Sarah: An example of the damage done by today’s educational system

Don Boudreaux, one of the relatively few remaining educators talks with one of his students, Sarah.

Sarah's responses make clear how much damage to thinking our educational system has been doing. A large chunk of education today is indoctrination, not education, which has been so successful as to make many students opaque to facts and reason.

Your reaction to DB's report on his discussion with Sarah will tell a lot about your ability to place due emphasis on facts and reason.

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The opening lecture that I deliver every time I teach a Principles of Microeconomics course, which I do each semester, is on what the economic historian and liberal philosopher Deirdre McCloskey calls “the Great Enrichment.” I impress upon my students (most of whom are in their late teens) that they and everyone they know are off-the-charts materially wealthier than were the vast majority of all humans who ever lived. I explain that millennia after millennia, our human ancestors breathed, toiled, and perished in poverty so grinding that we today can barely imagine it.

This pattern of existence, when reckoned in historical time, was suddenly shattered just over two centuries ago. First in Holland, and then even more spectacularly in Britain, ordinary people gained steadily greater access to goods and services that in the past either were available only to royals, nobles, and members of high priestly classes, or – more commonly – weren’t available to anyone at all. Even Louis XIV, likely the most powerful man in the world, could not travel in motorized vehicles, escape from the heat of summer into air-conditioned rooms, converse in real time with people out of earshot, avoid having his face disfigured with smallpox, improve his vision with contact lenses or Lasik surgery, or treat his gonorrhea with antibiotics.

A key purpose of my intro econ course is to help my students understand that and how peaceful, commercial cooperation – today spanning the globe and involving billions of people nearly all of whom are strangers to each other – emerges to create and maintain our astonishing material prosperity.

Some students more than others resist my explanation of how. One such student – a freshman who I’ll call “Sarah” – came up to me after our most recent class and asked this question: “Isn’t our wealth the result of slavery?” She continued: “My high-school history teacher taught us that our wealth was extracted from slaves.” Sarah seemed to be convinced by her high-school teacher’s explanation.

Don to Sarah: “Yes, I’ve heard that claim, but I don’t buy it. How do you explain the fact slavery in America ended 157 years ago and ever since then the wealth of ordinary Americans has continued not only to grow, but to grow far more impressively than it did when slavery still existed. Think of what happened in the 20th century. Ordinary Americans got easy access to electrification, radio, television, automobiles, a continent-spanning network of paved roads, air travel, air conditioning, supermarkets, antibiotics, contact lenses, and laptops and smartphones. All of these pieces of prosperity were created long after slavery’s demise.”

Sarah to Don: “Yes, but these things were made possible by the wealth that whites extracted from slaves. Without the wealth produced by slaves and then stolen from them, we wouldn’t have had the foundation to produce what we did after slavery ended.”

Don: “American slaves worked overwhelmingly in agriculture. How did, say, cotton picked by slaves in Louisiana in 1860 turn 160 years later in Michigan into middle-class homes equipped with wi-fi, Google Home, and refrigerators stuffed with orange juice from Florida, pineapples from Hawaii, and sauvignon blanc from New Zealand?”

Sarah: “The wealth stolen from slave labor was eventually invested in factories that produced all these things.”

Don: “Not so. Consider, for example, Henry Ford. He was born into modest means on a Michigan farm in 1863 to a family with no history of slave-owning. What made him successful in business?”

Sarah: “You’re asking me?”

Don: “I am.”

Sarah: “I’m not sure. I don’t know the specifics.”

Don: “Henry Ford had entrepreneurial ideas. He also had the gumption and the freedom, as the economist Deirdre McCloskey says, ‘to have a go’ at putting his ideas into practice. Ford, like countless other lesser-known entrepreneurs, created wealth. Ford grew rich by dramatically increasing the efficiency of producing automobiles that the masses eagerly bought. His business success owed nothing to slavery.”

Sarah: “I get that he didn’t use slaves. But I feel that the capital to start his company probably came from wealth that had earlier been produced by slaves.”

Me: “First, the capital that first backed Ford came from a man named William H. Murphy. Born in 1855 in Maine, Murphy moved to Detroit where he and his father were successful in the lumber business. I’m pretty sure that post-Civil War Michigan lumbermen didn’t earn any income from slavery. Murphy, like Ford after him, created his wealth by running a successful business.

“Second, regardless of the source of the capital that Murphy invested in Ford’s new business, that investment would have been worth diddlysquat if Ford hadn’t had the vision, energy, and freedom to use those resources in ways that produced outputs that the masses wanted to buy and at costs low enough to make it worthwhile for Ford to continue to produce. This is what I mean when I say that Ford created wealth – wealth, obviously, for himself, but also for his customers in the form of automobiles that were worthwhile to purchase, and for his workers in the form of opportunities to earn incomes higher than they could have earned by working elsewhere.”

Sarah: “But I still feel that the seed money for all these later companies like Ford’s came from the slave economy that lasted in this country for centuries.”

Don: “Sarah, don’t feel. Think! Don’t you see that Ford created wealth? Don’t you see that he created value that didn’t exist until he put his entrepreneurial ideas into action? If Henry Ford could, without slavery – as you admit – turn some amount of wealth into a larger amount of wealth, why can’t other people have done the same, before and after Ford? Even if – contrary to fact – all of the seed money for the Ford Motor Co. happened to come from former slave owners, what created Henry Ford’s wealth and the valuable goods that he produced for millions of Americans was Henry Ford’s entrepreneurial vision and effort put into operation in an economy that permitted him to act entrepreneurially. No amount of resource-value grows into a larger amount of resource-value automatically.

“The ability of an entrepreneur to turn some amount of resource-value into greater resource-value doesn’t depend upon the source of the initial funding that the entrepreneur used to launch his or her venture. What matters is the entrepreneurship and the freedom of markets, which emphatically has nothing to do with slavery.”

Sarah: “I don’t know. Capitalism followed slavery. That must be significant.”

Me: “Do you remember my lecture from about three weeks ago in which I warned against the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy? You’re committing that fallacy now. You can’t legitimately conclude that if event A is followed by event B, that A caused B. Maybe it did, but maybe it didn’t. In fact, it’s possible that B happened despite, and not because of, A. Just because people leave their homes in the morning carrying umbrellas doesn’t mean that the rain that started later that day was caused by people carrying umbrellas.”

“Slavery was prevalent throughout human societies for millennia. If slavery was the cause of capitalism, don’t you think that capitalism would have started at least seven or eight thousand years ago? If slavery is the source of our prosperity today, why are not all countries in the world as rich as are the United States and Sweden? Do you realize that Brazil had slavery until 1888, nearly a quarter-century longer than the U.S. had slavery? Yet Brazilians have always been, and remain today, much poorer than Americans.”

Sarah: “I’m not convinced.”

Me: “Well, may I ask that you keep an open mind for the rest of this semester? Perhaps what’s still to come in our economics course will help you to better understand why I’m certain that modern prosperity has no connection whatsoever to slavery except that it is capitalism – and the ideas that support it – that brought about slavery’s demise.”

Sarah: “Yes, I’ll keep an open mind. Good night, professor.”

Me: “Thanks Sarah. That’s all I can ask. Good night. See you in our next class.”

Marxism at the Museum

 Andy Kessler gets it right at the Wall Street Journal.

The Woke culture misrepresents economics at the New York Public Library.

The educational system has done a great job at destroying rationality and tolerance. We are almost to 1984 and moving fast.

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Polls show more than half of 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. have a negative view of capitalism. More than half have a positive view of socialism. I wonder where they got that.

I recently strolled through the New York Public Library’s “Treasures” exhibit, which would delight readers and writers alike: Charles Dickens’s writing desk, a manuscript delivered in a box from former newspaper columnist Mark Twain, draft cover art for Jack Kerouac’s novel “On the Road,” and an illustrated page from Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities” manuscript. Pretty cool stuff.

Ah look, a first edition of Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” from 1776—the free-market bible. I was in awe until I read the description: “Adam Smith believed, as did Karl Marx the following century, that national prosperity was best measured by a country’s labor power rather than by how much gold lay in its treasury.” I guess the description is technically correct, but Karl Marx? In the same breath as Adam Smith, who called free markets “the obvious and simple system of natural liberty”? Unlike Smith, Marx naively saw a static world without productivity, only labor exploitation. He completely missed that labor is more brain than brawn. Add exhibit curators to the list of socialist tub thumpers.

I wonder what Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the rather capitalistic private-equity firm Blackstone and giver of $100 million to the New York Public Library, whose name is etched in stone outside, thinks about the Marxist agenda of the library’s curators.

Wouldn’t you know it, next to “The Wealth of Nations” was none other than manuscript notes for “Das Kapital” by Karl Marx with this description: “The work has exerted an immense and lasting influence on world events: over the past century, its ideas have not only maintained a secure place in the realm of economic and political theory, but also inspired anticapitalist revolutions across the globe.” OK, but it was a lasting negative influence. And of course there was no mention of the hundreds of millions of people impoverished and slaughtered by Marxist regimes.

The description goes on: “Karl Marx’s foundational account of capitalist production and its manifold effects on human lives still inspires argument, insight, and resistance.” Inspires? Marxism is a desperate and dangerous call for redistribution from the productive class to, say, museum curators. No matter, a 2018 New York Times opinion piece blared, “Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!” The Marx rehabilitation tour continues.

A 2020 Edelman global survey found that 56% agreed that “capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world.” Really? I guess somehow the global increase in living standards and lowering of the extreme poverty rate from 36% to under 10% since 1990 happened by magic. It’s really a miracle since capitalism is so bad and Marxism is so good. Of the porous southern border President Biden recently noted, “What’s on my watch now is Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.” Why would anyone leave a Marxist paradise for the capitalist U.S.? Maybe the New York Public Library has an answer.

An almost fanatical devotion to Marxism is everywhere. The Journal’s Eric Gibson wrote a fantastic piece last month titled “Woke Ideologues Are Taking Over American Art Museums,” which got serious pushback from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We’re exposed to anticapitalist agendas every day.

You wouldn’t expect this from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, but here are some words under Cornelius Vanderbilt’s portrait: “He began in the rough-and-tumble world of the New York port and by 1829 had parlayed several small shipping ventures into a stake in the lucrative Hudson River trade.” No mention that he did this by offering lower prices and better service than the Hudson River Steamboat Association, a government-sanctioned monopoly. Still, the museum labels the Commodore a “ruthless monopolist.” He was no saint, but he did provide affordable steamships to San Francisco and helped expand railroads. Like the term “robber baron,” this is anticapitalist propaganda disguised as education.

Here’s another from the Portrait Gallery: “John D. Rockefeller once remarked ‘The only question with wealth is, what do you do with it?’ By 1913, Rockefeller, a founder of the Standard Oil Company, had amassed an estimated $900 million, earned from an aggressive reorganization of the oil industry.” Get it? Wealth is evil and never deserved. Remarkably, no mention of his role in driving down the price to consumers of energy that boosted a rapidly expanding economy. Again, no saint, but the gallery notes, he “rehabilitated his reputation in later years by supporting charitable causes.”

This is a rather loud message to capitalists Bezos, Musk, Page, Brin, Zuckerberg: Give your money away if you want to be remembered kindly. Just don’t give your money to libraries or museums. Please.

The Thinnest Veneer of Civilization

Victor Davis Hanson at townhall.com on where are civilization is headed - and why.

As B. F. Skinner noted long ago - it's all about consequences - and unless those are changes our civilization will continue its decline.

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To be able to eat, to move about, to have shelter, to be free from state or tribal coercion, to be secure abroad, and safe at home - only that allows cultures to be freed from the daily drudgery of mere survival.
Civilization alone permits humans to pursue sophisticated scientific research, the arts, and the finer aspects of culture.

So, the great achievement of Western civilization - consensual government, individual freedom, rationalism in partnership with religious belief, free market economics, and constant self-critique and audit - was to liberate people from daily worry over state violence, random crime, famine, and an often-unforgiving nature.

But so often the resulting leisure and affluence instead deluded arrogant Western societies into thinking that modern man no longer needed to worry about the fruits of civilization he took to be his elemental birthright.

As a result, the once prosperous Greek city-state, Roman Empire, Renaissance republics, and European democracies of the 1930s imploded - as civilization went headlong in reverse.

We in the modern Western world are now facing just such a crisis.

We talk grandly about the globalized Great Reset. We blindly accept the faddish New Green Deal. We virtue signal about defunding the police. We merely shrug at open borders. And we brag about banning fertilizers and pesticides, outlawing the internal combustion engine, and discounting Armageddon in the nuclear age - as if on autopilot we have already reached utopia.

But meanwhile Westerners are systematically destroying the very elements of our civilization that permitted such fantasies in the first place.

Take fuel. Europeans arrogantly lectured the world that they no longer need traditional fuels. So, they shut down nuclear power plants. They stopped drilling for oil and gas. And they banned coal.

What followed was a dystopian nightmare. Europeans will burn dirty wood this winter as their civilization reverts from postmodern abundance to premodern survival.

The Biden Administration ossified oil fields. It canceled new federal oil and gas leases. It stopped pipeline construction and hectored investors to shun fossil fuels.

When scarcity naturally followed, fuel prices soared.

The middle class has now mortgaged its upward mobility to ensure that they might afford gasoline, heating oil, and skyrocketing electricity.

The duty of the Pentagon is to keep America safe by deterring enemies, reassuring allies, and winning over neutrals.

It is not to hector soldiers based on their race. It is not to indoctrinate recruits in the woke agenda. It is not to become a partisan political force.

The result of those suicidal Pentagon detours is the fiasco in Afghanistan, the aggression of Vladimir Putin's Russia, the new bellicosity of China, and the loud threats of rogue regimes like Iran.

At home, the Biden Administration inexplicably destroyed the southern border, as if civilized nations of the past never needed such boundaries.

Utter chaos followed. Three million migrants have poured into the United States. While some cross over clandestinely, others clear border stations without an adequate audit, and largely without skills, high-school diplomas, or capital.

The streets of our cities are anarchical - and by intent.

Defunding the police, emptying the jails, and destroying the criminal justice system unleashed a wave of criminals. It is now open season on the weak and innocent.

America is racing backwards into the 19th-century Wild West. Predators maim, kill, and rob with impunity. Felons correctly conclude that bankrupt postmodern "critical legal theory" will ensure them exemption from punishment.

Few Americans know anything about agriculture, except to expect limitless supplies of inexpensive, safe, and nutritious food at their beck and call.

But that entitlement for 330 million hungry mouths requires massive water projects, and new dams and reservoirs. Farmers rely on steady supplies of fertilizer, fuels, and chemicals. Take away that support - as green nihilists are attempting - and millions will soon go hungry, as they have since the dawn of civilization.

Perhaps nearly a million homeless now live on the streets of America. Our major cities have turned medieval with their open sewers, garbage-strewn sidewalks, and violent vagrants.

So, we are in a great experiment in which regressive progressivism discounts all the institutions, and the methodologies of the past that have guaranteed a safe, affluent, well-fed and sheltered America.

Instead, we arrogantly are reverting to a new feudalism as the wealthy elite - terrified of what they have wrought - selfishly retreat to their private keeps.

But the rest who suffer the consequences of elite flirtations with nihilism cannot even afford food, shelter, and fuel. And they now feel unsafe, both as individuals and as Americans.

As we suffer self-inflicted mass looting, random street violence, hyperinflation, a nonexistent border, unaffordable fuel, and a collapsing military, Americans will come to appreciate just how thin is the veneer of their civilization.

When stripped away, we are relearning that what lies just beneath is utterly terrifying.

Another attempt by Tech through censorship, etc., to influence the coming elections

 Here is Jonathan Turley pointing out the double standard on elections with yet another example.

Here is a link to the video he mentions - it's worth watching.

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YouTube Demonetizes Taibbi Video Showing Democrats Claiming Prior Elections Were Stolen

In the latest attack on free speech, YouTube had demonetized a video disseminated by former Rolling Stone and current Substack journalist Matt Taibbi. YouTube has previously shown open political bias in its censorship and demonetization policies. However, this is remarkably blatant in demonetizing a video that showed how Democrats previously claimed elections of Republicans were stolen — contradicting the narrative maintained in the media and on social media.

Taibbi sent out an email to his subscribers that revealed YouTube’s decision to demonetize:

Today we’re releasing a video Matt Orfalea has been working on, showing years of audio and video clips, tweets, and headlines in which Democratic Party politicians and media figures describe Donald Trump’s presidency as illegitimate. Before it was even published on this site, Matt received the above notice.

I’d like to thank YouTube for making our point. The material in this video does not promote the idea that any election was stolen or illegitimate. On the contrary, it shows a great mass of comments from Democratic partisans and pundits who themselves make that claim, about the 2016 election. Those comments were not censored or suppressed when made the first time around, by the likes of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Karine Jean-Pierre, Adam Schiff, Rob Reiner, Tom Arnold, and Chris Hayes, among many others.

Nor did any platform step in to issue warnings when my former boss, Keith Olbermann, promised with regard to Trump’s ascension to the White House, “It will not be a peaceful transfer of power.”

However, the decision to assemble these materials in one place, inviting audiences to consider their meaning, apparently crosses a line. Now we know: you can deny election results on a platform like YouTube as much as you want, you can even promise disruption, but drawing attention to such behavior angers the algorithm. It’s hard to imagine a better demonstration of the double-standard in content moderation.


Demonetizing a video of what Democrats have previously declared is reminiscent of Twitter the blocking of the site LiberalsofTicTok to stop the site from replaying the postings of liberals.

YouTube and other companies are now openly advancing a political agenda in blocking or demonetizing such postings. This is only likely to get worse as we approach the midterm and 2024 elections. The effort is to actively block resources or access to conservative, libertarian, or contrarians viewpoints.

The company is owned by Google, which has also faced such criticism of political bias. These are publicly traded companies like Twitter that have written off many potential users to advance a political agenda of company staff. They are selling a censored product to consumers who want free speech forums. While these companies continue to dominate the market, they are fueling calls for Substack and other alternative sites committed to free speech. Taibbi writes on Substack.

Here is the video:

Self defense is a risky act – even when lawful

 Massad Ayoob lays out the risks in a self defense action at The American Handgunner.

Using a gun in self defense is a last resort. Ayoob's articles at the American Handgunner can help provide the knowledge you need so that you do not do something inappropriate or unnecessary. One thing you need to know is that a jury may not understand enough about guns and appropriate defensive action to recognize when using a gun in self defense is necessary to avoid death or serious bodily injury.

Remember: the best self defense - if it is possible to do so safely - is to escape from the situation.

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AYOOB FILES: GOING FOR A GUN: THE JARRETT JONES CASE

Situation: Snarling homicidal threats … A big man lunges for your gun and then appears to go for his own. You perform the indicated response … and end up tried for murder.

Lesson: Too few people, even in the criminal justice system, understand the concepts of disparity of force, disarming attempts and furtive movement shootings.

It is March 8, 2022, at about 10 p.m., and I’m starting this article on my laptop in a hotel in Aberdeen, SD, where a jury just came in with a verdict in the murder trial of Jarrett Jones.

Not Guilty on all counts. Total acquittal.

Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but this isn’t about drama or suspense. It’s about lessons. In this case, there were several.

BACKGROUND

Jon Schumacher and Jarrett Jones had a history. Jarrett, 48, was a prosperous farmer and real estate developer. Jon, 28, owned an excavating business. Two years before, Jon had started dating Jarrett’s then 17-year-old daughter. She had fallen in love with the tall, handsome Jon, who could be charming when he wanted to be, and she enjoyed acting as stepmom to Jon’s three young sons. Jarrett was an indulgent dad despite instinctive disapproval of the relationship and wanted his daughter to be happy.

Jarrett referred work to Jon and often helped him with manpower and equipment. Even so, Jon wasn’t making a go of his excavation business. Word was Jon was a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt. There were stories of jobs unfinished and people Jon hired going unpaid. Much of that debt was owed to Jarrett, who couldn’t say no when his daughter asked him to stake the boyfriend she loved.

It wasn’t long before the daughter discovered another side of Jon. She told Jarrett Jon beat her and, on one occasion, raped her. Jarrett had a “come to Jesus” meeting with him. Jon was meek and contrite, wanting to keep the beautiful young girl and the money Jarrett sent his way. He promised to be better.

The promises didn’t last long.

(UN)HAPPY NEW YEAR

Jon drowned his troubles in alcohol. There were rumors of drugs as well. We all know how much booze gets consumed in America on New Year’s Eve; by New Year’s Day of 2020, an increasingly angry Jon Schumacher was still drinking. He had borrowed a truck from Jarrett and crashed it into a snowbank. He had a Bushmaster AR15, a Beretta 391 autoloading 12-gauge and a GLOCK 19 pistol in the vehicle with him.

He called Jarrett’s daughter to come and get him. She couldn’t; she was taking care of his three sons. Jon flew into a rage and threatened to kill her if she didn’t obey him.

He had finally gone too far. She told him their relationship was over.

He was arrested for drunk driving and driving on a suspended license. When the state trooper asked him about a blood test, Jon replied morosely he would take it if it would get him free sooner. His blood alcohol content was nearly twice the legal limit.

Jarrett and one of his employees drove to the scene to retrieve the truck. Jarrett found the guns, cleared them, and put them in his safe. With them was Jon Schumacher’s coat. The GLOCK 19 had been in the coat pocket.

Meanwhile, an angry Jon had called his long-suffering ex-wife, who agreed to pick him up at the police station. He asked to be driven to Jarrett’s place. On the way, he asked her if she would come back to him. She declined. In a very short time frame, he had now been rejected by both of the women he professed to love.

ESCALATION

By the time a steaming Jon Schumacher arrives at the Jones place, the clock has ticked past midnight and into the wee hours of January 2. A concerned Jarrett has armed himself: In his hip holster is a subcompact 9mm 1911, a Kimber Micro 9 in desert tan color, which came with a Crimson Trace laser sight.

In the 13 minutes that follow, Jon’s rage becomes increasingly homicidal: He demands to see his ex-girlfriend and is refused by her and her dad. Jon explodes with threats to kill her, Jarrett and others. When the ex-wife demands he leave with her and he refuses, she leaves alone.
Jarrett, at one point, is far enough away from Jon that he feels safe taking a moment to turn his back to him and yells to the others to stay back. The 300-lb. employee is between him and Jon, whose back is to the door he entered through. Then Jarrett turns back to face Jon.

The moment comes when Jon grabs Jarrett by the throat. Jarrett breaks free and draws the Kimber, hoping its deterrent effect will bring Jon to his senses.

Every mammalian instinct, every human instinct, tells him to intersperse himself between his threat and his children. The daughter Jon has traumatized, now 19, is some 20 feet behind him in the office. So is his younger daughter, 12.

FLASHPOINT

Jarrett brings his pistol up in a two-hand Isosceles stance and again orders Jon to leave. He has closed the distance in hopes of moving Jon back toward the door he has entered through.

But Jon doesn’t back up. Jarrett comes to a stop. A security camera shows the men are now about five feet apart, chest to chest.

Jarrett is acutely aware his dominant right hand, the one holding the gun, is presently crippled. He has recently undergone carpal tunnel surgery and his recovery was complicated by a severe infection that has left the hand hurting, significantly weakened and encased in a soft cast. He is 5’5″ tall; Jon, 6’4″, looms over him. Having trained under instructor Justin Hoffman two years before to earn his South Dakota Enhanced Concealed Carry Permit, Jarrett is acutely aware of how quickly Jon can close the gap and snatch the gun … and how poor his chances will be to keep possession of the Kimber if a gun grab occurs.

By now, Jon has threatened to murder both Jarrett and his daughter and stated he doesn’t care if he dies himself. He has at one point threatened to kill his own three little kids. Jarrett knows if Jon tries to disarm him and kill everyone, he won’t be able to stop him. He realizes if that happens, his only chance will be to shoot Jon in time. The safety is off, and Jarrett’s index finger is poised on the front of the Kimber’s trigger guard.

He is on high alert, watching for attack signals. And what he sees now horrifies him.

Jon’s face bears a look Jarrett has never seen before, an expression of absolute hate and explosive rage. The veins in his forehead are bulging, and his eyes seem to be bugging out of his head. He has been clenching and unclenching his hands; then Jon’s fingers tighten into fists.

And now, Jarrett sees Jon’s head and shoulders come forward, and there is only one last resort remaining.

FIRST SHOT

Jarrett Jones fires. The security camera catches the little tongue of flame that licks out from the muzzle, and in an instant, Jon Schumacher pitches to his left and into the camera’s view at last. He sprawls on the concrete floor of the workshop on his left side, perpendicular to Jarrett and facing him. For a moment, he lies still.

Jarrett lets go with his left hand, and his right hand brings the gun down. He watches Jon in unbelieving horror at what has just happened. It looks as if it’s over.

It isn’t.

SECOND, FINAL SHOT

Several seconds have passed. Jarrett’s hands are down at his side now, the right hand still holding the Kimber, pointed at the floor.

Suddenly, Jon’s right hand flashes toward the right front pocket of his jeans.

Jarrett has known Jon for a long time and knows the man always carries one or more guns in various places — vest, boot, pocket. He knows how fast a person can draw and fire.

He raises the pistol one-handed, thinking there’s no time to resume a two-hand hold, and the beam of the Crimson Trace Laser plays on Jon’s neck as Jarrett fires a second time.

Jon stops moving. Now it really is over.

They call 9-1-1. The first responding officer arrives in approximately 18 minutes. Jon Schumacher is dead on the scene. Jarrett waives his Miranda rights and submits to an extensive recorded interview.

Approximately 12 hours later, as he is leaving the office of attorney Marshall Lovrien, Jarrett Jones is arrested and charged with murder in the first degree. A conviction is likely to bring life without parole, and the death penalty is not entirely off the table, either.

THE JUSTICE MACHINE

Jones went to trial in the court of Judge Richard Sommers on February 28, 2022. Twenty-six months had elapsed since the shooting. The original local prosecutor, called a state’s attorney in South Dakota, had departed, replaced by Ernest Thompson. The latter may have simply felt a need to continue the work and wishes of his predecessor. I was informed the grand jury that indicted Jones was not given a self-defense instruction and indeed was told self-defense was not an issue, even after one grand juror repeatedly asked about it.

To an untutored eye that didn’t know what to look for, it was easy to miss Jon’s right hand going toward the pocket, even though Jarrett had told police he knew Jon always carried one or more guns. Later, ace defense investigator Mitch Vilhauer found multiple people who claimed Jon had pulled a gun on them, usually a snub-nosed hammerless revolver, when angry. The defense couldn’t get that in because, being unknown to Jarrett at the time of the shooting, these incidents were not formative to his decision and action and therefore were inadmissible.

Jarrett had described Jon’s movement precipitating the first shot as a “lunge.” As I had occasion to testify, the Oxford English Dictionary defines a “lunge” as “a sudden forward thrust of the body,” which is precisely what Jarrett described. However, most perceive a lunge to involve large movements with arms outstretched. Jon, Jarrett said, had his fists clenched close to his body as if coiled to punch at the final moment he started to come forward.

Until he fell from the first shot, all the camera could see of Jon was the front of his left boot in the lower left corner of the frame; Jarrett dominated the viewer’s eye in his resolute Isosceles stance, gun extended and the muzzle flash. After Jon fell, anyone not watching his hands could easily miss the reach for the pocket.

That reach created a “furtive movement shooting,” a movement consistent with reaching for a weapon and not reasonably consistent with anything else within the totality of the circumstances. Many lawyers I’ve discussed it with don’t recall being told about furtive movements in law school and, similarly, pass their bar exams without having heard of disparity of force. The latter means a situation where the opponent, while ostensibly unarmed, possesses such great physical advantage over the defender that a bare-handed attack will likely cause death or great bodily harm. Factors include such disparity as Jon being 6’4″ and 28, and Jarrett, 5’5″ and 48, and the able-bodied Schumacher versus Jones and his crippled gun hand.

Moreover, while the eye of the untrained sees an “armed man shooting helpless unarmed man,” use of force professionals look at such a situation and see the exact truth: a man coming as if to punch you in the head and take your gun is a man going for a gun!

SA Thompson reached out for reinforcements from the South Dakota State Attorney General’s Office: first Kelly Marnette, and subsequently the highly experienced Brent Kempema. Early on, during an informal deposition, Ms. Marnette suggested Jones had nothing to fear because his employee, whom she described as a “300-lb. linebacker,” would protect him. I replied it would be foolish to count on protection by a third party from an attacker so close and noted that, in any case, the man did nothing but move away during the actual shooting.

These are things it takes a skilled defense team to get across to the jury, and Jones had that. Lead counsel Marshall Lovrien crafted the defense expertly and brought in as co-counsel the very able Bill Gerdes, who was said to have more experience with homicide trials than any other lawyer in the region.

TRIAL

With the State’s own witness, the forensic pathologist who did the autopsy, they established that while Jones appeared to be firing straight ahead, his Kimber was angled slightly upward. The 115-grain Winchester 9mm full metal jacket bullet entered the chest, pierced the heart, exited the back and kept going, punching a neat round hole through the steel door behind Schumacher at a height indicating an upward trajectory. The projectile was never recovered. However, the wound path went down through the body, front to back. Lovrien established with the doctor there was only one explanation for this: Schumacher’s upper body had to be angled distinctly forward when hit, consistent with aggressive forward movement. The doctor put a wooden dowel through a skeleton Lovrien had brought to court, vividly demonstrating for the jury.

This correlation between autopsy and video — hard scientific evidence — was irrefutable. It was a cornerstone of the defense.

Cross-examining the lead investigator, the defense established this was his first homicide case. He had never been explicitly trained in homicide investigation and he had never explored the elements of self-defense by Jones.

Self-defense is an affirmative defense, meaning, “The defendant did the act, but he was justified in doing it.” The defendant should usually take the witness stand in an affirmative defense because it’s no longer a “whodunnit,” it’s a “Why did he do it?” and only the defendant can truly answer that.

In this case, Jarrett had done something virtually every defense lawyer and I would advise against: He waived his Miranda rights and answered every question that night without counsel present. While some things sounded out of sequence, he got the basics right — and still in the grip of the emotion of his near-death experience, came through with sincerity and honesty. There was little he could add that would be worth the risk of being tricked by a crafty cross-examiner. Thus, he did not take the stand.

The jury heard from his daughter. There were tears in the jury box when they heard her smartphone recording of one of Jon’s vicious attacks upon her. The hired man, who first told police Jon lunged at Jarrett, changed his story and said there was no lunge. The State hung a lot of its case on that. Later, when I was on the stand, I was able to show the jury on the surveillance video that this man was looking off to the side at the moment of the shot and couldn’t have seen whether Jon had lunged or not.

Jarrett had taken South Dakota’s Enhanced Concealed Carry permit course from Justin Hoffman, who now works for Blackhawk. Logistics kept Justin from getting there in time to testify himself, but he provided his PowerPoint program delineating state law and a thorough, detailed affidavit. I was allowed to work from that and show Jarrett’s training had “checked every box” for what the state itself considered to constitute justifiable use of deadly force. This, in turn, gave Attorney Lovrien the nuclear-grade statement he made in his closing argument: Jones had literally done everything the law demanded for this homicide to be justified.

Before trial, I had done video demonstrations of how quickly Jarrett could have been disarmed and killed by a man in Jon’s position and how swiftly a man down on his side could draw a gun from his trouser pocket and shoot another man five feet away. It has been my experience some judges prefer video only, and some demand such demonstrations be done live in the courtroom. This trial was my first in 43 years as an expert witness where the judge would allow the jury to see neither demonstration. Nonetheless, having done them did allow me to testify that the disarm could be accomplished in two or three seconds, and the downed man’s draw to the shot from the pocket in under two.

In the disarm video, it took only six-tenths of a second to deflect the muzzle of the gun, another six-tenths to rip the small auto pistol out of my opponent’s hand, and a little over than one second more to re-grasp the pistol, point it at the center of his head, and pull the trigger. From the first movement to the “fatal shot,” the disarm had taken 2.23 seconds. Jarrett had been on the razor’s edge of losing his life. The pocket draw to fatal shot had taken 1.63 seconds, starting with the hand outside the pocket as Jon’s was in the video.

There was no gun in that pocket, but Jones could not have known that. He did know the man was known to carry guns in his pockets. Remember, Jarrett had removed a GLOCK from Jon’s coat pocket that night — and he believed Schumacher was going for one. Instead, what had been in his pocket was a front-opening switchblade, the double-edged Benchmade Infidel. It was still wrapped in the plastic evidence bag the troopers had put it in before they gave it back to him upon his release that night. When he cross-examined me, prosecutor Kempema made a big deal about it being in a bag and not readily accessible. I replied it was irrelevant because Jones believed the man was reaching for a gun. “You don’t have to be right; you have to be reasonable.”

From Gerdes’ powerful opening statement to Lovrien’s crushing close, the defense had brought the truth to 12 people who ultimately knew it when they saw it … and delivered justice.

LESSONS

Juries have to be educated. If attorneys overlook concepts like disparity of force and other dynamics of violent encounters, what we now call “force science” thanks to the brilliant Dr. Bill Lewinsky, you can’t expect ordinary people in the jury pool to intuit them.

Document your training. It is a winning strategy to show the jury you did what you were trained to do, and what you did was, in fact, the right thing to do. South Dakota v. Jarrett Jones was a classic example.

Train with instructors who will stand up for you in court. Not all of them will, even in the police sector. Justin Hoffman did, and he had a big part in the defense’s victory.

Understand the cost of a trial. Jarrett Jones estimated he had spent at least $300,000 in legal fees and expenses when it was over. Consider joining a post-self-defense support group. For me, it’s the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network. Full disclosure: I’m on their advisory board. You have many such organizations from which to choose. Read the name of this case: State v. Jarrett Jones. When the power of an entire state is against you, you don’t want to be fighting alone. A lawsuit by the family of the deceased is pending.

The decline and the self-precipitated death of a 28-year-old man were tragic, and hearts, including mine, go out to his parents and loved ones. At the same time, the pattern of Jon Schumacher’s escalation in his final hours indicates Jarrett Jones very likely saved more innocent lives than his own.

A Washington Post journalist who is not

 Jonathan Turley is on target concerning the Washington Post's "journalists" and a few others.

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Washington Post Columnist Calls for the End of Impartiality and Balance in Journalism

In an age of rage, Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor Jennifer Rubin has long been a standout in her attacks on Republicans and conservatives: “We have to collectively, in essence, burn down the Republican Party. We have to level them because if there are survivors, if there are people who weather this storm, they will do it again.” However, her recent column shows that she has made a clean break not only from Republicans but from reason. The writer (long cited by the Post as their “Republican columnist” for balance) has called for the media to abandon balance and impartiality. Rubin is demanding that the media just become overt advocates in refusing to report both sides in the myriad of political issues in this election.

In her column, Rubin rejects the “need for false balance” because the coverage can suggest that Republicans are “rational.”

“The Kabuki dance in which Trump, his defenders and his supporters are treated as rational (clever even!) is what comes from a media establishment that refuses to discard its need for false balance that it has developed over the course of decades.”

That balance was once called “journalism” but Rubin now calls it facilitating “disinformation.” Balanced reporting is now dangerous and makes the media “a megaphone for disinformation, upholding the pretense that there are two political parties with equally valid takes on reality.”

Rubin’s attack on disinformation is ironic given her own past controversies in misrepresenting news, cases, and events. For full disclosure, I clashed with Rubin over her personally attacking me for a theory that I did not agree with in a column that I did not write. I also challenged her on an equally bizarre column where she wrote about my impeachment testimony and later column misrepresenting the holding in an appellate case involving Trump. That false account was never corrected by the Washington Post. It appears that misrepresenting the holding of a major case is not being a “a megaphone for disinformation.”

Rubin, however, is not alone in this call to abandon the foundational principle of impartiality in journalism.

We have been discussing the rise of advocacy journalism and the rejection of objectivity in journalism schools. Writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. This movement includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy.

Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll decried how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that the journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”

Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism.

Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.” Her 1619 Project has been challenged as deeply flawed and she has a long record as a journalist of intolerance, controversial positions on rioting, and fostering conspiracy theories. Hannah-Jones would later help lead the effort at the Times to get rid of an editor and apologize for publishing a column from Sen. Tom Cotten as inaccurate and inflammatory.

These figures are killing journalism. Polls show trust in the media at an all-time low with less than 20 percent of citizens trusting television or print media. Yet, reporters and academics continue to destroy the core principles that sustain journalism and ultimately the role of a free press in our society. The result is to turn newspapers like the Post into echo chambers for the values of its reporters and a core of liberal readers.

For the rest of the country (including roughly half that voted for Trump), figures like Rubin are saying that they should go elsewhere. They are. Media outlets like CNN have faced sharp declines in viewership and are trying to break away from this advocacy model to restore ratings. (The move has been denounced by some in the media as potentially helping Republicans by fairly reporting their side of these controversies). The movement toward advocacy journalism is likely to build in the coming years to remake the media in the image of figures like Hannah-Jones and Rubin.

Viewers clearly tune in to Fox News and MSNBC for their strong editorial opinion and commentators. However, there has long been a line between reporters and commentators in how stories are presented. If journalists want to be advocates, they can shift to the side of commentary. However, that is clearly not sufficient for some like Rubin who do not want readers to be able to receive both sides of these controversies. Readers are to be shaped in their opinions like impressionable children. That was the message from the conference on disinformation led by media and Democratic figures like the recently fired CNN media host Brian Stelter.

Even as a columnist, I prefer the approach of Theodore White that “when a reporter sits down at the typewriter, he’s nobody’s friend.”

Another study at odds with climate alarmism

Nicholas Lewis's recent paper "Objectively combining climate sensitivity evidence" calls into question the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) likely range of climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide.

Here is a press release style summary of his paper.
One of the most important conclusions of the recent 6th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC AR6) was to reduce the uncertainty in estimates of climate sensitivity to doubling the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Since 1979, the likely range (66% chance) of climate sensitivity has been between 1.5°C and 4.5°C. This range has remained stubbornly wide, until the IPCC AR6 narrowed the likely range to be between 2.5°C and 4.0°C.

A new paper by independent scientist Nic Lewis published in the journal Climate Dynamics challenges the conclusions of the IPCC AR6 about climate sensitivity. Lewis’ analysis reduces the magnitude of climate sensitivity by one third, relative to the range provided by the IPCC AR6. These results suggest that future global warming in response to fossil fuel emissions could be significantly less than has been assumed by policy makers.

In 2015, the World Climate Research Programme convened a Workshop aimed at reducing the uncertainty in estimates of climate sensitivity to increasing carbon dioxide. The Workshop ultimately resulted in publication of a report (a 92 page paper) by many of the participants that thoroughly assessed all lines of evidence (Sherwood et al, 2020). A key result of this paper was to reduce the likely range of climate sensitivity values to 2.6 oC to 3.9 oC. While Lewis was an invited participant to the 2015 Workshop, he was not a coauthor on this paper. The Sherwood et al. paper strongly influenced the IPCC AR6’s assessment of climate sensitivity.

Lewis’ paper critiqued the methods used in the Sherwood et al. paper, finding significant errors, inconsistencies and other shortcomings. Lewis remedied these shortcomings and also revised key input data, almost entirely to reflect more recent evidence. The results of Lewis’ analysis determined a likely range of 1.75 to 2.7oC for climate sensitivity. The central estimate from Lewis’ analysis is 2.16 oC, which is well below the IPCC AR6 likely range. This large reduction relative to Sherwood et al. shows how sensitive climate sensitivity estimates are to input assumptions. Lewis’ analysis implies that climate sensitivity is more likely to be below 2 oC than it is to be above 2.5 oC.

The lower estimates of climate sensitivity determined by Nic Lewis have profound implications for climate models and projections of warming for the 21st century. Climate models used in the IPCC AR6 had values of climate sensitivity ranging from 1.8oC to 5.6oC. The IPCC AR6 judged that some of the climate models had values of climate sensitivity that were too high. Hence the AR6 selected only the climate models with reasonable values of climate sensitivity to be used in projections of 21st century climate change. Lewis’ analysis indicates that a majority of climate models used in the IPCC AR6 have values higher than the likely range.

Here is a link to his paper.

Here are some excerpts.

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Introduction

The Earth's climate sensitivity is a key measure of the longer-term climate response to external forcing. It is perhaps the most important ill-quantified climate system parameter. In principle, climate sensitivity represents the equilibrium change in mean surface temperature to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration from preindustrial levels, once the deep ocean has reached a stable state. In practice it is normally estimated using some approximate measure, often derived from disequilibrium changes. Climate sensitivity has been estimated from various types of evidence, but none of these has narrowly constrained its value. The first five Assessment Reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relied heavily on estimates of climate sensitivity from global climate model (GCM) simulations. The 1.5–4.5 K likely range for climate sensitivity in the 2013 IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) was identical to the range presented in the landmark Charney (1979) report, with the great increase in GCM sophistication since 1979 not having led to any narrowing of the climate sensitivity range.

GCMs use semi-empirical approximations (parameterizations) to represent subgrid-scale cloud and convection processes that are known to be critical to determining the model's climate sensitivity, which varies by up to a factor of three among GCMs. In one well regarded GCM, a simple change to how convective precipitation was parameterizedFootnote1 varied its climate sensitivity by a factor of two, with no obvious change in how well the model otherwise performed (Zhao et al. 2016). Changing the order in which the various parameterized atmospheric modules were updated in each time step was found to vary another GCM's climate sensitivity by a factor of up to two, with ambiguity existing regarding the optimum ordering (Donahue and Caldwell 2018). Moreover, the universal use in GCMs of deterministic parameterizations may bias their climate sensitivity upwards (Strommen et al. 2019). Such issues make the reliability of GCM-derived estimates of climate sensitivity questionable.

In the light of such issues, and the further widening of the range of GCM climate sensitivities in the latest (CMIP6) generation of GCMs (Zelinka et al. 2020), the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) abandoned the previous reliance on GCM climate sensitivities. Instead, evaluation of climate sensitivity was approached by combining estimates based on different lines of evidence, such as process understanding (feedback analysis), the historical instrumental record, and paleoclimate data.

Combining different lines of evidence should, to the extent that they are independent, enable climate sensitivity to be estimated more precisely than from any single line of evidence (Stevens et al. 2016). A comprehensive attempt to do so was made by Sherwood et al. (2020, henceforth S20), a 92-page study. S20 was conducted under the auspices of the World Climate Research Programme's Grand Science Challenge on Clouds, Circulation and Climate Sensitivity and provides a very detailed investigation of climate sensitivity. As the most influential recent assessment, S20 was cited over twenty times in the relevant AR6 chapter, which approached climate sensitivity estimation on very similar lines to S20, albeit not using its formal probabilistic methods. There are in principle considerable strengths in S20's scientific approach. Its main results were derived by combining understanding from feedback analysis (Process evidence) with evidence from changes since circa 1850 (Historical evidence), and from cold and warm past periods (Paleoclimate evidence)—three lines of evidence that S20 judged to be largely independent.

The contribution the present study makes to estimation of climate sensitivity is three-fold. First, it identifies statistical problems in S20. The main methodological argument is that, when Bayesian methods are used, an Objective rather than a Subjective Bayesian approach should be taken. This means that rather than the investigator choosing the prior distribution, the prior distribution should be mathematically computed, based on the assumed statistical model relating to all the evidence to be analyzed (Bernardo 2009). S20 used a Subjective Bayesian statistical method, with an investigator-selected prior distribution, that has been shown may produce unrealistic climate sensitivity estimation when used to combine differing types of evidence (Lewis 2018), and S20 provided no evidence that it did not do so in this case. Moreover, for all except Process evidence, S20 used a method of estimating likelihoods that turns out to be unsound. This study validates its likelihood estimates by using multiple methods and cross-checking their results. S20's method is shown to often result in serious likelihood underestimation at higher climate sensitivity levels.

The second contribution of this study is that it develops and applies an Objective Bayesian approach to combining differing climate sensitivity evidence, using a mathematically computed prior distribution. The results using the methodology developed and the same input assumptions as S20 are then used to assess what effect the statistical problems identified in S20 have on its results. It is found that they bias S20's estimation of climate sensitivity downwards, although only to a minor extent even at the upper uncertainty bound when all three lines of evidence are combined.

This study's third contribution is to review and where appropriate revise the input assumptions used by S20, paying particular regard to more recent evidence, and to investigate the effect of the revised input assumptions on estimates of climate sensitivity using the developed Objective Bayesian methodology. Some of the revisions to input assumptions relate to the treatment in certain cases of CO2 forcing and/or the warming it causes. This study differs from S20 regarding the appropriate scaling of CO2 forcing, and comparison of warming, where different changes in CO2 atmospheric concentrations are involved, and regarding scaling CO2 forcing where its use requires a different estimation basis from that on which the forcing estimate was derived. The combined effects of the revisions to S20's CO2 related estimates and to other input assumptions result in a major reduction in estimated climate sensitivity.

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Discussion

This study first identifies statistical problems in S20. Using a Subjective Bayesian statistical method involving an investigator-selected prior distribution, as S20 does, may produce unrealistic climate sensitivity estimation when used to combine differing types of evidence (Lewis 2018), even assuming that the data likelihood functions are correct. In this case, I found that the method S20 used for estimating likelihoods for all but Process evidence was in fact unsound, and that it underestimated likelihood at high S levels, substantially so in some cases. I also found that S20 used an uncertainty estimate for PETM CO2 forcing that was a factor of ten too low, due to an apparent coding error, further biasing their likelihood estimate (although not affecting their main results).

This study then develops an Objective Bayesian approach to combining differing climate sensitivity evidence that, unlike the method used in Lewis and Grünwald (2018), is not restricted to dealing with a particular simple statistical model. The approach involves computationally deriving Jeffreys' prior distributions that are designed to maximize the influence of the data on the results and to produce probabilistic estimates that are as close as possible to being confidence intervals, and thus are well calibrated. Three different inferential methods employed for this purpose each provide nearly identical estimated likelihoods and Jeffreys' priors, and final results. This result is very supportive of the validity of the methods used and of the results they produce.

The robustness of S20's results to the use of properly calibrated statistical methods and validly calculated likelihood estimates is then examined, using the Objective Bayesian methods developed in this study. It is shown that while S20's choice of prior and its likelihood misestimation lead to over-constraining of high S levels, based on S20's data-variable assumptions the downwards bias in S20's Baseline combined evidence results is modest: the median S estimate is approximately 0.13 K low, and the 95% uncertainty bound 0.35 K low. However, the bias in S20's No Process results is over twice as large.

The other main contribution of this study is to assess the impact of revising various input data-variable distributions used by S20, by:(i)

adjusting the F2×CO2 value used for inferring S from Process and Historical evidence to reflect the effect of climate feedback changing over GCM abrupt4xCO2 simulations, as should undoubtedly be done;
(ii)

allowing for the CO2 concentration-ERF relationship being slightly non-logarithmic, and estimating the ECS to S ratio in a way that is unaffected by that relationship;
(iii)

changing some of S20's other data-variable estimates to reflect more recent information; and
(iv)

using arguably better justified (albeit not based purely on more recent information), alternative estimates for a few other data-variables.

I find that doing so results in substantially lower and better constrained estimates for S. The median S estimate when combining all lines of evidence, using the Objective Bayesian method and the LGM and mPWP for Paleoclimate evidence, reduces from 3.23 to 2.16 K.

All the revised data-variable estimates are not only defensible but, given the evidence now available, in my view are better justified than S20's original estimates. Moreover, omitting the only revisions dependent, to a greater or lesser extent, on reevaluation of existing evidence only very modestly changes the combined evidence results, with the omission just of the revision of the Historical aerosol forcing having almost no effect on the results.

It therefore currently remains quite plausible that S is below 2 K. The truncation in S20's results of the lower bound for S does not appear justified given the range of data-variable estimates supported by relevant, mainly more recent, studies. There is 36% probability of S being under 2 K, considerably greater than the 26% probability of S exceeding 2.5 K, according to the revised data-variable assumptions 'All combined: Paleo LGM + mPWP' results; they also imply that it is extremely unlikely that S is below 1.5 K, and extremely unlikely that S is above 3.2 K.

The revised data-variable median Historical evidence estimates of Shist and TCR are somewhat higher than the comparable estimates in Lewis and Curry (2018), of 1.66 K and 1.33 K respectively. The excess is mainly due to a stronger aerosol ERF change, even after revising S20's assumptions. Further revising S20's median aerosol ERF to match the change per the AR5 time-series, extended post-2011 using AR6's annual changes, would reduce the Table 8 median Shist and TCR to respectively 1.82 K and 1.40 K. Changing the base period to 1869–1882 to match Lewis and Curry (2018), avoiding the poorly observed 1861–1868 period, would further reduce those estimates, to 1.79 K and 1.37 K. The methane shortwave ERF adjustment, and greater estimated change in radiative imbalance, in AR6 can account for the small remaining differences.

Armed Citizen Rescues Woman and Child

 The Adam Nesvick incident - by Massad Ayoob at the American Handgunner.

True story.

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Situation: A man is beating a woman and child. He is armed with a bat. You are the only one effectively capable of stopping him.

Lesson: Aimed fire works at close range. Deadly force against a violent criminal attempting to disarm you is justifiable. And even the most righteous shooting can have devastating reverberations.

October 16, 2018, Clarksville, Indiana. Dusk is fading into darkness. It is early evening at the River Chase apartment complex, a pleasant neighborhood where families barbecue and children play on lawns. It is not the sort of place where one expects deadly violence to break out.

Until it does.

Brandon Haycraft, 31, lives there. He is a tormented man. His baby has died a short time before, while lying in bed next to him, and he is swamped by guilt. He has been caught up in a cycle of substance abuse. One co-worker will later describe him as “a mean drunk.”

THC is in his bloodstream now, but the marijuana hasn’t mellowed him. He has taken anti-depressants, but they aren’t helping. Neither is booze. At the moment, his blood alcohol content is 0.228%, almost three times the legally drunk limit. He has told his significant other that he’s going to die tonight one way or the other, and he might just take her with him.

His prediction is at least partly correct.

Meanwhile …

Among Brandon’s many neighbors in this peaceful area is Adam Nesvick, 37. On this seemingly normal Tuesday evening he is home alone for the moment, preparing a dinner of tacos for the rest of his family who are due to arrive at the apartment soon.

He is interrupted by the sound of loud shouting. This is a neighborhood where children commonly play outside at this hour, and at first, he thinks it’s just kids getting a little rowdy. Glancing out the window, he sees his wife’s car has just pulled up, and he goes outside to meet her.

The tableau before him is unexpected. He notices his wife is on her cell phone, and he hears her scream, “My God, he’s going to kill her!” He’ll later learn 911 dispatch is on the other end of his wife’s conversation. A neighbor cries out plaintively, “My God, isn’t someone going to do something?”

And now Adam sees the cause of the trouble. His neighbor across the street is brutally punching his girlfriend in the face as she sits on the ground, feebly trying to protect herself. Her daughter, age nine, swings what appears to be an aluminum T-ball bat into the big man’s back, trying to stop him from beating her mom.

Adam watches in horror as Brandon rips the bat away from the child and throws her some six feet away.

Adam and Brandon both weigh about 240 lbs., but Adam is five-feet-nine while Brandon stands six-feet-two and is rippled with muscle. He’s also now armed: He has the metal baseball bat. Adam realizes he can’t deal with this bare-handed.

Adam runs back inside his apartment for his gun.

He’s had a carry permit since he was 18 years old. His current carry gun is a SIG SAUER M11-A1, fully loaded with 9mm Speer Gold Dot 124-grain +P bonded hollow points. He’s left it on his desk in an IWB Comp-Tac holster, and now he pulls it from its Kydex scabbard and sprints back toward the door, the pistol in his dominant right hand.

When he emerges from the door, he can see the situation has degraded. Before, the man had been punching the downed woman in the head, brutally. Then, she had been down on her butt as he beat her; now, she is down on her back on the front lawn with the boyfriend hulking over her, holding the bat horizontally in both hands across her throat, trying to crush her larynx.

The beatdown has turned into attempted murder in progress.

Closing to a distance of about 15 feet from attacker and victim, Adam stands in the street, levels the gun at Brandon and shouts, “Get the f**k off of her! Sit the f**k down or you’ll be shot!”

The big, angry man turns to face the rescuer. He flings the bat at Adam. It lands halfway between them on the lawn, some six or seven feet from the armed citizen who is still standing in the street.

Safe for the moment, the little girl runs into her apartment, followed by her mom. Brandon sits on the steps and puts his head in his hands. Adam lowers his SIG to a ready position. The man has obeyed his commands. Adam hopes it is over.

It isn’t.

Attack

The lull in the action lasts about 30 seconds. Then Brandon rises, his muscled body tensed with rage, and screams at Adam, “You don’t know me, motherf**ker!” He starts moving toward Adam and yells, “You gonna shoot me, motherf**ker? You aren’t going to do anything with that [gun], you fat ass!”

Adam is backing away from him, the pistol raised again now, and he is shouting, “Stop! Don’t do it! Stop! Stop!”
But the antagonist can move forward faster than the defender can backpedal, and is closing the distance fast, and at last there is only one thing left to do.

Shots Fired

Under the streetlights, the sky nearly dark, the green Trijicon night sights on the SIG glow like beacons. Adam Nesvick puts the front sight high on his attacker’s chest.

He fires as fast as he can hold the front sight in place. He sees blood squirt toward him from the man’s chest. Suddenly Brandon falls, pitching forward at about a 30-degree angle, and lands heavily face down in the street, motionless.

And, just that quickly, it’s over.

Immediate Aftermath

The Clarksville Police arrived quickly, some 30 seconds after the last shot had been fired. Adam’s wife Shannon had described the situation to the police before they got there, and none of the cops felt a need to take Adam at gunpoint. Per protocol, however, they patted him down, handcuffed him, and placed him in the back seat of a patrol car.

Adam said later, “I remember sitting in the back of the car praying for the soul of the man I had been forced to shoot, praying for the mom and daughter, praying for the well-being of my family, praying the police understands the situation and I actually get to go to my daughter’s wedding in four days and am not sitting in jail. While I was in the car, I noticed my left hand and arm were covered in blood spatter.”

It didn’t take the police long to sort things out. Haycraft had not survived. Nesvick’s aim for upper chest had been true. One of his four hits had pierced the man’s aorta, accounting for the blood spurt and spatter, and another had smashed the spine; that bullet, Nesvick opines, was likely the shot that finally dropped the attacker.

Immediate Aftermath

Nesvick’s first realization he wasn’t in trouble was probably when a female officer approached him while he was still handcuffed and confided, “You know you’re a hero to that woman and little girl.” Adam later told American Handgunner, “That remark helped steady my nerves and ground me.” He added, “I … was approached by the Chief of Police for our town and he said, ‘What you did was heroic, you probably saved their lives.’ He told me they had had prior dealings with the man and he was a dangerous individual.”

Says Adam, “Fast forward another hour and I’m sitting in the office area of the police station waiting to make my statement, watching the forensics officer check in the evidence … I saw them check in my gun, and there was blood on the slide. They checked in the bat, and they checked in a chunk of hair that had come from the mother, and a few other miscellaneous things.”

Adam continues, “While I was sitting there, finally in some kind of light, I noticed blood stains all over my shirt and pants. He was really close when I shot him. Anyway, I gave my statement, keeping it simple and to the point. The biggest thing I remember them pressuring me on was ‘Was it an accident? Did you inadvertently fire?’ My answer was ‘No, officer, I was scared shitless, but it was a conscious act to fire because I knew my life was in danger.’ I had my wife bring me new clothes so they could put mine in evidence, and I walked out and got in the car. The officers thanked me repeatedly for being cooperative.”

It took a while for the prosecutor to call Adam to confirm he considered Adam a hero, and he definitely wasn’t going to be charging him with anything. At this writing, no lawsuit has been filed, and the window for plaintiffs to do so will have closed by the time you read this. The prosecutor’s finding actually came sooner than that.

Wave3 News reported soon after the shooting, “‘He did approach the individual who was assaulting the lady and her child and did, at gunpoint, instruct him to leave them alone and sit down on the curb,’ said Clark County Prosecutor Jeremy Mull. Police said the man complied for a while, but then tried to attack the neighbor and ignored warnings to stop. When he came at the neighbor, police said he shot him. ‘Based upon what we learned last night, I’m of the belief that it was self-defense, that it was justified under the law and therefore there was no arrest made in the case,’ Mull said. ‘In a case where an individual was acting violently and had just violently assaulted a child and a defenseless lady. Due to his intervention, the assault was terminated, and this individual was ultimately killed in an act of self-defense.’”

The legal side of it was, for all practical purposes, over. It had clearly been a justified homicide. But there were still the emotional and psychological elements to deal with.

Personal Aftermath

It is common for defensive gun usages to happen at or near one’s home. Often, family members are present, and it’s a traumatic thing for them to experience. You’ll recall Adam’s wife, Shannon, was outside the house and in fact the first to call 911. She told American Handgunner, “When Adam stepped out with the firearm, I told 911, ‘My husband has a firearm, he has a permit, he’s trying to get the guy to sit down.’ I heard the dispatcher say ‘Weapon involved’ or ‘Weapon on scene.’ My husband walked over to the curb and had the husband sit down. I saw the woman and girl run into the house. A car blocked my view of Brandon, I couldn’t see if he was sitting or lying. In 30 seconds, I saw the man jump up and come rapidly toward my husband and when they got about 10 feet apart, my husband started backing up. He was telling my husband, ‘You aren’t going to do anything with that, you fat ass.’ He began to lunge at Adam, and Adam fired. I thought it was three shots. He collapsed. I saw blood squirting everywhere.”

Altered perceptions are extremely common in these incidents. Far more often than not, auditory exclusion or auditory muting will occur. Adam Nesvick was no exception. He told AH, “I had auditory exclusion so bad I didn’t hear everything he said as he came at me while I was screaming ‘Don’t do it!’ When I fired, I remember hearing muffled gunshots. I heard little pops, but I was deaf as a post for three days later.”

Another extremely common phenomenon is tunnel vison. Adam told us, “When the woman and the little girl went into the house and he got up, I realized ‘Oh, my God, this is going to happen, I’m probably going to have to shoot,’ and I hyper-focused on him from then on.”

When multiple shots are fired, relatively few participants remember the round count correctly. This was true here as well. Adam and Shannon each thought Adam had fired three shots, while one eyewitness insisted five shots were fired. All were incorrect: Evidence incontrovertibly proved Adam had unleashed four rounds.

After you’ve been in an incident like this, people treat you differently. Dr. Walter Gorski, the great police psychologist who is credited with defining “post shooting trauma” as something separate and distinct from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) referred to it as Mark of Cain syndrome. Sometimes, you are excoriated as a murderer. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you may be treated like a hero. The latter of course is better, but can still leave you wondering whether people still see you as the good neighbor, the good professional, the good worker at your job; instead, they see you as “He Who Killed,” and it changes the way they treat you, which in turn can change the way you feel about yourself.

Little kids had always seemed to play outdoors in their neighborhood; after the shooting, not so much. The mom and daughter whom Adam had rescued spent a couple of days in the hospital, refused to look at Adam or Shannon after coming home, and soon moved away. Other neighbors started moving away too.

That said, though, Adam reports, “No one really dumped on us. One of the little kids, who was a friend of the little girl who used the bat to try to get Brandon to stop beating her mom, saw us on the street and gave us a big thumbs up. Brandon’s best friend told me, ‘I’m sorry he died, but you did what you had to do.’ The apartment complex gave us a $50 gift certificate to go to dinner on them.”

Sleep disturbance is a virtually universal experience among those who’ve had to kill to survive. “I didn’t sleep for three days afterward,” Adam told us. “This eventually went away. I had flashbacks for a long time and still do occasionally, but not as bad or as vivid. Shannon had really bad flashbacks. We were comfortable talking about it, and that got us through a lot. Shannon got counseling. I got help from friends who had been through similar things, maybe more help than I would have gotten from a psychologist.”

In 2020, the Nesvicks moved to another state. “I thought getting away was the best thing, not being in the place every day where I had shot someone,” Adam explained.

The police gave him his gun back a month later. He was deeply touched to note the cops had not only wiped the blood spatter off the SIG but had cleaned and oiled it too.

His SIG went away. It carried too many unpleasant memories. Today Adam carries a CZ P10C.

A Great Neck high school student exposes her school's intellectual corruption

 Sahar Tartak is on target at the Wall Street Journal about how illiberal are some of the Liberals in Great Neck, NY.

Having lived in Great Neck for many years, gone to the best schools, and taught at the university level,, I can vouch for the attitudes and behavior she describes as reflecting the tendencies of many of the educators I have encountered.

But it's not only Great Neck. Freedom and truth are undervalued by the Woke, cancel, and Progressive ideologues everywhere. They are the threat.

It seems that education is a two-edge sword. It imparts knowledge which benefits everyone. However, history suggests that a by product all too often is an elitist view that leads to a desire for control of others' behavior and a lack of common sense about what policies actually help people. The widespread past adulation among many Elites of socialism and communism and a lack of appreciation for the damage that government interference in the economy can do and often does are examples.

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I was educated in the school district ranked by Niche.com as America’s third-best. Immigrants from around the world come to Great Neck, N.Y., to raise their children. My best friend’s father was at the Tiananmen Square massacre. My classmates left behind their families in El Salvador. My mother escaped revolutionary Iran, and my grandfather escaped the Nazis.

Lately, though, the area’s diverse and liberal-minded residents may have reason to think their local school officials aren’t as open-minded as they thought. In 2021 Great Neck North High School directed the student government to give $375 of student funds to a “racial equity” group to speak to the student body about “systemic racism.” I was the student government’s treasurer, and I felt we didn’t know enough about the organization and its mission to disburse the funds. So I refused to sign the check.

In response, the teachers who advise the student government berated, bullied and insulted me at our next meeting, which took place over Zoom for my parents to overhear. They began by announcing that my social studies teacher would be present. Together, the three adults told me that the principal himself found my stance “appalling.” I had made them and the school “look bad,” they told me. One teacher said the situation gave her “hives.”

When I suggested that students might not need or want a lecture on systemic racism, my social-studies teacher asked whether I’d also oppose a Holocaust survivor’s presentation.

I objected to that comparison, but she cut me off: “If you’re not on board with systemic racism, I have trouble with that, girlfriend.”

When I didn’t back down, she made a bizarre accusation: “The fact that you think slavery is debatable . . .”

I logged off Zoom and started crying. My parents comforted me, and I decided I wasn’t going to sign that check.

That’s when I noticed how illiberal my liberal high school had become. I once expressed disagreement with the narrative of the “1619 Project,” and that same social-studies teacher snapped that I was opposed to hearing other perspectives. I had signed up for her class because it was described as “discussion-based,” but certain discussion seemed forbidden.

Later, a friend showed me a lesson from his English class—a Google Slides presentation urging that students pledge to work “relentlessly” in the “lifelong process” of “antiracism.” According to these slides, America is a place where racism is “no better today than it was 200 years ago.” I disagreed but didn’t mind the debate. Yet this wasn’t about debate: Immigrant children were being told to “pledge” to defend a view many of them don’t hold.

I doubt students could have comfortably objected in class. The lesson pre-empted criticism by imputing to them “white fragility,” which means they “close off self-reflection,” “trivialize the reality of racism,” and “protect a limited worldview.” The adult presenting this accusatory material was a teacher who had the power to grade them and affect their prospects of getting into college.

When parents caught wind of this presentation, their group chats exploded: “I feel like I live under a rock.” “I did not realize the extent of this at all.” “If you too are troubled by this, join us at the upcoming school board meeting.”

I decided to tell the school board about my treatment at the hands of teachers and school officials. I was nervous but I made my case. The response, to my shock, was a standing ovation. I also received many expressions of support from fed-up parents, from teachers who silently abhorred their one-sided “professional development” courses, and from students who had been punished by administrators for questioning the orthodoxy of systemic racism. (One of those students had been sent to the principal’s office for refusing to sign an “antihate” pledge.)

That experience prompted me and a few like-minded others to look into our school’s curriculums. What we found was an arsenal of lopsidedly race-obsessed lesson plans. One was about the American Psychological Association’s “Apology to People of Color” for its role in “Promoting, Perpetuating, and Failing to Challenge Racism.” Another was titled “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.” My favorite: “A Critical Race Theory Approach to The Great Gatsby.”

The schools in our district had always followed the guidelines of New York state’s comprehensive social-studies curriculum, which included teaching about the pervasiveness and evils of slavery, mistreatment of Native Americans, discrimination against Chinese immigrants and so on. What we discovered was something else—partisanship and race essentialism, mixed in with administrative intimidation and bullying that our officials refused to address.

District officials responded in the way school officials often do when criticized. They ignored us for as long as possible, then delayed taking action for as long as possible, clearly hoping everybody would forget the controversy and move on. They didn’t respond to my father’s freedom-of-information request until the day before a contentious school-board election. The board then promised to further investigate the curriculums, but we never heard anything after that. My school brought in a member of the state Education Department’s Board of Regents, to discuss curriculums, but that resulted in nothing.

I graduated last spring, but no one has moved on. Students and parents across the country are finally asking tough questions about anti-American curriculums. Immigrants like my mother and grandfather found refuge in America because for all its problems, it’s a wonderful place full of generous and open-minded people. The nation’s schools have a duty to teach students that basic truth.

More on the DOJ’s and FBI’s double standard of justice

Here is Jonathan Turley on the FBI.

Clearly, the DOJ and the FBI have been politicized for some time. But that is not the worst part - which is that many voters' views on equal justice before the law are driven by the same partisanship.

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Durham: The FBI Had Danchenko on Payroll as An Informant During the Russian Collusion Investigation

Yesterday, a filing by Special Counsel John Durham revealed that Igor Danchenko, who worked as a key contributor to the discredited Steele dossier funded by the Clinton campaign, was later put on the FBI payroll as an informant. The disclosure rocked Washington and raised additional questions of the FBI’s eagerness to pursue any allegations against Donald Trump despite being warned that the dossier appeared to be a vehicle for Russian disinformation.


Danchenko is facing with five counts of lying to the bureau during that relationship. His trial is scheduled for next month in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia.

The filing states that “In March 2017, the FBI signed the defendant up as a paid confidential human source of the FBI. The FBI terminated its source relationship with the defendant in October 2020.”

The news shocked many of us who have closely followed the Russian collusion controversy for years. The FBI showed a zeal to investigate Trump and his campaign that seemed to border on the blind obsessive. It was not simply with the Steele dossier. On the baseless Alfa Bank allegations (also pushed by Clinton campaign through friends at the FBI) the supervisory agent for the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe, Joe Pientka, sent a note to FBI special agent Curtis Heide, stating: “People on the 7th floor to include Director are fired up about this server.” Pientka then messaged Heide: “Did you guys open a case? Reach out and put tools on?”That description of the apparent eagerness of then-FBI Director James Comey and others only magnifies concern over the bureau’s alleged bias or predisposition on the Trump investigation. It was the same eagerness that led the FBI to pursue the Russian investigation for years despite being warned early by American intelligence that the Steele dossier contained not just unsupported allegations but possible Russian disinformation.

Indeed, Danchenko’s possible connections to Russian intelligence have been raised as a matter of concern. Indeed, the filing states “During his January 2017 interview with the FBI, the defendant initially denied having any contact with Russian intelligence or security services but later — as noted by the agents, contradicted himself and stated that he had contact with two individuals who he believed to be connected to those services.”

What is particularly concerning is that the FBI also had former British spy Christopher Steele, on its payroll. Steele then assembled his dossier under the funding of the Clinton campaign which repeatedly denied such funding to the media. This money was funneled through the law firm of Perkins Coie and the campaign’s general counsel, Marc Elias. (The Federal Election Commission (FEC) fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for violating election rules in hiding that funding).

So the FBI cut off Steele as a paid source after he allegedly worked with the media to spread these unproven claims. It then turned around and hired his principle source for the dossier.

The filing also states that Danchenko discussed an interest in obtaining classified information for possible sale to the Russians.

“As has been publicly reported, the defendant was the subject of an FBI counterintelligence investigation from 2009 to 2011. In late 2008, while the defendant was employed by a prominent think tank in Washington, D.C., the defendant engaged two fellow employees about whether one of the employees might be willing or able in the future to provide classified information in exchange for money.

According to one employee (‘Employee-1’), the defendant believed that he (Employee-1) might be in a position to enter the incoming Obama administration and have access to classified information. During this exchange, the defendant informed Employee-1 that he had access to people who would be willing to pay money in exchange for classified information. Employee-1 passed this information to a U.S. government contact, and the information was subsequently passed to the FBI.

Based on this information, the FBI initiated a ‘preliminary investigation’ into the defendant. The FBI converted its investigation into a ‘full investigation’ after learning that the defendant (1) had been identified as an associate of two FBI counterintelligence subjects and (2) had previous contact with the Russian Embassy and known Russian intelligence officers.”

The “prominent think tank” appears to be the Brookings Institution. I have previously written about the prominent role of Brookings in spreading the Russian collusion claims and hiring an array of people who played critical roles in these investigations. That also included former FBI general counsel James Baker. For some, it seemed like not just friends but “friends with benefits.” It seems that everyone in this scandal was six degrees from Brookings.