Category Archives: PC

Far Green Screws Consumers and Environment. Again

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New York City has banned yet another common product. First it was the trans fats when the City worried about gangs greasing up the subway tracks. Then the red Solo™ cup of soda. Next it was selfies with kittens.

Now, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that the largest city in the U.S. will ban polystyrene foam, effective July 1. No more packing peanuts. No more takeout coffee cups. No more Rigid Foam insulation.
Coffee Cup on the Beach
Actually I’m good with losing packing peanuts. They are such a PITA to store in my barn.

And I don’t drink coffee.

More than 75 cities and counties in California have banned polystyrene food and beverage containers and more. Brookline, Massachusetts, did the same in 2013. And now NYC.

Did the U.S. suddenly suffer a cranio-rectal inversion? Did the science-denying State of California suddenly end up on the East Coast?

There is, as usual, pretty good (read “scientific”) evidence that plastic is better than paper. It seems that science is anathema to the Far Green.

Let’s spend a minute with the real science instead of the political science.

Study after study has compared “styrofoam” cups side by each with paper cups to find that

• Polystyrene is derived from petroleum and natural-gas. It takes 4,748 gallons of water to make 10,000 Polystyrene cups. The 5.4 million BTUs needed to make 10,000 16-ounce polystyrene cups is about the same as burning 450 pounds of coal. Most important, it takes gallons of water.

• In addition to the renewable twenty million trees, most paper cups are coated with polyethylene, derived from petroleum and natural-gas. It takes 8,095 gallons of water to make 10,000 LDPE-coated paper cups with sleeves. The 6.5 million BTUs needed for 10,000 polyethylene-coated paper cups is equivalent to 542 pounds of coal. (The “greener” polylactide-coated paper cups require even more water and energy.)

Huh.

The average 16-ounce polystyrene cup uses a third less energy, produces half the solid waste by volume, releases a third less of the so-called greenhouse gases, and uses 40-percent less water than does the “green” 16-ounce paper cup with a sleeve.

[Editor’s note: the next wars will be fought over water.]

I know! I know! We’ll ban the plastic cup because it’s bad and promote the paper cup because it’s so much better for the environment.

We haven’t even gotten to life cycles.

Polystyrene is easy peasy to grind up and put through the process again and again and again so that marvelous, mailable cooler your steaks came in could have a new life as a high dollar coffee cup if the Far Green weren’t determined to cut down our forests.

Do you really want to save the environment? Carry your own mug. Don’t litter on my beach. Learn science.

 

je suis Charlie

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This latest cover of Charlie Hebdo has been published in advance by the French media. Outside France, the Washington Post, Corriere della Sera in Italy, Frankfurter Allgemeine in Germany, and the Guardian in the UK are also publishing the cartoon. As am I.

I’ve never read Charlie Hebdo but its satirical and stridently left-wing cartoons, reports, rants, and jokes are as crucial to our free and open exchange of ideas as this Perspective is.

It is intolerable that anyone would apologize for or even tolerate a religion that systematically murders those who oppose it. And waiting for God to let the thugs know that they’re getting Virginians rather than virgins is just too little, too late.

 

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

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In Charlotte, Vermont, in 2008, a school got hammered to take down its candy cane decorations because a grinch there says they have an overt Christmas message. Federal Reserve examiners in 2010 told a hometown bank that it must remove crosses, Bible verses, and Christmas buttons because they could be offensive. The Fed says the Christian paraphernalia violated federal bank regulations. In 2012, the owner of a New Jersey business faced thousands in fines because he installed a 40-foot tall inflatable Santa Claus on his retail store rooftop. CANDY CANES and SANTA! The Menorah and the Glitter Moon and Star for Ramadan probably stayed up at the school, though.


christmas bird

Every radio station has defaulted to Christmas music. I’m surprised we haven’t lost that, too. I don’t particularly like Christmas music but my radio has an off switch. I don’t have to listen to it if I don’t want to.

I was raised in a family that was Quaker on one side, Presbyterian on the other. I may not be as organized now as I was when I reached the age of accountability and joined the Presbyterian church but I am still a Christian. And, of course, a WASP.

You don’t have to be either.

Tomorrow is the day Christians celebrate the birth of the Christ child and the meaning of Christianity. It was a pretty big day before the stock exchange took it over.

It doesn’t mean Do unto all the other religions, then cut out. Unless you are a Member of Congress.

Here’s the thing. If you offer food to the monks on Vesak, Buddha’s Birthday, I will honor your commitment to the poor. If you celebrate Diwali, the Festival of Lights, I will honor with you the victory of Lord Ram over the demon-king Ravana. If you fast during Ramadan when the Qur’an was revealed to Mohammad, I will honor your patience and humility. If you celebrate the most solemn and important of Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur, I will honor your atonement and repentance. If you light the candles of Kwanzaa, I will help you honor your heritage. And if you are a lib’rul atheist, I will not proselytize.

That maybe the most important message.

Not one American soldier in Afghanistan, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Canada, Cuba, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Greenland, Guam, Honduras, Indian Ocean, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Netherlands, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, or the United States has forced any man, woman, or child to convert to Christianity at the point of a gun this year.

You don’t have to be a Buddhist, a Hindu, Islamic, a Jew, a Kwanzaan celebrant, or an atheist. It is time, on this Christian holy day, to let Christians be Christians.

My right to impose my own beliefs stops at my property line (or the end of my nose when I’m out in public). The Charlotte, Vermont, grinch’s right to his own idiocy stops at pretty much the same place. It is time to stop accepting that “politically correct” credo and start honoring the true message of Christmas.

Scythian philosopher Anacharsis wrote in the 6th century BCE, “Wise men argue causes, and fools decide them.”

Peace.

This column originally appeared on Christmas Day, 2008. It required very little updating.

 

Protest Too Much

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“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

“O, but she’ll keep her word.”

But will she?

Shakespear and others of that time knew that the word “protest” meant to “vow” or “declare solemnly.” Gertrude thought the Player Queen went a little over the top with her promises. Taking the modern approach, I think the Player Queen got a little skewed with her mission.


Protesters Holding the Wrong Signs

Tens of thousands of protesters swarmed Washington yesterday because a black kid got shot running from a crime.

Not one protester was upset about the number of crimes committed by actual criminals. Or the crimes committed by the protesters. Some are calling this movement the “new Civil Rights” but no one takes responsibility for the old (un)civil behavior.

Some pundits believe as I do that it’s time for the Civil Rights movement to grow up, take responsibility, and forge ahead.

Are there some bad cops? Sure. There are about 15,000 law enforcement agencies in the United States with more than 750,000 sworn officers. That many people means there are some bad actors but the data shows that police officers commit very few crimes relative to the population they swear to protect.

1,163,146 violent crimes were reported in 2013 nationwide. More than 720,000 ag assaults accounted for 62.3% of that. Almost 350,000 robberies (29.7%), 81,000 rapes (6.9%) and about 14,000 murders (1.2%) made up the rest.

The question you have to ask yourself is, who should get most of your attention? The few bad cops or the 1,163,146 criminals?

End Gang ViolenceWhere are the protests over unarmed black men shot in drivebys?
Where are the protests over unarmed black women shot in bedrooms?
Where are the protests over unarmed black children shot in “neighbor disputes”?

No Looting BurningWhere are the protests over drug dealers on the corners?
Where are the protests over vandalism?
Where are the protests over arson?

Stop Robbing UsWhere are the protests over burglaries?
Where are the protests over armed robberies?
Where are the protests over smash-and-grabs?

Those are the crimes in neighborhoods like yours and mine. Those are the crimes you expect cops to prevent. Those are the crimes you say are the cops’ fault.

Who is the actual pig in this story?

Some pundits believe as I do that it’s time to stop letting old demagogues like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson blame everyone but the criminals for all the crimes. It’s time for the Civil Rights movement to grow up, take responsibility, and forge ahead.

We’ve all seen the current crop of protest signs. I like my signs better.

This might could or even might be the start of Civil Rights 2.0.

 

Kill the Pigs

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[please note that the title has nothing gekko’s porcine potluck provisioning poast.]

Neighbors shot it out in Liberty City yesterday. Again. A 3-year old girl was caught in the crossfire. The shooting started as a dispute between neighbors when bullets started flying. She was outside playing with her brother and friends when she was hit. Cops and paramedics rushed in. The little girl will be OK.

That’s just another day in the life of a police officer. It might have included a traffic stop (will they shoot me or spit on me?), a crash with injuries (will an innocent die?), a next of kin notification (how can they do that?), a burglary (is there a perp with a gun in the house?), a mob of looters (is that a brick or a stolen radio or a ham sandwich?), or a shoot out in Liberty City.

All of those incidents are adrenalin-rich but they may feel less dangerous than walking down the street to the cop on the beat who knows there could be a sniper in a shelter or a bomber with a backpack or a criminal on crank increasing his pressure on the trigger right now.

My daughter found this public troll on Facebook. She reproduced it with her own comment:

Somebody Needs to Kill Them All

“This is a posting from someone who lives in Vermont just five minutes from my house. For the purposes of this lesson, I removed the identity of the owner of the post; however, I was able to see the post without ‘friending’ him.

“The anger is real and it is on our doorstep. As the wife of a police officer, these are troubling times. Simply being a police officer makes a person ‘guilty by association.’

“We need to stand up for our police officers. I’m ready for a picket line in support of our officers. It’s about time.

I’d walk that line, too, but it will take more than that. See, this isn’t the first time — even in Vermont — for some nincompoop to put a target on the men and women who serve.

Kill the Pigs
In this case, our Vermont poster could well be the idiot offspring of a 60s flower child who chanted the title phrase in San Francisco before moving east.

Those seminal protesters weren’t so original after all. Cecil Adams at
StraightDope tell us, “If you thought the term pig arose in the 1960s, you’re in for a surprise.

“The OED cites an 1811 reference to a ‘pig’ as a Bow Street Runner–the early police force, named after the location of their headquarters, before Sir Robert Peel and the Metropolitan Police Force. Before that, the term ‘pig’ had been used as early as the mid-1500s to refer to a person who is heartily disliked.”

For the record, I’ve yet to meet a liberal who liked being called “pissylittledramaqueen” or a police officer who liked being called “pig.”

Did you ever wonder why that cop looked you over — twice — when you walked past?

Did you ever wonder if it were the fact that cultured, ivy league you just screamed “Kill the pigs” and he wondered whether you meant to do it right now?

I don’t wonder about how we raise protesters. This country was founded by protesters.

I do wonder how we raise people who can praise burning down their town, praise looting my store, and praise murdering all the cops all while they condemn a cop for killing a likely lawbreaker.

Who will save your butt:
Remember that the “talk down, not take down” proponents are the ones who run away from the flying bullets and that police officers run toward them.