I ran across this chart of words people either will or will not use in a substack article by the Liberal Patriot – who took the graph from a study done by the New York Times.  It’s worth examining, and it may tell me something about my perspectives – not necessarily my biases.

Down on the list is powwow.  I’m one of the 34% who use this word . . . and every Native (American Indian) I know uses the word too.  There are some expansions on it in the Native population.  As a gerund – going powwowing usually means going to a powwow to dance or drum.  As a descriptor – the powwow circuit means attending multiple powwows. 

On the other hand, while 73% of the respondents are comfortable referencing the third world, I’m not.  The first world is still with us – what we call the western world – but the second world was dominated by the USSR, and that’s been gone since just after Christmas in 1991.  It’s hard to have a third world when you don’t have a second world anymore.

I think the words we use – at least those identified in this study – show a language split based on ideology.  To me, illegal alien is a legitimate descriptor.  When I was in the southwest, I might have used the same Spanish term my neighbors did –mojado.  The word translates to wet – I’m pretty sure the implication was wetback.  None of the folks who used the term mojado would have accepted the term Latinx.

It only happened once – and it happened after the government was kaput and the officials were locked up at Nuremberg, awaiting trials for war crimes.   At the Nuremberg trials several Nazi leaders achieved genius-level scores on an IQ test. Highest result was 143! | The Vintage News

World War II had ended – a bunch of Nazi officials were locked up, and fundamentally, some American psychologists in uniform wanted to know how these guys could have led their nation not just through the second World War, but into the holocaust that killed at least 6 million jews.  Some conjectured that the Nazi leadership was below normal in intelligence.  Others thought there must have been some collective insanity.  Perhaps the question was answered best by Hannah Arendt in 1963 with the phrase “banality of evil.”  At any rate, the allies had a couple dozen senior Nazi officials in custody.  The results of their IQ tests are below – you can click the link above for the whole story – it is worth reading.

“ Part of establishing whether or not the Nazis were capable of standing trial was the administration of an IQ test. The Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Test was adapted from English and given in German, and at the time, it was one of the most widely used IQ tests available. Scores of 65 or less were classified as “defective,” between 80 and 119 as normal, and 128 and above was “very superior.” Only about 2.2 percent of the population scored in that range. The average of all the Nazis tested was 128. This means that they were a lot above from the average human IQ. Here are the results for all 21 Nazis tested:

1 Hjalmar Schacht 143
2 Arthur Seyss-Inquart 141
3 Hermann Goering 138
4 Karl Doenitz 138
5 Franz von Papen 134
6 Eric Raeder 134
7 Dr. Hans Frank 130
8 Hans Fritsche 130
9 Baldur von Schirach 130
10 Joachim von Ribbentrop 129
11 Wilhelm Keitel 129
12 Albert Speer 128
13 Alfred Jodl 127
14 Alfred Rosenberg 127
15 Constantin von Neurath 125
16 Walther Funk 124
17 Wilhelm Frick 124
18 Rudolf Hess 120
19 Fritz Sauckel 118
20 Ernst Kaltenbrunner 113
21 Julius Streicher 106”

The man at the top of the list is Dr. Hjalmar Schacht – who was acquitted at Nuremburg.  Schacht was never a party member, had been put into a concentration camp for his role in the Hitler assassination, and was one of the few German Freemasons to survive the Holocaust.

The second man on the list, Arthur Seyss-Inquart, was a school principal’s son who damned well deserved the noose he received.  Third was Hermann Goering.  Hermann was placed in command of Ritchoffen’s Flying Circus when the Red Baron was shot down, and was addicted to Morphine.

Obviously, the list goes on – but this is the only time I have found where government officials’ IQ was tested – and I’m not sure that it wasn’t a good idea.  From an informed voter’s point of view, I’d like to be able to read a list that included education, work history, and IQ.  I have this unpopular idea that IQ is just another measurement – like height and weight.  Without that measurement, politicians can (like Biden) claim to be really smart, and we have no data to prove, or disprove the statement.

Seyss-Inquart definitely proved that a high IQ (141 – he’d have been the smartest kid in a room with 319 people in it) didn’t keep him from being a vile, loathful individual who did vile, loathsome things.

I was behind a pair of refugee Californians.  The car was a four wheel drive Subaru, and it was wearing Montana plates – but there was something about the driving style that shouted “California.”  And there are more than a few reasons to be kind to the refugees from what was once “the golden state.”

Californians aren’t the worst drivers when it comes to snow and ice.  I’m pretty sure that title rests with Texas.  It might be Mississippi or Louisiana -but there are just so many Californians and Texans that we notice them more.  It’s not a long-term problem – most will learn the skills needed for Montana winters in a couple, three or four years.  But think of what they have left behind.

Our refugee Californians tend to be conservative – more so than our Montana natives.  They have left what seems to be the nation’s finest climate behind as they moved from the golden state to the treasure state.  Historically, quite a few of our greatest Montanans have done a tour or two in California before coming to Montana.

Let’s look at what they have left:  California has half of the nation’s homeless people.  I suppose that has some relationship to the state being 49th in home ownership.  California has a third of the nation’s welfare recipients, despite having just an eighth of the population.  Obviously, while California has 14.2% of the US Gross Domestic Product, it isn’t spread around evenly.  The state is somewhere around dead last in literacy, despite having schools as highly regarded as Cal Tech and Stanford.  It leads the nation in cost-adjusted poverty.  Roger Simon writes a substack called  American Refugees and covers his move from California to Tennessee.  He mentioned Mama Cass and the notes from California Dreaming came through my mind.

California ranks 50th in the category of opportunity.  Frighteningly enough, it ranks 42nd under fiscal stability -so we know that, despite California’s projected $68 billion budget deficit, some states are in worse shape.

I’ve known Jews who left Europe when they read the writing – I was going to say on the wall, but Adolf published Mein Kampf – all they had to do was read the guy’s game plan.  I’ve met damned few who stayed in Germany.   It’s hard to leave a spot that is imprinted on your heart – but I remember a conversation with Willi, where he explained that “You Americans don’t realize that you need to be ready to leave.”  Willi had been on the last ship out of Germany, taking all he owned with him in a small bag of diamonds and precious stones.  By the time he got to the US, we weren’t accepting Jewish refugees – fortunately the ship managed to dock at Trinidad.  I think we need to be accepting of our California refugees.

Los Angeles reported the following retirement levels for its public employees:

• All retirees – pension $65,027, benefits $13,471, total $78,497
• Sheriffs – pension $88,144, benefits $18,395, total $106,539
• Firefighters – pension $104,905, benefits $20,350, total $125,256
• All other retirees – pension $50,484, benefits $10,581, total $61,065

I suspect we’re not going to have to worry about our refugee Californians becoming wards of the state – though we might find a reason for Montana property evaluations going up in those figures.

At any rate, I followed the Californians in their Subaru on our first snow day and marveled at their trepidation on roads that were, to me, essentially bare and dry.  A week and a half later, I spun out on a patch of ice – I really should have dropped the Suzuki in four wheel, but it was a short stretch of shaded road.  My pompous superiority in driving skills took a bit of a hit as I stood alongside my error, waiting for my neighbor Brian to come by with a tow rope.  Perhaps I am not always as superior as I might like to believe.

Years ago, I heard how Florida’s election count kept Al Gore from the presidency by 537 votes.  When your paycheck comes from a university, you have a lot of born again Democrats sharing that sort of information with you.  So I figured out a reply – “Yeah, and did you know that in 1998 seventeen Democrat Senators kept Al Gore from becoming President?”  That one usually confused my colleagues – and the statement that Clinton paid a $25,000 fine and had his Arkansas law license suspended to head off charges of lying under oath in the Lewinski affair kind of showed that there was solid justification for a guilty vote in the impeachment.

At any rate, it was fun to watch my liberal colleagues wriggle – and now I can see where a handful or two of Democrats kept Kamala Harris from the presidency.  The 25th Amendment covers it in Section 4: “Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.”  Since there are 15 Cabinet Secretaries, Kamala is still only 8 votes away from being declared Acting President. 

I suspect that, had Al Gore been running from the White House, he would have beaten George Bush in 2000, and gone on to beat him again in 2004.  And given the reports of how long they’ve covered up for Biden’s senility, Kamala could still get a turn at the presidency if 8 out of 15 Democrat Cabinet Secretaries chose to admit that Slow Joe just can’t handle the job. 

I’m not sure if invoking the 25th amendment in time for Christmas would make Kamala the 47th President or not – but I think it’s reasonable to infer that, had 17 Democrat senators chosen to vote guilty on Bill Clinton and remove him from office, we wouldn’t have had 8 years of George Bush.  Likewise, had 8 Cabinet Secretaries chose to vote Biden out last Summer, Harris might have had a better chance against Trump.  I suspect that the blind loyalty that accompanies the big D may be more weakness than strength.

Javier Milei has described his efforts with cutting through government regulations with a chainsaw.

I tend to use a little more protective gear than the Argentine President – and, after a year when I lacked the strength to start my saws, I’ve went over to a Stihl Easy2Start.  (I think Milei’s saw is a Chinese knock-off) With the many trees that the snow has bent over, and the tops taken out, it was a good idea.  Just keeping the roads open takes a chainsaw. 

Some of the blowdown comes out in firewood, some in short logs.  While I set up a mill that can turn out 20 foot beams and boards, I realized that I don’t have the strength to handle 20 foot slabs – so I kind of stick with 8 and 10 foot short logs.  Occasionally, I go so far as a 12 – and, what the hay, it’s nice to have plenty of track, even if I don’t use it all.

It looks like I’ll have an easy year for firewood in 2025.  The bent over trees and the trees where the tops have snapped are what I’m cutting now – and most of the stuff in firewood lengths are under 10 inches across.  Next Spring, when the snow is off, I’ll pick up the cut firewood, take it to my new splitter, and then put the split wood under shelter to dry.  The woodshed holds two winters worth of wood, so it will have another year to dry out while it’s under cover.

Last year, the weakness of aging left me unable to overcome the compression and start my saws.  This year, the technology of Easy2Start has given me back the gasoline powered chainsaw, and simple hydraulics has me able to split firewood again.  Modern technology makes it easier to do things despite the body wearing out.

Still, I envy Milei.  I can take a chainsaw to blowdowns and damaged trees – but it must be a lot more fun to take a chainsaw to government regulations.

I admit that I thought pardoning Hunter was a bit excessive -I’m familiar with the ATF rules that call for five years in the big house, and wasn’t too impressed.  Still, it only took a couple of weeks for Slow Joe to come up with a pardon that makes Hunter look positively deserving. 

Victims of Crimes of Those Granted Clemency Furious With Biden  Click the link – here’s the copied teaser to show why you should:

“Former Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Conahan

Conahan is one of many judges brought to justice in the Kids-for-Cash scandal in Pennsylvania.

They received $2.1 million in kickbacks for sending juveniles to two private, for-profit detention centers:

Conahan pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges and was sentenced in 2011 to 17½ years in prison. However, he petitioned the courts for a “compassionate release” during the COVID-19 pandemic, writing that he was “in grave danger of not only contracting the virus, but of dying from the virus.”

He was released to home confinement in Florida under federal supervision in June 2020.”

Nothing personal – but a judge who sent juveniles to private slammers and took kickbacks for it is worse than Hunter Biden.  I can’t think of anything lower than a corrupt judge screwing kids over.  Or we can look at this bastard:

“Former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora

Former Cuyahoga County Commissioner Jimmy Dimora landed in prison due to his involvement “in a massive pay-to-play scheme” in Ohio.

The FBI and IRS investigated and almost “60 politicians, government officials and contractors” were convicted of granting contracts “in exchange for money, trips, gifts and favors.” Wow:

Prosecutors said Dimora made about $450,000 off bribes, including trips to Las Vegas, prostitutes and an infamous outdoor stone-fired pizza oven installed in the backyard of his Independence home.

Dimora was initially sentenced in 2012 to 28 years in what was, at the time, one of the Ohio’s most expansive corruption cases in history.

That sentence in 2022 was cut to 25 years in prison after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in a different case that clarified the definition of what constitutes a bribe under federal law.

Dimora has been on home confinement since 2023. It should have ended in 2030.”

As Kipling wrote over a century ago:

”If print is print or words are words, the learned Court perpends: —
We are not ruled by murderers, but only — by their friends.”

The term “midwit” is described by its originator at The Coining of the Term: Midwit – Vox Popoli.  The most pertinent phrase is “ A midwit has an IQ in the 105 to 120 range. The very need for the term is derived from the observation that the individual so described possesses a level of intelligence that is sufficiently above average to inspire him to overrate himself. “  

To turn that description into useful numbers, the  IQ Percentile and Rarity Chart is a useful tool.  It lets us know how many people have to be in the room where the midwit is the smartest kid in the room.  The problem with being the smartest kid in the room is that there are always times when you wind up in a larger room.  Here’s where the Bell Curve kicks in:

An IQ of 105 is, by definition, above average.  Has to be – the average IQ is defined at 100.  (I will admit having some amusement when a classmate had bragged about his IQ score of 93 – but the fact that he completed his master’s degree long before I got mine does keep me a bit humble)

That flight of memory aside, the guy with an IQ of 93 can still be the smartest kid in the room if he’s the only one in the room.  The guy with the 105 IQ has tested higher than 63% of the population.  He’s technically above average, but not significantly above average – you have to score over 115 to be above the average or normal range. 

At 107, he/she has scored above 67% of the population – so if the room holds 3 people (and is filled in a way that matches probability), he/she is the smartest kid in the room.  110 is above 75% of the population, so gets a 4 person room.

A score of 113 is above 80% of the population, so gets a 5 person room.  115 tests at 84% and is at the top of the hypothetical 6 person room.  At 117, we reach the 87% level and get to the top of an 8 person room.  At 120, the percentage is 91% and the room size is 11.

And that takes care of explaining midwits – and there is nothing wrong with scoring in the 105 to 120 range.  I suspect it may be a happier area than either of the extremes.

Mensa’s cutoff is 130 – basically, to get into Mensa, you need to score higher than 98% of the population.  Sounds like a big deal – but the room only has 50 people in it . . . well, actually 44, but 131 is 98.06% and has 52 people in the room.  That 130 is close to the line for the second standard deviation above the average, and each point up from there really gets a bigger room.  Basically, to be a member of Mensa you have to score in the top 2% on the test and pay $79 a year dues. 

The third standard deviation comes in around 145 – and that score beats 99.87% of the population – the chart shows that individual is the top scorer of 741 people.  The room is getting larger – but even that score won’t be the top in the county.  Five more points – 150 – is one out of 2,330 – we’re talking a large room here.  That one in a million score is somewhere between 170 and 171.

Incidentally, some IQ tests have a standard deviation of 15, some have 16.  The numbers I’m throwing out are all based on the 15 SD.

IQ isn’t fair.  This graph, taken from IQ, explained in 9 charts | Vox shows the inverse correlation between IQ and risk of death.

On the other hand, an extremely high IQ doesn’t always bring success – articles like Chris Langan: The Bouncer, Rancher, And Conspiracy Theorist Who Might Be The World’s Smartest Man and William James Sidis: The Tragic Story Of The World’s Smartest Person show where it might be a lot more pleasant to go through life as a midwit.

This article will describe some of the theories – and I’m going to begin with Laurence Peter’s concept, which he humbly termed “The Peter Principle.”  It was a new concept during my second year of college – which means I have had a long professional life to examine his theory.

“Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence.” ~ Laurence J. Peter

His book – The Peter Principle is available for a free download at https://epdf.pub/the-peter-principle.html  and is definitely worth downloading and reading.

Now if we look at Lincoln County’s road departments, there isn’t so much hierarchy (and the Peter Principle is based on hierarchy).  If they need an engineer or a hydrologist, they go outside the department’s hierarchy.  On this pyramid example, our county road department hierarchies are pretty much confined to levels 5 and 6.  In a flat organization, there isn’t much opportunity to be promoted to your level of incompetence.

On the other hand, the Health Department is a lot more hierarchical – but not every employee starts at level 6.  A beginning sanitarian has to have a bachelor’s degree in environmental health.  The next level – getting past the sanitarian in training takes a year of experience and passing a standardized test.  The next hoop is completing a correspondence school master’s degree – I’ve seen the Hoop’s signature line showing that behind her name – surprising me, since I’m used to doctorates coming behind the name.

Not a big deal, but you can see that there is a three step hierarchy that is basically achieved by breathing for 12 months and passing some correspondence classes.  It’s a lot easier to achieve your level of incompetence in the county’s health department than it is in the Sheriff’s office or county roads.  On the other hand, the Clerk and Recorder, or the County Treasurer are both elected to run their departments. 

The Peter Corollary is that, if a hierarchical institution lasts long enough, every position will be filled by an incompetent.  The thing is, as a county, we don’t make a point of hiring the best and the brightest – this 2014 chart shows where different majors average scores were on the Scholastic Aptitude Test:

Then, after our Health Department employees complete their year of training they have an opportunity to transfer out to a county where the wages are higher – but Lincoln County tends to go for internal promotions.  Lincoln County is fighting a lot of trends if it wants the best and the brightest for the county health department.   Unfortunately, there are occasions where we need the best and brightest there . . . and we have a crew of midwits. 

Then there is the Dilbert Principle – “companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management (generally middle management), in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing.”  I don’t believe it applies to Lincoln County Government.

The relevant portion of Parkinson’s Law is that “the number of workers within public administration, bureaucracy or officialdom tends to grow, regardless of the amount of work to be done. This was attributed mainly to two factors: that officials want subordinates, not rivals, and that officials make work for each other.

The only solution I see is the County 57 movement.  Secession from Libby may be the answer.

It’s a bit of a challenge to have perfect laissez-faire capitalism in a county where three quarters of the land is owned by the government.  My grandmother spoke of a time when cabins on private land were burned – she believed – by Forest Service employees.  I don’t know whether she was correct – but early Trego had its fair share of Wobblies (International Workers of the World), and, after the 1917 Strike that shut down the woods, making sure that there weren’t places to live may have made sense.  If I had to join a union, I’d prefer the Wobblies  (https://www.iww.org/ ).

Still, we have a great example of a planned economy in Lincoln County.  Under laissez-fair capitalism, the market makes the decisions about how things are done.  In a planned economy, politicians and government employees make the decisions.  In Lincoln County, the green boxes and landfill problems we are encountering have been produced as part of a planned economy.  The politicians have been our county commissioners, and the government employees involved work for the county health department.

Generally speaking, across the world, planned economies have failed.  Red Foxx may have described it best when he took on the role of Mao Tse Tung and said something like: “Comrades, I have good news and bad news.  First the bad news.  Our Great Leap Forward has stumbled.  Our Five-Year Plan has fizzled.  In two more months there will be nothing left to eat but horse manure.  Now for the good news: there isn’t enough of it to go around.”

In 1854, Dr. John Snow took the pump handle off the Broad Street well pump, stopped a cholera epidemic, and provided the first justification for powerful public health departments (you can get more details from UCLA’s public health department at John Snow and the Broad Street Pump: On the Trail of an Epidemic .  We’ve had a similar situation in South Libby Flats in the sixties, where shallow wells and septic tanks spread disease. 

Consequently, we’ve been blessed with health department employees that tend to regard the public as their enemy and greet every opportunity to increase their department’s power with open arms.  After all, they knew that they were the best and the brightest. 

The green box and landfill situation pretty much demonstrates that their training neglected economics.  A contracted garbage truck shows up at Trego, empties the green boxes, then hauls the garbage 90 miles to a landfill near Libby.  It wasn’t a problem when the health department folks developed this plan – Lincoln County was rich with PILT (payment in lieu of taxes) funds from timber harvests, and the small tax increase they needed was affordable.  This sort of problem inevitably occurs when the smartest kids in the room aren’t. 

To be fair, the Hoop didn’t make the decision to have one large landfill in Libby and to task garbage trucks with the never ending road trip.   To be fair, it was a predecessor that ignored the fact that Lincoln County would be giving a monopoly with legal protections against competitors.  To be fair, it was the County Commissioners who trusted the health department and voted their recommendations into the harsh reality we face today. 

Still, to be fair, it was at the end of 2018 when the commissioners passed Ordinance 2018-05 “AN ORDINANCE TO CONTROL COMMUNITY DECAY WITHIN LINCOLN COUNTY AND ESTABLISH PROCEDURES FOR ITS ENFORCEMENT”.  As near as I can tell, it was written by the Hoop’s health department with enforcement planned by the same folks that wrote the law.  Our sheriff’s department requires POST certification – but it looks like the health department folks are so much smarter that they can enforce laws without any such training. 

“Administrators make work for each other so that they can multiply the number of their subordinates and enhance their prestige.” ~ C. Northcote Parkinson

Unfortunately, the folks who pay the price for failures in Lincoln County’s planned economy are the taxpayers.  Our county commissioners tend to be voted out after a single term – and the folks in the health department tend to continue until retirement or death removes them.  That can be a lot of mistakes for the taxpayer to cover.

The landfill and transportation decisions that led to our 3 day per week garbage pickup came from the health department.  Their planning seems to be no better than Red Foxx’ joke about Chairman Mao.  We can vote out our elected officials – but the health department employees will still be there when the new commissioners come on board.  And they will still be coming up with more plans.