First, there is no state income tax in Texas. Some people know this and some don’t—few really grasp what it means practically. It means that if you make decent money and decide to move here and rent something affordable, it’s essentially free to live in Texas. If you make $150,000 a year, your state income taxes in California are roughly $12,000 per year (in NYC it’s closer to $15,000). Or, you can put a thousand bucks a month toward your rent here. If you decide to buy, property taxes are high—but what you get for the money more than makes up for it. My editor at the Observer recently tried to cajole me into coming back to New York. Our house now—which has its own lake and is 29 minutes from the airport which never has lines—costs less than the rent we were paying for our lofted studio apartment in Midtown. Are you kidding?
“The average full-career California teacher receives a pension benefit equal to 105% of their final earnings. CalSTRS CEO says the plan isn’t generous enough.”
Texas’ 2016 Fiscal Year started September 1st. “Several taxes that were eliminated on September 1 include the Inheritance Tax, Oil Regulation Tax, Sulphur Regulation Tax, Fireworks Tax, Controlled Substance Tax Certificates, and the Airline/Passenger Train Beverage Tax.”
Evidently California’s Democratic politicians stay up late at night devising ways they can make the state go broke even faster. The answer: Host the Olympics again.
Korean-owned businesses in LA consider relocating to El Paso. “Kim makes the case that El Paso, once home to plants for denim companies including Levi’s and Wrangler, has abundant skilled laborers, fewer regulations, much cheaper rent and direct flights from Los Angeles.”
Never mind the usual pro-cop-killing idiocy. Nothing says “I’m a badass” quite like holding a gun store’s AR-pattern rifles in each hand…while the anti-theft chains are still attached…
I take a look at the Internet Movie Database Bottom 100 List from time to time. Recently I was surprised to see a film called Kod Adı: K.O.Z. shoot to the top (it’s currently ranked the third worst film ever made), wince I had never heard of it. Turns out it’s a propaganda film by Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s scumbag Islamist government in Turkey.
This is presumably the worst propaganda film ever shot in the entire history of cinema. It gives a highly biased and re-written account of the recent political corruption scandals in Turkey; the so-called 17-25 December corruption and bribery investigations in the year of 2013. What happened in reality was that, despite obvious evidence, the barefaced government officials including the back-then prime minister (the current president of the republic) insisted to call the investigations as a coup d’etat, and produced a surrealistic storyline to cover the allegations. The film intends to prove the unbelievable and mind-blowing theses of the government.
If anybody is curious about this movie and wonders why there are so many negative comments about it, that’s because it’s the “WORST” movie ever, I mean it. It’s completely waste of time, don’t even spend your time to watch it if you still haven’t. This movie itself is the proof of how much Turkey resembles Nazi Germany nowadays.
Dear IMDb! please add a no star option cause if I give this film one star this will be an insult for the films which deserve one star. This is the worst and most disinformatic film I ever watched in my life. Please surf on facebook chatting with friends or what instead of watching this film cause it really really full of lyings and I and the people of Turkey is sure that this film is ordered by the current government of Turkey ruled by dictator Erdogan and the government even can put you in prison if you have a poll company and the resutl of you poll is against the gov. There are a lot of journalist are in prison in Turkey that there sine is to write against the gov. And there are hundereds of legal sound and video recording of Erdogan and his ministers that are particpiating in the Turkey’s big corruption in the history, instead of answering for their corruption they put the polices in jail. and the government bought more than 90% of the media and even republic media are used actively against the people in Turkey and in this situation how can you believe this film that when asked the director about the film that is biased, he answered that I have chosen my side. Long Live Tolerance, dialogue and peace in the world.
It’s obvious that English is not the first language of many reviewers (which makes sense, since it’s a Turkish film), but they seem united in pronouncing it and incompetently made and a wretched piece of propaganda for a brutal, corrupt dictatorship.
So Hillary’s Super Secret Secure Server was actually hosted on the same server as the not secret and not particularly secure Clinton Foundation email system.
Which means any hacker that could pwn the Clinton Foundation server (and why wouldn’t they?) could almost certainly pwn Hillary’s private e-mail server, chock full of illegal classified national security information, through any number of exploits or privilege escalation attacks.
And evidently she was running her emails off an Exchange 2010 Server, which meant it was running on top of Windows, which means there were no end of exploits by which a dedicated hacker could gain control.
“Oh hey! I’m hosting this list of ISIS secret agents on my Doom III deathmatch server! I’m sure there’s no way that could possibly backfire on me!”
Or to put it in non-computer terms, she was storing classified information in an unlocked tin box under her bed that everyone in her neighborhood also knew contained bundles of unmarked $100 bills, and she was just hoping no one broke in.
She’s a major security risk that should never, ever be in the oval office…
Keeping with with California’s ongoing descent into a failed state is a never-ending task. That’s why I’m adding Cal Watchdog to the blogroll, a long overdue move.
Do check them out if you like the Texas vs> California roundup…
Welcome to the final week of traditional summer. Of course, it used to be that everything (school, football, the new TV year, etc.) started after Labor Day Weekend, but that’s not the case any more…
Oh, and he wants to give the Falkland Islands to Argentina. Why, it’s almost as if the hard left yearns for nothing so much as undoing every conservative foreign policy triumph out of spite…
And he also called Osama Bin Laden’s death “a tragedy.”
So Damon Linker has penned a one-eyed-liberal-in-the-land-of-the-blind piece on how cultural elites have brought opposition to immigration (and Donald Trump) upon themselves by their failure to enforce border controls.
These institutions have been sluggish to respond to this discontent because two (sometimes overlapping) factions of our political and economic elite strongly support high levels of immigration — or at least oppose doing very much to stop it.
One of the factions — the business class and its neoliberal champions in government, think tanks, and NGOs — believes in a free-flowing international labor market that treats borders as superfluous.
The other faction — liberal lawyers, activists, intellectuals, journalists, academics, members of the clergy, and (once again) NGO staffers — has a deep-seated moral suspicion of nations and political boundaries in general. Why should an American count for more than a Mexican who crosses the border into the United States? Shouldn’t a refugee fleeing violence in North Africa enjoy full political rights upon setting foot in the European Union? Don’t all human beings deserve to be treated equally under the law? Isn’t opposition to such equality an example of bald-faced racism?
He’s not entirely mistaken, as these things go, but he’s leaving out one important factor: crass self interest.
Univeralism is all well and good as an explanation, but it’s crass self-interest that underlies most of the opposition to enforcement of existing immigration laws. Yes, crass self interest from business lobbies who want cheaper labor, but also crass self interest from left wing parties to construct a new electorate more to their liking. Tony Blair’s Labour Party did precisely this in the UK.
The Democrats believe (probably correctly) that a legalizing a massive influx of illegal aliens from Mexico and points south can help make them a permanent majority party, which is why they continue to support Obama’s unconstitutional and deeply unpopular illegal alien amnesty. It is this crass self interest that is why the Obama Administration refuses to deport illegal aliens who are taking entry level unskilled and manual labor jobs from the poor black and white Americans that used to make up their base. Indeed, for the Democratic Party it’s a twofer: they get a new voter from Mexico and they make an American more dependent on the big government welfare statism that is the bread and butter of their business model.
Illegal aliens may be bad for America, but they’re good for the Democratic Party. And that’s why Democrats in general, and the Obama Administration in specific, refuse to enforce border controls.
