Archive for the 'Your tax dollars at work – and play.' Category
10th August 2022
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Kellen worked for Epstein as his scheduler for years and was referenced in deposition testimony given during the defamation case between Virginia Guiffre and Ghislaine Maxwell. Marcinkova was a more prominent member of Epstein’s entourage as she served as one of the pilots of his infamous aircraft dubbed “The Lolita Express.”
Reinhart assumed his role as Kellen and Marcinkova’s attorney once he set up a criminal defense firm after resigning from his post as a senior prosecutor in the Southern District of Florida as it was negotiating a non-prosecution agreement for Epstein. Reinhart would officially begin his legal representation of Epstein’s accomplices within days of leaving his position as a senior prosecutor within the district.
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10th August 2022
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We’ve reached the stage of American history where everything we see on the news must first be understood as political theater. In other words, the messaging layer of news now almost always dominates the factual narrative, with the latter often reported so unreliably as to be meaningless anyway. Yesterday’s sensational tale of the FBI raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of former president Donald Trump is no different.
As of now, it’s impossible to say if Trump’s alleged offense was great, small, or in between. But this for sure is a huge story, and its hugeness extends in multiple directions, including the extraordinary political risk inherent in the decision to execute the raid. If it backfires, if underlying this action there isn’t a very substantial there there, the Biden administration just took the world’s most reputable police force and turned it into the American version of the Tonton Macoute on national television. We may be looking at simultaneously the dumbest and most inadvertently destructive political gambit in the recent history of this country.
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9th August 2022
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9th August 2022
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Even taken at face value, sending armed men to recover documents that first, do not exist, second, if they did were removed by staffers, third, if they had been removed would not have been illegal (since the President can declassify any document at will by removing them from the White House), fourth, if they had been removed illegally, Trump already offered, without reservation, to have officers of the national archives go through his documents to confirm.
The FBI padlocked the room to secure it weeks ago, in order to secure any possible documents while the Archivists investigated. During the raid, they broke the padlock they themselves installed.
Of course, this is red meat to the MAGA base. If the effort to exclude Trump from the next Presidential election fails, they may deeply regret the effort. “He who draws his sword against the king must throw away the scabbard.”
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8th August 2022
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8th August 2022
U.S. Senate approves bill to fight climate change, cut drug costs in win for Biden (Reuters) Except that Biden had nogthing to do with it. It was entirely constructed and pushed through by the Democrat leadership, while he was isolated for COVID. Maybe they mean he didn’t managed to screw it up somehow.
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8th August 2022
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Scientists have joined a lawsuit against the Biden administration. The lawsuit alleges that the administration used social media companies to censor certain COVID-19 information.
Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty joined the lawsuit last week. The doctors say that Big Tech social media platforms censored them for posting content contrary to the federal government’s narrative about COVID-19.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance’s (NCLA) Tuesday press release indicated that the doctors were fighting for their First Amendment rights.
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7th August 2022
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6th August 2022
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6th August 2022
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Democratic lawmakers spent the better part of two years assailing their Republican colleagues for not taking the COVID-19 pandemic seriously enough for their liking. Nevertheless, these same Democrats are flagrantly disregarding COVID safety protocols to ensure the timely passage of a massive tax-hike and spending bill before Congress adjourns for the summer recess.
Gee, you’d think there wasn’t a Pandemic Panic going on.
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5th August 2022
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5th August 2022
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There’s been a lot written about the trust freefall. People haven’t trusted politicians for years (U.S. Congress: 18% approval), but now even formerly highly trusted institutions like the church (now at 31% confidence) and the U.S. military (trust down 25% since 2018) are in a trust freefall.
You may expect national leaders to be racking their brains on how to rebuild this trust, yet there is no sign of that. Instead, the attitude seems to be, “What the hell is wrong with the American people?” Leaders bemoan the rise of populism yet refuse to give even the briefest thought to its root causes.
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5th August 2022
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The Penn Wharton Budget Model politely mocks its Democratic inflation-reduction claims. “The Act would very slightly increase inflation until 2024 and decrease inflation thereafter,” University of Pennsylvania economists reckon. “These point estimates are statistically indistinguishable from zero, thereby indicating low confidence that the legislation will have any impact on inflation.”
The Inflation Reduction Act would fight inflation through higher government spending. That’s like battling alcoholism with just one more round of drinks.
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4th August 2022
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4th August 2022
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It was called the gold standard. Franklin Roosevelt killed it. We’ve been increasingly poor ever since.
When Roosevelt was elected President, a $20 gold piece contained an ounce of ‘coin gold’.
Google the price of gold and find out how far our money has been devalued.
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4th August 2022
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In Washington things are rarely what they seem. It’s why Congress labels bills with names they think will be more palatable to the public rather than a name that would accurately reflect the content of the legislation. Notice how many times over the years the word “civil rights” has appeared in legislation that often has had little or nothing to do with civil rights.
Now Democrats have junked the original title of President Biden’s “Build Back Better” massive spending plan and rebranded it “The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.” Clearly this was in reaction to poll numbers showing the public blames the president and Democrats for the rise in food and gas prices, increased mortgage rates and so much else.
It appears the name change and some behind-the-scenes bargaining was enough for Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) to end his opposition to the original bill, which he used to say would add significantly to the debt and not produce the results claimed by the administration.
That just ups his price.
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3rd August 2022
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3rd August 2022
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Democrats haven’t stopped trying to take over elections, they just have new tactics to do so under voters’ noses.
Employees throughout the federal government who are carrying out President Joe Biden’s executive order directing them to get involved in state elections are likely all violating the Anti-Deficiency Act, besides interfering in the election process and using federal resources in what seems to be a get-out-the-vote operation for the party in power in the White House.
And the administration is doing everything it can to hide its activities in violation of the federal open records law.
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3rd August 2022
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2nd August 2022
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2nd August 2022
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Now, the LA County Board of Supervisors has unanimously decided to allow illegal immigrants to take up positions in government without ever applying for citizenship. The rule was passed under a new “inclusive hiring” program and was introduced by supervisors Hilda L. Solis and Sheila Kuehl in June 2021.
Time to leave.
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1st August 2022
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1st August 2022
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A Senate hearing on “diversity and equity” in American diplomacy proved to be a wasted opportunity to tackle a core question in our politics: Do we want equality or “equity?”
Instead, the hearing kicked off with mostly old white men bemoaning that the senior ranks of the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International development are dominated by old white men.
In essence, they complained that the agencies don’t do enough to discriminate against their own grandchildren in hiring.
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1st August 2022
Michael Shellengerger
Of course it will.
When Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) went on NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday he said that the $700 billion climate change, energy, and health care proposal he announced last week with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer would not raise taxes. “We should not increase taxes, and we did not increase taxes,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
But a new study by the U.S. Congress’s nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has found that not only would the legislation increase taxes, it would increase taxes by $11 billion more on Americans earning below $200,000 per year than on Americans earning between $500,000 and $1 million, in 2023.
And the legislation would increase taxes by $3 billion more on Americans earning below $200,000 per year than on Americans earning between $200,000 and $500,000 per year.
I hope it doesn’t come as a surprise to him that Democrats lie.
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31st July 2022
Enough of Joe Biden’s ‘He said-Xi said’
Former director of national intelligence warns of China’s threat to America under Biden’s leadership More accurately, lack of leadership.
The Biden corruption investigation in Delaware
Dotorimuk: Lee Smith Exposes the Biden Crime Family
Build That Wall!
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30th July 2022
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30th July 2022
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The Education Department vastly underestimated the cost of the federal student loan program and will likely lose $197 billion on loans it issued over the past 25 years, according to a Government Accountability Report released on Friday.
The federal watchdog said that from 1997 to 2021, the department estimated the student loan program would generate about $114 billion, when in fact it was actually losing billions because of revised assumptions about borrowers and repayments, pandemic-related policy changes that affected the program and the expansion of a popular plan that tied repayments to a borrower’s income.
The department’s calculations were off by roughly $311 billion.
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29th July 2022
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29th July 2022
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As a tenured law professor at Stanford University, Pamela Karlan earned $1 million a year. We now know that she stayed on the Stanford payroll, at that same impressive salary, during the entire 17 months she served as the Justice Department’s principal deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights.
Karlan left her DOJ post on July 1, just one day before the department delivered documents to the American Accountability Foundation under a Freedom of Information Act request that revealed her unorthodox and ethically suspect arrangement with the Biden administration.
Karlan is a radical leftist. As a political appointee at DOJ, she threatened to sue the Arizona Senate over its audit of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, absurdly claiming that such an audit violated the Voting Rights Act. She was also behind DOJ’s latest lawsuit against Arizona for trying to verify the citizenship of its voters.
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28th July 2022
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28th July 2022
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First, the FBI raided a private business to seize safe deposit boxes and assets belonging to hundreds of people who were not suspected of having committed any crimes.
Now, prosecutors are trying to keep the public in the dark about why the brazen forfeiture effort was undertaken in the first place—and are offering little justification for why such secrecy is necessary.
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28th July 2022
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In general, the name of a Congressional act is the opposite of what will actually happen.
Inflation happens when too much money is chasing too few goods and services. The government’s policies over the last two years have been a perfect recipe for the highest inflation in four decades: trillions of dollars in government spending financed by the Federal Reserve’s printing presses coupled with lockdowns, new regulations, a war on energy, and anti-work programs that drove down supply.
Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, a stimulus spending bill in March 2021, proved to be the match that lit the inflationary fire.
Biden and his big-spending allies in Congress are now back for more.
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28th July 2022
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The CHIPS Act, originally designed to provide $52B in incentives for chipmakers to open US plants, has now passed a Senate vote, with bipartisan support. It is expected to pass a House vote as early as next week, but has gained weight in its journey through Congress.
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.
Apple lobbied in favor of the original plan, stating that it was vital to the construction of a TSMC plant in Arizona, which is expected to make chips for the Cupertino company …
Well, if Red China invades Taiwan, that chip plant will certainly come in handy. You’ll not that ‘the Cupertino company’ isn’t pushing for something to be built in California.
A cynic might suggest that a much larger pot of money will see funds sent to a greater number of Senate constituencies, allowing senators to boast about how many jobs they’ve created in their state – just in time for the midterms.
Oh, ya think?
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28th July 2022
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Conservative leaders are calling on senators to reject the House-passed Respect for Marriage Act, which aims to codify into federal law the Supreme Court’s 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage in Obergefell v. Hodges.
“The Act, which was suddenly rushed through the House without any public hearings or input, is an attack on millions of Americans, particularly people of faith, who believe marriage is between one man and one woman,” wrote more than 80 conservative leaders, along with the legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, in a letter Tuesday to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The letter writers believe the bill would threaten the religious freedom rights of individuals and groups across the nation if it becomes law.
Over half of the states have amended their constitutions to provide that marriage is only between one man and one woman. Ineffective under the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, these would come back into effect if that decision were overturned, as the various abortion-limiting laws still on the books sprang back into life once Roe was overturned.
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27th July 2022
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26th July 2022
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The House Committee on Education and Labor is expected this week to consider legislation known as the Healthy Meals, Healthy Kids Act.
H.R. 8450 is a far-left wish list, seeking to expand welfare for all through universal free school meals and trying to use the school meals programs as a pretext to push far-left environmental, labor, and social justice policies.
I have searched the Constitution, and nowhere do I find that school meals are the job of the Federal government.
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25th July 2022
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24th July 2022
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24th July 2022
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Hunter Biden’s indictments may be “delayed.” As Gomer would say: Gollee!
Remember Gomer Pyle? I recalled one of his most famous expressions when I read an article today about possible plans of the Department of [In]Justice to “delay” moving forward with charges against Hunter Biden because of “election year sensitivities.”
Surprise, surprise, surprise!
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23rd July 2022
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23rd July 2022
Biden Has No Right to Declare a National Climate Emergency
There’s no “It’s Summer” clause in the Constitution empowering the president to ignore the will of Congress and unilaterally govern when it gets hot. The rejection of the president’s “agenda” by the lawmaking branch of government isn’t a justification for executive action; it’s the opposite. The Senate has unambiguously declined to implement Biden’s climate plan.
Though you have to marvel at the utter shamelessness of Democrats, incessantly warning that “democracy” is on the precipice of extinction, now urging the president to act like a petty dictator.
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22nd July 2022
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22nd July 2022
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The “experts” didn’t expect it to turn out this way. An experiment conducted by Harvard University and University of Exeter social scientists found no-strings-attached handouts harmed low-income recipients rather than help them.
Funded by an anonymous nonprofit, the study centered on an experiment in which 2,073 low-income people were randomly selected to receive a single, unconditional cash transfer of either $500 or $2,000. Another 3,170 low-income study subjects received no money from the study.
The experiment was conducted from July 2020 to May 2021. On average, the subjects were earning roughly $950 a month while receiving another $530 in food stamps and other government benefits. A little over half were unemployed and 80% had children.
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22nd July 2022
John Hinderaker at Power Line.
Socialized medicine has long been a chief goal of the Democratic Party, but it is hard to understand why anyone would voluntarily entrust his family’s health care to the tender mercies of any government, even the most benign. We have tracked the United Kingdom’s experience with socialized medicine in our “Annals of Government Medicine” series, and I wrote here about the current crisis in British dentistry: nine out of ten National Health Service dentists’ offices won’t take any new patients. And British dentistry, like European dentistry in general, was nothing to write home about in the first place.
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22nd July 2022
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Here is a simple proposal: Every dime of potential budgetary savings in the Medicare program should first be plowed back into the Medicare program to help ensure its solvency or secondarily be earmarked for debt reduction.
Under no circumstances should Medicare be milked as a cash cow for other government programs, whether bulking up Obamacare subsidies, funding “climate change” initiatives, promoting taxpayer funding of abortion, or whatever narrow ideological obsession happens to be captivating congressional “progressives” at the moment.
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20th July 2022
Daniel Greenfield.
The Obama administration pumped billions in taxpayer money into battery and electric car manufacturing, the majority of which failed, on the theory that enough government subsidies would lower battery costs. Not only was much of that money lost, but currently electric battery costs hover around the $160 kilowatt-hour mark. Green boosters cheer that’s far down from over $1,000 per kWh a decade ago, but that still adds up to the reality that an electric car capable of traveling for even short distances needs a battery that alone costs thousands.
…
The Nissan Leaf was initially a hit, but car manufacturers quickly realized that anyone willing to overpay that much for substandard performance had money to burn. The electric car market is now thoroughly dominated by luxury vehicles subsidized by taxpayers. And the Leaf went from 90% market share to less than 10%. The EV market is now a taxpayer-funded status symbol.
The dirty truth about the “clean” car market is that it consists of traditional car companies and Tesla frantically trying to unload a limited share of luxury electric cars on wealthy customers to cash in on the emissions credits mandated by states like California. Tesla makes more money reselling these regulatory credits to actual car companies than it does selling cars. Taxpayers and working class car-owners pick up the bill for the entire luxury electric vehicle market.
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20th July 2022
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How can it be that with so much cattle in America, we sometimes can’t buy meat?
At the beginning of the pandemic, Costco, Wegmans and Kroger limited purchases of beef. Hundreds of Wendy’s outlets ran out of hamburgers.
“How the hell can this be?” says Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., in my new video. “They (Wendy’s) were out of hamburger, yet you could see cattle from the drive-thru!”
It happens because of stupid government rules.
Massie owns a small farm in Kentucky. “I’d rather deal with cattle than congressmen,” he jokes. “At least (cattle) exhibit learned behavior.”
But politicians often don’t.
“You’re born with the right to eat what you want,” says Massie. “Why is the government getting in the middle and saying, ‘No, you can’t buy that’?”
“To keep you safe,” I push back.
“They’re not keeping you safe,” Massie responds. “They’re keeping you away from good, healthy food.”
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20th July 2022
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Especially since now they have more jobs for Fashionable Minorities than even the bus system gave them.
And we all know how much cheaper and more efficient government-provided services are.
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19th July 2022
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When a Democrat occupies the White House, you can be reasonably sure that administrative agencies will start bending rules to get results that they can’t get through normal procedures.
Witness, for example, the rise of the agency “guidance” document. These are documents that express an agency’s view of what the law is. They are not, however, formal rules that have the force of law.
Still, any regulated entity would be foolish to ignore an agency guidance document because it knows the agency will enforce its new understanding of the law. The agency’s bureaucrats in charge of dishing out fines and other administrative penalties will treat the guidance as if it’s binding.
Think of guidance not as a command, but as an implied threat. Yes, it’s not technically a rule that you have to follow, but if you don’t go along willingly, we’ll break your kneecaps … bureaucratically.
A recent decision by U.S. District Judge Charles Atchley struck a blow against these shenanigans, and that’s a good thing.
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19th July 2022
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According to the Office of Student Enrollment, the city is projecting that 28,100 fewer students will enroll in public schools in the fall. During the 2020-21 school year, the city lost roughly 43,000 students, and an additional net 21,000 students departed during the 2021-22 school year. And that accounts for over half of the 120,000 net students who had left the city’s public school system over the last five years.
New York is increasingly unliveable for families. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio focused more on punishing charter schools (and, by extension, the parents who wanted their children to attend them) than on improving public schools in the city. And just as in California, COVID-19 has accelerated the decline of public schools in the Big Apple, and it isn’t hard to see why.
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