Month: February 2021

Once again as usual, let’s start out with “let’s be clear” . . . I still get my local “newspaper” for basically two reasons . . . to do the Sunday crossword puzzle and to read about the local college football and basketball teams. I do not continue to subscribe to it to read their slanted news coverage.

Once a week they have a section called, “Your Say,” where they have local community members write short essays on a topic. This weeks topic for discussion . . . Are you ready for this? . . . “The G.O.P.’s Future.” (When I read this, I had a hard time stopping my coffee from coming out my nose! – but I recovered!)

There were five essays, and excerpts of each are cited below. In summary, the whole concept was a joke, as it is a very liberal “paper” with an extremely liberal editorial board choosing essays from selected readers. Again let’s be clear, these printed essays were the encapsulated desired projection of the future of the GOP from the liberal editorial board of the “newspaper.”

For the sake of brevity I will point out some illustrative excerpts from these five essays, so that everyone will realize how fatuous this endeavor was.

#1 – Republicans Need Some New Leaders and Ideas . . . “Donald Trump must rapidly be removed as a significant source of influence.”

#2 – G.O.P. Must Get Some More Leaders Like Romney . . . “If we want to restore integrity to the Republican Party, we need more leaders like Romney and less like Trump.”

#3 – The GOP Can’t Just Be the Party of Division . . . “Callousness has always been a part of the modern Republican Party.”

#4 – Following Trump Will Just Cost the GOP More Races . . . “As a Democrat I am pleased that”, etc. etc. etc. “The center of the problem is Donald Trump.”

#5 – True Conservatives Must Find a New Home . . . “The base Republican Party, AKA Donald Trump’s Party, is a rabble of anarchism and authoritarianism.”

Now once again, let’s be clear. I still am a big Trump fan. I firmly believe that this past election was stolen by various nefarious means. After reading these trite selected essays, I have concluded that either there are no Republicans in my county (not likely), or no pro-DJT Republicans submitted an essay (even less likely), or perhaps there are no local Republicans that still read this “newspaper” (Increasingly likely all the time).

Finally, let’s be clear one final time:

My take on this puerile attempt at telling Republicans what they should now be thinking and doing means that a lot of somebodies (RINOs, Democrats, and liberal “newspapers”) are terrified of Mr. Trump

To be clear, in California, kindergarten is not required, although almost all kids do go to kindergarten. In a typical year, from a teacher’s viewpoint, it is very easy within the first few days of first grade for that first grade teacher to identify those who went to kindergarten and those who did not.

The initial “reading” level in kindergarten is level A. Basically everyone starts in level A, and the ideal goal is that they all progress at their own speed gradually into level D. Likewise, E.L.(English learners) also start at A and typically will progress to level C while in school. Keep in mind that this progress is mainly due to the ELs being physically present in school, as they simultaneously attain a beginning grasp of English. Most students will lose a level with summer vacation, and consequently almost all will start first grade at level C. Some will start first grade at D and a few will start at level B (again mainly E.L) In a typical year, none of those who went to kindergarten will start in first grade back at level A. However that is not the case this year as some EL students are still firmly entrenched in level A, now despite Zoom school for over half of the school year. 

While the reading goal in kindergarten is to progress to level D, the goal in first grade is to progress to level J, and in second grade the goal is to progress from J onward and upward. As most are aware reading is the key to learning which in many ways is ultimately related to a relatively successful and fulfilling life. To cut to the chase, if one cannot read, he/she is set up for failure.

Keep in mind that although this includes every child, it is even more critical for those at the lower end of the economic spectrum, and even more so for those whose family speaks a language other than English at home(EL).

Someone I know quite well teaches kindergarten at an inner-city school in a big California city. There are basically three non-swear words that describe her experience this year. Disastrous! Shameful! Chaos!

She has twenty-seven children in her class, and with seven of them, English is not the language spoken at home (EL). When tested last week on Zoom (zero in-person learning), all of these seven EL tested to level A, as there is no lower level, and this teacher doubts that any of them will improve to level B this year. For these kids this is disastrous. Their parents do not understand the instructions for picking up assignments and homework packets, and so they are not picked up. The result is that these kids are getting shafted, and the school system is setting them up to fail. . . . Shameful! Very frequently these same kids miss Zoom school, or if they do manage to get on line, the background in the house is chaos.

In first grade it is more of the same as only a small minority will make it to level J by the end of first grade. Most of the students in this inner-city school are projected to only make it into reading level G by the end of first grade, and even less for EL students. Then etc. for grade two. . . . behind again. What happening is that those who know best in education in California are setting them up to fail.

Zoom school for most kids at the lowest  grade levels is a disastrous, chaotic mess, and especially for the EL group of kids, it is shameful.

First of all I do not know anybody from the town of Oakley which is somewhere up near San Francisco. For sure I do not know anybody from that town’s school board . . . or perhaps I should say I didn’t know any of the now ex-members of that school board. Ex-members? Yes, for they all resigned after their meeting and their snide comments mainly about the parents of school children who are being forced into Zoom distance learning were accidentally on an open mike. The video feed shut off after school officials realized their profanity & insults were broadcast to the very same parents they were disparaging. A school board with what I would politely refer to as a whole lot of chutzpah.

(The entire school board at Oakley elementary has since resigned.)

Locally from towns just outside San Diego, in La Mesa-Spring Valley (LMSV), another open mike embarrassment during a Zoom school board meeting when Chardá Bell-Fontenot, the vice president of the La Mesa-Spring Valley School Board (LMSVSB) apparently said that reopening schools was akin to slavery and an exercise in white supremacy. 

As  many of you already know, I am usually suspicious of a hyphenated last name, so I personally went and listened her tirade. To me it sounded as if she said that forcing her to vote on sending kids back to school was like slavery and white supremacy. 

Whaaat! To me this is the pinnacle of chutzpah as it is those nonwhite children who are suffering the most from the stoppage of in-person learning. Keep in mind that this is the Vice President of LMSVSB. After listening twice to what Ms. Chardá Bell-Fontenot said, let’s just say that my feelings about hyphenated last names has not changed.

To be fair the LMSVSB did vote 4-1 to reopen schools . . . I wonder which member voted “no?”

(As of yet, Ms. Chardá Bell-Fontenot has not resigned.)

I bring up these two very recent open-mike episodes, because I wonder how many more school boards act and speak in a similar dastardly fashion when the mikes are not open.

On 2/25 there was a front page article in my local “newspaper” about how preventing children from attending in-person school is having dramatic deleterious effects on children. Attempted suicides, visits to emergency rooms, inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations . . . all increased and aggravated because of distance learning. Finally a group is suing Mr. Gavin Newsom, our governor, and his so-called experts (his medical underlings “that know best” in his autocratic regime.) over the school situation.

It’s about time! 

Most of the following is from Science, 2/15/21:

“In March 2020, schools around the world closed as governments tried to keep SARS-CoV-2 in check. But children in Sweden through ninth grade continued to attend class, while 10th through 12th graders shifted to remote learning.

“Whether the harms of school closures outweigh the risks of virus transmission in classrooms and hallways has been the subject of intense debate around the world. Outbreaks have demonstrated that the virus can spread via schools to the wider community at least occasionally, and some data suggest teachers have higher than average risk of infection. However, it has been difficult to separate school-based transmission from other confounding factors, especially because schools have tended to open or close in concert with other restrictions lifting or tightening.

“A study then compared infection rates of parents whose youngest child was in ninth grade with those whose youngest was in 10th grade. They also compared infection rates in teachers who continued to teach in person at lower secondary schools (grades seven to nine) with those of teachers at upper secondary schools (grades 10 to 12), who taught remotely. Finally, they compared infection rates in the spouses of teachers in the two types of schools.

“Swedish schools instituted only relatively mild precautions against infection in the spring. Health authorities encouraged pupils and teachers to wash or disinfect their hands regularly, keep their distance when possible, and stay home when ill. But neither teachers nor students wore masks, and close contacts of confirmed cases were notquarantined.”

It is of interest to me that this Science article was titled,

“Keeping schools open without masks or quarantines doubled Swedish teachers’ COVID-19 risk.” 

The first paragraph reads,

“A careful analysis of health data from Sweden suggests keeping schools open with only minimal precautions in the spring roughly doubled teachers’ risk of being diagnosed with the pandemic coronavirus. Their partners faced a 29% higher risk of becoming infected than partners of teachers who shifted to teaching online. Parents of children in school were 17% more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than those whose children were in remote learning.”

The title and the introductory paragraph certainly imply that the risk to the teachers was prohibitive. OMG!

However, when the entire article is read, the actual numbers say something different.(N.B. going from a risk of 0.1% to 0.2% is a doubling, however both risks are exceedingly low.)

The following statistics are from this same Science article.

In grades 7-9 there were 39,000 teachers who taught in-person, and 79 (0.2%) were hospitalized with Covid, and 1 (0.0025%) died. Ergo, there does appear to be a risk to teaching in a classroom without masks, but it is extremely low.

Would the adding of masks possibly have reduced the risks to both teachers and families?  Possibly.

However, Danny Benjamin, a pediatrician at Duke University who has studied the spread of the pandemic coronavirus in North Carolina schools, said, the Swedish study shows that “even if schools do not require masking, risk to families of in-person schooling is low.”

So what can we learn from this informative article in Science? 

1. The risk to teachers and parents of in-person learning is very very small.
2. Since most readers will often only read the title and the first few lines of most things, always be skeptical until you have read the entire article.
3. Since the writer of this piece has his own personal point of view, do not risk being mislead . . . read the entire Science article for yourself.

Sometimes I wonder why we actually have a Supreme Court when they seemingly duck on important issues. They are supposed to be the brightest legal minds, but when it comes to these bright legal minds actually making a meaningful decision  . . . they duck, and the country gets nothing (a goose-egg). They’ve been ducking various abortion issues for years and now they are presented with serious issues related to the abuses of freedoms and the making-up of laws because of Covid.

Well, News Flash! . . . they just ducked again, and consequently the country got a goose-egg. This week the Court ducked on two election issues out of Pennsylvania. They seem now to have “ducking” down to a science. The vote on these Pennsylvania cases was 6-3 in favor of “ducking.” One might say, 6-3 is not close as two votes would have to be changed in order to make it 4-5. However, whereas a 5-4 majority is needed to ultimately decide a case, only four (4) votes are needed to hear a case. As pointed out in The Keneally Chronicles, this is referred to as the “Rule of Four,” meaning that only one more of the Justices needed  to agree to hear the case. Only one additional Justice needed to have the fortitude not duck these election issues. I am not surprised that Chief Justice Roberts ducked, as he seems to be losing courage year after year, but I am very surprised that Roberts’ outrage against hearing any election cases a few months back is continuing to have an effect on Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett. 

Thank God for Justice Clarence Thomas who is not afraid to speak his mind.

“One wonders what this Court waits for,” understates Thomas in his dissent, adding “we failed to settle this dispute before the election, and thus provide clear rules. Now we again fail to provide clear rules for future elections. The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence. Our fellow citizens deserve better and expect more of us.”

Justice Thomas adds,

“The Constitution gives to each state legislature authority to determine the ‘Manner’ of federal elections…Yet both before and after the 2020 election, non-legislative officials in various States took it upon themselves to set the rules instead…. [T]he Pennsylvania Legislature established an unambiguous deadline for receiving mail-in ballots… the Pennsylvania Supreme Court extended that deadline… (and) ordered officials to count ballots received by the new deadline even if there was no evidence—such as a postmark—that the ballots were mailed by election day. … these cases provide us with an ideal opportunity to address (this) before the next election cycle. The refusal to do so is inexplicable.”

Inexplicable . . . unless you are a duck!

“When is a person dead?” In the vast majority of situations when called to “pronounce” an individual, the physician will put the stethoscope onto the individual’s chest and listen for a heartbeat. If there is no heartbeat then that individual is pronounced dead. 

In less common situations an ICU physician might say to a family, “If we discontinue the breathing tube, your loved one will die.” If the ventilator is then turned off, often within a relatively short period of time, that individual does die. He/she is then declared dead when the heart stops beating. So far, so good . . . pretty straightforward.

A more difficult issue is that on the opposite end of life. Specifically, when does life begin? The pro-life answer: Life begins at conception, and thus abortion is the taking of the life of the fetus. The pro-choice answer: Life begins at birth, and thus abortion is not taking the life of anyone.

Is aborting a non-viable one month old fetus and aborting a full term fetus the same? An issue with Roe v Wade is that there was no wiggle room in that decision, as it implies that a one month fetus and a full term fetus are the same. But are they?

Some lawmakers do not think they are the same.

Last week in South Carolina a law was passed banning abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected by ultrasound.

Planned Parenthood on 2/18/21, filed a federal lawsuit against the state, which questioned the bill’s constitutionality, saying that the measure would overturn “the constitutional right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade.” The South Carolina Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act, which bans abortions if providers detect a heartbeat on an ultrasound excluding cases of rape, incest, and physical danger to the mother, was signedinto law by Republican Gov. Henry McMaster on 2/18/21.

On 2/19/21, a federal judge, Mary Geiger Lewis, temporarily halted South Carolina’s law banning most abortions if fetal heartbeats are detected.

On this issue, to me, there are basically two questions:

When is a fetus considered to be a living thing? 

At conception? At birth ? Or somewhere in between?

Does a fetus have any rights?

In my recent novella, The Keneally Chronicles, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Keneally is faced with these same two questions in a contentious abortion case out of California. He realizes that as a moderate, in all likelihood, he will be the deciding vote in a 5-4 decision.

What is his opinion and what is his reasoning?

The Keneally Chronicles is available on both Amazon and Kindle.

Two of my college age grandchildren just cannot seem to get Covid. No, I do not mean the vaccine, but rather I am referring to the actual virus. You might think that is a good thing, but au contraire, it is not. Each has been in very close quarters on numerous occasions with friends and roommates who have tested positive for the virus. Keep in mind that their individual risk from Covid is extremely low, and each time they are exposed to someone with the virus, the result is that each one is in quarantine for two weeks. I have lost track of how many times each of them has been quarantined for two weeks  . . . in two different states. Repeated Covid tests (for the 21 year old, seven separate Covid tests) – all negative.

They have both gotten antibody tested, and both are negative, and according to present knowledge, this means that they have not been previously infected. How can this be especially with a virus that is supposed to be very infectious? Is it possible that an individual could have been infected with Covid, and not be antibody positive?

A recent article from the Wall Street Journal by Dr. Marty Makary addresses this issue as well as the recent plummeting of Covid cases.

(Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health.)

Why the recent dramatic drop in the number of cases? This decrease is occurring despite a number of things which would make one think that the opposite should be occurring. It is still winter, and in many parts of the country people are continuing to spend a lot of time indoors, as opposed to being outdoors where transmission is less. In addition in many parts of the country businesses are starting to open. Restaurants are opening. (Twice in the last two weeks I have eaten indoors at a restaurant.) Beauty Salons and barbershops are again seeing customers. Mask wearing and social distancing remain in vogue without any recent apparent change. From my personal unscientific observation there has not been any decrease in the number of people frequenting Costco or Walmart.

This significant decrease in the number of cases should not be happening . . . but yet it is! Why?

From Dr. Makary’s WSJ article:

“The consistent and rapid decline in daily cases since Jan. 8 can be explained only by natural immunity. Behavior didn’t suddenly improve over the holidays; Americans traveled more over Christmas than they had since March. Vaccines also don’t explain the steep decline in January. Vaccination rates were low and they take weeks to kick in.”

Dr. Makary questions, “Could the reason for the recent dramatic decrease in the number of new infections be because we are approaching herd immunity.”

Herd immunity! How can that be? 

The various estimates on the number needed to achieve herd immunity range from 60-80%, and certainly we cannot be close to that number with the relatively low percent of positive antibody tests. Even adding in the the 15% of Americans have received the vaccine, no way can we be close to the number needed for herd immunity, can we? Could antibody studies underestimate natural immunity. Antibody testing doesn’t capture antigen-specific T-cells, which develop “memory” once they are activated by the virus. (Survivors of the 1918 Spanish flu were found in 2008—90 years later—to have memory cells still able to produce neutralizing antibodies.)

Researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute found that the percentage of people mounting a T-cell response after mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 infection consistently exceeded the percentage with detectable antibodies. T-cell immunity was even present in people who were exposed to infected family members but never developed symptoms. A group of U.K. scientists in September pointed out that the medical community may be under-appreciating the prevalence of immunity from activated T-cells.

Dr. Makary feels there is reason to think the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection. As more people have been infected, most of whom have mild or no symptoms, there are fewer Americans left to be infected . . . in other words, herd immunity.

Dr. Makary’s hypothesis about under appreciated T-cell responses could explain my granddaughters’ apparent inability to get Covid. In each of their situations, perhaps a T-cell response to an original mild or asymptomatic infection and then an antigen-specific memory T-cell response to further exposures to Covid could explain their apparent inability to actually get positive Covid tests despite recurrent close-encounter exposures and negative antibody tests.

For a variety of reasons I hope that Dr. Makary is correct because that would mean that the Covid pandemic could be going, going, and soon gone.

Here in California we are use to practices that hurt the poorest among us. For the most part these are initiated and subsequently pushed by the liberal Sacramento politicians here in our state. But why?

First, Increasing the minimum wage.

From Forbes, 2017:

The restaurant industry is the most intensive user of of minimum wage labour. A useful, although not wholly accurate, rule of thumb is that 50% of those making minimum wage are in restaurants, and that 50% of those working in restaurants are on minimum wage. So, whatever the employment effects of a minimum wage rise are they’re going to show up in the restaurant industry. Meaning that if w want to study the minimum wage effects on employment then restaurants are a great place to go looking.

The evidence suggests that higher minimum wages increase overall exit rates for restaurants. However, lower quality restaurants, which are already closer to the margin of exit, because of very slim profit margins, are disproportionately impacted by increases to the minimum wage. Estimates suggest that a one dollar increase in the minimum wage leads to a 14 percent increase in the likelihood of exit for a 3.5-star restaurant (which is the median rating), but has no discernible impact for a 5-star restaurant (on a 1 to 5 star scale).

In other words not only are those that work in medium rated restaurants more likely to lose their jobs, but restaurants in the less affluent neighborhoods that are frequented by less affluent patrons are also more likely to disappear. Furthermore the effect of Covid on restaurant closings is only going to aggravate this situation. 

Second, raising the gas tax.

Without question here in California the poorest among us cannot work from home, and so they are the most likely ones that have to commute to their workplace. On a national level the scuttlebutt is that there is proposal in the works to institute a “gas tax” based on miles driven, ergo the main effect of this would be on those who must commute longer distances because they cannot live in the more affluent city areas where their jobs are.

Third, raising the price of gas even before a tax kicks in.

Doing things like closing pipelines will inevitably cause the price of gasoline to go up. Surprise, surprise it is already happening! Likewise the fracking moratorium on federal lands will only increase the cost of heating homes in the next year or so. Who will suffer the most from this? Predictably, the poorest among us for a variety of different reasons.

Why do Democrats promote policies that are seemingly intended to hurt those who can least likely afford them?

Next the Dems will be going after the Costco $5.00 chicken.

This issue is another twist on the “me first” issue of which group should be a priority on getting the Covid vaccine. After health care workers and the elderly, who should be next? I warned about this months ago and now this sort of haggling is coming to fruition in spades. 

The Euro-zone is apparently having a significant problem with vaccine distribution, and the people of Europe are not happy. In fact Hungary has broken away and is getting its vaccine from Russia. Meanwhile France is trying a unique way to distribute its vaccine. As best I understand they are going to be distributing the vaccine according to areas that have a more significant Covid problem. In eastern France, there is a higher incidence and possibly a higher death toll from Covid, and so they are condoning off an area, and are going to prioritize distributing the vaccine to those who live in that area. 

Does this make sense? Instead of prioritizing the vaccine distribution according to which group can yell the loudest, distribute it according to Sutton’s law. (Sutton’s law is named after the bank robber, Willie Sutton, who reputedly replied to a reporter’s inquiry as to why he robbed banks by saying “because that’s where the money is.”) Insofar as vaccine priority, is it reasonable to prioritize vaccine distribution to those areas “where the money is,” or in other words prioritize the vaccine distribution to those areas where it is needed most.

In Chicago this exemplification of Sutton’s law is taking place.

The following is from an article the 2/17/21 Chicago Sun Times:

“The Latino-majority Belmont Cragin community is one of the city’s hardest-hit by the pandemic for cases and deaths and is one of 15 singled out by Mayor Lori Lightfoot to concentrate vaccination efforts.

Possibly this can be a model for the city’s other high priority areas, such as Gage Park, South Lawndale (Little Village) and Austin that are majority Latino or Black and disproportionately hurt by the virus.”

This plan sounds very similar to what is happening in France.

As much as I hate ever agreeing with mayor Lightfoot of Chicago, (because she is wrong most of the time), here, her plan seems to make sense. The city of Chicago instead of allocating the vaccine to group A over group B because of political clout or the “me first” selfish mentality, it is apparently going where the money is.

Egyptian Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz succinctly said, “Fear doesn’t prevent death. It prevents life.”

I find this quote interesting in these times of Covid lockdowns.

I find it somewhat bizarre how differently different people react to lockdowns. Within reason, I think that just about all individuals are doing their best. However it amazes me what some individuals will do . . . in the name of ?? Certain individuals just seem adverse to resuming certain basic interactions. It that because of fear? Are they afraid of dying?

One of our friends (and her husband) hasn’t seen three of her grandkids in over a year, as they live around a thousand miles away. No way will she fly to see them . . . too dangerous. No way will she drive to see them, even though that used to happen about twice a year, because she would have to stay in motels for a couple of nights while driving the thousand miles, and again a couple of nights driving back . . . too dangerous. Recently the son-in-law and these same three grandkids were going to be much closer, but she wouldn’t make the three hour drive to see them . . . something to do with the necessity of quarantining. From my way of thinking, here “fear is preventing life.” (As an aside to this friend – “you aren’t getting any younger!”)

Another friend has two children locally, a son and a daughter. Each with two kids, and so four grandkids within a few miles. The son says that his mother (grandma) cannot visit his house unless she quarantines for two weeks after visiting anybody including her daughter, his sister. As an expected consequence our friend has visited the daughter’s house much more than the son’s house. Again from my perspective, here “fear is preventing life.” (As an aside to the son – “your mother isn’t getting any younger!”)

I saw seven of my grandkids over Christmas, and six over Thanksgiving . . . two of them I saw on both occasions. I do not want to die anytime soon, but I am not going to let fear prevent life.