KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Democrats Are Bathing In Desperation and Flop-Sweat. “It’s odd that, with so many entertainment industry people in the bag for them, Democrats don’t understand the optics in situations like this. There should be someone involved in these decisions who can say, ‘Yeah, that’s a lousy idea.’ Maybe some famous actor.”
Related: Robert De Niro Remains the Poster Boy for ‘Just Shut Up and Sing.’
SMART: Toyota, Japanese rivals promise more efficient next-gen ICE engines amid the shift to EVs.
Japanese automakers have been some of the biggest laggards in the transition to fully electric. As a result, Toyota was once again the worst-ranked automaker on InfluenceMaps annual report on climate lobbying.
The rankings are based on automakers’ EV plans and how much they are lobbying against climate-friendly government commitments.
Tesla, Ford, GM, VW, and Mercedes-Benz topped the list, while Toyota, Mazda, and Suzuki rounded out the bottom.
Despite this, Toyota, Mazda, and Subaru are doubling down on ICE engines.
Despite strong market signals that buyers prefer hybrids to EVs?
TAXPAYERS ARE FLEEING, THE PUBLIC PENSION PROGRAM IS EFFECTIVELY BANKRUPT, BUSINESSES ARE RELOCATING… WHAT’S A STATE GOVERNMENT TO DO? Illinois Senate advances largest spending plan in state history to House.
In fiscal year 2019, the state spent around $36.4 billion in state taxpayer funds. The proposed plan for fiscal year 2025 that begins July 1 is more than $53 billion. Considering total taxpayer spending, including federal passthrough dollars, in fiscal 2019 taxpayers spent $71.8 billion on Illinois. For fiscal 2025, total spending including federal tax funds will be $124.6 billion.
“And now we’re forced to raise taxes on the people of Illinois and we’re paying for illegal immigrants to come here,” Rose said.
Among the spending is nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer funds for non-citizen migrants. Around $629 million will be for non-citizen health care, $182 million for direct services and $160 million for welcoming centers.
To pay for that, there will be more than $1 billion in tax increases, including $526 million by capping business net operating losses, and $200 million for a tiered sports betting company tax. Removed from the plan is a provision that would have legalized ground-based sparkler fireworks with an excise tax of 3%.
Gooder and harder, Illinois — although I know the people downstate by and large didn’t vote for this.
TODAY’S BEVERAGE OF CHOICE: LEFTIST TEARS. Dear Mainstream Media: You’re Squirming and We Love It.
CRISIS BY DESIGN:
NEW: Another 118 Chinese nationals crossed illegally into San Diego sector yesterday, per CBP sources.
I’m told San Diego sector has now had 30,000+ Chinese since October 1st.
Other San Diego sector nationalities since 10/1:
8,900+ India
7,800+ Turkey
2,900+ Uzbekistan
4,400+…— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) May 26, 2024
I already read Kurt Schlichter’s “The Attack” and would rather not live through it.
DON’T GET COCKY BUT DO ENJOY STORIES LIKE THESE: The Great 2024 Democratic Party ‘Total Freakout.’
STATE CAPITALISM IS A GRIFTER’S DREAM AND THAT’S WHY JOE BIDEN IS SO FOND OF IT: China Throws Money At Semiconductors Again. “Do you remember the last time I covered where the money went to in those previous phases? The money went to companies like Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Result? ‘Hongxin’s unfinished plant in the port city of Wuhan now stands abandoned. Its founders have vanished, despite owing contractors and investors billions of yuan.'”
THEY MIGHT HAVE THE SOLUTION, TOO: How Big Tech Helped Bring on America’s New Energy Crisis.
OUCH: Buying a home is getting more difficult — and it isn’t just because of price. “Today’s homebuyer faces a smaller pool of options than in previous years. And there’s little relief in sight, as the pace homes are arriving on the market remains outstripped by demand.”
“IRAN DENIES” IS ONE OF THE LEAST-CONVINCING PHRASES IMAGINABLE: Iran Denies Sabotage in President’s Death After Helicopter Crash.
JOANNE JACOBS: Yale wants science profs to ‘promote DEI through teaching.’
Yale wants biophysics and biochemistry professors to place “DEI at the center of every decision,” according to its website, Sailer writes. Every job advertised links to a rubric that tests candidates’ “knowledge of DEI and commitment to promoting DEI,” their “past DEI experiences and activities,” and their “future DEI goals and plans.”
The “exceptional” candidate will have a “clear and detailed plan for promoting DEI through teaching,” he notes. Anyone who expresses doubts about microaggressions, implicit bias and systemic racism need not apply.
“Diversity statements raise serious issues about free expression, and they also signal an ill-advised shift in priority — away from disciplinary excellence and toward social activism,” writes Sailer.
Cornell’s DEI policies are “corrupting” its science, math and engineering hiring, according to a report by the Cornell Free Speech Alliance, writes Carl Campanile in the New York Post. Twenty-one percent of applicants in a recent faculty search in a hard-science field were rejected because their views were deemed ideologically suspect, according to the alliance.
Trofim Lysenko smiles.
ONE MORE SMALL STEP TOWARDS WASHINGTON DECIDING WHO GETS LIFESAVING MEDICAL TREATMENTS: Joe Biden’s ‘Equity Agenda’ Has a New Target: Kidney Transplants.
The Biden administration unveiled a plan that would push American hospitals to prioritize low-income patients when performing kidney transplants, a move Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra says is aimed at rooting out “racial inequities” in the “transplant process.”
The proposal, which Becerra’s agency announced on May 8, would place 90 of the nation’s 257 transplant hospitals into a pilot program that uses an annual point system to grade participants. Under the system, a successful kidney transplant counts as one point. A transplant furnished to a low-income patient, however, counts as 1.2 points thanks to a “health equity performance adjustment,” thus incentivizing the hospitals to prioritize such patients.
At the end of each year, those points are applied to a transplant quota. Hospitals that meet their quota receive as much as $8,000 per transplant; those that don’t may have to pay up to $2,000 per transplant.
I suppose it would be silly to ask where medical necessity fits into their calculations.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: It Is Rocket Science, and the Government Is Awful at It. “Boeing and NASA are hardly a dream team. They’re both plagued by different kinds of bureaucracies that have had some historic misses. Those misses have all come with body counts.”
HOW’S BIDEN’S HAMAS PIER GOING? ABOUT AS WELL AS EVERYTHING ELSE HE TOUCHES:
Sad times for Mr Pier. Operating beyond sea state limits, no wave attenuation devices, and little in situ ability to manage, it seems. pic.twitter.com/Kgw7p38lMC
— Think Defence (@thinkdefence) May 27, 2024
Noah Pollack: “Update on the Biden admin’s Gaza pier to nowhere: Parts of it have broken free and washed up in Israel. And virtually all of the aid that was delivered was stolen by Hamas. A $320M fleecing of the US taxpayer. There should be hearings.”
More: 4 Army Vessels Run Aground Near Floating Gaza Pier.
To be fair, Biden promised “no boots on the ground” and said nothing about boats.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): With a possible war in the Pacific looming, a logistics/engineering failure of this magnitude bodes poorly. We were great at this stuff in WWII, and as recently as twenty years ago. What are we great at now?
Pronouns, I guess.
FASTER, PLEASE: Dear Joe Biden: Get the Hell Out of SpaceX’s Way.
I BET OUR ALLIES SURE COULD GO FOR SOME MEAN TWEETS RIGHT ABOUT NOW: Biden Administration Presses Allies Not to Confront Iran on Nuclear Program.
The U.S. is arguing against an effort by Britain and France to censure Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s member-state board in early June, the diplomats said. The U.S. has pressed a number of other countries to abstain in a censure vote, saying that is what Washington will do, they said.
U.S. officials deny lobbying against a resolution.
The differences are emerging as Western officials’ concerns have deepened about Iran’s nuclear activities.
On Monday, the U.N. atomic-energy agency reported that Iran’s stockpile of 60% highly enriched uranium rose 20.6 kilograms to 142.1 kg as of May 11 from three months earlier, its highest level to date.
U.S. officials say that material could be converted into weapons-grade enriched uranium in a matter of days. It would then be enough to fuel three nuclear weapons.
Some U.S. officials say they fear Iran could be more volatile as the country moves toward elections for a new leader after the death of President Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash earlier this month. The Biden administration has long said it is seeking a diplomatic solution on Iran’s nuclear program.
No, they’ve sought to appease — at best — a terrorist state with imperial ambitions.
BEEGE WELBORN: On Serving Your Country: Honor and Remembrance.
Memorial Day weekends are especially hard at our house. As a military family with someone in uniform for every conflict this great nation has faced going back to the Revolutionary War, we have a reverence for this land, what it takes to defend it, and those who do. We cherish the time spent in the uniforms representing her, and have been so damn proud to wear them.
We had also been singularly blessed through all those generations that we never lost a family member while wearing one. There have been close calls. The most spectacular is my memory of the story of my Uncle Bobby, a young Marine at the time, who fell three decks on the USS New Jersey during the chaos of a typhoon while off the coast of Korea during that conflict. Months in the hospital in traction, and they weren’t sure if he’d even walk again.
He did.
But that run of good fortune and health changed in 2016, when, as I recounted in my Memorial Day post last year, we lost SSG John Perry to a suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
Read the whole thing.
IF PUTIN DOESN’T LIKE HIS NEIGHBORS JOINING NATO, HE SHOULD TRY NOT INVADING HIS NEIGHBORS: Sweden’s NATO Membership Unlocks the Baltic Sea for Alliance, Ends 200 Years of Neutrality.
HIS QUALIFICATION FOR OFFICE WAS THAT HE LIKES TRAINS: Buttigieg Blames Increase in Extreme Turbulence on Climate Change Because… Why Not?
LEAK, SCHMEAK: NASA Gives Go Ahead for Manned Starliner Launch.
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