Friday Homestead Dispatch
Pathogenic Pedagogical Pumpkins
“I know myself very well. I’ve been in me a long time.” – Sidney Powell, talking to Australian journalist Sarah Ferguson
“Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then – now we got we to clean that back up.” – Herschel Walker, Drumpf-endorsed Georgia Republican Senate candidate, July 11, 2022
1.
It seems like only yesterday I had many friendly chats with a young man who was working in the same office complex at the Computer Center on the campus of the University of Arizona. It was the early aughts and the young man, Ladd Keith, has since moved up to the position of Assistant Professor of Planning and Sustainable Built Environments and Chair of Sustainable Built Environments in the School of Landscape Architecture and Planning.
Imagine my pleasant surprise when my long-time friend, Kathleen Williamson, posted a Washington Post article on Facebook that features Keith in an interview discussing how a growing number of cities are searching for strategies to offset the effects of higher temperatures on their communities.
You go, young man!
Keith, along with Sara Meerow, an assistant professor in the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University in Tempe, recently published a free and downloadable guidebook called Planning for Urban Heat Resilience, which was supported by financial assistance provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Extreme Heat Risk Initiative. In it, they argue that the planning profession has a critical role to play in equitably addressing increasing heat risk and lay out the steps communities can take to either start heat planning or improve their current efforts.
An urban planner by training, Keith has over a decade of experience planning for climate change with diverse stakeholders in cities across the United States. His current research explores heat planning and governance with funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and National Institute for Transportation & Communities and Meerow’s current research focuses on conceptualizations of urban resilience, climate change adaptation, and green infrastructure planning in a range of cities across the U.S. and internationally.
The diagram above is Figure 2.9 from the guidebook. A multitude of measures exist for heat, including remote sensing of land surface temperatures, ambient air temperatures, and wet bulb globe temperature readings (Ladd Keith and Sara Meerow)
There’s hope for these millennials, I say…now, where’d I put my teeth?
2.
James Webb, the namesake of the amazing Space Telescope that has been sending back the most astonishing and detailed photos yet of the cosmos, headed up NASA from 1961 to 1968 and has been cited as the one responsible for laying the foundations at NASA for one of the most successful periods of astronomical discovery. But as an article written by Susie Bright points out, Webb was instrumental in rooting out and destroying people’s lives whom the Feds maligned as homos, and/or commies. Hundreds of persecutions were sweated out in small, tight-knit agencies. People were afraid to wear the wrong clothes, to have the wrong hobbies, to not be married, or admit what they were reading. Being smeared cost people’s careers, and their very lives.
Scientific American actually pointed this out in an article last year. When he arrived at NASA in 1961, his leadership role meant he was in part responsible for implementing what was by then federal policy: the purging of LGBT individuals from the workforce. When he was at State, this policy was enforced by those who worked under him. As early as 1950, he was aware of this policy, which was a forerunner to the antigay witch hunt known today as the lavender scare. Historian David K. Johnson's 2004 book on the subject, The Lavender Scare, discusses archival evidence indicating that Webb, along with others in State Department leadership, was involved in Senate discussions that ultimately kicked off a devastating series of federal policies.
Most people have heard of the Red Scare which thrust Joseph McCarthy and Roy Cohn into the national spotlight. But the Lavender Scare, during that same period, focused on the purging of LGBT individuals from the workforce. Webb bore responsibility for policies enacted under his leadership, including homophobic ones that were in place when he became NASA administrator. Some argue that if Webb was complicit, so was everyone working in the agency's administration at the time.
I vote for the Carl Sagan Space Telescope. “We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.”
3.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), man above the law. "What I'm trying to do is do my day job. If we open up county prosecutors being able to call every member of the Senate based on some investigation they think is good for the country, we'll ruin the place."
Unfortunately, Graham’s call was not recorded (as were Drumpfs) but Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has said that in that call, Graham “questioned the validity of legally cast absentee ballots, in an effort to reverse President Trump’s narrow loss in the state,” as The Post reported. Raffensperger asserted that he understood the South Carolina senator to mean that the Georgia official should “‘[l]ook hard and see how many ballots you could throw out.'”
Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney cites a 1972 Supreme Court case, as holding that the speech and debate clause does not “immunize a Senator or aide from testifying at trials or grand jury proceedings involving third-party crimes where the questions do not require testimony about or impugn a legislative act.” The Georgia court also has made clear that the privilege ends “when a witness (or his staff) has engaged with [non-legislators] on topics relevant to the grand jury’s investigative charter.” By calling Raffensperger, Graham looks to have been engaging in political activity well outside any proper legislative function and, therefore, beyond the privilege’s protection.
If you have nothing to hide…
4.
It seems Mick Wallace, Member of the European Parliament from Ireland, has a point.
I saw this video as it was posted on Michael Moore’s Independence Day’s Declaration post. In it he declares he will do the following:
1. Until women’s rights have been fully reinstated, and their equal rights are enshrined in our Constitution (now that the required 38 states have passed the Equal Rights Amendment), I will not shut up about this. If you invite me to dinner that’s all I’m gonna talk about. Have me over to your party and it’s going to be, “Dobbs, Dobbs, and more Dobbs!” And I won’t stop until Roe is reinstated and 51% of Congress is female.
2. I will help to organize a massive Get Out The Vote drive amongst the millions who follow me on social media, listen to my podcast, and read my Substack column. I will join with others to tour the country. No candidate will get our support unless they sign a pledge stating they will vote to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land; make gerrymandering and voter suppression illegal; eliminate the filibuster; upgrade Obamacare to Universal Health Care for All; pass strong gun control laws; and end the police executions and racist incarcerations of Black citizens.
3. I will help lead a national strike, in whatever form it needs to take, and if we want to see immediate change, watch what happens when we shut down even 10% of the country. POOF! goes Wall Street! Hit ‘em where it counts.
…and his declarations were:
1. I refuse to live in a country threatened by white supremacy — and I’m not leaving. So we‘ve got a problem.
2. I cannot in good conscience continue to receive the privileges of “full citizenship” in this land when all of its women and girls have now been, by Court decree, declared official second-class citizens with no rights to their own bodies and conscripted to a life of Forced Birth should they fall pregnant and not want to be.
3. I demand an end to the mass incarceration of Black Americans, an end to police shooting Black people, and I demand that reparations be made to the Black community for all they currently have to suffer and endure.
4. I insist we remove every single Republican from office in November. The Republican Party has dismantled itself and its remaining rogue elements now exist purely to overturn legitimate election results and overthrow the elected will of the vast majority of the American people. This must be halted without delay or equivocation.
I like this guy…
5.
Ian Underwood, a resident of Croydon, MA, recently asked “Why is that guy paying for that guy’s kids to be educated?” A fair question, and one I’ve sometimes asked myself being childless and paying high property taxes. But Underwood is aligned with the Free State Project, a movement that for years has promoted a mass migration of “liberty activists” to the state so as to seed a kind of limited-government Shangri-La. The group espouses “radical personal responsibility,” “constitutional federalism” and “peaceful resistance to shine the light on the force that is the state,” its website says.
So when residents approved the proposed $1.7 million school budget, which covers the colonial-era schoolhouse (kindergarten to fourth grade) and the cost of sending older students to nearby schools of their choice, public or private, is when Underwood spoke up. According to the New York Times, he called the proposed budget a “ransom,” he moved to cut it by more than half — to $800,000. He argued that taxes for education had climbed while student achievement had not, and that based in part on the much lower tuition for some local private schools, about $10,000 for each of the town’s 80 or so students was sufficient — though well short of, say, the nearly $18,000 that public schools in nearby Newport charged for pupils from Croydon. In pamphlets he brought to the meeting, Mr. Underwood asserted that sports, music instruction and other typical school activities were not necessary to participate intelligently in a free government, and that using taxes to pay for them “crosses the boundary between public benefit and private charity.”
The point of the article is that not paying attention to local politics and the policy decisions in your own community, leaving it to others to decide, you might get what you deserve. The moment revealed a democracy mired in indifference. Turnout at town meetings has been low for years. The town’s websites are barely rudimentary, with school board minutes posted online sporadically. The select board’s minutes are found at the town hall — open three afternoons a week — or the general store, beside chocolate bars being sold to benefit the local humane society.
Conservatives, liberals and those who shun labels — “an entirely nonpartisan group,” said Ms. Damon, one of the members — began meeting online and in living rooms to undo what they considered a devastating mistake. They researched right-to-know laws, sought advice from nonprofits and contacted the state attorney general’s office to see whether they had any legal options. They did: Under New Hampshire law, citizens could petition for a special meeting where the budget cut could be overturned — if at least half the town’s voters were present and cast ballots.
In the end, Croydon residents filed into a spacious building at the local YMCA camp for their special meeting. The We Stand Up contingent needed at least 283 voters. The turnout: 379. The vote in favor of overturning the Underwood budget: 377. The vote against: 2.
There are many studies and papers published in support of public education and how it is a worthy investment for a democratic society to flourish. One such paper reports that Research shows that individuals who graduate and have access to quality education throughout primary and secondary school are more likely to find gainful employment, have stable families, and be active and productive citizens. They are also less likely to commit serious crimes, less likely to place high demands on the public health care system, and less likely to be enrolled in welfare assistance programs. A good education provides substantial benefits to individuals and, as individual benefits are aggregated throughout a community, creates broad social and economic benefits. Investing in public education is thus far more cost-effective for the state than paying for the social and economic consequences of under-funded, low quality schools.
The paper goes on to report that:
– High school dropouts are more than twice as likely to be unemployed and three times more likely to receive welfare assistance, costing billions of dollars nationally each year for government funded assistance programs.
– Decreasing the number of high school dropouts by half would nationally produce $45 billion per year in net economic benefit to society.
– Improved education and more stable employment greatly increase tax revenue, such as a return of at least 7 dollars for every dollar invested in pre-kindergarten education.
– 41% of all prisoners have not completed high school, compared to 18 percent of the general adult population. The annual cost of incarcerating an individual is about $32,000, while the annual cost of a quality public education is about $11,000.
– A 5% increase in the male graduate rate would save $5 billion in crime-related expenses.
– Mortality decreases for every additional year in schooling by 7.2% for men and 6% for women; and the chances of optimum health is up to 8 times higher for citizens with eighteen years of education versus only seven.
– Graduating from high school improves the quality of health, reduces dependence on public health programs by 60 percent, and cuts by six times the rate of alcohol abuse.
– National savings in public health costs would exceed $40 billion if every high school dropout in just a single year would graduate. Average annual public health costs are $2,700 per dropout, $1,000 per high school graduate, and $170 per college graduate.
– A 1-year increase in median education level is associated with a more than 13% jump in political primary turnout.
So, again, why would you want to spend your hard-earned money on kids that aren’t yours? personally, I’d rather not live in a country surrounded by illiterate dumb-asses who might, at any minute, replace their tiny brains with guns and try to overthrow elections or someth…..uh, wait a minute.
6.
And in this week’s “Just How Gullible Are You” contest, Secret Service texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021 were deleted, according to the Department of Homeland Security, as part of a “device-replacement program. The USSS erased those text messages after OIG requested records of electronic communications from the USSS, as part of our evaluation of events at the Capitol on January 6.” Tied for second is that Frumpf and his nasty offspring were scheduled to testify under oath today in NYC in an investigation into the nasty man’s business practices but has been delayed because Ivana Trump died “at the foot of a stairway.”
Heh.
7.
…and in my continued series of Christian bashing, anti-Drumpf Pastor John Pavlovitz tweeted that “Organizations like Hobby Lobby are why so many people believe all Christians are hateful, intolerant bigots,” after that company bought full-page ads on the 4th of July across the country titled “One Nation Under God” blessing ‘our’ nation whose God is the Lord. There…now, go to Michael’s for all your country craft needs.
And now…
