Did you know that there is a federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)? But of course there is. And you might suppose that since pipelines carry mostly oil and natural gas, it would be housed inside the Department of Energy. But no: it is part of the Department of Transportation. So we have yet another instance of government cabinet department that does nothing to produce an increased supply of the thing it was created for (energy, but see also: education), while a department that is widely failing in its primary responsibility (transportation) has jurisdiction over oil and gas pipelines.
The monstrous case of Lucy Letby reminds us that the devil wears many faces. The particular evil in this instance, is that she chose to hijack the compassion afforded by a nurse’s uniform to facilitate her crimes. While abhorrent, this should not surprise us; where else should evil gravitate, if not to those professions which grant immediate access to the vulnerable, the young, and the trusting? The malevolent hide in plain sight within the police force, masquerade as teachers, and perhaps vilest of all, occasionally pose as medical staff too.
Letby was sentenced last week to 14 whole-life jail terms, for the murder of seven babies, and the attempted murder of six others during her time at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016. Although this already makes Letby Britain’s worst infant serial killer, these numbers are conservative. Cheshire Police have confirmed they will be examining the records of 4,000 babies Letby may have come into contact with, alongside fears that she harmed dozens more.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Moral Case for Capital Punishment
As San Francisco implodes under the weight of crime and Democrat dysfunction, tech billionaires are pivoting, setting their sights on building a new ‘smart city’ on the outskirts of the Bay Area. Perhaps it’s cheaper to build a new metro area rather than salvage the sinking ship that is San Francisco.
And who could blame them?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on “Game of Thrones’ Kind of Thing”: Tech Billionaires Buy 55,000 Acres Outside San Francisco to Start New City
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s call for a “new census” is causing much backlash over missing people in his country, The Washington Post reported.
López Obrador says the number of Mexico’s missing persons is much lower than the 100,000 listed last year. He has dispatched officials to check whether people initially reported as disappeared have returned to their families, The Post said.
Families and advocates of the disappeared persons, however, fear López Obrador is trying to lower the numbers artificially before an election year.
Karla Quintana, the head of the government commission responsible for the official count, abruptly resigned on Wednesday “in light of the current context.”
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Mexican President Claims Fewer Citizens Missing
The evidence continues to accumulate that America’s nonprofit sector is failing the country in some basic ways. Specifically, it is not doing enough to break down unjust inequalities and barriers to opportunity.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on What Harvard Can Learn From Olive Garden
One of the problems with evaluating global warming claims is that the temperature record has been corrupted. Custodians of the various temperature data sets are generally global warming zealots, and they have gone back and changed the temperature records of the past, e.g. by lowering the temperatures that were recorded during the 1930s, to make “climate change” hysteria seem more plausible.
At the same time that records custodians make such dubious “adjustments,” they do nothing to compensate for factors that really do distort the record, pre-eminently the Urban Heat Island Effect. There is no question that weather stations in cities are affected by urban development that increases local temperatures for reasons that have nothing to do with climate. A large part of the increase in temperatures that has been recorded over the last 50 years is due to the Urban Heat Island Effect.
Much of the Third World has been hoofing it to Germany for the last eight years so that they can hold out their hands and yell “Gimme!” Now a new naturalization law put into place by the traffic light* government will allow all those newcomers to continue their “gimme” act as full German citizens.
* “Traffic light” coalition government:
Red: Social Democratic Party
Yellow: Free Democratic Party
Green: Alliance90 / The Greens
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Just Snap Your Fingers, and You’re German
After Joe Biden’s recent delayed visit to Maui in which he fell asleep during a ceremony honoring the people killed during the terrible event and chuckled about almost “losing his wife, his corvette and his cat” in a fire, many questions about the calamity remain unresolved. Without any obvious pressure from the federal government to get answers, Hawaii’s Democrat leadership is left to its own devices. They are even attempting an information blackout instead of begging Maui citizens for their forgiveness.
Multiple reports from Lahaina indicate that West Maui residents ran into government barricades while trying to flee the rapidly expanding fire; with the survivors being forced to disobey the blocks and bypass police. It’s yet another bizarre occurrence in a long list of disastrous decisions made by Hawaiian officials that likely cost hundreds (if not thousands) of lives.
The government gave no warning siren, denied access to water for fighting back the blaze, and set up barricades which stopped people from escaping. It’s almost as if the state government did not care about a high body count…
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Maui Residents Turned Back By Police Barricades Recount Their Brush With Death
The first days and weeks of a new school year are always filled with anticipation, adjustments, transitions, and growth for parents and students. Yet, this school year’s “firsts” for an expanding pool of families also includes the first time that their children will have the resources and freedom to enroll in the school of their choice.
The short- and long-term consequences of these new opportunities for school choice aren’t just experienced within the four walls of a home or school building, or by the families now empowered to pursue them. The impact of education choice stretches across communities and economies, helping to unleash prosperity and growth that benefits everyone.
Since 2021, eight states have passed universal or near-universal school choice programs, affecting over 13 million students nationwide—a growth of over 4 million in just two years.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Economic Benefits of School Choice
America’s public schools are almost unbelievably bad, to a degree that poses an existential threat to the republic. That’s the bad news. The good news is that most Americans are figuring it out. Rasmussen finds that a 36% plurality say that our public schools are poor. That is a remarkable finding. A sadly misinformed 9% think our schools are excellent. But that disproportion is revealing. The teachers’ unions aren’t fooling many people anymore.
Minnesota exemplifies the awful performance of our schools as well as any state; perhaps better than most, since at one time Minnesota’s schools had the reputation of being above average. Now they are terrible: 64% of Minnesota’s 11th graders can’t do math at grade level. Nevertheless, they are all going to graduate. Good luck competing with Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, German, and other kids from across the world.
The latest test scores have come out in our state, and my colleague Catrin Wigfall explains at AmericanExperiment.org: “Majority of Minnesota students aren’t meeting reading and math standards.”
Our pal Mark Perry asks a simple question: If America is such a horrible systemically racist country why did the number of Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean double from 2M to 4M between 2000 and 2019?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Daily Chart: The Overlooked Immigrants
Italy is facing numbers of illegal immigrant arrivals not seen since the height of the migrant crisis and now, several leftist mayors are joining calls for stricter measures on illegal immigration after migrants were redistributed to their areas.
Mayors belonging to the leftist ItalianDemocratic Party (PD) are now critical of illegal immigration as the Italian government under Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has begun redistributing migrants to their cities and towns, the newspaperIl Giornale reports.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Leftist Mayors Protest Illegal Migration After Being Sent Actual Migrants
