“It’s For The Children”

Posted on Wednesday, September 6, 2023

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by Tammy Bruce

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4 Comments

“It’s for the children” is one of the most familiar alibis used by leftist tyrants and bullies throughout history. To this very day, Americans are faced with the malevolent targeting of children in the name of protecting them from their own parents.

But there is good news on the home front when it comes to our pushback against the left using schools to turn children against their parents. Claiming to be champions of ‘transgender children’, they attempt to co-opt the language of compassion and civil rights to surreptitiously damage the relationship and influence mothers and fathers have over their own children.

But while the left continues to use agents of the state at schools to cleave children from their parent’s sphere of influence, at the end of August, patriot and warrior attorney Harmeet Dhillon and her team at the Center for American Liberty achieved an important legal victory for Jessica Konen said her 11-year-old daughter, Alicia.

Once Konen found out her little girl was being “transitioned” without her knowledge, she sued the school. Fox News reported, “In what’s been called a landmark victory for parental rights, a California school district has settled for $100,000 with a mother who said her daughter was ‘socially transitioned’ to a boy without parental knowledge or consent.”

Konan is an example of what Biden’s DOJ must especially fear—an inspirational mom on a mission. “They [teachers and schools] need to understand their place, and they need to stay in their place. And schools nowadays they’re awful. So, I’m going to fight this fight and keep fighting this fight,” Konen told Fox News Digital. Her lawyer noted, “At its core, this case is about upholding the sacred bond between parents and their children…Parents have an inherent right to be involved in pivotal decisions concerning their children’s lives.”

Political and social advocates are constantly using this strawman argument that schools have to keep secrets from parents because the child may face danger at home or, at the very least, won’t be accepted for who they are.

That is the core of their argument, and yet if a child faces actual danger in a home, there are already laws allowing intervention for a child’s safety. But even the left knows they can’t (yet) have children taken from their parents simply because the parents don’t pay allegiance to the leftist narrative du jour. Make no mistake—that is their ultimate goal. Keep an eye on how the left and their media enablers will continue to push the malicious lie that anything other than a ‘progressive’ home constitutes an environment that is “unsafe” and “violent” for a child.

In this country, one hallmark is that we don’t allow the government to punish us for our beliefs, take our children from us because of our faith, or arrest people because we don’t like their opinions. At its core, it is disgusting and pathetic, but even more seriously, it reveals a nationwide effort by the government and agents of the state (through teachers’ unions and leftist politicians) to gain pseudo-custody of your children by alleging that not conforming to the leftist worldview places children in danger.

For example, California is now suing a Southern California school district for daring to implement a policy requiring parents to be notified if their children want to change their gender or pronouns. California Attorney General Rob Bonta said informing parents was a threat to the safety of students: “For far too many transgender children and gender nonconforming youth, school serves as their only safe haven — a place away from home where they can find validation, safety, privacy. We have to protect that.”

This obsession by the Democrats has nothing to do with being concerned about children and everything to do with using an issue to smear parents, turn children against their parents, and then substitute leftist agents of the state as the moral arbiters for all children in public school.

Fortunately, more schools are implementing parental rights policies, which is a direct result of parents running for and winning school board seats throughout the country, but they will also likely face lawsuits from states run by regressive Democrats. We must remain vigilant and involved at our local and state levels.

Efforts to cleave the relationship between parents and children are taking more than one form. Another attempt by a school to frighten and crush a child’s freedom and usurp the family’s values was in full view when a Colorado Springs middle school banned a boy from having a Gadsden flag sticker on his backpack. The problem? They explained it was due to the flag’s “origins with slavery,” a completely false and wildly ignorant claim.

A videotape of the meeting between an administrator from the school, the boy, and his mom went viral on social media and the news, and only then, in the midst of the massive backlash, did the school reverse itself, allowing the boy to wear the Gadsden flag patch. Connor Boyack, an education expert and president of the Libertas Institute in Utah, broke the story and noted this about the outcome on X (formerly Twitter): “We won! Let this be a lesson — document your encounters w/ government employees. Had Jaiden’s mom not recorded the video, this wouldn’t have got nearly the attention that it did.”

Believing parents have a right to know what’s happening to their children in school is being framed by the Democrats as scandalous, controversial, and strange. But no one believes that. Americans are united against the increasingly extreme Democrat social agenda, especially that which impacts children, with a new poll indicating Americans don’t want children’s lives manipulated and used as proxies in adult political and cultural fights.

This is not surprising at all. Agents of the state, strangers who have no long-term personal responsibility or interest in the children but want to control and influence them, have no business perpetuating the malevolent argument that parents are the dangerous ones. It is strangers who are obsessed with controlling your children who are the monsters on the hill.

This is too true to be funny  .  
 

The next time you hear a politician use the         
Word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about whether you want the ‘politicians’ spending
YOUR tax money  .  
 

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,         
But one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.

A.         
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B.         
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive   .

C.         
A billion hours ago our ancestors were
living in the Stone Age .

D.         
A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

E.         
A billion dollars ago was only  
8 hours and 20 minutes,
at the rate our government
is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in our brain… 
let’s take a look at New Orleans …
It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Louisiana Senator,         
Mary Landrieu (D)
was asking Congress for  
250 BILLION DOLLARS
To rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number…
What does it mean?

A.         
Well .. If you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans
(every man, woman and child)
You  each get   $516,528

B.         
Or … If you have one of the 188,251 homes in
New Orleans , your home gets  $1,329,787.

C.         
Or… If you are a family of four…
Your family gets $2,066,012.

Washington, D.C.     

HELLO!         
Are all your calculators broken??

Building Permit Tax         
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax (Fed)
Federal Unemployment Tax (FU TA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge Taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
(And to think, we left British Rule to avoid so many taxes)

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY?

Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago…        
And our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt.         
We had the largest middle class in the world.
And Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What happened?         
Can you spell

‘politicians’!

Rocky Mountain high: CO teachers union instructing members to destroy evidence

https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2023/09/04/rocky-mountain-high-co-teachers-union-instructing-members-to-destroy-evidence-n575438

Prof. Turley’s comment hits to the heart of the matter.

Oxford scientist criticizes ‘green’ push for wind power: ‘Fails on every count’

‘Whichever way you look at it, wind power is inadequate. It is intermittent and unreliable; it is exposed and vulnerable; it is weak with a short life-span,’ Oxford professor Wade Allison argued.

 Piotr Wytrazek/Shutterstock

Chris
Morrison

• 2

Tue Mar 28, 2023 – 10:23 am EDT

Listen to this article

0:00 / 5:101X

BeyondWords

(The Daily Sceptic) — It could be argued that the basic arithmetic showing wind power is an economic and societal disaster in the making should be clear to a bright primary school child. Now the Oxford University mathematician and physicist, researcher at CERN and Fellow of Keble College, Emeritus Professor Wade Allison has done the sums. The U.K. is facing the likelihood of a failure in the electricity supply, he concludes.

“Wind power fails on every count,” he says, adding that governments are ignoring “overwhelming evidence” of the inadequacies of wind power, “and resorting to bluster rather than reasoned analysis.”

Allison’s dire warnings are contained in a short paper recently published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He notes that the energy provided by the sun is “extremely weak,” which is why it was unable to provide the energy to sustain even a small global population before the Industrial Revolution with an acceptable standard of living.

A similar point was made recently in more dramatic fashion by the nuclear physicist Dr. Wallace Manheimer. He argued that the infrastructure around wind and solar will not only fail, “but will cost trillions, trash large portions of the environment and be entirely unnecessary.”

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In his paper, Allison concentrates on working out the numbers that lie behind the natural fluctuations in the wind. The full workings out are not complicated and can be assessed from the link above. He shows that at a wind speed of 20mph, the power produced by a wind turbine is 600 watts per square metre at full efficiency. To deliver the same power as the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset, England – 3,200 million watts – it would require 5.5 million square metres of turbine swept area.

It is noted that this should be quite unacceptable to those who care about birds and other environmentalists. Of course, this concern does not seem to have materialized to date. Millions of bats and birds are calculated to be slaughtered by onshore wind turbines every year. Meanwhile, off the coast of Massachusetts, work is about to start on a giant wind farm, complete with permits to harass and likely injure almost a tenth of the population of the rare North Atlantic right whale.

When fluctuations in wind speed are taken into account in Allison’s formula, the performance of wind becomes very much worse. If the wind speed drops by half, the power available falls by a factor of eight. Almost worse, he notes, if the wind speed doubles, the power delivered goes up eight times, and the turbine has to be turned off for its own protection.

The effect of the enhanced fluctuations is dramatic, as shown in the graph above. The installed nominal generating capacity in the EU and U.K. in 2021, shown by the brown dashed line, was 236 GW, but the highest daily output was only 103 GW on March 26. The unreliability is shown to even greater effect in the second graph that plots the wind generated offshore in the U.K. in March last year.

For eight days at the end of the month, power generation slumped, presumably, says Allison, because the wind speed halved. The 8.8 GW daily loss over the period was noted to be 1,000 times the capacity of the world largest grid storage battery at Moss Landings in California. When it comes to the enormous batteries needed to store renewable power, Allison notes the problems with safety, as well as mineral shortages. Batteries will never make good the failure of offshore wind farms, even for a week, and he points out they can fail for much longer than that.

Others have recently looked in more detail at the costs of battery storage. The American lawyer and mathematician Francis Menton, who runs the Manhattan Contrarian site, reviewed recent official cost reports and found that “even on the most optimistic assumptions” the cost could be as high as a country’s GDP. On less optimistic assumptions, the capital cost alone could be 15 times annual GDP.

Last year, Associate Professor Simon Michaux warned the Finnish government that there were not enough minerals in the world to supply all the batteries needed for Net Zero. Michaux observed that the Net Zero project may not go fully “as planned.” Meanwhile, Menton concluded, with an opinion that some might consider unduly charitable: “It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the people planning the Net Zero transition have no idea what they are doing.”

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Professor Allison has done his sums based on basic physics and freely available information. “Whichever way you look at it, wind power is inadequate. It is intermittent and unreliable; it is exposed and vulnerable; it is weak with a short life-span,” he concluded.

Being a Misien, I don’t particularly agree with what Scott Adams, author of “Dilbert”, twitted, however, I do FIRMLY BELIEVE IN FREE SPEECH!!!

The EpochTimes has discontinued “Dilbert”. The Epoch Times has gone Woke.

I suggest to y’all that you discontinue all subscriptions where the publisher has discontinued “Dilbert”.

As noted in other posts on this blog, especially those regarding economics, racism, sexism, and all the other stupid ‘isms, are counter productive and are a serious negative effect on the economy, in fact, on ALL economies. They impede productivity, economic growth, and negatively impact wealth creation.

Authors to read: Ludwig von Mises, Murray N. Rothbard, Thomas Sowell, A.J. Hayek, Hazlitt, Hoppe, Jason L. Riley, Victor D. Hanson, and on and on.

Clouds are just space on someone’s hard drive- which can be quite susceptible to attack.  Best to protect your data with multiple points of backup (i.e., external personal backup drive and multiple online backup clouds, however:

Protect with good antimalware such as Malwarebytes Premium, a good VPN (such as Express VPN) and especially “asynchronous backups”  that start/stop different dates.  All this will give you decent protection, but not assurance against a hack.  Some of us have data/storage/programs not connected to the internet stored in Faraday bags- closed to the outside world.

My buddy, xxxxxx, that has ZZZZZZZ is very connected to govt. national security committees, also owns XXXXXXXXX.  I would advise you to get devices for cars and circuit box at home.  xxxxxx also is building a 1.9-Billion-dollar chip factory in XXXXZXX XX.

The Wall Street Journal

Letters-to-the-editor

Op-ed@wsj.com

Re: Article Requests

Please present two articles for my edification.

First, a few years ago, you published a short article on ‘how to delete a Facebook account.’ I did not save it, and, once again, want to delete an account that I opened decades ago but it keeps re-surfacing. I have used Fb’s drop-down menu to delete this account, to no avail. Although there is nothing of interest, even to me, in it, it has generated all sorts of junk-mail, spam, and phishing.

Second, I keep asking, ‘no, really, what is “the cloud”?’  I’m sorry, but at the bottom of it all, there must be a physical device, possibly a mainframe or set of servers, of some sort that functions and is real, and, therefore, subject to hacking +/or invasion from the outside. My I-T people keep foisting off schematics that show nothing. From them, I am assuming that “the cloud” is really unused memory in servers, networks, +/or computers, around the world and my data are being encrypted and e-mailed from point to point, thus, susceptible to attack, interference, and corruption.

Considering that AWS has had two global system’s failures in the past two weeks, ya, two weeks!, this has gotta be a story worth investigating and printing.

I am certain that I am not the only subscriber in need of The Journal’s expertise, clarity, and objectivity in getting answers to business questions.

From Liberalism: The Classical Tradition

Chapter 11 “The Limits of Governmental Activity”

Mises, Ludwig von pp 30 – 33 (© 1927) ISBN 978-0-86597-585-9

As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil. A government that, instead of fulfilling its task, sought to go so far as actually to infringe on personal security of life and health, freedom, and property would, of course, be altho0gether bad.

            Still, as Jacob Burckhardt says, power is evil in itself, no matter who exercises it. It tends to corrupt those who wield it and leads to abuse. Not only absolute sovereigns and aristocrats, but the masses also, in whose hands democracy entrusts the supreme power of government, are sonly too easily inclined to excesses.

            In the United States, the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages are prohibited. Other countries do not go so far, but nearly everywhere some restrictions are imposed on the sale of opium, cocaine, and similar narcotics. It is universally deemed one of the tasks of legislation and government to protect the individual from himself. Even those who otherwise generally have misgivings about extending the area of governmental activity consider it quite proper that the freedom of the individual should be curtailed in this respect, and they think that only a benighted doctrinairism could oppose such prohibitions. Indeed, so general is the acceptance of this kind of interference by the authorities in the life of the individual that those who are opposed to liberalism on principle are prone to base their argument on the ostensibly undisputed acknowledgment of the necessity of such prohibitions and to draw from it the conclusion that complete freedom is an evil and that some measure of restriction must be imposed upon the freedom of the individual by the governmental authorities in their capacity as guardians of his welfare. The question cannot be whether the authorities ought to impose restrictions upon the freedom of the individual, but only how far they ought to go in this respect.

            No words need be wasted over the fact that all these narcotics are harmful. The question whether even a small quantity of alcohol is harmful or whether the harm results only from the abuse of alcoholic beverages is not at issue here. It is an established fact that alcoholism, cocainism, and morphinism are deadly enemies of life, of health, and of the capacity for work and enjoyment; and a utilitarian mush therefore consider them as vices. But this is far from demonstrating that the authorities must interpose to suppress these vices by commercial prohibitions, nor is it by any means evident that such intervention on the part of the government is really capable of suppressing them or that, even if this end could be attained, it might not therewith open up a Pandora’s box of other dangers, no less mischievous than alcoholism and morphinism.

            Whoever is convinced that indulgence or excessive indulgence in these poisons is pernicious is not hindered from living abstemiously or temperately. This question cannot be treated exclusively in reference to alcoholism, morphinism, cocainism, etc., which all reasonable men acknowledge to be evils. For if the majority of citizens is, in principle, conceded the right to impose its way of life upon a minority, it is impossible to stop at prohibitions against indulgence in alcohol, morphine, cocaine, and similar poisons. Why should not what is valid for these poisons be valid also for nicotine, caffein, and the like? Why should not the state generally prescribe which foods may be indulged in and which must be avoided because they are injurious? In sports too, many people are prone to carry their indulgence further than their strength will allow. Why should not the state interfere here as well? Few men know how to be temperate in their sexual life, and it seems especially difficult for aging persons to understand that they should cease entirely to indulge in such pleasures or, at least, do so in moderation. Should not the state intervene here too? More harmful still than all these pleasures, many will say, is the reading of evil literature. Should a press pandering to the lowest instincts of man be allowed to corrupt the soul? Should not the exhibition of pornographic pictures, of obscene plays, in short, of all allurements to immorality, be prohibited? And is not the dissemination of false sociological doctrines just as injurious to men and nations? Should men be permitted to incite others to civil war and to wars against foreign countries? And should scurrilous lampoons and blasphemous diatribes be allowed to undermine respect for God and the Church?

            We see that as soon as we surrender the principle that the state should not interfere in any questions touching on the individual’s mode of life, we end by regulating and restricting the latter down to the smallest detail. The personal freedom of the individual is abrogated. He becomes a slave of the community, bound to obey the dictates of the majority. It is hardly necessary to expatiate on the ways in which such powers could be abused by malevolent persons in authority. The wielding of powers of this kind even by men imbued with the best of intentions must needs reduce the world to a graveyard of the spirit. All mankind’s progress has been achieved as a result of the initiative of a small minority that began to deviate from the ideas and customs of the majority until their example finally moved the others to accept the innovation themselves. To give the majority the right to dictate to the minority what it is to think, to  read, and to do is to put a stop to progress once and for all.

            Let no one object that the struggle against morphinism and the struggle against “evil” literature are two quite different things. The only difference between them is that some of the same people who favor the prohibition of the former will not agree to the prohibition of the later. In the United States, the Methodists and Fundamentalists, right after the passage of the law prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages, took up the struggle for the suppression of the theory of evolution, and they have already succeeded in ousting Darwinism from the schools in a number of states. In Soviet Russia, every free expression of opinion is suppressed. Whether or not permission is granted for a book to be published depends on the discretion of a number of uneducated and uncultivated fanatics who have been placed in charge of the arm of the government empowered to concern itself with such matters.

            The propensity of our contemporaries to demand authoritarian prohibition as soon as something does not please them, and their readiness to submit to such prohibitions even when what is prohibited is quite agreeable to them shows how deeply ingrained the spirit of servility still remains within them. It will require many long years of self-education until the subject can turn himself into the citizen. A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.

Death, Are You Ready?
Tom Klocek
I fell in my driveway yesterday, landing on my shoulder and banging my head right above the eye hard on the concrete. My wife insisted on taking me to the emergency room. Anyone who has been to the E.R. for anything knows what that is like – perkatory. Perkatory is that agonizingly endless interval endured while waiting for a fresh pot of coffee to brew. Only at the end of perkatory there’s a fresh mug of coffee and it’s a lot shorter than the wait in the E.R.
My phone was running out of juice, so I had to find something else to focus on while waiting. As this was the day after Ash Wednesday, I couldn’t help reflecting on the words said at the distribution of ashes, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” Ash Wednesday is a reminder of our mortality. My situation brought to mind the four last things: death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
It also made me wonder about all those supposedly Christian (and especially Catholic) politicians who advocate so strongly for abortion and all the other things that run counter to the natural law and the teachings of the faith. What goes on in their minds? Do they think they can deceive God who sees into their hearts? They may deceive themselves with specious mental arguments and think that what they are doing is okay, but God sees into their hearts. He sees through the darkness – they cannot hide in it.
Tim Kaine, a self-proclaimed pro-abortion Catholic, thinks he is hiding in the darkness because in part of the mass we say, “Lord I am not worthy” and that makes things alright. True, none of us is worthy, but through God’s grace and the sacrament of reconciliation, with true repentance and full intent to no longer sin, we can approach Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. However, repeated votes against Church teaching are not indicative of repentance nor amendment. If folks like him would just abstain from voting on such issues it might give some indication of change. I wrote Tim Kaine a letter asking him if he thought he would be able to truly repent as he took his last breath, but he never answered.
Jesus teaches repentance and that we should never underestimate God’s mercy. It is infinite. But there are conditions. As I stated above one must ask for forgiveness, be repentant (acknowledge our sins – mortal sins need to be acknowledged explicitly), be truly contrite, and have a firm purpose of amending one’s life – a desire to stop that sin. Otherwise, the door will be closed to us.
This brings us to the title of this essay. One of the shortest (and one of the best – not just because of its length) homilies I have heard was given by a parish priest after reading the Gospel of Matthew (25:1-13) concerning the ten virgins waiting for the bridegroom (Christ). Five brought extra oil for their lamps and five were unprepared. The bridegroom was delayed (we don’t know the time of Christ’s return), so the unprepared virgins asked the others for some of their oil but were refused because then all of them might run out. While they went to procure more oil, the bridegroom arrived. When those virgins finally returned and asked for admittance to the bridal feast, they were told, “Truly, I say to you, I do not know you.” They were forbidden entry. After finishing the Gospel reading, the priest leaned over to the microphone, said the words above, “DEATH! Are you ready,” and sat down. You could hear a pin drop.
Other parables and teachings of Jesus give a similar lesson: Mark 13:33 (“Take heed, watch and pray, for you do not know when the time will come”), Luke 21:36 (“But watch at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of man”), and Acts 1:7 (“It is not for you to know the times or seasons which the Father has fixed by His own authority”).
My message to these politicians and to all is stop making excuses for your wrong and sinful actions which make the darkness of your hearts deeper. Let the light and love of God enter in – researchers have shown that this will help your feelings of happiness, reduce feelings of despair, and make your lives more stable, Stop trying to convince yourselves that you aren’t really (that) bad (I’m not as bad as that guy over there). Only individuals can be saved – it is not a comparison test. Quit trying to twist scripture to justify your actions and support your sin.
As the other statement made on Ash Wednesday says, “Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” (Mk 1:15)

5 lessons about how we treat people

>>>>> 

>>>>>>  

>>>>>> _

>>>>>> (5) lessons about the way we treat people_

>>>>>> 1 – First Important Lesson – Cleaning Lady.

>>>>>> During my second month of college, our professor Gave us a pop

>>>>>> quiz. I was a conscientious student And had breezed through the

>>>>>> questions until I read The last one:

>>>>>> “What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?”

>>>>>> Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the Cleaning woman

>>>>>> several times. She was tall, Dark-haired and in her 50’s, but how

>>>>>> would I know her name?

>>>>>> I handed in my paper, leaving the last question Blank. Just

>>>>>> before class ended, one student asked if The last question would

>>>>>> count toward our quiz grade.

>>>>>> “Absolutely, ” said the professor.. “In your careers, You will

>>>>>> meet many people.  All are significant.. They Deserve your

>>>>>> attention and care, even if all you do Is smile and say “hello..”

>>>>>> I’ve never forgotten that lesson.. I also learned her Name was

>>>>>> Dorothy.

>>>>>> _2. – Second Important Lesson – Pickup in the Rain _ One night,

>>>>>> at 11:30 p.m., an older African American Woman was standing on

>>>>>> the side of an Alabama highway Trying to endure a lashing rain

>>>>>> storm. Her car had Broken down and she desperately needed a ride.

>>>>>> Soaking wet, she decided to flag down the next car.

>>>>>> A young white man stopped to help her, generally Unheard of in

>>>>>> those conflict-filled 1960’s. The man Took her to safety, helped

>>>>>> her get assistance and Put her into a taxicab.

>>>>>> She seemed to be in a big hurry, but wrote down his Address and

>>>>>> thanked him. Seven days went by and a Knock came on the man’s

>>>>>> door. To his surprise, a Giant console color TV was delivered to

>>>>>> his home. A Special note was attached.

>>>>>> It read:

>>>>>> “Thank you so much for assisting me on the highway The other

>>>>>> night. The rain drenched not only my Clothes, but also my

>>>>>> spirits.  Then you came along.

>>>>>> Because of you, I was able to make it to my dying Husband’s’

>>>>>> bedside just before he passed away… God Bless you for helping

>>>>>> me and unselfishly serving Others.”

>>>>>> Sincerely,

>>>>>> Mrs. Nat King Cole.

>>>>>> _3 – Third Important Lesson – Always remember those_ _Who serve.

>>>>>> _ In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, A

>>>>>> 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and Sat at a table. A

>>>>>> waitress put a glass of water in Front of him.

>>>>>> “How much is an ice cream sundae?” he asked.

>>>>>> “Fifty cents,” replied the waitress.

>>>>>> The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and Studied the

>>>>>> coins in it.

>>>>>> “Well, how much is a plain dish of ice cream?” he inquired.

>>>>>> By now more people were waiting for a table and the Waitress was

>>>>>> growing impatient..

>>>>>> “Thirty-five cents,” she brusquely replied.

>>>>>> The little boy again counted his coins.

>>>>>> “I’ll have the plain ice cream,” he said.

>>>>>> The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on The table and

>>>>>> walked away The boy finished the ice Cream, paid the cashier and

>>>>>> left..  When the waitress Came back, she began to cry as she

>>>>>> wiped down the Table.  There, placed neatly beside the empty

>>>>>> dish, Were two nickels and five pennies..

>>>>>> You see,  he couldn’t  have the sundae, because he had To have

>>>>>> enough left to leave her a tip.

>>>>>> _4 – Fourth Important Lesson. – The obstacle in Our Path. _ In

>>>>>> ancient times, a King had a boulder placed on a Roadway.  Then he

>>>>>> hid himself and watched to see if Anyone would remove the huge

>>>>>> rock.  Some of the King’s’ wealthiest merchants and courtiers

>>>>>> came by And simply walked around it..  Many loudly blamed the

>>>>>> King for not keeping the roads clear, but none did Anything about

>>>>>> getting the stone out of the way.

>>>>>> Then a peasant came along carrying a load of Vegetables.  Upon

>>>>>> approaching the boulder, the peasant laid down his burden and

>>>>>> tried to move the stone to the side of the road.  After much

>>>>>> pushing and straining, he finally succeeded. After the peasant

>>>>>> picked up his load of vegetables, he noticed a purse lying in the

>>>>>> road where the boulder had been. The purse contained many gold

>>>>>> coins and a note from the King indicating that the gold was for

>>>>>> the person who removed the boulder from the roadway.  The peasant

>>>>>> learned what many of us never understand!

>>>>>> Every obstacle presents an opportunity to improve our condition.

>>>>>> _5 – Fifth Important Lesson – Giving When it Counts… _ _Many

>>>>>> years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at a_ _hospital, I got to

>>>>>> know a little girl named Liz who _ _was suffering from a rare &

>>>>>> serious disease.  Her only_ _chance of recovery appeared to be a

>>>>>> blood_ _transfusion from her 5-year old brother, who had_

>>>>>> _miraculously survived the same disease and had _ _developed the

>>>>>> antibodies needed to combat the_ _illness.  The doctor explained

>>>>>> the situation to her_ _little brother, and asked the little boy

>>>>>> if he would_ _be willing to give his blood to his sister. _ _I

>>>>>> saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a_ _deep breath

>>>>>> and saying, “Yes I’ll do it if it will save_ _her.”  As the

>>>>>> transfusion progressed, he lay in bed_ _next to his sister and

>>>>>> smiled, as we all did, seeing _ _the color returning to her

>>>>>> cheek. Then his face_ _grew pale and his smile faded._ _He looked

>>>>>> up at the doctor and asked with a_ _trembling voice, “Will I

>>>>>> start to die right away”. _ _Being young, the little boy had

>>>>>> misunderstood the_ _doctor; he thought he was going to have to

>>>>>> give his_ _sister all of his blood in order to save her. _ _Now

>>>>>> you have choices. _

>>>>>> _1 Delete this email, or _

>>>>>> _2. Forward it other people. _

>>>>>> _I hope that you will choose No. 2 and remember. _ _Most

>>>>>> importantly…. ”Live with no regrets, Treat people the way you

>>>>>> want to be treated, Work like you don’t need the money, Love like

>>>>>> you’ve never been hurt, and Dance like you do when nobody’s

>>>>>> watching.”; _

>>>>>> _NOW more than ever – Please…    Pass It On…_

>>>>>> _You never know how or when you’ll be paid!_

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VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The coup we never knew

An FBI podium is shown during a press conference outside the main entrance of City Hall in Boulder City, Nevada on Friday, Sept. 16, 2016. Richard Brian/Las Vegas Review-Journal Follow

Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Content Agency

January 7, 2023 – 9:01 pm

Did someone or something seize control of the United States?

What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did President Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?

Since when did money not have to be paid back? Who insisted that the more dollars the federal government printed, the more prosperity would follow? When did America embrace zero interest? Why do we believe $30 trillion in debt is no big deal?

When did clean-burning, cheap and abundant natural gas become the equivalent to dirty coal? How did prized natural gas that had granted America’s wishes of energy self-sufficiency, reduced pollution and inexpensive electricity become almost overnight a pariah fuel whose extraction was a war against nature? Which lawmakers, which laws, which votes of the people declared natural gas development and pipelines near criminal?

Was it not against federal law to swarm the homes of Supreme Court justices, to picket and to intimidate their households in efforts to affect their rulings? How then with impunity did bullies surround the homes of Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts and Clarence Thomas — furious over a court decision on abortion? How could these mobs so easily throng our justices’ homes?

Since when did Americans create a government Ministry of Truth? And on whose orders did the FBI contract private news organizations to censor stories it did not like and writers whom it feared?

How did we wake up one morning to new customs of impeaching a president over a phone call? Of the speaker of the House tearing up the State of the Union address on national television? Of barring congressional members from serving on their assigned congressional committees?

When did we assume the FBI had the right to subvert the campaign of a candidate it disliked? Was it legal suddenly for one presidential candidate to hire a foreign ex-spy to subvert the campaign of her rival?

Was some state or federal law passed that allowed biological males to compete in female sports? Did Congress enact such a law? Did the Supreme Court guarantee that biological male students could shower in gym locker rooms with biological women? Were women ever asked to redefine the very sports they had championed?

When did the government pass a law depriving Americans of their freedom during a pandemic? In America can health officials simply cancel rental contracts or declare loan payments in suspension? How could it become illegal for mom-and-pop stores to sell flowers or shoes during a quarantine but not so for Walmart or Target?

Since when did the people decide that 70 percent of voters would not cast their ballots on Election Day? Was this revolutionary change the subject of a national debate, a heated congressional session or the votes of dozens of state legislatures?

What happened to election night returns? Did the fact that Americans created more electronic ballots and computerized tallies make it take so much longer to tabulate the votes?

When did the nation abruptly decide that theft is not a crime, assault not a felony? How can thieves walk out with bags of stolen goods, without the wrath of angry shoppers, much less fear of the law?

Was there ever a national debate about the terrified flight from Afghanistan? Who planned it and why?

What happened to the once trusted FBI? Why almost overnight did its directors decide to mislead Congress, to deceive judges with concocted tales from fake dossiers and with doctored writs? Did Congress pass a law that our federal leaders in the FBI or CIA could lie with impunity under oath?

Who redefined our military and with whose consent? Who proclaimed that our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could call his Chinese communist counterpart to warn him that America’s president was supposedly unstable? Was it always true that retired generals routinely libeled their commander-in-chief as a near Nazi, a Mussolini, an adherent of the tools of Auschwitz?

Were Americans ever asked whether their universities could discriminate against their sons and daughters based on their race? How did it become physically dangerous to speak the truth on a campus? Whose idea was it to reboot racial segregation and bias as “theme houses,” “safe spaces” and “diversity”? How did that happen in America?

How did a virus cancel the Constitution? Did the lockdowns rob of us of our sanity? Or was it the woke hysteria that ignited our collective madness?

We are beginning to wake up from a nightmare to a country we no longer recognize, and from a coup we never knew.

Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and a classicist and historian at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. Contact him at authorvdh@gmail.com.

FINANCE / GOVERNMENT WATCH

List of Biden Tax Hikes Hitting Americans on Jan. 1st

Posted Wednesday, January 4, 2023   |   By Outside Contributor   |  28 Comments

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President Biden and congressional Democrats imposed a long list of tax increases as part of their “Inflation Reduction Act” passed in 2022.

On Jan. 1, 2023 the following Democrat tax hikes will take effect:

$6.5 Billion Natural Gas Tax Which Will Increase Household Energy Bills       

Think your household energy bills are high now? Just wait until the three major energy taxes in the Inflation Reduction Act hit your wallet. The first is a regressive tax on American oil and gas development. The tax will drive up the cost of household energy bills. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the natural gas tax will increase taxes by $6.5 billion.

The tax hike violates President Biden’s tax pledge to any American making less than $400,000 per year. Biden administration officials have repeatedly admitted taxes that raise consumer energy prices are in violation of President Biden’s $400,000 tax pledge.

A letter to Congress from the American Gas Association warned that the methane tax would amount to a 17% increase on an average family’s natural gas bill. Democrats have included a tax in the bill despite retail prices for energy surpassing multi-year highs in the United States.

$12 Billion Crude Oil Tax Which Will Increase Household Costs

Democrats are imposing a 16.4 cents-per-barrel tax on crude oil and imported petroleum products that will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher gas prices.

The tax hike violates President Biden’s tax pledge to any American making less than $400,000 per year.

As noted above, Biden administration officials have repeatedly admitted taxes that raise consumer energy prices are in violation of President Biden’s $400,000 tax pledge.

As if it weren’t bad enough, Democrats have pegged their oil tax increase to inflation. As inflation increases, so will the level of tax.

The non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimates the provision will raise $12 billion in taxes.

$1.2 Billion Coal Tax Which Will Increase Household Energy Bills

The tax hike more than doubles the current excise taxes on coal production. Under the Democrat proposal, the tax rate on coal from subsurface mining would increase from $0.50 per ton to $1.10 per ton while the tax rate on coal from surface mining would increase from $0.25 per ton to $0.55 per ton.

JCT estimates that this will raise $1.2 billion in taxes that will be passed on to consumers in the form of higher electricity bills.

$74 Billion Stock Tax Which Will Hit Your Nest Egg — 401(k)s, IRAs and Pension Plans

When Americans choose to sell shares of stock back to a company, Democrats will impose a new federal excise tax which will reduce the value of household nest eggs. Raising taxes and restricting stock buybacks harms the retirement savings of any individual with a 401(k), IRA or pension plan.

Union retirement plans will also be hit.

The tax will put U.S. employers at a competitive disadvantage with China, which does not have such a tax.

Stock buybacks help grow retirement accounts. Raising taxes and restricting buybacks would harm the 58 percent of Americans who own stock and more than 60 million workers invested in a 401(k). An additional 14.83 million Americans are invested in 529 education savings accounts.

Retirement accounts hold the largest share of corporate stocks, accounting for roughly 37 percent of the outstanding $22.8 trillion in U.S. corporate stock, according to the Tax Foundation.

In 2017, corporate-sponsored funds made up $4.45 trillion in market value; union-sponsored funds accounted for $409 billion; and public-sponsored funds, which benefit teachers and police officers, added up to $4.25 trillion.

When companies perform stock buybacks, these investors are the ones who benefit. A tax on buybacks could dissuade companies from conducting this action and negatively impact retirement savings.

American companies will face significant compliance costs — a boon to expensive white-shoe law firms — the burden of which will be passed on to working households.

$225 Billion Corporate Income Tax Hike Which Will Be Passed on to Households

Democrats imposed a 15 percent corporate alternative minimum tax on the financial statement income of American businesses reporting $1 billion in profits for the past three years. These American companies employ millions of Americans.

The cost of this tax increase will be borne by working families in the form of higher prices, fewer jobs, and lower wages.

A Tax Foundation report from last December found a 15 percent book tax would reduce GDP by 0.1 percent and kill 27,000 jobs.

Preliminary cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office found the provision would increase taxes by more than $225 billion.

According to JCT’s analysis, 49.7 percent of the tax would be borne by the manufacturing industry at a time when manufacturers are already struggling with supply-chain disruptions.

Tax Foundation also warned that current supply chain issues could be worsened by the book tax’s disproportionate burden on key industries. The report concluded that “the coal industry faces the heaviest burden of the book minimum tax, facing a net tax hike of 7.2 percent of its pretax book income, followed by automobile and truck manufacturing, which faces a 5.1 percent tax hike.” 

Reprinted with Permission from – Americans For Tax Reform by – Mike Palicz

The Wall Street Journal

Op-Eds

December 15, 2022

Zero Customer Svs & FAQs

I recently tried ‘contacting’ SiriusXM to combine my Pandora and SXM channels. The website responded to my query by sending me to ‘contact’ which sent me to ‘help and support’ which sent me to FAQs which sent me to ‘contact’ which sent me to ‘help and support’, &c.

I have had the same problem with E*Trade/MorganStanley and Angi. In addition, E*Trade requires a customer to call an 888#, puts one on hold, due to COVID hiring problems, for two hours and then kicks the customer out of the queue. Angi’s number sends the customer to a non-English speaking outsource who signs you up for services not asked for.

And, as noted on Varney & Co., organizations, both public and private, cut staff yet find the money to hire woke diversity executives with compensation packages that include six figure salaries.

Shareholders and customers are screwed over.

Respectfully,

Gas Prices and Remedial Econ 101 in California

Graduates from California high schools didn’t know even the most basic facts.

Dec. 14, 2022 10:23 am ETSAVEPRINTTEXT

15

Gas prices in Mill Valley, Calif, Oct. 3.PHOTO: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

Listen to article

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Your editorial “Gavin Newsom’s Latest Tax Increase” (Dec. 12) comments, “This is high-school economics—though we’re not sure they teach that anymore.” Reading that, I laughed. California has required a semester of high-school economics for decades. During my 37 years teaching college economics, I saw the results in my classes. Graduates from California high schools didn’t know even the most basic facts. “Do demand curves slope downward?” was likely to be answered with a blank stare and, “What’s a demand curve?”

I learned why when a high-school teacher enrolled in our master’s program. She took several courses from me. When she was about to graduate, I asked her if she was going to teach economics. She answered, “I can’t. My certificate is in business. Teaching econ requires a social-studies credential.” That, in a nutshell, is the problem.

Em. Prof. Tony Lima

California State University, East Bay

Hayward, Calif.

CRIME AND POLICE / GOVERNMENT WATCH / INSTAGRAM / POLITICS

The Biden Family Laptop Mess

Posted Thursday, December 15, 2022   |   By AMAC, Robert B. Charles   |  Add Comment

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The laptop computer, owned, used, and populated by the son of President Biden – seized by the FBI in 2019, its contents suppressed by the FBI and Twitter in 2020 – is not important because of crimes, for which there is ample evidence, committed by the President’s son. It is important because of evidence on the computer that implicates the current president, Joe Biden, in public corruption.

What public corruption? What evidence? What should happen? These are the key questions – not whether and for what crimes the son, who is in trouble, should be confronted with. 

Question one: Let’s start with “what public corruption” is. To knowingly facilitate violation of federal law, such as to knowingly transport, facilitate, or participate in procurement of illegitimate foreign contracts, or act as a foreign lobbyist while in public office, is a crime. 

To benefit directly or indirectly, including enrichment of a family member, from such activities is public corruption. To be part of a scheme to sell political influence or to know such a crime is occurring and thus be complicit, is a crime. 

To benefit directly from acts involved in the selling of political influence to a person, company, or country, is a crime. To act in a way consistent with expectations of someone who gave a bribe or gratuity to the officer-holder or family is a crime. To deny having knowledge or cover them up is a crime.

In truth, the definition of public corruption is broad and statutes supporting one or all of the foregoing definitions of privately indictable and publicly impeachable activity.

Question two: What evidence exists that Joe Biden knew of, participated or was complicit in, acted consistent with, or was a beneficiary of – or any relative was a beneficiary of – such sale of influence?

The answer is found in the public record and information on a computer belonging to President Biden’s son, much known in early 2020, suppressed by leading social media, apparently at the FBI’s suggestion.

While the record is dense, there is more information daily, some hard to ignore facts implicating President Biden. For example, President Biden was Obama’s Vice President (VP) from 2009 to 2017, during which time he sought and received permission to be “point man” for Ukraine. 

In 2013 and 2014, VP Biden flew his son on Air Force Two to Ukraine – and China. On these trips, the VP’s son secured lucrative private contracts, transparently at odds with his experience, suggesting that something other than expertise was being bought.

In both cases, the strong implication, confirmed by the son’s computer, is that the purchasing companies – in China’s case government-affiliated – sought and got access to the sitting VP. 

In the case of Ukraine, current events notwithstanding, the VP further travelled to Kiev in 2015 and delivered an ultimatum not to investigate a company from which his son was profiting and on whose board the son sat – or Ukraine would be denied a “billion dollars” in US aid.

Remarkably, the VP gave a speech thereafter in which his ability to get results was questioned. He responded: “I looked at them [Ukraine] and said ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money … Well, son of a b*tch, he got fired.”

The public record reveals, and incoming Congress will authenticate, this conversation occurred when the Ukrainian government had “specific plans” to investigate the VP’s son.

Evidence on the computer indicates Ukrainian officials not only wanted access to the VP, but the same party paying the VP’s son thanked the son for a meeting with the VP, which the VP later denied occurring. 

The VP also denied ever discussing these issues with the son who travelled with him and benefited from it, later pressuring Ukraine.

Before moving on, as evidence mounts implicating Joe Biden, the real question is: Given the foregoing criminal provisions and public facts, how does Joe Biden avoid a serious inquiry?

Look now to China. What the Biden family did fits the model used in Ukraine. The VP took his son to China in 2013, introduced him to top officials at companies who paid the son for what seems access or influence. The Biden family, and perhaps the VP himself, benefited.

The evidence of public corruption, direct and circumstantial, is considerable. So, the final question: What can be done? Why has all this been suppressed and not properly discussed by journalists, the Justice Department, FBI, Congress, even state prosecutors until now?

The answer: Republicans were boxed out, not given access to the computer’s contents in 2020, leaked contents questioned, denied, minimized, suppressed by social media and media outlets, both on their own and apparently at FBI direction as “misinformation.”

The implications are many. The computer’s contents appear – and did from the start – to be factual, authentic, hard to dismiss, and objectively damning. A grand jury empaneled to examine the president’s son has completed work – now, why is there no deep inquiry of Joe Biden?

The President’s AG, who himself might be asked in a major inquiry why he has both done and not done many things, appears indifferent at best, focused on Biden’s predecessor and scurrilous side issues like investigating parents and anti-abortion educators as terrorists.

In all events, the time is coming when “truth will out,” and as Twitter disgorges new information and Republican oversight committees prepare, expect a lot to come out. The White House, Justice Department, and FBI are in for some hard questioning.

Bottom line: What has happened is deeply disturbing and looks increasingly like serious public corruption. Late breaking revelations only confirm what many felt was already clear. This is not about the president’s son or that he is objectively a participant in depraved behaviors. The real issue is his father and the public corruption that the son’s computer – with public record – seem to confirm. This whole inquiry is serious – better called “Joe Biden’s Laptop Mess.”

The Burning Platform

WE ARE TRAPPED IN A TRUMAN SHOW DIRECTED BY PSYCHOPATHS

Healthline News

“Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” – Aldous Huxley – Letter to George Orwell about 1984 in 1949

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution” ― Aldous Huxley

When I step back from the day-to-day minutia and trivialities flooding my senses from all directions and media devices, it almost appears as if I’m living in a highly scripted reality TV program where the characters and plots are designed to create passions and reactions to support whatever narrative is being weaved by those directing the show. Huxley really did foresee the future as clearly and concisely as anyone could, decades before his dystopian vision came to fruition.

Orwell’s boot on the face vision is only now being initiated because a few too many critical thinkers have awoken from their pharmaceutically induced stupor and begun to question the plotline of this spectacle masquerading as our reality. The mass formation psychosis infecting the weak-minded masses; relentless mass propaganda designed to mislead, misinform, and brainwash a dumbed down and government indoctrinated populace; and complete control of the story line through media manipulation, regulation, and censorship of the truth; has run its course. As Charles Mackay stated 180 years ago, the masses go mad as a herd, but only regain their senses slowly, and one by one.

My recognition that the world seems to be scripted and directed by Machiavellian managers, working behind a dark shroud, representing an invisible governing authority, molding our minds, suggesting our ideas, dictating our tastes, and creating fear, triggered a recollection of the 1998 Jim Carrey movie – The Truman Show. The movie, directed by Peter Weir (Gallipoli, Witness, Dead Poet’s Society), had the surreal feel of Forest Gump, while beckoning the horrendous introduction of reality TV (Big Brother, Survivor), which poisons our shallow unserious society to this day. The plot of the movie focuses on individuality versus conformity, consumerism, voyeurism, reality versus manipulation, false narratives, the truth about the American Dream, and the dangers of surveillance in a technologically advanced society.

Truman Burbank is the unsuspecting star of The Truman Show, a reality television program filmed 24/7 through thousands of hidden cameras and broadcast to a worldwide audience. Christof, the show’s creator seeks to capture Truman’s authentic emotions and give audiences a relatable every man. Truman has been the unsuspecting star of the show since he was born 30 years prior. Truman’s hometown of Seahaven Island is a complete set built within an enormous dome, populated by crew members and actors who highlight the product placements that generate revenue for the show. The elaborate set allows Christof to control almost every aspect of Truman’s life, including the weather. The picture-perfect home, with picket fence and plastic people, is an attempt to convince Truman he is living the American Dream rather than in an inescapable dystopian techno-prison.

To prevent Truman from discovering his false reality, Christof manufactures scenarios that dissuade Truman’s desire for exploration, such as the “death” of his father in a sea storm to instill aquaphobia, and by constantly broadcasting and printing messages of the dangers of traveling and the virtues of staying home. One cannot but acknowledge the plotline to keep Truman under control, obedient, and locked down in his controlled environment, with no escape hatch visible, as exactly the plotline used by our overlords during the Covid scam. Using fear to regulate your subjects is a familiar theme used by those controlling the narrative and pulling the strings behind the scenes of our glorious democracy of dystopia.

The first task was to instill fear into the masses through fake videos, fake medical experts spewing fake “facts”, denying the reality masks, social distancing, and locking down the world did not stop a microscopic virus, while suppressing treatments which were clearly safe and effective (ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine) and forcing Fauci’s remdesivir and ventilators on patients – insuring their deaths. Truman’s life was built upon lies, deception, and fake narratives, controlled by a tyrannical director putting on a show to please his bosses and maximize profits. We are experiencing the same reality today.

Since March 2020 we have been trapped in a dystopian reality show based on lies, deception, and fake narratives about a weaponized virus created in a lab funded by Anthony Fauci and utilized to further the totalitarian Great Reset agenda of Schwab, Gates and their ilk, while maximizing the profits of Pfizer, TV networks and filling the pockets of politicians, shills, and apparatchiks willing to sellout the people of our country for thirty pieces of silver.

As the Truman Show approached its 30th anniversary, Truman began discovering unusual elements, such as a spotlight falling out of the sky in front of his house and a radio channel that precisely described his movements. He began to awaken to the fact he was nothing but a peculiarity trapped in a cage and constantly deterred from escaping at every turn, for the good of the show. He lived in a scripted world of conformity, where questioning the plot was not allowed, and the masses just played their parts.

This is exactly how a dictatorship without tears uses technology, pharmaceuticals, and psychological manipulation to convince the masses to love their servitude. This is the reality show we have been living in during this 21^st Century dictatorship dystopia of dunces. But this psychological phenomenon is not new to mankind, as Plato described an ancient Truman Show analog in the 4^th Century BC with his Allegory of the Cave. The nature of human beings has not changed across the trials and tribulations of history.

In the allegory, Plato describes a group of people who have lived chained in a cave all their lives, facing a blank wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall from objects passing in front of a fire behind them and give names to these shadows. The shadows are the prisoners’ reality but are not an accurate representation of the real world. An enlightened man is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and comes to understand the shadows on the wall are not reality.

The ignorant inmates do not desire to leave their prison/cave, for it is the only life they know, and they fear reality. The fire and the puppets, used to create shadows, are controlled by artists. Plato indicates the fire is also the political doctrine taught by a nation state. The artists use light and shadows to indoctrinate the masses with the dominant doctrines of the times. Few humans ever escape the cave. Most humans will remain at the bottom of the cave, with a small few elevated as major artists, to project the shadows keeping the masses disoriented, confused and fearful.

“Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

“Most people are not just comfortable in their ignorance, but hostile to anyone who points it out.” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

The State is run by an eager group of psychopaths who are hell bent on destroying our civil society and common culture on behalf of globalists attempting to implement their Great Reset agenda, and enforcing it through technological surveillance, mind control through propaganda messaging, and strict management of the daily plot via mainstream media and social media censorship of the truth. As Plato contemplated twenty four centuries ago, most men will remain in their cave, believing shadows presented by their overlords is reality, never questioning their servitude or seeking the truth.

Never has this fact been truer than during this covid pandemic reality show directed by our Christof – mass murderer Anthony Fauci. The willful ignorance of the masses was assumed by the covid controllers who cast shadows of fear and death on the cave walls of the locked down extras in this well-orchestrated reality show. Using a purposefully misleading PCR test to vastly overestimate “cases”, paying hospitals to classify all deaths as covid, and having the propaganda professionals at CNN, MSNBC and Fox showing Covid Death Counters on their screens 24/7 to terrify the masses into compliance was the Covid Show.

Once the fear level was ramped to eleven on the control dial, the producers of this show introduced the miraculous Big Pharma vaccine antidote to save the day. Their script was so believable they were able to convince over 5 billion members of their captive audience to inject themselves with an untested, unproven genetic therapy, that didn’t prevent you from catching, transmitting, getting sick, being hospitalized, or dying from the Fauci funded Wuhan lab produced virus. But, as a dramatic twist to the tale, it seems the “vaccine” causes myocarditis, blood clots, infertility, miscarriages, heart attacks, cancer, and sudden death.

Despite the obvious dangers and failures of these “vaccines”, those bullied into getting jabbed became so comfortable in their ignorance, they were easily persuaded to hate the unjabbed and wish for their deaths. Orwell’s “Two Minutes of Hate” was extended for over a year and continues to this day. Rather than think critically and question why annual flu cases averaged 35 million per year prior to 2020 but dropped to near ZERO during the covid “emergency”, the cave dwellers lashed out in anger at anyone questioning the plot, because to admit they were duped would destroy their self-esteem and decrease their virtue signal credits.

The annual flu didn’t disappear. Covid was the annual flu, with a multi-billion-dollar marketing campaign. This wasn’t a pandemic, but an IQ test, and most people failed miserably. But the critical thinking unvaxxed are still considered the enemy of the state, especially since they have been proven right.

Whether we are trapped in an artificial world produced in a dome, cave, or our current technologically advanced surveillance propaganda state, the goal of those controlling our false reality is to take away our freedoms, crush dissent, keep us ignorant of the truth, and treat us as plebs to be taxed and molded. Christof, whose name is supposed to invoke him being a god-like figure ruling over Truman’s world, declares Truman could discover the truth and leave at any time, while using every diabolical trick to keep that from ever happening, because his show generated revenues exceeding the GDP of a small country.

Truman and ourselves are essentially prisoners in a vast production, and our overlords believe it is their duty to convince us to love our servitude and prefer our cells, because it is financially beneficial to the overlords and their crew.

Our world is not fake, but it is tightly controlled by those running the show. Seemingly random events, plots, and subplots are manipulated to generate specific emotions and reactions by the public in order to achieve the objectives of those benefiting from the various storylines. They are molding our minds and forming our tastes through psychological and technological manipulation of our daily existence. Christof explained why most rarely discover the truth or question the world they live in – “We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented. It’s as simple as that.”

We have allowed men we have never seen to dictate how we live our lives, the choices we make, and which politicians and “experts” to believe, without ever putting in the effort to understand why we are being prodded to do so. We are locked in a self-imposed prison of desires, emotions, and needs through mass media messaging and a constant barrage of advertisements. Conformity and obedience are the desired traits sought by the ruling class, while individuality and skepticism are frowned upon and punished through social ostracism.

We are conditioned from birth to believe what they tell us to believe. Government school indoctrination and mass media misinformation does the trick. Distracted by our techno-gadgets and ignorant of truth is how the globalist oligarchs methodically implement their Great Reset agenda. They are so convinced of the ignorance of the masses they openly proclaim their depopulation and techno-prison schemes with no fear of push back or retribution.

The ending of the Truman Show is a lesson in resistance, persistence, and the strength of the individual, even in the face of a technologically advanced Big Brother state. It offers a message of hope, no matter how powerful our overlords appear to be. Refusing to obey or conform by one individual can inspire others to do likewise. Once Truman ‘awoke’ to his plight as a lab rat in a scripted show, he began to plot his escape. Using a makeshift tunnel in his basement, out of view of Christof’s cameras, he disappeared and forced the suspension of the broadcast for the first time in thirty years.

Christof discovers Truman sailing away from Seahaven in a small boat, as he has overcome the fake conditioning of fear instilled in him by the man who supposedly loves him but traumatized him about the sea by faking his father’s death while at sea. Christof chooses to almost drown Truman by creating a violent storm to deter him from discovering the truth. Ultimately the storm ceases and his boat strikes the wall of the dome.

This is exactly how our controllers treat the ignorant masses. They feed us stories designed to make us fearful and compliant to the exhortations of their paid experts. Paid to lie. Paid to misinform. Paid to persuade people a dangerous concoction is “safe and effective”. The evilness of using Sesame Street characters to convince four-year-old children they need this Big Pharma gene altering toxic brew, even though essentially ZERO children on earth died from covid, is a testament to the greed and malevolent impulses of those in power. Vast amounts of ever-increasing advertising revenue are what kept The Truman Show on the air for thirty years.

The covid advertising campaign will never be topped, as Hollywood stars, top athletes, famous writers, rock legends, supposedly impartial journalists, and all the major networks said SHOW ME THE MONEY!!!! Everyone was for sale, and all they had to do was lie and say the jabs were “safe and effective”. Product placement was the money-making formula for the Truman Show, while hard selling a Big Pharma phony cure over the airwaves 24/7 using the tax dollars of the victims was the final solution of the Great Reset Cabal.

The grand finale is a clash of the philosophies of reality versus false reality, as Truman discovers a staircase leading to an exit door. Christof speaks to Truman, claiming there was no more truth in the real world than in his artificial world, and he would be safe, with nothing to fear, in a world controlled by men invisible to him assuring him they have his best interests at heart. Truman chooses individuality, truth, risk, living a real meaningful life, and seeking honest relationships over a safe existence in a bubble where all decisions were made by others. Truman bows to the audience and exits, leaving Chistof to mourn the loss of his star and the revenue he generated. The ignorant masses watching the show cheer his escape and then ask, “what’s on next?” Plato captured the uncertainty and bewilderment Truman must have felt as he walked into the light.

“Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light” ― Plato, The Allegory of the Cave

This world of manufactured dystopian pleasure harkens more towards Huxley’s Brave New World, where pharmaceuticals and conditioning would keep the public seeking pleasure, pre-occupied with trivialities, distracted by materialism, unable to think critically, and reduced to passivity and egoism through the control of messaging by their controllers. Our efficient totalitarian state has gained complete control by convincing the masses to love their servitude and beg for more rules, restrictions, and reduction of liberties in the name of safety and security.

Smart phones, smart cities, and smart streets are nothing more than code for spying on you and controlling you. Truman finally understood his liberty was his to choose and not Christof’s to give. There is a small minority of Americans who are realizing the same thing after two years of totalitarian measures designed to take away our freedoms and liberty. The question is whether enough will exit this tyrannical government produced show to make a difference. The future of mankind literally depends on the answer to this question.

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“Liberties aren’t given, they are taken.” ― Aldous Huxley

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Just as those controlling the Truman Show were not doing it for Truman’s benefit, but for their enrichment, those controlling the puppet strings of our society today had no interest in our health over the last two years, our financial well-being, our psychological well-being, or the peaceful rational functioning of our civilization. They have no interest in securing our border, reducing crime, holding fair elections, promoting peaceful solutions to global conflict, or allowing the truth to reach the masses. Their agenda has been and continues to be, the destruction of our civilized society, obliteration of our core standards and norms, depopulation of the planet, confiscation of our wealth, and ultimately our enslavement through technological shackles and chains.

As Huxley noted decades ago, technology has just provided our civilization with a more efficient means of going backwards. Technology is being used by our controllers to monitor our movements, communications, and to surveil, distract, and amuse us to death. It is no longer a force for good, but a means to control us. They plan to use technology to disarm their citizens through increasingly authoritarian regulations, sold as keeping us safe from mass shooters.

Their climate agenda isn’t about the climate, but about complete control of the masses. When government and their social media attack dogs monitor the citizens for “hate speech and misinformation”, and dole out retribution at their whim, our system is profoundly broken and extremely warped. They are supposed to answer to us. But these megalomaniacs have much bigger agenda.

We’ve lost all sense of reality, reason, and truth in a profoundly abnormal world, created by those we allowed to ascend to power through the control and influence of shadowy globalist billionaires operating as an invisible government, with Deep State apparatchiks doing the dirty work. Schwab, Gates, Soros, the World Economic Forum, and whoever hides in the shadows behind these psychopaths, intend to control the entire world and steal all the wealth because they believe they are smarter, more ruthless, and know what’s best for the lowly peasants polluting their satanic playground planet.

They know facts can be ignored when they’ve conditioned the masses to be willfully ignorant. They know they can lie without implications, but even more powerful, they can stay silent about the truth through censorship, suppression, and cancellation of truth tellers. The adaptation of the masses to this abnormal society, created by evil power-seeking men, is a form of mental illness – or as documented by Mattias Desmet in his book The Psychology of Totalitarianism – Mass Formation Psychosis.

 “The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does. They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” ― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited

I know I will never adapt or adjust to this abnormal society. We certainly can’t change a system, so thoroughly rigged and controlled (e.g., 2022 Arizona election and the 2020 presidential election), through traditional means. Those in control can easily buy-off our politicians, scientists, doctors, academics, TV personalities, and journalists to spin whatever web they choose, enabling their despicable anti-human agenda of deviancy. The only viable solution is the individual solution of walking away from this phony world like Truman.

Armed revolution is a non-starter, as the oligarchs have far more firepower, and the dissenters are unorganized and scattered. A form of ‘Irish Democracy’ where a silent dogged resistance, marked by the withdrawal from society, belligerence to authority and non-compliance with government dictates by millions of ordinary people would accomplish far more than rioting and armed revolution. Millions have already practiced a form of Irish Democracy by not masking, not social distancing, not getting jabbed, and taking control of their own health decisions.

They have almost sealed the escape hatch in this dystopian paradise of pleasure and pain. They know their techniques of control through fear work like a charm. Their final task to achieve total control is central bank digital currencies (CBDC), where everything we buy and sell is tracked digitally, so taxes can be levied, your life tracked, and if you choose to dissent from government directives, your ability to utilize CBDCs will be turned off. Micro-chipping us is next on the agenda.

We need to reduce our tax and digital footprint now. It might seem hopeless in going to battle against these vile, vindictive vermin, but the solution is to not play. Many have already walked away from the modern world, taking to the country – farming, homesteading, bartering, and only giving to Caesar the bare minimum. They’ve chosen a hard, but a far more fulfilling life.

The more people who disassociate from their fake world, the weaker they get. As their hold on our lives weakens, they will lash out. This is why it is important to be armed. Direct armed confrontation with the establishment’s forces is foolish, but guerrilla tactics on land you know would start to eat away at the morale of the paid police thugs sent to enforce their dictates. The beast isn’t as strong as it portrays. It’s broke and its empire of debt is crumbling.

If millions walk out the exit door, the beast will begin to starve and eventually die. Maybe a new, less complex, smaller, more community-oriented society could be born from the ashes. Tribe up with like-minded individuals with different skills, if possible. There is hope if enough patriots decide to regain their senses and walk away from this abnormal society, leaving our totalitarian Christofs to wallow in their failure to control the truly awoken.

“Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration, for the life you deserved but never have been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.” ― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

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The Trouble With Socialism

JEFFREY A. TUCKER

“The trouble with socialism,” wrote Oscar Wilde, “is that it takes up too many evenings.” He was right then and right now, and the insight pertains to “woke” ideology in our time. It consumes one’s life and fills what should be happy days with personal ambition and dreary prattle about endless grievances concerning every manner of intractable realities of the world.

None of the woke ideology flows from common sense experience, much less the “lived experience” of the working classes. In fact, there is a huge chasm that separates the belief systems of woke intellectuals and the working classes, who generally have no time for this wacky nonsense. Wokeism is an intellectual imposition that must be taught and imposed simply because of its implausibility.

In particular, Wilde was bothered by the 19th-century socialist habit of seeking some kind of localized democratic consensus for every statement of belief, as if a committee can and should be in charge of the world. But his insight pertains more broadly, too, and points to the humorlessness of the entire exercise.

Back in the day, socialist theory in its most extreme form imagined the possibility of abolishing private property and money. Today, it has gone much further to imagine the possibility of abolishing biology itself and thus targets all evidence of it with regard to sex and gender, and even the need for economics at all. It has become flat-out dystopian with its push for bug eating, Flintstone cars, and massive population reductions.

Today, it’s particularly attracted to the number zero as an ideal: zero emissions, zero-COVID, zero meat, zero discrimination, zero economic growth, and we can add to that zero humor, art, and good sense. The woke tribe adopts all these tropes as a matter of group identity and not because they are either true or really understood.

That’s why woke theory has become what a friend calls “a dog’s breakfast,” a bowl of mixed and messy leftovers from last night’s party.

The whole enterprise has become so preposterous and anti-populist that only the most educated and privileged elites could possibly believe it. And that is precisely what you find in circles where educated elites gather. Their doctrines of belief are reduced to implausible incantations that no one is allowed to question. Their loathing of popular culture and bourgeois habits of religion and family life are always just below the surface of their misty-eyed sloganeering.

The tendency of leftist philosophizing toward doctrinal reductionism has a very long history. Karl Marx wrote long and ponderous essays and books that made some attempt at rigor, but it never really took hold. Under the guidance of Friedrich Engels, he finally coughed up the “Communist Manifesto,” which put the entire apparatus within reach of people with no time for books but a longing for some creed by which to live.

This is also why the left was drawn to the bloodthirsty pamphlet of Chairman Mao and the publication of the “Red Book.” They read it like a bible so they internalize truths such as “We must have faith, first, that the peasant masses are ready to advance step by step along the road of socialism under the leadership of the Party, and second, that the Party is capable of leading the peasants along this road.”

Oh. I hope you catch the elitism in there. It’s an inherent part of the culture of socialist organization. There’s always a vanguard, always a tiny minority of wise leaders who understand the trajectory of history and are ready to lead the rest of us to their promised land while crushing all dissent. You see that in China today as the party-loyal whites crush the ambitions of the population for basic freedom and rights.

In the old days, I found myself confused by the existence of what people called “limousine liberalism,” which is another way of saying well-to-do, highly educated elites who have a deep hatred for the systems of wealth creation that gave them their privileges. Now, I see that this is an inherent part of socialist ideological structure. The elites in the party are entitled to break all their own rules, as long as they are fervent in their advocacy and impositions of doctrines on others.

Hence, taking chartered flights to Davos to attend meetings that agitate for zero-carbon to save the planet shouldn’t shock us. Hypocrisy is baked into the belief system.

This is also why the left and its vanguard can’t tolerate free speech. The main tenets of its ideology are so implausible and contrary to all real-life experience that they must be protected against any and all criticism lest they crumble into nothingness. They simply are too weak to withstand the slightest scrutiny.

Socialism is rooted in a very simple error, one so fundamental that it denies a fundamental feature of the world. It denies the existence and the persistence of scarcity itself.

Wokeism is an intellectual imposition that must be taught and imposed simply because of its implausibility.

As for the economics of socialist theorizing, it’s the most persistent nonfalsifiable ideology on planet Earth. The socialists are like people who swear that gravity doesn’t exist and keep hopping around on two feet, expecting to rise into the clouds at any moment. It never happens, but the faith that there is no gravity remains unshaken.

Socialism is rooted in a very simple error, one so fundamental that it denies a fundamental feature of the world. It denies the existence and the persistence of scarcity itself. That is to say, it denies that producing and allocating is even a problem. If you deny that, it’s hardly surprising that you have no regard for economics as a discipline of the social sciences.

So, for example, just because the stores overflow with groceries, or because internet startups are begging you to download applications, or because we can stick a wind turbine here and there and watch it work if the weather is right, or power your handheld calculator with solar rays, doesn’t mean that we live in a post-scarcity age.

There is no such thing as post-scarcity in this life. Everything consumed must be produced. So long as anything is scarce, there can’t be free, unlimited, collective access to it. If you attempt to make a scarce good collectively owned, it will be overutilized, depleted, and finally vanish following the final fight for the last scrap.

Things can be allocated by arbitrary decision backed by force, or they can be allocated through agreement, trading, and gifting. The forceful way is what socialism has always become. This is for a reason: Socialism doesn’t deal with reality. This is true in economics but is also true in everything from gender to climate. It has become nothing more than a fantasy that only the rich and privileged can afford to believe.

It’s a tragedy of our time that this belief system has made such progress in the world of commerce, media, and art, so much so that it is nearly impossible to move within any “high-end” circles in this country without having one’s ears assaulted with repeated multiple incantations of woke slogans.

Would this ever have happened without the assistance of academia? Doubtful. Such ideological systems can only come about and become entrenched once a class of people become completely detached from the normal demands of commercial life and broad engagement with the normal operations of society. Hence, my favorite cure for this cultural infection: Get a real job and learn a real and marketable skill.

The coming recession might assist many in elite cultures along this path. Jeffrey A. Tucker is the founder and president of the Brownstone Institute, and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press, as well as 10 books in five languages, most recently “Liberty or Lockdown.” He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He writes a daily column on economics for The Epoch Times and speaks widely on the topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

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Activists attend Fridays For Future NYC climate strike in New York City on Sept. 23, 2022. ODD ANDERSEN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

A sculpture of Karl Marx in Chemnitz, eastern Germany, on Aug. 27, 2018.

Copyright (c) 2022 The Epoch Times, Edition 12/7/2022

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Home | Wire | Economic Progress and Economic Decay: North versus South

Economic Progress and Economic Decay: North versus South

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TAGS Bureaucracy and RegulationCronyism and CorporatismLawU.S. Economy

22 MIN AGOStephen Apolito

They read like Civil War battlefields: Chattanooga, Tennessee; Tuscaloosa, Alabama; Greer, South Carolina; West Point, Georgia; Montgomery, Alabama; Tupelo, Mississippi; Smyrna, Tennessee. They are the towns and small cities in the Deep South where America now builds its cars and trucks.

Take Greer, for example (population of thirty-five thousand as of 2020). Located in the foothills of the bucolic Blue Ridge Mountains in the northwest corner of South Carolina, it is home to the BMW US manufacturing plant.

According to BMW, the Greer facility employs over twenty-three thousand people to produce the models X3–X7 as well as the XM crossover SUVs and has invested nearly $5 billion in the 1,150-acre, four-million-square-foot campus.

What about New York?

There was a GM plant in Sleepy Hollow, New York, where the Buick Century and Pontiac Bonneville were once made, but that shut down in 1996. Ford made radiators and springs in Green Island, New York, but that closed in 1989, and the building was demolished in 2004. I am told there are still a few small, outdated parts facilities in Buffalo just hanging on like the rest of the city.

According to the Buffalo City Journal,

at the onset of the Great Depression, Buffalo had 573,000 inhabitants, making it the 13th-largest city in America. In the 75 years that followed, this once-mighty metropolis lost 55% of its population, a decline most dramatic in its blighted inner city but also apparent in its broader metropolitan area, one of the 20 most quickly deteriorating such regions in the nation.

New York recently tried to lure industry back to Buffalo and the rest of Upstate New York, but to date, its ham-fisted and misguided efforts have had only mixed results. Take, for example, the Buffalo Billion project. The project has been caught up in a corruption and bid-rigging scandal that led to the conviction of former SUNY Polytechnic Institute president Alain Kaloyeros, who oversaw all upstate economic development projects. The developer and others connected to the project were also fined and jailed.

New York spent almost $1 billion on a factory and equipment to build a solar plant for a Tesla-Panasonic joint venture. Panasonic pulled out in 2020, leaving Tesla holding the bag. Tesla, for its part, has switched production from solar roof panels to components for its electric vehicles. Tesla’s agreement with the state inexplicably only requires the company to have a certain number of jobs in Buffalo. It does not include any provisions regarding the types of jobs or how much the jobs pay. Because of Tesla’s switch in production, the state has been forced to sell or scrap expensive taxpayer-funded solar manufacturing equipment costing more than $200 million. Yet another socialist experiment gone awry!

Of course, this invites a serious question. Why not create an environment that companies will be attracted to instead of bribing them to relocate with taxpayers’ money? It should not be overlooked that BMW received hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies and tax breaks to settle in Greer, but it still doesn’t compare to the subsidy dollars thrown about in New York.

Many wonder, “What has happened to the once great Empire State?” The sad truth is that we hardly make anything here anymore. Take General Electric, for example. In the 1950s they employed over forty thousand people in Schenectady. Now fewer than four thousand people work in the upstate facility. No one would be surprised if GE closed the facility entirely. You can still drive by the sprawling complex—a city within a city of mostly empty and shuttered brick buildings.

The story is similar for Grumman Aircraft, the maker of the World War II Wildcat and Hellcat fighter planes, as well as the Apollo Lunar Module. At its peak in 1986, it employed twenty-three thousand people on Long Island and occupied six million square feet of office and factory space. The company eventually closed almost all its facilities on Long Island and converted its Bethpage plant into a residential and office complex.

I know there are many New Yorkers who are happy about the exodus of jobs: No smells, no drilling, no smoke, no noise, no traffic, no lights, no parking lots, no nothing. These modern-day Luddites have a natural antipathy to everything that smacks of business and industry. It seems they want the eggs, but not the chickens that lay them.

To be fair, Micron Technology plans to spend up to $100 billion on a massive complex of computer chip plants in Syracuse’s northern suburbs, in what would be the largest single private investment in New York history. The move to New York, however, comes with a steep price tag for taxpayers because Micron will receive billions in federal, state, and local tax incentives. The state incentives alone are expected to reach almost $6 billion over twenty years. The federal subsidy comes as a result of the recently signed CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to provide $52 billion in direct subsidies and more than $24 billion in investment tax credits to promote the manufacture of semiconductors in the United States.

Critics of the act argue that “it perpetuates more deficit spending to support profitable industries that already plan to expand without taxpayer subsidies.” (Then there’s always the shadow of Solyndra, which hangs over all government attempts to meddle in the free market. Will this be a reprise?)

In the ’50s, when I was just a kid living on Long Island, I would often hear grown-ups say, “If you can’t make it in New York, you can’t make it anywhere!” Back then, people didn’t move to places like Greer, South Carolina, or Tuscaloosa, Alabama, to find work. People from there came to New York.

A few years ago, I spoke to my neighbor Bob, who is retired and lives with his wife in Pawling (a small community in Dutchess County, about sixty miles north of New York City). He mentioned that he was thinking of moving to Georgia. “How come?” I asked. “Well, my son got a good job down there, and at our age, we thought we should live near our children. And besides, we want to see our grandchildren grow up.”

So that’s what it has come to. When we send our children off to college, we should not expect them to come home—not to New York, anyway. There are few good jobs here: not in Pawling; not in Buffalo; not in Schenectady. If we want to be near our children and see our grandchildren grow up, then we will have to go to them—to places like Smyrna and Greer.

According to the New York Post, an analysis of new federal labor statistics reveals that

New York still has 454,000 fewer private-sector jobs than it had two years ago before the coronavirus pandemic hammered the city and state—a 4.1 percent employment deficit that is the worst in the mainland U.S. . . .

“. . . only Hawaii and Alaska were worse off,” . . . .

Meanwhile, Florida and Texas have added jobs during the pandemic—3.4 percent and 2.9 percent respectively.

The exodus of jobs is mirrored by an exodus of people. Between April 1, 2020, when the last census estimates were released, and July 1, 2021, New York state lost more than 365,000 people, or 1.8 percent of its population.

This is what the deadweight of government has wrought. I hope the last one to leave New York remembers to turn off the lights!

Author:

Stephen Apolito

Stephen Apolito is a CPA living in Bronxville, New York. A veteran of the US Air Force, Apolito is a graduate of Washington and Lee University and has taught in the New York City public schools.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.