FIGHT THE POWER, STICK IT TO THE MAN: Court: NY Attorney General Attempt to Force Section 8 on Landlords Unconstitutional. “The challenged law forced landlords to consent to warrantless government searches of their property and business records. Ithaca’s Jason Fane prevails, calls ruling ‘a victory for the rights of small business owners and the civil liberties of every citizen.'”
Archive for 2023
June 28, 2023
ANALYSIS: TRUE. America Needs More McJobs.
“McJobs” aren’t just worth having. They’re vital. They make it easier for the people who have them to accumulate valuable skills and labor market experience, which research has shown leads to higher future earnings. The market process allows low-skill people to specialize in what they do best while freeing up high-skill people who can concentrate their efforts on things they do best. Everybody wins, and in some small way, you have a part in every achievement by every bleary-eyed customer for whom you dutifully pour coffee on their morning commute.
Consider a real-world example. This article has sat in my “drafts” folder for a very, very long time. I wrote the very first draft of this article more than a decade ago at a McDonald’s and revised it one time at India Palace (one of my favorite restaurants in Memphis, where I was living at the time). The opportunity to cooperate with the owners and staff at India Palace freed up time I would otherwise spend on food preparation and allowed me to concentrate on something I enjoy and do relatively well, namely, writing articles like this one. The owners and staff at the restaurant were able to earn higher incomes. I’m able to earn a higher income. We’re both better off.
Minimum wage laws and other job-killing regulatory schemes have forced automation — or getting customers to do for themselves what employees used to do for them — on what used to be entry-level jobs that young people needed to get started in the real world. That, coupled with the elimination of work requirements for welfare, goes a long way towards explaining our stubbornly low labor participation rate.
If government had intended to destroy the American work ethic, I’m not sure what they would have done differently. Or maybe that was the goal all along.
LIFE IN OUR BANANA REPUBLIC: Sen. Ron Johnson Calls For More Whistleblowers To Come Forward, Details ‘Breathtaking’ Corruption.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: NYT quietly confirms the allegation that Merrick Garland lied to Congress about Hunter. “But these latest allegations are far more serious: they include perjury on the part of the Attorney General, and lying to Congress on the part of Weiss. If true, both men are theoretically in legal jeopardy, and any fig leaf that the case wasn’t rigged–we all know it was, but couldn’t prove it–flies off into the winds of a hurricane. Well, according to the NYT, they have confirmed at least one of the allegations made by the whistleblower: that Weiss enquired about charging Biden in California on charges related to crimes he committed there (even federal crimes are charged in the jurisdiction in which they took place) and he was denied permission to do so.”
COME TO SAN DIEGO!!: The Californians for Equal Rights Foundation is having its 2nd Annual Conference on August 12th on the beautiful (but woke) USD campus. Our keynote speaker will be Edward Blum, founder of Students For Fair Admissions. Other speakers include Nicole Neily of Parents Defending Education, Joshua Thompson of the Pacific Legal Foundation, and yours truly.
My topic may be the California Legislature’s renewed effort to repeal Proposition 209. Despite being massively outspent, we spanked them in 2020. Californians voted down Proposition 16 (which would have repealed 209). But California’s deep-blue legislature just won’t give up! The new effort purports to be a compromise. It presents as an “exception” to Proposition 209’s ban on preferential treatment based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin. Under it, only if there is RESEARCH showing that preferential treatment is a good idea can Proposition 209 be waived. But you can get “research” to show that people with … ahem … male anatomy are women. If the wokesters needed to prove that the moon is made of green cheese, they could produce “research” that proves it.
AND I WAS SO LOOKING FORWARD TO JUNE BEING OVER: Biden Administration’s Token Transgender Declares ‘Summer of Pride.’
$200 BILLION IN COVID WASTE: The Inspector-General at the Small Business Administration (SBA) has found an estimated $200 billion in COVID-19 relief funds lost to fraudsters.
But that’s just the beginning because Mike Ware, the SBA IG, claims to still have “tens of thousands” of leads likely to produce more confirmed fraud.
Somewhere, Willie Sutton is kicking himself and wondering why he wasted all that time at the banks when the real money to be stolen was there for the taking in the federal bureaucracy.
STILL NOT READY FOR MASS ADOPTION: Media notices EVs weigh a buttload, EV makers are losing their butts.
Dribs and drabs about problems with EVs are now making their way into general media release which you might not have noticed in the chorus of hosannas surrounding their development and the ensuing narrative push.
For example, EVs weigh a buttload, thanks to that battery, which can be anywhere from 1000-2000 (which is a ton) lbs. The average is about a grand of extra weight on the vehicle. As a set of regular tires will wear out 20% faster on an EV than an ICE, they have to have specially formulated tires to handle the load and torque.
The Brits are finding out that that extra weight raises hell with road surfaces.
Plus: “For all the ‘thou shalt have only electric vehicles by [insert date]’ mandating going on by state legislatures, greasy governors, and a Biden administration desperate to shove them down our throats, the numbers on the ground are signaling pretty stiff resistance.”
AND THERE’S THAT: IRS whistleblower’s boss confirms claims.
THIS IS EXACTLY WHY THEY INDICTED HIM, OF COURSE: Trump up 5, DeSantis down 10 in NH after indictment.
Democrats are desperate to run against Trump. But they felt that way in 2016, too.
SOCIALISTS NATIONALLY HAVE DISCOVERED THEIR NEXT HITLER:
MSNBC’s @JoyAnnReid: @RonDeSantis is running “the most openly fascist campaign I’ve ever seen.”
Lincoln Project’s @stuartpstevens: He’s “worse than Trump. [He] is a threat to what it means really to be an American, & I think we have to realize that, & address it accordingly.” pic.twitter.com/Wil9pvqKXw
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 27, 2023
With the exception of Eisenhower, every Republican presidential candidate, from Thomas Dewey (smeared as a Nazi by no less than Harry Truman) to the present will be attacked by the left in this fashion, no matter his temperament, or his small government, libertarian bona fides. He will then be rehabilitated* by the DNC-MSM as a wise elder statesman, compared with the terrifying GOP demagogue who has or is about throw his hat into the ring.
* Including Trump, since he’s by far the media’s favorite choice to run against Biden.
SAID THE PARTLY OWNED SUBSIDIARY OF NETFLIX: Out-of-Touch Obama in Massive Self-Awareness Fail. “It’s very hard to sustain a democracy when you have such massive concentrations of wealth.”
VIVEK RAMASWAMY: The human suffering in our cities is a symptom of deep cultural rot. Here’s how I plan to fix it.
The first step is to stop incentivizing people to do the very things we don’t want them to do. If we want people to work, then stop paying them not to work. If we want people to be clean and sober, then stop handing out needles and crack pipes. Enabling destructive behavior is not compassionate. Do we really think handing out kits packed with Pyrex crack pipes, metal pipe screens, mouthpieces, lip balm, alcohol swabs, lighters, chewing gum, and condoms, is the way to help people get back on their feet?
This is insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting something other than citizens transforming into tranq-doped zombies right before our eyes, or playing hopscotch over used needles to avoid getting stuck, or watching people sweep the sidewalk in front of tent camps under the deafening and disorienting sound of SEPTA trains overhead is the very definition of insanity. The people I met in Kensington deserve better.
The extreme permissiveness in areas such as Kensington not only drives up the number of homeless and addicts, but it also incentivizes the very behaviors we don’t want to replicate in our country. And for those who might think their families are immune from such suffering, as a mother who lost her child to fentanyl poisoning told me, if we don’t fix this problem, your child is next.
Much more at the link.
A BIT SHORT ON FLOWERS: Spring near the Martian north pole.
AS WE SHOULDN’T: Americans Aren’t Buying Biden’s Border Crisis Bunk.
WHOLLY OWNED BY CHINA: Hunter Biden to CCP-Linked Business Partner: ‘The Bidens Are the Best I Know at Doing Exactly What the Chairman Wants’.
I say we put them in a container and send them to their purchaser.
THEY SHOULD FEAR IT: What the Left Has Left for America.
THEY ARE RUBBER STAMPING INVASION: Supreme Court: States Lack ‘Standing’ To Challenge Biden Slow Walk On Immigration Enforcement.
BECAUSE YOU NEED TO WEAPONIZE A WEAPON: BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Whines that Term “ESG” Has Become “Weaponized”.
BAH. EPSTEIN DIDN’T KILL HIMSELF: DOJ: Jail Staff’s Negligence, Failures Enabled Epstein to Commit Suicide.