Elizabeth Kübler-Ross popularized the notion of the Stages of Grief.

I’m going to need to do one for “progressive” approaches to an issue.

Let’s take a whack at it.

1. Panic: Declare that something is a crucial issue that is going to cause massive, seismic change.
2. Ignore those who dissent.
3. Mock the dissenters
4. Attack, mock and deplatform dissenters.
5. And, when at long last you are proven wrong, Clalm you knew it all along.

As re Covid shutdowns, they just got to step 5:

Perhaps by way of starting over.

Perhaps it’s time for a truth and reconciliation commission.

Production: US currently run by an administration imposing a “radical restructuring” that will make society a dystopian droog state (for all but the oligarchs who will sit at the top. See also the USSR, or China).

Staging: Justin Trudeau’s Canada, where the next steps of the dystopian vision are trialed on a “western” population.

Experimental Red China. Where the surveillance state has come to life in ways that’d make Orwell blanche in horror:

Coming to a “free society” near you, if the powers that be have their way.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

India not shipping much wheat to other nations,they’re keeping most of it to feed their own. They are hoarding wheat!

The tiny amount they grudgingly sell costs too much. They are price gouging!

Poor people in other nations will go hungry. They are playing politics with food, women and children hardest hit!

India is putting the interest of its own citizens first and letting the rest of the world fend for itself. They are ultra-nationalist isolationists!

Why aren’t we?

Joe Doakes

Rhetorical question, right?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Riddle me this: when is a bumblebee like a tuna?

When it’s in California, where a bumblebee is considered a fish for purposes of the Endangered Species Act.

Joe Doakes

Sunday, history will regard California as a parody of itself.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Should that cover demonstrating outside the homes of judges to demand a particular result?

The purpose of speech directed at the government is to change government policy, which is properly made by the Legislative Branch (albeit sometimes the details of how to carry out policy are delegated to the Executive Branch). But the Judicial Branch does not make policy, it decides cases according to the policies set by the Legislative Branch, as we all learned in high school civics class. That’s how the checks-and-balances system of the Constitution was set up.

Stop laughing. I know that’s not how it was done in the past – abortion, gay marriage – but that’s what Alito’s draft opinion means. It means the Judicial Branch is restoring Constitutional government to the land.

Justice Thomas was absolutely correct when he said, “We are becoming addicted to wanting particular outcomes, not living with the outcomes we don’t like. We can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want. The events from earlier this week are a symptom of that.”

The people protesting outside judges’ homes demanding a particular result are using the same intimidation tactics as cross burners and ‘protection’ racketeers. They should be arrested and prosecuted for domestic terrorism.

Joe Doakes

Justice Thomas was right. He was also raised in a generation that had some concept of “living with consequences “.

We haven’t had one of those generations, least of all among our “cultural elites“, in quite some time.

The California Legislature is currently gestating a bill declaring the work week shall be 32 hours for companies with more than 500 employees. Worse, the bill would mandate that the pay rate remain what it was for 40 years, and cannot be reduced. But wait, there’s more!

If the beleaguered employer tries to get its employers to work more hours to make up for the lost productivity, they have to pay time and a half over 32 hours. Or, the beleaguered employer can take on the added expense of part-time works to make up the lost hours.

From the text of the bill:

Existing law defines and regulates the terms and conditions of employment. Existing law generally defines “workweek” for these purposes and requires that work in excess of 40 hours in a workweek be compensated at a rate of at least 1 1/2 times the employee’s regular rate of pay, subject to certain exceptions. Existing law makes a violation of these provisions a misdemeanor.

This bill would instead require that work in excess of 32 hours in a workweek be compensated at the rate of no less than 1 1/2 times the employee’s regular rate of pay. The bill would require the compensation rate of pay at 32 hours to reflect the previous compensation rate of pay at 40 hours and would prohibit an employer from reducing an employee’s regular rate of pay as a result of this reduced hourly workweek requirement. The bill would exempt an employer with no more than 500 employees from the above provisions. By expanding the scope of a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

What’s the worry, you say? A number of companies have experimented with a four-day work week.

I realize that when classroom instruction time is taken up with inculcating little Brandon and Ashley Snowflake on the nuances of gender bending there is less time to spend on basic economics. But, there is a difference between a private company choosing the hours their workers put in and what they get paid, and the government mandating that an employee can work 20% less for the same pay, and that the employer must bear the added cost.

While I would love to see this bill pass in California, as it would only hasten the demise of that state, and perhaps something useful could be rebuilt from the rubble, a Democrat Congressman has introduced a similar bill at the federal level. (Co-sponsored by Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.)

Prices are often described as signals because they convey information to both producer and consumer who can make rational decisions based on that information. Producers make decisions on whether to produce more or less. Consumers make decisions about consuming more or less.

The price of labor is no different. It conveys information that employers take into account when deciding how many employers it can afford, and employees decided if it is worth it for them to work at a given pay rate, or if they can find a better rate elsewhere.

When the government interferes in markets, and things like minimum wages and rent control are interferences, it introduces distortions. Distortions lead to bad information, and with bad information, producers and consumers make decisions they wouldn’t have made otherwise had they had good information.

These distortions have ripple effects. Employers cannot just absorb 20% less work for the same pay, and so these costs are passed on either in higher prices for goods, or fewer employees.

Do the people behind these bills care about the distortions they would introduce? One problem is they can’t know all the distortions they would cause. Prices are the signals that imbalances are present, and the prices would be wrong. The authors of these bills think they bribe voters by giving them other people’s money. Only a simpleton would think such a bribe wouldn’t cause problems, and only a fool wouldn’t worry that these problems can’t be completely known.

One completely predictable outcome is when you elect socialists, you wind up living under socialism.

Kevin Williamson put it this way:

We want to simplify the complex. And we want to bring down that which is high to a lower level where it’s easy to understand. So if the thing that’s wrong with the country is there are people we don’t like, and they’re getting rich by screwing us. And by messing everything up behind the scenes. That’s a pretty comforting story. If the actual story is “wow, the world is complex and we can’t actually accomplish a lot of the things that we want to. And the government can’t necessarily do the right thing even if we all agree on what it is because there are information problems and there are problems of incentives and problems having to do with complexity, that make things come out not the way we intended, and that all of our best intentions and our purest motives can produce horrifying results as they as they have over the years.” You see this in the really extreme political outcomes.

You know, the people who fought the Russian Revolution, didn’t want to build a nightmare state of gulags, but that’s where they ended up. I don’t think most of the people around the Chinese Communists in Mao’s era wanted to inflict the kind of nightmare on their people that they did. But they did. Now our situation isn’t that extreme, obviously. But it’s the same principle in the sense that nobody wants the current situation. Nobody really wants these outcomes. No one wants our healthcare system to look the way it does. No one wants K through 12 education to suck as hard as it does around the country. No one wants police who are irresponsible and trigger happy. But this is the system we’ve nonetheless managed to build for ourselves out of the interaction of our conflicting motives and incentives and information.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The US government seized funds without notice or hearing and doesn’t plan to give the money back. It plans to spend the money.

“Good,” you say. “That person deserved it. He lives in a country we don’t like. He belongs to a religion we don’t like. He believes in medical treatments we don’t like. Glad they did it, ought to do more.”

But what about the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? “The Constitution is a living document which must be reinterpreted to fit changing circumstances. The Founders never meant a guarantee of property rights to shield enemies of society from just retribution. Merely by asking the question, you’ve lowered your Social Credit Score and put yourself on The Watch List.”

It’s the latest fad, all the Kool Kids are doing it. Last quarter, it was Canadian truckers’ money. This quarter it is Russian citizens’ money. How long before it is your money? No arrest, no conviction, no Summons, no hearing, no appeal – a click of a button and your life savings disappears, your ‘hoarded wealth’ redistributed to those more deserving. Welcome to the Digital Economy.

Joe Doakes

It’s one of those reasons, among many others, that “a cashless society” needs to be resisted.

Elon Musk buying Twitter is generating some…exaggerated reactions from progs:

The idea that they are not, in fact, an inevitable force of history seems to confuse and frighten them.

Paul Krugman on the end of the mask cult:

My two cents? I suspect Krugman, and many maskaholics desperately want this to be true.

Part of it is Berg’s Seventh Law – they need to project their behavior onto others.

Part of it is the need on the cultural left that’s become apparent in the past two years to, at best, feel they are part of some larger struggle; they are part of a generation that’s had no Omaha Beach, no Great Depression, no Civil Rights Movement. This is it for them, and they’re milking it for all they got.

At worst? They feel their sense of petty control slipping from their grasp, and they are not about to go gently.

Years and years ago, on a NARN broadcast at the “Back to the Fifties’ car show at the Fairgrounds, James Lileks made a point that summed up why “progressivism” is so noxious to so many people; there would, and could, never be an electric equivalent of the 1965 Ford Mustang.

Progressivism isn’t about muscle, happiness, abundance. It’s about shared misery – spreading it, virtue-signaling it (and, if you’re one of the “Big Guys”, quietly and flagrantly avoiding it). It’s no accident that it’s the “progressives” that are still wearing masks as they walk their dogs, alone, down empty streets.

The problem is, poor societies don’t solve problems. It takes prosperity to innovate. Leftists never get that.

Not everyone on the left believes in the virtue of wallowing in privation for “the common good”. Ruy Texeira – author, TED talker and public radio regular guest, who describes himself as a committed liberal – writes an excellent piece in the National Review about all the things the Democrats are getting wrong. It’s a longish and excellent read (and might require a subscription, i dunno)…

…and makes a similar point; Democrat disdain for prosperity (among the proles, at least – nobody’s coming for Zuckerberg’s spare yacht) is hurting them among the normies,

Energy is a big fault line:

Closely related to Democrats’ relative indifference to economic growth is their lack of optimism that a rapid advance and application of technology can produce an abundant future. More common is fear that a dystopian future might await us thanks to AI and other technologies. This is odd, given that almost everything ordinary people like about the modern world, including relatively high living standards, is traceable to technological advances and the knowledge embedded in them. From smartphones, flat-screen TVs, and the Internet to air and auto travel to central heating and air-conditioning to the medical devices and drugs that cure disease and extend life to electric lights and the mundane flush toilet, technology has dramatically transformed people’s lives for the better. It is difficult to argue that the average person today is not far, far better off than her counterpart in the past. “The good old days were old but not good,” as the Northwestern University economic historian Joel Mokyr puts it.

Doesn’t the Left want to make people happy? One has to wonder. They show more interest in figuring out what people should stop doing and consuming than in figuring out how people can have more to do and consume. They rarely discuss the idea of abundance, except to disparage it.

Texeira may never do lunch on Nob Hill again, but it’s worth a read.

Suwana Kirkland, DFL-anointed candidate to replace Dave “The Drunk Driver” Hutchinson, is running in a moldy blue country. She doesn’t have to worry about Real Americans votes.

So if she’s caught on camera snuggling with gun-grabbers at DFL caucuses, no biggie for her.

You just shouldn’t expect much new from the HCSO.

Well, less drunk driving.

Probably.

CORRECTION. I’m informed the woman in the HCSO uniform is Duwanna Witt. Not being a Henco resident, I’m not nearly as up on the candidates as I should be.

I regret the error.

Green, “sustainable” energy policies that make middle class live unsustainable.

Transitioning from houses to apartments, from cars to mass transit.

Moving from meat to vegetables, with maybe some insect thrown in as a treat.

Hyperinflation, which serves mainly to make common savings and investment worthless, but does wonders for the wealth of the plutocrats, “futurists” and pols – who will give up no cars, houses, yachts ,warmth or food.

Seems like the “new world order” looks a lot like the old, pre-1776 world order, doesn’t it?

Victor Davis Hanson – perhaps more optimistic than I feel at the moment – in a piece you should read. Pull quote:

So a reset reckoning is coming—in reaction to the “new orders” championed by Biden and the Davos set. 

In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic “No!” to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility—and arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies. 

What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked. 

I hope he’s right. The boundless stupidity of the “send me more stimmies” set – whose votes count just as much as those of smart people – serves as the counterexhibit.

…is always, always, always be looking for more ways to transfer taxpayer money to the political class.

And that is exactly what they are doing.

Less anyone wonder why the teachers unit in Minneapolis is out on strike – besides grabbing “their share“ of the “surplus“ – their union boss spells it out pretty clearly:

At least she was honest-ish.

Minneapolis teachers will likely be walking off the job.

The timing…doesn’t seem great, from their perspective:

I think Majority Leader Gazelka got this one right:

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The transformation of society from capitalism to communism requires a transition phase under a strong-man during which people are ‘socialized,’ trained to the new rules. Those who will not submit are purged. It’s said you can vote your way into socialism but you must shoot your way out. The Canadian Parliament just voted their way into socialism and the purges are under way. But Canada’s gun registration and prohibited gun laws soon will turn into confiscation, leaving the public with nothing to shoot. The road to socialism will be a one-way street Up North.

Canada provides a lesson in real time for those who think it cannot happen here.

Joe Doakes

Even many well-meaning “liberals“, as opposed to progressives, blinded by “normalcy bias“, are going to be surprised at how this next few years goes.

And as in Canada, freedoms only hope in the United States is in the west.

Not every “blue” government does it all the time.

But eventually, one way or the other, one metaphor or another, this mechanism or that, this is blue governance in action.

Justin Trudeau has essentially seized dictatorial power in Canada to rid his capitol of unruly subjects and their :

This is the first time the Emergencies Act has been invoked since it came into force in 1988, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said yesterday it is necessary to protect critical infrastructure such as borders and airports from the blockades, and create time-limited powers that do not already exist.

The government will use the act to force towing companies to remove big rigs and other vehicles that are blocking highways and other critical infrastructure.

It will also be used establish zones where public assembly is not allowed, and require banks to suspend or freeze accounts suspected of supporting the blockades, including those belonging to companies whose trucks are part of the convoy.

That seizure of assets, by the way? No court order or due process needed.

What could go wrong?

Can you imagine what the likes of Trudeau, and the rest of western pseudointelligentsia, would have done if Trump had declared a state of emergency to shut down a legitimate, if obsstreporous, protest?

One of the main organizers behind the truckers’ protest in Ottawa, now in its third week, said members are not going anywhere, and will “hold the line” in the face of the act.

This, after weeks of the Canadian media – generally no less incurious and subservient than the US media to government – telling the world the protesters were violent (the only the actual violence was when some counterprotesters rammed a vehicle full of protesters), racist (no photos) and destriuctive (all “vandalism” was easily picked up).

Let’s make sure we’re clear on this: after a year of barbering about the (real, serious) riots on January 6, which had no chance whatsoever of affecting the Constitutional process, much less seizing any actual government power, the western Left is applauding a western “progressive” leader usurping banana-republic powers to stifle obstreporous and boisterous speech that could be dealt with by legal, due-process means, had Trudeau the will and the courage.

This is not only the work of a coward, awash in fear over his 16% approval rate.

It’s the work of a politician, at the head of a moment, that has no respect for representative democracy.

Scratch a “progressive”, and they’ll bleed “tyrant”.

I “joke” that Covid restrictions and states of emergency are on the ropes in states where Democrats are polling badly in the mid-terms.

I supposed that it’s a logical corollary that in states where Democrats don’t need to worry about mid-terrms, they don’t have to care.

Exhibit M:

Maybe it’s just to forestall refugees from Canada…

“Sure would be a shame if you couldn’t afford insulin for her”:

“Pass my bill, and it can all go away…”

…liberals of the type we call “progressives” these days got very tired of me pointing out the irony that their side was the one obsessed with one level of “class warfare” or another…

…but that on many issues (guns, taxation, property rights), theirs was the patrician side of the “debate”.

It’s even more true today.

I don’t as a rule care about artists politics, anymore than I care about a politician’s taste in music.

But the flip-flop of so many “counterculture” artists to “cultural enforcer” would be jarring, to anyone who thought about it critically.

It made headlines last week: Neil Young, who’s spent the last couple weeks trying to shut down Joe Rogan, was participating in “Free Speech rallies” in 2006.

Now, you could call them anti-George W Bush rallies that had little to do with free speech; I certainly called them that at the time.

But the language Young used is interesting:

“Just getting up in front of a lot of people makes you nervous. But when you know that some of them are really going to be angry at you, and you’re in a crowd, and it’s a volatile situation, people have been drinking, whatever — you know, it makes you nervous.”

“It was just that critical time in history where things were turning. Things were changing,” he added. “Those who feel the way we do had some hope and those who don’t feel the way we do were angry that the change happened. And those people have got a voice, and they have a reason for feeling the way they do. They strongly believe in the convictions. They believe in the military.” 

“They believe that we’re doing the right thing for the world, and they have every reason to be respected for their beliefs,” he said. 

Does it look like he’s describing Rogan listeners to anyone else?

Did Neil Young become The Man? Did “Rage Against the Machine” become “Rage Enforcing The Machine?”

Maybe – but I suspect the Tea Party, and its slandering back into the shadows, from whence it emerged mean and without manners as the Trump Populist movment, had a lot to do with it. The counterculture of 50 years ago is now the dominant culture.

…the current President took an oath to uphold the Constitution.

On the other hands…

…his Administration seems hell-bent on destroying it.

Not only is it time for the US to leave the UN and cut off all our funding to it, but we need to dismantle the building and recycle the material, preferably into new guns to distribute to deserving Americans.

UN distributes cash and sob stories to “migrants” seeking asylum:

In one, the U.N. was cited as the source of cash cards used to fund lodging, food, and medicines on their journey from Mexico to the U.S. border. Those payments have recently drawn the ire of some Republicans in Congress angered over the efforts and costs…Bensman reported some families receiving $400 every 15 days to use as they wish….

In another report Monday, Bensman said U.N. groups are providing migrants with psychological help to pull stories of torture and abuse from their memories. Those stories are often needed to win temporary asylum passage into Mexico and eventually the U.S.

“At least two U.N.-funded nonprofits with operations in the southern border states of Chiapas and Tabasco pay stables of clinical psychologists to help migrants recover ‘repressed memories’ of government persecution and other hardship stories that qualify migrants for Mexican asylum and a residence card, allowing an eventual trip over the U.S. southern border,” the report said.

I’d vote for a controlled implosion. After the bureaucrats inside have relocated.

If possible.

When I interviewed Michael Yon last winter, he characterized the “migrant caravans” as.a direct assault on American sovereignty, clearly not spontaneous, clearly planned.

It sounded conspiracy-theory-y.

Not so much anymore.

A group of restauranteurs and bar owners are taking the Frey regime to court over the city’s bizarre, unscientific vaxx mandate:

Plaintiffs in the complaint filed in Hennepin County Fourth Judicial Court Thursday include Bright Red Group, LLC (owners of Smack Shack), 90’s Minneapolis, LLC (The Gay 90’s), PJ. Hafiz Club Management, Inc. (Sneaky Pete’s), Urban entertainment, LLC (Wild Greg’s Saloon), Urban Forage, LLC (Urban Forage), and MikLin Enterprises, Inc. (Jimmy John’s) and I & E Inc. (Bunkers Music Bar & Grill).

According to the complaint, the emergency resolution “is calculated and purposed to attempt to prod the general public toward vaccination… Minneapolis bars and restaurants are being used as pawns to further Mayor Frey’s agenda of pushing for and convincing the public to get vaccinated. Whether the end being sought is noble, the scheme is forcing restaurants and bars to lose additional patrons and business that have already been reduced over the past two years and incur new costs and burdens to enforce the requirements.”

When I saw the original mandate, I wondered – so some 20-something 110 pound female hostess encounters someone without a vaxx card who wants to eat anyway. Then what?

Does the restaurant call the cops?

Even if there’s some response on their part, they’ll show up long after the customers have ordered, eaten and left.

What is it exactly that the Frey regime expects restaurants to do under color of his mandate?