LinkSwarm for June 17, 2022

June 17th, 2022

The Fed goes Volcker, more Welcome Back Carter cosplay, Big Yellow moves to Texas, and Florida Man makes a run for the ocean.

FYI, Blue Host has been acting weird today, giving errors when you tried to save, even though everything appears to be there upon reloading. (Shrugs.)



  • Fed hike rates 75 basis points. The attempt to Volckerize inflation during the Biden Recession has begun.
  • Speaking of St. Volcker, there were a lot of other factors that helped kill inflation in the early 1980s:
    • Oil was one of the primary causes of the 1970s inflation and everyone remembers the oil crisis. During the decade, oil ran all the way from $2 to $39. However, the flipside to this story is that with a lag, high oil prices will eventually incentivize production. The issue was that the US specifically disincentivized US producers and importers. Ronald Reagan signed an Executive Order in January of 1981 to eliminate oil price controls and then removed Jimmy Carter’s idiotic Windfall Profits Tax a few years later. As expected, global production expanded rapidly and with the removal of price controls, that production flooded into the US. By the middle of the decade, despite repeated production cuts by OPEC, there was a global glut of oil and by 1985, oil had collapsed all the way to $7. It wasn’t interest rates that made oil decline, it was government policy on the deregulation side, along with rapid production increases from non-OPEC countries.
    • President Reagan’s Economic Recovery Tax Act was signed into law in August of 1981, designed to reduce tax rates and incentivize investment by rewarding risk-taking by businesses. In particular, the Accelerated Cost Recovery System served to accelerate depreciation, reducing taxes for those that invested in productive capacity. Once again, government policy, not interest rates led to an increase in investment and ultimately supply, helping to tame inflation.
    • It wasn’t just Reagan working on de-regulation; The Staggers Act of October 1980, deregulated the railroads, The Motor Carrier Act of July 1980, deregulated the trucking industry, and the Airline Deregulation Act of October 1978 effectively deregulated transport industries. The net effect was dramatic price competition, better ability to invest and innovate, and the ability to eliminate unprofitable business that was funded by profitable business. Almost immediately after passage, pricing for transport services collapsed and the ease of transporting goods expanded.
    • Organized labor was also dealt a near-fatal blow when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in August of 1981. This may have reduced the wages for a generation of middle-class workers, but it sure wasn’t inflationary. It also accelerated the decline of unions which had already peaked out as a percentage of workers. More importantly, it reduced the militancy of unions and took the teeth out of their ability to disrupt businesses, leading to better efficiency and lower costs for consumers.
    • At the same time, when it comes to macroeconomics, demographics equals destiny. In this case, Volcker simply got lucky. Think of the Baby Boom generation, the last of whom was born in 1964. By 1982, these last Boomers hit 18 and started joining the workforce. The eldest Baby Boomers, born in 1946, were already 36 by then. Look at the massive increase in workers starting in the late 1970s and into the 1980s, which tamped down wages and tamed inflation—especially as female participation in the workforce expanded dramatically. This added labor slowed a key component of the inflation.

    The Biden Administration looks capable of pursuing none of those policies, and the Baby Boomers are starting to retire…

  • More Biden Magic: “The Dow has now had 11 down weeks out of the last 12. This has never happened before… (in Nov 1929, The Dow fell for 10 of 11 weeks)…”
  • How did we get here? Well, in addition to those SUPERgeniuses in the Biden Administration, decades of deficit spending, and loose Fed money printing, there’s the Flu Manchu lockdowns.

    For weird reasons, some people, many people, imagined that governments could just shut down an economy and turn it back on without consequence. And yet here we are.

    Historians of the future, if there are any intelligent ones among them, will surely be aghast at our astounding ignorance. Congress enacted decades of spending in just two years and figured it would be fine. The printing presses at the Fed ran at full tilt. No one cared to do anything about the trade snarls or supply-chain breakages. And here we are.

    Our elites had two years to fix this unfolding disaster. They did nothing. Now we face terrible, grim, grueling, exploitative inflation, at the same time we are plunging into recession again, and people sit around wondering what the heck happened.

    I will tell you what happened: the ruling class destroyed the world we knew. It happened right before our eyes. And here we are.

    Last week, the stock market reeled on the news that the European Central Bank will attempt to do something about the inflation wrecking markets. So of course the financial markets panicked like an addict who can’t find his next hit of heroin. This week already began with more of the same, for fear that the Fed will be forced to rein in its easy-money policy event further. Maybe, maybe not; but recession appears impending regardless.

    The bad news is everywhere.

  • More Welcome Back Carter 70s throwbacks: labor unions want to wage war strikes against the U.S. food chain.
  • A closer look suggests that Democrats are actually doing worse than their horrible polls suggest.

    The polling error for the 2020 election was roughly 4% nationwide, the largest in the last 40 years.

    Fast-forward to today. Inflation is 8+ percent, the price of food and gasoline is way up, crime is up, there is a nationwide shortage of baby formula, and don’t get me started on the border crisis. Yet Joe Biden’s job approval is close to 40% positive. That means almost four out of every ten Americans think Joe is doing a good job if you believe the RealClearPolitics average. And I don’t.

    Snip.

    If the polls are overestimating approval numbers for Biden and other Democrats, how bad is it? The political climate today is different since the 2020 election, but the Democrat poll bias seems intact, which was 4% nationwide. Since nonresponse bias, 4%, and registered voter bias, 2.6%, should be mutually exclusive, we can add them together. This gives us a total Democrat bias of roughly 6.5%

    What does this mean? Until pollsters switch to sampling likely voters right before the election, you can subtract a solid 6 percent from Joe Biden’s approval numbers. And if nothing changes before the election, any Democrat who leads by 3 percent or less is likely to lose.

  • Another Russian ship sunk.
  • “Paxton Wins Lawsuit Against Lax Biden Immigration Policy.”

    Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is enjoying a victory against a Biden administration policy that has allowed illegal aliens to cross the southern border without consequence.

    In 2021, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security issued a rule giving immigration law enforcement officials the power to decide whether or not to detain illegal aliens who attempt to cross the border (in contradiction to federal law, which says they must all be detained).

    This policy caught the attention of Texas Attorney General Paxton and Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, who sued to stop the rule change, arguing that Biden was violating federal law when refusing to take custody of criminal migrants.

    Paxton bashed President Biden, arguing that the policy was contrary to federal law and was instituted without following the proper procedure. Over a year since the original lawsuit was filed, a federal judge issued a ruling against the Biden administration on Friday.

    Federal District Judge Drew Tipton said in his decision that the rule was “an implausible construction of federal law that flies in the face of the limitations imposed by Congress.” Tipton added, “Whatever the outer limits of the authority, the executive branch does not have the authority to change the law.”

    After a legal fight lasting almost a year, Texas judges ruled a final judgment banning Biden’s detention-discretion rule.

  • The Sheriff’s Office of Isabella County, Michigan has to stop responding to some 911 calls due to rising gasoline prices.
  • Sixty years ago came the birth of the New Left via Tom Hayden, Students for a Democratic Society and the Port Huron Statement. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.
  • Most of what you know about Watergate is probably wrong. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Leaked internal emails showing Twitter employees debate banning Libs Of Tik-Tok for crimes against social justice.
  • “Round Rock ISD Trustee Sues Superintendent Over Alleged Illegal Investigation. The saga continues in Round Rock ISD as trustee Mary Bone files against scandal-plagued Superintendent Hafedh Azaiez.”
  • Caterpillar is moving their headquarters to Texas.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Elon Musk: “Democrats ‘Would Rather Tesla Was Dead Than Be Alive And Non-Unionized.'” Of course they would. If they can’t rake graft off you, or harvest votes from your ghetto, you’re worse than useless to them.
  • Speaking of Musk: Several snowflakes working at SpaceX circulated a letter calling Musk “an embarrassment” and demanding the company be more “inclusive.” Result: He fired their ass. Good.
  • McDonald’s gives up on healthy food.
  • Florida Man Crime Blotter: Accused Medicaire fraudster Ernesto Graveran captured trying to escape to Cuba on a jet ski. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • How bad is the Biden economy? There’s now a Sriracha shortage.
  • San Antonio symphony orchestra shuts down and files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. “The last bargaining session between the Symphony Society and the Musicians’ Union took place on March 8, 2022 after which the Union declined to return to the bargaining table, despite efforts of federal mediators and the Symphony. The Musicians’ Union has made it clear there is no prospect of the resumption of negotiations, absent the Board agreeing to a budget that is millions of dollars in excess of what the Symphony can afford.” (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • “School District Announces Summer Enrichment Program For Kids Who Need Extra Grooming.”
  • Swim like no one’s watching.

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Communism, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Global Warming, Media Watch, Military, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, video, Waste and Fraud | 2 Comments »

    Everyone Hates Soros-Backed LA DA George Gascon…Including His Own Prosecutors

    June 16th, 2022

    In the wake of the successful recall of Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, LA DA George Gascon is the next Soros-backed DA recall target.

    And according to Bari Weiss, the recall is coming from inside the building.

    On May 31, 2018, Desiree Andrade was scrolling through Facebook when she saw a local news report about the body of an unidentified man found at the base of a canyon in the forest north of Los Angeles. Andrade’s son, Julian, who was 20, had disappeared two days earlier. So she called the police. “I was giving facial features,” she told me, “and the lady on the other end said, ‘You know, ma’am, facial features aren’t going to work. He doesn’t have a face.’”

    Andrade told the dispatcher there was a rose tattoo on Julian’s left hand. A few minutes later, a detective called her back to confirm that the dead man was her son.

    Five men were charged in Julian Andrade’s death—beating and stabbing him, and then throwing him off a cliff, and then, when they heard him thrashing about, climbing down to pummel him some more. Two of them had known him in high school. They thought he’d stolen their weed.

    He died slowly—from head trauma, blood loss and the cold. By the time his body was recovered, two days later, it had been ripped apart by bears or mountain cats.

    Prosecutors told Desiree Andrade it could take up to five years for the case to inch its way through the system but assured her that justice would ultimately be served. Then Covid hit, and everything slowed down. And then, while the city was still hunkered down, George Gascon became Los Angeles County district attorney.

    The day after Gascon’s inauguration, on December 7, 2020, Phil Stirling, the lead prosecutor on the case, called Desiree Andrade. She was at her home in Whittier on a conference call. (Like everyone, she was working remotely.)

    The new D.A., Stirling explained, had issued nine directives that, among other things, eliminated “enhancements”—extra penalties for more serious crimes. Stirling had been hoping for life without parole for “the three heavies.” (The other two defendants were not thought to have played a central role in the murder.) But without the enhancement—Julian Andrade hadn’t simply been murdered but murdered during the commission of a kidnapping—the best they could hope for, he said, was 25 years in prison, which probably meant 20, since convicts often wind up serving 80 percent of their sentence.

    “I felt betrayed,” Desiree Andrade told me.

    Her son’s case was one of thousands that, in the waning weeks of 2020, were suddenly, inexplicably downgraded. The stories of justice denied, and the rage and heartbreak of mothers and fathers like Desiree Andrade, combined with a rise in violent crime, ignited a firestorm across the city. In December 2021, angry Angelenos, including Andrade, launched a recall campaign against Gascon.

    The campaign has reeled in more than 500,000 signatures. If it gets the 566,857 it needs by July 6, voters will decide come November whether to fire the D.A. (Given that organizers recently mailed out 3.6 million more petitions, including return envelopes, that seems likely.)

    The revolt—as was the case in San Francisco, with the campaign against Chesa Boudin, another uber-progressive prosecutor—is coming from inside the house, too.

    In February, the prosecutors’ union, the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, conducted a vote to see where its members stood on the recall: Nearly 98 percent supported it. Last week’s recall of Boudin gave the anti-Gascon organizers a major boost. “Everyone is talking about it in the office,” a prosecutor said. “Literally everyone.”

    To a person, these prosecutors said that the problem was that Gascon had portrayed himself on the campaign trail as a progressive, and they thought that was a lie. They thought that he was captive to a radical agenda; that he wanted to blow the whole place up; that Black Lives Matter was now in charge of the criminal-justice system in Los Angeles; and that all of this was hurting the people the activists claimed to care about the most.

    Check, check, check and check.

    They meant people of color, mostly Latino, some black, mostly confined to the east side of the city. The people who lived next to the freeway overpasses, between strip malls and empty lots and homeless encampments, whose kids had spent most of the past two years at home, who were always fending off disaster, who lived among the gang members and drug dealers and the dealers of illegal guns and car thieves and armed robbers. The people who needed them.

    Snip.

    John Lewin, a deputy D.A. who has been in the Major Crimes Division for nearly two decades, said: “What happened is the D.A.’s Office was taken over by somebody who, in my opinion, has no interest in prosecuting criminals.” Another longtime deputy D.A. who voted for Gascon and has since revised his opinion told me: “Voters expect their district attorney to protect the public. Instead, they got a Trojan horse—a D.A. and his coterie of radicals and sycophants who are hellbent on blowing up the criminal-justice system in the name of ‘progress.’”

    The recall and all the energy behind it aren’t just about Gascon, prosecutors told me.

    It was about all the right-thinking people who had backed him—George Soros; Netflix CEO Reed Hastings; Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti; Bernie Sanders; Elizabeth Warren; and, of course, Patrisse Cullors, the BLM co-founder who had piloted the movement into a successful house-hunting enterprise—and it was about the moment that birthed him. With the tailored suits and the retro sunglasses, Gascon was radical chic. He was cool. Hollywood had been in love with him. (“Jackie Lacey is so out of step with right now,” a Democratic bundler told me a few months before Gascon’s election, referring to the black, female incumbent D.A., whom Gascon defeated.) Gascon was the antidote to over-incarceration and George Floyd. He was the prosecutor who didn’t like prosecutors—like the other Soros-backed D.A.s who had recently taken office: Boudin; Larry Krasner, in Philadelphia; and Kim Foxx, in Chicago. Like other “reform-minded” prosecutors, as The New York Times put it, in Austin, Orlando, Columbus and beyond.

    Eric Siddall, a deputy D.A. and the vice president of the prosecutors’ union, said no one had ever thought that much about the district attorney before. There was a system, and sometimes it moved a little in one direction or another, but it always basically worked the same way, and now it seemed to be imploding in slow motion. “It’s never been as politicized as it has been by George Gascon or Chesa Boudin or Larry Krassner or Kim Foxx,” Siddall said.

    “It was kind of a perfect storm,” said Richard Doyle, who used to run the D.A.’s Compton branch. “I don’t think the voters understood how radical the changes were that he was proposing. I think that allowed him to sneak in the back door.”

    Snip.

    In the mass email, Gascon also announced a new mission statement. Moving forward, the D.A.’s Office would advance “an effective, ethical and racially equitable system of justice.” He called the office “a learning organization that believes in reduced incarceration.”

    “In Gascon’s and his supporters’ twisted view, it is the offenders committing the violent crime who they consider to be the victims,” John Lewin, the deputy D.A., said. “They draw no distinction between those individuals who are committing the violence and those individuals who are having the violence committed upon them.”

    Gascon assured prosecutors that decarceration would lead to lower recidivism rates and that the data backed him up. Prosecutors, including many who called themselves liberal Democrats, were skeptical.

    It didn’t help that Gascon’s inner circle mostly included former public defenders who thought the D.A.’s Office and the Los Angeles Police Department were shot through with systemic racism—who basically assumed the deputy D.A.s, many of whom were black or Latino, were enthusiastic enforcers of or, at best, cogs in the prison industrial complex.

    One of those former public defenders, Tiffiny Blacknell, who was now Gascon’s community and government affairs liaison, had been especially vocal. On her Instagram, Blacknell, who is black, had posted a picture of herself in a t-shirt that said, “THE POLICE ARE TRAINED TO KILL US,” and another photo of herself in a shirt that said, “THEY CAN’T KILL US ALL.”

    The true believers carrying water for Gascon seemed to imagine themselves doing battle with a white gerontocracy—stiff, staid, backward-looking prosecutors who just did not get it. “They think we’re dinosaurs and we’re standing in the way of change,” a deputy D.A. told me.

    “Without even knowing us, he basically spelled out that we were an office of systematic racism,” added deputy D.A. Maria Ramirez. Ramirez is suing the D.A.’s Office for demoting her for, she claims, refusing to toe the party line.

    The change could be felt across the county.

    Richard Doyle, the head of the Compton branch office, was directed by one of Gascon’s lieutenants, Mario Trujillo, to drop felony charges against three BLM protesters who had dragged a metal barricade onto some metro tracks, threatening to derail a train full of passengers. When Doyle protested, he was slapped with a “letter of reprimand” and later transferred to the Environmental Crimes Division. (Trujillo did not reply to requests for comment.)

    Snip.

    Phil Stirling, the lead prosecutor on the Andrade case, pointed out what pretty much everyone in the city’s rougher neighborhoods already knew: “Ninety-nine percent of the victims of gang murders and gang rapes and gang robberies and gang beat downs are minorites—black and brown people,” he said. “That’s what’s crazy about this whole racist prison bullshit.”

    But that “racist prison bullshit” has had a profound and negative impact. Since Gascon took office, roughly 300 deputy D.A.s have left. On top of that, job applications are down. The D.A.’s Office usually hires every two to three years, and it gets about 2,000 applications each hiring season. This year, 240 people applied for 60 spots, a longtime deputy D.A. told me. “And you should see who these people are,” he said. ​​“It’s people who no one else will hire.”

    Everywhere the racist ideas of social justice have been tried, it is poor minorities who are hurt worst by the crime and chaos it brings. That, in fact, seems part of the entire point: To destroy the foundations of America’s Constitutional system of ordered liberty so that radical, neo-Marxist ideas can be imposed.

    To the Soros network, the destruction of so many American lives is a feature, not a bug.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 4 Comments »

    Republicans Flip Another Hispanic Texas House Seat

    June 15th, 2022

    Republican inroads into Texas Democratic Hispanic strongholds continue apace.

    According to unofficial results, Republican Mayra Flores has won the special election to represent Texas’ 34th Congressional District, anchored in Cameron County.

    The 34th is a sprawling district that includes a lot of rural southern Texas between San Antonio and the Gulf Coast. Cameron County is where the Rio Grande empties into the Gulf of Mexico, and includes Brownsville, Harlingen and South Padre Island.

    It’s an 85% Hispanic district that went for Obama by 61% in 2012, but for Biden by only 51% in 2020, an indication of the steady erosion of Democratic support among Texas Hispanics. And it’s also a district that suffers greatly under the Biden Administration’s continued refusal to deport illegal aliens.

    It’s also where Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch facility in Boca Chica is located. A small house Boca Chica is also Musk’s legal residence, and Musk announced on Twitter that he voted for Flores.

    Flores’ victory represents a major upset for the historically Democratic seat.

    A Republican has not won the seat since the district was drawn in the last redistricting cycle 10 years ago. In fact, over the past forty years, a Republican has only won the seat once, in 2010.

    Flores squeaked past the 50 percent mark just after 9 p.m. on Tuesday night. At the time, runner-up Dan Sanchez, a Democrat, had just over 43 percent of the vote.

    Flores enjoyed a clear advantage over Sanchez in the election day vote count. Among early voters only, the gap between the two candidates was fewer than 300 votes. Election day voters preferred Flores to Sanchez by well over a thousand votes.

    The special election pitted candidates from both parties in a four-way race on the same ballot. However, party leaders largely rallied behind Flores and Sanchez.

    Flores, a respiratory care practitioner, had already won the Republican primary in March before the incumbent Filemon Vela (D-TX-34) announced his retirement. Flores enjoyed the endorsements of Governor Greg Abbott and Texas GOP Chairman Matt Rinaldi.

    On the Democratic side, Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-TX-15), who currently represents a neighboring congressional district in South Texas, won the Democratic nomination on March 1. However, Vela’s abrupt resignation announcement meant that Gonzalez would have had to leave his current seat to run for the 34th district instead of waiting for a regular transition in November.

    Gonzalez decided not to leave his current seat, endorsing Sanchez in his stead.

    Sanchez also nabbed Vela’s endorsement among other prominent Democrats, such as attorney general candidate Rochelle Garza.

    However, there’s a caveat:

    Bolstered by ongoing political trends in South Texas, timing gave Republicans an advantage.

    The voting population included in District 34 under the current map leans 54 percent Democratic based on data from the past two general elections. But the voting population of the newly adopted district map leans 63 percent Democratic.

    In other words, if Vela had not retired and triggered a special election, his replacement would have been decided in November by a more Democratic voting population than what the district currently includes.

    Flores may face a greater challenge in November when the regular election takes place under the new map with a more Democratic voting population.

    Between the impact of the Biden Recession and the continued flight of Hispanics from the Democratic Party, if ever there were a year for Republicans to defend a marginal seat, 2022 is it. Expect Flores to get all the help she needs from the state and national party to hold the seat.

    Can Republicans trust her to not go squishy on border security once in office? Since she’s married to a border patrol agent, I’m go to go with “Yes”…

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    Posted in Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Texas | 3 Comments »

    Banks Runs In China?

    June 14th, 2022

    Reader Kirk suggested Chinese bank runs might be the next story to cover. I think I covered bank runs at smaller rural Chinese banks in a previous “China is screwed” post. Is a wider run in progress? Maybe.

    Multiple sources contacted by Asia Markets, have confirmed deposits at the following six banks have been frozen since mid-April.

  • Yuzhou Xinminsheng Village Bank (located in Xuchang City, Henan Province)
  • Zhecheng Huanghuai Bank (City of Shangqui, Henan Province)
  • Shangcai Huimin Rural Bank (Zhumadian City, Henan Province)
  • New Oriental Village Bank (City of Kaifeng, Henan Province)
  • Huaihe River Village Bank (Bengbu City, Anhui Province)
  • Yixian County Village Bank (Huangshan City, Anhui Province)

    • It’s understood the banks with branches across the Henan and Anhui Provinces successively issued announcements in April, stating they would suspend online banking and mobile banking services due to a system upgrade.

    At the same time, clients reported their electronic deposits in online accounts, mobile apps and third-party platforms could not be withdrawn.

    This led to depositors rushing to local bank branches, only to be told they were unable to withdraw funds.

    By late May, images emerged on Chinese social media of demonstrations at the front of numerous bank branches. Asia Markets has verified these images with local contacts.

    Snip.

    Regardless of the cause, the developments raise serious questions about the health of China’s and its regulatory oversight. The more immediate concern, however, is the prospect of contagion, which could see the (so-far) rural-only bank run spread to bigger cities.

    There’s evidence this is already happening.

    In one of the only mainstream international media articles to report on the unfolding situation, local residents highlighted the seriousness of the situation and the likelihood of contagion.

    From the Financial Times on June 9:

    “Some depositors such as Xu have already lost trust in the system. The 39-year-old said he had withdrawn all of his deposits from 10 other small banks that had promised him an annualised yield of more than 4 per cent.

    “Another depositor, a 30-year-old father, said he had placed more than Rmb900,000 in his village’s banks since 2020 at a return of 4.1 per cent. “I felt like being slaughtered,” he said, declining to give his name. He drove overnight to negotiate with the banking regulator in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan, in mid-May. “This is the money my wife and I have saved together since we got married. I had to lie to her that I was away for work.”

    On Twitter, a video of a large line at an ICBC Bank in China (one of China’s largest state-owned banks) posted on Tuesday, June 9, suggest contagion is in progress.

    Translated to English, the tweet reads “The bank card system is locked, and these people are here to unlock it. Massive runs are coming.”

    Blogger, Jennifer Zeng, has reported major issues with withdrawing cash from banks in Shanghai in recent days. The uncertainty no doubt exacerbated by the prospect of more lockdowns as COVID cases again spike.

    “All banks in Shanghai have restricted depositors from withdrawing money… A bank run is about to sweep China,” she said.

    Maybe. This, from five days ago, suggests Shanghai banks are limiting total transactions to 300 a day.

    While I’m always willing to believe the worst about China’s smoke-and-mirrors economy, it’s possible that Shanghai’s problems are just temporary post-lockdown issues that will subside, assuming China doesn’t lock that city down again. (Don’t count on it.)

    All the reports of bank runs I’m seeing either link to that Asia Markets piece, or the Hal Turner radio show piece that largely reprints it.

    Right now I’m going to go with “Not Yet Proven” for current bank runs in China.

    Though Lord knows if I were stuck in China (and had somehow managed not to get imprisoned or executed), I’d be pretty intent on getting my money out of Yuan entirely and into something more stable like gold, silver, or even U.S. dollars…

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    Posted in Communism, Economics, video | 5 Comments »

    China’s High Speed Rail Network Is A Trillion Dollar Debt Sinkhole

    June 13th, 2022

    Lefty sorts are always whining that other countries have high speed rail networks and we don’t. Many point to China’s extensive network of high speed rail as what we should be doing.

    Tiny problem: China’s high speed rail network is a giant, unprofitable sinkhole of $1.8 TRILLION worth of debt.

    Some take-aways:

  • The average operating loss for the system is $24 million per day.
  • The official amount for China National Railway debt for high speed rail is $900 billion, but since roughly half of the debt comes from local governments, the total is probably closer to $1.8 trillion.
  • For comparison sake, $1.8 trillion is about South Korea’s entire yearly GDP.
  • “Shanghai, the richest city in China, has a total GDP of $600 billion in 2020, which means that even the whole year of Shanghai’s GDP won’t be able to cover the debt of China National Railway.”
  • It’s extensive: 37,900km, nearly double the length from 2015.
  • Return on high speed rail investment is only about 2%, and the bulk of bond payments for loans are coming due over the next few years. “Cash flow from railway transportation revenue isn’t enough to cover the operating costs, let alone the ability to pay the debt and interest.”
  • Local government debt levels are around 100%.
  • “More than 85% of the funds raised through urban investment bonds are earmarked for repaying old debts with new ones.”
  • Even the most profitable high speed rail stretch, Beijing to Shanghai, only earns a return on investment of 5%.
  • Japan’s successful high speed rail network serves three metropolitan areas (Tokyo, Nagoya and Osaka) that have 55% of that nation’s population.
  • “A professor at the School of Economics and Management of Beijing Jiaotong University concluded that the operating costs are only just covered when the transport density of a high-speed rail line reaches 36 million passenger kilometers per kilometer. In China the average transport density is only about 17 million passenger kilometers per kilometer.”
  • High speed rail can’t transport heavy freight.
  • “The Lanzhou Uramuchi HSR in western China can run more than 160 trains per day. In reality, this route only runs four trains per day.”
  • High speed rail occupancy rate is only 30%, and is still too expensive for most Chinese to use.
  • High speed rail construction has squeezed out much-needed construction of regular rail. “China’s rail freight capacity can’t meet market demand. China’s market share of road freight turnover has risen rapidly to 49% market share in 2016.” China rail has jacked up freight costs to make up for losses on high speed rail.
  • China’s freight trucks get overloaded all the time.
  • China’s containerized shipping accounts for 40% of global trade, but “the proportion of China’s sea rail intermodal transport volume in 2017 was only about 2.5 percent.” 84% of port containers go out by road.
  • So why all the money poured into high speed rail? Opportunities for corruption.

    Officials see the high-speed rail project in which China is involved as a lucrative opportunity. China’s former minister of railways, known as the father of high-speed rail, was sentenced to death for corruption. Emerging industries such as high-speed rail, which offer both substantial commercial value and political achievements for local officials, have enormous room for corruption. In a systemically corrupt environment white elephant projects, that is a large project that falls significantly short of its goals, and the costs of upkeep outweigh its usefulness, are favored by many officials and businessmen looking to make a fortune. The vast majority of high-speed railways around the world can’t make ends meet on passenger revenues alone to cover their construction and operating costs. Most operate at a loss.

    In light of all that, why do American leftists keep complaining about America’s lack of high speed rail? Simple: It’s the corruption, stupid. High speed rail construction offers boundless opportunities for graft and corruption, and refusing to build any keeps them from getting their snouts into another giant trough of taxpayer money…

    (I didn’t expect this past week to become a string of “China’s economy is smoke and mirrors all the way down” posts, but I keep running into more examples.)

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    Posted in Communism, Economics, Foreign Policy, video, Waste and Fraud | 17 Comments »

    Chinese Corporate Scam + Green Subsidy Scam = Mountains of Abandoned New Cars

    June 12th, 2022

    Here’s another entry for the “China’s economy is smoke and mirrors all the way down” file. Remember the previous story on the mountains of unused bikes for failed Chinese bike-sharing startups? Well, evidently the exact same thing happened with “green” cars:

    The mechanics of the scam:

    1. First they put together a down payment, order a batch of vehicles, and license them at a vehicle administration office.
    2. Then they contact government officials, present the vehicles in their hands and apply for permission on the grounds that they are operating an online car sharing business.
    3. The third step is to get the government’s permission, then go to the bank to get a loan.
    4. The fourth step is to find a financer and present the vehicles and the government papers to secure some venture capital from the financer.
    5. Last mortgage the vehicles to some smaller financial institutions to squeeze out their final value.

    After all these steps are completed, the scammers disappear. The bank, the financer and the small financial institution are left with triangular disputes while the vehicles rot somewhere in the wilderness.

    More takeaways:

  • China offers subsidies for new “green” cars.
  • Lots of these subsidized cars are bought by ride-sharing startups…
  • …that just happen to be subsidiaries of the the Chinese car companies manufacturing the cars being subsidized. (Presumably these are different companies than the pure scammers, but who the hell knows?)
  • Despite not being used, many have new license plates and up-to-date inspections.
  • Though there are minimum mileage requirements to get the subsidies, the businesses (in best Chinese fashion) just falsify the data.
  • “Especially the electric cars produced in previous years, the battery has a short range and the performance declines quickly. It’s worthless. At present it costs more to replace a new battery than the value of the old car.”
  • Most insane of all: China’s communist government required scrapping vehicles after 10 years or 100,000 kilometers. How’s that for “green”?
  • They later revised this to 15 years with annual inspections, then revised it again to a maximum of 600,000 kilometers.
  • And, of course, you can bribe inspectors to pass the inspection.

    • Green subsidy scams and failed startup detritus is hardly unknown in the U.S. (witness all those electric scooter sharing startups that are just now starting to go bankrupt), but China’s corner-cutting, get-rich-quick mentality combined with green government subsidies, interlocking corporate ownership, the usual Chinese scam artists and loose, bribe-able enforcement at various levels of Chinese government all combined for an especially appalling mountain of waste.

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    Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, video, Waste and Fraud | No Comments »

    Shanghai Locking Down Again

    June 11th, 2022

    Just days after the Chinese Communist Party lifted Shanghai’s last Flu Manchu lockdown, they’re locking Shanghai down again.

    China’s commercial hub of Shanghai will lock down millions of people for mass COVID-19 testing this weekend – just 10 days after lifting its gruelling two-month lockdown – unsettling residents and raising concerns about the business impact.

    Racing to stop a wider outbreak after discovering a handful of community cases, including a cluster traced to a popular beauty salon, authorities have ordered PCR testing for all residents in 14 of Shanghai’s 16 districts over the weekend.

    Five of the districts said residents would not be allowed to leave their homes while the testing was carried out. A notice issued by Changning district described the stay-home requirement as “closed management” of the community being sampled.

    The latest scare triggered a rush to grocery stores and online platforms to stock up on food, as users of China’s Twitter-like Weibo expressed fear they could be locked down for longer, having only started going back to work after the last lockdown was lifted on June 1.

    Some areas had remained sealed off or quickly returned to lockdown due to infections and their close contacts.

    While the rest of the world has moved on from useless lockdown foolishness, China is still Stuck On Stupid, and their “Zero Covid” policy has as much chance to stop spread as tying a live chicken rump to buboes had at stopping bubonic plague.

    You’ve got to hand it to Peter Zeihan, who said this was precisely the sort of stupidity China would keep pursuing when talking about Tianjin’s lockdown last month.

    I’ve been telling my clients for quite some time that it was only a matter of issue as to how the American/Chinese relationship imploded. It could be Trump, could be Biden, could be energy, could be food, could be security, could be trade, could be ethics, could be genocide. It’s a long list, but it appears that Covid ultimately is the one that is winning out.

    The Chinese vaccine does not work against Covid, and the Chinese have spent the last two years lambasting the world and lying in the propaganda that they are the only country that’s even remotely dealt well with Covid. And they’ve specifically parroted a lot of the crazy theories out there about the western vaccines, that they make you magnetic or they make you infertile or whatever else, so they can’t import the western vaccines at all they have to wait until they make their own MRNA formula, and there’s no way that’s going to happen in the next year or two, so lockdowns are the only public health policy they have and now the majority of the parts of china that matter are offline.

    If you’re stuck in manufacturing in China this is the beginning of the end, if it’s not the end already, because as soon as you have an opening, Omicron comes back in and then you get a closing again because that is the only tool that the Chinese Communist Party has left.

    At the beginning of the pandemic, many of us early on suggested that it was possible that Mao Tze Lung was an in-development bioweapon that escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Little did we know at the time that the country that would launch the most irrational policy in response to the weapon was China itself…

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    Posted in Communism, Foreign Policy, video | 6 Comments »

    LinkSwarm for June 10, 2022

    June 10th, 2022

    Democrat tries to murder Brett Kavanaugh and Pelosi shrugs, human traffickers busted in Texas, another Democrat convicted of voting fraud (in Philadelphia, naturally), WaPo finally draws a line it won’t let SJWs cross, and an 8K computer that can be yours if you have somewhere north of a quarter million dollars. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Another month, another four decade high inflation rate. “The Consumer Price Index (CPI) went up by 8.6 percent in May, the highest year-over-year increase since December 1981.”
  • Democrat arrested for attempting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh

    Nicholas John Roske was charged with attempting or threatening to murder or kidnap a Supreme Court justice Wednesday after traveling to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s home armed with a Glock handgun, intent on killing the justice over his expected rulings in ongoing cases related to abortion and the Second Amendment.

    Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif., was identified as the suspect in an affidavit unsealed Wednesday afternoon. Roske told law enforcement that he called 911 to turn himself in because he was having suicidal thoughts, also telling the operator that he intended to kill a “specific” Supreme Court justice, according to the affidavit.

    Roske was subsequently arrested, and officers found a Glock 17 pistol with two magazines, as well as a tactical knife, pepper spray, and other items.

  • Naturally, Democrats stalled a bill to provide additional security for Supreme Court Justices.
  • In another sign of the Democratic Party’s reasonable and measured approach to the abortion debate, pro-abortion terrorists firebombed a pro-life Christian pregnancy center in Buffalo.
  • Speaking of saving children, “70 Children Rescued in West Texas from Human Trafficking by State and Federal Authorities,” the youngest ten years old.
  • A former Democratic congressmen convicted and expelled for taking bribes has now been convicted of committing that voting fraud that Democrats swear up and down doesn’t exist.

    A former Democrat congressman, who was expelled from the House of Representatives in 1980 after getting caught taking bribes in what turned out to be an FBI sting, pleaded guilty to multiple election fraud charges this week after the U.S. Department of Justice charged him with bribery, falsifying voting records, stuffing ballot boxes, and more election crimes in Pennsylvania.

    According to U.S. Attorney Jennifer Arbittier Williams, 79-year-old Michael “Ozzie” Myers admitted to bribing Philadelphia election judge Domenick J. Demuro, who already pleaded guilty in 2020, during the 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 state elections for $300 to $5,000 per election and then telling him to lie about falsely inflating votes.

    Demuro, who “was responsible for overseeing the entire election process and all voter activities of his Division in accord with federal and state election laws,” then manipulated the voting machines in his respective ward and division in a way that satisfied Myers’ desire to “illegally add votes for certain candidates of their mutual political party in primary elections,” especially those clients who paid him “consulting fees.”

    “Some of these candidates were individuals running for judicial office whose campaigns had hired Myers, and others were candidates for various federal, state, and local elective offices that Myers favored for a variety of reasons,” the DOJ noted in a press release.

    Myers pulled the same stunt with another South Philadelphia election judge Marie Beren, who also pleaded guilty in 2021 to her role in the fraud.

    “Myers acknowledged in court that on almost every Election Day, Myers transported Beren to the polling station to open the polls. During the drive to the polling station, Myers would advise Beren which candidates he was supporting so that Beren knew which candidates should be receiving fraudulent votes. Inside the polling place and while the polls were open, Beren would advise actual in-person voters to support Myers’ candidates and also cast fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates on behalf of voters she knew would not or did not physically appear at the polls,” the DOJ stated.

    The pair also used cell phone communication to notate in real-time how many votes they faked versus how many were real.

    “If actual voter turnout was high, Beren would add fewer fraudulent votes in support of Myers’ preferred candidates. From time to time, Myers would instruct Beren to shift her efforts from one of his preferred candidates to another. Specifically, Myers would instruct Beren ‘to throw support’ behind another candidate during Election Day if he concluded that his first choice was comfortably ahead,” the press release continued.

    Much like Demuro, Beren then falsified poll books “by recording the names, party affiliation, and order of appearances for voters who had not physically appeared at the polling station to cast his or her ballot in the election” and balanced the list with the ballots recorded by voting machines before certifying the tainted results.

  • In a story that launched a thousand “Bye, Felicia” jokes, Washington Post Social Justice Warrior “reporter” Felicia Sonmez was fired for insubordination and constantly attacking her co-workers for victimhood points.

    The workplace drama began on June 2 when Sonmez publicly took colleague Dave Weigel to task after he retweeted a joke from YouTuber Cam Harless that said “every girl is bi. You just have to figure out if it’s polar or sexual.”

    Sonmez posted a screenshot of the retweet, captioning it “fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed!”

    Weigel deleted the retweet, and explained that he “did not mean to cause any harm.” Nevertheless, the Post handed down a one-month unpaid suspension to punish Weigel for his retweet.

    Post reporter Jose A. Del Real then waded into the controversy to criticize Somnez for continuing to tweet about Weigel and the paper even after it took action against Weigel. He accused her of public bullying and “clout chasing,” leading Sonmez to accuse Del Real of violating the paper’s social-media policy.

    With the drama hitting a boiling point, Post executive editor Sally Buzbee sent an internal memo to staff saying, “we do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online.”

    The memo seemed to spark a flood of pro-Post tweets from its reporters, who used similar language to laud the paper’s “collegial” work environment.

    Sonmez evidently took offense to her colleague’s tweets saying they were proud to work at the paper.

    “The reporters who issued synchronized tweets this week downplaying the Post’s workplace issues have a few things in common with each other,” Sonmez wrote on Twitter on Thursday morning. “They are all white . . . They are among the highest-paid employees in the newsroom, making double and even triple what some other National desk reporters are making, particularly journalists of color . . . They are among the ‘stars’ who ‘get away with murder’ on social media.”

    Will this be a cause for soul-searching among MSM outlets over the wisdom of staffing their newsrooms with social justice warriors? Of course not. Sonmez dared to make the mistake of going after higher ranking members of the Clerisy.

  • Speaking of crazy, sloppy social justice warrior attack dogs employed by the Washington Post, Taylor Lorentz was very, very upset that other people were right about Amber Heard against her wishes.

    Taylor Lorenz and the Washington Post are attempting a third adpocalypse. They’re attempting to take out rivals to the leftwing legacy media — specifically, YouTubers who sided more with Johnny Depp during the Amber Heard defamation trial. The leftwing media, of course, had uncritically championed Amber Heard, as they’d championed all #MeToo allegations, #BelievingAllWomen without asking for any evidence.

    In fact, the defamatory opinion piece Depp sued Heard for appeared in the Washington Post. They just added a stingy “Note” to their defamation.

    So Lorenz is now attempting to paint it as dangerous for people to openly question #MeToo allegations on YouTube, and to suggest there’s something wrong with non-legacy-media outlets making money off of a major media story. There’s nothing wrong with the Washington Post making money off it, of course — because they take the proper leftwing view of things.

    But people like Rekieta or YellowFlash or That Umbrella Guy, the people who thought that Amber Heard was lying? Which, of course, a jury found to be the case?

    They’re dangerous and they shouldn’t be allowed to make money off it. And damnit, YouTube has got to control who is allowed to make money from these news events!

    By the way: The entire Depp/Heard story was already heavily censored by YouTube. Videos would be demonetized — denied advertising — if they discussed it all. Because of this, YouTubers were forced to resort to the childish tactic of referring to Depp as “The Pirate Guy” and Heard as “the Aqua Lady” to avoid censorship and demonetization. They had to avoid saying the names of the people they were talking about.

    No, I’m serious.

    But that’s not enough for Taylor Lorenz and The Washington Post.

    Either they have to declare “The Aqua Lady is telling the truth and The Pirate Guy is an abuser,” or they must be deplatformed!

    And Lorenz, in making the case that only she, a nobody, barely-educated semiliterate wannabe influencer who pretends to be a tweenager online and gets away with it because she is effectively developmentally delayed, should be allowed to weigh in on the Depp-Heard trial, and that actual trial lawyers like Rikieta and LegalBytes should not be so allowed, is on a scorched earth campaign to make them toxic to advertisers.

    And of course she’s also up to her old tricks of claiming she reached out to her subjects — I mean, targets and victims — for comment.

    Spoiler alert: She did not reach out to her targets and victims for comment.

  • “How The Virginia Project Helped Engineer the 2021 GOP Wins in Virginia.”

    Gordon decided to take a strategic approach to make the Virginia GOP a party that could attract serious, intelligent, capable candidates, run them, and win. He founded The Virginia Project (TVP) with the mission to create a 21st-century party infrastructure capable of competing effectively and rolling back Democrat Party influence.

    Once Gordon realized that Republicans failed to field candidates in 25% of races with a Democrat incumbent in 2019, he made running a candidate in every race a mission point. Other objectives of TVP included taking a complete accounting of GOP performance in every election district and providing a baseline level of support for every GOP candidate in the state. The group also wanted to share tools and best practices to optimize branding, marketing, messaging, voter outreach, and mobilization throughout the state. The goal was to disrupt the Democrats’ narratives and force them to play defense.

    After the 2020 election, Gordon realized that to put Democrats on their heels, TVP would have to go on offense. There was no way to verify the vote in Virginia after nearly 60% of Virginians voted early or by mail. The window for challenging congressional elections closed in 25 days. There was no point in fielding candidates across the state without shoring up election integrity. So with the help of Ned Jones, Gordon and TVP set about securing Virginia’s elections.

    The group forced the implementation of voter roll management laws already on the books. TVP ensured the process was logged, transparent, and consistent in every Virginia county and removed a half million bad entries from the voter rolls statewide. Then TVP made sure a system was in place for 2021 that had what Gordon refers to as “Eyes on Every Ballot.”

    Challenging elections after the fact proved fruitless at the state and national levels in 2020. The key would be to challenge violations on the spot rather than post facto. TVP prepared and delivered training for election observers. The Virginia GOP went from 33% to 95% observer coverage. Gordon said, “The worse Biden gets, the more people volunteer. A good look in some of the disputed states in 2020 also motivated people to get involved.”
    The success in recruitment and training allowed the GOP to challenge every suspected violation on election night 2021. As a Twitter thread from TVP noted, “[DNC lawyer Marc] Elias’ now-legendary losing streak started with us stopping him. We fought for and won every legal stipulation needed to enforce our rights.”

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • “Seven NEW Hunter Biden Scandals the Nets Refuse to Report On.” A lot of these I had heard of, but this one is new:

    President Biden unveiled new sanctions Thursday targeting influential Russians and President Vladimir Putin’s yachts on the 99th day of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine — but two oligarchs linked to his son Hunter Biden again were spared.

    The slow rollout of sanctions comes despite the president threatening “swift and severe” penalties ahead of the invasion, which began Feb. 24.

    New US-targeted individuals include the steel and gold-mining oligarch Alexey Mordashov, Putin-linked money manager Sergei Roldugin, billionaire property developer God Nisanov, electronics executive Evgeny Novitsky, banker Sergey Gorkov and Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The Treasury Department also sanctioned two yachts that Putin allegedly co-owns and the Monaco-based yacht brokerage Imperial Yachts and its Russian CEO, Evgeniy Kochman.

    It remains unclear why Hunter Biden’s alleged Russian business associates — the billionaire oligarchs Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenko — eluded the latest round of US sanctions against members of Russia’s business elite.

    It’s a great mystery.

    Baturina, whose wealth derives largely from construction, in 2014 paid a firm associated with Hunter Biden $3.5 million, according to a 2020 report written by Republican-led Senate committees. She is the widow of former Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, and documents from Hunter Biden’s laptop indicate she may have attended a 2015 dinner in DC with then-Vice President Joe Biden.

    Yevtushenkov, who owns a nearly 50% stake in Russian conglomerate Sistema — which has telecom, retail, banking, food and health interests — faces UK sanctions over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but hasn’t yet been targeted by the Biden administration. He met with Hunter Biden in 2012 at Moscow’s Ritz-Carlton hotel, but recently claimed they had no subsequent contact.

  • “Meet the Guardsman Helping Ukrainians Blow Up Russian Tanks over the Phone.”

    Before the war, [Sgt. 1st Class Chris] Freymann, a cavalry scout in the Washington state National Guard, had been the lead instructor in the U.S. military’s program that trained soldiers in Ukraine how to use the shoulder-fired tank-killing missiles. He trained about 200 Ukrainian troops during his months with the program.

    Russia launched its invasion in February, after U.S. trainers left. But the relationships Freymann made remained. His former students — now troops fighting on the front lines — again reached out for help on operating the Javelins as they encountered technical issues or forgot details.

    “When the war started, I had a lot of guys hitting me up on WhatsApp,” Freymann told Military.com. “One of our linguists, her husband was one of the few soldiers who were left. A lot of the students trained by the other [Guard units] died.”

    Freymann would relay information on operating the Javelin to the linguist. Her husband, who was in the fight, would then send Freymann photos and videos of destroyed Russian tanks. Freymann says at least four tanks were destroyed after some of his over-the-phone coaching.

  • Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Americans are abandoning high tax states (New York, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey) and moving to low tax states (Florida, Texas, Arizona, North Carolina, Tennessee). (Hat tip:Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • “Pizza Hut is featuring a book about ‘drag kids’ as one of the books promoted by its ‘Book It!’ reading incentive program aimed at children in pre-kindergarten through 6th grade.”
  • “Louisiana Transgender Sports Ban To Become Law.” Good. If you have XY chromosomes, you shouldn’t be competing in women’s sports.
  • Speaking of obvious truths vs. radical transsexism: “Norwegian Feminist Faces Three Years In Prison For Saying Biological Men Can’t Be Lesbians.”
  • Ilya Shapiro resigns from Georgetown University rather than work with a Social Justice Warrior Sword of Damocles hanging over his head.
  • Brandon Herrera fires a rare Barrett .50 BMG designed to take out helicopters.
  • How bad is the new Lord of the Rings TV series? This bad.
  • And Disney is about to just churn out an endless conveyor belt of garbage.
  • Ouch!

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

  • Not news: Real estate owners in New York City jacking up rates. News: Jacking up New York real estate. Namely jacking a landmark Broadway theater up 30 feet to put retail space underneath it.
  • Houston YouTube rapper who bragged about robbing ATMS arrested for robbing ATMs. What are the odds? (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Speaking of Dwight, he’s showing off his new gun purchase, a Smith and Wesson Model 38 Bodyguard Airweight in .38 Special.
  • Got over $200,000 lying around? Then you still have time to bid on an original Apple-1 computer signed by Steve Wozniak.
  • Boys und Panzer.

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Guns, Media Watch, Military, Supreme Court, Texas | 3 Comments »

    New Trend For Young Chinese: Give Up And “Let it Rot”

    June 9th, 2022

    It’s tough to be a pimp young worker in today’s China. In addition to being repressed by the communist government, they’re unable to afford cars or houses, and many can’t even find jobs. As a result, some have turned to the philosophy of bai lan, or “Let it rot.” They’re just giving up on working or caring anymore and openly embracing loserdom.

    Naturally, the CCP is not pleased. Commies have never been tolerant of “parasitism” getting in the way of their political goals.

    A few takeaways:

  • The unemployment rate for those 16-24 is 18.2%. “The highest rate since official figures began.”
  • Even graduates of prestigious Peking University were competing for entry level bureaucratic jobs.
  • The repeat Flu Manchu lockdowns were the last straw for many. “What is the point of working hard when you can lose your basic rights as a human being, when your home can be broken into and when your private items can be thrown away at will? Chinese people once thought that if they worked hard and followed the rules they could have a good future but that seems to be an illusion.” Yeah, totalitarian Communist states are funny that way…

    • Unspoken is just how these young working-age Chinese who have given up manage to afford food and shelter, but I’m just assuming they’re following the time-honored tradition of sponging of their parents. What are they going to do, kick out their only heir?

    The problem with reports like this is that it’s hard for those of us outside China to determine just how widespread this phenomena is. Is it “Hey, all the young kids are listening to Mel Torme” or “Hey, all the young kids are listening to Nirvana”? It sucks to be young with dim prospects during a recession, and it sucks a lot worse to be under the heel of a communist dictatorship. Combining those isn’t a recipe for happiness.

    Hey Chinese bai lan sufferers: Have you considered launching a revolution against the communist government instead? That would give you lots of excitement and fill your life with purpose! It may shorten it as well, but I suspect it beats lying around waiting to die…

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    Posted in Communism, Economics, Foreign Policy | 10 Comments »

    Soros-Backed DA Chesa Boudin Recalled in San Francisco

    June 8th, 2022

    Before this year, if you had asked observers where the next big conservative political revolution would come from, “San Francisco” would probably be about the last place on the list. But first voters ousted three radical school board members over Critical Race Theory and now San Francisco voters have recalled radical Soros-backed DA Chesa Boudin.

    Fed-up San Francisco voters ousted their progressive district attorney on Tuesday in a recall election that rejected his soft-on-crime policies following surges in shameless shoplifting, car break-ins and rampant, open-air drug dealing.

    The recall effort against Chesa Boudin, a former public defender and the son of convicted Weather Underground terrorists, was supported by 61% of voters in early returns, according to NBC.

    Tuesday’s recall election, Proposition H on the ballot, could prove a bellwether of voter sentiment across the US, including in New York City, where Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has faced widespread criticism since enacting a slew of progressive policies after taking office in January.

    “Around the country, we have seen the rise of the so-called progressive DAs,” Richie Greenberg, a former Republican mayoral candidate and spokesman for the recall effort, told The Post before Tuesday’s vote.

    “We here in San Francisco have lived it and we don’t want to see the great city of New York fall in the way that San Francisco has.”

    Snip.

    Viral videos have revealed shoplifters running rampant during smash-and-grab thefts at high-end stores, with city police Lt. Tracy McCray lamenting to Fox News last year that “we can have a greatest hits compilation of people just walking in and cleaning out the store shelves.”

    Offenses against Asian-Americans also proliferated amid the pandemic, with lifelong resident Henry Wong, 74, who worked for the late comedian Robing Williams saying that people “spit on me on elevators, on the streets” and calling Boudin “the worst district attorney the city has ever had.”

    “These are crimes,” Wong told the Washington Post.

    “And he doesn’t care. It’s just so easy to break the law.”

    The latest official police statistics show that overall crime in the city is up nearly 8 percent this year, with a 20 percent surge in larcenies, as well as spikes in homicides, rapes and assaults.

    Boudin was just one of 75 George Soros-backed prosecutors elected around the country. (Here’s a list to get started on.) Here’s a partial list of Soros fronts:

  • Open Society Foundation
  • The Tides Center
  • The Tides Foundation
  • Tides Advocacy
  • Alliance for Safety and Justice
  • The Brennan Center for Justice (“Brennan also employs the public relations firm Berlin Rosen, which also happens to be the largest expenditure item for nearly all Soros DA campaign spending.”)
  • Color of Change
  • Equal Justice Initiative
  • Fair and Just Prosecution
  • Justice and Public Safety PAC (and various subsidiary state organizations)
  • NEO Philanthropy Fund
  • New Virginia Majority
  • The New Venture Fund
  • The Sixteen Thirty Fund
  • Texas Organizing Project
  • Vera Institute for Justice

    • I’m betting there are others.

    Bouncing Boudin is an excellent start, but all Soros prosecutors need to be recalled, defeated, or indicted. Crime cannot improve as long as racist Soros-backed prosecutors refuse to indict, try or convict criminals due to the color of their skin.

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    Posted in Crime, Democrats, Social Justice Warriors | 5 Comments »

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