances.  It's not impossible to believe that a major skyscraper is being built now that will be the one that coincides with the next "great recession".  

Skyscrapers only began to exist in the late 1800s, when steel frames and concrete construction were developed enough to allow them; before then buildings were limited to how high bricks could be stacked, a handful of stories.  Skyscrapers then turned into high-tech innovation factories.  If more floor space is needed for more offices, the amount of the skyscraper dedicated to things like elevators, fire suppression systems, water and sewage lines has to be reduced.  Higher strength elevator cables and faster elevators had to be developed.  You get the idea. 

Along the way of reading the last few chapters I've completed, I came across this analysis of "income inequality" that I thought was worth quoting. 

"A monetary system that is dominated by a central bank, such as the Federal Reserve, and uses fiat money, as in our current monetary system, can expect to benefit certain people, such as bankers, financiers, and people with debt. Likewise, because such a system is inflationary, it tends to hurt wage workers and savers. Such a system can be expected to hurt the lower-and middle-income classes and enrich those in the financial industry and the upper-income class.

A gold standard has historically had a tendency for prices to be stable or slightly deflationary. This means that wage rates, cash balances, savings, and bonds tend to gain purchasing power over time. This type of monetary system rewards the hard-working and frugal classes, which leads to an expansion of the middle-income class and the economy."

He presents data from the Pew Research Center (in graphical form) to back up this claim:

This shows that the bottom 90% of the income distribution had an estimated 2/3 of the total US income from the end of WWII (reinstatement of the gold standard) and the top 1% had about 10% of the total income until the 1980s as the effects of the abandoning the gold standard continued to grow.  By 2012, the bottom 90% dropped down to 49.6% of the income while the top 1% expanded from 10 to 22.5%. 

As I'm fond of pointing out, the central banks have cross hairs on savers' backs.  This Pew data and Thornton's interpretation reinforces that.  Of all the complaints about millionaires and billionaires, all the talk about punishing the highest income earners with 70 to 90% tax rates, all of these Evil Party talking points are Raging Against the Wrong Machine.  If they really want to make the life of the low and middle incomes better (the bottom 90% of all income earners in the country), they should rage against the Federal Reserve and fractional reserve banking not the rich.   But, see, that would require thinking and understanding, not just feeling.  Don't hold your breath waiting. 

My quick summary of the book is that it's a three to four star book review.  It's good, but the insight density; the number of insights per page, is low compared to others.  My favorite "Monetary Theory for MoFos" book is still "The Death of Money" by Jim Rickards, which introduced me to the Information Theory of Money.  I've mentioned it many times around here (but not in several years) and even posted a lot of interesting things I got from it.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Men...

This was not a weekend that went as planned or anticipated.

It has been a mild winter here, in terms of average temperatures and "climatological data".  While we enjoyed a cooler January than in recent years, the temperature never got into the mid-30s and there was never a threat of frost.  Average low temperatures were in the mid-40s, which is below average (around 50, depending on the date), but nowhere near records.  I really don't recall it even getting into the upper 30s this year.  February was warmer, with most of the month above average in lows and highs.

That means that the pollen producers had no reason to hold back, and everything is coated with pollen.  On our cars, we get a coarse, sticky, yellow-tinged coat; I've long been told it's mostly pine but I honestly don't care.  I just know it means it's past time to wash the cars.  The nature of the mess is that a drive through car wash won't remove it.  It needs to be scrubbed with something like these.

Due to our size differences, Mrs. Graybeard and I have an arrangement in life.  I clean the roofs, hoods and other high surfaces while she gets the lower parts of the quarter panels, wheels and the lower panels.  I'll do the first arm length down from the hood or trunk, leaving the lower stuff for her.

At one point, Mrs. Graybeard was pulling the hose around her car to get the wheels on the other side and she tripped on the hose.  As Murphy demands, she missed landing on the grass and fell onto our concrete (paver) walkway narrowly missing whacking her head on the rocks that trim the front planted area.  She landed hard on her left hip.  Here's where I need to point out that both of her hips have been replaced, the first one when she was about 50.  She couldn't get up due to excruciating pain.  We tried waiting for a few minutes, and everything I could think of that might help.  She could get upright and stand on her knees, but couldn't stand up any farther.  It took about 15 minutes for her to say, "we'd better call 911".  The paramedics were here quickly and took her to the big hospital ER in town; I straightened up a bit and drove down to sit with her.

The big fear was that the implant was damaged and that can mean emergency surgery.  Thankfully, she didn't damage the implant, but she did break part of her thigh bone (two pieces off the greater trochanter for you medical folks who visit).  The ER doctor said as far as his expertise goes, it doesn't need surgical repair, but it's going to hurt like hell for at least a few days and she should see a specialist.  They sent her home with a prescription for pain meds - ironic in view of my last post - along with a referral to see an orthopedic surgeon.  To both of our surprises, I found her old walker in the garage from when she had one of the hip replacements.  That's helping her get around quite a bit.  She will be very inactive the next few days, and I'll be doing all the cooking, cleaning and such.

That's why it was "radio silence" yesterday.

But that was then and this is now.

Over the last few days, one of my favorite reads, Aesop at Raconteur Report has been running some exchanges (this, for example) with some women in the aftermath of the court ruling that a military draft that took only men was unconstitutional.  With very few exceptions, or so it seems, people who have been on the front lines in the military are against this idea.

In that light, I want to point out something that hasn't seemed to get much coverage.  Congress critter Ilhan Omar (D - Minnesotastan) has asked the Minnesotastan Attorney General, Keith Ellison (D - Domestic Abuse)  to investigate USA Powerlifting for barring biological males from women’s events, according to a Jan. 31 letter she sent USA Powerlifting.

USA Powerlifting has said that men who are transitioning genders may not compete as women because of the obvious advantage being male has.

“Men naturally have a larger bone structure, higher bone density, stronger connective tissue and higher muscle density than women,” the weightlifting association notes in an online explainer. “These traits, even with reduced levels of testosterone do not go away. While [male-to-female athletes] may be weaker and less muscle than they once were, the biological benefits given them at birth still remain over that of a female.”

Rep. Omar told USA Powerlifting that the advantages they document are a myth:

“I urge you to reconsider this discriminatory, unscientific policy and follow the example of the International Olympic Committee. The myth that trans women have a ‘direct competitive advantage’ is not supported by medical science, and it continues to stoke fear and violence against one of the most at-risk communities in the world,” wrote the congresswoman.

The same thing is going on in other sports, as I'm sure you've heard.  Unlike what Rep. Omar says, in sports like various Track disciplines or Cycling, for example, there are long standing Men's and Women's records.  They are often kept by age, or weight class for each sex.   Without exception, Men's records are faster than women's.

A few months ago, a biological male who identifies as a transgender woman won a women’s world championship cycling event.

Rachel McKinnon, a professor of Philosophy at Charleston College, won the women’s sprint 35-39 age bracket at the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles.   Allow me to post a picture of the podium from Cycling Weekly.  I think it's an instructive game of "one of these things is not like the others" that a small child could spot.

The woman on the left is silver medalist Carolien Van Herrikhuyzen of the Netherlands and on the right is bronze medalist Jennifer Wagner of the USA.

Unlike Powerlifting, cycling is a sport where the most important metric is not pure size or pure strength, it's power to weight ratio (usually in watts/kg), so McKinnon's obviously wider, masculine physique is not as big advantage as it might be in Powerlifting.  She/he says that the smaller Jennifer Wagner had beaten her in 10 of their last 12 races, including the 500-metre time trial earlier in the week.

But, of course, this isn't about the athletic ability, it's about social justice and "muh rights".

“Focusing on performance advantage is largely irrelevant because this is a rights issue. We shouldn’t be worried about trans people taking over the Olympics. We should be worried about their fairness and human rights instead.”

McKinnon also compared restrictions on biological males competing in women’s events to racial segregation.

“This is bigger than sports, and it’s about human rights,” McKinnon said to USA Today.

“By catering to cisgender people’s views, that furthers transgender people’s oppression. When it comes to extending rights to a minority population, why would we ask the majority? I bet a lot of white people were pissed off when we desegregated sports racially and allowed black people. But they had to deal with it.”

I don't care if Wagner had beaten her 99 out of 100, they shouldn't be competing.  Modern military work for the guys on "the pointy end of the spear" is more like Powerlifting than cycling.  Women shouldn't be in there, either.

Opioid Control and Gun Control

It's nearly universally stated in the 2A community that gun control isn't about guns; it's about control.  It's looking like the same thing can be said about opioid control, and the governments' responses to the "opioid epidemic".  It doesn't matter if their policies are getting the right results, it only matters as a means to the end of more control over more people.

Background:  I've written on the topic a few times, a simple search in the search bar in the upper left corner of the screen returns the three most relevant posts.  Around the same time I did mine, Aesop at Raconteur Report wrote about opioids in Northern California and I always link to him.  (Parts 1, 2, 3, Final)  Let me share a short version of where I stand from a piece I posted last October.

I think there's a deliberate attempt to conflate prescription opioid problems with illegal heroin overdose.  We don't have a prescription drug problem, we have a "junkies shooting adulterated heroin problem".  So why the public ruse?  The old advise to "follow the money" leads me to the company that makes naloxone, the anti-narcotic drug administered to people in overdose.  It was being pushed that virtually everyone should carry it everywhere as a lifesaver; it was even pushed on librarians to have it available for the library junkies who OD while watching internet porn in the library (do you have that where you live?).  The price of naloxone had gone up 17x.  Going down that rabbit hole led directly to Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.

A few weeks after I posted that, conservative commentator Eric Bolling lost his son to an overdose.  I truly feel sorry for Eric and his family for the incredible pain they've been subjected to.  On the other hand, Eric has fallen right into the "painkillers = heroin" trap and argues that we use too many opioid pain killers.  His awful emotional pain does not give him the right to inflict physical pain on others.

The problem is that the effort to restrict opioid prescriptions is fueling a black market while leaving people in agonizing pain.  According to Maia Szalavitz, an expert reporter on this subject writing in the NY Times: 

As many as 18 million patients rely on opioids to treat long-term pain that is intractable but not necessarily associated with terminal illness. In 2016, seeking to curb opioid misuse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced guidelines outlining a maximum safe dosage and strongly urging doctors to avoid prescribing for chronic pain unless death is imminent. The guidelines were supposed to be voluntary and apply only to chronic pain patients seeing general practitioners. Instead, they have been widely seen by doctors as mandatory.

As a result, thousands of pain medication recipients have had their doses reduced or eliminated. But this attempt to save people from addiction is leaving many patients in perpetual pain — and thus inadvertently ruining, or even ending, lives.

The problem, as usual, is that the Government regulators are starting from a bad assumption.  They assumed today's junkie shooting contaminated fentanyl is yesterday's patient who started out on prescription drugs and got addicted that way.  Only about 8% of people who receive prescription opioids develop addictions.  80% of addicts get started in other, less legal, ways.

As the Journal of Pain Research points out, the government’s campaign is based on a false premise: “Today’s non-medical opioid users are not yesterday’s patients.” Medical users usually do not become addicts.

Wrong assumptions lead to wrong law, and doctors are being threatened with their livelihoods by new regulations.

Prescribing outside the C.D.C. guidelines can lead to scrutiny by medical boards and even the Drug Enforcement Administration — and the result has been that many doctors have either quit prescribing entirely or tapered patients’ doses to fit the guidelines. According to a 2017 Boston Globe survey, nearly 70 percent of family and internal medicine doctors nationwide reported having reduced their prescribing in the previous two years — and nearly 10 percent reported stopping prescribing pain medication entirely. 

The problem with these blanket policies from the CDC or other Big Government agencies is that people are individuals and vary in their response to the pain killers.  Some people can't get by without them.  The VA recently did a study that showed alarming rates of suicidal acts “following discontinuation of opioid therapy.”

Jay Lawrence, a former truck driver, is a case in point. When his doctor refused to continue his medication in early 2017 — even though he had severe pain from spinal cord injuries and was not addicted — he told his wife that he’d had enough. In a park where they’d recently renewed their wedding vows, he fatally shot himself in the chest while she held his hand.

Writing in the Orange County Register, Dr. Jeffrey Singer notes that attacking doctors for prescribing opioids to patients for essential pain relief does nothing to prevent black-market use of opioids or deaths among non-medical users:

A recent report reveals California’s “Death Certificate Project,” is terrorizing doctors into under-prescribing or even abruptly terminating medication for acute and chronic pain patients. The project investigates doctors who have treated patients identified as overdoses on death certificates and considers rescinding their licenses or charging them with homicide.

It is scandalous that we doctors and our patients are the latest victims of America’s war on drugs, while deaths from nonmedical use of licit and illicit drugs continue their exponential and perpetual climb — with no end in sight.

The U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently released the latest results of the current strategy: opioid-related overdose deaths in 2017 continued their steady climb, increasing 13 percent over 2016 totals. This happened despite the fact that per capita high-dose opioid prescriptions fell 58 percent from 2008 to 2017, while the number of all opioids dispensed fell 29 percent from 2010 to 2017.

Perhaps most damning is this assessment from the CATO Institute.  A study by Harvard’s Jeffrey Miron and others shows the government’s anti-opioid crusade has backfired and actually increased opioid addiction and overdose deaths:

Opioid overdose deaths have risen dramatically in the United States over the past two decades.… The opioid epidemic has resulted from too many restrictions on prescribing, not too few. Rather than decreasing opioid overdose deaths, restrictions push users from prescription opioids toward diverted or illicit opioids, which increase the risk of overdose because consumers cannot easily assess drug potency or quality in underground markets. The implication of this “more restrictions, more deaths” explanation is that the United States should scale back restrictions on opioid prescribing, perhaps to the point of legalization.

Last words not to Cato's Jeffery Miron, but to Maia Szalavitz who started down this road:

Paradoxically, there is a growing medical consensus that patients who are addicted to their pain pills shouldn’t be forced to taper their dosages. The safest treatment for opioid addiction is maintenance with an appropriate opioid: For addiction, the opioids methadone and buprenorphine are the only treatments proved to cut the death rate from overdose by 50 percent or more.

“We have less mercy for people who have chronic pain and are on chronic opioids than we do for somebody who’s using heroin in the streets right now,” said Dr. Kertesz.

Both groups deserve more compassion, including a safe legal harbor for high-dose prescribing for patients who truly need it — as well as for their doctors. Attempting to reduce overdose risk by raising the odds of suicide is both cruel and senseless.

Yeah, I'd Watch That

Yeah, I'd totally watch this over the better known one.

About HR8 and HR1112 in the US House

Miguel at Gun Free Zone has been leading the charge to contact your representatives regarding these two Democrat gun right restriction bills.  HR8 is a "universal background check" bill that seeks to redefine "transfer" from selling a gun to letting anyone use your gun, and (I swear I'm not making this up) is justified by making background checks apply at gun shows and internet gun sales.  I guess they have a 100% perfect record of never telling the truth about these things, so at least they're consistent.  HR 1112 makes buying more obtuse than that.  Miguel says:

H.R. 8 criminalizes the private transfer of firearms and targets law-abiding gun owners for persecution. It would make criminals out of law-abiding gun owners for simply loaning a firearm to a friend or some family members. This bill would not stop criminals from obtaining guns because criminals do not comply with the law. And the legislation would be unenforceable without federal gun registration.

H.R. 1112 would allow the government to arbitrarily delay firearm purchases for over 20 days and make it more difficult for law-abiding Americans to defend themselves and their families.

HR 1112 is aimed at giving the government more time, up to 20 days, to do a background check.  Currently, if a background check is taking too long, a buyer can get provisionally approved to buy a gun after three days.  Much like the bump stock ban, it seems to be a law based on the fact that one time in recorded history, someone who was provisionally allowed to pass his background check committed a crime.  This was the Charleston church shooting.  "Once in the history of the world" appears to be the new standard for outlawing something.  I suppose no one ever considered regulating the government's ability to do their job and improve their performance.  

Maybe it's my general disgust with the tribes running DC, but I take a more cynical view of the goings on.  I can't help but think of these as the Evil Party's version of the Stupid Party voting something like 45 times to repeal Obamacare when it would never pass the senate and then rolling over and doing absolutely nothing to repeal it when their votes would actually matter.  These bills are all for show.  They can pass outright national door to door confiscation legislation in the House to give their financial backers a thrill up their legs, feeling sure it's never going to see the light of day in the Senate so they don't experience consequences, such as people voting them out as they did back after the passage of the '94 Assault Weapons Ban.

Chances are that even Milquetoast Rubio and Voldemort Scott wouldn't cross party lines to vote for either one in the Senate, if they even come up for a vote, but right now there's absolutely nothing we can do to stop both passing in the house.

My representative is very good on this, but I gave him a pat on the back by email for opposing them FWIW.   HR8 passed today on a mostly party line vote, although 8 idiot Stupid Party members crossed over to vote for the bill.  BTW, that link is to the NPR story.  I've read and listened to some propaganda in my day - I was a shortwave listener during the cold war - but that is a masterpiece of propaganda reporting.

Both are perfect gun control bills.  They make advocates feel good, but won't do a damned thing to prevent bad people from doing bad things.  When those bad things inevitably happen, the sheeple will cry out for even more gun control which the controllers will be only too happy to suggest.  In Bloomberg's - and his minions' - eyes, that's perfect.

Just How Bad Was the Cold on Electric Cars?

Back during the strong cold snap a few weeks ago... sorry, let me turn on the reverb, during the Po po po lar lar lar Vor vor vor tex tex tex ...  there were stories about how badly batteries were affected by the cold weather.  So how bad was it?

AAA recently studied the effects of cold on EV range and found that when temperatures dropped to 20°F, EV (electric vehicle) range dropped an average of 41% compared to range measured at 75°F.

It does freeze in my corner of the planet, but not very often.  I think the last day we had when it was under 32F around here was in 2010.  Still, I realize that freezing happens on much of the earth and I don't think a fuel source that loses half its capacity in the cold is something I'd be trying to stake the future on.  Perhaps the bigger problem is that it's not only worse in the cold, it's worse in the heat, too.  The range vs. temperature curve is shaped like an upside down "V".

 AAA tested five electric vehicles, all with a minimum EPA estimated driving range of 100 miles, in partnership with the Automotive Club of Southern California’s Automotive Research Center. For this study, AAA researchers used a 2018 BMWi3, a 2018 Chevrolet Bolt, a 2018 Nissan Leaf, a 2017 Tesla Model S 75D, and a 2017 Volkswagen e-Golf.

The BMW i3 was most sensitive to temperature change in both hot and cold conditions, losing 50% and 21% of range in cold and hot conditions, respectively. The Nissan Leaf was the most temperature-resistant, losing 31% and 11% of range in cold and hot conditions, respectively.

All the cars had between 1,000 and 6,200 miles on them before the test, and all of their battery packs were tested to rated limits before and after the tests.  Tests were conducted on a dynamometer in a temperature chamber.  No warning lights were allowed before or during the test runs.  Lots of details for how they were tested on the Power Electronics magazine article's website.

The striking difference between the BMW i3 and the Leaf makes me wonder what the two companies did differently.  If one car is significantly different from the others, why?  What did the bad one do wrong or the good one do right?  Can we make them all like the good one?

I hope it's evident that hot weather is a problem, too.  Just as running a heater when it's 20F outside sucks battery life and vehicle range, when it's 95 outside and you're running the air conditioner, that sucks battery life, too.  Of course, the air conditioner puts some load on gasoline consumption, while most internal combustion engine cars use at least some waste heat from the engine to warm the cabin, too.  With an EV, everything has to come out of the battery. 

On the School Kids Put Up in Feinstein's Face

As others have said, I think Diane Feinstein handled the obnoxious kids sent to destroy her rather properly.  As the Daily Caller summarizes:

The interaction was filmed and posted on Twitter by the Sunrise Movement, an organization dedicated to “building an army of young people to make climate change an urgent priority across America, end the corrupting influence of fossil fuel executives on our politics, and elect leaders who stand up for the health and well-being of all people,” according to their website.

In the days when journalists were serious, a publicity stunt like this would get just about zero attention.  No reporter would interview children of that age, and no politician would talk with them, because everyone would know that the kids are only parroting what they've been taught to parrot.  An organization like Sunrise Movement couldn't exist in a non-Saul Alinsky world. 

The only reason there are kids in her office at all is to try to make her look bad: heartless, child hater, hate the earth and so on.  This whole thing was done at the least to embarrass Di-Fi and possibly to make her look bad for an attempt to primary her in her next election cycle.  Judging by the Twits on Twitter, most of the adults can't see that. 

Their cover story, all their carefully indoctrinated talking points, were Green New Deal talking points.  Di-Fi had the sense to tell them it's not likely to pass under current conditions, but that wasn't good enough for the little Wokescolds.  (H/T Sense of Events)

Feinstein went on to explain that she doesn’t believe the Green New Deal will pass in a Republican-controlled Senate, adding that she has drafted up her own version of the bill that she believes is more likely to pass. She had copies of her version of the bill printed out and distributed among the group.

Sunrise Movement indoctrinated the kids to claim that the world will end in 10 years If We Don't Pass This Right Now!!!  Again, as I've been talking about lately, that's simply not true.  The UN IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body formed specifically to find a way to blame humans for bad things, to extort money out of rich countries, that IPCC, in their latest report doesn't say anything remotely close to what Sunrise Movement or Occasional Cortex say.  To borrow a money quote from Dr. Judith Curry - a "warmist" - posted by Borepatch:

“Every single catastrophic scenario considered by the IPCC AR5 (WGII, Table 12.4) has a rating of very unlikely or exceptionally unlikely and/or has low confidence. The only tipping point that the IPCC considers likely in the 21stcentury is disappearance of Arctic summer sea ice (which is fairly reversible, since sea ice freezes every winter).”

Dr. Curry goes on to say (from this post on her blog):

Thinking that catastrophes like major hurricane landfalls, massive forest fires etc. will be ‘cured’ by eliminating fossil fuel emissions is laughable.  Well its not really funny.  Thinking that eliminating fossil fuel emissions will ‘solve’ the problem of extreme weather events is very sad, sort of on the level of doing rain dances.

Putting small children in positions like this is child exploitation, pure and simple.  Sunrise Movement should be subject to arrest for it. 

Crap-cam photo apparently from someone's phone, on Twitter, and from Daily Caller.

A Year After Cutting the Cable TV Cord

A year ago this week, Mrs. Graybeard and I started down the road of cutting the cable TV cord.  It began simply enough, with researching whether it was possible from where we live.  As I posted last year:

We've been cable TV subscribers since around the time we moved here into central Florida in '82.  There was broadcast (OTA) TV available, but a few networks and all of the transmitters were far enough away that we were considered fringe or beyond fringe for reception: not very good quality without a fairly serious outside antenna.  To get a good picture, and then for the larger variety of choices, we started cable. 

Our cable provider was bought a series of times and in the course of the last six months that we had cable, our monthly charge had gone up twice.  Looking at my old checkbook records, going back to 2010, the cable service and Internet had gone up almost 400%.  By last winter, we had finally gotten to the point where we were ready to do things. 

How We Got Where We Are

Some initial conversations with friends and folks who sold antennas got us to understand it was entirely possible to get OTA television with a modest outdoor antenna.  A few days later, I updated that previous post, when the test results with the small antenna were in.

We get the major networks, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, PBS, a bunch of shopping channels, a bunch of old TV show/movie channels, and lots more.   Far more than we're likely to watch because the reason we started this effort was that we watch two hours a week of TV in a typical week, and we're paying far too much for two hours.  The local news is good for "boil water" or "road washed out" news, but I sure don't trust those national networks for news.

I concluded that update by saying that we were going to research streaming services and try that approach to complement the OTA.  In the intervening year, we've had two streaming services and I'm really not happy with either one.  

To start with, you guys know me - a spreadsheet was involved.  We had a couple of "must have" channels and a bunch that we also wanted.  It turned out the two "must have" (Fox News or One America News and the Outdoor Channel) were the hardest to get while the "nice to have channels" were easy.   The hardest to get, by far, is the Outdoor Channel. 

When we started this,  YouTubeTV had a $35 offer that we signed up with and it stayed that way.  You can see that Hulu offered essentially the same lineup as YouTubeTV, although I think that's the price I entered when YouTube was $5 cheaper.  YouTube, though, doesn't provide the Outdoor Channel at all.  This past fall, when the new season of Gun Stories was starting, we looked into starting a second streaming service with their own service, My Outdoor TV.  It's $10/month (25%), which was painful enough, but they didn't start showing the series when it was broadcast on the channel.  IIRC, the customer service guys said shows are held six months before they air.  If that's right, last October's Season 8 episode 1 should be available in March.  If the whole series has to at least six months, then it will be at the end of June. 

By comparison, a service called FuboTV advertised as a "sports centric" network was $45/month (what we would have been paying for YouTubeTV and the MyOutdoorTV combination), and a $5 add-on package would include the Outdoor Channel, Sportsman Channel, World Fishing Network, and another three.  We switched to FuboTV when my month of YouTubeTV ended in October.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The good part is that the streaming quality of the video we get from both YouTubeTV and Fubo are excellent.  I'm told you need a wireless speed of about 20 Meg/second and our system typically holds that with no problems.  Our OTA pictures are beautiful, and while we haven't watched the OTA TV as often as the streaming services, it's an excellent backup for hurricane season, should the internet connection be down (which it almost always is).  Curiously, we get one streaming channel (Comet - old sci-fi shows) over the air and through our streaming device (Roku) main menu.  It was on YouTubeTV, too. 

Roku has their own service and more services get added every month if not every week.  We have watched a couple of Amazon Prime movies.  Yes, we're that one family left in America who does not subscribe to Netflix.  OK, that was an exaggeration. 

Another good part is that I expected to need to buy a DVR.  No need with these particular services.  YouTubeTV includes an "infinite DVR".  You record any show you want and keep it until you watch it (I think the limit was they kept it for 9 months).  Fubo provides 30 hours recording.  For OTA broadcasts, I would need something like a TiVo DVR.

The worst of the bad parts is that the user interface could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch, it sucks so bad.  With the cable service, if I wanted to see what was on another channel at any time, I could hit the "Guide" button and get an onscreen list of every channel and what was on it.  With the streaming services, there is simply no equivalent.  If I want to see what else is on, I have to quit the show I'm watching and change to another way of looking at what's on each channel (which doesn't provide the information the cable guide carries), and whether I change channel or go back to the one I was watching it takes 5-10 seconds to change channels.  It was faster to change channels back when I had to walk across shag carpeting to turn a knob.   

The horrible user interface applies to the DVR features, too.  Both YouTubeTV and Fubo do different stupid things to you when want to record a TV series. 

A chronic bad part is the difficulty getting the channels we want, especially Outdoor and Sportsman's Channels (they're the same company, after all).  Everyone with cable TV gets a version of this problem.  Of the $50/month we pay for Fubo, I consider most of it a waste of money.  The only redeeming feature the streaming service brings is that while I may be throwing away approximately $40/month, with our cable TV bill I was throwing away more like $120/month. 

Ugly, or just plain weird, is that the "sports oriented" service we get doesn't include ESPN.  All I ever watch on ESPN is college football, and going through the "bowl season" without them was annoying.  We used the OTA TV more than streaming to watch some college games.  Minor bowls that we honestly didn't care about.  On the other hand, if you're from Europe and trying to keep up with your soccer team or you just love soccer, Fubo is the channel for you 

We're watching the latest season of the Outdoor Channel's series The Best Defense, which should end around the end of March (rough guess - that would be a 12 week season, which seems to be what they do).  Right now, I think there's a 75% chance that we go back to YouTubeTV.  Maybe more options will be available by next fall.

Non-Surprise of the Day: A "Wealth Tax" Won't Pay For the Green New Deal

It's probably not a surprise to you that the Democratic Socialists of America are completely economically ignorant.  Politically, they probably aren't.  Politically, they unabashedly say they want to destroy capitalism and the US.  It isn't a surprise, then, that their "Green New Deal" economics is all about destroying the US economy. 

Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute took at look at some of the real numbers behind the story and the tax increases we've heard talked about are so short of funding this Green New Deal fiasco that there's no way anyone can think they're being serious. 

There aren't many proposals that can really be looked at.  AOC did that famous screed on TV about the marginal tax rate on any dollars earned above a person's 10 millionth dollar (the "tippy top") being taxed at 70%.  We've heard about 90%.  How much does it really cost?  Jill Stein, the Green Party Candidate in the 2016 elections, proposed a “Green New Deal” costing between $700 billion and $1 trillion per year for public jobs and clean energy initiatives.  But that's 7 to $10 Trillion over the next 10 years, which is clearly not enough spending for the Democrats today.

Instead, the plans that have been widely talked about come closer to $50 trillion over 10 years.  Over and above the current deficits.

(W)hen assessing the needed tax revenues, a green-energy initiative costing $7–$10 trillion over the decade should be examined in the context of $42 trillion in additional Democratic-socialist proposals that include single-payer health care ($32 trillion), a federal jobs guarantee ($6.8 trillion), student-loan forgiveness ($1.4 trillion), free public college ($800 billion), infrastructure ($1 trillion), family leave ($270 billion), and Social Security expansion ($188 billion).

That 21 percent of GDP cost would double federal spending. And that does not even account for a baseline budget deficit rising to 7 percent of GDP over the decade — bringing the total budget gap to 28 percent of GDP.

Riedl then goes through some additional numbers.  Let's start here.  Let's not bother with taking 70% of income over $10 Million, let's take every penny of income over $1 million - you know they want to.

Analysis of IRS data shows that this would raise 3.8 percent of GDP — not even enough to balance the current budget, much less finance a Green New Deal. And even that figure implausibly assumes that people continue working and investing. Slightly more realistically, doubling the top 35 percent and 37 percent tax brackets, to 70 percent and 74 percent for singles earning more than $200,000 and couples earning at least $400,000, would raise roughly 1.6 percent of GDP. That figure also ignores all revenues lost to the economic effects of 85 percent marginal tax rates (when including state and payroll taxes) as well as tax avoidance and evasion.

Is he being reasonably accurate?  I think so.  A few years ago, I calculated if you took 100% of income for the "top 1%", which was around $300,000 at the time, you couldn't run the government for more than a few weeks.  Bill Whittle said it well in this video.  Even though it's dated 2011, I think the numbers aren't so different that the concept is worthless - it's within a factor of two. 

Riedl does the same sort of disassembly of the current tax proposals as Bill Whittle talked through in that video (taken, BTW, from Iowahawk, whom I used to link to when he still blogged).   There is simply no way to pay for this with "tax the rich" proposals; they need to raise taxes radically on everyone.

Writer Mica Mosbacher for Townhall adds a piece on Riedl's article and adds an important nugget of information. 

To make the math work, though, Democrats would have to revise their definition of “super-rich” to encompass pretty much anyone who can afford to pay their bills on time, which is precisely what Senator Warren seemed to suggest in a recent MSNBC interview about her wealth tax proposal.

“When we’re only taxing income, we’re taxing two people who may have the same income but are in wildly different economic circumstances,” Warren complained, making clear that the intention of her wealth tax is to punish people who manage their finances responsibly.

Yet, even Warren’s own economists estimate that her wealth tax would only bring in about $2.75 billion over 10 years.

It's a clue by four when the candidate alludes to taxing everyone and her staff economists say her wealth tax falls pitifully, abysmally short of raising the funds she needs (not even .01% of it).  If you haven't figured this out yet, when they say they're going to "tax the rich" and the corporations, they mean YOU.  You may not consider yourself to be rich, but they simply can't make it work without taking everything from everyone. 

We have to assume that's the plan.

(Tell ya what.  AOC gets entirely too much publicity.  Let's skip "bucktooth Betsy" and use Faux-cahontas for variety).

Guess What? Min Wage Goes Up, Hours and Jobs Go Down

It occurred to me some years ago that I'm really tired of arguing minimum wage because every time we argue that the people it's most supposed to help end up being the most hurt by it.  We're right every time, we get ignored every time, and those people get hurt every time.

Guess what?  It's happening in New York, just as predicted.  They're calling it the Restaurant Recession. 

In a survey conducted by New York City Hospitality Alliance late last year, about 75 percent of the more than 300 respondents operating full-service restaurants reported they’ll reduce employee hours this year because of the new wage increases, while 47 percent said they’ll eliminate jobs.

Note that this rising wage trend has been going on since 2015, so that cuts in numbers of jobs and hours worked go back to 2015.  The survey also reported that “76.50% of respondents report reducing employee hours and 36.30% eliminated jobs in 2018 in response to mandated wage increases.”

As an example, the website Eater NY tells the story of the small chain, Rosa Mexicano. 

Every afternoon at 4 p.m., each of Rosa Mexicano’s four Manhattan locations used to have a pre-shift staff meeting. “That meeting created a really nice family atmosphere,” says Chris Westcott, Rosa Mexicano’s president and CEO. “It created energy and synergy, and people were pumped going into the shift.”

But as of last month, the meeting doesn’t happen anymore. Now, start times for shifts are staggered through the evening, and employees receive a document with the day’s updates when they arrive.

It’s one sacrifice the Mexican chain has made to help offset the additional $600,000 that Governor Andrew Cuomo’s minimum wage increases will cost them this year. The changes — announced on November 10, 2015 as part of a gradual growth — brought wages up to about their cap on December 31, representing a minimum wage hike from $13 to $15 per hour for businesses in New York City with more than 11 employees. Tipped employees’ hourly wage also rose from $8.65 to $10, with a tip credit that guarantees they’ll receive at least $15 per hour, and the changes extended to workers on salary; the overtime exemption rate rose to $1,125 per week in New York City ($58,500 annually).

Servers who still have their jobs are reporting that they're being pushed to do more - work harder - to try to utilize every minute of that $15/hour rate.

Merelyn Bucio, a server at a restaurant in Soho that she declined to name, says her hours were cut and her workload increased when wage rates rose. Server assistants and bussers now work fewer shifts, so she and other servers take on side work like polishing silverware and glasses.

Similarly, prices are reported to be rising as well.  For example, Lalito, a small restaurant in Chinatown, has increased menu prices by 10 to 15 percent.  The restaurant business is a tight margin business so increases in labor costs will pinch the bottom line and may require price increases to break even.  Some try to hold off price increases by reducing "little things" that distinguish the restaurant:

John Seymour, founder and CEO of popular fried chicken restaurant chain Sweet Chick, is holding off on raising prices in his four New York locations. Instead, he’s trying to reduce maintenance costs and cut non-essential expenses. Details like candles on tables at dinner are being reconsidered so customers don’t have to take on the extra cost. 

The Foundation for Economic Education posts this graphic of Year Over Year (YOY) restaurant employment changes for full-service restaurants in New York City: 

Although they mark recessions (gray vertical bars) and the drop in YOY employment, they leave the two red arrows on the left too steep; starting well before the recessions when YOY employment was doing much better.  Those drop precipitously  in the recession, as opposed to the one on the right that starts its decline to lower growth since the start of Cuomo's minimum wage laws in 2015.  It's obvious that restaurant employment growth has been in decline since the start of 2015.  With a YOY chart, anything above the zero line (horizontal red) represents growth, everything below it is shrinkage.

The article at FEE goes on to explain:

December 2018 restaurant jobs were down by almost 3,000 (and by 1.64%) from the previous December, and the 2.5% annual decline in March 2018 was the worst annual decline since the sharp collapse in restaurant jobs following 9/11 in 2001.

As the chart shows, it usually takes an economic recession to cause year-over-year job losses at NYC’s full-service restaurants, so it’s likely that this is a “restaurant recession” tied to the annual series of minimum wage hikes that brought the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour at the end of last year. And the NYC restaurant recession is happening even as the national economy hums along in the 117th month of the second-longest economic expansion in history and just short of the 120-month record expansion from March 1991 to March 2001.

It doesn't take a Ph.D. in economics to predict this is going to happen; you might have to be a Ph.D. in Modern Monetary Theory economics to be so delusional that you believe these things won't happen.  I talked with a kid working in a restaurant several years ago who said he didn't want to see our state raise min wage exactly because "everything will get more expensive and the jobs will get harder to find".  This was back in 2013.  Yes, we've been talking about a $15/hr min wage since 2013.

(Commieus americanus var. laborus)  | Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A Little More on Modern Monetary Theory

Back at the end of January, I did a piece on the new economic theory sweeping the Democrat party:  Modern Monetary Theory.  The theory and name are the products of economist Bill Mitchell of the University of Newcastle in New South Wales.  When we marvel at Apoplexia Occasional Cortex saying, "just pay for it" and ask no one in particular, "she really has a masters in Economics?" - this is how you get a world full of people like AOC.

Economist and financial advisor John Mauldin writes on MMT this week and has lots to say:

Let’s get the official definition of MMT from Wikipedia. My comments inserted are in brackets.

 In MMT, "vertical" money (money created by the government and spent in the private sector) enters circulation through government spending. Taxation and its legal tender enable power to discharge debt and establish the fiat money as currency, giving it value by creating demand for it in the form of a private tax obligation that must be met. [And thus higher taxes create more demand for the currency and help to maintain the value thereof.]

In addition, fines, fees and licenses create demand for the currency. An ongoing tax obligation, in concert with private confidence and acceptance of the currency, maintains its value. Because the government can issue its own currency at will, MMT maintains that the level of taxation relative to government spending (the government's deficit spending or budget surplus) is in reality a policy tool that regulates inflation and unemployment, and not a means of funding the government's activities by itself. [The more you want the government to spend, the higher the taxes have to be in order to keep from creating inflation, or so the theory goes.]

Proponents argue that unemployment is caused by lack of demand and lack of demand is caused by insufficient money entering the private sector, a problem the government can solve by creating money and spending it in the private sector. Voilà, demand is created and unemployment goes down. Inflation? That can be controlled by higher taxes. Hey, it’s their theory. Don’t ask me to explain it.

Take a look at that first sentence in the last paragraph: "Unemployment is caused by lack of demand, which is caused by insufficient money entering the private sector..."   I can see how the lack of demand for some company's products could lead to unemployment for people who work at that company, but how does money the government created and spent in the whole "private sector" matter to that specific company?  If you really don't like the products, or don't like the company (cough - Dick's Sporting Goods) how does that Gubmint Money affect you?  Are you really going to buy that product or shop at that company if the government buys their products?  If the .gov does buy their products, then what?  Do they buy their products and bury them in a landfill to create more demand?

The whole thing is this sort of borderline lunatic thinking from top to bottom.  "Fines, fees and licenses create demand for the currency" - oh, great!   Let's fine people to death, demand fees for everything, and licenses for everything because it will "create demand for the currency"?  It creates a demand for money, but that's money the government will create and then pay to itself.  You're just a hapless channel for that money.  The same goes for the first paragraph and the idea that the Taxation creates demand for currency - they're creating money to pay to themselves through you.

Be prepared for more fees, more taxes and licenses for everything in life.

The problem is that this idea is gaining traction in one of the major political parties.  Economists advising major presidential and congressional candidates on the progressive and even “moderate” left are more and more openly talking about MMT and its practical applications.

Why should this be on your radar? Let me give you just a few scenarios…

Politicians are increasingly talking about “free stuff.” Free college, guaranteed basic income, more total healthcare paid for by the public, basic housing, and more. It is almost like there will be an auction to see who can promise the most free benefits, paid for by taxes on the rich. They will cite economic advisors who say it is completely doable and even necessary for the general welfare.

“The richest country in the history of rich countries can easily afford to spend more on its citizens ensuring basic income and wealth equality.” More or less a direct quote from several interviews. Forget mere income taxes. The new political ante will be a wealth tax.

That means these ideas will be increasingly promoted in the public space. More politicians will argue for increased spending and/or at least different spending priorities. Guns and butter.

Over the next few years, this is likely to spread as a "great new theory" on the left.  Since younger voters are led by feelings rather than experience and logic, they will feel a natural affinity with the idealism. Why shouldn’t a rich nation help those who are less advantaged?

The lurking problem is that the business cycle, well, cycles.  Boom gives way to bust; expansion is followed by recession.  At some point there will be a recession. Unemployment will rise and deficits increase until we are on our way to a $30-trillion debt in just a few years. This will crowd out private investment, slowing whatever recovery there might be and making us vulnerable to a quick second recession, not unlike the recessions of 1980 and 1982.

That could also raise the potential for a true “throw the bums out” election. The frustration among voters that led to Trump will still be there, but it will also be shared by many on the left who will see the MMT promises as a way to change things.   

It is not far-fetched to imagine a White House and Congress beginning to work around the principles of MMT, if not adopt it outright with sharply higher taxes and spending.

Is this a threat?  I think so.  Is it a big threat?  That's much harder to answer.  Right now, no, but given the right combination of an inopportune recession and an election as close as the last, it could get a foothold.  There are definitely constitutional issues that have to be resolved; to wit, the Federal Reserve can buy US bonds, but it can't directly create money as this requires.  For all the pounding we all did on Quantitative Easing, it was rather subtle compared to this outright money printing.  

 

From a long (21 page) article on MMT at Seeking Alpha