The most surprising component of Gov. Greg Abbott’s largely unsurprising slate of emergency items this session is a prohibition on COVID-19 restrictions and directives — not because of what the governor hasn’t done, but because of what he did.
During the pandemic’s height, Abbott, like many other GOP governors across the country, issued his own executive orders closing businesses, restricting the ingress and egress of persons, and mandating masks — the lattermost of which was announced only weeks after the office’s official position stated that “no jurisdiction can impose a civil or criminal penalty for failure to wear a face covering.”
A similar instance occurred in 2021 relating to vaccine mandate bans when Abbott’s spokesman stated that “private businesses don’t need government running their business.” A couple of months later, the governor expanded his vaccine mandate ban to include private companies along with governmental entities.
Abbott is now embroiled in a legal fight — to be featured at the Texas Supreme Court this week — with school districts who tried to preserve their own mask mandates well after the state ended its own.
The goalposts of pandemic policy across the country have moved constantly over the last three years, including in Texas — attributable in part to the giant uncertainty about the situation, especially early on. Mixed messages from officials were a common theme in the first few months.
“People didn’t know what we were dealing with with COVID, so there’s some grace that has to be extended,” state Rep. Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler), a frequent critic of the governor’s emergency response, said at The Texan’s 88th Session Kickoff in January. “I think there’s some grace that is extended to our leaders for getting through a chaotic period of time.”
Some grace is fine. After all, Flu Manchu was new and potentially deadly, and no one knew just how deadly at the start. It became evident very early on that Mao Tse Lung was not remotely as deadly as Ebola, yet Abbott still took six weeks of two weeks to bend the curve before he even started lifting the lockdown by a magnanimous 25% (remember the absurdity of tapped over restaurant tables you couldn’t sit at), markedly slower than many other Republican governors. Florida’s Ron DeSantis was notably faster at lifting all his markdown restrictions than Abbott was.
Finally, keep in mind that just renewed his own Flu Manchu disaster declaration February 13th. There’s never been a good explanation of how Flu Manchu lockdown restrictions were compatible with basic constitutional rights. So why has Abbott kept that disaster declaration going years after everyone else has moved on with their life?
The first target of Greg Abbott’s 2023 ire over “COVID-19 restrictions and directives” should be the Greg Abbott of 2020.
If I were tracking the 2024 Republican Presidential Primaries the way I tracked the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primaries (I’m not; the Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update was a huge pain in the ass and I don’t have the time to spend on it), Vivek Ramaswamy is exactly the sort of fringe candidate I’d give some time and attention to.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the millionaire entrepreneur and author of Woke, Inc., told National Review on Monday that he is “strongly considering” a run for president and expects to make a decision “very soon.”
Ramaswamy said he’s been drawn to the idea of running to address a “national identity crisis” that has left Americans hungry for purpose, meaning, and identity.
“We are at a point in our national history when the things that used to fill that void — faith, patriotism, hard work, even family — have disappeared,” he said, adding that in its absence, “wokeism, climate-ism as an ideology, radical gender ideology, Covidism” have become secular religions that fill that “black hole of identity.”
Conservatives have gotten too good at pointing out the problem and “trying to stamp out the poison without actually addressing the real problem,” said Ramaswamy, who has been dubbed the “CEO of Anti-Woke Inc.” The solution, he says, is to “fill that identity void with a vision of American national identity that runs so deep, that it dilutes the secular agendas to irrelevance.”
Those such as President Biden who deliver a vision of national unity by beginning in the middle and calling for compromise are doing it wrong, Ramaswamy said. In order to build unity, the country must return to the “extremism of the ideas that set America into motion: free speech, unbridled meritocracy,” he said.
“I think most people believe these ideals and most people think their neighbors and their colleagues believe these ideals to be true as well, but they can’t be sure anymore, because they don’t feel free to talk about it,” he said. “And so that’s been one of the hallmarks for me, is to start talking openly, again, to lead the way by actually doing it.”
Ramaswamy founded biotech company Roivant Sciences in 2014 and served as its CEO until 2021. That year, he published Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam, which says that despite “rosy promises of a better, more diverse, environmentally-friendly world,” stakeholder capitalism “robs us of our money, our voice, and our identity.”
In May 2022, Ramaswamy announced the launch of his new financial firm, Strive, which would focus on “excellence capitalism” rather than encouraging American corporations to get involved in social or environmental issues.
The Ohio-based firm was created to solve what it says is a fiduciary problem created by investment companies such as BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, which have used clients’ funds to “exercise decisive influence over nearly every U.S. public company to advance political ideologies that many of their clients disagree with.”
“Over the last two years, I have traveled the country and listened to the concerns of everyday Americans who want to be heard in the places where they shop, work and invest,” Ramaswamy said in a statement at the time. “We want iconic American brands like Disney, Coca-Cola and Exxon, and U.S. tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and Google to deliver high-quality products that improve our lives, not controversial political ideologies that divide us. The Big 3 asset managers have fueled this polarizing new trend in corporate America, and that’s why we’re going to compete with them head-on to refocus American companies on the shared pursuit of excellence over politics.”
In September, Ramaswamy published his second book, Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence.
He told National Review on Monday that he has been working to create a space for open conversations about a return to American ideals in recent years.
“I wasn’t free to speak as an elite CEO or the other environments I had been in, but I purposefully stepped aside from my job as a CEO to make this my mission over the last three years, to start talking openly,” he said.
He wants to “revive the American dream in the 21st-century context,” a vision that is of personal importance to Ramaswamy who has “lived the full arc of the American dream” as a first-generation Indian American. Ramaswamy, who attended Harvard for undergrad before attending Yale Law, is the son of a General Electric engineer and a geriatric psychiatrist.
Another box he checks is “Can self-fund,” as he is reportedly worth $500 million. That’s the sort of money that can easily get you to the finish line…in a senate or governor’s race. As Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg proved, spending $50 to $200 million
Is he a better speaker than Steyer or Bloomberg? That’s a pretty low bar, but yes:
That’s the latest video from his YouTube channel. Which, as of this writing, has 44 views.
So you can begin to see the scope of the problem.
Ramaswamy is a guy who might make a serious candidate for a lower-level job, but who wants to run for President as an outsider message candidate. In that sense, he’s a lot like Andrew Yang was for Democrats in 2020. But while Yang’s message was a bit eclectic for Democrats, Ramaswamy’s seems to be a lot closer to the default position for Republicans. It’s hard to see the necessary war against radical social justice being a wedge he can use to calve votes from higher profile and more experienced candidates.
It would be great if there were a Republican candidate in the 2024 Presidential race who was running to destroy wokeness…and who was also a proven elected leader of a large, successful state.
Like, say, Florida.
That’s the sort of candidate a majority of Republicans could get behind…
Via Texas Scorecard comes two different stories of how radical racist social justice warrior ideology in the form of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion continues to infect Texas universities.
First up: A University of Texas professor is suing UT officials for violating his First Amendment rights.
In attempts to silence the professor for speaking out on controversial issues, university administration threatened his job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, and academic freedom.
Richard Lowery, Ph.D., a tenured finance professor at University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business, said in the complaint, “The officials at the state’s flagship university violated his constitutional right to criticize government officials.”
In the suit, Lowery claims the university administration “harmed his right to academic freedom.”
Lowery’s suit explains that the First Amendment “protects the right of public university professors to engage their colleagues and administrators in debate and discussion concerning academic matters, including what should be taught and the school’s ideological direction and balance.”
According to the Institute for Free Speech, Professor Lowery is “well known” for his “vigorous commentary on university affairs.” Lowery’s articles have been featured in The Hill, The Texas Tribune, the Houston Chronicle, and The College Fix.
Lowery has also been known to use social media and online opinion articles to “publicly criticize university officials’ actions, and ask elected state-government officials to intervene. He has also used such tools to participate in the sort of academic campus discourse that faculty traditionally pursue.”
In his articles criticizing UT officials, Lowery specifically calls them out for their approaches on issues such as “critical race theory indoctrination, affirmative action, academic freedom, competence-based performance measures, and the future of capitalism.”
On multiple occasions, Lowery reported that university administrators are using diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirements to filter out “competent” teachers and professors who disagree with the DEI ideology prevailing on campus.
In response, Lowery claims university administrators “responded with a campaign to silence” him, where they threatened his job, pay, institute affiliation, research opportunities, academic freedom, and labeled his behavior as inviting violence or lacking in civility.
The suit continues, saying school officials “also allowed, or at least did not retract, a UT employee’s request that police surveil Lowery’s speech, because he might contact politicians or other influential people.”
“Lowery got the message,” the suit says.
In response, the professor is seeking to “vindicate” his right of free speech, asking the court to declare the administration’s actions as unconstitutional and restore his First Amendment rights to speak on matters he was previously prevented from speaking on.
DEI has even infected the university previously considered a bulwark of conservative value, Texas A&M:
Thought of by many Texans as a relatively conservative university, a new report explains how Texas A&M has “gone woke” in recent years.
Scott Yenor, a Boise State professor and fellow at the Claremont Institute, explained during a recent interview on The Luke Macias Show how leftist Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies have seeped into the campus.
DEI programs have come under fire recently for prioritizing factors like race, gender, and sexual orientation over merit in hiring, admission, and curriculum.
“Texas A&M has this reputation as being one of the more conservative public universities. I know a generation ago when someone asked me where I would send my kids to school, I said the best public university in the country is Texas A&M,” said Yenor.
But when Yenor began researching DEI programs in college campuses across the country, he found something troubling in Texas.
The interesting thing about these universities is that they advertise what they’re doing. They have a plan and they’re proud of the plan. And then they go about trying to execute the plan. And Texas A&M announced a very radical diversity plan in 2010 and has been executing it like on steroids the last two years.
Yenor mentioned recent efforts to take down a statue of former Confederate General and Texas Governor Sul Ross from campus. Though that movement was unsuccessful, Yenoer argued bigger factors are at play.
“There were attempts to take down statues and, and, you know, other other ways of affecting the campus climate symbolically. But the more important thing is that there’s been a real, real ratcheting up of their understanding of what they have to do. The 2020 diversity plan really concerns breaking down the systems of oppression in words like ‘merit,’ hiring the best person, and things like that,” said Yenor.
To that end, Yenor pointed out a shocking statistic: Texas A&M University currently has more DEI personnel than the University of Texas at Austin.
“It’s true at A&M that diversity is the new merit,” said Yenor.
Governor Greg Abbott issuing a directive banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory doesn’t seem to discouraged social justice warriors from continuing to radicalize Texas higher education. There needs to be sterner measures, including defunding the DEI bureaucracy, followed by pink slips.
Here’s some spectacular slow motion footage of various rifle calibers hitting a steel plate at 250,000 frames per second. Rounds tested include .223, 5.56 NATO, 300 Blackout, 7.62×39 (the AK-47 round, but out of an AR pattern rifle), 7.62×54 (Mosin–Nagant), .308, and our old friend, .50 BMG.
A few notes:
5.56 NATO seems to pack more punch than 300 Blackout, which is strangely unimpressive.
You can actually see the shadow of the shock cone from the 7.62×39, which is pretty cool.
The fireball from the Mosin–Nagant is huge!
The .50 BMG is shot from a Noreen 50, which I don’t think I’ve seen before (on video or in person).
The .50 BMG punches through the ballistic steel plate and destroys the wooden backstop. You can see the shockwave distortion pass in from of the camera.
The fireball from the .50 BMG muzzle break is a lot more noticeable at 250,000 fps compared to 33,000 fps.
Like just about every blogger, I have some half-finished drafts of posts I never finished, many of which I still have Firefox tabs open for. Every now and then I have a hankering to bear down and finish one of them, if only to close a few tabs. So let’s have a poll!
[ays_poll id=5]
Let me know what you’re interested in and I’ll make an effort to finish that one. Just don’t expect it immediately…
“Biden’s job growth is mostly immigrants working for low wages.” Also this: “The Department of Homeland Security has been issuing an unknown number of two-year work permits to illegal immigrants, which will keep them in the workforce suppressing wages and fanning the flames of discontent amongst Americans unable to find jobs until the next presidential election.” What the hell?
“Disinformation Inc: State Department bankrolls group secretly blacklisting conservative media.”
The Department of State has funded a deep-pocketed “disinformation” tracking group that is secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media, likely costing the news organizations vital advertising dollars, the Washington Examiner can confirm.
The Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups, is feeding blacklists to ad companies with the intent of defunding and shutting down websites peddling alleged “disinformation,” the Washington Examiner reported . This same “disinformation” group has received $330,000 from two State Department-backed entities linked to the highest levels of government, raising concerns from First Amendment lawyers and members of Congress.
“Any outfit like that engaged in censorship shouldn’t have any contact with the government because they’re tainted by association with a group that is doing something fundamentally against American values,” Jeffrey Clark, ex-acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, told the Washington Examiner. “The government or any private entity shouldn’t be involved with this entity that’s engaged in conduct that is either legally questionable or at least morally questionable.”
GDI compiles a “dynamic exclusion list” that it feeds to corporate entities, such as the Microsoft -owned advertising company Xandr, emails show. Xandr and other companies are, in turn, declining to place ads on websites that GDI flags as peddling disinformation.
The Washington Examiner revealed on Thursday that it is on this exclusion list. The list includes at least 2,000 websites and has “had a significant impact on the advertising revenue that has gone to those sites,” said GDI’s CEO Clare Melford on a March 2022 podcast.
GDI has identified that the 10 “riskiest” news outlets for disinformation are the American Spectator, Newsmax, the Federalist, the American Conservative, One America News, the Blaze, the Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and the New York Post.
Another huge story that the news media has done it’s best to ignore: a toxic derailment in East Palestine, Ohio. The blew it up to prevent a BLEVE and ended up releasing Phosgene gas. That’s carrying your World War I reenactment too far.
90-year California Democratic Senator old Dianne Feinstein to retire after 2024. But…
A few hour later she was evidently unaware she had retired. Increasingly, “crazy” or “senile” seem to be the two most common flavors of the Democratic Party…
Toast, the all-in-one restaurant technology platform and one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the U.S., today announced an additional $101 million in financing led by new investors Generation Investment Management and Lead Edge Capital.
Snip.
ABOUT GENERATION
Generation Investment Management LLP is dedicated to long-term investing, integrated sustainability research, and client alignment. It is an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and headquartered in London, with approximately $17 billion in assets under management. Its Chairman is former Vice President of the United States Al Gore and its senior partner is David Blood. Generation Investment Management LLP is authorized and regulated in the United Kingdom by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Funny how an ex-American Vice President feels a need to run an investment company out of London.
he Austin City Council on Wednesday voted to fire City Manager Spencer Cronk following his response to the winter storm earlier this month. The council voted 10-1 in a special called session, with only Natasha Harper-Madison (District 1) voting against Cronk’s firing.
Natasha Harper-Madison is an ultra-lefty sort, which makes me slightly more assured that firing Cronk was the right move.
Cronk’s termination is effective Thursday, Feb. 16. He will receive a one-year severance of $463,001.50, under a City ordinance in which he was hired in 2018. The council has appointed Jesus Garza, who served as Austin’s city manager from 1994 to 2002, to serve as interim city manager.
This is where things get interesting. The city of Austin has an Assistant City Manager, Veronica Briseno. Normal procedure is that the Assistant City Manager takes over as Acting City Manager while a permanent replacement is found. Why was that not done here? Could it have something to do with the fact that current Travis County DA and Soros-backed leftist tool Jose Garza is Jesus Garza’s nephew?
What are the odds?
I mean, it’s just plain odd to hire someone who was last city manager 20 years ago. That’s like thinking that M. Night Shyamalan is a sure thing to helm a big budget movie because Signs made a lot of money.
More lawsuits are pouring in against the Biden administration’s recent decision to redefine firearms with pistol braces as short-barrelled rifles (SBR) under the National Firearms Act (NFA), with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Gun Owners of America (GOA) filing a joint lawsuit seeking to block the rule.
The lawsuit, State of Texas v. ATF, was filed in the Federal Southern District Court of Texas on Thursday, joining two other lawsuits filed in federal district courts in Texas. Those include a challenge filed by attorneys with the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty in the Northern District, and a challenge filed in the Eastern District by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF).
GOA called their lawsuit “the most comprehensive” among those filed, writing, “Our complaint makes clear that the agency’s rule violates the Second Amendment ‘text, history and tradition’ standard set forth by the Supreme Court in its recent Bruen case.” GOA also said their case argues the rule violates several other constitutional provisions, including being an “invalid” exercise of taxing authority.
Paxton also released a statement on the lawsuit, saying he is hopeful they prevail in blocking the rule.
“This is yet another attempt by the Biden Administration to create a workaround to the U.S. Constitution and expand gun registration in America,” Paxton said in the release. “There is absolutely no legal basis for ATF’s haphazard decision to try to change the long-standing classification for stabilizing braces, force registration on Americans, and then throw them in jail for ten years if they don’t quickly comply. This rule is dangerous and unconstitutional, and I’m hopeful that this lawsuit will ensure that it is never allowed to take effect.”
Today, Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) jointly filed a lawsuit challenging the Biden Pistol Brace Ban with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. The suit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
This new rule, which took effect on January 31st of this year, will force Americans to register or destroy their approximately 40 million lawfully owned brace firearms within 120 days, or face possible felony charges.
Erich Pratt, GOA’s Senior Vice President, issued the following statement:
“Millions of Americans are facing a very tight deadline to destroy or register their lawfully owned property under this draconian new rule. We hope the court will hear the pleas of gun owners across the country who will be irrevocably harmed by this rule, and GOA stands ready to fight it at every turn.”
Sam Paredes, on behalf of the board for GOF, added:
“This rule will have some of the most wide-reaching impacts nationwide in the tyrannical history of gun control. We the People will not tolerate this abuse.”
Having a state Attorney General join your lawsuit tends to do wonders to establish standing to sue the federal government. Like bump stocks, ATF has decided to retroactively make an entire class of widely-owned firearms accessory illegal, along with turning millions of lawful gun owners into felons for continuing to possess the same accessories they had already lawfully purchased. The composition of the Supreme Court has changed since Gundy v. United States was decided, and the current court may be much more inclined to reign-in delegation of congressional powers to regulatory agencies.
After talking to his government sources, Peter Zeihan thinks that we won The Great Balloon War, having gained valuable insights by capturing Chinese tech, and that the entire episode is another symptom of high level CCP dysfunction.
Some takeaways:
“What the Chinese were technically trying to do: They were doing overflight of a lot of our military bases, specifically our ICBM launch facilities, because the Chinese are new to having a nuclear deterrent.”
“Remember that as early as the 1970s, the United States had over 30,000 nuclear weapons, about one-third of which would have been deployed by missile. Now, with arms control treaties and the post-cold war environment, we have slimmed that down to just a few hundred.” Here Zeihan is wrong. The declared number of nuclear warheads the United States possesses is 3,750, but those numbers don’t count tactical nuclear weapons. Including those yields an estimate in the 5,500 range, though some 1,800 of those are slated for dismantlement.
“But the United States has a deep bench of experience in building and maintaining these things and the Chinese simply don’t.”
“Balloons are big, they’re slow moving, you can’t maneuver them very well, they’re obvious.”
He reiterates his theory that Xi has purged any possible successor and surrounded himself with slavish yes-men.
“It just never occurred to me that they could be that dumb. Well, turns out the rampant stupidity that is taking over decision making in Chinese policy has now reached a bit of a break point.”
“The Chinese have lost the ability to coordinate within their own system.”
“The Americans were reaching out to the Chinese, and the Chinese refused to take the call because they didn’t know what to say, because they couldn’t get directions.”
“The bureaucracy is seized up…there’s really only two types of people left: Those who will do nothing unless they are explicitly instructed to do something, or those who are True Believers.”
He doesn’t think that the Chinese got anything from balloon observation of our missile silos they couldn’t have gotten from satellites.
“The whole time U.S. hardware was tracking that balloon, tracking its emissions, taking digital renderings of the entirety of the structure, and, oh yeah, yeah, just just so we’re, clear this one’s not a weather balloon, this thing was 300 feet wide. That’s a big ass balloon. That’s like an order of magnitude bigger than weather balloons.”
“The equipment that was hanging from the bottom of the balloon, the payload was bigger than an Embraer [jetliner], and there were long range antennas and listening devices and computing capacity and solar panels on this thing, along with some propellers.”
“The diplomatic system seized up because the truth was so obvious, but the Chinese diplomatic corps had no idea that this was going on.”
He asserts that it we shot it down over Montana, there’s a good chance people would die, which is simply not the case, since there are vast stretches of Montana with very minimal population. (See also: the Columbia explosion.)
“We’re getting a better look at spy equipment out of China, and their capabilities, and their emissions, and how they handle information, and what they’re looking for, as a result of this incident than normally you would have gotten after a one or two year probing effort using more traditional methods.”
Zeihan and his sources either missed or omitted a more likely explanation for China’s spy balloon, mainly that they were more interested in signals intelligence and threat response communication than photographing ICBM silos (though they might well have done some of that too). Because radio waves bounce off the ionosphere, that’s the sort of information you can’t get from satellites. Maybe the point of the exercise was intended to see what sort of signals they could capture when we scrambled assets to take a look at them.
Still an incredibly stupid thing to do, but more purposely stupid than Zeihan gives them credit for.