Newsom wants electricity costs to be income-based

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In 2022 the California legislature passed a bill with the intention of implementing “equitable” electricity charges – in other words, charge the non-poor more.

Must have seemed like a great idea to the California legislators at the time, but guess what? It turns out the people aren’t keen on it. Who would have guessed such a thing? And now even many of the Democrat lawmakers are backing away from it.

But not Gavin Newsom:

California governor Gavin Newsom is standing by the state’s soon-to-be-implemented “equitable” policy to base electricity bills on income, rather than usage, even as public and political opposition to the idea builds in the Democratic coalition.

A spokesman for the governor said on Tuesday that Newsom is looking forward to seeing a final proposal from the state’s utilities commission “that is consistent with” the 2022 law that required the agency to devise an income-based billing system.

“California must combat climate change by rapidly expanding the use of clean electricity in our vehicles and buildings, while at the same time making it more affordable for low-income Californians,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Newsom’s commitment to California’s income-based electricity billing plan followed a press conference by a group of Democratic lawmakers who want to reverse the policy, after they voted in its favor as part of a 2022 budget bill. Citing public outcry, they condemned the plan as another price hike for Californians’ astronomical energy bills that would punish conservation-minded households while also subjecting everyone to invasive income checks.

I wonder why they didn’t think of that in 2022. That’s not sarcasm on my part – well, only a bit. I really do wonder, because this is such an egregiously bad idea that it could have been confidently predicted that even in bluer-than-bluer California the consumers would not like it. Apparently they – and Newsom – are extremely out of touch.

Speaking of out of touch – or rather, untouchable [emphasis mine]:

The latest proposals vary between an extra $30 to $50 per month for Californians who aren’t poor enough to qualify for subsidies. Utility companies initially pitched charges of up to $128 for higher-income households, but walked those back after public outcry. The agency, an unelected body of regulators, is tasked with settling on a final fee and implementing it by summer.

A lot of people think Newsom will somehow replace Biden as the Democrat candidate for president in 2024. I don’t think so. He may have survived recall in California, but I don’t think he’d do well on a national level. At least, I hope not.

The House versus the Senate on the border bill

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Speaker Johnson of the House says “no” to the new “bipartisan” border bill sent by the Senate:

… Speaker Johnson said, “I’ve seen enough. This bill is even worse than we expected, and won’t come close to ending the border catastrophe the President has created. As the lead Democrat negotiator proclaimed: Under this legislation, “the border never closes.”

From Mike Collins and Steve Scalise:

Do Johnson and McConnell ever speak to each other?

Every two years the entire House is up for re-election. Many House members are incumbents in relatively safe districts, but many are not. This arguably makes the House more responsive to public opinion compared to the Senate, only a third of whose members are up for re-election every two-year cycle.

McConnell has been especially bad – even for a GOP senator – in terms of doing what the people want. This bill certainly reflects that.

The problem of the people’s government representatives not doing the will of the people – or what would be good for the country – particularly regarding borders, is hardly limited to the US. It’s rampant in Europe as well.

Extraordinary article by former Sudanese slave, plus video about violence and slavery in Africa today

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First, an excerpt from the article by Simon Deng, entitled: “First They Came for My People, Then They Came for the Jews: A South Sudanese former slave recognized the Palestinian pogrom on Oct. 7”:

My name is Simon Aban Deng. I am from South Sudan. I am a Shilluk. I am a Christian. I am a former slave.

I will not forget that day when Arab Sudanese government troops came and raided my village. We didn’t know what was going on until we heard gunshots from every direction. I was only 9 years old, but the militiamen were shooting anybody they saw, including children.

Myself, my family, and five of my friends had to run. But the Arabs ran after us: While we were running, they shot two of my friends. We ran wildly, not knowing where we were running. We just wanted to get away from these men, and the bullets, chasing us. …

… [On returning later the survivors discovered] the whole village had been burned to the ground with the people inside the houses, including a blind man and an elderly lady we knew.

Deng tells the story of how he then was sold into slavery, what it was like during the years he was a slave, and how he came to be free. Then he writes this:

On Oct. 7, 2023, I watched the news and was sick. Seeing the video of the attack on the music festival in Israel, everything welled up inside me. From the experience of my people, from my own experience, I knew exactly what had just happened and how those terrified hostages were going to suffer. Israelis had been raped, tortured, mutilated, and burned alive just like my people had been for centuries. I will never forget the fires and the burned bodies: They looked exactly like what I saw the day my village was destroyed.

What Hamas did was precisely like what Arab Sudan’s genocidal government did to my people. Since they invaded Africa in the seventh century, Arab Muslims had always been doing jihad. We will never really know many Blacks have died between then and today. It is one of those numbers which, because it is unknown, proves how huge the suffering must be.

Much much more at the link.

The following video is a companion piece I came across not long after. It takes a broader look at the same subject: African Arabs’ violent war on black Africans. I highly recommend watching it. From the description at YouTube:

Many are not aware, but slavery and sex trafficking has never ended in Africa. But while the human rights community seems obsessed with “genocide” in Palestine, no one really pays attention to the massive human rights violations happening to black people in Africa. Why are human rights groups so selective? Why does the media gravitate towards and champion the rights of some while others are ignored?

This week on Top Story, JNS Editor-in-chief Jonathan Tobin speaks with the co-founder of Americans for Peace and Tolerance Charles Jacobs and executive director of the American Anti-Slavery Group Ben Poser, both of whom are involved in raising awareness of African slaves and freeing them in some cases.

Walpurgis Nacht in competition

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This “Bacchante” variation from Walpurgis Nacht was Maya Plisetkaya’s forte, and nobody else is Plisetskaya or even close. But many give the variation a try, especially in dance competitions where they face a particularly daunting task: to perform the variation without the accompanying satyrs who give the dance its context. For example, the little hand flicks that accompany the hops on point are meant to tease the satyrs, but when the dancer performs them all by herself then they’re just strange little hand flicks while hopping on point. But it’s a fun variation; I once learned a tiny bit of it.

Here’s a dancer who can do all the steps just fine, but doesn’t exhibit much of the playfulness and ease that’s required:

Whereas this girl at 14 years old (young for this dance) really puts a lot more playfulness and easy-seeming grace (although it’s not the least bit easy) into it than most adult professional soloists do:

And here’s the Plisetskaya standard to which all can aspire but no one can reach. Such abandon! Such freedom of the upper body! She’s not afraid to bend way forward and way back as she’s prancing. Really, there’s never been anyone like her (she’s also got the requisite satyrs here, since I’m pretty sure this is a live performance, although I believe the sound was added later). Unfortunately, video can’t be embedded, but just click here to watch it.

Bonus clip: the following video (filmed in 1956) can’t be embedded, either. It features the dancer Raisa Struchkova in the same role, and she’s wonderful too, although she gives it a different feel than Plisetkaya does. Struchkova is incredibly light and airy. So take a look; the variation begins at around minute 3:45.

The New York Times notices that “sudden gender dysphoria” might be a fad-like thing and that the “affirmative” model of treatment might be hurting many young people

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I noticed this yesterday, and I think it may be significant and represent a sea-change, however slight:

Is this a result of lawsuits? I think that must be having some effect.

There’s a long way to go, though, towards sanity. And the most fanatical trans activists and their allies on the left will fight it all the way.

Milei gets down to business: economic reforms in Argentina

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Who predicted a year ago that this would be happening in Argentina? I certainly didn’t.

Milei gets to work:

Argentine lawmakers took a first step Friday toward approving President Javier Milei’s sweeping economic, social and political reform package, which has sparked angry opposition protests.

The bill won the “general” approval in principle of the lower house of Congress, whose members will examine the plans of libertarian and self-described anarcho-capitalist Milei in detail next week.

Shortly before the vote, the 53-year-old political outsider said on social media that lawmakers had “the opportunity to show which side of history” they wanted to be on.

“History will judge them according to their work in favor of the Argentines or for the continued impoverishment of the people,” a presidential statement said.

Milei won a resounding election victory in October, riding a wave of anger over decades of economic crisis in the South American nation, where annual inflation stands at over 200 percent and poverty levels are at 40 percent.

I make no predictions about how this will go, but I wish him well. He’ll need it; he will be bucking a great many vested interest groups.

Extraordinary interview with Natan Sharansky

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Natan Sharansky is interviewed in the following video, in which he speaks on growing up in the Soviet Union and the mental gymnastics it required, becoming a “refusenik,” spending nine years in the Gulag, living in Israel after his release, and what’s going on now both in Israel and around the world regarding anti-Semitism. I found it to be an unusually fascinating talk by a courageous and insightful man.

I’ve written about Sharansky before. This post from 2015 concerns his contention that the many Jews leaving France at the time were a warning sign that liberal democracy was in grave danger of dying there. And this post is about his description of living what he calls a “double life” under the Soviets.

I’ve cued up a couple of short clips from the recent video. In this first one, Sharansky describes his reaction at the age of five to Stalin’s death:

Here he describes how, about twenty years ago, he noticed what was happening on campuses and correctly predicted a rise in anti-Semitism as a result of the spread of “progressive” (neo-Marxist) viewpoints:

Here’s the entire interview. One of the things that occurred to me while watching it is that, for many secular American Jews on the left, 10/7 and the world’s reaction to it shocked them into feeling as though they were part of Jewish history, and helped them to identify with that history, perhaps for the first time.

I want to add that when Sharansky says “left” and “right” he’s not talking about small-government conservatism; he’s using the word “right” more in the European sense:

It’s Groundhog Day – again!

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[NOTE: What could be more appropriate on Groundhog Day than a repeat of an old essay about the movie? The film is a huge personal favorite of mine: very funny, mysterious, and touching. This essay has been slightly edited, of course, because in the spirit of the movie we try to get it better and better.]

In discussions of the film “Groundhog Day” on this blog, I’ve noticed a couple of people questioning why the Bill Murray character would find Andie McDowell’s Rita deserving of all those years of his devotion and energy. For example, “…[W]hat, exactly, made the lovely but, let’s face it, vapid Rita worthy of Phil’s centuries of effort?”

My answer is that he discovered love. Yes, Rita was beautiful, and a good human being with many excellent qualities. But of course she was imperfect, and over the years (centuries? millennia?) Phil no doubt had learned just about all of her flaws. Still, it didn’t matter to him because it wasn’t about Rita, exactly—it was about the fact that, somewhere along the long path of his transformation to wisdom, he finally understood that every person in town, including the ones he couldn’t tolerate at the beginning, was worthy of his attention—and of something one might call “love,” in its broadest sense.

And somewhere along the way to that knowledge, Phil’s efforts in “Groundhog Day” stopped being about getting into Rita’s pants or even getting her to love him, although that certainly took up a larger percentage of his time (and the movie’s length) than some of his other pursuits. But he probably spent at least as much time learning to play the piano (a form of love, too), or to carve ice sculptures, or to become skilled at some of the more mindless and meaningless tricks he mastered, or learning details about the life of almost everyone in town.

Was the old derelict, whose life Phil tried to save over and over and over, “worth it” either? Such questions no longer mattered to him, because the gesture and the effort were worth it, and every life was worth something to him.

Rita, of course, had always been physically attractive to Phil. But as the film (and time) wore on—and on—she became the object not just of eros, but of agape as well. By the end of the movie, I think that Phil had come to appreciate the idea of the theme and variations versus the symphony, which I wrote about here:

And, although walking repeatedly in the same place is very different from traveling around the world and walking in a new place every day, is it really so very much less varied? It depends on the eye and mind of the beholder; the expansive imagination can find variety in small differences, and the stunted one can find boredom in vast changes.

And I submit that love is like that, too. Some people spend a lifetime with one love, one spouse; plumbing the depths of that single human being and what it means to be in an intimate relationship with him/her. Others go from relationship to relationship, never alighting with one person for very long, craving the variety.

It would seem on the face of it that the second type of person has the more exciting time in love. But it ain’t necessarily so. Either of these experiences can be boring or fascinating, depending on what we bring to it: the first experience is a universe in depth, and the second a universe in breadth. But both can contain multitudes.

Towards the end of the film (SPOILER ALERT), Phil makes it clear that he has given up the pursuit of Rita entirely, and immersed himself in his love for her instead. Is this what finally frees him?

[NOTE: Here’s another essay on the film that’s worth reading.]

Biden ♥ Iran

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This was written yesterday:

Don’t buy the hype: When President Biden finally responds to the deadly Iran-backed attack on American troops in Jordan, odds are he’ll both dispel the concerns of fearmongers hysterical he is going to bomb Iran and dash the dreams of hawks demanding he do so.

This was apparent even before his administration leaked it will strike Iranian personnel and facilities in Iraq and Syria, giving the regime ample time to close up shop and evacuate.

For Biden to strike Tehran’s tentacles, let alone the head of the octopus with the overwhelming force necessary to deter it — à la President Donald Trump’s strike on Iranian terror mastermind Qassem Soleimani — would be to completely contradict his entire Middle East policy.

In a continuation of the Obama-Biden administration policy before it, the president has subordinated nearly all else to making the mullocracy the regional “strong horse,” under the perverse premise putting Iran First — and the screws to our Israeli friends and anti-Islamist Arab partners — will produce order and peace over instability and war.

Biden has sought since day one to appease and empower the Islamic revolutionary regime and its proxies, fueling and incentivizing ever-greater aggression.

That’s really pretty much it. Biden follows in Obama’s footsteps re Iran, but why? Obama at least had a long leftist history and an internationalist “anti-colonial” outlook. Biden has a very different history. He’s never been smart about foreign affairs – in fact, has been wrong very very often in his long career in the Senate – but prior to becoming Obama’s VP I don’t think he ever was pro-Iran, anti-Israel, or anti-American.

So, what happened? A lot of possibilities, and they’re not mutually exclusive:

(1) Biden isn’t calling the shots at all, and it’s just Obama’s advisors continuing Obama’s destructive policies.
(2) But Biden is at least acquiescing to these things, and I assume he has some agency and is not an automaton. Perhaps his agreement is because he saw how popular Obama was because of, or despite, such moves.
(3) Currying favor with the international crowd that despises Israel.
(4) Catering to his left flank. They’ve been upset with him ever since October 7. Then again, this pro-Iran policy has been one he consistently followed much earlier than that.
(5) Cowardice.
(6) Lack of any other ideas about what to do.

The article calls Biden’s Iran agenda “treacherous.” That it certainly is. I would add “treasonous.”

Today, the administration launched airstrikes on targets in Syria and Jordan:

The US military struck Iranian forces and Tehran-backed militia groups in both Iraq and Syria on Friday as a retaliation for the drone attack that killed three American soldiers at a base in Jordan.

The US has blamed Iran-backed forces for the attack but did not directly strike its rival.

Of course not. Wouldn’t want to “escalate” things – even if Iran keeps doing so through its proxies.

More:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said that at least 13 pro-Iran fighters were killed in the attack. “At least 13 pro-Iran fighters have been killed,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

The administration says there will be more coming. I predict that none of it will affect Iran in any important way. Iran is well aware that any retaliation will not be meaningful, and acts accordingly.

Biden, Blinken, and a possible hostage deal

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This is one of the most disturbing discussions I’ve ever heard. If the information here is accurate – and I believe it substantially is – the Biden administration is pressuring Israel to make a suicidal deal and to reward the terrorists and hand them a triumph.

I have detested this administration from the start. For example, the manner of its withdrawal from Afghanistan was absolutely catastrophic in an almost surrealistic way, making a bad situation so very much worse, and for no rational reason (unless the destruction of America’s military reputation and deterrent threat is the reason). What Biden and company did there seemed to be capriciously evil, almost a sort of madness. And what the administration is reported to want Israel to do now has the same characteristics: self-destructive madness for Israel and reward for some of the worst people on earth.

If you don’t want to become very very angry, don’t watch it:

In related news:

Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Beirut, says the Gaza-ruling terror group remains committed to its initial demands for a permanent ceasefire. Israel is ready to pause the fighting in order to secure the release of hostages, but insists it will not end its military campaign until Hamas is destroyed.

Hamdan also says Hamas seeks the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners being held for acts related to the conflict with Israel, including those serving life sentences.

He mentions two by name, including Fatah terror convict Marwan Barghouti, who is seen as a top future candidate to lead the Palestinian Authority. Barghouti was arrested by Israel in 2002 and is serving five life terms for planning three terror attacks during the Second Intifada that killed five Israelis.

In addition to Barghouti, Hamdan names Ahmad Saadat, head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, as well as Hamas prisoners and those from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization. Saadat is serving a 30-year sentence for his role in the 2001 assassination of Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze’evi.

The internal pressure from many (not all) of the hostage families and many many other Israelis, and the external pressure from Blinken and Biden, is immense. But it seems suicidal madness to me to even consider such a deal.

Why are they even seriously talking about it? Two possibilities occur to me. The first is that they are seriously considering it. The second is that they wish to appear to be, both to placate the families (who will not be placated until their loved ones return) and to keep the terrorists hoping. The reason to keep the terrorists hoping is that, if the terrorists were to think no deal is possible, the hostages’ worth would disappear and they would likely be killed and possibly publicly, with extra violence and cruelty, in Isis-like fashion.