Posts Tagged ‘Social Justice Warriors’

How California Destroyed Its Middle Class

Saturday, May 13th, 2023

The decline of California under one-party Democrat rule has been one of the long-running themes of this blog. Today Victor Davis Hanson discusses how California’s wealthy destroyed the middle class with policies whose baleful effects they knew wouldn’t fall on them.

  • “The irony is that, as we created more wealth and more leisure, because of the very success of the middle class citizen, the middle class citizen and his central role in western government was forgotten.”
  • “California in the 1960s had the largest middle class in the United States. California had the finest educational system. California invented the idea of a modern freeway and a modern airport.”
  • “California had a state where two-thirds of the people lived with one-third of the precipitation, and yet they built the greatest transference of water with reservoirs and aqueducts the world had ever seen.”
  • “California had the most successful oil, timber and mineral industries in the world. They had some of the finest universities…Again this was a product of, both democratic governors and Republican governors.”
  • “However, today when we look at California, it’s got the highest number of homeless people in the United States. Half of all of America’s homeless live in California.”
  • “One-third of all the welfare recipients in the United States live in California. One-fifth of all Californians live below the poverty line.”
  • “California yet has the highest taxes in the country in the aggregate, the highest property taxes because of the enormous assessed evaluations…highest sales tax at over 10 to 11%, highest income tax at up to 13.2%.”
  • “The result of all of that that is is the middle class finds itself unable to pay and be competitive with other businesses in other states.”
  • “They look at all of these higher taxes, and they say themselves ‘I’m willing to pay it if I’m economically viable,’ but the regulations that the state creates fall heavily on the small farmer, the hardware store owner, the tire [store?] owner, but not necessarily on the Silicon Valley corporation that has an array of lawyers, or legal teams, or analysts, or economists, that find ways not to pay it.
  • “And so the middle class leaves, they vote with their feet they go to places where it’s more conducive for middle class livelihoods. We’ve lost somewhere between 8 and 12 million people of the middle class.”
  • At the same time, America has allowed in 20 million illegal aliens, half of which have ended up in California.
  • “We have not built an aqueduct in California in about 40 years. The schools that were rated in the top 10 percent of comparative state rankings are now in the bottom 10 percent. The airports are decrepit.”
  • “That the more taxes I pay, the worse schools I get.”
  • “In this period, there was about five trillion dollars in market capitalization that grew out of Silicon Valley alone. And we created sort of a medieval caste, a wealthy caste of Barons and Lords that were not subject to the consequences of their own ideology. So they had so much wealth they felt they were exempt from worries about taxation.”
  • “We created a very, very wealthy elite that was not subject to the consequences of their own ideology.”
  • Whether out of virtue signaling and guilt, or whether out of contrived political necessity, they made a political alliance with the very poor of California. And the poor said “Give us more entitlements, tax the middle class, transfer that money to us we need it.” And the wealthy said “Yes, we will open the borders. We’ll transfer money, but you have to vote for issues that we’re in favor of. And we’re in favor of them precisely because they don’t affect us.”

  • And of course, the left’s disdain for the middle class shows up in their language: They’re the “bitter clingers,” the “deplorables,” the “chumps and dregs of society.”
  • “Muscular labor was no longer essential to the American experiment. In other words, you could make have things made overseas in China or southeast Asia or Mexico. And the great middle class territory of the middle west of the United States—Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana—started to become hollowed out.”
  • “We’ve taken the middle class, the backbone of citizenship, and we’ve eroded it and destroyed it.”
  • LinkSwarm for May 12, 2023

    Friday, May 12th, 2023

    Biden family corruption, Hollywood fumbles, Poland rising, and a whole bunch of NFL teams you’ve never heard of. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • House Republicans reveal details of Biden crime family.

    The Biden family and its business associates created a complicated web of more than 20 companies, according to bank records obtained by the House Oversight Committee — a system, GOP lawmakers say, that was meant to conceal money received from foreign nationals.

    Sixteen of the companies were limited liability companies formed during Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president, the committee said in a press conference on Wednesday. The Biden family, their business associates, and their companies received more than $10 million from foreign nationals’ and their related companies, the records show. These payments occurred both while Biden was in office as vice president and after his time in office ended.

    In what Representative Nancy Mace called an act of “financial gymnastics,” many payments were routed from foreign companies to the Biden family’s business associates’ companies which then doled out payments to the Bidens in incremental payments to different bank accounts in an alleged attempt to hide the source of the funds.

    At least nine Biden family members received payments, according to committee chairman James Comer. That includes Hunter Biden; James Biden; James Biden’s wife, Sara Jones Biden; the late Beau Biden’s wife, Hallie Biden; Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle; Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen; and “three children of the president’s son and the president’s brother.”

    Much of the money came from Chinese nationals and companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Multiple Biden family members received money after it passed through an associate’s account. Comer said of the countries the Biden family was influence peddling in, China is “the most reputable.”

    The committee revealed Wednesday that records suggest the Biden family and its associates’ business dealings in Romania “bear clear indication of a scheme to peddle influence” from 2015 to 2017.

    At the time, then-Vice President Biden spoke out against Romanian corruption while the Biden family received more than a million dollars from a company controlled by a Romanian national, Gabriel Popoviciu. Popoviciu, who has been accused of corruption, sent the money through a Biden family associate, according to the committee. Sixteen of the seventeen payments involved in the deal occurred while Biden was still in office. The money “stops flowing from the Romanian national soon after Joe Biden leaves the vice presidency,” Comer said.

    The Bidens also received “millions of dollars from China,” with Comer saying it is “inconceivable that the president did not know” about the payments.

    Comer said the information revealed Wednesday is the result of subpoenas to four different banks and stressed that the committee is still early in its investigation and believes there are as many as 12 banks with records relevant to its investigation.

    Naturally, the mainstream media are doing their very best to ignore these revelations…

  • How badly the Biden Recession screwing the Democrats? Elizabeth Warren is trailing possible Republican challenger Charlie Baker by 15 points. Early poll caveats apply, but this is Massachusetts. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Man whose ad campaigns made Bud Light #1 complains that Budweiser’s tranny pander has destroyed all his work in a week.
  • “Why shouldn’t Poland be richer than Britain?”

    You might have noticed a meme floating around the media about how Britons could become “no better off than people living in Poland”. “If the UK continues with the same level of growth it has seen for the last decade,” writes Sam Ashworth-Hayes, “Poland will be richer than Britain in about 12 years’ time”:

    It sounds like an absurd idea that in 2040 we might see complaints in the Polish press about a flood of British plumbers undercutting wages, or Brytyjski Skleps lining the rougher areas of Warsaw, but it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

    This talking point has also appeared in the Telegraph, the Express and the Financial Times. It often comes with a sense of vague alarm and bewilderment. Poland? The post-communist place? Don’t they live entirely off vodka and potatoes? Don’t they have horses clippety-cloppeting down the streets selling women’s underwear pinched off a truck in Germany? Poland?

    Having lived in Poland for nine years, I can say that I am not at all surprised by these projections. To be clear, that is all they are — projections. A lot can change in nine years, in Britain and in Poland.

    Still, I think a lot of British people would be surprised by how much better things can be in the land of Lech Wałęsa and John Paul II. Equally, a lot of Polish people would be surprised by how much worse things can be in Britain — given that a lot of Poles of my acquaintance appear to think that getting rich in the U.K. is as easy as walking outside with a wheelbarrow and catching the banknotes that rain down from the sky.

    Britain has had minimal economic growth for years. Poland has long been enjoying some of the highest economic growth in Europe. It even emerged from the pandemic better off than other European nations with, as Paweł Bukowski and Wojtek Paczos wrote for the LSE, “a relatively lax approach to economic lockdown and a bit of sheer luck”.

    Institutions often seem to work better as well. I can generally visit a GP on the day I call. Britons often have to wait for more than a week. Maternal mortality is higher in the UK — and infant mortality is about the same, despite Britain being much richer overall. Actually, Polish life expectancy as whole is just a touch shorter than British life expectancy, despite the nation having a lot more smokers.

    Polish kids have ranked higher on the PISA education rankings than British kids — ranking, indeed, the third highest in Europe in science and maths, and the fourth in reading comprehension. Poland is a more peaceful place than Britain, with murder and rape generally being rarer (granted, statistics in the latter case are famously difficult to trust). Terrorism, for reasons I leave to the reader, has been almost non-existent in Polish society.

    Some Polish achievements are more difficult to quantify. In Britain, the 20th century was marked by a curious habit of ripping down beautiful buildings and constructing ugly ones. Poland, meanwhile, has been beautifully renovating and reconstructing many of its urban spaces, pursuing a philosophy of “preservation meets modernisation”. Warsaw and Kraków are famous enough, but travellers could also visit lovely towns and cities like Wrocław, Toruń and Gdańsk — or my own, Tarnowskie Góry.

    Also, Poland seems to have actual conservatives who aren’t afraid to push for the right policies, instead of timid functionaries scared of their own shadow.

  • UK sends Storm Shadow cruise missiles to Ukraine.
  • Chile nationalizes lithium. Peter Zeihan thinks this hurts China worst, but that’s one of his go-to conclusions…
  • King Charles III crowned. I have no strong opinions on this. It’s a hard gig to screw up, and they’ve had worse kings…
  • Oscar-winning actor Richard Dreyfuss says that Hollywood mandatory diversity rules make him vomit.
  • Texas republican state representative Bryan Slaton resigns over wine-and-bang sex with underage (for alcohol) staffer. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Last quarter, Disney+ lost 2.4 million subscribers. But this quarter is different! This quarter, Disney+ lost 4 million subscribers.
  • Related. “They got these ulterior motives, and you know, it’s about this this sort of political shit. And, yeah, I guess that’s part of it. But a lot of it is just these guys are just fucking stupid.”
  • This won’t end well: “UFC fighter says he could beat up any 10 ‘trans men’ at the same time, trans wrestler challenges him to 1-on-1 fight.”
  • Huge floods in China.
  • Golden Corral saved my life.”
  • “Biden Unable To Participate In Democratic Debates Due To Looming Screenwriters Strike.”
  • Oh no, not the bees!
  • Competitive tag. I’d still watch this over golf.
  • Like most people from Houston, I have little use for the BESFs Tennessee Titans, but this is pretty funny.

  • Cajun Dog is not tired of your shenanigans:

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • Americans Reject Transexism Because It’s Anti-Reality

    Sunday, May 7th, 2023

    “How many fingers, Winston?”

    While the usual poll caveats apply, a clear majority of Americans reject transexism.

    If a majority of the population was starting to reject a dangerous, destructive, violent ideology, normally that would be cause for serious celebration, right?

    But I dunno guys. I get the slightest feeling The Washington Post isn’t crazy about it, don’t you?

    Clear majorities of Americans support restrictions affecting transgender children, a Washington Post-KFF poll finds, offering political jet fuel for Republicans in statehouses and Congress who are pushing measures restricting curriculum, sports participation and medical care [sic].

    Most Americans don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth. A 57 percent majority of adults said a person’s gender is determined from the start, with 43 percent saying it can differ.

    Genders are not assigned at birth, sexes are recognized. If you have XX chromosomes you’re female, and if you have XY chromosomes you’re male. Everything is either rounding-fraction of genetic abnormality or sophistry. If a male Golden Retriever and a female Golden Retriever have puppies…

    You have my permission to “Awwwwww”

    …you don’t “assign” the puppies as puppies, you recognize the basic biological fact. No matter how much you might call them “kittens,” they remain puppies.

    Likewise, sex is a biological reality, not a social construct. Calling a man a woman, or mutilating him to make him look like a sad facsimile of a woman, doesn’t change those XY chromosomes, no matter how much he or random social justice warriors insist otherwise.

    The American people realize that, probably in much higher numbers than those polls indicate, and resent the left wing overclass for trying to shove transgenderism down our throats.

    LinkSwarm for May 5, 2023

    Friday, May 5th, 2023

    A Soros-backed DA is stepping down, a Harvard prof lying about playing footsie with commies sentenced, and another Democratic fundraiser convicted of fraud. It’s the Friday LinkSwarm!

  • Good news, everyone! Soros-backed St. Louis Democrat DA Kim Gardner has resigned.

    On Thursday, a progressive prosecutor who was notoriously funded by far-left billionaire George Soros announced her resignation, after months of bipartisan pressure to do so.

    Fox News reports that Kim Gardner, the Circuit Attorney for St. Louis, announced that her resignation will be effective June 1st. Gardner was one of the first prosecutors in the country to be bankrolled by Soros, who has since expanded his efforts to other major cities across the country. She was first elected in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, largely due to Soros’ financial backing. Prior to her resignation announcement, she had declared her intention to run for a third term in 2024.

    After years of criticism for being soft on crime and siding with criminals over victims, Gardner faced a whole new wave of criticism from both parties over an incident in February: Teenage volleyball player Janae Edmonson, who was visiting St. Louis from Tennessee for a tournament, was hit by an out-of-control car while crossing the road; although Edmonson survived, she had to have both of her legs amputated.

    The driver of the car was Daniel Riley, a man who was out on bond while awaiting trial for an armed robbery case. It was later revealed that Riley had violated the terms of bond dozens of times, but was never arrested. When the blame turned to Gardner for failing to keep him off the streets, she falsely claimed that her office had attempted to have Riley jailed once again, only to be denied by a judge; there are no records of her office filing any such motion or otherwise seeking the revocation of Riley’s bond.

    Following the Edmonson incident, Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R-Mo.) filed a petition quo warranto, the process by which the state attorney general can fire a prosecutor who has been determined to be neglectful of her duties. Bailey claimed that as many as 12,000 criminal cases have been dismissed due to Gardner’s failures, with another 9,000 having been thrown out right before they were set to go to trial, due to Garnder’s office refusing to provide evidence and speedy trials for defendants.

    After Gardner’s announcement, Bailey released a statement demanding that she vacate her office immediately, rather than wait for another month.

  • The Biden Banking Crisis continues to bubble along. First Horizon, PacWest, and Western Alliance are the new banks facing trouble. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Wagner Chief to Pull Mercenaries Out of Bakhmut over Ammunition Dispute with Russian Military.”

    Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said he will pull his mercenaries out of the meat grinder that is the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut on May 10, one day after Russia’s Victory Day Celebrations, which Russian president Vladimir Putin is expected to use to shore up support for the Russian invasion.

    The Wagner Group, a well-known mercenary unit known to be one of Russia’s most competent fighting divisions, is leading the charge on Bakhmut, a city that that has gained outsized symbolic importance.

    “I am withdrawing the Wagner PMC units from Bakhmut, because in the absence of ammunition they are doomed to senseless death,” Prigozhin said in full military fatigues and carrying an automatic weapon. The video he released showed him surrounded by masked Wagner fighters. Prigozhin also released a statement to the same effect.

    His forces had no choice but to withdraw to rear bases to “lick the wounds,” said Prigozhin, as translated by the Washington Post. If Wagner goes through with the withdrawal, it would be viewed as catastrophic in terms of morale. The Russian invasion has ground to a standstill after large-scale Russian and Ukrainian offensives last year. Kyiv, which has been amassing ammunitions including tanks and fighter jets, is expected to launch a fresh counterattack in the very near future.

    Prigozhin also launched a remarkable video tirade overnight on Telegram in which he displayed bodies of dozens of Wagner soldiers killed in Bakhmut. He angrily laid into the Russian Defense minister Sergei Shoigu and Valery Gerasimov, chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces, for supplying Wagner with only 30 percent of the ammunition that’s needed.

    The statement released today claimed that number was even lower, standing at 10 percent.

    One caveat is that we’ve heard complaints from Prigozhin about his ammo supply before.

  • Russian soldiers dig trenches in horse graveyard in occupied Ukraine. Now they have anthrax.
  • Biden CIA chief met with Epstein several times after financier convicted of child sex crime. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns had three meetings with Jeffrey Epstein in 2014, when the top spy official was deputy secretary of state and after Epstein was convicted of child sex exploitation.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
    

  • “Harvard chemistry professor sentenced for lying about ties to CCP…Former Harvard University Chemistry Department Chair Charles M. Lieber was sentenced Wednesday to time served and over $80,000 in fines for committing fraud and for failing to disclose his connections to the Chinese Communist Party.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Longtime Democratic Campaign Strategist Charged with Election Fraud.” And completely different than the Democratic Party fundraiser convicted of fraud last week.

    New Jersey Democratic campaign strategist James Devine was charged with election fraud for allegedly submitting more than 1,900 fake petitions to help secure a 2021 Democratic gubernatorial primary ballot spot for candidate Lisa McCormick, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin announced Tuesday.

    Devine was McCormick’s campaign manager and sent the fake voter certifications to the New Jersey Secretary of State’s Division of Elections via email in April 2021, but the New Jersey Democratic State Committee challenged his attempt days later, arguing that all the forms featured same the style of signature and at least one of the named voters was deceased, Platkin said.

    A judge subsequently took McCormick off the primary ballot, and Devine is now charged with third-degree offenses concerning nomination certificates or petitions, tampering with public records or information and fourth-degree falsifying or tampering with records.

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • “Kansas Becomes 1st State to Pass Law Defining Gender as a Person’s Sex at Birth.” One down, forty-nine to go…
  • Killer in Satan’s service finds the left’s child sexual mutilation fetish disgusting.
  • Shots of Minneapolis before and after the Antifa/BLM riots of 2020.
  • El Paso Engulfed In ‘Mass Migration Dumpster Fire‘ As State Of Emergency Declared.”
  • Accused serial black widow killer charged with murdering her fifth husband.
  • “You just killed two people tonight.” “Yeah, but when can I go back to school?”
  • California banning diesel effective 2036.
  • Could sexbots and AI end humanity?
  • “Googlers angry about CEO’s $226M pay after cuts in perks and 12,000 layoffs.” Funny how you never hear the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd going after the Sundar Pichais of the world.
  • Speaking of Google, I’m hardly an expert on AI, but here’s a piece that claims Google is getting its clocked cleaned by OpenSource AI.

    LoRA updates are very cheap to produce (~$100) for the most popular model sizes. This means that almost anyone with an idea can generate one and distribute it. Training times under a day are the norm. At that pace, it doesn’t take long before the cumulative effect of all of these fine-tunings overcomes starting off at a size disadvantage. Indeed, in terms of engineer-hours, the pace of improvement from these models vastly outstrips what we can do with our largest variants, and the best are already largely indistinguishable from ChatGPT. Focusing on maintaining some of the largest models on the planet actually puts us at a disadvantage.

    (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

  • The Case of the Disappearing Swiss Cheese Holes.
  • Wes Anderson’s Star Wars.
  • A nice stroke of book collecting luck: I picked up an inscribed presentation copy of H. G. Wells’ The Food of the Gods. Or rather, I picked it up as part of a multibook lot back in February and didn’t realize it was inscribed until last week.
  • “Biden Deploys 1,500 Troops At Border To Help Register New Voters.”
  • “Pro Disc Golfer Disqualified After Testing Negative For Cannabis.”
  • LinkSwarm for April 22, 2023

    Friday, April 21st, 2023

    I finally finished and sent off my taxes this week. It’s a load off my mind! Now I can get back to my low calorie life substitute!

    This week: The Biden Administration tries to cram transexism down America’s throat, more Blue City crime dysfunction, and the Babylon Bee is on fire!

  • “How Americans have taken a pay cut every month since Biden took office.”

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has laid out the devastating results of runaway government spending on the middle class and why it’s so important to claw back lost ground for the average American, who has “received a pay cut for 24 consecutive months … as inflation has persisted.”

    He also noted the average American family has lost the equivalent of more than $7,000 in annual income.

    There is a direct link between spending, borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, and these disastrous results for Americans.

    President Biden has spent trillions of dollars the nation didn’t have.

    These unchecked costs drove the deficit to record highs and pushed the debt over $31 trillion.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
    

  • Ex-Planned Parenthood exec commits suicide after botched child porn raid in Connecticut.

    A former Connecticut Planned Parenthood honcho took his own life days after police failed to arrest him on child pornography charges — botching the raid by knocking down the door of the suspect’s New Haven neighbor.

    Tim Yergeau, 36, the former director of strategic communications at the Southern New England branch of Planned Parenthood, died by suicide on Tuesday amid a child pornography investigation in Connecticut last week.

  • The Biden Administration desperately wants to cram transexism down America’s throats.

    The Biden administration on Thursday unveiled a proposal that would prohibit schools from instituting policies that “categorically ban transgender students from participating on sports teams consistent with their gender identity.” The policy would allow schools to implement certain limitations in the interest of fairness or safety, however.

    The proposed rule, which would impact any school or college that receives federal funding, would expand Title IX protections to include gender identity. Under the proposal, a “one-size-fits-all” ban on transgender athletes playing on teams that match their stated gender identity would be a violation of Title IX. The rule, which is likely to face challenges, will face a lengthy approval process.

    This is, in fact, the exact opposite of the text of Title IX, which provides special protection for biological women, not men pretending to be women.
    

  • “Pennsylvania Teachers, Activists Concocted Bogus LGBTQ Bullying Epidemic for Political Gain, Investigation Finds.”
  • Meanwhile, Twitter has moved in the opposite direction, saying it will no longer ban users for “misgendering” or “dead-naming,” i.e. daring to say that a biological man is a man.
  • Meanwhile, Democrats in Minnesota are planning to shove social justice down children’s throats.

    Under the radar, a package of bills is ramming through sweeping changes that will reorient our public schools around a new paradigm — subordinating academic basics to an obsessive, politicized preoccupation with race and social justice activism.

    “Critical Social Justice” ideology (CSJ) — the vehicle for manipulating our young people into adopting this worldview — is laced strategically through a variety of bills, including “ethnic studies” (HF 1502), “Teachers of Color” (HF 320) and now the House and Senate omnibus education bills (HF 2497/SF 2684).

    Taken together, this legislation will inject reductive, racialized thinking into every classroom in Minnesota’s approximately 500 school districts and charter schools; change the fundamental mechanics of education in our state; and give the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) and the Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board (PELSB) broad new powers that amount to an end-run around our state’s hallowed tradition of local control.

  • More blue city dysfunction. “Portland REI to Close Due to Record Number of Break-Ins, Thefts.”
  • California’s crazy program to subsidize poor home owners with mortgage down-payments runs out of money in 12 days.
  • Related: “Joe Biden Wants Homebuyers With Good Credit to Subsidize High Risk Mortgages.”
  • TikTok’s Democrat Lobbyists Visited Biden White House At Least 40 Times In Past Year.” Beijing Joe likes his dough.
  • Here’s a story I missed earlier: “Kazakhstan Impounds Property of Roscosmos Subsidiary.” That’s the Russian company that’s the main operator of Baikonur spaceport. Haven’t seen any resolution to this, mainly because Russia is so broke thanks to mismanagement, sanctions, and an illegal war of territorial aggression.
  • Ruh-roh!

  • ATF Director Steve Dettelbach says he’s not a firearms expert. Sounds like he should have another job.
  • No wonder they hid it. “Louisville Shooter’s Manifesto Details His Intent To Push Gun Control.”
    

  • Anheuser-Busch Thinks We’re Idiots.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • BuzzFeed shuts down. Dwight whipped this up:

  • Jay Leno drives the 1,025 horsepower 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170. I have an irrational desire to own something with a Hellcat engine, which I need like I need a hole in my head. Plus I like the look of the Shelby GT-500 Mustang better, and I’m not buying one of those either.
  • Size comparison video of different science fiction starships.
  • “Disney World Forced To Close After DeSantis Builds Elementary School Within 1,000 Feet.”

    “Disney has proudly employed sex predators for years, and this act of aggression by DeSantis will force thousands of our proud pedo-American workers to leave the park to stay outside the 1,000-foot radius required by law,” said Disney CEO Bob Iger. “This is tyranny!”

  • “Hasbro Introduces New ‘Transition Me Elmo’ Doll.”
  • “Budweiser Replaces Clydesdales With Cows Dressed As Horses.”
  • “Chicago Mayor Warns That If Local Walmart Locations Close People Will Have Fewer Places To Shoplift.”
  • “Newlyweds In San Francisco Looking For Nice One Bedroom, Zero Bath Starter Tent.”
  • 

    Ninth Circuit To Berkley: No, You Can’t Ban Natural Gas. Not Yours.

    Tuesday, April 18th, 2023

    Another lunatic leftwing California ecowarrior directive bites the dust.

    A federal appeals court on Monday overturned a California city’s first-in-the-nation ban on natural gas hookups in new buildings, saying it violates federal law.

    The three-judge panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal sided with a coalition of California restaurants, who argued that the City of Berkeley’s ordinance essentially bans gas appliances in violation of a 1975 directive that gives Congress control over restrictions on appliances. The unanimous ruling is a major blow to California Democrats’ green energy push, and could clear the way for legal challenges to similar bans around the country.

    Democrats have increasingly moved to ban gas stoves while attempting to downplay their efforts. New York is poised to become the first state to ban gas stoves, and California is working towards a statewide ban of its own. The White House has denied that President Joe Biden supports banning gas stoves while the Energy Department works to restrict their sale. Blue state attorneys general and environmental groups lined up to support the ban in court, in a sign of the case’s national implications.

    The California Restaurant Association claimed Berkeley’s ban violated the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act , which gives the federal government final say over restrictions on energy appliances.

    Judge Patrick Bumatay wrote that even though Berkeley lawmakers didn’t specifically ban the use of natural gas appliances, they reached the same result “circuitously” by changing their building code to ban gas piping—a policy that renders “the gas appliances useless,” he said.

    This preemption would apply to state policies as well, he added.

    “States and localities can’t skirt [federal preemption] by doing indirectly what Congress says they can’t do directly,” he wrote.

    There’s simply no end to the things ordinary people enjoy that radical environmentalists are willing to ban. Fortunately, there’s still some semblance of the rule of law to at least temporarily keep them in check…

    Ex-LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva Discusses The Homeless Industrial Complex

    Sunday, April 16th, 2023

    Here’s a video where Ex-LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva discusses how the Homeless Industrial Complex racket works there.

  • Five people a day die on the streets of LA in the gutter like a dog. Five a day. Like, five on drugs from overdosing overdosing on drugs, from illnesses that are treatable. But if you’re not being treated, like, for example, you’re insulin dependent type one [diabetes]. Without insulin you die. That’s what happens, because these are people are not in a state of mind to actually accept and seek medical care for a problem, so it goes untreated they die, or they overdose and they die, or they do both and they die. I think in 2020-2021, they registered, I think, over 1,800 deaths of that type on the street, which is mind-boggling, but it’s consistent.

  • “If you don’t pay attention, people are going to die. So the people, the activists, they want to get in the way. ‘Don’t touch them, you’re criminalizing poverty!’ or this or that. Yet they have no answer. And their solution is just to let people die on the street. That’s not a solution.”
  • “The [homeless] count is getting bigger, not smaller.”
  • “There’s a perception in the entire nation that, if you’re homeless and you like to use drugs, go to LA. Until that train stops, it doesn’t matter what you do locally in LA. You can’t defeat 49 other states sending all their homeless their derelicts their drug addicts to LA.” I don’t know, a lot still seem to be going to San Francisco. And we need to do more to spread the word to Austin’s drug addicted transients in hopes they move there.
  • When he started trying to clean things up, he got immediate pushback from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. They had “no desire whatsoever” to work with him.
  • “They’re not doing anything about it because the homeless industrial complex is alive and well. Look at the career arc of Holly Mitchell, supervisor. Karen Bass, mayor. Community organizers. Now they’re running non-profits. Now they’re receiving contracts from the county, from the city. Now they’re in public office. Those two in particular prime example of it, and that’s the wave of the future.”
  • “You’ve got a whole community of people that are in the 501c3s, the non-profits, and uh Boards of Directors, CEOs. The amount of money is pouring into the nonprofits is just incredible. There’s no governance, there’s no oversigh, there’s no accountability on the results. They just keep shoveling money at them, and the problem keeps getting worse and worse.”
  • “This has become a system for people to to get in and get involved, and actually build a career and build a path to politics. The top 10 CEOs of non-profits eight hundred thousand dollar a year. They were making more than twice what I was making as sheriff, and the size of my operation dwarfed all of them probably combined. But that tells you the influence the money involved.”
  • “From 2011 to 2021, L.A. County spent 6.5 billion dollars on homeless initiatives. The homeless count went from 39,000 to over 80,000. it doubled in size.”
  • “It’s engulfing every corner of life in L.A County.”
  • Watch the whole thing.

    LinkSwarm for April 14, 2023

    Friday, April 14th, 2023

    If you’re stressing over your taxes, you might be slightly relieved to know that they’re not due until April 18. Thus week: More Blue City violence and decline, lots of Social Justice Warrior backlash, Facebook shows snowflakes the door, and Budweiser commits brand suicide.
    

  • “Ex-ABC Senior Producer Who Rolling Stone Covered For Indicted On Child Porn Charges. Former ABC senior producer James Gordon Meek has been indicted on three counts of child pornography nearly one year after the FBI raided his Arlington, Virginia home.”
    

  • “A Silicon Valley Vs. Homeless Industrial-Complex Power-Struggle Emerges In San Francisco.”

    Something about the apparently random street murder of Silicon Valley tech executive Bob Lee seems to have overturned a crawly rock in San Francisco’s political scene, suggesting a brewing power struggle on the horizon.

    On the one hand, we have a very vocally angry Silicon Valley tech community speaking out about the out-of-control crime situation in the city, with the valued and talented Lee’s untimely death from some night creature who crawled out from some sewer or encampment and stabbed him to death, quite possibly in a drug-addled haze. That’s expected if you live in a place full of bums and criminals, but Lee didn’t live in a place full of bums and criminals. He had actually fled the city for Florida based on its engulfing crime and come back only for a brief business trip.

    On the other hand, we have a soggy, entrenched political establishment seeking to assure that there’s really no crime problem at all. This is evident enough in the “crime is down” coverage seen in the political establishment’s house organ, the San Francisco Chronicle, and in the surreal statements of the city hall power establishment, which is rooted in special interests, particularly the most powerful one, the homeless industrial complex. I wrote about that here. San Francisco currently spends about as much on homeless “services” as it does on police, and by some studies such as the one cited below, actually more.

    Not surprisingly, as per Thomas Sowell’s observation, you can have all the poverty you want to pay for, and San Francisco pays a lot.

    The Hoover Institution’s Lee Ohanian has noted:

    Spending $1.1 billion on homelessness is just the latest installment in San Francisco’s constant failure to sensibly and humanely deal with an issue that it chronically misdiagnoses and mismanages about as much as is humanly possible. Since fiscal year 2016–17, San Francisco has spent over $2.8 billion on homelessness, and the city’s politicians remain seemingly baffled, year after year, as the number of homeless in the city skyrocket, as opioid overdoses kill more than COVID-19, and as the city has become nearly the most dangerous in the country. https://www.hoover.org/research/why-san-francisco-nearly-most-crime-rid….

    Since 2016, the number of homeless in San Francisco has increased from 12,249 to 19,086, which comes out to about $57,000 in spending per homeless person per year. With a total population of about 860,000, roughly 2.2 percent of San Francisco residents are homeless, which is over 12 times the national average. There is little doubt that as San Francisco spends more, homelessness and its impact on the city worsens.

    Do the homeless get that $57,000 being spent on them? Of course not. The princelings of the NGO establishments got that money — for themselves. That’s what’s made them politically powerful, enough to call the shots at city hall.

    Democrats and Social Justice Warriors view homelessness as a huge profit center, and seek to increase the ranks of the homeless at every opportunity.

  • Speaking of Bob Lee’s murder, the former San Francisco fire commissioner was attacked with crowbar the day after Lee was stabbed to death.
  • Also, an arrest was made in the Lee case and it was a fellow tech guy who knew him. “A tech executive named Nima Momeni was arrested by San Francisco police Thursday morning in the April 4 killing of Cash App founder Bob Lee…Lee and Momeni were portrayed by police as being familiar with one another. In the wee hours of April 4, they were purportedly driving together through downtown San Francisco in a car registered to the suspect.” So not a random gibbering drug-addicted transient.
  • Speaking of San Francisco street crime, a Whole Food closes one year after opening due to violence and theft.
  • Speaking of store closings in blue cities, Walmart is closing half their Chicago stores.
  • Is it it riot and murder season in Baltimore already? Ha! Trick question! It’s always riot and murder season in Baltimore.

  • “Embattled Soros-Backed St. Louis Prosecutor Sanctioned By Judge Amid New Complaints.”

    A St. Louis judge sanctioned St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner’s office last week for allegedly withholding evidence in a double-murder case, while allowing the suspect out on bond, amid rising criticism about left-wing prosecutors allowing crime to flourish in major U.S. cities.

    Alex Heflin, 23, was held without bond since January after he was initially charged with two counts of second-degree murder and armed criminal action, local media reported. But those charges were recently reduced to involuntary and voluntary manslaughter before he was released, while his April 17 trial has been postponed until June 12.

    Judge Theresa Counts Burke ruled in favor of Heflin’s lawyers after they filed a motion accusing a prosecutor under Gardner of violating discovery rules. They alleged that her office did not turn over evidence, including a 911 call recording and DNA evidence.

    “The court finds that there have been repeated delays by the state in obtaining discovery and providing it to the defense,” Burke wrote, according to local reports.

    “There has been a lack of diligence on the part of the state in following up and providing discovery to the defendant in a timely fashion. As a result of the state’s actions and lack of diligence, the court grants defendant’s second motion for sanctions.”

    Under Burke’s order, Heflin will have to remain on GPS monitoring. She also ordered the circuit attorney’s office to hand over their list of witnesses within 24 hours, provide DNA test results within 24 hours, or ask a crime lab for the DNA results.

  • Remember when Reagan was criticized for taking the deficit above $100 billion? Now it’s over a trillion. Every six months. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • 2024 update: Tim Scott getting in.
  • Mike Pompeo getting out.
  • Fort Worth ISD to make DEI die.
  • Molotov balloons are a ball filled with sulfuric acid, but white strips are a type of paper treated with potassium chlorate and a sugar mix. When the balloon breaks, the acid reacts with the potassium chlorate and sugar, which causes ignition.”
  • Another girlboss indicted: “Penn grad Charlie Javice, founder of Frank, charged with fraud over $175M JPMorgan deal.” Seems the heart of the indictment is fake users.

    Prosecutors and the SEC allege that Javice orchestrated a scheme to deceive JPMorgan into believing that Frank had access to valuable data on 4.25 million students who used the company’s service when in reality the number was less than 300,000.

    Prosecutors said when JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) sought to verify the number of Frank users and the amount of data collected about them, Javice fabricated a data set. She is alleged to have an unnamed co-conspirator who first asked Frank’s director of engineering to create an artificially generated data set. Prosecutors said the director of engineering declined the request after expressing concerns about its legality.

    Javice, according to prosecutors, then approached an outside data scientist and hired him to create the synthetic data set — which was then provided to an agreed-upon third-party vendor in an effort to confirm to JPMorgan that the data set had over 4.25 million rows.

    Based on that alleged fraudulent data, prosecutors said JPMorgan agreed to buy Frank for $175 million. As part of the deal, the nation’s largest bank hired Javice and other Frank employees. Prosecutors said Javice received over $21 million for selling her equity stake in Frank and, per the terms of the deal, was to be paid another $20 million as a retention bonus.

    Prosecutors said as the fabricated data set was being created, Javice and her co-conspirator sought to purchase real data for over 4.25 million college students to cover up their misrepresentations.

    Treading the fine line between “fake it until you make it” and “interstate wire fraud.”

  • Bud light tranny pander wrecks brand. “I’ve never seen such little sales [as] in this past few days.”
  • In fact, they’ve lost six billion dollars in market cap.
  • “People With Taste Buds Continue Decades-Long Boycott Of Bud Light.”
  • The history of Barrett firearms. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Facebook to lay off 10,000 employees, including some of the people bragging that they had no work to do.
  • We’re having a party, a bankruptcy party. (Maybe.)
  • Tragic non-steak roasting befalls 18,000 cows.
  • Possible sequel to Cocaine Bear hits unexpected obstacle. Or vice-versa.
  • “BLM Leaders Call For Renewed Protests This Summer After Finding A Fantastic Beach House For Sale On Zillow.”
  • “Pentagon Leaker Kicking Himself For Not Just Leaving Classified Documents Strewn Around His Garage.”
  • “Disaster On Mandalorian Set As Lizzo Eats Baby Yoda.”
  • The Steely Fist of Justice

    Wednesday, April 12th, 2023

    Next to the idea that a man can magically become a woman by declaring himself one, and the idea that criminal should be set free because they’re actually victims of whiteness/capitalism/etc., “reparations” are one of the most absurd and counterproductive ideas floated under the banner of “social justice.” the idea that people who were never slaves should extort money from people who were never slave owners is an unconstitutional absurdity that no one should take seriously.

    Which is why this story warms the cockles of my heart.

    A Target security guard punched a customer during a confrontation that was sparked when she asked for “reparations” while at a checkout line with more than $1,000 in groceries, according to a police report.

    The ugly incident happened in October at the megastore in Blue Ash, Ohio, and began when Karen Ivery asked a cashier for their manager regarding the bill and reparations, according to the police report reviewed by The Post.

    Social Justice Karens are worst Karens.

    The cashier alleged to authorities that Ivery brought up reparations several times during their brief encounter before the manager arrived, the report states.

    When speaking with the manager, the customer first asked for reparations and grew angry as she walked “aggressively” toward the manager, according to the report.

    “Ivery kept berating her about reparations and her privileged life,” the report alleges as the patron kept walking toward the manager.

    That’s when Zach Cotter, a loss prevention officer, intervened and asked Ivery to calm down and leave the store, the report states.

    But she allegedly began screaming at Cotter and followed him to his office.

    When he tried to shut the door, Ivery allegedly forced her way in and Cotter threw a punch, according to the report.

    Surveillance footage of the incident reported on by the Daily Mail shows the staffer’s punch caused the woman to hit the floor.

    After reviewing footage of the incident, authorities wrote that they determined Ivery was the “aggressor” and she was placed under arrest.

    Good. Deluded people who demand free money for breathing should be derided and ignored, and aggressive people who barge into offices making threats have well earned a five-finger reparation to the face.