Read it.

Wow, what a narcissist. All he things about is himself.

But you have to remember that Trump has accomplished ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in his firs year in office.

Read it.

I’ll just bet he was — both manually and financially.

Read it.

In July of 2017, Los Angeles imposed a “road diet” in the quiet beach community of Playa del Rey, replacing car lanes with bike lanes and parking spaces. The roads were suddenly jammed with traffic. The community was livid.

“Most of Playa Del Rey didn’t know this was happening,” says John Russo, a local resident and co-founder of Keep L.A. Moving, a community group formed to fight back against the city’s unilateral decision to reconfigure the streets. “It really created havoc for us because we have no other roads to take.”

Road diets are part of a strategy known as Vision Zero, in which Los Angeles aims to eliminate all traffic-related fatalities by 2025. It’s an idea borrowed from Sweden, which in the ’90s started experimenting with reconfiguring the roads to encourage more commuters to bike or take mass transit to work.

Read it.

But you have to remember that Trump has done ABSOLUTELY NOTHING during his first year in office.

Don’t let reality distract you from the importance of the Narrative.

Read it.

Democrats have been the party of machine politics and corruption since the earliest days of the republic.

You’d think that people would catch on.

Read it.

Oh, ya think?

You will notice, in all this talk of a ‘tax cuts’, that the underlying theme is that any ‘tax cuts’ be ‘paid for’.

What this means is, that any changes result in no net decrease in tax revenues for the government.

How is this a ‘tax cut’? IT ISN’T.

If taxes are changed, but at the end of the process the government still has the same amount of tax revenue, then IT IS NOT A TAX CUT. It is a tax re-arrangement. In a tax re-arrangement, some people wind up paying less tax, and other people wind up paying more.

In other words, this is an attempt to shift the tax burden from some favored people to some unfavored people. Once again, the government is picking winners and losers, using taxpayers’ own money as the carrot and stick.

This is a cornerstone of proglodyte politics. No matter what happens, the amount of money that government takes from the people who earn it cannot be allowed to go down. The contest then becomes a fight over who gets to be winners and who losers in the subsequent re-arrangement. That’s the sort of fight that lobbyists for special interests live for (and get paid big bucks for), and how proglodytes make their living (and accrue their power).

Somebody ought to point out to Republican legislators that they ought to be deeply embarrassed by participating in this charade.

Read it.

It would be nice to think that I was not the only person who watched Tuesday’s congressional hearing regarding sexual misconduct on Capitol Hill and felt pronouncedly stupider afterwards. But apart from a headline in The Washington Post suggesting that “Training is ‘first step’ in stopping sexual harassment in the House, lawmakers say,” there is little evidence so far that any other sentient human beings saw it. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was talking about Russia on the other C-SPAN at roughly the same time, so maybe no one did.

Your tax dollars at work.

She then proceeded to explain why putting up posters full of legalese written in tiny print is the surest way of making it absolutely clear to Rep. BlueBlazer McEntrepreneurship that he should not under any circumstances be showing his penis to members of his staff or his fellow representatives. Adults, especially those with college degrees, proud service in our nation’s Armed Forces, decades of experience getting things done in the private sector, and the other sorts of things that you generally find on the CVs of congressmen, learn these things from posters when they are 40 or 50 years old. Who would know otherwise?

Read it.

Amazon is blaming the U.S. Postal Service for having to shut down its grocery delivery service in portions of the country, according to Recode.

USPS was responsible for delivering orders from the tech conglomerate’s eponymous service Amazon Fresh for a large majority of intended destinations, but allegedly failed to do so in a timely manner, or at all, in certain instances. Amazon cites this, as well as an overall imperfect relationship with USPS, as the primary reasoning behind its decision to limit its delivery feature, which included cutting it off in parts of nine states.

They expected the Postal Service to deliver stuff in a timely manner? Really? Really?

Read it.

But of course Trump has gotten ABSOLUTELY NOTHING accomplished during his first year in office. Don’t ever forget that.

Read it.

What could be more ‘diverse’ than importing potential terrorists?

Read it.

Thank God for those strict gun control laws in Chicago, or the place would be like Texas.

Read it.

Hint: You do.

These days, there is considerable obfuscation about the true costs of “green” energy–basically, wind and solar. Politicians, regulators and sometimes utilities assert that wind and solar are efficient–that they actually are price-competitive with reliable energy sources like coal and natural gas. If you know anything about energy, you know this is an absurd claim. If it were true, we could do away with all subsidies for wind and solar, but no “green” energy advocate would dream of allowing that.

Read it.

Riddle me this: Why are we subsidizing farms? Are we short of food?

Read it.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that.

Read it.

Former President Barack Obama is facing backlash from Chicago community organizers over his plan to build a sprawling 20-acre community center in the heart of the city featuring a sledding hill, recording studio and garden.

Surely they’ve included an Endangered Species Petting Zoo?

Read it.

Rep. Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, walked out of Congress’ moment of silence for the victims of the Texas church shooting on Monday.

Keepin’ it classy.

“I am heartbroken about the children and the adults that were killed in the worst mass shooting in Texas history this Sunday,” Lieu stated. “My colleagues have a right to do [a moment of silence] and I myself have participated in many of them.”

“I cannot do this again. I have done too many moments of silences,” he asserted. “What we need is we need action, we need to pass gun safety legislation now.”

Lieu called for a universal background check, a ban on bump stocks, and a ban on assault rifles.

Except that this shooter passed the background check (because the Air Force screwed up), didn’t use a bump stock, and actual assault rifles are controlled as automatic weapons.

Those who depend on the government for their safety wind up in the ground.

Read it.

Saudi Arabia deployed its U.S.-provided Patriot missile defense system against a Yemeni missile targeting the capital city of Riyadh Saturday.

The missile was launched by Houthi rebels, an Iranian backed Shiite militia Saudi Arabia is actively fighting in the neighboring gulf country. The missile was reportedly towards an airport in the capital city if Riyadh, spreading panic throughout.

Read it.

Drafted and enacted in response to the 2007–2009 financial crisis, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) became law in 2010. Dodd-Frank’s drafters hoped the law would repair the flaws in the financial system that had so painfully manifested themselves during the financial crisis. Rather than addressing the regulatory failures that led to the crisis, Dodd-Frank’s core solution was to shift decision-making from the private sector to regulators—the same regulators whose lapses had contributed to the crisis. Dodd-Frank has been costly in the short term, as any major regulatory overhaul would be. The financial industry and regulators have poured countless hours and dollars into implementing the new law. Of greater concern than these short-term implementation costs are Dodd-Frank’s potential long-run costs. Rather than averting crises, Dodd-Frank’s rejiggering of the financial system has created the preconditions for a future crisis, while inhibiting economic growth and dynamism.

A reminder that government workers are bad at nearly everything they touch, and so ought not to be placed in charge unless there is literally no other option.

Read it.

The brownshirts of the Left are on the march.

Yet Trump is the New Hitler.

Read it.

Having cast the clay model and shipped it off to the foundry for a casting mold, the Washington, D.C. city council is set to approve a new statue honoring…Marion Barry.

Since Muriel Bowser is the Major of D.C., the inscription really ought to read ‘Bitch set me up.’

Read it.

You might think so.

According to a Supreme Court brief filed today, Utah prairie dogs “produce nothing of importance except the annoyance of the surrounding population,” and “they make terrible pets.” The brief, which urges the Court to hear a constitutional challenge to a federal regulation protecting the rodents, concedes that they are “adorable little critters” but notes that “the protection of cuteness is not a congressional power” granted by the Constitution.

…

“The government seeks to protect an abundant, commercially irrelevant, and wholly intrastate rodent without regard for whether such regulation has any connection to economic activity, let alone commerce among the several states,” says the Cato/Reason/IRF brief. “The Utah prairie dog is not a marketable commodity. There is no illicit trade in prairie dog horns or hides for the government to suppress. They carry no firearms into school zones. Their domestic relations are none of the government’s business. Finally, they have neither purchased health insurance nor plan to do so in future.” Those are references to Supreme Court cases in which the government claimed (mostly without success) that a federal law was constitutional because the activity it regulated had a “substantial effect” on interstate commerce.

Read it.

Hoist by their own retard.

Read it.

Legislation to codify the U.S. attorney general’s recent ban on diverting millions in legal settlements to outside groups is now in the Senate’s court, following last week’s House action.

The Justice Department practice, widely criticized as a $1 billion “slush fund” benefiting liberal advocacy groups in the last 30 months of the Obama administration alone, would be outlawed under the House bill.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., is sponsor of the Senate version of legislation to prohibit U.S. government officials from creating and enforcing settlement agreements with corporations and other entities that steer funds in the form of donations to third-party, special-interest groups.

Read it.

The ‘rich’ not only pay Their Fair Share, they pay a lot of other peoples’ as well.

Read it.

Thanks to an obscure provision of the 1986 Water Resources Development Act, the federal government and the South Florida communities hit by Hurricane Irma have been prohibited from procuring foreign sand for their beach replenishment projects until all other feasible domestic sources have been tapped.

Foreign companies have offered to contain these costs by importing white sand from the Bahamas by barge at as little as half the cost of domestic sand. But thanks to current federal law, these battered communities have had to tell these willing sand suppliers to take a hike, hamstringing local recovery efforts.

Read it.

Read it.

I missed this story at the time, but earlier this year the New York Times reported that the New York Board of Regents eliminated a requirement that aspiring teachers in the state pass a literacy test to become certified. The Board eliminated the requirement because Black and Hispanic candidates for teaching jobs passed the literacy test at significantly lower rates than white candidates.

Unbelievable.

Read it.

A new report on transportation equity demonstrates that Dallas Area Rapid Transit’s zeal to build the largest light-rail system in America has harmed the city’s low-income population. While the report (really a PowerPoint show) itself is fairly mild in tone, the interpretation by Dallas Observer columnist Jim Schutze is anything but moderate.

DART light-rail lines, “built at costs in the billions, reach up into Carrollton, Plano and Rowlett — suburban areas that need light rail like they a ski lift,” says Schutze. Meanwhile, “DART does an appalling job of providing mass transit to inner-city, low-wage workers who need it.”

DART isn’t stupid — they serve the areas that pay the high taxes that support their service. The Underclass are graciously allowed to piggyback on that arrangement.

Schutze makes this out to be a debate between cities vs. suburbs, compact development vs. sprawl. But really, it is a question of what is the appropriate mission for transit agencies. Outside of those few urban areas with large downtowns–New York, Chicago, and a few others–most people don’t ride or need transit, so transit agencies have to come up with some rationale for continued subsidies. At one time, that rationale was that poor people needed mobility too. But now, most poor people have cars, so today the rationale is the need to get middle-class people out of their evil automobiles.

I’ve used DART and it suffers from the same flaws as every public transport system: If you’re live and work near a rail line, you’re golden; if not, it’s of no use to you. There are never enough hipsters available to cover the (unionized worker) costs, so it needs massive subsidies in order for fares to be ‘affordable’ — if passengers were charged full freight, minority representatives would scream bloody murder. Transit subsidies are just another way that race pimps buy votes.

Read it.

President Barack Obama’s Justice Department created a “slush fund” of nearly $1 billion using legal settlements with banks and steered those funds to political allies on the left while excluding conservative groups, internal documents show.

The financial institutions, which made legal settlements with the Obama administration regarding mortgage securities that imploded during the 2008 financial crisis, include Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and JPMorgan Chase.

Public records of the settlement agreements with the Justice Department show that when cash donations to liberal groups are combined with other donations in the form of loans and a separate settlement with Volkswagen of America Inc., the slush fund may have topped $3 billion.

Read it.

As Microsoft found out in the 70s, if you don’t spread some cash around inside the Beltway the pack will be coming after you next. Politicians have many ways to make you squeal.

Read it.

Oh, they just loved Big Brother.

Obama and Holder were well trained in the racial shakedown business by Jackson and Sharpton.

Read it.

Protectionism, pure and simple.

That’s why Bob Smith, owner of the Pacific Coast Horsehoeing School, used to train students to be farriers—the technical term for someone who makes and fits horseshoes—regardless of how much formal schooling they had. It’s a good-paying job, one that comes with flexibility and independence. There are no licensing laws restricting who can be a farrier or mandating a certain level of training. If you can find someone to teach you the skill and find someone to pay you to practice it, you’re all set.

At least that’s what Smith thought, until the California Bureau for Private and Postsecondary Education sent him a letter last year. During an inspection of Smith’s records, bureau officials discovered that he had been teaching students who lacked a high school diploma or GED certificate.

The letter informed him by a 2010 state law Smith could face fines or have his school shut down by the state if he accepted students who lacked a high school education.

This sort of shit is why we can’t have nice things. It’s also one of the reasons so many people are moving from Mexifornia to Texas.

Read it.

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt’s decision to curb a common Obama-era legal practice could keep billions of dollars worth of regulations off the books, according to a new report.

The right-leaning American Action Forum found 23 regulations stemming from “sure and settle” lawsuits “resulted in a total cost burden of $67.9 billion, with $26.5 billion in annual costs.”

AAF looked at 23 major regulations imposed by EPA from 2005 to 2016, and found they resulted in hefty economic price tags. Settlements reached during the Bush and Obama administrations resulted in some of the costliest rules on the books.

Read it.

In the early 1990s, California tax authorities traveled to Las Vegas in pursuit of Gilbert Hyatt, an inventor who earned a fortune as the patent holder of the microcomputer. They staked out his home, dug through his trash, and hired a private eye to look into his background. He’d moved to Nevada in 1991, but California made a claim that the state was entitled to millions of his recent earnings.

What transpired over the next twenty-five years is a story of greed, harassment, anti-semitism, and the abuse of power. And it wasn’t the first time that the California tax agency has strong-armed a former state resident. What’s so unusual about Gilbert Hyatt is that he fought back—and won.

The major difference between taxing authorities and the Mafia is that taxing authorities don’t speak Italian.

Read it.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Read it.

UCLA used to be a highly-respected university. They appear to be throwing that away with both hands.

Read it.

I think General Kelly ought to demand that all Congressional Black Caucus women apologize to the country. Every damned one of them looks as if she’d been sucking on a lemon for the last twenty years.

Wilson is just letting her inner Black Congresswoman out.

Read it.

Can’t say that I blame her.

Read it.

The chief of staff to Rep. Bennie Thompson spends his days in the halls of Congress and his weekends in jail for tax evasion, after the Mississippi Democrat violated his pledge to fire his wealthy chief if the aide was found guilty of stiffing the treasury of $150,000.

A Democrat violating a pledge is news?

Read it.

What would you think of someone who got sued, lost in court, and celebrated the loss? You’d think there is something seriously amiss. In fact this has been the longstanding practice of a number of federal agencies, who actively cooperate with activist groups (invariably on the left) to set up lawsuits against agencies that result in the agencies having more power and instituting more regulations.

To give a good example, when the EPA lost the 2007 case of Massachusetts vs. EPA (that was the one that said the EPA could regulate greenhouse gas emissions), employees at EPA opened champagne to celebrate their “loss” at the Supreme Court. Much of the time these legal actions never actually make it very far in court, because the agency will “settle” with the plaintiffs through a consent decree, which means in practice that the agency conveniently consents to having more power. It is called “sue and settle,” but I call this “crony administration.” Much of the time these faux lawsuits are filed with the active participation of the agency, making a mockery of the rule of law.

A very bizarre form of ‘regulatory capture‘.

Read it.

A Minnesota judge will allow four anti-pipeline activists who damaged an oil pipeline to present evidence supposedly showing the threat of climate change justified their actions.

Read it.

I personally find no credibility in a ‘representative’ whose persona includes a rhinestone-encrusted cowboy hat.

Read it.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Yet Trump is the New Hitler.

The Antiplanner blows the whistle.

Here’s a difference between government-run businesses and private businesses: when private businesses face competition, they are forced to innovate to survive. When government-run businesses face competition, they can regulate or tax their competitors out of business.

…

Now consider the Chicago Transit Authority, which has lost riders in every year since 2012, partly if not mostly because of the growth of Uber and Lyft. Ridesharing has also reduced car rentals (which are taxed by the city) and downtown parking (which is taxes by the city). Although Uber and Lyft also pay taxes to the city, the city estimates it lost a net of $40 million in revenues (including transit fares and vehicle taxes) in 2016. So Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to increase taxes on Uber and Lyft to make up the difference.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, Ford subsidiary Chariot is running buses in competition with publicly subsidized Muni. This has led to demands that the city “regulate Chariot to save public transit.” The term public in public transit doesn’t refer to ownership; it refers to transport that is available to all of the public. So what they really mean is “regulate privately owned transit to save publicly subsidized transit” because, for some reason, subsidized transit deserves to be “saved” from private competition.

Read it.

Another win for Trump.

Read it.

Sounds like another win for Constitutional government.

Read it.

Which is worse: committing to sell off public land at millions below its market value, or not remembering you’d made that commitment in the first place?

That’s the question the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) is no doubt asking itself as it tries desperately to get out of a deal it made to sell $138 million of land to a property development company for the recession-era price of $17 million.

The company, Integral, claims it was promised the $120 million discount by former AHA chief Renee Glover in a 2011 agreement. AHA’s current president, Catherine Buell, says she knew nothing about the 2011 deal until Integral tried to make good on it in late 2016, and that the terms are wholly inappropriate.

Read it.

The rising cost of public employees’ retirement benefits has prompted the state to raise taxes three times in the last eight years. The public employee unions are adamant that the problem can be solved only by more taxation, and they have threatened to sue if any changes are made to the present payouts. Gov. Dannel Malloy and the General Assembly haven’t been able to agree on what to do, leaving the state without a budget for more than 100 days.

The state is $74 billion short of what it needs to fund those retirement benefits and the state’s bonded debt obligations. As of 2014, according to The Wall Street Journal, Connecticut ranked 48th in pension funding, meeting only 50 percent of its obligations. The state is looking at a budget deficit of $3.5 billion, out of a budget of about $19 billion.

The last time Connecticut faced financial difficulties of this size was in 1991. From 1984 and 1990, the cost of state pensions increased by 119 percent, according to The Connecticut Mirror. That led the state to impose its first-ever income tax. But the income tax revenue—$126 billion over the following 25 years—did little to restrain spending, and funding for pension programs is still inadequate. Retirement costs and debt services were 12 percent of the state budget 20 years ago. In this fiscal year, they will be 31 percent.

The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.

Read it.

CBS on Sunday and Monday hammered Republicans in Congress for supporting a law in 2015 that changed how the Department of Drug Enforcement could regulate opioid distribution. The network minimized the fact that the law was signed by Barack Obama (as the opioid crisis grew). On 60 Minutes, Sunday, Obama’s name was mentioned just once.

What’s truth to a pig?