Day: August 23, 2023

Second Amendment Week

Here in Mississippi we have a special tax free week for the buying of guns and ammo…..and we are in the middle of that tax free week.

A sales tax holiday is an annual event during which the Mississippi Department of Revenue allows certain items to be purchased sales-tax-free at any participating retailer within the state.

Mississippi allows you to purchase the following items tax-free during their annual sales tax holidays: $100 worth of clothing and footwear in July; all firearms, ammunition, archery, and certain hunting supplies in September.  (we got started early this year)

The September firearms and hunting supplies sales tax holiday is officially called the Mississippi Second Amendment Weekend (MSAW).

This is not something new….Mississippi has had an annual “Second Amendment” sales tax holiday since 2014. This tax holiday is meant to encourage participation in the upcoming hunting season, and enables sportsmen to purchase guns, ammunition, and other hunting supplies tax-free. 

There you go an incentive for people to buy more guns and ammo….just what this state needs….more idiots packing heat in a time when we have a major problem with gun violence….it all seems so logical (sarcasm)….

I do not know if other states have this benefit for gun lovers….I just know that my state does not need an incentive to sell more guns.

But what can I expect from a deep Red State where logic is a dirty word.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

When Did Climate Weaponize?

My granddaughter asked this the other day….and me being an old fart I tried to explain it to her…she knew that I had been around in the early days of the debate.

I explained that it pretty much began in earnest in 1973 with the formation of the Heritage Foundation, a GOP think tank…..and in 1981 they offered up the first of the conservative programs that become the platforms for candidates and elected officials….

Not much has changed in all these years….the newest incarnation of their ‘policies’,

The Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Presidential Transition Project released the ninth edition of Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise in April, and that mandate includes significant rollbacks to federal efforts to tackle the climate emergency, as E&E News reported Wednesday.

“Make no mistake: this is a battle plan,” End Climate Silence founding director Genevieve Guenther tweeted in response to the news. “The war being waged is against our children’s future.”

The document would essentially serve as a policy blueprint for the first 180 days if Trump—or another Republican—were to gain control of the White House in January 2025, as E&E News explained. Climate and environmental rollbacks in the document include

  • Axing the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations;
  • Stopping the focus on “grid expansion for the benefit of renewable resources or supporting low/carbon generation” and instead expanding natural gas infrastructure and overall fossil fuel use;
  • Downsizing Environmental Protection Agency (EPA offices including the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance, and the Office of Public Engagement and Environmental Education;
  • Preventing other states from adapting California’s stricter environmental standards for greenhouse gases; and
  • Banning the use of scientific studies including private health data in setting EPA regulations.
  • (commondreams.org)

More than 400 people contributed ideas to the final document, which was written by former Trump staffers, industry lobbyists and consultants, and conservative policy experts. The section on the DOE was penned by Trump Federal Energy Regulatory Commission appointee Bernard McNamee, while the EPA section was written by Mandy Gunasekara, who served as the agency’s chief of staff under Trump.

The document doesn’t limit itself to climate and energy policy, but rather contains a chapter on each of the major federal departments.

So when asked who weaponized the climate then you have your answer….The Heritage Foundation.

Behind all the lies and denials of the GOP stands the Heritage to offer disinformation to help make a spurious case.

Then there is social media which these days is leading the charge on disinformation…..YouTube is a major contributor to this situation…..

Google-owned YouTube is again facing allegations of profiting from not enforcing its own ban on the monetization of climate misinformation, this time in a report published Friday amid legislative battles in Brazil over policies on the Amazon rainforest, Indigenous rights, and social media.

Google announced in October 2021 that for advertisers and publishers along with creators on its video platform YouTube, the company would “prohibit ads for, and monetization of, content that contradicts well-established scientific consensus around the existence and causes of climate change.”

For four weeks, researchers with Ekō—a group formerly known as SumOfUs that works to curb the power of big corporations—reviewed 60 YouTube videos in English and Portuguese that contained disinformation and conspiracy theories about Amazon deforestation, Indigenous rights, and the climate emergency.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/youtube-climate-disinformation

I made my thoughts known on this debate 10 years ago….

Climate Change Debate

We have been waiting for an honest debate on the climate since 1977….and we wait….and wait….

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”