This may not be an accident. She knows the US and New Mexico Constitutions forbid government infringement on a citizen’s “right to keep and bear arms,” and Supreme Court has spoken, yet she did it anyway. She knows a ban on self-defense is illegal, yet she did it. Time to speak boldly: This is wrong. The anti-gun nuts … are coming.
Yes, the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution states that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Yes, the New Mexico Constitution, at Article 2, section 6, further says “No law shall abridge the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms for security and defense, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for other lawful purposes.”
Still, the Democrat Governor – caring not a twit about those longstanding provisions and caselaw – like Governors who decided COVID permitted stripping Americans of free speech, free exercise of religion, travel, and a right not to be compelled to be injected by the government (or face loss of job, education, travel, and right to serve) – did it again.
She knowingly ignored the law, just threw a ban on guns outside the home, and declared that new edict the law. Where is justice? Where is respect for those two Constitutions?
Specifically, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham just “issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public…for at least 30 days…” across her state.
“The Democratic governor said she expects legal challenges but was compelled to act in response to gun deaths, including the fatal shooting of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium this week” – calling it “an emergency public health order.” Really?
Her order – as she knows – explicitly defies both Constitutions and recent Supreme Court cases and is facially unconstitutional, yet she has effectively given the citizens of her state, as well as those who framed both Constitutions and the High Court, her middle finger. She does not care.
Is this the “new norm?” The Supreme Court rules that student loans cannot be forgiven by the Executive without Congressional action, yet the President ignores the Court, does it anyway. The High Court rules Roe v, Wade is no longer law, yet the top two Democrats cry payback, and a Supreme Court Justice – unprotected by a Democrat Attorney General – is nearly assassinated.
A former President gains in the polls, leads the field – shares popularity greater than Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny – and is then indicted, prosecuted by Biden surrogates at the state and federal level, arrested with intent that he not run or win the race, and headed for prison.
Is Biden studying Putin? Is New Mexico’s Grisham studying Biden? And what is next? Perhaps not coincidentally, Biden s watched Putin get his opposition arrested in 2014, then get him barred him from running for President in 2018, despite international law scholars objecting.
Intent on power, Putin then had him poisoned (or that is the suspicion), from which he recovered, then had him jailed when he returned from exile in 2021. The parallel is ominous: Those in power hate to give up power, those seeking to vindicate the people are arrested and shackled.
Frankly, I watched this happen all over the world as an Assistant Secretary of State and in the military, just never imagined it would occur on US soil. Many will say, “but, but, but …” and I say, “yes, but …” Then halt your defense, and examine the Constitution, our caselaw, and ask yourself – is your security based on the idea that nothing like that can happen here? It can.
The evidence is right before us It began in 2020, with the idea that longstanding citizen rights could be taken, under the color of an “emergency public health order.” The Supreme Court, presently led by Constitutionalists, overturned those federal and state infringements.
But it took time, and people lost jobs, businesses, opportunities to worship together, travel, hold jobs in law enforcement, the military and private sector. They were punished for asserting their constitutional rights.
Now we get this, a governor who, following the lead of Mr. Biden, himself oddly shadowing behavior of Mr. Putin, including defense of China for no reason credible legal reason – has decided to outlaw guns.
Sometimes, as Plato so eloquently wrote, we read things in “shadows on the cave wall,” and we are well served to watch, think, seek sun and then ponder what those shadows portend.
The New Mexico Governor’s actions may not be an accident. Either way, they are illegal. They show knowing disrespect for our Constitution, the Supreme Court, and her State Constitution. There is no legal justification. Time to speak boldly: This is wrong. Anti-gun nuts are coming.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
How easily we forgot what life was like back then.
Will you come with me and reminisce for a while?
Let me take you back to the day of the Inauguration of the 45th President. It was a somber speech about the dark America created by those who hate our country. But afterward, the mood was jubilant. The parade on the way to the White House. The many Inauguration balls we held that night. But it wasn’t just about celebrations. It was about Making America Great Again. And on Saturday morning, we got down to work. We unleashed the fuel of America, the lifeblood of fossil fuels, opening up the Keystone pipeline, shale, and fracking fields to feed the engines of growth. But it wasn’t just about the economy.
After 8 years of treating the military like a science experiment for left-wing ideologues, we reinvested in our troops so they could execute the only mission of merit: killing America’s enemies. And under their new Commander-in-Chief, that’s exactly what they were tasked to do. President Trump committed us to the destruction of the Jihadi Caliphate of ISIS. And within a few months, that’s what happened.
Then, when it came to our national sovereignty, true patriots like Tom Homan and Mark Morgan were tasked to find and deport illegals and build the Wall.
America was finally back. The factories were humming, and the store shelves were full. We witnessed record-low unemployment and a stock market that made everyone’s pensions and 401Ks the strongest in American history.
These were the statistical and empirical truths of life for Americans under the Presidency of Donald J. Trump. Yet what was the response from the Establishment and the scions of Corporate, legacy media? 4 years of calling the Commander-in-Chief a “Russian-colluder,” a racist, a White-Supremacist, and even a Nazi.
As if the incessant calumny of multiple 24/7 smear campaigns were not enough, the Democrats and the permanent bureaucracy used every weapon they could deploy against the most successful President of the modern age. From Operation Crossfire Hurricane, the Mueller Probe, to not one but 2 impeachments, and then COVID, the perfect cover under which to mail our 80 million ballots.
At the same time, in classic Alinskyite fashion, violent mobs were unleashed, leveraging the violent death of George Floyd to justify riots across the nation, with looting and arson costing business owners $2 billion and costing more than 3 dozen Americans their lives, including retired black police officer David Dorn. What was President Trump’s reaction? Did he cut and run when the Antifa and BLM thugs assaulted the White House and set fire to St. John the Episcopal church, one block away? No.
So that was your life under my former Boss, President Trump. Can we contrast that to the last 2+ years under his replacement?
It starts with the cancellation of Keystone, a war on the energy that drives America, and an obeisance to the cult of environmentalism at the same time that the real networks that make America run were neglected. Remember East Palestine?
Whilst we’re talking national-level logistics, what about the “supply-chain” disasters, the lack of staples like baby formula, or the scores of shipping containers stuck off the California’s coast?
Disregarding the needs of Americans was matched by a disdain for our national sovereignty, as the border regime we built was dismantled and millions of illegals were let into our homes, along with literally tons of deadly narcotics that killed more than 100,000 Americans in just one year.
On today of all days, as we remember the thousands murdered in New York, Washington D.C., and Pennsylvania by Jihadi terrorists, we would do well to remember the perennial cost to our nation when the highest office of the land is held by those who either hate America or do not have the courage to do what is needed.
Another Democrat President, Bill Clinton, had multiple opportunities to kill Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of 9/11, before that sunny Tuesday morning 22 years ago today. But he didn’t. He was afraid to lead. As a result, almost 3,000 men, women, and children died that day, and thousands more in the wars that followed.
We need a true leader back in the White House.
Are you helping to make sure that happens in 2024…Before it’s too late?
The Green New Deal As we illustrate in our series Fueling a Freer Future, the hysteria over climate change and energy policy is ultimately about political power. In our newest animated video, we look at the Green New Deal proposals that have become a focus of the political left in America.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s original New Deal ushered in the most radical growth of the federal government that America had ever seen. Similarly, the Green New Deal is a push to grow the government’s power in almost every aspect of our lives, regulating our travel, our food, and even our most intimate behavior in our homes. It will reward favored political groups, and impoverish the rest of America.
This is why Fueling a Freer Future is dedicated to explaining the essential role that energy plays in our day-to-day lives.
Catch up on the entire Fueling A Freer Future series by clicking here.
“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 Libertyachieved 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.
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.
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.
(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.”
— Article continues below Petition —
Tell G20 to drop radical climate policies causing inflation and blackouts
Show Petition Text
11236 have signed the petition.
Let’s get to 12500!
Add your signature:Country…USACanadaAaland IslandsAfghanistanAlbaniaAlgeriaAmerican SamoaAndorraAngolaAnguillaAntarcticaAntigua and BarbudaArgentinaArmeniaArubaAustraliaAustriaAzerbaijanBahamasBahrainBangladeshBarbadosBelarusBelgiumBelizeBeninBermudaBhutanBoliviaBosnia and HerzegovinaBotswanaBouvet IslandBrazilBritish Indian Ocean TerritoryBrunei DarussalamBulgariaBurkina FasoBurundiCambodiaCameroonCape VerdeCayman IslandsCentral African RepublicChadChileChinaChristmas IslandCocos (Keeling) IslandsColombiaComorosCongoCook IslandsCosta RicaCote D’IvoireCroatiaCubaCuracaoCyprusCzech RepublicDemocratic Republic of the CongoDenmarkDjiboutiDominicaDominican RepublicEcuadorEgyptEl SalvadorEquatorial GuineaEritreaEstoniaEthiopiaFalkland IslandsFaroe IslandsFijiFinlandFranceFrench GuianaFrench PolynesiaFrench Southern TerritoriesGabonGambiaGeorgiaGermanyGhanaGibraltarGreeceGreenlandGrenadaGuadeloupeGuamGuatemalaGuernseyGuineaGuinea-BissauGuyanaHaitiHeard and McDonald IslandsHondurasHong KongHungaryIcelandIndiaIndonesiaIranIraqIrelandIsle of ManIsraelItalyJamaicaJapanJerseyJordanKazakhstanKenyaKiribatiKuwaitKyrgyzstanLao People’s Democratic RepublicLatviaLebanonLesothoLiberiaLibyaLiechtensteinLithuaniaLuxembourgMacauMacedoniaMadagascarMalawiMalaysiaMaldivesMaliMaltaMarshall IslandsMartiniqueMauritaniaMauritiusMayotteMexicoMicronesiaMoldovaMonacoMongoliaMontenegroMontserratMoroccoMozambiqueMyanmarNamibiaNauruNepalNetherlandsNetherlands AntillesNew CaledoniaNew ZealandNicaraguaNigerNigeriaNiueNorfolk IslandNorth KoreaNorthern Mariana IslandsNorwayOmanPakistanPalauPalestinePanamaPapua New GuineaParaguayPeruPhilippinesPitcairnPolandPortugalPuerto RicoQatarRepublic of KosovoReunionRomaniaRussiaRwandaSaint BarthelemySaint HelenaSaint Kitts and NevisSaint LuciaSaint MartinSaint Pierre and MiquelonSaint Vincent and the GrenadinesSamoaSan MarinoSao Tome and PrincipeSaudi ArabiaSenegalSerbiaSeychellesSierra LeoneSingaporeSint MaartenSlovakiaSloveniaSolomon IslandsSomaliaSouth AfricaSouth Georgia and the South Sandwich IslandsSouth KoreaSouth SudanSpainSri LankaSudanSurinameSvalbard and Jan Mayen IslandsSwazilandSwedenSwitzerlandSyriaTaiwanTajikistanTanzaniaThailandTimor-LesteTogoTokelauTongaTrinidad and TobagoTunisiaTurkeyTurkmenistanTurks and Caicos IslandsTuvaluUgandaUkraineUnited Arab EmiratesUnited KingdomUnited States Minor Outlying IslandsUruguayUzbekistanVanuatuVatican CityVenezuelaVietnamVirgin Islands (British)Virgin Islands (U.S.)Wallis and Futuna IslandsWestern SaharaYemenZambiaZimbabweState…AlabamaAlaskaAmerican SamoaArizonaArkansasCaliforniaColoradoConnecticutDelawareFederated States Of MicronesiaFloridaGeorgiaGuamHawaiiIdahoIllinoisIndianaIowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarshall IslandsMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew JerseyNew MexicoNew YorkNorth CarolinaNorth DakotaNorthern Mariana IslandsOhioOklahomaOregonPalauPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirgin IslandsVirginiaWashingtonWashington D.C.West VirginiaWisconsinWyomingArmed Forces EuropeArmed Forces AmericasArmed Forces Pacific
Keep me updated via email on this petition and related issues. Sign this Petition
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.
C/O: The Daily Sceptic
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.
C/O: The Daily Sceptic
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.”
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR DAILY HEADLINES US Canada Catholic
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.
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.
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)
For more than a decade, the British government has run its National Health Service, the world’s largest government-run healthcare system, on a tight budget. The NHS prided itself on being one of the leanest healthcare systems in the developed world, spending less per head on average than its large European neighbors—and far less than the U.S.
Now the state-funded service is falling apart. People who suffer heart attacks or strokes wait more than 1½ hours on average for an ambulance. Hospitals are so full they are turning patients away. A record 7.1 million people in England—more than one in 10 people—are stuck on waiting lists for nonemergency hospital treatment like hip replacements. The NHS on Monday faced the biggest strike in its history, with thousands of paramedics and nurses walking out over pay.
The NHS’s woes are an extreme example of issues playing out across the developed world. Healthcare systems, hit hard by Covid, are under pressure as people live longer and have a wider range of treatment options. Aging populations mean costs will keep growing. The U.K.’s experience is a warning of what happens when supply in healthcare provision can’t keep up with demand.
“The healthcare system in the U.K. is facing a crisis like no other I have seen in my career,” said Nigel Edwards, the retiring chief executive of the Nuffield Trust, a healthcare think tank, and former chief executive for the NHS. “The U.K. has mistaken cheapness for efficiency in its approach to health, and it’s coming home to roost.”
NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP
What’s News
Catch up on the headlines, understand the news and make better decisions, free in your inbox every day.PreviewSubscribe
The NHS has lost thousands of hospital beds in the past decade in its drive for efficiency. Covid delayed treatments for patients, resulting in a vast waiting list. Hospitals in England were already at 98% capacity in December when the brutal flu season began to take hold. The mass of sick patients gummed up the system to devastating effect.
An NHS hospital ward in London, Jan. 18.PHOTO: JEFF MOORE/PA WIRE/ZUMA PRESS
Delays in treating people are causing the premature deaths of 300 to 500 people a week, according to estimates from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, a professional association in London. One in five British people were waiting for a medical appointment or treatment by the NHS in December, according to the U.K. Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The NHS said those excess death figures are likely too high but acknowledged delays are costing lives. In late January, the U.K. government announced funding to provide more ambulances, call handlers and 1,000 extra hospital beds to relieve the strain on the health system.
Fixing the service will take time, said NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard. The NHS said that over the next year it aims to cut the average time a heart attack sufferer waits for an ambulance to 30 minutes.
ADVERTISEMENT
“No one should be waiting longer than necessary for treatment,” said Will Quince, a minister of state for health, adding that the government is spending up to $17 billion over the next two years to address issues facing the NHS and social care services.
Just before 5 p.m. on Nov. 18, the family of Martin Clark called 999, the U.K. equivalent of 911, after the 68-year-old father of five began having chest pains. After waiting half an hour, the family said, they called again and pleaded for an ambulance, saying Mr. Clark’s condition was getting worse. In another call 15 minutes later, they told the dispatcher they were going to drive him to hospital themselves, according to the family, even though the dispatcher encouraged them to wait for the paramedics.
Twenty minutes after the family had left for the hospital, the dispatcher left a voice mail to say the service still didn’t have an ambulance to send. Mr. Clark died shortly after arriving at the hospital.
About a week later, 5-year-old Yusuf Mahmud Nazir died from what began as a throat infection. His family said they had taken the boy, who was having trouble breathing, to the emergency room at their local hospital in Rotherham, which gave him some antibiotic pills after a six-hour wait and sent him home. The family said it pleaded with the hospital a few days later to let Yusuf be admitted and given further tests, but were told the hospital was full.
By the time the family got Yusuf by ambulance to another hospital, he had severe pneumonia. He died days later from organ failure and cardiac arrest.
“They killed Yusuf—it’s as simple as that,” said Yusuf’s uncle, Zaheer Ahmed, who accompanied the boy’s family at the hospital. “A 5-year-old boy has died of tonsillitis in a rich, industrialized country. It shows the entire system has serious issues.”
Zaheer Ahmed holds his phone showing a photo of his nephew Yusuf Mahmud Nazir.PHOTO: MARY TURNER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Mr. Ahmed pleaded with the hospital to admit Yusuf.PHOTO: MARY TURNER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
The Rotherham hospital said in a public statement it had met with the family, apologized and launched an independent investigation into what happened. It declined to comment further.
Almost every day, media reports allege new horror stories: An 83-year-old woman in Leicester with a suspected stroke waited more than 18 hours in a makeshift tent outside a hospital emergency room. A 90-year-old woman with suspected sepsis waited three days. A man in Wales with diabetes lost his toe after it turned blue and then black after he sat waiting for treatment for three days.
The NHS is Europe’s biggest employer, with around 1.2 million staffers, and has a budget this year of about $188.6 billion, funded through taxes. It now has 2.9 doctors per 1,000 people, compared with a European average of 3.7. The U.S. has slightly less, at about 2.6 doctors per 1,000, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
ADVERTISEMENT
Aging populations will add to the demand. The elderly consume between three and five times the amount of healthcare compared with younger people, according to an estimate by the OECD. The number of people in the U.K. aged 85 and above is expected to double to more than 3 million by 2041. The U.K.’s current population is around 67 million.
Until 2010, governments of all political stripes kept funding for the NHS growing faster than both population growth and inflation—with annual increases from 2% to nearly 6% per capita, adjusted for inflation. But from 2010 to 2020, per capita, inflation-adjusted funding declined very slightly.
The Conservative government has sharply increased funds to the NHS since 2020, but most of the money has gone toward the pandemic, including for vaccines. Inflation is now eating away at about half the additional yearly funding. Overall, the inflation-adjusted increase in funding amounts to a 2.9% yearly increase, still below the historic average of 3.4%, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank in London.
Striking nurses picketed outside University College Hospital in London, Feb. 6.PHOTO: ISABEL INFANTES/SPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Healthcare expenditures, both public and private, amounted to around 11.9% of the U.K.’s gross domestic product in 2021, according to the ONS. That compares with 18.3% of GDP in the U.S. that year, according to government data.
For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, Britain’s ill health is acting as a brake on economic growth, said Andy Haldane, a former chief economist at the Bank of England. The growing number of sick people is exacerbating a productivity crisis within the British economy, he said. The number of long-term ill people in the U.K. has shot up by half a million in the past two years, to a record 2.5 million, something economists say is due in part to the NHS’s inability to quickly treat sick people.
The NHS was created after World War II to offer free healthcare to a war-hit population. Every hospital was effectively nationalized and put under government direction. It was a more sweeping overhaul than in any European country. Some countries, such as Denmark, adopted a similar system, while others have varying degrees of private care and publicly funded insurance.
ADVERTISEMENT
The NHS has long been a point of pride for many Britons, who have generally received quality care and can simply walk out of hospital without paying a bill. Yet seven in 10 now describe the NHS service as bad, compared with 21% who describe it as good, according to a YouGov poll.
People can pay to access private healthcare in the U.K., and according to the ONS, one in eight adults in Britain said they paid for private healthcare in the past year because NHS waiting lists were too long. Several private healthcare providers have reported a jump in demand.
Still, the overwhelming majority continue to support the NHS’s basic model of a government-run system. Just 3% said they wanted the system totally privatized, according to the YouGov poll.
The government started constraining the NHS’s budget in 2010, at the same time it launched an effort to make the system more efficient, such as adding more internal competition between different parts of the NHS for government funds.
These changes proved a distraction for management, former and current officials say. As part of the drive for efficiency, NHS managers were pressured to keep bed vacancies low. Recruiting and training was given less priority, and salaries for doctors and nurses steadily fell behind inflation.
When the pandemic hit in early 2020, the NHS’s centralized system helped it weather the crisis. The service delayed non-urgent treatments, and successfully rolled out a mass vaccination program.
From mid-2021 to mid-2022, more than 34,000 nurses left their role in the NHS.PHOTO: VICTORIA JONES/ZUMA PRESS
The ripple effects are being felt now. By December, a total of 401,537 people in England were waiting more than a year for hospital treatment. The total was 1,613 just before the pandemic.
Struggles in the U.K.’s elderly care system, which has major staff shortages and is funded separately from the NHS, has also meant that many patients who would normally be looked after at home or in a retirement home instead languished in hospital wards.
In December, an average of 13,439 beds a day in England out of the roughly 100,000 available were taken up by elderly patients medically fit for discharge—up almost a third from the previous year, according to the NHS.
ADVERTISEMENT
The lack of space at hospitals this winter, when the flu began to take hold, had a cascading effect. Ambulances began to form lines outside of hospitals, waiting to discharge patients because of a lack of free beds. That delayed the time it took for ambulances to attend to other people in need.
Patients in England admitted to hospital and waiting for a bed
More than 4 hours
More than 12 hours
200 thousand patients
150
100
50
0
2011
’15
’20
Source: National Health Service Rosie Ettenheim/THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
By this winter, half of all patients in an emergency ward waited four hours or more to be seen by a doctor, and a further four hours on average to get a bed, according to NHS data.
A study of more than 5 million patients published in early 2022 by the U.K.’s top medical journal, the BMJ, found that for every 82 people forced to wait beyond four hours for emergency care, one additional person died who otherwise would not have. The longer the wait, the worse the outcomes.
“Every day, I wake up thinking, how much harm is going to occur to patients that we are responsible for,” said Simon Walsh, head of emergency-room services at a London hospital. “It’s not if harm is going to occur, it’s how much.”
The stress of the pandemic and funding squeeze is exacerbating a staffing crisis in the U.K. As of September last year, there were 133,000 staff vacancies in the NHS, compared with 83,000 before the pandemic, according to government data.
The average fully qualified family doctor in England is now responsible for 2,300 patients on average, compared with 2,100 in 2018, according to government statistics. Average pay has fallen by more than a third since 2008, adjusted for inflation, according to the British Medical Association, a union for doctors. The number of doctors who are retiring early has tripled in the past 13 years.
ADVERTISEMENT
While the overall numbers of nurses have remained stable, turnover has grown. From mid-2021 to mid-2022, more than 34,000 nurses left their role in the NHS, an increase of 25% from the previous year, according to the King’s Fund, a healthcare think tank.
Rotherham Hospital, where Yusuf initially went for a throat infection.PHOTO: MARY TURNER FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Demands for increases in spending are coming up against economic pressures. The Bank of England projects the U.K.’s economy will shrink this year, potentially lowering tax revenues. And as changes in demographics and medical technology continue to weigh on the NHS, ever-higher funding risks crowding out state spending in other areas, such as education and infrastructure.
Money alone may not solve the problem, some in the industry warn. In Wales, the regional government has for most years since 2000 spent more money per capita than any region in the U.K. Yet nearly every indicator from waiting times to health outcomes are still worse. One explanation: Wales is both poorer and has the oldest population in the U.K.
Focus is turning to whether the system needs to be revamped. In Scotland, which runs its own NHS, officials have discussed ideas including further rationing of care or having wealthier residents pay for care in order to fund free care for the rest—an option that officials say was discarded.
One former U.K. health secretary recently said patients should pay to see a doctor. The idea was quickly dismissed by the government.
Just over a year ago, Akshay Patel, an IT professional in northern England, made five calls to 999 when his mother, Bina Patel, developed breathing problems. Initially the call handler told him an ambulance would be there soon, Mr. Patel said. His mother’s health quickly worsened and she became too sick to be loaded into a car. He watched his distressed 56-year-old mother gradually go pale and die. The paramedics arrived after an hour and were unable to resuscitate her. The local hospital was a 2-minute drive away.
“We always believe that the NHS exists for us when we’re in need,” said Mr. Patel. “But personally if I had to call an ambulance. I wouldn’t. I don’t trust them. I can’t.”
Corrections & Amplifications An earlier version of the graphic on patients in England admitted to the hospital and waiting for a bed incorrectly added the numbers of those who waited more than 12 hours to the portion of those who waited more than four hours.
ADVERTISEMENT
Appeared in the February 7, 2023, print edition as ‘U.K.’s Healthcare Crisis Sounds An Alarm for Aging Countries’.SHOW CONVERSATION (1105)
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.
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 TaxWhich 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 BillionStock 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 BillionCorporate 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.”
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.
Gas prices in Mill Valley, Calif, Oct. 3.PHOTO: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES
Listen to article
Length(2 minutes)Queue
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.
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 thepublic corruption that the son’s computer – with public record – seem to confirm. This whole inquiry is serious – better called “Joe Biden’s Laptop Mess.”
Piotr Wytrazek/Shutterstock
Share
Tweet
Email
Justplainbill's Weblog 
Gun nuts coming, by RB Charles, (be afraid, very afraid)
Newsline , Society
Anti-Gun Nuts…Are Coming
Posted on Tuesday, September 12, 2023
|
by AMAC, Robert B. Charles
|
21 Comments
This may not be an accident. She knows the US and New Mexico Constitutions forbid government infringement on a citizen’s “right to keep and bear arms,” and Supreme Court has spoken, yet she did it anyway. She knows a ban on self-defense is illegal, yet she did it. Time to speak boldly: This is wrong. The anti-gun nuts … are coming.
Yes, the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution states that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Yes, the New Mexico Constitution, at Article 2, section 6, further says “No law shall abridge the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms for security and defense, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for other lawful purposes.”
Still, the Democrat Governor – caring not a twit about those longstanding provisions and caselaw – like Governors who decided COVID permitted stripping Americans of free speech, free exercise of religion, travel, and a right not to be compelled to be injected by the government (or face loss of job, education, travel, and right to serve) – did it again.
She knowingly ignored the law, just threw a ban on guns outside the home, and declared that new edict the law. Where is justice? Where is respect for those two Constitutions?
Specifically, New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham just “issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public…for at least 30 days…” across her state.
“The Democratic governor said she expects legal challenges but was compelled to act in response to gun deaths, including the fatal shooting of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium this week” – calling it “an emergency public health order.” Really?
Her order – as she knows – explicitly defies both Constitutions and recent Supreme Court cases and is facially unconstitutional, yet she has effectively given the citizens of her state, as well as those who framed both Constitutions and the High Court, her middle finger. She does not care.
Is this the “new norm?” The Supreme Court rules that student loans cannot be forgiven by the Executive without Congressional action, yet the President ignores the Court, does it anyway. The High Court rules Roe v, Wade is no longer law, yet the top two Democrats cry payback, and a Supreme Court Justice – unprotected by a Democrat Attorney General – is nearly assassinated.
A former President gains in the polls, leads the field – shares popularity greater than Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny – and is then indicted, prosecuted by Biden surrogates at the state and federal level, arrested with intent that he not run or win the race, and headed for prison.
Is Biden studying Putin? Is New Mexico’s Grisham studying Biden? And what is next? Perhaps not coincidentally, Biden s watched Putin get his opposition arrested in 2014, then get him barred him from running for President in 2018, despite international law scholars objecting.
Intent on power, Putin then had him poisoned (or that is the suspicion), from which he recovered, then had him jailed when he returned from exile in 2021. The parallel is ominous: Those in power hate to give up power, those seeking to vindicate the people are arrested and shackled.
Frankly, I watched this happen all over the world as an Assistant Secretary of State and in the military, just never imagined it would occur on US soil. Many will say, “but, but, but …” and I say, “yes, but …” Then halt your defense, and examine the Constitution, our caselaw, and ask yourself – is your security based on the idea that nothing like that can happen here? It can.
The evidence is right before us It began in 2020, with the idea that longstanding citizen rights could be taken, under the color of an “emergency public health order.” The Supreme Court, presently led by Constitutionalists, overturned those federal and state infringements.
But it took time, and people lost jobs, businesses, opportunities to worship together, travel, hold jobs in law enforcement, the military and private sector. They were punished for asserting their constitutional rights.
Now we get this, a governor who, following the lead of Mr. Biden, himself oddly shadowing behavior of Mr. Putin, including defense of China for no reason credible legal reason – has decided to outlaw guns.
Sometimes, as Plato so eloquently wrote, we read things in “shadows on the cave wall,” and we are well served to watch, think, seek sun and then ponder what those shadows portend.
The New Mexico Governor’s actions may not be an accident. Either way, they are illegal. They show knowing disrespect for our Constitution, the Supreme Court, and her State Constitution. There is no legal justification. Time to speak boldly: This is wrong. Anti-gun nuts are coming.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.