Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

The Associated Press reports that, unchastised by Tuesday night’s rout, Nancy Pelosi plans to ready the House of Representatives for a “debate and vote on a revised draft of President Joe Biden’s now-$1.85 trillion domestic policy package.” The decision, the AP suggests, is intended to “show voters the party can deliver on its priorities.”

That’s one way of putting it, certainly. Another might be: Nancy Pelosi hopes to appease the progressive wing of her caucus by sending her most vulnerable members unarmed into the Somme.

Substantively, what Pelosi is proposing is bonkers. For a start, there is no “Build Back Better” bill. It remains what it has always been: a slogan, in search of a topline, in search of an agenda. There is only one thing on which the Democratic Party is agreed, and that is that the United States should spend at least two trillion more dollars over the next decade than it had planned to before Joe Biden won. On what? Well, that depends. Some want tax cuts for the rich. Some want to send checks to Americans who have kids. Some want a bunch of new permanent programs. Some want climate-change-mitigation measures. Some want to a second New Deal. At various points during the last few months, all of these things have been in the bill in one form or another, and, at various points, they’ve been taken out again. There is a reason that we have not had a “national debate” over the “Biden agenda,” and that reason is that, beyond its cost, there is nothing concrete to debate.

The result has been the creation of a protean piece of vaporware that nobody in Congress seems much to like, and that the American people seem increasingly to loathe. Since Tuesday’s elections, the institutional Democratic Party has rallied stupidly around the idea that, in order to stave off further electoral losses, it must show voters that it can “get things done” — as if the average American citizen favors action for its own sake. But, of course, it must do no such thing. Reflecting upon this fallacy, Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, noted yesterday that “nobody elected [Biden] to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos,” while Representative Kathleen Rice, her colleague from New York, seemed baffled by the whole thing. “I don’t understand some of my more progressive colleagues saying [that Tuesday] night now shows us that what we need to do is get both of these bills done and shove even more progressive stuff in,” Rice said.

Rice is correct. And yet, inexplicably, “shove even more progressive stuff in” is precisely what Nancy Pelosi has chosen to do in response.

“Do the will of the Party, comrade, and know that when we step on your corpse, we’re climbing to a glorious future!”

Budget Gimmicks Pour Gasoline on Inflationary Fire

The main number mentioned about the bill is the claimed cost of $1.75 trillion in spending and tax credits. For starters, this is only an educated guess on the part of Democrats, since official congressional scorekeepers have not had a chance to weigh in yet.

More importantly, that stated cost (which is not zero) is only possible as a result of deliberate budgetary gimmicks. Many key programs expire after a few years rather than the usual 10 years, and in some cases expire after a single year.

Amazingly, the bill’s cost would more than double without the gimmicking.

This would still be a problem even if all of the programs are allowed to expire. That’s because the bill front-loads the spending while spreading tax hikes across the decade, meaning it would increase deficit spending significantly in the first few years, especially the first year.

In turn, that deficit spending would mean artificially injecting billions of dollars into the economy. This would only serve to worsen the biggest wave of inflation in decades.

Causing hardworking families to pay more for essentials is no way to “build back better.”

Using Taxpayer Dollars as a Back Door to Mass Amnesty of Illegal Immigrants

Providing amnesty to illegal immigrants has been a top priority of the left for decades. While the spending package is supposed to be just that—a spending package, not a new immigration law—Democrats are attempting to sneak amnesty through the back door.

Because the bill is written to fit within strict budgetary rules, there are limits to what it can contain. The Senate parliamentarian has ruled against the inappropriate amnesty provision twice already, with the second decision relating to the language that’s in the revised bill.

Democrats have said that the current immigration text is a “placeholder” while they make a third attempt to convince the parliamentarian to give them what they want. The fact that they’re including text that has already been ruled out of order demonstrates how little regard they have for the rules.

Plus handouts for the wealthy, more social justice indoctrination, and $2.5 billion for “tree equity.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

A point Manchin made about the use of “budget gimmicks” by fellow Democrats [could] doom the Biden agenda.

Manchin reiterated his concerns about “exploding inflation,” the debt, the potential for rising interest rates, and the creation of new social spending programs. “How can I in good conscience vote for a bill that proposes massive expansions of social programs when vital programs like Social Security and Medicare face insolvency and benefits could start being reduced as soon as 2026 in Medicare and 2033 in Social Security?” he asked rhetorically. “How does that make sense? I don’t think it does.”

Initially it seemed as though he was just demanding the need for a CBO score when he talked about the need for more transparency about the bill’s fiscal impact. That alone would be consistent with a strategy of wanting delay legislation that he would ultimately vote for. And there are a myriad of ways for Democrats to game the intricacies of the CBO process to get an acceptable enough score for Manchin to vote for.

But then Manchin took things a step further.

He said, “As more of the real details outlined in the basic framework are released, what I see are shell games — budget gimmicks that make the real cost of the so-called $1.75 trillion bill estimated to be almost twice that amount if the full time is run out. If you extended it permanently. And that we haven’t even spoken about.”

On September 9, President Biden announced a directive to the Labor Department to develop a temporary emergency rule for businesses with 100 or more employees that would require workers to be fully vaccinated or be tested at least once a week. Biden declared that, “We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers. We’re going to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America.”

This morning, the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration announced that starting on January 4 — sixty days from today’s publication — new vaccination-or-test requirements for businesses with more than 100 workers will go into effect, as well as a vaccine mandate for health care workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid.

OSHA is issuing the vaccine mandate under an “emergency temporary standard,” which means the regular public comment period was skipped. Emergency temporary standards are applied when “workers are in grave danger due to exposure to toxic substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or to new hazards and that an emergency standard is needed to protect them.”

Just past the Christmas season. Funny that.

We’re f–ked. We are going to toast like marshmallows,” retired electrician Vinny Agro, 63, told the Post. “It’s another sad day for New York City.”

Across the Rockies, Los Angeles Country Sheriff Alex Villanueva has warned of an “imminent threat to public safety” caused by a “mass exodus” of thousands of deputies and civilian personnel who refuse to take the jab.

“I could potentially lose 44% of my workforce in one day,” he wrote in a Thursday open letter to the Board of Supervisors, adding that he can’t enforce “reckless mandates that put public safety at risk.”

This seems to be the desired outcome. Ordinary people who voted for Democrats might start to ask why.

Within hours of the Biden administration unveiling a Jan. 4 deadline for 100 million workers to get vaccinated, a small business advocacy group announced it is filing a lawsuit seeking to block the measure.

“The Biden administration’s vaccine mandate is clearly illegal and will have a devastating impact on our small business community and our entire economy,” said Alfredo Ortiz, the CEO of the Job Creators Network.

CN is suing the administration on the grounds that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t have authority to impose the mandate and that, in any case, there is neither the grave danger nor necessity to issue it.

It’s just one of many court battles set to ensue over the rules, many coming from Republican leaders accusing the federal government of overreach into personal medical decisions.

At least 19 states have filed three separate lawsuits aimed at stopping the previously announced mandate for federal contractors, and the rules are being challenged by most of the Republican caucus in the Senate.

(Hat tip: Director Blue.)

The head of the Los Angeles teachers union said “there is no such thing as learning loss,” despite evidence of massive educational declines due to a year of remote learning.

Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, told LA Magazine that “It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.”

Anyone know what it takes to decertify a union?

As an admin for the largest school district in Indiana, here's what we mean when we tell you that we aren't "teaching" Critical Race Theory: pic.twitter.com/f6RLghcw2R

— Tony Kinnett (@TheTonus) November 4, 2021

“The main issue was rights,” Durr said, via phone. “People talk about how New Jersey has the highest taxes, and we’re the worst state for business, with high debt, and so on, but bottom line is rights. It’s family.

“When somebody’s messing with your family, you’ll do anything,” he said. “The governor was messing with people’s families. When you mess with somebody’s job, their livelihood, their home, their children — people just won’t take that.”

Durr said that New Jersey’s harsh coronavirus policies had helped create a “perfect storm” that made his victory possible.

“It was the combination of a governor who acts like a king, and a senate president who acts like a court jester, and does nothing. That made it very easy to convince people they were not being paid attention to. And when they got ignored, they got angry.”

But Durr, 58, did more than just get lucky. And he spent more than the $153 that has been highlighted in media reports.

“That’s the amount I spent prior to the primary,” he explained, somewhat exasperated by the inaccurate reporting.

He estimates that he spent about $8,000 to $9,000 in total, mostly on campaign literature, yard signs, and a now-viral video.

He also worked hard, walking door-to-door to speak to voters. Having left long-haul trucking for a job working a local route close to home, he was able to use afternoons and evenings to campaign in the district, together with several volunteers.

“I walked three to four hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Saturdays and Sundays, I walked six to eight hours. We usually had half a dozen volunteers. One time we went out and we had twelve to thirteen go out with us,” he recalled proudly.

“Trust me, plenty days I did not feel like walking. It was too hot, my ankles and my feet hurt — I’m not a young man anymore, and I have gout, and plantar fasciitis — it was a hard thing.

“But it was well worth it, because it allowed me the opportunity to talk to every person I could possibly talk to, and understand what they were feeling, and get the pulse.”

(Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)

The primary researcher behind the Steele Dossier, a collection of unsubstantiated opposition research linking the 2016 Trump campaign to the Kremlin, was arrested by federal authorities Thursday.

Russia analyst Igor Danchenko’s indictment stems from the federal probe led by John Durham, the special counsel tapped by the Trump administration to audit the Russia investigation for malfeasance, anonymous individuals with direct knowledge of the matter told the New York Times.

Syukuro Manabe has been a pioneer in the development of so-called general circulation climate models (GCMs) and more comprehensive Earth System Models (ESMs). According to the Committee, Manabe was awarded the prize “For the physical modelling of the earth’s climate, quantifying variability, and reliably predicting global warming.”

Snip.

Every six years or so, the U.S. Department of Energy collects all of these models, aggregating them into what they call Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIPs). These serve as the bases for the various “scientific assessments” of climate change produced by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the U.S. “National Assessments” of climate.

In 2017, University of Alabama’s John Christy, along with Richard McNider, published a paper that, among other things, examined the 25 applicable families of CMIP-5 models, comparing their performance to what’s been observed in the three-dimensional global tropics. Take a close look at Figure 3 from the paper, in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, and you’ll see that the model GFDL-CM3 is so bad that it is literally off the scale of the graph.

At its worst, the GFDL model is predicting approximately five times as much warming as has been observed since the upper-atmospheric data became comprehensive in 1979. This is the most evolved version of the model that won Manabe the Nobel.

In the CMIP-5 model suite, there is one, and only one, that works. It is the model INM-CM4 from the Russian Institute for Numerical Modelling, and the lead author is Evgeny Volodin. It seems that Volodin would be much more deserving of the Nobel for, in the words of the committee “reliably predicting global warming.”

Might this have something to do with the fact that INM-CM4 and its successor models have less predicted warming than all of the other models?

So we're debating what sort of medal to give him? pic.twitter.com/TopWPjQW2c

— BattleSwarm (@BattleSwarmBlog) November 2, 2021

Puppy break. pic.twitter.com/dX7tFLCwKD

— Ian Miles Cheong @ stillgray.substack.com (@stillgray) October 31, 2021