Category: Politics

Trying not to start the public floggings

No Frigging Chance

Marxists, Third World

And it was all going so well.

I was reading an article at American Greatness which shows in detail how California has screwed things up,whether by Net Zero foolishness, taxation, over-regulation and so on, e.g.

If the builder [Gov.] Pat Brown was an exemplar of “Responsible Liberalism,” California’s government today has been ranked by Wallet Hub as the least efficient in delivering services relative to the tax burden. Pat Brown’s son Jerry – who was governor from 1975-1983 and then again from 2011-2019 – and his successor, Newsom, epitomize the triumph of ideology over effectiveness. Theirs is a kind of performative progressivism that shrugs about things like roads that are now among the nation’s worst, a high-speed bullet train plagued with endless delays and massive cost overruns, and a failure to boost critical water systems in a perennially drought-threatened state.
In exchange for all this, the progressive regime has stuck ordinary Californians and businesses with some of the nation’s highest taxes and greatest regulatory burdens.

So far, so good, and the article goes on to show exactly how, why and to what extent California is doomed.  Then, in the very last paragraph, this:

Yet, for all its problems, California is far from hopeless, and its promise is not extinguished. It remains uniquely gifted in terms of climate, innovation, and entrepreneurial verve. Sitting at the juncture of Asia, Latin America, and North America, it can once again become, as Kevin Starr noted, America’s “final frontier: of geography and of expectation.”

Nope.  Unless the CalGov is purged by a mini-DOGE — or maybe even a greater DOGE, given its entrenched Marxism — as well as a 180-degree change in voting patterns, there is no way for the Golden Shower State to survive.  None.

It is a hopeless state, and the mass exodus of Californians to other states over the past ten years reflects just that.

Well THAT Explains It (Ignore)

Bad News, Legal Stuff, Marxists

I’ve looked askance at several of Chief Justice John Roberts’s activities in the past — first, and most notably, his decision that ObamaCare was actually a “tax” and not an un-Constitutional prescriptive power grab over the lives of U.S. citizens — and since then, several of his votes on Supreme Court decisions have made me furrow my brow.  Here’s one example:

The Supreme Court on Friday let the Trump administration temporarily suspend $65 million in teacher-training grants that the government contends would promote diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, an early victory for the administration in front of the justices.

The decision was 5 to 4, with five of the court’s conservatives — Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil M. Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Brett M. Kavanaugh — in the majority. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voted with the court’s three liberal justices in dissent.

Some commentators have asked the question:  “Does someone have something on Judge Roberts?”  as an answer to these of his decisions — what we used to call the “sex photos with a dead animal or child”  kind of blackmail.

In fact, the answer is a lot simpler, and far less salacious.

Investigative journalist Bad Kitty Unleashed reported on Thursday that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is involved in an invite-only club for elite judges in Washington, DC.

The elitist club America Inns of Court also includes the radical America-hating judges James Boasberg, Beryl Howell, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Amit Mehta—all hard-left judges and Trump-haters.

Go ahead and read the whole thing.  It will explain exactly why Roberts has voted the way he has.

I don’t know what the solution is — there’s that “freedom of association” thing in the Constitution —  but what it basically means is that the nominally-conservative Chief Justice is in thrall to the hard Left judiciary in this country, and there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot we can do about it.

I think I’d have preferred the photos.

Preparing For The Better

Business, Economics, Trumpism

We always talk about “preparing for the worst”, but there’s an equally-compelling reason to prepare for the opposite.  Here’s a good example of this.

I see that POTUS has increased the logging quota on federal lands by 25%, to the consternation of the Usual Idiots.  Ignoring their wails (which is good advice anyway), his reasoning is sound:

The new order serves two purposes. One is to control fires. President Donald Trump said in January that the Los Angeles wildfires were partly caused by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s refusal to clear brush and dead trees.

The other purpose, though unstated, is likely to increase the supply of lumber and head off potential price increases due to tariffs on Canadian lumber, which could have a cascading effect on the American construction industry.

The second reason is actually the better one.  Of course we should not allow ourselves to be held hostage by the Canucks over timber — and in any event, the more self-sufficient a nation is, the better — but the very last sentence is equally telling.

You see, with Treasury yields falling (meaning that U.S. debt is being bought out — a Good Thing), what will follow the drop in yields is a drop in interest rates, which means that housing will become more affordable.  And the construction industry cannot afford to be choked of its timber supply if building costs are to be contained.

As it is, construction companies face potentially higher labor costs because all the cheap (illegal, lest we forget) laborers are being deported — meaning more citizens working ergo more taxes being paid as opposed to untaxed dollars just being sent south of the border — so if the builders get cheaper and more-plentiful timber supplies, everyone wins.

I don’t see too many downsides to this — it’s a “two (actually three) birds with one stone” scenario — but this is after all a fairly superficial overview because I don’t claim too much expertise in this area to dig more.  Am I missing something?

Keeping Up

Trumpism

I am a man of advanced years and much-reduced mental- and physical capacity thereby, so I’m having trouble dealing with all the MAGA / Trumpist / Musk-y goodness these days.  Quite apart from Saturday’s posts, there’s this:

Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Sec. Scott Turner has announced the end of Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-insured mortgages for any “non-permanent residents,” effectively eliminating illegal aliens’ access to the taxpayer-funded program.

…and this:

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is slashing 10,000 full-time employees as part of its effort to trim fat and reorient the department around Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Health Again” (MAHA) agenda.

“We aren’t just reducing bureaucratic sprawl. We are realigning the organization with its core mission and our new priorities in reversing the chronic disease epidemic,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “This Department will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

…not to mention this:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that as many as 300 foreign students have had their visas revoked due to President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Rubio confirmed the number of revoked visas when speaking at a press conference in Guyana.

“Maybe more, it might be more than 300 at this point,” Rubio said. “We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”

Okay, let’s not let my enfeebled state and stamina be a hindrance to all this most excellent and long-overdue Chainsaw Activity.

Wasted Money

Bureaucracy, Foreign Affairs, Good Stuff, Trumpism

I see that the Department of Labor, not to be outdone by other federal departments in Extreme Chainsaw Activity, has done The Right Thing:

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has canceled nearly $600 million in grants to foreign countries in another round of major funding cuts.

John Clark, a DOL official appointed by President Donald Trump, directed the department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB) to axe all 69 of its active grant programs on Wednesday due to a “lack of alignment with agency priorities and national interest.”

Quite what the Department of Labor was doing in giving money to furriners in the first place… well, we all know the answer to that one.  [humming the tune to “The Internationale”]

And seeing as the U.S. is no longer part of the international socialist collective — or at least we’re heading in that direction, at long last — there’s no reason for us to fund the wellbeing of foreign workers anyway.

One particular item did catch my attention, though:

“$3 million for ‘safe and inclusive work environments’ in Lesotho”

I’ve been to Lesotho several times, know the place quite well in fact, and for three million bucks you could probably buy the country’s entire industrial infrastructure, pay the workers a fat cash bonus and still have some money left over to  gamble  invest in a couple of their casinos.

Of “$3 million to ‘enhance social security access and worker protections for internal migrant workers’ in Bangladesh”, we will not speak.  (It’s a Muslim country;  let the fucking Arabs pay for it.)

Similar arguments can be made for all the other useless items.  Read the article for the full flavor of the wastage, and if you have specific knowledge of the circumstances of any of them, feel free to comment.

In the meantime: