Tag: Evil Bastards

At Last, Some Good News

Immigration

According to some official-sounding stats:

Americans are no longer moving to Southern boomtowns

Reasons?

The cost of living has jumped, thanks to rising mortgage rates, skyrocketing home prices, and higher fees for insurance and HOAs – particularly after a string of natural disasters.  

Now that the influx of newcomers has slowed, the housing markets in these cities are feeling the squeeze. Annual double-digit price jumps are no longer a sure thing. 

Home prices that once seemed unstoppable are leveling off – and in many cases falling. Homebuying demand is plunging, and in some places, inventory is surging.

Places like Tampa, Dallas and Austin were once seen as affordable alternatives to high-cost cities like San Francisco and New York, but now the gap in housing costs between big-city job centers and Sun Belt metros has shrunk.

Well yes, in terms of the “unstoppable” housing prices, that was caused most of all by this influx of Californians, New Yorkers and other migrants who arrived here in the South flush with the proceeds of their overpriced real estate and were willing to pay the prices asked by sellers.  (I should point out that my old Plano house sold for the asking price and was listed for eighteen hours before being snapped up by a Californian family, who paid the ask after having been involved in bidding wars in previous homebuying attempts.  I should also point out that my 4BR 3BR house would have cost $1.4 million for a comp in northern California, instead of the $395k I was asking for mine.  No wonder they jumped on it.)

Anyway, the good news for us in northern Texas:

Dallas – one of several Texas cities that boomed during the Covid-19 pandemic – saw a net inflow of around 13,000 residents in 2024, also down from 35,000 the year prior. 

Thank fuck.  The fewer liberal assholes moving here, the better for all of us.

Something else is interesting:

Now that many companies are requiring workers to come into the office, fewer people have the freedom to move – and some people who moved to the Sun Belt during the pandemic are returning to big cities.

I guess all those empty office blocks in L.A. and San Francisco need to be refilled.

And the people who paid those sky-high prices for our Texas houses who are now being forced into selling them?  The houses that once sold within days can now stand unsold for months, or longer.

Forgive me for not shedding any tears. And my compadres  over in Florida may share my delight.

Cornerstone, Dislodged?

Eco-Crap, Good Stuff, Trumpism

Looks like the Trumpistas are aiming their harpoons at another whale:

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin said that the agency will review the agency’s endangerment finding — the “holy grail of the climate change religion” that has created over a trillion dollars in regulatory impact.

Wut dat?  Breitbart explains:

The finding stated that greenhouse gas emissions are an alleged threat to public health and welfare.

And when you look at the data which supposedly supports the finding, it, like most other “environmental” data, is a bunch of codswallop.

The EPA proceeded in an unorthodox manner. Slicing and dicing the language of the statute, it made an “endangerment finding” totally separate from any actual rulemaking-setting standards for emissions from cars. EPA argued it had the authority to do this because Congress didn’t specifically forbid it from taking this approach. By taking this approach, the endangerment finding intentionally ignored costs of regulations that EPA knew would follow from the finding — and indeed ignored any other policy impacts of those regulations.

Results (that you or I would care about)?

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the director of the Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment at the Heritage Foundation, said that the EPA regulations that arose from the endangerment finding have contributed to automobile prices to rise from $23,000 in 2009 to nearly $50,000 now.

The EPA has relied on the endangerment finding for seven vehicle regulations that reportedly have an aggregate cost of more than one trillion dollars, according to the agency’s own regulatory impact analyses. 

We all knew that enviro-bullshit was behind so much of the price increases — that, and the raft of “safety” regulations that accompanied them.

My message to Sec. Lee Zeldin:

Get rid of that stuff.

Me, I’d like to see the FedGov refund some of that trillion-dollar price increase to everyone who bought cars and trucks — internal-combustion-driven cars and trucks, that is — from 2009 until today.

Why?  Because it was taken from these buyers by government malfeasance.

And if our current government wants to “claw back” some of that money from the people and organizations who instigated this swindle, that would be fine, too.

Ya Don’t Say

Terrorism

Here’s a shocker:

Cody Balmer, the 38-year-old man arrested for allegedly firebombing the home of Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) over the weekend, hates Jews.

“Balmer called 911 following the attack early Sunday, identified himself by name and told operators Shapiro needs to know he ‘will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.’ ”

My immediate thought would be to round up this asswipe’s family, then set the lot of them on fire — family first, then him later in the day — because after all, that’s what he had in mind for Shapiro’s family.

Yeah, this kind of shit makes this old atheist go all Old Testament / Hammurabi-like, sue me.

Try That Somewhere Else

Muzzies

This one’s been boiling around the kettle of my fevered brain for a while now, but a comment from Reader TopCat last week brought it steaming out.  His comment was a quote from Raspail’s The Camp Of The  City  Saints, which I had read (in the original French, as part of a class assignment) right after it was first published, but almost forgotten about.

I shouldn’t have.  Here’s the quote:

“Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door…”

…and it is one of the most perceptive statements ever made on the topic of mass immigration.

However — and I’m not excusing it — I can almost understand why a tired and cold immigrant might, in extremis, decide to burn a piece of furniture.  There is an extenuating circumstance.

There are no extenuating circumstances for immigrants who arrive in this wonderful country, and then try to set about changing it into the shithole they just left.  We all know about the Communists of the Frankfurt School, of course, and they were (and still are) aided and abetted by our own locally-bred Commies of the Red Diaper persuasion.

And then there’s this little development [sic] :

A video circulating widely on social media has gained widespread attention, claiming that 402 acres in Texas have been purchased to build an “Islamic city that will govern itself.” The project, known as EPIC City, is linked to the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC) and is at the center of intense scrutiny and speculation.

EPIC announced plans in early 2024 for what it described as a “historic project”, a residential and commercial development near Josephine, Texas, roughly 30 minutes from its Plano-based mosque, as reported Daily Mail. The project includes proposals for 1,000 homes, a school, a shopping complex, and a central mosque, intended to serve a growing Muslim population.

There has been some opposition to the building of this little self-created ghetto:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has launched more than a dozen state investigations against the development, claiming that EPIC City officials want to impose Sharia law within the community.

…as well he should.  As this article points out:

Deep in the heart of Texas, just outside of Dallas, is the new community of Epic City, a totally Muslim City. Amy Mek sees it as the beginning of the end. It is a big change for Texas. That’s certain.

The problem with Islam is it is a total way of life, political, social, religious, and there can be no other way. Sharia Law cannot coexist with the US Constitution. The US needs people to assimilate.

The project will feature a mosque at its center, surrounded by houses, townhomes, apartments, Muslim schools, parks, gyms, and other facilities.

Many Texans are expressing concerns about EPIC City. Some see it as creating a separate Muslim-only area, which they fear could lead to segregation.

They worry it might become a “no-go zone,” where non-Muslims feel unwelcome. Critics also fear that introducing Sharia law could conflict with U.S. laws and values.

“Could” conflict with U.S. laws and values?  How about “will definitely” do all that? As this article states:

Supporters argue that EPIC City is about religious freedom. Except it’s not simply a religion. It’s a complete life plan.

Of course, the Muslims deny all that:

EPIC City developers said that is simply not true, and its newly-hired attorney Dan Cogdell has called the state’s opposition to the community flat out “racial profiling.”

It has nothing to do with race, you MuzzieSymp fuck;  it has everything to do with culture — and Muslim culture, at its very core, sets out to suppress any culture that isn’t Muslim*.  To argue otherwise is to invoke the oh-so-Muslim practice of taqiyyah — lying to infidels in order to further Islam.  Here’s more from that Green Diaper lawyer:

“If this were a Presbyterian church in Red Oak or a Catholic church in Waxahachie, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he said on Friday’s airing of “Morning in America.”

Yeah, let’s conflate the hostile and murderous Islam with Presbyterians and Catholics, by all means.

“It’s because they’re Muslim. It’s just that simple,” Cogdell added.

Damn right it is.  And now for the taqiyya:

Cogdell told NewsNation the community does not intend to impose Sharia law as the state of Texas accuses.

“They have no intentions of that. There are 7,000-10,000 that attend the current mosque. There are lawyers, judges, doctors, politicians that attend that church,” he said. “It’s just absurd that that allegation is even being made at this point.”

I know that at some point the WhatAbouts (like this asshole Cogdell) are going to ask me how I feel about the enclaves of Orthodox Jews that are sprinkled about, and my answer is that I have no problem with them — not because they’re Jews, but because Orthodox Jewry is not about forcibly changing U.S. law into Talmudic.

In other words, I believe strongly in the freedom of association (and of religion) embodied in our First Amendment — but not when such association or religion sets about changing our nation and our Constitution into fucking Shari’ah.  If you don’t think that’s their goal, you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been happening in Africa (see the link immediately above).  And feel free to consult a poll (any poll, in any country) of Muslims to see under which set of laws a majority of them would want to live.

The Constitution, as the man quite rightly said, is not a suicide pact.

And speaking of majorities:  typically, it doesn’t take a majority of Muslims in a population before the shit starts spraying off the fan blades;  as I recall, anything over 15-18%, and the fun starts.  Sometimes it’s even less.

Make no mistake, this EPIC City thing, if allowed to survive, would not be the only settlement of its kind.  Pretty soon they’d spread throughout the United States like cancer cells in a chainsmoker’s body.  I leave it to your imagination as to what the end result of that would be.

And if you think that EPIC City (or Cities) would not become a breeding ground for Islamist extremism, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

As I see it, though, opposition to EPIC is following a bureaucratic path:

“The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found that the East Plano Islamic Center and affiliated entities have not obtained the required authorizations or permits needed for construction.”

That’s fine;  but if those authorizations or permits are denied, expect lawsuits:  lawsuits that the Muslims might win.  And then what?

Better, I think, to put the issue onto a binding referendum in the November elections.  (The referendum question has to be simple, e.g.:  “Do you think that the state of Texas should allow Muslims to create Muslim-only settlements in Texas?”)

Let’s see how the good people of Texas feel about this.

*My original thought was that I’d test the Muslims’ protestations by recruiting a few beautiful Texas gals, dressing them in the skimpiest-yet-legal clothing, and have them strut past the EPIC mosque during Ramadan, just to see the locals’ response.  (Of course, they’d be accompanied by a few good ol’ Texas boys — carrying concealed guns, as is our right under both U.S. and Texas law — just in case someone might want to harass our young ladies for only doing what they are allowed — nay, encouraged — to do here in the Lone Star State.)

Alternatively, I’d support the application of any Christian church, ditto a few Christian bookstores and a parochial school or two, to apply for building- and business permits inside the boundaries of EPIC City, just to test the veracity of their “Oh noes we’re not exclusively Muslim!”  claims.

I welcome a discussion of the Christians’ chances of success.

And yes, I’ve spoken about this topic before, and also here.

Timely Law, Catchy Title

Government Thugs, Gummint, Taxes and Theft

From the U.S. Senate comes this little bit of commonsense:

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) on Monday introduced legislation that would sell off millions of dollars of the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) firearms to pay for the national debt.

As America approaches Tax Day on Tuesday, Ernst introduced the Why Does the IRS Needs Guns Act to reform how the agency handles firearms. The Iowa senator introduced the legislation after reports from Open the Books have suggested the IRS would one of the top 50 largest police departments based on its headcount and stockpiling of firearms and ammunition.

“Since 2006, the IRS spent $35.2 million on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment (CPI adjusted). The years 2020 and 2021 were peak years at the IRS for purchasing weaponry and gear. Just since the pandemic started, the IRS has purchased $10 million in weaponry and gear,” Open the Books wrote.

Since 2020, the IRS has spent at least $10 million on firearms and ammunition for its roughly 2,100 special agents.

Here’s Joni, outside D.C.:

And Rep. Barry Moore (R-AL) introduced the House companion legislation:

“Arming these agents does not make the American public safer. My legislation, the Why Does the IRS Need Guns Act, would disarm these agents, auction off their guns to Federal Firearms License Owners, and sell their ammunition to the public.”

Moore takes the cake with this exit quote:

“The only thing IRS agents should be armed with are calculators.”

As the old (and bitter) joke goes:

“Taxes are funds taken from citizens at gunpoint.”
“No, they aren’t!”
“Really?  Try refusing to pay them.”

Bastards.  Disarm them.  All of them.  Perhaps they’d be a lot less arrogant towards us if they were unarmed.

Nazzo Fast, Guido

Taxes and Theft

I’m truly enjoying the havoc and chaos that Musk and his DOGE squad are inflicting on the Gummint.

I’m not so sure about this one, though:

Acting IRS Commissioner Melanie Krause felt slighted after Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem struck a deal for the tax agency to share data with DHS on illegal aliens. She decided to resign and take the government buyout that Trump offered.

Sources told the Washington Post that disagreements over the agency’s direction also factored into Krause’s decision to leave.

To be sure, I don’t give a rat’s ass about Krause — or pretty much any IRS apparatchik, fuck ’em all — but on reading further, her reason for quitting stuck with me:

Trump and Musk want to overturn the entire privacy regime that prevents the IRS from sharing data with other government agencies. They’re contemplating building a “cross-government data-sharing system,” reports the Post, “that would allow agencies to use personal tax information to hunt for fraud in social safety net programs.”

Nice goal, but I’m not so sure about that “cross-government data-sharing system” thing — most of all when it comes to tax-related data.

Remember the immortal words of John Cowperthwaite:  “If I let them compute those statistics, they’ll want to use them for planning.”  And no “statistics” are more deadly in government hands than financial ones.

I’m against giving government personal data, even in that most innocuous of functions, the decennial census.  Financial data, that could be shared between government agencies (such as, for example, the FBI and ATF and not just Social Security)?

I don’t fucking think so.

The old joke was that the IRS didn’t care if you were a citizen or an illegal alien, as long as you paid taxes on your wages and earnings;  while the INS didn’t care if you paid your taxes or not, as long as you were a legal resident.  It was a joke back then, but it’s going to stop being a joke, in every way possible, if this “cross-government data-sharing system” becomes a reality.

And remember, while I may — may — trust that this Republican government is going to do The Right Thing with all this data that’s going to be shared (and that’s not a sure thing, by any means), I have no illusions about how this data is going to be used by any future government, no matter what its label may be.

It’s going to be used against us — you and me — for whatever purpose they may dream up.

The only way I might agree to this fuckery is if there’s an absolutely cast-iron guarantee that the IRS is going to disappear altogether in the (very) near future, to be replaced by a National Excise Office that would collect taxes exclusively from foreign governments (tariff fees) and merchants (end-user sales taxes) — i.e. when the godless 16th Amendment is nullified — and we all know that none of that is going to happen anytime soon.

I would stipulate that this sharing of tax data be limited strictly to root out corruption in the SocSec network — i.e. it’s a one-time, one-function application — but we all know that this stipulation would be ignored before the ink was dry on the paper, to await the arrival of a future government or government department which would use it as a tool to oppress and destroy our freedoms.

No, this data-sharing thing is a bridge too far, and I don’t care how badly it’s needed — Musk has yet to prove that to me or anyone else — or how much easier it would make DOGE’s job.

My personal data doesn’t exist in order to make anyone’s job easier or more convenient.  So leave it the fuck alone.