November 10th, 2021
Thanks to California regulations and vaccine mandates, supply chain problems continue to plague America. Here’s an update on those disruptions and other topics related to the wondrous Biden Economy.
Inflation hits a 31 year high.
Not only is inflation bad, it’s about to get much worse. Unprocessed goods are up 56% from a year ago. “At the current rate of increase, regular unleaded gasoline will hit $6/gal (National Average) by Easter.”
It’s not just us: China’s prices are soaring as well.
China’s trade balance may have just hit a record on the back of resurgent exports and slowing inflation, but the favorable impact to China’s mercantlist economy was more than wiped out by the just released record PPI and resurgent CPI.
China’s National Bureau of Statistics reported that in October, CPI rose 1.5% Y/Y, higher than the 1.4% expected, and a 0.7% sequential increase from the September print; the CPI increase was evenly split between base effect and sequential growth.
At the same time factory gate, or PPI, inflation hit a fresh all time high of 13.5%, steamrolling the 12.4% consensus estimate, and rising at the fastest pace since records began in November 1995.
While the gradual increase in CPI is alarming, and the NBS said that it was affected by weather, commodities demand and costs – it was the producer price inflation that was far more alarming, soaring as a result of a tight supply of energy and resources. In reality, however, there was just one key variable – thermal coal, which as we said last month indicates that PPI will continue rising far higher, although judging by the recent sharp reversal in the price of Chinese thermal coal (if only for the time being), this may be as high as PPI gets.
Or so Beijing should hope because with the spread between PPI and CPI hitting a new all time record, virtually no Chinese companies that use commodity inputs – which in China is a vast majority – are making any profits.
The situation at LA and Long beach ports is not getting better:
DHL releases service announcements every week so shippers in their network know what to expect at ports all around the world. The most recent announcement came out today, and it shows that the situation at America’s top West Coast port complex is not improving. Here’s DHL’s summary of the port conditions at Los Angeles/Long Beach:
Ships are waiting 13-22 days to catch a berth. Currently there are 72 vessels waiting for a berthing spot. Both ports are seeing record volumes month after month and the ships at anchor are delayed an average of 4 days. Delays forcing the ships to wait at anchor are expected to continue for the remainder of the year. All terminals remain extremely congested and evaluating a reduction on their window for export cargo acceptance from four to three days. The expected spike on imports generated by the peak season and cargo pre-shipped is already here making the operation more complex. Local trucking delays have been reduced and are being closely monitored. The LAX/LGB rail operations from all terminals and the off dock ramps continues to deteriorate as demand exceeds capacity, therefore inland moves by rail can suffer considerable delays.
That’s not an encouraging description, and there has not been movement in the right direction. The waiting time and number of ships waiting have been steady for over a month now, according to DHL. If anything, they are getting slightly worse. Here’s how those estimates have changed over time:
“Port congestion has been a problem for months now, and we’ve yet to see signs of improvement.”
“You Know Those Cargo Ships And Trains Waiting To Be Unloaded In California? Yeah, Now Homeless People Are Breaking In And Stealing Things From The Stopped Trains.”
So, not only will you have to wait literal months for products you’ve ordered to finally make it to their destination, now it looks like you’ll be lucky if any of these things make it to your house because homeless people are stealing from unprotected parked trains.
Truckers should be making money hand-over-fist to solve the supply chain crisis. Port constraints mean They’re not:
We have covered the ocean-carrier side of this crisis (‘In Deep Ship’), and the new fee equivalent to $1m a day, and rising $1m each following day, for a 10,000 TEU vessel whose cargo is stuck in LA/LB port. However, we stressed in that report that the supply chain issue is more systematic. So, allow me to share quotes from an article exposing there is ‘No Trucking Way’ we are about to return to normal:
“Think of going to the port as going to WalMart on Black Friday, but imagine only ONE cashier for thousands of customers…Most port drivers are ‘independent contractors’, leased onto a carrier who is paying them by the load. Whether their load takes two hours, fourteen hours, or three days to complete, they get paid the same, and they have to pay 90% of their truck operating expenses…I honestly don’t understand how many of them can even afford to show up for work…In some cases they work 70 hour weeks and still end up owing money to their carrier.
So when the coastal ports started getting clogged up last spring due to the impacts of COVID on business everywhere, drivers started refusing to show up. Congestion got so bad that instead of being able to do three loads a day, they could only do one. They took a 2/3 pay cut and most of these drivers were working 12 hours a day or more…Many drivers simply quit. However, while the pickup rate for containers severely decreased, they were still being offloaded from the boats. And it’s only gotten worse…The ‘experts’ want to say we can do things like open the ports 24/7, and this problem will be over in a couple weeks. They are blowing smoke, and they know it.”
The author also points out a crippling shortage of truck chassis; warehouse workers, again due to low-pay and Covid, so unloading takes longer; and warns soon there will be less, not more truck drivers. Crucially, he bewails that ocean carriers, ports, trucking companies, warehouses, and retailers are all making great money – so won’t invest before the system collapses further. If so, this book-ends the 1980 deregulation of the US trucking industry under President Carter.
Meanwhile, Senator Manchin just said ‘No Trucking Way’ to the White House’s fiscal plans, again, which already fail to address the above logistical problems. Perhaps it’s time for US economists to study what weak, share-cropper logistics and on-off fiscal and central-bank liquidity largesse do for emerging markets’ macroeconomic and financial stability?
Indeed, Bloomberg reports: “Chinese households are encouraged to stock up on a certain amount of daily necessities, such as vegetables and meat, in preparation for the winter months, according to a notice from Ministry of Commerce aimed at ensuring supply and stabilizing prices of such items for the next few months. Major agricultural distributors are encouraged to sign long-term contracts with producers. Reserves of meat and vegetables will be released on a timely basis to replenish market supply.”
Another problem: Some 73,000 truck drivers taken off the roads due to newly implemented drug tests.
The biggest number of clearinghouse violations by far — 56 percent — are for marijuana use, according to federal data. (Amphetamine and methamphetamine violations account for 18 percent, while cocaine and various opioids account for 15 percent and 4 percent, respectively.) Some argue that because marijuana can stay in the body for up to 30 days, testing does not accurately reflect whether a person is driving while under the influence.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
Whoever is in charge of Slow Joe’s administration is making everything worse:
- As Mario Loyola laid out, “The World Economic Forum rates America’s shipping-industry regulations as the most restrictive in the world, chiefly because of the Jones Act. Stifling regulations have left America with the most inefficient ports in the world. A recent review of container-port efficiency ranked the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach below ports in Tanzania and Kenya, near the bottom of the list of 351 top ports. America’s ports are effectively third-world. The 50 most efficient ports in the world are mostly in Asia and the Middle East; none are in America.”
- Loyola continues, “Above all, it is the shortage of truck drivers that’s causing the current crisis. And why do we have that shortage? One reason, according to truck drivers, is that the restrictions on their access to ports are too onerous. The Jones Act has made that problem worse, too. The Jones Act ‘has made coast-wise shipping prohibitively costly and therefore put additional pressure on alternative inland transit such as trucks and trains,’ Lincicome writes. “In practice, this means badly needed rigs that could be servicing U.S. ports currently are instead stuck on I-95 ferrying oranges from Florida to New York.”
- Earlier this year, Heavy Duty Trucking reported that the Biden administration had imposed a tariff on truck chassis (the framework that provides the truck base that includes the wheels and axles) made in China; “chassis or sub-assemblies imported from China for the next five years will be subject to tariffs/duties that would add up to more than twice the value of the actual chassis itself.”
- Weston LaBar, executive director of the Harbor Trucking Association in California, told Heavy Duty Trucking that that, “The [U.S. International Trade Commission] really botched their decision, at a time when our industry is needing to inject more equipment, both for capacity and for folks trying to retire older equipment. Now people have to stretch out the useful life of existing equipment, which isn’t an ideal thing from a safety standpoint. And now we’ve created scarcity and increased the cost.”
- California imposed regulations requiring trucks built before a certain date to replace their engines or not operate in the state.
- Our Dominic Pino observes that the Biden administration wants to make two-man crews for freight-train engines standard, forever — no matter what technological advances occur. The unions for the train crews argue that trains are like planes and require two engineers — unlike a freight truck, which can be safely driven by one person. “As the Association of American Railroads says, plenty of other trains operate just fine with only one person at the controls. In the European Union, Australia, and New Zealand, one-person crews are the norm, and even in the U.S., passenger trains are commonly driven by one person.”
A view from the trenches by (of all people) Dukakis campaign manager Susan Estrich:
I’m exactly the sort of person who should be up-to-the-minute on what the senators from Arizona and West Virginia are doing and whether the progressives will go along and whatever else it is that has caused Congress to accomplish absolutely nothing under supposed Democratic control. But I’m not.
I’m up-to-the-minute on the price of eggs. And the cost of cans for cranberry. And the likelihood of empty shelves when I shop for all the children in my life come December.
I’m up-to-the-minute on all the big ships you can see lined up just waiting to unload at San Pedro, which is pretty far south of where we’re sitting.
Twelve dollars for a dozen eggs. At the farmers market on Sunday, I did my own survey. Three stands were $11. The rest were $12. Ten minutes ago, they cost $6.
One hundred dollars. That’s how much it cost my handyman to fuel up his truck.
They’re warning that the price of canned cranberries is going to be 50% higher this year because of the scarcity of aluminum for the cans.
Remember overnight deliveries from Amazon? Notice that all those overnight specials now take three days, and certain products are already being slated for January delivery.
The supply chain problems hits ordinary Texans:
everyday items have started disappearing, leaving the stores with nothing to replace them with.
Belton resident Laura Zarate said it started slowly.
She’d go to her local store to buy groceries and the store didn’t have something she needed.
Now her shopping list is getting lighter as more items move to her can’t get list.
“When I walk in, on the shelves I see they don’t have a lot of things anymore that we used to buy. They’re kind of empty sometimes. It worries me,” Zarate said.
And it should worry all of us. In a global economy that lives or dies by its dependence on consumer spending, transportation becomes a vital link in getting products to consumers through something called “the supply chain”.
The supply chain is a network of transportation that takes goods from factories to airplanes and eventually to warehouses and eventually us.
And what’s the weak link here?
“The breakdown is in the supply chain in general,” a Port of Los Angeles longshoreman said.
However, this supply chain didn’t just have weak links, it looked like a roving gang with bolt cutters tore into it.
Take Christmas for instance, those decorations that didn’t show up in August could be the only thing we get.
“The cut-off was probably about a month ago,” said a L.A. warehouse manager, talking about when most of Decembers merchandise should have been here.
But that supply chain, that network, now has holes in it and empty store shelves prove it.
What are stores doing about the supply chain problem?
Frankly, everything they can and everything they can think of because if they aren’t selling, they aren’t making any money.
Stores blame shipping companies and shipping companies blame overseas companies, who blame the shipping companies and it goes round and round until it just becomes background noise, leaving Laura Zarate, paying more for much less to buy.
People started noticing it when ships mysteriously started dropping anchor off the coast of California.
A backup caused by only so many parking spots and so many employees unloading the ships.
“Everything. Everything on paper, your shirts, your shoes, your bike, computers, air conditioner, everything. Everybody’s waiting for,” said dock workers when asked about the growing problem.
The world shutdown is the cause but experts say we added to the problem by believing stories shipping companies spun of how their super-efficient delivery system meant you didn’t need a stockpile of stuff.
“We’ve had a lot of shortages, truck drivers and high utilization of our supply chains since the pandemic started. When you put all that together plus the shift of consumer spending from more services more towards goods, which has created more demand so it’s kind of like a perfect storm really says everything that could go wrong did go wrong and all at the same time,” said Michael Bomba, Ph.D., of the G. Brint Ryan College of Business, at the University of North Texas.
He says we will soon have to address the issue of better pay for truck drivers, another by-product of shifting spending and COVID.
(Hat tip: Vance Ginn.)
Among the items hit by supply chain shortages: Thanksgiving staples. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Now More Than 100 Container Ships Are Waiting outside the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.” That’s back on November 1.
Today: 111 container ships at dock.
Supply Chain Dive has a Port of LA and Long Beach tracker, though right now it seems heavier on policy announcements than actual action to relive congestion. One positive change: “The City of Long Beach is waiving container stacking rules for 90 days to help with port congestion. Previously, stacks could only be two containers high. Now, the city is allowing stacks of up to four containers, or up to five with a special permit.”
Some tweets:
Locally, the luncheon meat shortage at HEB seems mostly over, but Sam’s doesn’t appear to be stocking 12 oz cans of Diet Dr Pepper, only 20 oz bottles and cans of Dr Pepper Zero Sugar, which has a different formula. So far I don’t like it as much…
Tags: China, Democrats, DHL, Dr Pepper, Economics, inflation, Jones Act, Los Angeles, marijuana, Regulation, supply chain, Susan Estrich, Texas, trade, unions
Posted in Crime, Democrats, Economics, Texas, unions | 7 Comments »
November 9th, 2021
Yesterday, a number of anti-woke intellectuals announced that they were starting a new university on Bari Weiss’ substack.
Pano Kanelos:
So much is broken in America. But higher education might be the most fractured institution of all.
There is a gaping chasm between the promise and the reality of higher education. Yale’s motto is Lux et Veritas, light and truth. Harvard proclaims: Veritas. Young men and women of Stanford are told Die Luft der Freiheit weht: The wind of freedom blows.
These are soaring words. But in these top schools, and in so many others, can we actually claim that the pursuit of truth—once the central purpose of a university—remains the highest virtue? Do we honestly believe that the crucial means to that end—freedom of inquiry and civil discourse—prevail when illiberalism has become a pervasive feature of campus life?
The numbers tell the story as well as any anecdote you’ve read in the headlines or heard within your own circles. Nearly a quarter of American academics in the social sciences or humanities endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences. Over a third of conservative academics and PhD students say they had been threatened with disciplinary action for their views. Four out of five American PhD students are willing to discriminate against right-leaning scholars, according to a report by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology.
The picture among undergraduates is even bleaker. In Heterodox Academy’s 2020 Campus Expression Survey, 62% of sampled college students agreed that the climate on their campus prevented students from saying things they believe. Nearly 70% of students favor reporting professors if the professor says something students find offensive, according to a Challey Institute for Global Innovation survey. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports at least 491 disinvitation campaigns since 2000. Roughly half were successful.
On our quads, faculty are being treated like thought criminals. Dorian Abbot, a University of Chicago scientist who has objected to aspects of affirmative action, was recently disinvited from delivering a prominent public lecture on planetary climate at MIT. Peter Boghossian, a philosophy professor at Portland State University, finally quit in September after years of harassment by faculty and administrators. Kathleen Stock, a professor at University of Sussex, just resigned after mobs threatened her over her research on sex and gender.
We had thought such censoriousness was possible only under oppressive regimes in distant lands. But it turns out that fear can become endemic in a free society. It can become most acute in the one place—the university—that is supposed to defend “the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.”
The reality is that many universities no longer have an incentive to create an environment where intellectual dissent is protected and fashionable opinions are scrutinized. At our most prestigious schools, the primary incentive is to function as finishing school for the national and global elite. Amidst the brick and ivy, these students entertain ever-more-inaccessible theories while often just blocks away their neighbors figure out how to scratch out a living.
The priority at most other institutions is simply to avoid financial collapse. They are in a desperate contest to attract a dwindling number of students, who are less and less capable of paying skyrocketing tuition. Over the last three decades, the cost of a degree from a four-year private college has nearly doubled; the cost of a degree from a public university has nearly tripled. The nation’s students owe $1.7 trillion in loans.
And to what end? Nearly 40% of those who pursue a college degree do not attain one. We should let that sink in. Higher education fails 4 in 10 of its students. A system that so brazenly extracts so much from so many without delivering on its basic promises is overdue for a reckoning.
The warped incentives of higher education—prestige or survival—mean that an increasing proportion of tuition dollars are spent on administration rather than instruction. Universities now aim to attract and retain students through client-driven “student experiences”—from trivial entertainment to emotional support to luxury amenities. In fact, many universities are doing extremely well at providing students with everything they need. Everything, that is, except intellectual grit.
Snip.
But we are done waiting. We are done waiting for the legacy universities to right themselves. And so we are building anew.
I mean that quite literally.
As I write this, I am sitting in my new office (boxes still waiting to be unpacked) in balmy Austin, Texas, where I moved three months ago from my previous post as president of St. John’s College in Annapolis.
I am not alone.
Our project began with a small gathering of those concerned about the state of higher education—Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, Heather Heying, Joe Lonsdale, Arthur Brooks, and I—and we have since been joined by many others, including the brave professors mentioned above, Kathleen Stock, Dorian Abbot and Peter Boghossian.
We count among our numbers university presidents: Robert Zimmer, Larry Summers, John Nunes, and Gordon Gee, and leading academics, such as Steven Pinker, Deirdre McCloskey, Leon Kass, Jonathan Haidt, Glenn Loury, Joshua Katz, Vickie Sullivan, Geoffrey Stone, Bill McClay, and Tyler Cowen.
We are also joined by journalists, artists, philanthropists, researchers, and public intellectuals, including Lex Fridman, Andrew Sullivan, Rob Henderson, Caitlin Flanagan, David Mamet, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sohrab Ahmari, Stacy Hock, Jonathan Rauch, and Nadine Strossen.
It’s an interesting collection of people, running from conservatives to “mugged liberals,” all of which I think have objected to the epistemological closure of social justice.
We are a dedicated crew that grows by the day. Our backgrounds and experiences are diverse; our political views differ. What unites us is a common dismay at the state of modern academia and a recognition that we can no longer wait for the cavalry. And so we must be the cavalry.
It will surely seem retro—perhaps even countercultural—in an era of massive open online courses and distance learning to build an actual school in an actual building with as few screens as possible. But sometimes there is wisdom in things that have endured.
Here’s the website for the new institution, which states the following principles:
Universities devoted to the unfettered pursuit of truth are the cornerstone of a free and flourishing democratic society.
For universities to serve their purpose, they must be fully committed to freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience, and civil discourse.
In order to maintain these principles, UATX will be fiercely independent—financially, intellectually, and politically.
About funding:
We’re completely rethinking how a university operates by developing a novel financial model. We will lower tuition by avoiding costly administrative excess and overreach. We will focus our resources intensively on academics, rather than amenities. We will align institutional incentives with student outcomes.
The new university is located at 2112 Rio Grande Street in Austin, Texas. For those unfamiliar with Austin, that’s right in the West Campus area, AKA Fratville, immediately to the west of the University of Texas. Presumably they’ll be able to draw some students, talent, etc. from their location, not to mention a lot of nearby student amenities.
It will be interesting to see how this experiment works out, but one university isn’t enough to stem the tide. All of American education needs a hard reboot, one where everyone pushing social justice down America’s throat lose both their jobs and funding.
Tags: Andrew Sullivan, Arthur Brooks, Austin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bari Weiss, Bill McClay, Caitlin Flanagan, David Mamet, Deirdre McCloskey, Dorian Abbot, education, Geoffrey Stone, Glenn Loury, Gordon Gee, Heather Heying, Joe Lonsdale, John Nunes, Jonathan Haidt, Jonathan Rauch, Joshua Katz, Kathleen Stock, Larry Summers, Leon Kass, Lex Fridman, Nadine Strossen, Niall Ferguson, Pano Kanelos, Peter Boghossian, Rob Henderson, Robert Zimmer, Social Justice Warriors, Sohrab Ahmari, Stacy Hock, Steven Pinker, Texas, Tyler Cowen, University of Austin, Vickie Sullivan
Posted in Austin, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 4 Comments »
November 8th, 2021
With plenty of out-of-state money (including half a million from George Soros), Austin Justice Coalition and their allies managed to deliver a resounding defeat to Proposition A. There was a lot of signage against Prop A, and readers in Austin say they received anti-Prop A flyers. Here’s an example:
And here’s a closeup of who funded it:
There’s two places on the flyer it says it was partially funded by the Austin Justice Coalition.
Tiny problem: The Austin Justice Coalition is a 501(c)(3) organization last time I checked, and 501(c)(3) have very specific prohibitions against engaging in certain types of political activity and advertising.
(You might be wondering: Is that’s the case, how could SaveAustinNow legally campaign for Proposition A? Easy: They’re a 501(c)(4) organization, the rules for which are different.)
Did Austin Justice Coalition violate federal law? Maybe. Austin Justice Coalition briefly lost their tax exempt for failing to proper documentation. (It’s easier to search for information on them when you have their tax ID number: EIN 81-3138826.) But I’m not a lawyer, and the IRS statute language specifically mentions that 501(c)(3) organizations can’t campaign for or against candidates. I am unsure whether this prohibition extends to campaigning for or against ballot propositions.
Perhaps an expert in campaign finance law can shed some light on the issue…
(Hat tip: Blog commenter Clinton.)
Tags: 2021 Elections, 501(c)(3), Austin, Austin Justice Coalition, Democrats, IRS, Social Justice Warriors, Texas
Posted in Austin, Democrats, Elections, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | 3 Comments »
November 7th, 2021
Here’s a Glenn Greenwald thread touching on several strands of mainstream media malfeasance, including the fact that #Russiagate was an obvious hoax manufactured by Donald Trump’s political enemies, and yet the “journalists” spreading lies still won a Pulitzer for their lies, and that the Hunter Biden emails are obviously real, with huge implications for national security, foreign policy, and Biden Administration corruption.
I think the Ben Schreckinger book Greenwald is discussing is The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power, which I have not read.
They sleep well because they believe doing The Will of the Party is far more important than telling the truth.
All of these things contribute to the fact that the Democratic Media Complex is one of the least trusted institutions in the world. As a cherry on the top of this distrust, bloated leftwing media talking head Cirith Ungol Cenk Uygur put out a poll asking which was more responsible for damage to the country, right wing media or corporate media:
It’s still running, so feel free to vote. And here’s a screenshot of the current results, just in case he deletes the results:
Tags: 2016 Presidential Race, 2020 Presidential Race, Ben Schreckinger, Cenk Uygur, Christopher Steele, CIA, Democrats, Glenn Greenwald, Hunter Biden, Igor Danchenko, John Brennan, Media Watch
Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | 6 Comments »
November 6th, 2021
Astroworld was the name of a now-defunct Houston amusement park. Then it was the name of rapper Travis Scott’s album. Now it’s evidently the name of a rap festival in the parking lot of NRG stadium (close to where the Astroworld theme park used to be) where eight people just died:
At least eight people are dead and dozens more injured after a sold-out crowd of roughly 50,000 surged during rapper Travis Scott’s performance late Friday at the Astroworld Festival outside NRG Park, overwhelming security forces and resulting in one of the deadliest concerts in U.S. history.
As Scott’s performance started shortly after 9 p.m., the chaotic crowd seemingly swallowed everyone in it, Instagram user SeannaFaith wrote.
“The rush of people became tighter and tighter. .. Breathing became something only a few were capable. The rest were crushed or unable to breathe in the thick hot air,” she wrote. “It was like watching a Jenga tower topple. Person after person were sucked down…. You were at the mercy of the wave.”
“We begged security to help us, for the performer to see us and know something was wrong,” she continued. “None of that came, we continued to drown.”
Then, one person fell. And another.
“We had a mass casualty event here at Astroworld,” Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said.
Seventeen people were taken to the hospital, 11 of whom Peña described as being in cardiac arrest. Eight are confirmed dead. Some of the victims might be children.
Sounds quite similar to the tragic 1979 Who concert in Cincinnati, where 11 people died. It seems the lessons from that have been forgotten.
The original Astroworld park also had a reputation as being deadlier than other parks in the Six Flags family. Two workers were killed during construction in 1968, and a maintenance worker was killed after being struck by a roller coaster car.
There’s was also some weird scheme to build a virtual Astroworld theme park on blockchain technology. It always seemed more like buzzword bingo than a business plan, and I don’t think much has come of it.
Tags: Astroworld, Houston, Texas, Travis Scott
Posted in Texas | 5 Comments »
November 5th, 2021
Remember, remember, this Guy Fawkes Day LinkSwarm!
Nancy Pelosi: “See how we got slaughtered? Now march right uphill and take that machine gun nest for the glory of the party!”
The Associated Press reports that, unchastised by Tuesday night’s rout, Nancy Pelosi plans to ready the House of Representatives for a “debate and vote on a revised draft of President Joe Biden’s now-$1.85 trillion domestic policy package.” The decision, the AP suggests, is intended to “show voters the party can deliver on its priorities.”
That’s one way of putting it, certainly. Another might be: Nancy Pelosi hopes to appease the progressive wing of her caucus by sending her most vulnerable members unarmed into the Somme.
Substantively, what Pelosi is proposing is bonkers. For a start, there is no “Build Back Better” bill. It remains what it has always been: a slogan, in search of a topline, in search of an agenda. There is only one thing on which the Democratic Party is agreed, and that is that the United States should spend at least two trillion more dollars over the next decade than it had planned to before Joe Biden won. On what? Well, that depends. Some want tax cuts for the rich. Some want to send checks to Americans who have kids. Some want a bunch of new permanent programs. Some want climate-change-mitigation measures. Some want to a second New Deal. At various points during the last few months, all of these things have been in the bill in one form or another, and, at various points, they’ve been taken out again. There is a reason that we have not had a “national debate” over the “Biden agenda,” and that reason is that, beyond its cost, there is nothing concrete to debate.
The result has been the creation of a protean piece of vaporware that nobody in Congress seems much to like, and that the American people seem increasingly to loathe. Since Tuesday’s elections, the institutional Democratic Party has rallied stupidly around the idea that, in order to stave off further electoral losses, it must show voters that it can “get things done” — as if the average American citizen favors action for its own sake. But, of course, it must do no such thing. Reflecting upon this fallacy, Abigail Spanberger, a moderate Democrat from Virginia, noted yesterday that “nobody elected [Biden] to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos,” while Representative Kathleen Rice, her colleague from New York, seemed baffled by the whole thing. “I don’t understand some of my more progressive colleagues saying [that Tuesday] night now shows us that what we need to do is get both of these bills done and shove even more progressive stuff in,” Rice said.
Rice is correct. And yet, inexplicably, “shove even more progressive stuff in” is precisely what Nancy Pelosi has chosen to do in response.
“Do the will of the Party, comrade, and know that when we step on your corpse, we’re climbing to a glorious future!”
Examples of why the Democrats’ revised spending bill is still awful.
Budget Gimmicks Pour Gasoline on Inflationary Fire
The main number mentioned about the bill is the claimed cost of $1.75 trillion in spending and tax credits. For starters, this is only an educated guess on the part of Democrats, since official congressional scorekeepers have not had a chance to weigh in yet.
More importantly, that stated cost (which is not zero) is only possible as a result of deliberate budgetary gimmicks. Many key programs expire after a few years rather than the usual 10 years, and in some cases expire after a single year.
Amazingly, the bill’s cost would more than double without the gimmicking.
This would still be a problem even if all of the programs are allowed to expire. That’s because the bill front-loads the spending while spreading tax hikes across the decade, meaning it would increase deficit spending significantly in the first few years, especially the first year.
In turn, that deficit spending would mean artificially injecting billions of dollars into the economy. This would only serve to worsen the biggest wave of inflation in decades.
Causing hardworking families to pay more for essentials is no way to “build back better.”
Using Taxpayer Dollars as a Back Door to Mass Amnesty of Illegal Immigrants
Providing amnesty to illegal immigrants has been a top priority of the left for decades. While the spending package is supposed to be just that—a spending package, not a new immigration law—Democrats are attempting to sneak amnesty through the back door.
Because the bill is written to fit within strict budgetary rules, there are limits to what it can contain. The Senate parliamentarian has ruled against the inappropriate amnesty provision twice already, with the second decision relating to the language that’s in the revised bill.
Democrats have said that the current immigration text is a “placeholder” while they make a third attempt to convince the parliamentarian to give them what they want. The fact that they’re including text that has already been ruled out of order demonstrates how little regard they have for the rules.
Plus handouts for the wealthy, more social justice indoctrination, and $2.5 billion for “tree equity.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
Manchin still isn’t having any:
A point Manchin made about the use of “budget gimmicks” by fellow Democrats [could] doom the Biden agenda.
Manchin reiterated his concerns about “exploding inflation,” the debt, the potential for rising interest rates, and the creation of new social spending programs. “How can I in good conscience vote for a bill that proposes massive expansions of social programs when vital programs like Social Security and Medicare face insolvency and benefits could start being reduced as soon as 2026 in Medicare and 2033 in Social Security?” he asked rhetorically. “How does that make sense? I don’t think it does.”
Initially it seemed as though he was just demanding the need for a CBO score when he talked about the need for more transparency about the bill’s fiscal impact. That alone would be consistent with a strategy of wanting delay legislation that he would ultimately vote for. And there are a myriad of ways for Democrats to game the intricacies of the CBO process to get an acceptable enough score for Manchin to vote for.
But then Manchin took things a step further.
He said, “As more of the real details outlined in the basic framework are released, what I see are shell games — budget gimmicks that make the real cost of the so-called $1.75 trillion bill estimated to be almost twice that amount if the full time is run out. If you extended it permanently. And that we haven’t even spoken about.”
Further, Manchin saiud that he won’t vote to overrule the Senate Parliamentarian on reconciliation rules.
“I’m not going to vote to overrule the parliamentarian,” Manchin added. “I’m not going to do that; they all know that.”
Because Democrats are trying to bypass Senate Republicans on President Biden’s spending plan, they have to comply with the rules governing reconciliation, an arcane budget process that lets them avoid the filibuster.
The Senate parliamentarian provides guidance to senators about if policies meet the Byrd rule, named after the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), that restricts what can be included in a reconciliation bill.
If it doesn’t comply with the rule, it will be stripped out of the bill — or Democrats could try to overrule the parliamentarian. But that would take total unity from the 50-member Senate Democratic caucus, meaning they would need Manchin’s support.
In addition to Manchin’s opposition, members of Senate Democratic leadership have previously signaled that they don’t believe they have the votes for such a move.
But the parliamentarian has frustrated activists this year, first by ruling against including a $15 per hour minimum wage in a coronavirus relief bill. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tried to put it back in the bill as an amendment, which required 60 votes because it didn’t meet the budget rules, but lost several Democratic senators in addition to Republicans.
The Biden Administration has finally unveiled their vaccine mandate.
On September 9, President Biden announced a directive to the Labor Department to develop a temporary emergency rule for businesses with 100 or more employees that would require workers to be fully vaccinated or be tested at least once a week. Biden declared that, “We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers. We’re going to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by increasing the share of the workforce that is vaccinated in businesses all across America.”
This morning, the Occupational Safety and Hazard Administration announced that starting on January 4 — sixty days from today’s publication — new vaccination-or-test requirements for businesses with more than 100 workers will go into effect, as well as a vaccine mandate for health care workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid.
OSHA is issuing the vaccine mandate under an “emergency temporary standard,” which means the regular public comment period was skipped. Emergency temporary standards are applied when “workers are in grave danger due to exposure to toxic substances or agents determined to be toxic or physically harmful or to new hazards and that an emergency standard is needed to protect them.”
Just past the Christmas season. Funny that.
“Mandate Meltdown: 26 NYC Firestations Shuttered, LA Sheriff Warns Of ‘Mass Exodus‘, Tucson Water District Faces ‘Staff Shortage.'”
We’re f–ked. We are going to toast like marshmallows,” retired electrician Vinny Agro, 63, told the Post. “It’s another sad day for New York City.”
Across the Rockies, Los Angeles Country Sheriff Alex Villanueva has warned of an “imminent threat to public safety” caused by a “mass exodus” of thousands of deputies and civilian personnel who refuse to take the jab.
“I could potentially lose 44% of my workforce in one day,” he wrote in a Thursday open letter to the Board of Supervisors, adding that he can’t enforce “reckless mandates that put public safety at risk.”
This seems to be the desired outcome. Ordinary people who voted for Democrats might start to ask why.
And here come the lawsuits!
Within hours of the Biden administration unveiling a Jan. 4 deadline for 100 million workers to get vaccinated, a small business advocacy group announced it is filing a lawsuit seeking to block the measure.
“The Biden administration’s vaccine mandate is clearly illegal and will have a devastating impact on our small business community and our entire economy,” said Alfredo Ortiz, the CEO of the Job Creators Network.
CN is suing the administration on the grounds that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration doesn’t have authority to impose the mandate and that, in any case, there is neither the grave danger nor necessity to issue it.
It’s just one of many court battles set to ensue over the rules, many coming from Republican leaders accusing the federal government of overreach into personal medical decisions.
At least 19 states have filed three separate lawsuits aimed at stopping the previously announced mandate for federal contractors, and the rules are being challenged by most of the Republican caucus in the Senate.
(Hat tip: Director Blue.)
“Teachers Union: ‘It’s OK’ That Kids Don’t Know Math, ‘They Know The Words Insurrection and Coup.'”
The head of the Los Angeles teachers union said “there is no such thing as learning loss,” despite evidence of massive educational declines due to a year of remote learning.
Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of United Teachers Los Angeles, told LA Magazine that “It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a riot and a protest. They know the words insurrection and coup.”
Anyone know what it takes to decertify a union?
Yes, they are teaching Critical Race Theory:
Legal Insurrection has been all over covering the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. Here’s day 2. So far everything argues for legal self-defense, even the prosecution witnesses. “I’ve yet to see any compelling evidence that seems capable of meeting their burden to disprove self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt. And I’m beginning to wonder if we ever will.”
How Republican truck driver Edward Durr defeated Democratic New Jersey State Senate President Steve Sweeney.
“The main issue was rights,” Durr said, via phone. “People talk about how New Jersey has the highest taxes, and we’re the worst state for business, with high debt, and so on, but bottom line is rights. It’s family.
“When somebody’s messing with your family, you’ll do anything,” he said. “The governor was messing with people’s families. When you mess with somebody’s job, their livelihood, their home, their children — people just won’t take that.”
Durr said that New Jersey’s harsh coronavirus policies had helped create a “perfect storm” that made his victory possible.
“It was the combination of a governor who acts like a king, and a senate president who acts like a court jester, and does nothing. That made it very easy to convince people they were not being paid attention to. And when they got ignored, they got angry.”
But Durr, 58, did more than just get lucky. And he spent more than the $153 that has been highlighted in media reports.
“That’s the amount I spent prior to the primary,” he explained, somewhat exasperated by the inaccurate reporting.
He estimates that he spent about $8,000 to $9,000 in total, mostly on campaign literature, yard signs, and a now-viral video.
He also worked hard, walking door-to-door to speak to voters. Having left long-haul trucking for a job working a local route close to home, he was able to use afternoons and evenings to campaign in the district, together with several volunteers.
“I walked three to four hours on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Saturdays and Sundays, I walked six to eight hours. We usually had half a dozen volunteers. One time we went out and we had twelve to thirteen go out with us,” he recalled proudly.
“Trust me, plenty days I did not feel like walking. It was too hot, my ankles and my feet hurt — I’m not a young man anymore, and I have gout, and plantar fasciitis — it was a hard thing.
“But it was well worth it, because it allowed me the opportunity to talk to every person I could possibly talk to, and understand what they were feeling, and get the pulse.”
(Hat tip: Holly Hansen.)
Joe Rogan 1, “Journalists” 0. “So far, there isn’t a lot of evidence that ivermectin is a good anti-covid therapy, and federal agencies have warned people who hear about the drug not to consume a paste intended for livestock. But that doesn’t mean Rogan ate horse dewormer. You don’t fight disinformation with disinformation. Not if you’re a good reporter.”
“Police arrest suspect who shot HEB employee in North Austin.” Since Prop A failed, expect more shootings.
“Main Steele Dossier Researcher Arrested in Durham Probe.”
The primary researcher behind the Steele Dossier, a collection of unsubstantiated opposition research linking the 2016 Trump campaign to the Kremlin, was arrested by federal authorities Thursday.
Russia analyst Igor Danchenko’s indictment stems from the federal probe led by John Durham, the special counsel tapped by the Trump administration to audit the Russia investigation for malfeasance, anonymous individuals with direct knowledge of the matter told the New York Times.
Is China planning to build 150 nuclear reactors?
“Nobel Prize Awarded for the Worst Climate Model.”
Syukuro Manabe has been a pioneer in the development of so-called general circulation climate models (GCMs) and more comprehensive Earth System Models (ESMs). According to the Committee, Manabe was awarded the prize “For the physical modelling of the earth’s climate, quantifying variability, and reliably predicting global warming.”
Snip.
Every six years or so, the U.S. Department of Energy collects all of these models, aggregating them into what they call Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIPs). These serve as the bases for the various “scientific assessments” of climate change produced by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) or the U.S. “National Assessments” of climate.
In 2017, University of Alabama’s John Christy, along with Richard McNider, published a paper that, among other things, examined the 25 applicable families of CMIP-5 models, comparing their performance to what’s been observed in the three-dimensional global tropics. Take a close look at Figure 3 from the paper, in the Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences, and you’ll see that the model GFDL-CM3 is so bad that it is literally off the scale of the graph.
At its worst, the GFDL model is predicting approximately five times as much warming as has been observed since the upper-atmospheric data became comprehensive in 1979. This is the most evolved version of the model that won Manabe the Nobel.
In the CMIP-5 model suite, there is one, and only one, that works. It is the model INM-CM4 from the Russian Institute for Numerical Modelling, and the lead author is Evgeny Volodin. It seems that Volodin would be much more deserving of the Nobel for, in the words of the committee “reliably predicting global warming.”
Might this have something to do with the fact that INM-CM4 and its successor models have less predicted warming than all of the other models?
Lucifer Devil stabbed to death on Halloween. Looks like some Satanist dumbasses had the instructions upside down…
Play Taken games, win Taken prizes.
Zillow shuts down its home-flipping business. Louis Rossman says good riddance. Maybe you shouldn’t have kept tweaking your algorithm until you were paying way above market rates for housing…
“1959 Miller-Meteor Hearse powered by a 707 horsepower Hellcat engine.”
Happy feet!
Tags: Austin, Budget, Cecily Myart-Cruz, Crime, Democrats, Edward Durr, Evgeny Volodin, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Igor Danchenko, Joe Manchin, Joe Rogan, John Durham, Kyle Rittenhouse, LinkSwarm, Los Angeles, Louis Rossmann, Media Watch, Nancy Pelosi, pork barrel, Regulation, Social Justice Warriors, Stephen Sweeney, Syukuro Manabe, United Teachers Los Angeles, vaccine mandate, waste, Zillow
Posted in Austin, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Global Warming, Regulation, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas, unions, Waste and Fraud | 3 Comments »
November 4th, 2021
More post-election news:
Democrats take a good, hard, sober look at their policies to determine why voters abandoned them in drove. Ha, just kidding! It’s all racism all the way down:
In response to Republican Glenn Youngkin’s win in yesterday’s Virginia gubernatorial race — as well as Republican wins all the way down the ballot — left-wing pundits and celebrities immediately began to assert that the Democratic losses were the result of voters’ white-supremacist sympathies.
Yeah, that’s the reason voters turned out in droves to elect a black Republican Lt. Governor: white supremacy.
Even Politico writers got in on the action, asserting in this morning’s newsletter that Youngkin’s strategy included “racial appeals to working-class white voters.” During elections results coverage last night, MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace asserted that “critical race theory, which isn’t real, turned the suburbs 15 points to the Trump-insurrection endorsed Republican.”
Also on MSNBC last night, host Joy Reid spent much of the evening insisting that the education issue, an enormous part of Youngkin’s successful appeal to Virginia parents, was a dog whistle for racism. Plenty of progressives, including Reid herself, began pushing this line well before Election Day.
And that worked out so well for them.
Already, progressives are pointing to exit polls showing an enormous swing to the GOP among white working-class women, who voted for Joe Biden last fall but supported Youngkin this time around — the nasty implication being that these women were motivated to vote by Republicans’ supposedly racist agenda. Totally ignored, or even outright dismissed, are the many nonwhite voters who backed the GOP.
McAuliffe himself obliquely indulged in this fantasy in his statement conceding the election.
On several counts, progressives have begun to coalesce around a narrative that doesn’t hang together — one that displays a shocking unwillingness to grapple with the problems facing their party. For one thing, it makes little sense to assert both that critical race theory doesn’t exist and that parents who oppose it are doing so because they don’t want their children to learn about race or slavery.
If progressives admit that CRT exists at all, they pretend that it’s merely an effort to teach school children about the complicated history of race in our country. In fact, a quick investigation reveals that the proposed curricula contain, in most cases, highly inaccurate history aimed at indoctrinating kids into racially divisive identity politics.
Parents have legitimate concerns about such curricula, including understandable resistance to misrepresenting history, stoking guilt and division among children, and perhaps even encouraging race-based bullying. Dismissing these parents as white supremacists for having these concerns is unlikely to succeed either in persuading them to think differently about the curriculum in question or to vote for Democrats the next time around.
Finally, the “white supremacist” theory for Democratic losses intentionally ignores that two of the top Republican candidates voted into office were Winsome Sears, a female Jamaican immigrant elected lieutenant governor, and Jason Miyares, a Cuban American who was elected attorney general. It’s hard to imagine why Virginians voting en masse for the GOP out of thinly veiled racial animus would throw in their lot with this ticket.
Logic has never been the Democratic Party’s strong suit.
“Glenn Youngkin Defeated Terry McAuliffe Because Democrats Betrayed Parents.”
While former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s loss to Republican challenger Glenn Youngkin was cemented very late on election night, in practice the day that he forfeited the gubernatorial race was September 28. That was when, during a debate with Youngkin, McAuliffe, a Democrat, made the statement that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
That was his response to questions about school curriculum and the fury that had taken hold at many local school board meetings, where irate parents assailed education leaders for allegedly supporting what has been termed “critical race theory” by right-wing activists who oppose it. CRT is a divisive concept, in part because progressives and conservative disagree sharply about what it even is. Many members of the liberal media don’t even believe it exists, and have accused the GOP of fabricating the issue. As Youngkin’s victory became apparent, MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace lamented that critical race theory, “which isn’t even real,” had swung the suburbs 15 points in Republicans’ favor.
Dr. Carol Swain on voter rejection of critical race theory:
Well, they can’t really racialize it because a number of Black parents and immigrant parents have stood with their White brothers and sisters to reject critical race theory, which is very harmful to Black and minority children. It’s a violation of our civil rights laws. It’s un-American because it involves shaming and bullying children and it runs counter to our Constitution. And so, they can say what they want with their Marxist agenda and their false narratives but the American people spoke in my home state of Virginia and I could not be more proud of them.
(Hat tip: TPPF.)
More Twitter reactions:
One Democratic not screaming racism: ragin Cajun James Carville:
Democratic political strategist James Carville blamed his party’s recent losses and weak performance in state elections on “stupid wokeness” on Wednesday.
“PBS NewsHour” host Judy Woodruff asked Carville what went wrong for the Democratic Party in the Virginia gubernatorial race in which Republican Glenn Youngkin beat former Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
“What went wrong is just stupid wokeness. Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey. Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Wash. I mean, this ‘defund the police’ lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln’s name off of schools. I mean that — people see that,” Carville said.
“It’s just really — has a suppressive effect all across the country on Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a ‘woke’ detox center or something,” he added. “They’re expressing a language that people just don’t use, and there’s backlash and a frustration at that.”
Will Democrats heed his warning and abandon their suicidal drive for social justice, forced transgenderism and critical race theory?
Other news I missed: The Alexandria Ocasio Cortez-backed socialist running as a Democrat for mayor of Buffalo lost, despite being the only candidate on the ballot.
The incumbent Democratic mayor of Buffalo, running as a write-in candidate, declared victory Tuesday night as he held a nearly 20-point lead over his Democratic Party opponent.
India Walton, a socialist backed by many high-profile progressives, refused to concede to Mayor Byron Brown in the highly publicized contest until her campaign sees “all the votes,” her spokesman Jesse Myerson told The Post via text.
Brown, 63, who lost to Walton in the June Democratic primary, claimed what would be a stunning victory in a speech to supporters from his campaign headquarters shortly after 11 p.m.
“Today’s election, it’s not just a referendum on the future of the city of Buffalo, it was a referendum on the future of our democracy,” Brown said.
Both Walton and Brown are black, so I’m sure the reason he won was racism…
Another sign of discontent with Democrats: Republicans win four New York City Council seats, and may pick up a fifth.
Republicans won four contested City Council races in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island and had a shot at taking a fifth in a potential upset.
Republican Inna Vernikov thumped her Democratic opponent Steve Saperstein for an open seat in southern Brooklyn’s 48th Council District by nearly 30 points.
With 87 percent of the vote in, Vernikov, a 37-year-old lawyer and Ukraine native, garnered 10,768 votes, or 65 percent of the vote, to 5,870 votes, or 35 percent, for Saperstein.
She will succeed ex-Councilman Chaim Deutsch, who forfeited his seat earlier this year when he was convicted of tax fraud.
The district includes many Russian-speaking and Jewish immigrants in the communities of Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, Sheepshead Bay and Homecrest.
Vernikov ran as an unabashed supporter of former President Donald Trump, and Donald Trump Jr. endorsed her in a robocall to voters. She also opposed coronavirus vaccine mandates.
“I’m very excited. This election victory shows that the people are fed up with the progressive policies that have destroyed our city and district,” Vernikov told The Post last night.
Snip.
Vickie Paladino led former Democratic Councilman Tony Avella with 99 percent of the votes in. Paladino had the support of 12,143 votes, or 50 percent, to 10,490, or 43 percent, for Avella. John-Alexander Sakelos, running on the Conservative and Save Our City lines, received 1,729 votes or 7 percent.
Snip.
In another shocker, Democratic Councilman Justin Brannan, who is running to become the next council speaker, is fighting for political survival.
With 95 percent of the vote in, Brannan was locked in a dead heat with Republican Brian Fox in the 43rd District that takes in communities including Bay Ridge and Dyker Heights.
Other Republicans holding onto GOP seats: David Carr (not the former Texans quarterback) and Joann Ariola, who beat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-backed Felica Singh.
Another shocking loss for the hard left in deep-blue Seattle: “Republican Ann Davison is leading police- and jail-abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy in the race for city attorney.” Also, in the Mayor’s race, “Bruce Harrell, a former City Council president who urged adding police, including unarmed officers, rather than cutting funding, held a commanding lead of nearly 30 percentage points over current Council President Lorena González as additional ballots were counted Wednesday.” To be fair, Davison is a pretty nominal Republican.
Though it looks like Murphy will hold on to the governor’s mansion in New Jersey, “Republican Edward Durr, Truck Driver Who Spent $153 on Campaign, Defeats New Jersey Senate President Stephen Sweeney.”
Three of four Fort Worth bond packages fail.
Closer to home, Leander ISD voters turned down two of three bond issues:
The second-largest school bond in the state faced a narrow defeat Tuesday night as Leander ISD voters rejected the $727.2 million proposition. The proposal would’ve financed the construction of new buildings, including five new schools, and the renovation of two existing schools to expand capacity.
The final margin was one percentage point, amounting to 215 votes difference in the school district with over 40,000 students. Leander ISD said the bond, along with two others on the ballot Tuesday, was necessary for the population growth the district expects to come.
Those other two finished with slim margins, as well. Proposition B, a $33 million bond to finance technology upgrades including laptops for students and faculty, passed by 805 votes, and Proposition C, a performing arts center upgrade, failed by 765 votes.
(Hat tip: Holly Hansen)
Voters in The Woodlands reject incorporation, will remain a township.
Few things infuriate leftwing racists more than black republicans who refuse to bend the knee:
Tags: Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Ann Davison, black, Brian Fox, Brooklyn, Bruce Harrell, Buffalo, Chaim Deutsch, Critical Race Theory, David Carr (NYC), Democrats, Edward Durr, Felica Singh, Fort Worth, Fort Worth ISD, Glenn Youngkin, India Walton, Inna Vernikov, James Carville, Justin Brannan, Leander, Leander ISD, Lorena Gonzalez, Media Watch, MSNBC, New York, New York City, Nicolle Wallace, Republicans, Seattle, Social Justice Warriors, Staten Island, Stephen Sweeney, Terry McAuliffe, Texas, Tulsi Gabbard, Vickie Paladino, Virginia, Winsome Sears
Posted in Democrats, Elections, Media Watch, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »
November 3rd, 2021
That was a pretty consequential off-year election.
Not only did Glenn Youngkin win, but Republicans swept statewide offices in Virginia, with Winsome Sears winning Lieutenant Governor and Jason Miyares winning Attorney General. (And for those that worry that Youngkin wasn’t quite beyond the margin of fraud, Terry McAuliffe conceded.)
Turns out that Critical Race Theory and radical transgenderism are deeply unpopular among actual voters. Who knew?
Republicans also won control of the Virginia House of Delegates, flipping six seats held by Democrats. Democrats still control the Virginia Senate.
Jim Geraghty:
Here in Virginia, the sun is shining a little brighter, the birds are chirping sweetly, the leaves are turning vibrant colors, and Republicans just stomped the bejeebers out of Democrats up and down the ballot. A “bloodbath,” as University of Virginia professor Larry Sabato told Rachel Maddow last night. “A five-alarm fire,” as Van Jones declared on CNN.
Glenn Youngkin won the Virginia governor’s race by about 70,000 votes over Terry McAuliffe, Winsome Sears won the lieutenant-governor’s race by about 56,000 votes, and Jason Miyares won the state attorney-general’s race by about 34,000 votes. Democratic incumbent AG Mark Herring was the guy who called upon governor Ralph Northam to resign, despite his own past wearing of blackface. The night was so bad that McAuliffe’s surrogates canceled on Chuck Todd and wouldn’t come out and eat their humble pie.
Republicans picked up six seats to win control of the House of Delegates — the oldest continuous legislative body in the Western Hemisphere — with 51 seats to the Democrats’ 49 seats. This is one of the indicators that even though Terry McAuliffe was a deeply flawed candidate, the problem for Democrats was not just him. (With McAuliffe’s defeat, the last gasp of the Clinton political legacy ends.) This should dispel the defeatist “Virginia is a blue state now” talk among Republicans.
Snip.
Once schools did come back, some parents didn’t like what they saw in their children’s curricula and also how schools handled some big issues. What did it mean if teachers were instructed to “embrace critical race theory,” “engage in race-conscious teaching and learning,” “teach code-switching in positive, nonjudgmental ways,” and “re-engineer attitudes and belief systems”? What kinds of materials are appropriate for sex education, and what kinds of materials are age-appropriate for school libraries? Do schools quickly and accurately report sexual assault and violence, or are they trying to sweep it under the rug?
And when parents objected, the National Association of School Boards labeled them “domestic terrorists” and demanded “the resources of the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Secret Service, and its National Threat Assessment Center” to investigate them.
As Robby Soave summarized, “The public school system abused families’ trust during the pandemic, and the reckoning has just begun.”
Nebraska senator Ben Sasse contended that the teachers’ unions delivered the governor’s mansion to Youngkin.
“The Virginia GOP’s MVP has to go to Randi Weingarten, the leader of a radical teachers’ union that ignored actual teaching, politicized everything, shut down schools, and literally tried to tell parents to shut up. Congrats, Randi, you really turned out the vote,” Sasse declared in a released statement. “Congrats to Glenn Youngkin as well, on a sane, well-run campaign — and may all American politicians finally reject drunken, anti-parent rage from radicals like Randi Weingarten.”
Some Twitter reactions to Virginia:
If Sears were a Democrat, the leftwing media would never tire of telling us how historic her election was. Since she’s a Republican, the MSM tried to make her all but invisible. What was the media’s reaction to Republican ticket with a black Lt. Governor and a Hispanic attorney general winning? It was because of racism:
To the surprise of absolutely no one who’s been paying attention to the execrable members of the mainstream media, their response to this momentous occasion was to say that the Republicans won because of racism.
They’re not only evil, but they’re also lazy too.
As we have discussed on many occasions, the Democrats and their media mouthpieces are truly broken people. They were barely tethered to reality when Trump became the Republican nominee in 2016. His victory ripped them from any moorings that they had. Now incapable of rational thought, all they can do is reflexively belch “Racism!” whenever bested by a Republican. They’ve got nothing else, which is why that’s all they’ve got in response to the Virginia results despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
They’re still lying about Critical Race Theory, which is just going to keep making them dig deeper holes for themselves. There were stories about anti-CRT conservatives taking over school boards, like this one in Texas. Of course, NBC News spun that as the victors being anti-diversity. The biggest of the lies about CRT is that it’s “anti-racist,” which it is not. It’s racist, it’s commie, and it’s all about fomenting division.
It wasn’t just CRT that was on the ballot in Virginia last night, it was also a referendum on what the drooling idiot usurper in the Oval Office has done to the country since January. The media won’t dwell on that though, they’re still tasked with carrying all of the water for President LOL Eightyonemillion.
I’ve been writing and saying for months that the egregious overreach by the Democrats would be their undoing. This is the first electoral manifestation of that.
(Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
“Terry McAuliffe Baffled That Telling Parents The State Owns Their Children Wasn’t A Winning Strategy.”
If Virginia was a wakeup call for race and transgenderism-obsessed Democrats, then what are we to make of New Jersey? There Republican Jack Ciattarelli holds a razor-thin lead over Democratic incumbent Philip Murphy in the governor’s race. If that holds up, it would be a seismic event akin to Chris Christie’s victory there in 2009. That provided a foretaste of the red tsunami that would give Republicans control of the House and Senate in 2010, even if Republican enthusiasm for Christie himself waned considerably over the years. (Update: Murphy is now ahead.)
Bad news on for Austin residents: Proposition A, the proposal for adequately funding the police, went down to defeat. It wasn’t a small defeat, either. A whopping 102,791 against to only 46,433 for. And we’re left to figure out an electorate that voted to reinstate the homeless camping ban but didn’t want to refund police in the face of record murders. Maybe I should do a roundtable discussion on the topic.
Minneapolis voters took the opposite tack, voting against disbanding their police department.
All the Texas Constitutional Amendments passed.
Anti-CRT parents win control of the Carroll ISD school board. (Previously.)
I’m hearing the same about Cypress-Fairbanks, with three incumbents going down to defeat. Holly Hansen at The Texan is on that beat, and I’ll update this post when her piece is up. Update: Here it is:
Following a year of heated controversy in the state’s third-largest school district, challengers have unseated three long-time incumbents for positions on the school board.
The winners in the Cypress-Fairbanks ISD (CFISD) election — Natalie Blasingame, Scott Henry, and Lucas Scanlon — were all endorsed by the Harris County Republican Party (HCRP), the Conservative Coalition of Harris County (CCHC), and business political networking organization BIZPAC.
Tags: 2021 Elections, Austin, Austin Police Department, Critical Race Theory, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, Democrats, Elections, Glenn Youngkin, Jack Ciattarelli, Jason Miyares, Jim Geraghty, Lucas Scanlon, Minneapolis, Natalie Blasingame, New Jersey, Philip Murphy, police, Proposition A (2021), Randi Weingarten, Republicans, Scott Henry, Social Justice Warriors, Terry McAuliffe, Texas, Virginia, Winsome Sears
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Republicans, Social Justice Warriors, unions | 3 Comments »
November 2nd, 2021
Today’s Election Day in Texas, Virginia, and several other states! If you haven’t already voted early, find your voter registration card, grab your ID and head off to the polls!
Travis County polling locations.
Williamson County polling locations.
Now a few election roundup bits:
Tons of out-of-state money is flowing in to defeat Pro A.
Among several reforms, the proposition would enact the nationally recognized “Safe City Standard” in Austin to require two police officers per 1,000 citizens.
Texas Scorecard previously reported that New York billionaire George Soros recently intruded into Austin and gave $500,000 to oppose Proposition A. Now, other big players are joining him. Washington, D.C.-based labor union The Fairness Project and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (the largest trade union of government employees in the nation) are also pumping money to defeat the citizen-led effort.
The Fairness Project, which has previously supported harmful employer mandates in Texas, poured in $200,000 to kill the police campaign, while the big-government union tossed in $25,000.
More background on the Austin Justice Coalition, the main local anti Prop A group:
Founded by Chas Moore, the AJC has reached new heights of influence within the City of Austin. Before launching the coalition, Moore “served as a student activist fighting many social issues at The University of Texas at Austin and in the broader Austin Community.”
Snip.
Moore describes himself ideologically as a “liberal, radical, abolitionist, [and] afrofuturist.” He founded AJC in 2015.
According to the Internal Revenue Service, AJC had its tax exempt status revoked in August of 2019 for failing to file a Form-990 return for three consecutive years.
Moore said that there was a misunderstanding between himself and the organization financing AJC at the time, the Texas Fair Defense Project, as to who was responsible for the tax filings. He said that the misstep was rectified by filing backdated 990s and their status was reinstated in 2020.
Under Moore’s tutelage, AJC has prodded the progressive-dominated city council to adopt a sea change in policies.
One of AJC’s biggest triumphs includes its successful effort lobbying council to scrap a 2017 APD labor agreement and the eventual final product that included the creation of the city’s Office of Police Oversight — which expanded on the responsibilities of its predecessor, the Office of the Police Monitor. Another more recent and monumental gain is the 2020 cut and redirection of $150 million from the Austin Police Department (APD) budget.
Other big issues AJC and its sister organizations, such as Texas Appleseed, the Texas Fair Defense Project, and Just Liberty, pushed for include a 2017 ordinance mandating the municipal court prioritize personal recognizance (PR) bonds for defendants classified as indigent, the subsequent ousting of five judges who did not abide the policy change, and the 2019 recission of the citywide prohibition on camping and laying.
In Virginia, more gaslighting by the same people who hired the fake “white supremacists”:
Man, Terry McAuliffe sure likes to hire jerks:
What’s wrong with not just saying “Sorry, he’s not taking questions” rather than yelling “THANK YOU FOR COMING” over and over again?
Tags: 2021 Elections, Austin, Austin Justice Coalition, Brad Johnson, Chas Moore, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Proposition A (2021), Terry McAuliffe, Texas, Texas Constitutional Amendment, Virginia
Posted in Austin, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Texas | 9 Comments »
November 1st, 2021
There’s a Texas Constitutional Amendment election tomorrow.
So let me go through these in “one-eyed man in the land of the blind” fashion:
- Proposition 1: Charitable Raffles at Rodeo Venues [HJR 143]. What It Does: Designates sanctioned rodeos as professional sports teams and authorizes professional sports team charitable organizations to conduct raffles at rodeo venues.
Analysis: This is one of those small ball “every damn thing has to be spelled out in the Texas Constitution” amendments Yes.
- Proposition 2: County Infrastructure Bonds in Blighted Areas [HJR 99]. What It Does: Authorizes counties to issue bonds (debt) to fund infrastructure and transportation projects in underdeveloped, unproductive, or blighted areas.
Analysis: Lots of direct mail flyers trying to pimp this thing. “Underdeveloped,” “unproductive” and “blighted” sound like excuses to throw government subsidies to private business interests, with all the attendant possibilities of cronyism, graft and fraud. Texas local governments do not suffer from a crushing lack of debt. “Compared to the top 10 most populous states in the nation, Texas’ local debt per capita ranks as the second highest total, behind only New York (Texas Bond Review Board, 2021, p. 4). Proposition 2 may aggravate this situation by allowing counties to take on even more debt, which could result in higher future taxes, increased debt service payments, and credit rating risk.” No.
- Proposition 3: Prohibition on Limiting Religious Services [SJR 27]. What It Does: State and local governments may not enact any rules that prohibit or limit religious services by religious organizations.
Analysis: You know how Canada imprisoned a minister for daring to hold church services? Texas don’t cotton to none of that. Yes.
- Proposition 4: Eligibility Requirements for Certain Judicial Offices [SJR 47] What It Does: Adds that state Supreme Court and court of appeals justices, and court of criminal appeals judges, must be Texas residents at the time of election. They must have been practicing lawyers licensed in the state of Texas and/or Texas state or county court judges for at least 10 years (the current amount of experience), with no suspensions of their licenses. Requires district court judges to have eight years of Texas law practice and/or court judge experience, with no suspensions—twice the current requirement of four years of combined experience.
Analysis: Seems like sound requirements. Yes.
- Proposition 5: Authority of State Commission on Judicial Conduct [HJR 165]. What It Does: Authorizes the Commission to investigate complaints and reports against candidates for state judicial office, in the same manner it does judicial officeholders.
Analysis: Mildly in favor, though the advantage of catching bad apples before they’re elected has to be weighed against the possibility of the commission being used to stifle dissent. Yes.
- Proposition 6: Right to Designated Essential Caregiver [SJR 19]. What It Does: Residents of nursing, assisted living, and similar residential facilities have the right to designate an essential caregiver who may not be denied in-person visitation.
Analysis: More Flu Manchu fallout spelling out things that we didn’t realize needed spelling out before. Yes.
- Proposition 7: Homestead Tax Limit for Surviving Spouses of Disabled [HJR 125]. What It Does: Extends the current homestead school tax limit for disabled individuals to surviving spouses who are at least 55 years old and reside at the home.
Analysis: More small ball. Yes.
- Proposition 8: Homestead Tax Exemption for Surviving Military Spouses [SJR 35]. What It Does: Expands the current homestead tax exemption to include surviving spouses of service members fatally injured in the line of duty, along with those killed outright.
Analysis: More small ball. Yes.
If you live in Austin, I recommend a very strong Yes vote on Proposition A, to restore police staffing to sane levels, and a moderate No vote on Proposition B. I haven’t had time to research the ins and outs of this landswap, but with all the flyers I’ve been getting touting it, somebody’s palms are getting greased and somebody is going to make out like a bandit, so I would vote no just on general principle.
Tags: 2021 Elections, Austin, Elections, Proposition A (2021), Texas, Texas Constitutional Amendment
Posted in Austin, Elections, Texas | 5 Comments »