Welcome to a Friday the 13th LinkSwarm! Try to avoid hockey-mask-wearing serial killers today.
Although I feel slightly dirty putting up a link to Vox, this piece on how Alaska’s Permanent Fund Dividend warps the politics of the state is worth reading, even if you have to factor in Vox’s anti-conservative bias. And I was unaware that Alaska now has the highest unemployment rate in the country…
Chicago, Los Angeles and New York are among the worst-run cities in the country, and residents are leaving. If only there was one single common (D)enominator to all those cities…
President Trump seeks a ban on flavored vaping. This is a very stupid approach to something that is largely a non-problem. It’s not the government’s purpose to protect people from themselves, even if it were vaping is several orders of magnitude less dangerous to your health than smoking, and this is appropriately handled at the state or local (not national) level. Plus there is a sufficient framework of laws to making sales to minors illegal anywhere they’re not already illegal. President Trump is simply wrong here.
Brexit is already changing the British economy. For the better.
The economy overall expanded by 0.3 per cent in July, significantly faster than the 0.1 per cent expected, and better than most of our main rivals. Next, we found out that the trade deficit narrowed slightly as imports fell. Finally, we learned that employment was at record highs and that wages were still growing at record rates. Add in a Chancellor who is about to start spending money with carefree abandon and there is no reason why it shouldn’t improve from here. It isn’t fantastic. But it is a decent performance from a mature economy facing what is meant to be its biggest economic challenge in a generation.
The best data we have suggest that the vast majority of Americans view political correctness as a problem, and that, contra the claim of many progressives, this is not a battlefield consisting of resentful ranting whites on one side and oppressed people on the other, the latter simply asking to be treated and spoken of with decency. In fact, the people most enthusiastic about intense forms of language-policing tend to be more privileged and more white, according to a national political-correctness survey conducted by the firm More in Common that made headlines last year. As Yascha Mounk wrote in his writeup in The Atlantic, “While 83 percent of respondents who make less than $50,000 dislike political correctness, just 70 percent of those who make more than $100,000 are skeptical about it. And while 87 percent who have never attended college think that political correctness has grown to be a problem, only 66 percent of those with a postgraduate degree share that sentiment.” Moreover, “Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87 percent), and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness.”
Now, people have criticized that survey on the grounds that if you ask people whether “X is a problem,” where X is a culture-war buzzword, you’re likely to get a lot of positive responses. I think there’s something to this critique, but the numbers are too overwhelming to fully discount it. I also think that if you’re going to argue that PC is just a synonym for “being a decent person” you should then explain why so many Americans think that concept is a problem. Are Americans that invested in indecency?
Plus, it would be one thing if this survey were some sort of strange outlier, but if you look at the data we have on specific culture-war blowups of relevance to the PC and/or cancel-culture debates, you find the same pattern over and over. Almost always, the opinions most commonly represented in mainstream progressive outlets are not held by the masses, including by the groups seemingly with the most at stake. I’ve written about this before: On issues ranging from Ralph Northam’s blackface scandal to the Washington football team name to what term(s) should be used to refer to people of recent Latin American descent, woke-progressive opinion is often very out of line with that of the majority of members of the groups in question. Not only do the wokest progressives not speak for Americans; they don’t speak for the groups they’re claiming to want to protect. A 40-year-old American Indian from Oklahoma — that paragon of wealth and privilege and white resentment, of course — made this point pretty succinctly when he was interviewed for a focus group which accompanied the release of the More In Common survey: “It seems like everyday you wake up something has changed … Do you say Jew? Or Jewish? Is it a black guy? African-American? … You are on your toes because you never know what to say. So political correctness in that sense is scary.”
“It’s new,” Stone says of cancel culture, the term used to refer to boycotts started (usually via social media) when a person or group is offended by a star or brand. “I don’t want to say it’s the same as it’s always been. The kids are fucking different than us. There’s a generational thing going on.” Currently, Dave Chappelle is in the crosshairs for his latest Netflix stand-up special, Sticks and Stones. “I know some people have been canceled for genuinely, like, personal behavior, but Dave is not getting canceled anytime soon,” Stone says, joking that South Park and Chappelle are “grandfathered” out of the culture.
Stone also shared his theory as to why critics were so hard on the latest Chappelle special, while viewers seemed to enjoy it far more. “I feel bad for television critics and cultural critics,” he explains. “They may have laughed like hell at that, and then they went home and they know what they have to write to keep their job. So when I read TV reviews or cultural reviews, I think of someone in prison, writing. I think about somebody writing a hostage note. This is not what they think. This is what they have to do to keep their job in a social media world. So I don’t hold it against them.”
Also:
One of the most notable aspects from last season was the lack of any political dealings, specifically the nearly total absence of Donald Trump via the Mr. Garrison persona. “It was nice for us,” Parker says. “It was nice to not come in and talk about Donald Trump. And I think it was nice for people to watch and go, ‘Oh, yeah, there is still comedy outside of fucking Donald Trump. There is still funny shit as the world goes on.’ And you can get your Trump comedy on so many other shows.”
Every segment they air is selected because they think/hope it will damage President Trump and disenfranchise the tens of millions of Americans who voted for and support him. They don’t report news. They select only stories that they think will damage President Trump, and ignore or otherwise downplay and dilute the stories that don’t.
MyPayrollHR, a now defunct cloud-based payroll processing firm based in upstate New York, abruptly ceased operations this past week after stiffing employees at thousands of companies. The ongoing debacle, which allegedly involves malfeasance on the part of the payroll company’s CEO, resulted in countless people having money drained from their bank accounts and has left nearly $35 million worth of payroll and tax payments in legal limbo.
Snip.
Financial institutions are supposed to ignore or reject payment instructions that don’t comport with precise formatting required by the National Automated Clearinghouse Association (NACHA), the not-for-profit organization that provides the backbone for the electronic movement of money in the United States. But Slavkin said a number of financial institutions ended up processing both reversal requests, meaning a fair number of employees at companies that use MyPayrollHR suddenly saw a month’s worth of payroll payments withdrawn from their bank accounts.
Fake influencer exposed. Oh wait, let me rephrase that: More fake than usual influencer exposed. I’m not on Instagram, and I’m incredulous that “influencer” is even a thing. Maybe I could start an “anti-influencer” channel, with just videos of me reading a book while occasionally sipping from a can of off-brand diet root beer. Maybe I could get famous brands to me not to wear their clothing…
Permit me to list just a few of the more troubling accounts I was privy to during the committee’s meeting. Far more times than I would care to mention, the name “Indiana Jones” (the adopted title Dr. Jones insists on being called) has appeared in governmental reports linking him to the Nazi Party, black-market antiquities dealers, underground cults, human sacrifice, Indian child slave labor, and the Chinese mafia. There are a plethora of international criminal charges against Dr. Jones, which include but are not limited to: bringing unregistered weapons into and out of the country; property damage; desecration of national and historical landmarks; impersonating officials; arson; grand theft (automobiles, motorcycles, aircraft, and watercraft in just a one week span last year); excavating without a permit; countless antiquities violations; public endangerment; voluntary and involuntary manslaughter; and, allegedly, murder.
(Hat tip: Greg Benford on Facebook.)
Poland frowns on Greenpeace’s shenanigans:
No messing about
Armed Polish border guards board Greenpeace 'Rainbow Warrior' ship blocking the delivery of coal to the port of Gdansk.
Greenpeace have accused Polish authorities of using excessive force.
Everybody knows about the 36,000 homeless on the streets of LA, over 60,000 in the county, replete with human feces and syringes littering the sidewalks, along with rats, typhus and even rumors of bubonic plague.
And those figures are what we’re told. No one, if you can trust the comments sections in the LA Times or the Next Door app for my old Hollywood neighborhood, remotely believes them. They could be three or four times the number. And how do you take a census of the homeless anyway? They are inherently nomadic. But everyone knows they are everywhere, along those sidewalks, under the freeway underpasses, even in the brush up by Mulholland Drive. Maybe they should add homeless encampments to the Disneyland Mulholland ride.
But why has this happened in a place that is so rich it is the fifth biggest economy in the world by itself, ahead of the United Kingdom and just behind Germany? Can’t they just throw money at the homeless and make them go away?
Not so easy. It’s been tried, at least to some extent. Shelters, some of them well built, have been constructed all over the city but the homeless don’t want to stay in them. The reason is these shelters are drug-free zones and the homeless of LA (and San Francisco and Seattle) are anything but drug-free. Most are addicts. They prefer to live in tents where they can smoke what they want, shoot what they want, pop what they want.
So homeless encampments keep growing and sprout up everywhere as the syringes pile up.
Here’s a 10 minute drive through of Skid Row that gives you some idea of the size of the problem:
Here we see what the video producers want us to see as a “respectable” homeless person, the “mayor” of the block he pitches his tent on, and how he tells the “rules” to other homeless people camping there, but we also see that once a week city crews have to clean and hose off the block because it’s become a trash heap.
Notice that everyone in the video frames the problem as government needs to do more. Even the homeless guy realizes the promises are empty. There’s no discussion of eliminating California and Los Angeles’ onerous restrictions on building new housing.
Building costs in California are far above those in other states. A recent report indicates that a home that costs $300,000 to build in Texas would cost about $800,000 to build in California. The report cites factors that increase California costs, including the fact that approval of a major development in California is uncertain and that, once approved, construction can take up to 15 years. Another report shows that building “affordable housing” costs about $425,000 per unit in a multi-family development.
Take a moment and consider how many households can afford an “affordable housing” unit that costs $425,000 to build. Assuming a down payment of 10 percent, a household must earn roughly $100,000 to qualify for a conventional mortgage to purchase that home. Unless building costs fall significantly, this means some form of government subsidy—either to the builder or to the buyer—will often be required for these units to be built and occupied. And these subsidies will ultimately be paid for by taxpayers.
Regulations are a major factor behind outrageous California construction costs, and this includes the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). This legislation, which was passed by governor Ronald Reagan in 1970, requires that environmental review and protection be part of every state and local government decision-making process. But CEQA needs to be reformed. What was intended as a tool for protecting the state’s environment is now used by political organizations, businesses, labor unions, community organizers—you name it—for their own agendas that often have virtually nothing to do with environmental protection.
A key problem with CEQA is that it allows lawsuits brought by private parties, and a parade of CEQA lawsuits can add many years and millions of dollars in costs to projects. Roughly half of CEQA lawsuits are decided in favor of the plaintiff, which in turn promotes more CEQA-based lawsuits. CEQA serves as a litigant’s tool of last resort, because virtually anyone can easily disguise almost any lawsuit as one that is based on environmental concerns. If it involves building on a plot of land, then the environment is affected, no?
It is interesting to note that relatively few CEQA-type environmental lawsuits are brought in New York, which also has strict state environmental laws. But these types of lawsuits are rarely decided in favor of the plaintiff by New York judges, which in turn discourages parties from bringing these lawsuits in the first place.
Project opposition often emerges after years of planning and community outreach and at times is nothing more than a money grab. Imagine that you are a California developer. You must confront not only outrageously high construction costs but also the uncertainty of how long approval will take and the possibility that it won’t be approved unless you pay off a litany of extortive outside interests. Is it any wonder there is not enough new construction in California? This is certainly not what Governor Reagan or the state legislature imagined would happen when the law was passed in 1970, and this is why CEQA must be reformed.
Several attempts to reform CEQA have failed, blocked not only by environmental groups but also by labor. It is not that labor groups put the environment front and center in their agenda but rather that CEQA gives labor an extremely powerful tool in bargaining with developers.
You know who’s right at home in Los Angeles? Rats, who east scraps and human feces left by the homeless people defecating in the street (just like in San Francisco):
And that, in turn, has brought back the medieval scourge of typhus:
The problem is driving longtime businesses out:
Both California and Los Angeles have become one-party Democratic fiefdoms, where progressive policy preferences have been put into action. Tolerance of homeless drug addicts has meant an increase in homeless drug addicts, just like in Seattle.
Many liberals complain about the unfairness of broken windows policing. But when people elect hard-left Democrats to office they put an end to broken windows policing, and when you stop prosecuting lifestyle crimes, you get homeless drug addicts living on the street, which begets piles of garbage, which begets rats, which begets typhus and other infectious diseases. Sure as clockwork.
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Biden brags about his segregationist buds, a sleestak joins the race, Beto hires a Ralph Northam staffer, and New York Times and/or Google News screw up a lot of candidate photos. It’s your Democratic Presidential Clown Car Update!
Polls
Lot of damn polls this time around…
Economist/YouGov (page 162): Biden 26, Warren 14, Sanders 13, Buttigieg 9, Harris 7, O’Rourke 4, Booker 2, Bennet 1, Bullock 1, Castro 1, de Blasio 1, Delaney 1, Gabbard 1, Gillibrand 1, Klobucher 1, Yang 1. Hickenlooper, Messam, and Moulton not only got 0%, they got 0% across all demographic categories and subgroupsings (sex, age, race).
Monmouth University: Biden 32, Warren 15, Sanders 14, Harris 8, Buttigieg 5, O’Rourke 3, Booker 2, Yang 2, de Blasio 1, Gabbard 1, Inslee 1, Klobucher 1, Williamson 1, Castro, Gillibrand and Ryan all with less than 1, everyone else with zero.
The New York Times asked short video interview questions of 21 of the Democratic Presidential contenders…Joe Biden conspicuously not among them. Has he already adopted an Ivory Tower strategy as frontrunner? Even if you’re not going to watch any of those interviews, you might want to click on the link to look at the weird way NYT has looped little video snippets of all 21 candidate talking heads silently mouthing answers. The effect is somewhat…disturbing. It also reminds you that the vast majority of Democratic voters couldn’t pick most of these people out of a police lineup if their life depended on it.
21 of the candidates (including Biden) were in South Carolina for the state convention and “US Rep. Jim Clyburn’s ‘World-Famous Fish Fry.'”
CNN asks which Democrat is number two. (Insert your own Austin Powers joke here.) Their ranking is currently Biden, Warren, Sanders, Harris, Buttigieg, O’Rourke, Booker, Klobucher, Yang, and Castro. So Castro’s in the top ten and still below the Andrew Yang Line…
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet: In. Twitter. Facebook. “Michael Bennet pushes sweeping plan to remake political system. The Colorado senator says reforms on campaign finance, gerrymandering and lobbying are needed to push American forward.” Maybe he views all those as easier tasks than winning the Democratic nomination. More on the same theme. Democrats are still obsessed with the Citizens United decision, since they believe only left-leaning billionaires, tech companies, and union slush funds should be able to buy elections…
Former Vice President Joe Biden: In. Twitter. Facebook. Biden really stepped in while bragging about how well he worked with segregationist in the senate like late Mississippi Senator James Eastland. “‘I was in a caucus with James O. Eastland,’ the former vice president said while putting on a Southern drawl. “He never called me boy, he always called me son.” Yeah, that’s because you’re not black, moron. This is about the clumsiest and stupidest way you could brag on your ability to work with others. Will being Obama’s Vice President for eight years insulate him from charges of racism? Maybe with voters, but not with his fellow candidates (see below). Just another stop on the Biden Damage Control Tour. Has the Biden campaign bought lots of fake twitter accounts? Sure seems that way. (Hat tip: Director Blue.) Biden compared Trump’s election to MLK and JFK’s assassinations, which doesn’t sound at all like crazy talk. “Hunter Biden Still Active in Chinese-Sponsored Investment Fund.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.) Indeed, the media actually seem to be reporting on Hunter Biden’s shady deals, possibly because his segregationist samba removed the Obama Protective Shield of Media Disinterest in his scandals.
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg: In. Twitter. Facebook. Buttigieg got targeted by #BlackLivesMatter after an officer-involved shooting in South Bend. “Some of the fiercest criticism at the march came from Logan’s mother, South Bend resident Shirley Newbill, who told Buttigieg that she’s ‘been here all my life’ and officials have not done a ‘thing about me or my son, or none of these people put here. It’s time for you to do something … I’m tired of talking now … and I’m tired of hearing your lies.'” He tripled his campaign staff in New Hampshire. Evidently his fundraising is going well. “Hollywood’s Top Gay Donors Have Mixed Feelings About Buttigieg. The young mayor’s candidacy may be historic, but many gay bundlers and donors in Los Angeles are skeptical of his ability to win in 2020.” He held a town hall in North Augusta, SC.
Delaney is perhaps the candidate most familiar with that Wall Street bell — he lists among his top bona fides the co-founding of two publicly traded companies before he turned 40. At one point, he was the youngest chief executive with a company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
The first, HealthCare Financial Partners, offered financing to mid-sized healthcare providers. The company sold to Heller Financial for about $483 million in April 1999, according to the Baltimore Sun. He partnered to start a second lending firm in 2000, this time to finance small businesses. Delaney was first elected to Congress in 2012 while he was CEO of CapitalSource, which was eventually merged with PacWest Bancorp.
A New Jersey native, wealthy businessman and proud son of a union electrician, Delaney surprised Maryland Democrats when he first ran after the Sixth District was redrawn in the party’s favor. A Washingtonian profile of Delaney from that year described a “nasty, expensive primary campaign” that ended with Delaney’s besting another candidate seen as the next in line by party officials.
Seven years later, Delaney’s presidential candidacy could again be viewed as unique. He was one of the wealthiest representatives in Congress when he served, according to a March 2018 Roll Call analysis. He declared nearly three years before the 2020 Democratic convention, and has been barnstorming through Iowa ever since in advance of the caucuses in February.
Yet despite his 29 campaign trips in the past two years, he is not polling at the same levels as many of his opponents. The Des Moines Register reported this week that many Iowans still don’t know him or remain undecided about him. A mid-June Iowa poll showed 1 percent of respondents rated Delaney as their top choice, and 1 percent said he was their second.
Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard: In. Twitter. Facebook. She criticized Warren and Harris for criticizing Biden on the segregationist stuff. “Joe Biden did not ‘celebrate’ or ‘coddle’ segregationists. His critics have unfairly misrepresented his important message to score cheap political points.” A study shows her in second behind Cory Booker for Asian American donations, though Biden evidently hadn’t entered the race in the period analyzed. Also, I can’t tell is someone at New York Times or Google news was asleep at the switch for this one:
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: In. Twitter. Facebook. Here’s the latest “why isn’t she doing better” piece: “Why Kirsten Gillibrand’s campaign is stuck at 0.3%.” “Gillibrand is failing to leave voters with much of an impression. Two-thirds of the voters interviewed – including 15 of the 21 who just saw Gillibrand’s 10-minute lightning round of a stump speech – said they don’t know enough about her to have a strong opinion of her.” Finally, a break for her campaign:
Candidate comfort food:
Warren: Chips and guacamole Harris: Fries Gabbard: Vegan cupcakes Buttigieg: Beef jerky Gillibrand: Whiskey Castro: Iced tea Booker: Veggies Klobuchar: Baked Potato Williamson: “I have no comfort food”
Former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel: In. Twitter. Facebook. It’s another campaign run by three teenagers piece. He slammed Buttigieg: “The media has given Buttigieg a pass on a lackluster record in South Bend that shows him to be more concerned about public acclaim than the lives of average people. Why the pass? Because he’s an articulate white kid with all the right credentials. His constituents know the truth.” You may not think much of Gravel’s “troll higher polling candidates’ strategy, but at least it is an apparent strategy, which is more than I can say for some…
Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper: In. Twitter. Facebook. He too gets a Miami Herald profile, and there’s not a lot new there. Here’s a profile of him as “an extreme moderate.” “John Hickenlooper, a moderate, all the way through. He approaches a lighter shade of gray. Hickenlooper is so close to center he might be invisible.” And then one paragraph down it says “He supports reentering the Paris Accords, and imposing a Carbon Tax.” Those are not, in any way, shape or form, moderate positions that most Americans support. You don’t get to brag you’re a moderate because you’re slightly less radical than the most radical Democrats. And NYT/Google News do it again:
Washington Governor Jay Inslee: In. Twitter. Facebook. Speaking of radical environmental proposals, Inslee wants to ban fossil fuel production on private land, ban fracking, and institute a punishing carbon tax, all 2030. In short, he wants us dependent on Middle East oil and to bring France’s yellow vest riots to America. No word on how the federal government will deal with those outlaws still using gasoline-powered engines in 2030. Naturally I’m imagining death squads.
dozen minutes into a debate with U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar last October, her Republican opponent went on the attack.
The Minnesota Democrat, Jim Newberger said, “has a 90% rubber-stamp, compliant voting record with her leadership, so when you talk about reaching across the aisle and achieving things … I’m not seeing it.”
Klobuchar was ready: She had voted more than 40% of the time with Republican senators from South Dakota, North Dakota and Alaska, she said. “I try to work in the middle with people that want to find actual solutions to things and not just grandstand on them.”
Yeah, try pitching your awesome record of bipartisanship to the Democratic Party base. Can’t possibly see that failing…
Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam: In. Twitter. Facebook. Has an interview with South Florida Caribbean Radio. Or at least I assume he did. My Adblock blocked everything but the top banner bar. He spoke at that Columbia, South Carolina. But there’s only 50 seconds of video there. Even when he gets coverage, events conspire to deprive him of coverage…
Seth Moulton served four tours of duty in Iraq as a Marine, then won election three times to a U.S. House seat in Massachusetts, representing the district where he grew up.
Moulton, 41, earned three degrees from Harvard University — a bachelor’s, an M.B.A., and a master’s in public affairs. After earning his undergraduate degree in physics, Moulton joined the Marines, shortly before 9/11.
Moulton was among the first troops to enter Baghdad in 2003, and he was later assigned by Gen. David Petraeus to serve as a liaison to tribal leaders. Moulton earned two decorations for heroism. Personally, though, he had doubts about the war.
Moulton told The Atlantic that he remembers the moment in Iraq when he decided he wanted to enter politics. “It was after a difficult day in Najaf in 2004,” he said. “A young marine in my platoon said, ‘Sir, you should run for Congress someday, so this s— doesn’t happen again.’”
In 2014, Moulton defeated a scandal-weakened Democratic incumbent in a primary, then won the general election with 54% of the vote. He won reelection twice.
In Congress, Moulton took an active role on military issues as a member of the House Armed Services Committee. At times, he criticized President Barack Obama, including when Obama declined to describe the post-war military deployment to Iraq as a combat mission.
Why is it that every picture of Moulton, he either looks to be in pain, or his mouth is partially open? (It’s almost as common as Sanders’ “Enraged Squirrel Glare.”) Well, except this one:
O’Rourke has hired a former Obama administration official and policy executive at the left-leaning Center for American Progress to oversee his campaign’s expanding policy arm.
Carmel Martin, a former assistant secretary for policy and budget at the Department of Education, has joined O’Rourke’s campaign as his national policy director, an O’Rourke adviser confirmed to POLITICO.
Her hiring is a boon to O’Rourke, who is seeking to regain his footing in the Democratic primary.
Martin served as a policy adviser for John Kerry and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns. And her position as executive vice president for policy at CAP has been held in the past by heavyweights in Washington policy circles, including Melody Barnes before she left to join Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008.
Martin, before joining the Obama administration, worked as general counsel and chief education adviser to the late Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy on his Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
In addition to Martin, O’Rourke will continue to be advised by Ali Zaidi, a former associate director at Obama’s Office of Management and Budget and O’Rourke’s senior adviser for policy.
Despite consistently trailing five Democratic foes in national and early-voting state polls in recent weeks, the former Texas congressman is continuing to attract well-regarded Democratic talent to his campaign — and is ahead of most of his competitors in building on-the-ground organizations in the early states.
O’Rourke’s latest hires are deputy communications directors Rachel Thomas, hired from the Democratic digital organization ACRONYM, and Ofirah Yheskel, who was Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s communications director.
Thomas, a former EMILY’s List communications director and aide to Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, is O’Rourke’s deputy communications director for strategic content.
Yheskel, who prior to working on Northam’s 2017 campaign was Hillary Clinton’s Wisconsin press secretary in 2016 and worked on Wendy Davis’ bid for Texas governor, is O’Rourke’s deputy communications director for states.
O’Rourke hired Aleigha Cavalier as his national press secretary. Cavalier, a former Planned Parenthood public affairs director, was most recently a top Tom Steyer aide as communications director for Steyer’s NextGen America, and involved in Steyer’s heavy spending to encourage impeaching President Donald Trump. O’Rourke has also called for Trump’s impeachment.
Anna Pacilio, who was communications director for Texas Rep. Marc Veasey, was hired as O’Rourke’s director of women’s messaging.
I’m not sure Ralph Northam’s communications director would make my “must hire” list. O’Rourke also did some Robert Kennedy quoting that I’m sure in no way is a cynical ploy to remind voters how he looks a little like Bobby Kennedy. You know who O’Rourke doesn’t look like? Bill de Blasio:
I feel compelled to screenshot media cock-ups that get through layers and layers of fact-checkers before they disappear.
Vermont Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders: In. Twitter. Facebook. He appeared on Face the Nation and promised to cancel eveyone’s student debt; I guess he’s feeling the heat from Warren on his left flank. Bernie’s always been free with other people’s money. Also: “Last time around you have to win 51 percent of the vote. This time I don’t believe anyone is going to come close to 50 percent, so it’s a very different race with 24 candidates.” 25 now (see below). An interview with Sanders’ top foreign policy advisors (Matt Duss) makes Sanders sound less dovish than billed. “Sanders has views about military intervention that are more complicated than his campaign rhetoric. And that may explain why he hasn’t delved into much detail about foreign policy.” Centerist Democrats are spooked by Sanders:
A two-day conference hosted here by the centrist Democratic group Third Way focused on helping Democrats figure out “the way to win” in 2020 — and they’re sick of economic messages that focus on “free stuff” rather than opportunity, as former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp put it.
They’re not down with Medicare for All, and shared data to back up their fear. Among 1,291 Democratic primary voters polled by Third Way, there’s a 17-point difference in support for Medicare for All between “Twitter Democrats” and Democratic primary voters as a whole.
In fact, they’d love if all the 2020 Democrats got off Twitter entirely. Listening to the Twitterverse “will help re-elect Donald Trump,” according to Lanae Erickson, Third Way’s SVP for social policy and politics.
They’re also trying to obliterate the “blue bubble” created by liberals — perpetuated, they say, by appearances on networks like MSNBC and an obsession with online reach. “If you killed it on that podcast, I assure you we did not hear you,” said Steve Benjamin, mayor of Columbia, S.C.
Things like free college are “fluffy” and perceived as “handouts,” said Anna Tovar, mayor of Tolleson, Arizona. Particularly with Latinx Democrats, she said, “They want to work towards [those opportunities] and be proud of that.”
“But Elizabeth Warren — who’s viewed as the closest candidate to Bernie ideologically — gets a pass with these moderates. They say she’s focused on a Democratic capitalist message, while they view Bernie as a full-blown socialist.”
Addition: Former Pennsylvania Congressman Joe Sestak: In. Twitter. Facebook. He announced he’s running and Dave Weigel spotted him in Iowa. What sort of man looks at the current Democratic field of 24 a few days before the first debate and says “You know, someone else really needs to jump in, and I’m just the guy”? Evidently Joe Sestak. Then again, his spirit animal is an extremely slow moving lizardman:
Sestak, 68, had a 31-year naval career before going into politics, rising to the three star rank of Vice Admiral, and his campaign logo says “ADM JOE.” Sestek did render the nation one great service: He knocked vile turncoat Republican-turned-Democrat incumbent senator Arlen Specter out of the race in 2010 before losing to Pat Toomey. (He tried running again in 2016, but the DSCC poured $1.1 million to back primary opponent and Clinton fav Katie McGinty, evidently as payback for running against Specter. McGinty won the primary, then lost to Toomey in the general.) He’s for soft illegal alien amnesty and “sections of fencing where needed and appropriate.” (If I thought he had a snowball’s chance in Hell, I’d screenshot that page as proof for when hard left activists make him take it out.) Scanned his policy positions for any departure from Democratic orthodoxy and didn’t see much (bring back ObamaCare, global warming, taxpayer subsidized abortions, overturn Citizens United, etc.); it’s all boilerplate. Calling it vanilla insults a vastly underrated flavor. Says he was late jumping in because his daughter was diagnosed with brain cancer. It’s hard to see Democrats turning to a high-ranking ex-military guy after the “John Kerry War Hero” narrative blew up in their faces in 2004 (a failure that I’m sure is still seared, seared into their memory). Biden campaigned for McGinty in 2016, so I wonder if Sestak is running a revenge campaign against him, which would be hilarious. Besides that, it’s tough to see any justification for Sestak to jump into the race this late.
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren: In. Twitter. Facebook. Members of the Warren-aligned Progressive Change Campaign Committee think she can poach Biden voters. Presumably the pitch won’t be “Hey, they’re both really old and really white!” The lefty policy wonks behind Warren’s blizzard of policy proposals:
The head of the policy team, Jon Donenberg, makes the same as the campaign manager and other senior leaders.
“It’s all we can do to keep up with her,” said Donenberg, a Capitol Hill veteran who worked for former Rep. Henry Waxman and Sen. Richard Blumenthal before he joined Warren’s 2012 campaign and then served as legislative director in her senate office. “The job of the policy shop is to help her fill in the details around these proposals, to present data, and to talk through the costs and benefits of various approaches.”
Longtime Warren confidante Ganesh Sitaraman, an old friend of Pete Buttigieg from their time as undergrads at Harvard, is not on her campaign’s payroll given his job at Vanderbilt. But he has taken a lead role in formulating her domestic policies.
Sasha Baker is the former deputy chief of staff to Obama’s Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and focuses on national security. And Bharat Ramamurti, a longtime Senate aide who Warren pushed to fill a seat on the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2017, has been handling financial issues. The campaign said that both have been expanding their portfolios to other domestic policy topics as well.
Now Warren is promising reparations for gay people, a small demographic group that’s traditionally had above-average incomes, for what? The affront to their obviously not gay ancestors? Why not just adopt the campaign slogan “Free Money For Every Social Justice Warrior Victimhood Group?”
Williamson avoids using notes or prompters, never mutters an “um” or an “ah” or a “like.” She starts with the children, who are living in what she calls “America’s domestic war zones,” with their schools poorly funded and violence and starvation at home. She calls out the problem of corporate money in politics as little “more than a system of legalized bribery,” adding that she herself believes in “capitalism with a conscience.” Like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, Williamson supports Medicare for All and a $15-an-hour minimum wage.
She also supports financial reparations for the descendants of slaves. “If you’ve been kicking someone to the ground — particularly if you’ve been kicking them to the ground for two and a half centuries — then you have a moral obligation to do two things,” she says. “No. 1 is to stop kicking. No. 2 is to say, ‘Here, let me help you up. We stopped kicking.’ ”
Williamson has often called for the formation of a Cabinet-level Department of Peace, and she wraps up her talk by articulating her position on national defense, describing 100 B-21 bombers the White House had ordered at a cost of $550 million each: “You think about what that $550 million could do for those chronically traumatized children. Your karmic fingerprint’s on that. The nation gets a karmic blowback from that.
“The only way to defeat dog whistles is to drown them out with angel forces.”
Snip.
Williamson found A Course in Miracles around the time of its publication, when she was, she says, “muddling through” her 20s, aimless and directionless. She has said she wasn’t ready the first time she picked it up, but about a year later, while working in the bookshop at the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles, she was; she started lecturing about it, initially at the suggestion of the society’s president. It was the height of the AIDS crisis, and there were a whole lot of people looking, and hoping, for miracles. By the mid-’80s, Williamson had a local following, particularly among the gay men most devastated by AIDS. The word on the street was that a woman was proselytizing a nonjudgmental God who “loved you no matter what,” and the audiences came.
Her own first book, published in 1992, was called A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles, and her subsequent books have been built on its philosophy as well, including A Course in Weight Loss: 21 Spiritual Lessons for Surrendering Your Weight Forever, which suggests that “a way to repair a broken childhood is to allow God to re-parent you,” as well as pasting photographs of your face onto photographs of hot bodies and then taping them up around your house. In A Return to Love, Williamson, channeling the self-doubt of her reader, asks, “Who am I to be brilliant, talented, gorgeous, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.”
Williamson grew up in Texas, the Jewish daughter of an immigration lawyer (she has said that if her Jewish education had been stronger, she might have been a rabbi). She left Texas for Pomona College, and after two years of studying philosophy, she dropped out and moved to New Mexico, where she took some classes at UNM and lived in a geodesic dome. Two years after that, as Beto O’Rourke would do 20 years later, Williamson moved to New York with dreams of singing on a stage. In her books, she describes a period of dissatisfaction and unhappiness and hints at addictions but does not make the circumstances explicit. “I sank deeper and deeper into my neurotic patterns,” she writes in A Return to Love, “seeking relief in food, drugs, people, or whatever else I could find to distract me from myself.” She acknowledges a “nervous breakdown” and that she was “addicted to her own pain.” She is, like Cory Booker, vague about her personal life. She has described an early marriage as “the best weekend I ever had,” and when it comes to the father of her daughter, a 29-year-old Ph.D. candidate in London, she says simply, “I don’t go there.”
The O’Rourke comparison is interesting, with early aimlessness as the most defining character trait. But in the unlikely event she does become the nominee, expect her vague early history to be dragged into the light very quickly. In a bit of bicoastal synchronicity, she also gets a Los Angeles Magazine profile:
A cynic might interpret her presidential bid as the world’s most expensive book tour, but she insists she’s legit. Her last time at the campaign rodeo left her finishing fourth out of 16 candidates. “When that was over,” she confesses, sipping an Arnold Palmer at her campaign’s temporary HQ at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott, “I felt like I’d scratched whatever political itch I’d come down with. So I was surprised—and somewhat inwardly jolted—by this presidential impulse that emerged in 2017. It was either a moment of clarity or a moment of craziness. “Then the New Age practicing Jew explains: “The Yiddish word meshuga means both ‘inspired’ and ‘crazy.’ Look, I think we need a political visionary right now more than we need a political mechanic.”
Here’s a Daily Beast piece calling her “a dangerous wacko” for her anti-vaccination stance. The writer’s not wrong, but he’s swatting a butterfly with a sledgehammer.
Yang’s campaign, centered on his proposal to provide all American adults with a universal basic income of $12,000 a year until they’re eligible for Medicare, has attracted support from young progressives, a fair amount of libertarians, and despite his disavowals, even some white nationalists. He’s drawn thousands to his rallies across the country and inspired meme-filled Yang Gang anthems on YouTube. Yang blew past the 65,000-donor mark in March and told me he’s already closing in on the 130,000-contributor threshold the DNC set for its debates in the fall. He regularly hits 1 percent—and occasionally a bit higher—in the polls, and while he’s not threatening Biden’s front-runner status, Yang consistently registers in the top half of the crowded Democratic field, ahead of more established names like Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; Julián Castro, the former federal housing secretary; and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.
Yang’s website features an eclectic mix of 104 policy proposals, among them Medicare for All; term limits for members of Congress and the Supreme Court; statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.; a call for “empowering MMA fighters” and to pay NCAA student athletes; “free marriage counseling for all”; and the elimination of the penny. (He’s also come out against male circumcision.) But the centerpiece—indeed, the entire premise of Yang’s candidacy—is his embrace of a universal basic income, or what he calls the “freedom dividend.” (“It tests well on both sides of the aisle,” he told me of the branding.)
It is Yang’s answer to what he sees as the biggest, and most inevitable, threat facing the American economy, and a large part of the reason that Trump was elected in 2016: automation. The retail sector, call centers, fast-food chains, the trucking industry—all those job engines will be crushed in the coming years by advances in technology, Yang said, necessitating not only a government rescue of displaced workers but a reorientation of the federal safety net. By 2030, he told me, 20 to 30 percent of all jobs could be subject to automation: “No one is talking about it, and we’re getting dragged down this immigrant rabbit hole by Trump.”
And illegal aliens taking entry level jobs aren’t impacting legal American citizens right now? Americans lacking jobs right now don’t have the luxury of worrying about the Looming Robot Menace. “Some Asian Americans are excited about Andrew Yang. Others? Not so much. An April analysis of donor data found that Yang has received about $120K from Asian Americans, placing fifth out of 14 candidates examined.” That study has him behind Booker, Gabbard, and Harris.
Out of the Running
These are people who were formerly in the roundup who have announced they’re not running, or for which I’ve seen no recent signs they’re running:
The new rule represents the most sweeping federal gun control effort since the so-called assault weapons ban, which was passed in 1994 and expired in 2003. Even the Obama administration, which was overtly hostile to Second Amendment rights, rejected the logic of Trump’s bump stock ban.
As a matter of both law and physics, the Trump administration’s gun control rule banning bump stocks is an abomination. The Department of Justice (DOJ), which formally issued the rule, not only ignores underlying federal statutes that precisely define what constitutes a fully automatic “machine gun,” it also ignores the mechanics of how guns are fired and how bump stocks increase the rate of fire. Even worse, the faulty logic of the new gun control rule could eventually be used as a basis for a presidential administration unilaterally banning and confiscating all semi-automatic weapons.
Another concern about the bump stock ban: It doesn’t just ban them, it make those already legally purchased before the ban illegal to own:
“A current possessor may destroy the device or abandon it at the nearest ATF office, but no compensation will be provided for the device. Any method of destruction must render the device incapable of being readily restored to its intended function.”
Get caught in violation and prepare to have your life destroyed through arrest, prosecution, incarceration and a lifetime ban on owning guns. All brought to you by a “pro-gun” president taking his lead from NRA’s plea to regulate instead of legislate.
This is, to my mind, an unconstitutional taking under the Fifth Amendment, and if allowed to stand, would pave the way for future gun confiscations via regulatory mandate.
Borepatch makes his position clear: “Gun control is unconstitutional. All of it. ALL OF IT.” Further: “I would roll it all back past the 1934 Gun Control Act. No lists. No watchdogs. No limits on design or rate of fire.”
Speaking of unconstitutional, “red flag laws” are bullshit.”
City of Austin: Don’t think you can bring your foolish “gun rights” here. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: Here, have a lawsuit:
Austin could face punishment for infringing on the citizen’s rights: state law allows for a $1,500 daily fine for blocking licensed citizens from entering city hall with their permitted handguns. According to Paxton’s press release, the city has been barring the resident for more than 500 days, and the attorney general’s team asked the court to impose a total fine of over $750,000.
Let me take a stab at providing answers to these questions from the “we should declare victory in the War on Drugs and go home” perspective. The proposal is that most or perhaps all drugs be decriminalized, offered for sale, and taxed.
Rule #1. Can the person proposing the law state what they think the law will accomplish? This is intended to accomplish five specific things:
Remove the perceived need to militarization of the police forces, no-knock raids, asset forfeiture, controls on how much you can deposit at your bank, etc. It’s caustic for the Republic and it costs us a lot of money. It’s an anti-tyranny goal.
Improve the purity of the drugs on the market which will reduce overdose deaths. Food and Drug purity laws would apply and so the heroin that Joe Junkie buys at the local Alcohol Beverage and Drug Emporium wouldn’t be the equivalent of bathtub gin. His gin isn’t adulterated (like it was during the Prohibition days) and his smack shouldn’t be either.
Lower the price of drugs, by eliminating the risk premium that must exist to cover expected loss from seizure, arrest, etc.
Eliminate the massive profits that are flowing to drug cartels, which fund a bunch (admittedly not all) of the violence associated with illegal drug use.
Generate a tax revenue stream that can be targeted towards providing detox centers for drug users who want to fight their addiction.
Laws about theft, driving under the influence, etc would fully apply to junkies who commit these crimes, just as they do today. Peter, Aesop, and Bill are entirely correct that today these are not “victimless” crimes.
Rule #2. Can the person proposing the law state how likely the law is to accomplish the goal from Rule #1? Let’s break these down by the five points above.
No doubt some agencies will resist this – police unions, prison guard unions, the DEA, etc will rightly see the reduction of public funding as a threat to them. However, this is more of a hinderance to getting decriminalization passed in Congress than in implementation. In any case, I don’t see any fundamental disagreement between the two camps in this as a goal.
This seems a no-brainer, as the illegal drug market is replaced by a legal one. It will be safer for both sellers and users, and legalization will probably attract big corporations who know how to mass produce pure products. I’m not sure you’ll see Superbowl advertisements for “The Champagne of heroin” but I don’t think you need to for success here.
This seems like an absolute no-brainer. You are eliminating some very costly parts of the supply chain (machine guns, private armies, etc). Not sure how big this is but it sure isn’t zero.
We saw this with the end of Prohibition. Today’s Al Capones are drug king pins.
Tax money is notoriously fungible and is often diverted by politicians, but we see tax revenue streams from legal pot in places where it was legalized (e.g. Colorado).
I endorse this line of thinking. I cannot, however, endorse Borepatch’s heinous use of two spaces after periods in the computer era…
My own two cents (familiar to regular readers) is that federal drug prohibition is unconstitutional on Ninth and Tenth Amendment grounds, being neither necessary nor proper for the federal government to enforce, and thus should be left to the states. This is especially true of federal prohibition of growing marijuana for personal use, as only the warped, grossly expansive interpretation of the commerce clause endorsed in Wickard vs. Filburn would give the federal government standing to determine what can and can’t be grown on a person’s private property for their personal consumption. Elimination of federal prohibition would allow states to experiment with the right mix of policies for narcotics. Let Utah try total prohibition, Portland complete legalization and deregulation, Maryland decriminalization and drug treatment, and Pennsylvania state owned drug dispensaries, and see which aspects of which approaches work best. That’s what federalism and subsidiarity are for.
Anyway, there’s a lot more over there, and a lot of links to all sides of the debate, that are worth pursuing.
A property owner spent nearly 5 years and $1.4 million trying to convert his laundromat into new housing in San Francisco’s Mission district, only to find that city’s far left political establishment hates letting new housing be built.
And they wonder why San Francisco has a homeless problem…
The budget busting, premium-hiking monster that is ObamaCare may finally be slain:
A judge ruled Friday evening that Obamacare is unconstitutional, putting the future of the federal healthcare law in jeopardy.
The decision, issued by U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in the Northern District of Texas — a George W. Bush appointee, is likely to face an appeal to the Fifth Circuit. Obamacare will remain in place pending appeal .
The suit in the case, Texas v. Azar, was brought by 20 Republican state officials, who have asked that all of Obamacare be thrown out as a consequence of the new tax law, which zeroed out a penalty on the uninsured, known as the “individual mandate.” The officials argued that the penalty was central to making the rest of the law work, and that without it, the rest should crumble.
O’Connor appeared to sympathize with this argument in his opinion. He explained that he believed Congress would not have enacted Obamacare in the first place, with its various rules and taxes, without the mandate, and that the regulatory framework was intended to work together.
“Congress stated many times unequivocally — through enacted text signed by the president — that the individual mandate is ‘essential’ to the ACA,” he wrote of the Affordable Care Act, the formal name for Obamacare. “And this essentiality, the ACA’s text makes clear, means the mandate must work ‘together with the other provisions’ for the Act to function as intended.”
O’Connor was talking about the Obama administration’s argument that the mandate could not be severed from the rest of the law in a 2012 Supreme Court case. In his opinion, he elaborated on the different ways that Obamacare had been challenged in court and in Congress.
“It is like watching a slow game of Jenga, each party poking at a different provision to see if the ACA falls,” O’Connor wrote.
The “death of a thousand cuts” approach undertaken by congressional Republicans and the Trump Administration may finally be bearing fruit. Remember that the central conceit that allowed the Supreme Court to find ObamaCare constitutional in National Federation of Independent Business vs. Sebelius was treating the individual mandate as a tax, and the individual mandate was repealed in 2017.
Consider how radically the political environment has changed. Many of the baleful effects Republican foresaw for ObamaCare (spiraling premiums and declining choices) have come to pass. Also, in chasing their Russian collusion fantasy, the Democratic Media Complex has had precious little bandwidth to expend on extolling the supposed wonders of ObamaCare. Chief Justice John Roberts may well feel that he has a chance to undo a mistake in being the deciding vote in the originalSebelius decision now that the political pressure and scrutiny has lessened.
Texas vs. Azar may deliver ObamaCare the mercy killing it so richly deserves.
On August 7, Michael Hernandez was fed up. That morning, the pitmaster glanced through the window as two inspectors from the Texas Department of Agriculture pulled up to his restaurant, Hays Co. Bar-B-Que, in San Marcos. It was about an hour before the business’s 11 a.m. opening time, and Hernandez was in a meeting. The inspectors walked in the unlocked front door to inspect the scales he uses to weigh his barbecue, he says. Hernandez cut his meeting short and found them in his kitchen. His temper flared. “Get out of my establishment,” he told them. According to Hernandez, the inspectors looked at each other, and then went back to their truck. He says they then returned with a written warning for Hernandez about delinquency on his renewal fee, and told him they were just the messengers. “Here’s my message: tell Sid that I ain’t paying a damn thing,” he said.
Hernandez was referring to state agriculture commissioner Sid Miller, who has proven himself to be obsessed with the scales inside barbecue joints. The Texas Department of Agriculture had ramped up inspections on barbecue joint scales as part of Operation Maverick back in 2015, but they were removed from the department’s purview after the Barbecue Bill went into effect in September 2017—or so everyone outside of TDA thought. However, even after being repeatedly told the service is no longer required, Miller says his duty to protect the barbecue consumer won’t allow him let to go of barbecue scale enforcement.
The problem comes down to two words: “on premises.” After the legislature two years ago overwhelming passed the Barbecue Bill, which was designed to exempt barbecue joints, yogurt shops, and other establishments weighing food for immediate consumption from inspection, Section 13.1002 was added to the Agriculture Code. It reads: “Notwithstanding any other law, a commercial weighing or measuring device that is exclusively used to weigh food sold for immediate consumption is exempt” from the need for registration fees and inspections from the TDA. Implementing that directive from the legislature was the responsibility of TDA, which left Section 13.1002 alone but added new definitions for “immediate consumption” elsewhere in the Agriculture Code. One definition reads that an exempted scale is “a scale exclusively used to weigh food sold for immediate consumption on premises.”
In other words, the TDA was telling barbecue joint owners that if they sold any barbecue to go, they still had to pay their yearly registrations of $35 per scale and be subject to random inspections. The Texas Restaurant Association, which had supported the Barbecue Bill, cried foul, along with 45 Texas legislators who signed a letter to Miller urging him to change the new rule to align with the intent of the legislature. In response, Miller sought clarification on the rule’s wording from Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton. Miller received a response from Paxton in April:
The language of the statute [as written by TDA] requires that the vendor sell food that a consumer can eat immediately, but it does not mandate where or when the purchaser will eat that food. Nor does it require that the seller provide a space for the consumer to eat. On the other hand, the Department’s rules require actual consumption of the food on the premises, placing additional conditions on the buyer and seller in order for a device to be exempt from Department regulation.
In Paxton’s non-binding opinion, Miller’s interpretation was an overreach. Pitmasters, including Hernandez, were relieved. He admits he received a registration renewal letter for his scales from TDA a few months before the surprise inspection, but mistakenly thought that Paxton’s directive meant the issue was over. He was wrong.
“Nothing has changed,” TDA spokesman Mark Loeffler wrote in late June in response to Paxton’s directive. “The Attorney General’s letter is non-binding but has been thoroughly reviewed. Our inspectors will continue to do the work they do every day to protect consumers as outlined in TDA rules.” Miller requested the letter from Paxton—and when it didn’t offer the opinion he hoped for, his department ignored it.
I don’t vote for Republicans to increase taxes and regulation, especially in defiance of legislative intent.
I’ve written Mr. Loeffler to see if anything has changed [Edited to add: See comments below], or if the Texas Department of Agriculture still requires barbecue joint owners to pay yearly registrations of $35 per scale and be subject to random inspections, despite the express wishes of the Texas legislature and the opinion of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
I’m hoping that this week is Peak Busy for me. Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
Rasmussen: “Today’s [President Donald Trump] approval ratings among black voters: 29% This time last year: 15%.” Overall Trump approval rating at 50%.
Related: “President Donald Trump was lauded by inner-city pastors, including one who said he may go down as the ‘most pro-black president’ in recent history, during a White House roundtable on Wednesday that was focused on efforts to reform the prison system.” (Hat tip: Da Tech Guy via The Other McCain.)
At long last, the Trump administration has created a “freedom option” for people suffering under Obamacare. A final rulemaking issued Wednesday reverses an Obama-era regulation that exposed the sick to medical underwriting. The new rule will expand consumer protections for the sick, cover up to two million uninsured people, reduce premiums for millions more, protect conscience rights, and make Obamacare’s costs more transparent. And unlike President Barack Obama’s implementation of his signature healthcare legislation, it works within the confines of the law.
Federal law exempts “short-term, limited duration” health insurance from having to carry the unwanted coverage and hidden taxes Obamacare requires. Many consumers have understandably taken refuge from soaring Obamacare premiums in short-term plans.
Hoping to force those consumers into Obamacare plans, the Obama administration sabotaged short-term plans by stripping them of crucial consumer protections. It cut the maximum plan term from 12 months to three months, and forbade issuers from offering “renewal guarantees” that allow the sick to continue purchasing short-term policies at healthy-person rates. State insurance regulators protested that these restrictions literally stripped sick patients of their coverage.
Wednesday’s rule reinstates and even expands the consumer protections Obama curtailed. It allows short-term plans to last 12 months, and allows insurers to offer them with renewal guarantees.
You read that right. Democrats curtailed consumer protections; Republicans are expanding them.
Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?
From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.
A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.” One simple rule I have about describing groups of human beings is that I try not to use a term that equates them with animals. Jeong apparently has no problem doing so. Speaking of animals, here’s another gem: “Dumbass fucking white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.” Or you could describe an entire race as subhuman: “Are white people genetically disposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins.” And then there’s this simple expression of the pleasure that comes with hatred: “oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.” I love that completely meretricious “old” to demean them still further. And that actual feeling: joy at cruelty!
Another indicator that these statements might be racist comes from replacing the word “white” with any other racial group. #cancelblackpeople probably wouldn’t fly at the New York Times, would it? Or imagine someone tweeting that Jews were only “fit to live underground like groveling goblins” or that she enjoyed “being cruel to old Latina women,” and then being welcomed and celebrated by a liberal newsroom. Not exactly in the cards.
Venezuela’s socialist President Nicolas Maduro admits that socialism doesn’t work. Just think how much pain could be avoided if he had admitted this before people had to eat their dogs…
Mistaken police call for an active shooter at a McAllen mall turns out to be an illegal alien robbery gang. Result? Seven illegal alien criminal suspects arrested.
Sheldon Silver Sentenced: Seven in Sing Sing. (Actually, it’s not clear the former New York Assembly speaker will be serving his sentence in Sing Sing, but we can only hope, for the sake of the alliteration…)
China cracks down on illegal coffins. Which is to say, any coffins, since cremation is now mandated. Including seizing and destroying coffins old people have spent their entire lives saving for.
When Bill de Blasio became mayor of New York in 2014, things changed drastically. I started to hear rumblings early on. My former colleagues who were dedicated public servants were concerned by a large-scale rollback of Bloomberg’s strategic initiatives. These seemed to be based on partisan politics and black-and-white thinking as opposed to critical analysis. It was very disappointing for me since I had also voted for de Blasio.
Although I was still working in the same social-services agency where I had remained at the end of Bloomberg’s term, my job changed radically. I had no contact with the new commissioner who appeared to be disengaged from substantive discussions about social-services programs for an extremely vulnerable population. In fact, she was much more preoccupied with renovating her office — I heard her new desk alone cost thousands of dollars. She even requested that a private bathroom be built for her. She had the attitude of an oligarch and was disturbed that she had to vet invitations to galas through legal and City Hall. She wanted carte blanche to attend expensive events.
She also refused to meet with the lawyers in her department and she kept the door to her office closed and didn’t know the names of the people who worked in her agency.
Under my commissioner, there were no benchmarks, no goals and she did not hold regular meetings with her general counsel. Under her tenure, the legal unit was gutted. And there were no consequences for failing to meet performance goals because there were no performance goals.
Comics video blogger Jeremy Hambly attacked at GenCon. “The Quartering also provided another update claiming five eyewitness have identified the attacker as Matt Loter, the owner of Elm City Games.” GenCon promptly expelled Loter. Ha! Just kidding!
GenCon is blocking and muting and banning people who talk about @TheQuartering’s assault on their official channels and social media accounts.
It’s almost as if they want to make people angry by censoring all conversation about the topic.
“Millennial Drops Support For Socialism After Learning How Hard It Is To Get Avocado Toast In Venezuela.” The Babylon Bee has just been tearing it up recently. I probably need to add them to the blog roll.
This morning, the EU’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) voted in favor of the legislation, called the Copyright Directive. Although most of the directive simply updates technical language for copyright law in the age of the internet, it includes two highly controversial provisions. These are Article 11, a “link tax,” which would force online platforms like Facebook and Google to buy licenses from media companies before linking to their stories; and Article 13, an “upload filter,” which would require that everything uploaded online in the EU is checked for copyright infringement. (Think of it like YouTube’s Content ID system but for the whole internet.)
EU lawmakers critical of the legislation say these Articles may have been proposed with good intentions — like protecting copyright owners — but are vaguely worded and ripe for abuse. “The methods to address the issue are catastrophic and will hurt the people they want to protect,” Green MEP Julia Reda told journalists earlier this week. After this morning’s vote, Reda told The Verge: “It’s a sad day for the internet … but the fight is not over yet.”
Both Article 11 and Article 13 were approved by the JURI committee this morning but won’t become official legislation until passed by the entire European Parliament in a plenary vote. There’s no definite timetable for when such a vote might take place, but it would likely happen sometime between December of this year and the first half of 2019.
“Vaguely worded and ripe for abuse.” Music to a bureaucrat’s ears!
Both those provisions fly in the face basic structure of the Internet, where linking is free and censorship is damage to be routed around. And make no mistake, once they have an “upload filter” in place, there’s no way it will be limited to “copyright infringement.” Expect them to start by censoring “hate speech” (such as videos critical of unassimilated Muslim immigration into Europe) and anything else sufficiently critical of sacred European goals. Calls for Italy to quit the Euro? Sorry, those have to be banned in the interest of “economic stability.”
Set aside, for now, the impossibility of implementing this for all but the biggest sites in Europe, much less the world. Merely attempting it would no doubt do a lot of damange and have that fabled “chilling effect” on free speech.
Let’s hope this legislation gets killed by Eurocratic inertia…
