The French Cabinet held an emergency session over the collapsing franc.
Dangerous "boy gangs" were cruising Denver, according to the Rocky Mountain News.
Last Prior:
Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Dangerous "boy gangs" were cruising Denver, according to the Rocky Mountain News.
Last Prior:
Well, at least an orange haired tycoon associated with dubiousity wasn't involved.
Seven coal miners at the Nunnery Colliery in the United Kingdom were killed when a rope hauling a mine transport severed.
Interestingly, at least to me, an elevator cable severed in an elevator I was riding in last week. It was retroactively horrifying, but not like this.
Released on this date in 1923. It was the first film to feature Peggy-Jean Montgomery, aka "Baby Peggy".
She died at age 101 in 2020, being the last person with a substantial career in the silent film industry. She struggled in later years to disassociate herself from her childhood role, which brought her derision from other in the industry. She became a successful author, and was a convert to Catholicism.
Published on this date:
New disasters finally pushed the Cole Creek railroad disaster off the front page of the local paper.
Mine Explosion Snuffs Out Six Workers’ LivesNevada State Journal, RenoOctober 8, 1923Grand Junction, Colo., Oct. 7. -- An explosion of gas in the Midwest Coal Mine at Palisades, Colo., at 11 a.m. today killed six of the seven men working in the mine.The dead are:Robert P. Scott, managerJ. K. Keys and three sons, Harvey Keys, W. B. Keys and Robert T. KeysGeorge McKeeMcKee had entered the service of the company today, and this was his first shift.The government mine rescue crews that were fighting the fire in the Bookcliff Mine arrived an hour after the explosion, and located four bodies.Jim Benda, the other miner in the workings at the time of the explosions, was badly burned. He crawled three quarters of a mile through the smoke and gas to safety. It is said that he will recover.The usual force at the Midwest mine is 40 men, but only a short clean-up crew was at work today. Superintendent Scott had entered the mine on an inspection trip.The explosion wrecked the mine badly, it is said. The mine entry is far up on the side of Grand Mesa above Palisades.Three members of the government rescue crew attempting to recover bodies from the Midwest mine were so overcome by the smoke and gas, despite the helmets, that their companions had to carry them from the workings. All of the bodies except those of Robert P. Scott and W. B. Keys were recovered tonight and it was announced that no further efforts will be made to recover them until morning, when it is hoped that some of the gas and smoke will have cleared away.It is now believed that the mine did not take fire but that the smoke was from the explosion.The body of George McKee was the first to be recovered. He was found among wreckage of cars which had been started down grade toward the portal by the force of the explosion.The string of cars hit his body and were derailed by it. He was mangled by the cars. The bodies of J. K. Keys and one of his sons were found close to the air shaft which was wrecked by the blast. The younger men had been blown against one of the mine timbers with such force as to crush his body.The great exhaust fan at the top of the airshaft on the surface was blown from its foundation and hurled down the hill.
Freshman Congressman Harriet Hageman introduced the companion bill to a doomed bill introduced in the Senate by Cynthia Lummis, which provides:
117th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 543
To prohibit the President from issuing moratoria on leasing and permitting energy and minerals on certain Federal land, and for other purposes.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 28, 2021
Ms. Herrell (for herself, Mr. McCarthy, Mr. Scalise, Mr. Westerman, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Newhouse, Mr. Moore of Utah, Mr. Crawford, Mr. Young, Mr. Owens, Mr. McKinley, Mr. Sessions, Mr. Brady, Mr. Stauber, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Tiffany, Mr. LaMalfa, Mr. Curtis, Mr. Lamborn, Mr. McClintock, Mr. Roy, Mr. Smith of Nebraska, Mr. Reschenthaler, Mr. Calvert, Mrs. Bice of Oklahoma, Mr. Baird, Mr. Mooney, Mr. Rosendale, Mr. Hern, Mrs. Boebert, and Mr. Amodei) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on Agriculture, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned
A BILL
To prohibit the President from issuing moratoria on leasing and permitting energy and minerals on certain Federal land, and for other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the “Protecting Our Wealth of Energy Resources Act” or the “POWER Act”.
SEC. 2. PROHIBITION ON MORATORIA OF NEW ENERGY LEASES ON CERTAIN FEDERAL LAND AND ON WITHDRAWAL OF FEDERAL LAND FROM ENERGY DEVELOPMENT.
(a) Definitions.—In this section:
(1) CRITICAL MINERAL.—The term “critical mineral” means any mineral included on the list of critical minerals published in the notice of the Secretary of the Interior entitled “Final List of Critical Minerals 2018” (83 Fed. Reg. 23295 (May 18, 2018)).
(2) FEDERAL LAND.—
(A) IN GENERAL.—The term “Federal land” means—
(i) National Forest System land;
(ii) public lands (as defined in section 103 of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (43 U.S.C. 1702));
(iii) the outer Continental Shelf (as defined in section 2 of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (43 U.S.C. 1331)); and
(iv) land managed by the Secretary of Energy.
(B) INCLUSION.—The term “Federal land” includes land described in clauses (i) through (iv) of subparagraph (A) for which the rights to the surface estate or subsurface estate are owned by a non-Federal entity.
(3) PRESIDENT.—The term “President” means the President or any designee, including—
(A) the Secretary of Agriculture;
(B) the Secretary of Energy; and
(C) the Secretary of the Interior.
(b) Prohibitions.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President shall not carry out any action that would prohibit or substantially delay the issuance of any of the following on Federal land, unless such an action has been authorized by an Act of Congress:
(A) New oil and gas leases, drill permits, approvals, or authorizations.
(B) New coal leases, permits, approvals, or authorizations.
(C) New hard rock leases, permits, approvals, or authorizations.
(D) New critical minerals leases, permits, approvals, or authorizations.
(2) PROHIBITION ON WITHDRAWAL.—Notwithstanding any other provision of law, the President shall not withdraw any Federal land from forms of entry, appropriation, or disposal under the public land laws, location, entry, and patent under the mining laws, or disposition under laws pertaining to mineral and geothermal leasing or mineral materials unless the withdrawal has been authorized by an Act of Congress.
1. Can't pass the Senate
2. Would be vetoed if it actually passed both houses, when there's certainly not enough votes to override a veto.
So why do these things?
February 20, 2023
Golden moves on path to all-electric in new buildings: To meet its #climate goals, this #Colorado city of 20,000 needs to crimp #methane combustion. It could require all-electric in new buildings by January 2024
February 23, 2023
SNAP, the Federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, ends this month.
NPR is laying off 10% of its workforce.
March 3, 2023
A Gold and Copper mine will open in Laramie County in 2025.
The United States Post Office is buying 9,250 electric vans from Ford.
March 13, 2023
Silicon Valley Bank collapsed Friday after a comment by a major investment broker regarding it. The Federal Government is not going to "bail out" the bank, which has accounts by many wealthy investors.
President Biden is proceeding to authorize the Willow drilling project inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, despite protests over the proposed action.
March 28, 2023
Renewables produced more energy than coal last year.
Coal checked in at 20%, down from 50% in 2007, and it's declining.
This is no surprise here, we've noted the timeline of coal long ago:
A new Natrona County Advocacy Group, Fly Casper Alliance, is seeking $50,000 from the City of Casper to help secure the present Delta (Sky West) flight to Salt Lake City. The flight already receives subsidies from Natrona County, but this one time payment is hoped to help continue to secure the flight.
Related thread:
May 10, 2023
The big economic news right now, of course, is that the country is racing towards its debt limit, at which point it will default on its debts.
The whole idea of a debt limit was to put a cap on Congress' ability to borrow too much money. The problem is it didn't work out that way. Sort of like a spending limit on a credit card, it just caps off the debt, but the problem is, unlike a credit card, when you go to present it to the person you are buying something from, your credit isn't declined. You get the thing anyway, and then later just don't have the ability to pay for it.
So it works instead, like buying a house, for example, or a car, you couldn't afford.
In order to really have teeth, there'd have to be a third body, like the CBO, treasury, or something, that would just nullify bills authorizing spending over the limit. Or, rather, a court would have to declare, before things were spent, that there was a freeze on spending as Congress didn't have the statutory authority to make the spending.
A balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, frankly, would work significantly better.
It does serve to cause the spending entities to have to get together, but they don't do it honestly. Basically what we have going on is something akin to a couple at a banquet who have overspent arguing whether they should take the Bud Light off the table, while they're leaving the Dom Pérignon on. Or, rather, it's like a husband that has a job as Mini Mart clerks, but the education of PhDs, arguing about racking up bills rather than going out and getting a better paying job.
If we don't get this fixed by June 1, the country is going into a massive economic crisis.
To add to that grim situation, the negotiations are in the hands of 1) one politician who is so old that he can recall when he went to U.S. Grant's kindergarten recitals, and 2) one politician who is so beholding to Trumpist "Club For Growth" Kool-Aid drinkers that he stinks up a room before he gets there.
If you worked at a company run this way, you'd look for a new job. If you lived in a family run this way, you'd be looking for your own apartment.
This also serves, we might note, to recall the Jeffersonian warnings about democracy (and yes, we are a democracy, don't give me that "but we're a republic" crap, which is just what that line is, crap). Jefferson warned that once the country ceased to be agrarian, the government would fail, as at that point it gave rise to feeding the mob.
The history of modern democracies has so far demonstrated that fear to be wrong, but it has also taken real crises in order to address largess. The German democracy, for instance, beat up by the hyperinflation of Weimar era and the brutality of World War Two keeps a tight reign on its finances. The Japanese democracy, hit hard by the Japanese decline of the 1970s, does the same.
So far, the American democracy has shown no such tendency. Congress won't address entitlements, which it must, won't address gigantic defense spending, which it must, and won't address raising taxes, which it must.
In that context, again, it's like a couple employed as Mini Mart clerks, both with PhD's, who are standing outside their apartment yelling each at each other about whether to upgrade the stereo on the Tesla they can't afford.
May 13, 2023
Mining sector jobs grew more than any other sector of Wyoming's economy last year, by 9.1%. This in spite of dire warnings by, well, folks like me.
UW's employees will be receiving a pay raise.
Ford Motors will no longer put AM radio in its vehicles. Any of them. Many other manufacturers are pulling theirs from electric vehicles.
May 15, 2023
Trump apparently said in his Town Hall on CNN that unless the Administration agreed to major cuts, the Republicans should take the country into debt default, a totally wreckless position that would destroy the savings of his constituency.
Trump himself was responsible for major additions to the deficit.
Biden and the Republicans are set to meet again on Tuesday. Perhaps this slow motion process is part of his strategy, but its yet another example of government that is as slow as molasses.
May 16, 2023
The local paper is eliminating an edition, going to three print editions per week only and wiping out personal home delivery in favor of mail.
May 21, 2023
Nothing is being done about the debt ceiling while President Biden is at the G7. He gets back today.
If the US ends up with Trump again, this sort of behavior will be a lot of the reason why.
Footnotes:
"Freedom of Worship", the second in Rockwell's four freedoms illustrations, ran in the Saturday Evening Post along with an essay on the topic by Will Durant.
An explosion and resulting carbon monoxide poisoning killed 74 minders in Montana's Smith Mine No. 3. The horrible incident remains Montana's worst mining disaster.
The final arrest and expulsion of Jews from Berlin and other large German cities commenced.
The British landed on the island of Herm in the English Channel, but found that it was not occupied. Because of their landing spot, residents of the island were not aware that their countrymen had landed.
Wilhelm Cuno.
Businessman Wilhelm Cuno was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Friedrich Ebert. It was an appointment, not an elective, commission.
An independent politician, Cuno would serve in the role for less than a year and then retire from politics. He'd become an economic advisor to Hitler in 1932, which he didn't do long either, given his death in 1933.
This, obviously all male, occupation was exactly what it sounded like. Clerks who took appointments and handled the same. Sort of the equivalent of a secretary/receptionist.
As late as the Second World War, in government service this occupation was a male one. And, as the fine clothing in the photo demonstrates, one that paid a decent living to its occupants.
Indeed, every man here is wearing a three-piece suit of good quality.
Also of note, at least two are smoking cigars, not even taking time out from tobacco consumption to appear without one. When was the last time you were in an office and somebody was smoking a cigar?
A coal mine explosion in Spangler, Pennsylvania, killed 79 miners.
Ali Kemal, age 53, who we mentioned the other day, was lynched on his ways to the gallows by a mob.
By the way, in the long odds category, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a direct descendant of Ali Kemal. I.e, not a cousin, Kamal is BoJo's Great Grandfather.
Released this day in 1922.
A fire at California's Argonaut gold mine killed 47 immigrant men who worked there. It's the worst mine disaster in California's history.
The fire could not be extinguished. An exact cause was never determined.
As these photos show, the Red Cross reported to assist at the mine.
Greek Orthodox Bishop Chrysostomos of Smyrna was lynched by a mob after the Turks took the city. What exactly occurred is not known, but the Bishop, who was a Greek nationalist, refused to evacuate and reported to congratulate the Turks on their victory. He was horribly murdered and is regarded as a Saint by the Greek Orthodox.
I don't normally combine these two, but today offers an interesting example of early 20th Century conditions in the form of the centennial of the birth of Charles Bronson.
I don't idealize actors the way some people do, and that would include Bronson. But his early life really provides a glimpse of how things were in "the good old days". Indeed, of his films, only the short speech in the film The Dirty Dozen about why his character speaks German mirrors his own origins. Bronson spoke, in addition to English, Lithuanian, Russian and Greek, unlike German and Polish like his character in the film.
Bronson was born Charles Dennis Buchinsky, the eleventh of fifteen children of his parents. His father was a Lithuanian immigrant who changed the family name to that from. Bučinskis. His father was actually a Lithuanian Lipka Tatar, many of whom are Muslims. His parents were however Roman Catholic.
Bronson's family was desperately poor. His father died when he was ten and he began working in Pennsylvania coal mines at that age. He nonetheless graduated from high school, being the first member of the family to do so. He was a full-time miner until 1943, when he joined the Army and entered the Army Air Corps. He ultimately became a B29 crewman and was wounded in action over Japan. After the war he returned to Pennsylvanian and worked odd jobs until breaking into acting in the early 1950s. Unlike many of his acting contemporaries, his wartime service had nothing to do with acting at all. He was acting in movies by 1951 and had regular television and even leading television roles by the mid 1950s. His breakthrough star role came with The Magnificent Seven in 1960.
Reviews like this tend to become hagiographies, and I don't intend for that to be the case. In fact, I don't like most of the Bronson movies from the 1970s, when his star power was at its height. Interestingly, he broke into full-scale stardom after age 50, which is rare in acting, but a lot of his roles of that period were cartoonish violent exercises. He was married three times, the first time to aspiring 18 year old actress Harriet Tendler which ended in divorce nearly twenty years later, then to Jill Ireland, and lastly, after her death, to Kim Weeks. His character in real life always remained hard to get at as he was intensely private and shy, but he was known to hold grudges for protracted periods, seemingly caused, in some people's minds, by lasting surprise that he'd succeeded in movies.
So what, if any, lessons can we draw from this life?
Well, for one thing, while poverty certainly remains in the United States, early childhood stories like Bronson's have gone from common to extremely rare. We don't read about families of fifteen much, and if we do, they tend to more often than not be regarded as interesting oddities, like the now fallen Dugger family. Bronson's family was big, because it was big, and there's not much else to that.
We also don't see miner works himself to death and then boys begin mining as kids stories either. But at that time, that was common. Child labor laws were in effect by 1920, but in the coal mining regions of Appalachia, they obviously weren't really enforced. This is an American story we thankfully don't see much of, even with the very poor, and even with immigrants.
It also demonstrates that even relatively recently an era remained in which people could be intensely private, even secretive. Surprisingly little is known about Bronson as a person. Finding out what happened to his fourteen siblings is darned near impossible, other than that they all retained the Buchinsky name. We know that he was raised in a Catholic family, and his fist father-in-law, who was Jewish, objected to the marriage partially on those grounds, but we don't really know how observant Bronson was, if at all, as an adult. Indeed, some rumor mills have him as a Lutheran or Russian Orthodox believer, both of which are unlikely. He clearly wasn't observant in regard to the Catholic views on marriage. He was a Nixon supporter and his series of early 1970s crime films are of a stout right-wing vigilante character, neither of which tells us more about his deeper views. We just don't know that much about him.
American success story or American tragedy? Hard to say.
The United States contracted to purchase Bolivia's entire production run of tungsten, thereby depriving the Japanese of the same, which was the goal.
Bolivia was the largest supplier of tin to the Allies during World War Two.
Mussolini delivered a speech in which he stated that the United States was effectively already at war with the Axis powers, which while an exaggeration, had some measure of truth to it, given that the US was clearly acting beyond what strict neutrality would provide for. He claimed not to be worried and stated that the United Kingdom would fall anyhow.
At this point in time its debated on whether or not Mussolini was aware that Germany was just days away from launching at attack on the Soviet Union.
French vice premier Darlan delivered a speech in which he warned Frenchmen not to listen to the words of the leaders of the Free French, whom he felt were merely disrupting and disquieting the French.
At this point in time Admiral Darlan, who retained his office in the French navy, was the de facto head of the Vichy government. He would relinquish that position to Laval the following year. He was in Algiers when Operation Torch commenced and quickly struck a deal with the Allies which effectively caused the French in North Africa to switch sides.
Darlan has been referred to as a man of "failed destiny" in that he was clearly opposed to the Germans and threatened to take the French navy over to the British during the time of the French collapse. He was a loyal officer, however, and personally loyal to Petain and therefore collaborated with the Germans in his role as vice premier, at which time he seems to have been resigned to a German victory in Europe. Personally a republican, when the Allies landed in North Africa his sentiments came back out and he fairly quickly negotiated a French defection to the Allies which would have long lasting as well as immediate consequences.
He wouldn't live to see them as he was assassinated by monarchist Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, a member of the resistance, who hadn't forgiven Darlan his Vichy role.
The ironies, and indeed the tragedy, of Darlan are simply epic. A believer in the French republican and republican values, he ended up serving in the government that opposed them, A loyal servant of the French navy, he'd end up essentially leading a coup against Vichy that would in the end cause it to become more of a puppet than it already was and which would lead, in part, to the full German occupation of France. His most significant opponent after switching sides was DeGaulle, who saw the Free French cause as personally belonging to him, which the republican Darlan did not, and DeGaulle was a monarchist at heart.
Issues In the Wyoming Election. A Series. Issue No. 1. The Economy
Let's look at how I summarized this stool leg earlier. Here's what we wrote:The Wyoming Economy. Looking at it in a different way.
The extractive industries
Early Wyoming oilfield.
The Carissa Mine, South Pass Wyoming
And so how did I sees that in the context of the economic future and building a more stable Wyoming economy? Here's what I had to say on that:
So where do we go?
Wyoming’s energy industry has long been the backbone of our economy and has served our state, people, communities, businesses, and schools tremendously well. As the industry and markets change, so must our approach to protecting and promoting our natural resources!My new Power WYO Forward platform will foster and grow our state’s energy sector.The 6-point plan is simple:A person can take this for what it is worth, of course. The thing I think is interesting about it is that it obviously advocates for the use of state funds in regards to the oil industry. An irony of this is that the use of state money for private enterprise is generally not supposed to be a Republican thing, but apparently here it is. Another factor to be considered, or that perhaps should be, is that some of the targets for state money under this type of program would seem to be areas that, if they are viable, the largest sector of our economy would invest in itself.
- Building Infrastructure to Export Wyoming Resources - I’ll pursue opportunities with other sovereign funds, including the Alaska Permanent Fund and the Alberta Investment Management Corporation, to explore building infrastructure to export Wyoming’s high-quality minerals. Investing in private-sector endeavors or supporting them with bonds to do just that is a win-win.
- Driving Advanced Energy Technologies - I’ll work to position Wyoming as the leader in advanced energy technologies including Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and new carbon-to-product markets. We’re seeing promising research come out every day that shows the potential for turning carbon into marketable products we can make money off of – like petrochemicals, asphalt and plastics.
- Streamlining Regulations - I’ll drive a shift on the state and federal level towards regulations that reward people for doing a better job – be it through expedited permitting, faster response times, or other incentives. The free market can, and will, address many of the environmental concerns that come with energy production, but we have to give them reasonable room to do so.
- Localizing Decision Making – Working with Federal Agencies - Wyoming people, Wyoming leaders need to be empowered to make decisions. It is critical for the next Governor to leverage action with a strong relationship with the BLM and other federal agencies to expedite processes and keep projects moving.
- Streamlining & Aligning State Energy Resources - Streamlining and better aligning Wyoming’s energy agencies and resources will not only better serve taxpayers, but business – energy producers, innovators and those adding value to the chain. I’m committed to ensuring the state does more with less to direct people and companies to the resources Wyoming already has in place.
- All of the Above Energy Policy – There is Room for It All - Be it oil, gas, coal, uranium or wind, when it comes to natural resources, Wyoming has it all. As a lifelong conservative, I strongly believe that the market should pick winners and losers when it comes to energy sources – not government.