REFILLING THE SWAMP: Biden’s Choice to Head HHS Is a Lawsuit-Happy Government Nanny.
Archive for 2020
December 8, 2020
GOODER AND HARDER: New Yorkers May Have to Pay Package Delivery Surcharge to Help Fund MTA.
With the Metropolitan Transportation Authority facing a budget crisis, New Yorkers may have to dig into their pockets to help out.
Under a new proposed bill, New York City residents would be required to pay a $3 surcharge on packages they ordered online, with the exception for medicine and food.
Assemblyman Robert Carroll, who proposed the bill, says the online shopping fee would raise more than $1 billion a year “to fund the operating costs of buses and subways in the city of New York.”
Found via Karol Markowicz, who tweets, “I don’t want to overuse it but this does go back to the pajama divide. If you’re working from your couch (like I am!) then you can go to the store and buy what you need whenever you want. If you’re going into work, and don’t have time for strolls and shopping, you’ll be punished.”
Punished? Joe Biden says you spelled “patriotic” wrong.
HEATHER MAC DONALD: The Bias Fallacy. It’s the achievement gap, not systemic racism, that explains demographic disparities in education and employment.
The median black eighth-grader does not possess even basic math skills. “Basic” skills, as defined by the National Assessment of Education Progress exam, means partial mastery of grade-related knowledge. Fifty-three percent of black eighth-graders scored “below basic” on math in 2017. Only 11 percent of black eighth-graders were proficient in math, and 2 percent were advanced. By contrast, 20 percent of white eighth-graders were below basic in 2017, 31 percent were proficient, and 13 percent were advanced. Only 12 percent of Asian eighth-graders were below basic, 32 percent were proficient, and 32 percent were advanced.
The picture was not much better in reading. Forty percent of black eighth-graders were below basic in reading in 2017, 17 percent were proficient readers, and 1 percent were advanced readers. Sixteen percent of white eighth-graders were below basic in reading, 39 percent of white eighth-graders were proficient readers, and 6 percent were advanced readers. Thirteen percent of Asian eighth-graders were below basic, 45 percent were proficient, and 12 percent were advanced readers.
But the only number that matter to today’s activists — and the woke executives desperately vowing to change their hiring and promotion policies — is the percentage of minorities in a company or a profession. When you’ve got diversity, who needs basic skills?
I SEEM TO REMEMBER BUSH V. GORE WENT PAST THE EIGHTH: Team Trump: ‘Safe Harbor Date’ Does Not End Election Contests, RBG Said So.
NEWS I HOPE YOU CAN USE: How to Store Bulk Ammunition. “I’m not going to try to tell you how much ammo you need, but I will tell you this: I’m not sure you can have too much, and the only way you will ever know you don’t have enough is if you run out.”
SHE NEEDS HER REST: Nancy Pelosi Creates Tiny 101-Day Working Schedule for Next Congress.
FLORIDA WOMAN: Florida Police Raid Home Of Fired State Covid-19 Data Scientist Rebekah Jones. “About ten officers with guns drawn raided her home in Tallahassee at around 8:30 a.m., Jones told CNN, as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement worked to execute a search warrant as part of an investigation into whether the data scientist accessed a state government messaging system without authorization to encourage employees to speak out about coronavirus deaths, according to an affidavit obtained by the network. ‘It’s time to speak up before another 17,000 people are dead,’ the November 10 message said, according to the affidavit. ‘You know this is wrong. You don’t have to be part of this. Be a hero. Speak out before it’s too late’…She said officers also ‘pointed a gun six inches from my face’ and took all of her ‘hardware and tech’ including her computers, phone and flash drives that she says contained ‘proof that (state officials) were lying in January about things like internal reports and notices from the CDC’ and ‘evidence of illegal activities by the state.’ She said that she accessed those reports legally and some had been sent to her by other people after she was removed from her position. Rick Swearingen, the law enforcement department’s commissioner, said in a statement that ‘at no time were weapons pointed at anyone in the home.’”
Earlier: Rebekah Jones’ firing is the COVID clickbait the media dreams of – but it’s all fake.
SOMEWHAT THE WORSE FOR ITS IMMERSION: Divers Discover a Legendary Nazi Enigma Machine in The Baltic Sea.
NOT THE BABYLON BEE: This poor kid just wanted a Nerf gun for Christmas and liberal mall Santa decided to make him cry instead.
UPDATE: “Thankfully, this does have a happy ending. It even ends with a firing — although not in the firearms sense: ‘Jolly Justice! The mall got rid of #WokeSanta & took the little boy the nerf gun. Worth a watch!'”
And Steven Crowder, err, Santa Claus, has the boy on as a guest on his YouTube show!
REPORT: Huawei tested facial recognition software that ID’d Uighur Muslims, set off alarm.
Earlier: Trump Just Took the Nuclear Option on Huawei.
As Steve wrote in August, “Huawei isn’t merely a Communist front corporation — it was built on the bones of Nortel, picked clean by Huawei in what amounted to state-sanctioned intellectual theft and espionage.”
THIS SEEMS HIGHLY PLAUSIBLE: Risk for binge drinking increases with each week of COVID-19 lockdowns.
Don’t expect our “public health” experts to let this affect their actions, though.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: WaPo Discovers That School Closures Pose Significant Problems—After Relentlessly Advocating for Them.
WHAT HAPPENED TO “SCIENCE IS REAL?” Indiana University ignores its own study that in-person classes aren’t spreading COVID-19.
THERE WAS A TIME WHEN CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS WEREN’T SO EAGER TO MAKE THEMSELVES IRRELEVANT: Schumer pressures Biden to bypass Congress to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower.
THAT WHOLE UNITY THING SURE WAS SHORT-LIVED: Biden’s Latest Nominee Proves He Comes Not To Bring Peace, But A Sword To The Culture War.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: School Board Won’t Reverse Fourth-Grader’s Suspension for BB Gun Incident During Virtual School. Ka’Mauri Harrison is accused of bringing a BB gun to school. But he never left his house.