So how San Francisco become the homeless, crime, drug and feces-plagued wonderland that it is today? Michael Shellenberger (an author and journalists who has argued for technological solutions to environmental problems) discusses with Joe Rogan how it came to its current state.
Some takeaways:
San Francisco has always been friendly to illegal drugs, and in the 1800s it was the last city to shut down opium dens.
The movement (well-intention) to treat pain with opioids.
When that was restricted in 2010, a lot of opioid addicts switched to heroin.
After that came fentanyl, which is much easier to overdose on than heroin.
Meth was (is?) a separate epidemic.
Occupy brought a lot of tents into the homeless community in 2011. “The activists just gave the tends to the homeless.”
“Women are rapped in those camps, mentally ill people are taken advantage of, people overdose and die, people are killed when you can’t make payments on their drugs, drug dealers stabs you with a machete. These are really violent, dangerous, terrible places. You get hepatitis from all the feces.”
“Progressives have badly misled people into thinking this is a problem of high rents.”
“The idea that all black people are victims is a racist idea.”
When we last checked in on the Austin Police Department, it was plagued by staffing issues due to the City of Austin defunding the police and cancelling two cadet classes, as well as Travis County DA Jose Garza’s refusing to prosecute numerous felonies, thus putting numerous criminal back on the streets to commit more crimes.
The Austin Police Department (APD) is bleeding 15 to 22 officers per month as those departing join other departments or leave law enforcement entirely. With them goes decades of irreplaceable experience and left over is a void the City of Austin aims to fill with green recruits and a “reimagined” approach to public safety.
Political upheaval in Austin is not unlike any other situation in big cities across the country. Mass protests swept Austin as they did the nation last year after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, preceded by months of societal discord caused by the pandemic and related government shutdowns.
Currently, APD has 200 vacancies and 104 officers on leave on top of the 150 positions eliminated during the 2020 budget cut and redirection. The department’s average response time ballooned from seven minutes to nearly 10 minutes since the summer of 2020. Specialized units are being disbanded and the officers who stay are being redeployed to street patrol to fill the gaps.
Snip.
Michele Aparicio first joined APD in 1997. She lasted 23 years with the department before retiring in 2020 a few months into the pandemic.
Aparicio, a Hispanic, told The Texan that morale has long been a problem within APD and pointed to leadership and its internal decisions as its cause. “Surely seniority and experience had always played a role in promotions, but it got to the point where demographics took precedence over all else,” Aparicio said.
This, Aparicio said, had plagued the department’s morale and devolved into poisonous interactions with its leadership.
“There was a point where we had a meeting with Chief Manley and I asked him what he was going to do for morale, and he just put it back on me as a supervisor,” Aparicio said, adding that she was later approached by one of her superiors who informed her Manley didn’t approve of the interaction.
“I had a lot of respect for Acevedo, he had his flaws, but he was not scared to speak up for what he believed and for all the officers of APD,” said Kyle Sargent, a former APD officer of 15 years.
Contrasting Acevedo with Manley, Sargent added that he felt the latter began falling more in line and catering his decisions with the city council in mind — then beginning to lurch even further left than it already had been. Officer morale, Sargent said, took a hit with that transition and as Manley’s tenure unfolded, but nothing sped up the trend like what’s unfolded since.
Snip.
One contributing factor Aparicio identified was the racial sensitivity trainings officers were put through. “They were literally calling us racist and homophobic officers — a whole class designed to make it seem like we were guilty of being racist, of being homophobic, and that we treated other people differently,” Aparicio said.
“It wasn’t presented as something like ‘Hey, this is what the nation is going through.’ No, it was presented as APD needs this because y’all are a bunch of racists.”
“So, the morale was already s— to begin with and then this was forced upon us,” Aparicio emphasized. During those classes, she added, the presenters faced some serious pushback from the APD rank and file and so they “were toned down a little bit.”
But it didn’t end there.
Continuing that trend, this year the Austin City Council entered a contract with a consulting firm to provide racial sensitivity training for its police heavily imbued with critical race theory teachings. The city is paying the consultant $10,000 per day.
A change in that buying forward rate is coming early next year. Sargent told The Texan he’s heard as many as 150 to 200 officers could leave in January next year before the change starts in February.
That would be over 13 percent of the current APD employment leaving in the blink of an eye.
When officers leave, they are often able to purchase their gun and badge as mementos of their career. But when Sargent resigned, this courtesy was denied to him per a new policy from interim Chief Chacon.
“It was just vindictive — I felt like he was just trying to punish us for leaving and it sort of put an exclamation point on my decision,” Sargent said. “It’s a small thing but it’s that kind of stuff that just brings morale from low to even lower.”
Other APD tidbits:
Speaking of low staffing:
Yesterday, 99.97% of the patrol shifts worked with below authorized staffing. Only one shift at authorized level because they were able to fill vacant spots with partial shift overtime. #PropA is a staffing plan. We have not seen @MayorAdler's staffing or cadet hiring plan. https://t.co/pq50j0iE5X
Just got off the phone w/the officer handling my case. Apparently there are only 3 detectives who are assigned to deal w/auto-theft in the ENTIRE CITY OF AUSTIN!!! Absolutely insane.
Making it worse: cadets that contract Flu Manchu are being told to quit…or be terminated:
Police Department proposes new changes after APA speaks out on behalf of cadet employees forced to resign under the threat of termination due to testing positive for COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/vQdCetwH5T
After spending 2020 calling police “systematically racist” and trying to get them defunded (mainly so they could get their fingers on that money, suddenly it’s 2021 and Democrat-run cities and counties suddenly need police to be their vaccine enforcers. And police aren’t having any of it.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has foolishly put herself—and the safety of the people of Chicago—in a game of chicken, with at least half the police force ready to defy her vaccine mandate and be sent home from work by City Hall without pay, rather than comply.
“She wants to play a game of chicken. Well, we’re in a semi. And she’s in a Smart Car. And she wants to play chicken?” said Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara told me on Thursday. “That’s her decision.”
I figure Chicago’s little Napoleon in pants suits caves by Friday. As I type this on Thursday evening, Chicago aldermen are calling, saying she’s already blinking on her threats of “no vaccine, you’ll be sent home without pay.”
FRIDAY MORNING UPDATE: She blinked. She did cave. After her repeated threats, she won’t withhold their pay and send them home if they don’t comply with her vaccine mandate. Lori, that’s no way to play chicken or poker. Her chicken little game has come home to roost. Cops have had enough. Now she’s pouting, driving up the ramp of the chicken coop in her little clown car.
If she didn’t cave, victims of weekend violence would blame Lightfoot because she put her ego ahead of public safety. The smart play was to cave and call it something else. Her media friends can spin it. She can even call it victory, if she wants. But she caved. And that weakens her even more.
Across Allegheny County, public employees are fighting vaccine mandates but none as hard as those in law enforcement, which has suffered some of the highest losses from the disease.
The unions representing the county police and the corrections officers have gone to court to block the county’s order that all employees be vaccinated or be fired.
According to the National Fraternal Order of Police, 743 police officers have reportedly died of COVID-19, but while the FOP is encouraging officers to get vaccinated, the union opposes mandates, calling vaccines a personal health decision.
The leader of the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG), which represents over 1,300 officers of the Seattle Police Department (SPD), is calling the COVID-19 vaccine mandate the latest in a long list of betrayals by the city of Seattle.
SPOG President Mike Solan said city leaders could accommodate officers who don’t want the shot and keep the city safe, but they are choosing not to do that. With just days until the mandate takes effect, Solan said now is not the time to force a vaccine on officers as the police department already faces a staffing crisis.
“Crime is surging in this city. Our community is demanding more police officers to answer the 911 calls, and the fact we’ve already lost close to 350 police officers because of the politicians’ political betrayal,” said Solan.
Solan said that before George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers in May 2020, city officials called SPD a “model department” when it came to police reform. But he said the tables turned after Floyd’s death with some city leaders demanding massive cuts to the department.
Now, Solan wants Mayor Jenny Durkan to do what some other cities have done and allow officers who don’t want to get the shot the option to wear masks, get tested regularly for COVID-19, and not have their assignments changed.
“For some reason, this mayor is refusing that, which I think is unreasonable and is void of common sense,” said Solan.
It’s only illogical if you haven’t been paying attention. Every knee must bend to the holy demands of the Party and the State. Heresy against the narrative cannot be tolerated.
Soldiers told us there have been cartel gunfights in Ciudad Miguel Aleman, the Mexican city across from Roma, TX, frequently in recent days and weeks. The soldiers heard gunfire and explosions two days ago and showed us this video of smoke billowing after the gunfight. pic.twitter.com/yow1pPvJS8
Indeed, Biden’s poll numbers are so low that even CNN has noticed. “Just 32% of independents approved of how Biden is handling his job while 60% disapprove in a new Quinnipiac University national poll… In 2010, the Republicans picked up 63 seat, with being up 19 points among independents.”
Short-term debt limit extension bill passes. Tastes like chicken…
The reconciliation bill is deeply hostile to marriage. Well, it’s no surprise, since happily married couples with children are increasingly an obstacle to Democratic Party control…
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland recently instructed the FBI to begin investigating parents who confront school board administrators over Critical Race Theory indoctrination material. The U.S. Department of Justice issued a memorandum to the FBI instructing them to initiate investigations of any parent attending a local school board meeting who might be viewed as confrontational, intimidating or harassing.
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s daughter is Rebecca Garland. In 2018 Rebecca Garland married Xan Tanner. Mr. Xan Tanner is the current co-founder of a controversial education service company called Panorama Education. Panorama Education is the ‘social learning’ resource material provider to school districts and teachers that teach Critical Race Theory.
So far, all we have is his press conference and other such made-for-media huff-puffing. No such rule even claiming to be legally binding has been issued yet.
That’s why nearly two dozen Republican attorneys general who have publicly voiced their opposition to the clearly unconstitutional and illegal mandate haven’t yet filed suit against it, the Office of the Indiana Attorney General confirmed for me. There is no mandate to haul into court. And that may be part of the plan.
According to several sources, so far it appears no such mandate has been sent to the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs yet for approval. The White House, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Department of Labor haven’t released any official guidance for the alleged mandate. There is no executive order. There’s nothing but press statements.
Let the lawsuits against private companies firing people for refusing the vaccine for which no mandate exists begin!
Scientists from Wuhan and the US were planning to create new coronaviruses that did not exist in nature by combining the genetic codes of other viruses, proposals show.
Documents of a grant application submitted to the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), leaked last month, reveal that the international team of scientists planned to mix genetic data of closely related strains and grow completely new viruses.
A genetics expert working with the World Health Organisation (WHO), who uncovered the plan after studying the proposals in detail, said that if Sars-CoV-2 had been produced in this way, it would explain why a close match has never been found in nature.
Here’s a novel thought: How about you not do that?
Did I mention that Wuhan scientists also wanted to genetically engineer coronaviruses that were more infectious to humans and release aerosols containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” among cave bats in Yunnan, China? And they also applied DARPA grant! Who the hell was asleep at the grant proposal switch while Chinese biological warfare scientists were going full Frankenstein?
Masks are not mandatory now in classrooms in: UK, Iceland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium (12 & under), Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria (up to 5th grade), most of South America, etc. Masking children in the U.S. isn't science.
Facebook’s fake “Whistleblower” Frances Haugen was part of the election meddling team that suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story. Also: “She’s receiving ‘strategic communication guidance’ from former Obama aide Bill Burton’s public relations firm Bryson Gillette, which is run by Democratic operatives. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was a senior adviser there until September 2020.” Basically she’s a pawn to let Facebook suppress even more conservative stories.
WOW! This is the moment Acting Senior Sergeant Krystle Mitchell QUITS Victoria Police.
"I can't remedy in my soul anymore how the organisation I love is being used [to enforce health tyranny]… and the damage it's causing to the community."
“Tesla is moving its headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, CEO Elon Musk announced at the company’s shareholder meeting on Thursday.” Given how crappy California’s business climate has become, this was pretty much a forgone conclusion. Come on down, Elon.
Amazon is looking at leaving Seattle. “After years of deteriorating relations with their home city of Seattle and its ultra-progressive city council, Amazon’s CEO [Andy Jassy] made it known that the online giant may look for greener pastures. Citing the city’s hostility toward their presence, Jassy suggested that the suburbs are looking better and better for a new home to its 50,000-employee home base.”
Speaking of Seattle, over 400 police officers may be facing termination over refusal to get vaccinated. Good thing Seattle is a peaceful utopia where there are never any antifa riots…
The China/India border is getting frisky again. “Sources mentioned that patrol parties of both the countries came face-to-face in Arunachal Pradesh, which led to some jostling before they disengaged. The incident took place last week near Yangtse in the Tawang sector.” Arunachal Pradesh is basically the complete opposite end of northern India from where most of last year’s clashes occurred.
Did China lose coal shipments waiting for docks to open up to India? Source is a little “rah-rah India,” so grains of salt are probably in order.
Are you using the wrong plunger? This plumber seems to think that this one is the new hotness for clearing toilets.
There’s been a lot of news on the Austin Police Department and Soros-backed Travis County DA Jose Garza popping up, so let’s dig in:
In case you missed it, Austin police staffing levels have fallen so low that police will no longer respond to “non-emergency” calls. “Collisions with no injury or burglaries no longer in progress or where the suspect has left, would not warrant a 911 call. Austin residents in these situations and others like it will have to call 311 and file a non-emergency report.”
In an affidavit filed Tuesday, Austin Police Department (APD) Detective David Fugitt went to blows with Travis County District Attorney José Garza over his alleged tampering with Fugitt’s testimony in the prosecution of Army Sergeant Daniel Perry.
Last month, a grand jury indicted Perry for charges including murder, aggravated assault, and deadly conduct after he shot and killed Garrett Foster, a former Air Force mechanic who was protesting in downtown Austin at a Black Lives Matter demonstration on July 25, 2020.
Fugitt, who is spearheading the investigation into the incident in question, insisted that Garza quashed exculpatory evidence he planned to provide to the grand jury. He indicated that witness statements gathered by Foster’s relatives and their lawyers “were inconsistent with prior interviews” and video of portions of the incident.
With respect to a charge of threatening imminent bodily injury, Fugitt had also planned to say that the complaining witness “never once suggested that Daniel Perry” had threatened her by purposefully driving his vehicle in her direction.
According to the affidavit, Fugitt described an interaction he had with Assistant District Attorney Guillermo Gonzalez in which the detective had asked Gonzalez what “ramifications” there would be if he did not abide by the DA’s request to exclude the evidence favorable to Perry. Fugitt says the office merely told him again which evidence he was not to discuss in front of the grand jury.
“In my mind, after this directive from José Garza, is when the conduct of the District Attorney’s Office [went] from highly unethical behavior to criminal behavior,” Fugitt deposed.
“I firmly believe the District Attorney’s Office, acting under the authority of José P. Garza, tampered with me as a witness.”
When Fugitt refused and stood by his finding of justified homicide, Garza retaliated. That retaliation implicates Austin PD acting Police Chief Joseph Chacon and Assistant Chief Ricardo Guajardo, according to the filing and several others in the case which PJ Media has obtained.
Snip.
The documents call for an evidentiary hearing to determine the facts surrounding Det. Fugitt’s direct accusations against Garza, which include new evidence and also implicate the two leaders of APD. The documents also note that Garza opposes such a hearing, which Sgt. Perry’s defense attorneys interpret as evidence of Garza’s guilt.
The document accuses District Attorney Garza of felony criminal conduct under the Texas Penal Code 36.06(a)(1)(A), unethical conduct, and violation of Sgt. Perry’s right to a fair trial under the law as a defendant.
You may start to understand why rank-and-file APD officers were less than wild about Chacon being made police chief…
In the Sgt Daniel Perry case, @JosePGarza doesn’t want you to see the court filings. He’s filed a motion to seal so you can’t see what’s going on. We’re fighting back. pic.twitter.com/4gqAZ8lPwp
That’s not the only thing Garza doesn’t want you to see:
4 months after an open records request Jose Garzas DA office has asked the AG for relief. They are lying about my request. They include my request in with others that are asking for other info. See screenshot 4 my email specifically says NO applicant info requested. This is BS! pic.twitter.com/KLl3KhcIpE
“Austin Office Of Police Oversight Director Farah Muscadin Investigated For Spending Enormous Taxpayer Money To Push Critical Race Theory Training.”
Farah Muscadin, Director of the Austin Office of Police Oversight, has once again pushed to offer bribes to people in the community to take Critical Race Theory (CRT) training. For completing a 22-hour course, people are cashing in with $550 gift (read grift) cards. $55,000 was defunded from the Austin Police Department to fund this radical training course. Guess who is paying for this ridiculous CRT propaganda?
It is well past time for Austin citizens to demand their own Office of Government Oversight Committee to watch over how these people continue to waste taxpayer funds on pushing this Marxist-influenced indoctrination that is inherently racially divisive.
The influential driving force behind these shenanigans is Muscadin. Muscadin was ousted from a similar position at Chicago State University for employing the same shady tactics she is pulling here in Austin.
Austin Police Association President Ken Casaday said they investigated Farah Muscadin, the director of the Office of Police Oversight, and found some disturbing information about her past career at Chicago State University. Casaday sent a letter to Austin City Manager Spencer Cronk noting Muscadin’s name was mentioned in a lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to falsely accuse a professor of sexual harassment while she was working as Dean of Students at Chicago State University. He also provided board of trustee meeting minutes mentioning Muscadin had been “terminated.”
This blatant waste of money simply boils down to further defunding of the police. The goal of Muscadin and her ilk is to strip the Austin Police Department of every resource possible.
Indeed, Muscadin’s name appears in that lunatic Reimagining Public Safety Task Force document, the entire purpose of which was to transfer money from APD to various leftwing activist groups.
While Austin crime and homicide numbers continue to exponentially increase, these extreme-left radical groups keep chipping away at morale and funding to continue the downward spiral Austin is on in terms of law enforcement and public safety. While the excuses and denial are endless, accountability is in short supply. If you want to address the record breaking murder numbers, look no further than these anti-police radicals’ war with the police.
Three former Austin mayors come out for Proposition A:
George Soros, the man whose money helped install radical leftist Jose Garza in the Travis County DA’s office, is so displeased with the push to put more police back on the streets of Austin that he’s dumped half a million dollars into the fight against proposition A.
The billionaire benefactor of progressive causes across the country, George Soros, has waded into the political fight over Austin’s police staffing — pumping a half-million dollars into a campaign to defeat Proposition A.
Among other reforms, Proposition A would establish a minimum staffing level for the Austin Police Department (APD) of 2 officers per 1,000. Earlier this summer, APD was floating around 1.2 officers per 1,000 residents. From current staffing levels, it’d require the hiring of roughly 500 officers.
APD is suffering not only from a dearth in approved positions compared with its staffing level two years ago, but also from rampant attrition within its ranks, averaging 15 to 20 departures per month this year.
According to the Austin American-Statesman’s Ryan Autullo, the Open Society Policy Center, one of Soros’ advocacy arms, gave $500,000 to Equity Austin which opposes Proposition A.
The proposition is on the November ballot for Austin voters and is openly opposed by Mayor Steve Adler, Councilmember Greg Casar, and the city’s numerous progressive activist groups who each pushed for the $150 million APD budget cut and redirection last year.
Here’s the filing document showing the filing. And they’re not the only ones opposing Proposition A:
This isn't the only major donation coming into Austin to defeat Prop A.
Also on Monday, The Fairness Project in Washington gave $200,000 to Equity PAC.
Equity PAC and Equity Austin are the same thing, I'm told.
As I’ve written before, the hard left opposes adequate funding for policing because it’s much harder for them to rake off money from policing than various “Social Justice” initiatives for which their bureaucratic functionaries control checkbooks. And because they view police officers (probably correctly) as competing institutions of legal force and legitimacy that stand in the way of complete overthrow of capitalism and the current American constitutional order and its replacement with the neo-Marxist/Social Justice/Critical Race Theory “successor ideology.” To them, soaring Austin crime rates are a sign of their success.
All the more reason for ordinary Austinites to show up and vote in droves for Proposition A.
Greetings, and welcome to the Halloween season! Manchin and Sinema are the only thing that stands in the way of a giant, economy-destroying meteor of leftwing pandering, energy crises ramp up in China and Europe, Biden nominates a commie, and more Flu Manchu shenanigans.
Inflation hits a 30 year high, yet Democrats are furious two of their own party aren’t letting them run even bigger deficits.
West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin calls the giant runway Porkulus fiscal insanity.
“What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity,” Manchin said in a statement Wednesday.
Manchin says that any reconciliation bill must include a Hyde Amendment to bar federal taxpayer funding of abortion. I’m pretty sure Democrats would prefer kicking Manchin out of the party than give compromise on their holy of holies.
‘What if — and hear me out here,” writes Robert Reich, “we stopped letting two corporate Democrats singlehandedly block every single progressive policy we elected Democrats to pass?”
Okay, Robert. But how, exactly? The Democrats have 50 seats in the Senate. To pass a bill through reconciliation, the Democrats need 50 votes in the Senate. Two of the people who hold those 50 seats do not agree with the rest of the party on “every single progressive policy.” If the other 48 senators do agree — which is far from clear — the Democratic Party will have 48 votes for its agenda, two short of what it needs. Those two, not the Robert Reichs of the world, are the ones with the power to “stop” things.
“Should all of this just hinge on those two?” Representative Cori Bush (D., Mo.) asked yesterday. “Absolutely not.” But should doesn’t enter into it. The question is does “all of this” hinge on Sinema and Manchin? The answer is yes. Yes it does. And why? Because, again, “all of this” requires 50 votes in the Senate, and two of those votes aren’t on-board.
Underneath the complaints that Reich and Bush have leveled sits the erroneous implication that, come election time, American voters are obliged to press a button marked “Republican” or “Democrat,” and that, having done so, they are shipped a drone-like representative of the winning team from a central repository in Washington, D.C. Reich complains that “we elected Democrats.” But this is correct only in the aggregate. In fact, 50 different “we”s elected one hundred senators and 435 Representatives, who between them make up our majority and minority parties. There is nothing in this deal that obliges those emissaries to agree with one another.
Senators Manchin and Sinema are not a pair of uninvited interlopers who are unexpectedly gumming up the gears; they, themselves, are among the gears. This being so, the duo cannot be said to be “blocking” the Democrats’ de facto Senate majority so much as they are sustaining the Democrats’ de facto Senate majority. Why? Because their decision to caucus with the Democrats rather than the Republicans is the only reason that majority exists in the first place. To hear progressives talk, one would assume that in order to take one’s place within the firmament one must first swear a blood oath to Dick Durbin. Shockingly enough, one is obliged to do no such thing.
If there’s one thing we know about the looming debt limit crunch and the warnings about the dire consequences of default, it’s this: The government is not going to default.
The recurring brinksmanship over the debt limit and the partisan refusal to get Republican fingerprints on the increase don’t say much for our political class. But the U.S. Treasury isn’t full of stupid people, and they’ve been through this drill before. Back in July 2011, when the debt ceiling of $14.3 trillion was about to be reached, the Washington Post reported:
The Treasury has already decided to save enough cash to cover $29 billion in interest to bondholders, a bill that comes due Aug. 15, according to people familiar with the matter.
You can bet they’re making similar plans today. The difference is that 10 years later the debt ceiling is $28.4 trillion, just about doubled, and we’re about to bump into it again.
Back in that summer of discontent I talked to a journalist who was very concerned about the “dysfunction” in Washington. So am I. But I told her then what’s still true today: that the real problem is not the dysfunctional process that’s getting all the headlines, but the dysfunctional substance of governance. Congress and the president will work out the debt ceiling issue, probably just in the nick of time. The real dysfunction is a federal budget that doubled in 10 years, unprecedented deficits as far as the eye can see, and a national debt (more accurately, gross federal debt) yet again bursting through its statutory limit of $28.4 trillion and soaring past 120 percent of GDP, a level previously reached only during World War II.
The Cornell University law school professor [Saule Omarova]’s radical ideas might make even Bernie Sanders blush. She graduated from Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. Thirty years later, she still believes the Soviet economic system was superior, and that U.S. banking should be remade in the Gosbank’s image.
Snip.
Ms. Omarova thinks asset prices, pay scales, capital and credit should be dictated by the federal government. In two papers, she has advocated expanding the Federal Reserve’s mandate to include the price levels of “systemically important financial assets” as well as worker wages. As they like to say at the modern university, from each according to her ability to each according to her needs.
In a recent paper “The People’s Ledger,” she proposed that the Federal Reserve take over consumer bank deposits, “effectively ‘end banking,’ as we know it,” and become “the ultimate public platform for generating, modulating, and allocating financial resources in a modern economy.” She’d also like the U.S. to create a central bank digital currency—as Venezuela and China are doing—to “redesign our financial system & turn Fed’s balance sheet into a true ‘People’s Ledger,’” she tweeted this summer. What could possibly go wrong?
The FBI’s annual report Monday made official what most unfortunately presumed: The United States in 2020 experienced the biggest rise in murders since the start of national record-keeping 60 years ago.
The Uniform Crime Report detailed a murder increase of nearly 30 percent.
The previous largest one-year change was a 12.7 percent increase back in 1968. The national rate of murders per 100,000, however, still remains about one-third below the rate in the early 1990s.
The FBI data show around 21,500 total murders last year, which is 5,000 more murders than in 2019. More than three-fourths of reported murders in 2020 were committed with a firearm, the highest rate ever reported.
Now before you start jumping to conclusions about a correlation between the leftist fever to defund the police and a huge jump in the nation’s murder rate, you should probably be aware of the fact that the Democrats want you to know that there’s no problem at all.
That’s right, the same people who want us all to live in mortal fear of being breathed on by a stranger at Kroeger are trying to poof away a pile of bodies.
Speaking of Flu Manchu, here’s NBA player Jonathan Isaac calmly explaining why he doesn’t feel he needs the vaccine:
This is a calm, intelligent, respectful statement as to why @JJudahIsaac is hesitant about getting the Covid vaccine. Instead of screaming at those who are still figuring it out, listen to his response. pic.twitter.com/Q1xMLw8boX
The Lancet just gives up on trying to determine the origins of Flu Manchu, much like OJ has given up on finding the real killers.
China is trying the classic idiot price controls strategy for its self-inflicted energy crisis:
China is officially panicking.
Now that the global energy crisis has slammed China’s economy, leading to the first contractionary PMI since March 2020 as a result of widespread shutdowns of factory and manufacturing, not to mention hundreds of millions of Chinese residents suffering from periodic blackouts, Bloomberg reports that China’s central government officials “ordered the country’s top state-owned energy companies to secure supplies for this winter at all costs.”
Translation: Beijing is no longer willing to risk social anger and going forward China will be subsidizing coil and nat gas, which will lead to even higher prices, which will lead to even higher prices for other “substitute” commodities such as oil, which is why oil surged on the news.
The news follows a report on Wednesday that China will allow soaring coal prices to be passed on to factories in electricity prices. But prepare for a surge in PPI, which will likely not be allowed to be passed on to CPI due to ‘common prosperity’. Which logically means margin collapse, and shutting down – so even more structural shortages. Unless we get state subsidies of some sort, or differential pricing for the foreign and domestic market. There used to be a name for that kind of economy. Wall Street used to pretend it didn’t like it.
“We don’t want normal,” said activist Earnest Greer. “We want radical change. What if everything goes back to the way it was without us completely dismantling and rebuilding the system?”
Liberals saw the pandemic as an opportunity to get people less clingy to individual freedom and more accepting of government planning significant parts of everyone’s lives. Normal would mean relinquishing that power, which is anathema to the Left.
More news bubbling up on the Biden Border Crisis, so let’s dig in:
Remember how stories said the Biden Administration was deporting those Haitian illegal aliens in Del Rio? Yeah, not so much:
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted on Sunday that more than 12,000 Haitian migrants who had been camped out under a bridge near Del Rio, Texas, have been released into the US and more may follow them.
He told “Fox News Sunday” that there are about 12,400 Haitians in the process of having asylum claims heard by an immigration judge, while around 5,000 are being processed by the Department of Homeland Security.
About 3,000 are being detained.
“Approximately, I think it’s about 10,000 or so, 12,000,” Mayorkas responded when asked how many migrants have already been released.
He added that the number could go beyond 5,000 as other cases are processed.
Both the Biden Administration and his directory of “Homeland Security” seem to view illegal aliens as a precious resource that they must avoid deporting at all costs.
Speaking of Del Rio, Val Verde county has announced they’ve had enough and will join with other border counties to sue the federal government over their failure to enforce immigration laws:
#BREAKING Val Verde Co. to form coalition w/other border counties/cities to sue @POTUS “for failure to enforce the laws of the Constitution of the United States & failure to abide by his oath of office” & failure to protect/defend border. Vote was unanimous among commissioners. pic.twitter.com/GItZCvyyAT
Think the situation is bad now? Things are about to get a lot worse when the Biden Administration fires every Border Patrol agent who refuses the Flu Manchu vaccine.
It took a while, but it appears that at least one Austin media outlet, Fox 7, finally noticed something that was bubbling on Twitter Sunday morning, namely that there were a bunch of shots fired in downtown Austin early Sunday morning.
And there’s video:
Looks like someone wanted to fistfight, a friend wisely pulled him away, and the other party decided to open up as they were walking away.
A few points:
That’s like the third video of the shooting I’ve tried to embed, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that one disappears at some point as well.
I count something like thirteen shots fired.
Police response was quick.
Although this happened in front of the homeless ARCH building on Seventh Street, the perps don’t appear to be Adlers, but just those “youths” we hear so much about.
The Sixth Street district use to be an overpriced nightlife district that only occasionally got spicy, but in the last several years it’s gotten progressively more dangerous.
John Kerry’s commie connection. “Kerry’s latest filing with the Office of Government Ethics shows Teresa Kerry benefits from an investment of at least $1 million in a hedge fund specializing in private partnerships with Chinese government-controlled funds.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
The Indictment of Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman for allegedly lying to the FBI has a lot of people grumbling about how long it took prosecutor John Durham to finally come up with an indictment of someone with regard to the Russia collusion hoax. And even then, while Sussman was an important lawyer at an important Democrat operative law firm, his indictment has a “that’s it?” feel to it.
But, the 27-page Indictment is a wealth of information, and hopefully a roadmap to wider and more substantial prosecutions (you can’t take my hope away!). What the indictment demonstrates is that the Russia collusion claim leveled against Donald Trump and the Trump campaign was a fabrication of Hillary Clinton operatives who peddled the fraud to the media and FBI, allowing Clinton to use the media reports in the campaign against Trump.
Much like the fabricated Steele Dossier, also paid for and arranged by Clinton operatives, Hillary Clinton and Clintonworld perpetrated a massive fraud on the American public which not only manipulated the election process but also froze the Trump presidency and nearly paralyzed the nation politically for years.
We have had some pretty terrible politicians in our lifetime, and it’s always dangerous to say “the worst” — but the Russia collusion hoax fabricated by Hillary Clinton operatives proves beyond little doubt that Hillary Clinton is the most systemically manipulative politician of our lifetime.
Forget the MSM spin: Here’s what the Maricopa County audit really found:
None of the various systems related to elections had numbers that would balance and agree with each other. In some cases, these differences were significant.
There appears to be many ballots cast from individuals who had moved prior to the election.
Files were missing from the Election Management System (EMS) Server.
Ballot images on the EMS were corrupt or missing.
Logs appeared to be intentionally rolled over, and all the data in the database related to the 2020 General Election had been fully cleared.
On the ballot side, batches were not always clearly delineated, duplicated ballots were missing the required serial numbers, originals were duplicated more than once, and the Auditors were never provided Chain‐of‐ Custody documentation for the ballots for the time‐period prior to the ballot’s movement into the Auditors’ care. This all increased the complexity and difficulty in properly auditing the results; and added ambiguity into the final conclusions.
That’s the thing about a Missing White Woman story — the damsel-in-distress angle only works, in terms of TV news ratings, if the missing woman is young and attractive, preferably blonde. Males can and do go missing, but those disappearances never dominate national news. It’s always a woman, and a young, attractive woman — if she’s old, fat or ugly, nobody cares if she goes missing. But the nubile blonde? Oh, yeah, that’s nationwide headline stuff, because she’s Prime Rape Bait, and sex is the secret ingredient in the Missing White Woman story.
Beyond the cynical calculations of ratings-hungry TV news producers, however, what’s really wrong with Missing White Woman Syndrome is not the kind of “social justice” concerns Joy Reid is talking about. No, what’s wrong is that it feeds the public’s distorted ideas about crime.
How many people are murdered in America annually? Nearly 14,000 in 2019, according to the FBI, and about 78% of the victims were male. In terms of statistical risk, then, males were nearly four times more likely to be murdered than women, but how many of those murdered men become national news? Not many. And how many murder victims are white? About 5,800 in 2019 — 42% of the total — whereas blacks were 54% of the total murders. There were 1,759 white women murdered in 2019 — 12.6% of the total, according to the FBI — compared to 6,446 black males, 46.3% of the total. So the death of Gabby Petito was anomalous, a comparative rarity in the overall crime situation in America.
A blonde, blue-eyed “social media influencer” is not typical of murder victims, who are disproportionately male and black. During the month of August, when Gabby and her boyfriend were on their excursion across the West, 87 people were killed and 424 were wounded in Chicago. Did any of those Chicago victims make national news? Well, about 83% of the victims in Chicago were black, and none were blonde, blue-eyed 22-year-old “social media influencers.” Not newsworthy, you see?
The selectivity of the news media in deciding which murders deserve national attention is a sort of bias that most people never notice. Why does the death of one black in police custody become a cause célèbre, while the vast majority of murdered black men — about 125 a week, on average — never get any national media attention? Because the death of George Floyd fit a specific political narrative. And why does the disappearance of a blonde girl with an Instagram account get hourly updates on the cable-news networks? Because it’s a convenient distraction from the disastrous failure of Joe Biden’s presidency.
In fact, there were at least 46 reports of swollen balls (and another 76 of testicular pain) in the VAERS database of adverse reactions.
People who wanted Biden to win to see a “return to normal” are being gravely disappointed:
In traditional Washington fashion, Biden has ignored that message voters sent and delivered the opposite. In less than seven months, we have found that Biden is far from that empathetic persona he has crafted over the years, and we have not returned to anything near normal.
And Biden lies. Not tiny little lies, but ones that affect events that are deeply tragic. Last week, he told leaders in the Jewish community that he visited the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, where 11 people were slaughtered during a service in 2018.
Synagogue officials said he was never there.
One can only guess he said this as an attempt to continue the manufactured empathy he allegedly possesses. Forgetfulness is not an excuse anyone should accept.
Nor is it normal.
In fact, the only thing the Biden presidency has done most effectively is prove that we are not on the path to normality under his administration.
From the uneven overall economy to soaring inflation to the humiliating debacle in Afghanistan, and from Biden’s insistence to spend our money like a drunken sailor to the crisis at the Mexican border that he has blatantly ignored and to how he has politicized the pandemic: None of this is normal, none of this promotes stability, none of this is what an exhausted electorate bargained for.
Over the past 18 months our overall sales have increased as follows:
590% increase in revenue
604% increase in transactions
271% increase in site traffic
77% increase in conversion rate
This data is from February 23, 2020 – August 23, 2021, when compared to the previous 18 months (August 24, 2018 – February 22, 2020).
Leading the way: Texas, with a 736% increase.
9mm was the most popular ammunition just about everywhere, followed by .223 and 5.56 NATO.
“Maspeth High School [NYC] created fake classes, awarded bogus credits, and fixed grades to push students to graduate — ‘even if the diploma was not worth the paper on which it was printed,’ an explosive investigative report charges. Principal Khurshid Abdul-Mutakabbir demanded that teachers pass students no matter how little they learned, says the 32-page report by the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools, Anastasia Coleman.”
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s gambit to have funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system stripped backfires, with the funding passing 420-9. Now there’s principled case to be made against the U.S. funding Iron Dome, as part of a broader initiative to eliminate all foreign aid because it’s not an enumerated responsibility of the federal government, because we’re already running huge budget deficits, and because Israel is a prosperous, modern country that shouldn’t need our charity. But we all know that not why The Squad presented this bill.
I think the Squad’s biggest problem with the Iron Dome is that it keeps people from killing Jews.
Word is that pick isn’t popular with the rank and file:
@austin_police officers voted 90% to 10% for an outside candidate over a career insider for chief, yet Cronk/Council gave the insider the nod. Tell me again who is protecting the status quo? #atxcouncil has forfeited the right to say APD officers are the ones resisting change. pic.twitter.com/RwnBOHptmv
In the UK: “Our eco-obsessed government is sleepwalking into an energy crisis….we could be facing a hard winter of higher energy bills and even blackouts.”
50-64 years: 106,674 (.27% of total cases) 65-74 years: 144,020 (.36% of total cases) 75-84 years: 173,655 (.43% of total cases) 85+ years: 185,188 (.46% of total cases)
50-64 years: 106,674 (.27% of total cases) 65-74 years: 144,020 (.36% of total cases) 75-84 years: 173,655 (.43% of total cases) 85+ years: 185,188 (.46% of total cases)
Islamic terrorist dirtnapped in Indonesia. “The military earlier said the militants killed late Saturday were Ali Kalora, leader of the East Indonesia Mujahideen network that has claimed several killings of police officers and minority Christians, and another suspected extremist, Jaka Ramadan, also known as Ikrima.” (Hat tip: Rantburg.)
Our current moment is often described as a “racial reckoning.” In reality, what this often means is that a narrative about Black victimization has gone mainstream. We hear endlessly about systemic racism, white supremacy, the black/white income gap, and police brutality. So powerful an ideology has this narrative become that those of us who pose a credible counter-narrative—black anti-woke writers, for example—frequently find our words being misconstrued in an effort to stanch their impact.
This doesn’t happen to everyone who opposes the Critical Social Justice narrative of black victimization. White dissenters are simply called “racist” while many black dissenters are considered tragic victims of internalized racism. But things get ugly when woke Critical Social Justice proponents encounter a certain kind of black person who does not align with their preferred victim narrative and instead emphasizes his or her own individuality or self-regard. Such people present a threat to the woke narrative, since that narrative insists that all black people are victims of white supremacy, meaning anyone who insists on their individuality and their own power proves the falsity of that victim narrative; if the woke narrative were true, such people should not be able to exist.
Which means that when we claim to exist, antiracist woke warriors need to erase us, using a logical fallacy I call “erase and replace.” Erase and replace is a combination of the strawman and ad hominem logical fallacies. The move involves taking the argument someone is making and substituting it for one that fits more neatly into the woke victim narrative by specifically targeting the character of the challenger—since it is, in part, their character that is the greatest challenge.
“Chris Cuomo accused of sexually harassing former boss at 2005 party.” “A former ABC executive producer has accused Chris Cuomo of sexually harassing her at a 2005 work party after he grabbed her butt in front of her husband and co-workers.” If she was his boss, does that technically count as sexual harassment? In New York, I believe such an offense would fall under the statute for “forcible touching,” which is a class A misdemeanor. Do you think that this is coming out now because, with his brother out of office, Fredo is no longer of any particular political use to CNN?
ACLU alters Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s words to eliminate #Wrongthink.
