25th July 2023
OffGuardian.
It feels weird to write sceptically about this, because, as a self-proclaimed leftist for most of my life, free school meals is exactly the kind of policy I likely would have supported without question just a few short years ago…
…but those few years were Covid years, and they’ve taught us all a lot.
Firstly, and most importantly, its become increasingly apparent that any policy is only as fair as the people implementing it, and only as decent as the intention behind it, and, however superficially humane this plan might sound, the practical impact would be to hand yet more control over to the same murderous, eugenicist state that very recently killed thousands with a lie.
Secondly, a monopoly is a monopoly – whether private or state-backed – and the moment a monopoly exists the freedom to choose is dead. Freedom of choice is always the first liberty to go, but never the last.
I used to bring my lunch in a brown paper bag. I guess that’s not allowed any more.
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24th July 2023
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24th July 2023
Read it.
As they do.
Perhaps the single biggest legislative fight this year has been over federal spending.
There’s a good reason for that: The national debt is now an eye-popping $32.5 trillion (roughly $250,000 per household), and out-of-control deficit spending is one of the main reasons why families are struggling with inflation.
In May, Congress passed a bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling in exchange for reforms that would supposedly reduce spending levels.
Some parts of the deal were good, but as we learn more about the details of the package, it looks more and more like a raw deal for current and future taxpayers.
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23rd July 2023
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22nd July 2023
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22nd July 2023
OffGuardian.
There was a time when the census was just a head count. That is no longer the case.
The American Community Survey (ACS), sent to about 3.5 million homes every year, is the byproduct of a government that believes it has the right to know all of your personal business.
…
A far cry from the traditional census, which is limited to ascertaining the number of persons living in each dwelling, their ages and ethnicities, the ownership of the dwelling and telephone numbers, the ACS contains some of the most detailed and intrusive questions ever put forth in a census questionnaire.
At 28 pages (with an additional 16-page instruction packet), these questions concern matters that the government simply has no business knowing, including questions relating to respondents’ bathing habits, home utility costs, fertility, marital history, work commute, mortgage, and health insurance, among other highly personal and private matters.
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21st July 2023
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20th July 2023
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19th July 2023
Read it.
A popular tax break in the form of being able to make so-called catch-up contributions to 401(k) retirement savings plans is set to vanish for many higher-earning Americans at the end of this year.
Catch-up contributions refer to a provision in 401(k) plans that allows individuals aged 50 and older to contribute extra money to their retirement savings accounts. The aim of catch-up contributions is to enable older workers to accelerate their retirement savings in the years leading up to their retirement.
All your money are belong to us.
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18th July 2023
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17th July 2023
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17th July 2023
Read it.
And you know their names.
The U.S. Supreme Court is finished for the term, but questions about accuracy should follow some justices into the next session in October. For example: Was Justice Sonia Sotomayor correct in her description of a key historical event in a recent dissenting opinion—or did she obscure details to suit her purposes? And with the revelation that her colleague, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, incorrectly cited research findings in a dissent, Americans are right to ask whether the justices bend facts to fit their arguments.
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16th July 2023
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14th July 2023
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14th July 2023
John Hinderaker at Power Line.
After an 11-day alleged investigation, the Secret Service announced today that it cannot identify the person who left cocaine in the White House. The Service says that there were no usable finger prints on the bag that held the cocaine, and not enough DNA for an identification. So the investigation is being closed.
No one is going to buy this. The general area is under video surveillance, and there is a log of people who enter the West Wing.
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13th July 2023
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13th July 2023
Scott Johnson at Power Line.
The White House must be the most heavily guarded and surveilled building in the United States. Yet the case of the cocaine baggie outside the Situation Room is apparently damn near impossible to crack, if I may use that term in this context. I’m not sure if the White House is still taking the line that the area is “highly trafficked,” but that is the line that Politico persists in peddling.
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13th July 2023
Washington Free Beacon.
The socialist mayor of South Fulton, Ga., returned to work this week, days after police arrested him for entering a resident’s lake house.
Khalid Kamau, a vocal Democratic Socialist and cofounder of the Atlanta chapter of Black Lives Matter, is charged with first-degree trespass and burglary after a homeowner caught him entering his home on Saturday.
“We have never backed down from courageous conversations, but now is not the time for those discussions,” Kamau said upon his return Tuesday during a city council session. “We have city business to get to.”
He noted that “a lot has happened in the past few days” and he will “announce a time and place for those conversations to happen.”
If he were Republican, the Narrative media would be howling (HOWLING) for him to resign.
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12th July 2023
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11th July 2023
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11th July 2023
The Antiplanner.
Like San Francisco BART, the DC Metro rail system is facing a fiscal cliff, with a $750 million projected shortfall in operating funds in 2025. So why is the agency considering spending tens of billions of dollars on a new rail extension that will increase annual operating costs by $200 million?
Like BART, DC’s rail system historically has covered a high percentage of its operating costs with fares. Though that has declined from 68 percent in 2011 to 48 percent in 2019, the agency was still more vulnerable to ridership declines than agencies such as San Jose’s VTA, which before the pandemic covered less than 10 percent of its operating costs out of fares.
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10th July 2023
Why aren’t Americans happier about the economy? (The Guardian) Robert Reich just can’t understand it. (Cash-Strapped Consumers Resort To ‘Dumpster Dining’ To Save On Grocery Bill)
No health-insurance choice for YOU! (N.Y. Plost)
CNN’s Zakaria Declares Biden a Great President, ‘Brought Economy Back’ Uh, sure….
AG Morrisey to Newsmax: Biden EV Standards ‘Devastating’
NPR Politics Podcast Claims House GOP Has ‘No Evidence of Wrongdoing’ by Bidens Whistleblower? What whistleblower? Laptop? What laptop?
“It’s Seven Grandchildren, Mr. President”: NYT Rips Biden For Ghosting Granddaughter
NBC’s Todd: GOP Ugly for Pointing Out Biden Ignores 7th Grandkid
RFK Jr. Criticizes Biden for Sending Cluster Munitions to Ukraine Picking up the free money sitting on the table.
How U.S. Foreign Aid to Iraq Funds Terrorism Against Americans
Top Treasury sanctions official to visit southern border as it ramps up efforts to crack down on deadly fentanyl trade (CNN)
IRS Whistleblower’s Lawyer: WashPost Helping Hunter’s Team
Military Efficiency? Biden’s Electric Vehicle Push Adds Hours to Routine Marine Trip
Who Is Leslie Wolf? ‘Obstructive’ Prosecutor in Biden Bribery Case, a Democrat Donor, Ignored IRS Whistleblowers
Reconstructing a Corrupted FBI From the Ground Up
Harris’ Word Salads Make Biden Look Articulate By Comparison
U.S. Attorney David Weiss says he has not requested special counsel status as part of the years-long investigation into Hunter Biden. (Politico) After all, he’s not supposed to actually find anything.
So, are they preparing Joe’s retirement dinner? (The New Neo)
GOP Plan Would Close Foreign Dark Money Loophole for 2024 Democrats, of course, oppose it.
Another Free Speech Victory! Judge Denies Biden’s Request to Censor Americans
CNN: Biden’s Low Ratings Have Nothing to Do With Facts or Actions
Brain Rage: Biden’s Violent Temper a Common Symptom of Dementia, Alzheimer’s
Jankowicz Claims Gov’t Flagging Content Isn’t Censorship But it’s a big step down that road.
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10th July 2023
The Antiplanner.
Honolulu officials worried that their new train would be “overwhelmed” with riders when it opened at 2 pm on June 30. They needn’t have worried; a local news station reported that “scores of people lined up to ride the trains, which were free the first five days of operation.
In fact, about 9,000 people rode the train the first afternoon. Considering that each train can hold 800 passengers and they ran six times an hour until 6:30 pm, they were operating at about 40 percent of their capacity on opening day.
Over the next four days, another 62,000 people rode the trains, less than 25 percent of their capacity. When the agency began to charge fares, daily ridership fell to under 1,300 per day, or about 2 percent of the rail line’s capacity.
Taxpayers spent $9.9 billion, or $900 million per mile, for this 11-mile line to nowhere. The original plan was to build 20 miles from suburban Ewa to downtown Honolulu, but when costs more than doubled, the line from Ewa was terminated at Aloha Stadium. City officials hope to finish another 5 miles by 2025, and the rest by 2031, but don’t know where all of the money will come from to do so.
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9th July 2023
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8th July 2023
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7th July 2023
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5th July 2023
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5th July 2023
The Foundry.
Over the weekend, Ohio lawmakers passed a state budget that expands eligibility for the state’s EdChoice Scholarships to all K-12 students. Gov. Mike DeWine signed the bill into law on Monday, making Ohio the eighth state in the nation to pass a universal school choice policy and the sixth state to do so this year, following Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Utah.
Universal school choice is when education choice is offered to all students in a state, not just those who are low income or who have special needs.
Several other states also expanded their education choice policies already this year, including Alabama, Indiana, Montana, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.
Starting this fall, children from Ohio families earning up to 450% of the federal poverty line ($135,000 for a family of four) will be eligible for full scholarships worth about $8,400 (up from about $6,150 last year). Children from families earning above that threshold will be eligible for partial scholarships that will be adjusted based on income.
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5th July 2023
Read it.
Some U.S. senators have famously kept a pocket Constitution handy to use as a prop at political rallies; a few may have even read it. But at this point in American history it no longer matters whether they, or anyone else, can read the words of the Constitution because the words no longer mean what they say.
Take, for instance, the Supreme Court’s ruling last week that state legislatures do not have the sole discretion to determine how federal elections will be run in those states. Instead, state courts are given veto power over the decisions of the legislature.
The mainstream media (and of course their Democratic Party allies) celebrated the court’s decision in Moore v. Harper that rejected the so-called “independent state legislature” theory. The New York Times called the theory “dangerous.” Vox said the ruling was a “big victory for democracy.” Those who supported the independent state legislature “theory” were called extreme, fringe, radical, and worse. In other words, they were Trump supporters.
The only problem is that if the theory is extreme, then so is the U.S. Constitution, because no matter how much the 6-3 majority insists otherwise, it isn’t a theory at all. It is the plain language of the Constitution. Check it out for yourself.
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4th July 2023
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4th July 2023
Washington Post.
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked key Biden administration agencies and officials from meeting and communicating with social media companies, in an extraordinary injunction in an ongoing case that could have profound effects on the First Amendment.
The injunction came in response to a lawsuit brought by Republican attorneys general in Louisiana and Missouri, who allege that government officials went too far in their efforts to encourage social media companies to address posts that they worried could contribute to vaccine hesitancy during the pandemic or upend elections. The Trump-appointed judge’s move could upend years of efforts to enhance coordination between the government and social media companies.
The injunction was a victory for the state attorneys general, who have accused the Biden administration of enabling a “sprawling federal ‘Censorship Enterprise’” to encourage tech giants to remove politically unfavorable viewpoints and speakers, and for conservatives who’ve accused the government of suppressing their speech. In their filings, the attorneys general alleged the actions amount to “the most egregious violations of the First Amendment in the history of the United States of America.”
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3rd July 2023
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3rd July 2023
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3rd July 2023
Bruce Schneier.
Police are already using self-driving car footage as video evidence.
…
“We’ve known for a long time that they are essentially surveillance cameras on wheels,” said Chris Gilliard, a fellow at the Social Science Research Council. “We’re supposed to be able to go about our business in our day-to-day lives without being surveilled unless we are suspected of a crime, and each little bit of this technology strips away that ability.”
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2nd July 2023
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1st July 2023
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29th June 2023
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29th June 2023
CNBC.
Taxpayers are losing more than $100 billion a year to Medicare and Medicaid fraud, according to estimates from the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association.
“That’s probably a conservative number,” Pérez Aybar said. “When we think about all lines of business in Medicare and Medicaid, that’s probably a drop in the bucket.”
The fraud runs the gamut: billing for unapproved Covid tests, phony billing for wheelchairs, braces and other medical equipment, genetic testing fraud, home health-care billing and a host of other schemes. Investigators say fraudsters have gotten more brazen in recent years — as Washington swiftly doled out trillions of dollars in Covid-19 relief funds and other aid in response to the pandemic.
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27th June 2023
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27th June 2023
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26th June 2023
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25th June 2023
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24th June 2023
Read it.
Most Americans pay state and local income taxes based upon where they reside. Accordingly, the shift to remote work made no difference to their tax liability. But some employees are subject to commuter taxes, which are assessed based upon where the work itself is performed.
Commuter taxes raise their own public policy concerns—after all, commuters have no say in how those tax dollars are used because they cannot vote in those jurisdictions. The antiquated justification for commuter taxes is that employees receive some tangible benefits while they are physically in the city, i.e., if an employee has a medical emergency while at work, it would be the city’s emergency services that would respond.
But what happens when commuters are no longer commuting to those cities?
…
When Massachusetts issued a rule requiring employees who had previously worked in Massachusetts but were now working elsewhere due to Covid-19 to pay Massachusetts income taxes anyway, its neighboring New Hampshire sensibly filed a case in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of its citizens who were neither living nor working in Massachusetts. Unfortunately, taxpayers got no clarification because the Supreme Court declined to hear New Hampshire’s complaint, leaving Massachusetts’ unconstitutional money grab in place for the time being.
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24th June 2023
Washington Free Beacon.
“Can the senator’s penis please be off the record?”
This remarkable sentence, uttered by a panicked press aide after his boss, the seven-fingered Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.), relieved himself in an organic pea field during an interview with Washington Post journalist Ben Terris, hardly stands out among the array of mind-boggling details recounted in Terris’s new book, The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses Its Mind.
Tester’s rogue member is merely an aside in this collection of profiles highlighting the unelected power players who survived, thrived, and failed in national politics since Donald Trump annihilated the status quo, violating precious “norms” left and right. Washington may have “felt different” during the Trump presidency, Terris writes, but The Swamp proved as resilient as ever. Rather than being drained as promised, it simply “filled up with new creatures.” And, boy, are they something to behold. The Big Break is not for the faint of heart or stomach.
The book opens in December 2021. Leah Hunt-Hendrix, the 38-year-old granddaughter of billionaire oil tycoon H.L. Hunt, is throwing a holiday party at her $2.2 million Victorian mansion in a trendy Washington neighborhood. Her beloved Maltipoo, named after Malcolm X, roams the living room floor scrounging for crumbs. Ryan Grim, editor of The Intercept, is wearing a Harriet Tubman T-shirt and chatting with the half-brother of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The host is trying to gin up support for Mandela Barnes, the left-wing Wisconsin Senate candidate she met at a pool party in Miami around the same time he accused the her grandfather’s industry of “destroying the world.” He was “riding in one of those inflatable unicorns.”
This is normal.
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