News Miner 35
Bag ban, heat pumps, math education, progressives and liberals, red flags, 303, and more.
Bag Fees a Prelude to Ban
Complete Colorado published my column about the grocery bag fees and the pending plastic bag ban (with exceptions). Here is part of the text:
The legislators who passed this bill obviously think that you are an idiot. One way you can tell this is that the bill, signed by Gov. Polis on July 6, 2021, takes effect between January 1, 2023, and July 1, 2024. Yet the bill contains the emergency “safety clause,” declaring itself “necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health, or safety.” . . .
Obviously if you can’t even be trusted to decide how to carry your groceries home, you can’t be trusted to decide whether to challenge the bill under the state Constitution. . . .
Compared to thicker bags, plastic grocery-style bags are extremely convenient, very cheap, much less energy intensive to produce, reusable for a variety of purposes (such as trash can liners), and sanitary.
Read the entire piece.
Can Heat Pumps Handle Colorado Winters?
Complete Colorado published my column about the recent cold snap. One thing I discuss are heat pumps:
Lucky for me, Colorado Public Radio’s environmental reporter Sam Brasch put his system to the test. Prior to the Big Freeze, I asked him about this on Twitter. He said, “My model is a cold-climate heat pump manufactured by Mitsubishi. It’s rated to work down to negative 24 F, but this will no doubt be a massive test for the whole system. I have no gas or electrical-resistance backup system.” His system kept ahead of the cold nicely.
Read the entire piece.
Strangely, though, there was a December 26 article claiming, “US companies are producing heat pumps that work below -20F.” I’m not sure why the article seems to omit the sort of equipment that Brasch already has installed.
Below is Brasch’s photo of his heat pump that I pulled from his Twitter feed.
A Run-In with Uneducated Employees
Here is an anecdote I posted to Twitter on January 2:
Here is a quick tale about Walmart, customer service, and the spectacular failure of the U.S. education system. By way of background, most Colorado students are not proficient in basic skills.
My family and I went to the local Walmart, and we saw an "ugly Christmas sweater" rack marked 75% off. We each got something. But at checkout the items rang up 50% off instead. So the checker said, to get the full 75% off, he had to take an additional 25% off the ring-up price.
My guess is this checker is around a senior in high school. The actual prices were higher, but use $10 as an example. He was telling me to take 75% off of $10, you first take 50% off for $5, then take 25% off of the $5. But that yields a final price of $3.75, or 62.5% off.
I simply could not convince this kid that, to take 75% off of the original price, you had to "take 50% off of 50% off." (Using the $10 example, you first subtract $5, then 50% of $5, or $2.50. $7.50 is 75% of $10.) It did not surprise me this kid didn't know how to do math.
What did surprise me is that Walmart's floor manager also did not know how to calculate 75% off a price. He made the same error as the checker! And he just absolutely refused to allow me to explain to him how to calculate the proper price. We ended up not getting the items.
Ironically I am very impressed that Walmart can hire such complete idiots and still run a very-successful business. [Walmart also hires many very talented individuals!] But it's sad that U.S. businesses have to "idiot-proof" things to the extent they do to compensate for the widespread failure of U.S. schools to educate people.
Are Progressives “Liberal”?
Hannah Metzger wrote a good article about the ideological state of the Colorado legislature. The main problem is that she conflates progressivism with liberalism. This leads her to (for example) group rent control and criminal justice reform together, when in fact they have nothing fundamentally in common.
An authentic liberalism entails economic liberty. The progressives are in important ways profoundly anti-liberal in that respect. Rent control is an anti-liberal policy (and an especially stupid and destructive one at that).
I concede Scott Wasserman’s point that the main threat to liberalism today is the authoritarian, populist, theocratic right. Part of the problem with Metzger’s analysis is she leaves no room in the discussion for anyone other than progressives and the illiberal right.
The hard leftists in the legislature seem to think voters want a hard-left legislature. But as Floyd Ciruli points out, electoral outcomes had at least as much to do with a Republican collapse as with a love-affair among voters with hard-left candidates.
Actual liberals do have some hope in the face of progressive overreach.
Adrian Felix, president of Young Denver Democrats and secretary of Denver Democrats, fears Polis will be “more concerned about his presidential aspirations” than about rubber-stamping a hard-left agenda. Let’s hope so!
Ian Silverii told Metzger:
Without addressing Colorado's structural budgetary issues, the new progressive supermajority in the House and near-supermajority in the Senate won't be able to fully deliver on the things that voters sent them to Denver to do.
I think it’s far more likely that voters leaned on progressive candidates, partly, precisely because they knew that the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights would substantially restrain them.
Meanwhile, people who are neither hard leftists nor authoritarian rightists can only hope for the Republican Party (or some viable alternative) to get its act together and stop acting completely insane.
Missed Red Flags
On Christmas Enoch Apodaca murdered his wife and killed himself. The AP reports:
Just over a year before the explosion and shootings, a representative of Apodaca’s former employer, Sturgeon Electric Company Inc., said Apodaca told a Local 68 representative that he would shoot his wife and the union representative, and then “will come after the people responsible” after he and his wife lost their jobs.
When is law enforcement going to get serious about threats?
Elsewhere, Craig Silverman opines:
Colorado Springs’ Club Q massacre should never have happened. Awful local law enforcement allowed Anderson Lee Aldrich to carry out a stated intention to commit mass murder.
Caught red-handed and violent, Aldrich should have been incarcerated during 2022. In her June 18, 2021, affidavit, El Paso County Sheriff’s Deputy Bethany Gibson explained how Pamela Pullen called police dispatch that day after escaping her violent grandson.
Pullen reported Aldrich wanted to be the “next mass killer,” and was accumulating ammunition, firearms and body armor.
Read Silverman’s entire maddening report.
The 303 Creative Case
Garrett Mayberry argues:
The First Amendment not only limits the government from punishing a person for speech, but it also prevents the government from punishing a person for refusing to advocate for or promote the government’s approved messages. . . . The business owners here have expressed and demonstrated their willingness to conduct business with all people. They just won’t sell custom baked goods with messages that conflict with their personal beliefs.
Quick Takes
Antisemitism: A bigoted group dropped antisemitic flyers in Grand Junction.
Leadville: A book about Leadville by Gillian Klucas discusses the short-lived Libertarian majority city council of the early 2000s.
Pruning: Kelly Maher wants to "thoughtfully prune" the stuff of her life.
Transgender: “To be transgender in Colorado Springs is to live under siege,” writes Hannah Beckler. The closing paragraph is yet another indication that some transgender people are thinking seriously about self-defense.
Broadband: Many Colorado cities are spending tax dollars to develop high-speed internet. To me this seems like a way to force people who don’t use a city’s high-speed internet to subsidize people who do. There’s no “market failure” here that government needs to solve. And cell and satellite internet services are increasingly viable.
Laws: Coloradans will have to deal with grocery bag “fees,” a higher minimum wage, a new payroll tax for sick leave, and a ban on eggs that aren’t cage-free, CPR summarizes.
Suncor: The extreme cold has temporarily shut down the refinery.
Solar: “Pulling a year-to-date report for my home’s solar array, I could clearly see a steady decline sliding from summer into deepest winter of about half,” writes Cory Gaines.
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/a-home-near-you?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=343139&post_id=94291768&isFreemail=false&utm_medium=email