RogerG
This says it all.
A Lesson For All Seasons, The Movie Clip
Here’s the relevant scene from “A Man For All Seasons” mentioned in my previous post. Substitute young Roper for the cancel-culture mobs patrolling our campuses, infecting our children’s curriculums, manning the halls of power, and swarming the newsrooms. Mob rule has the upper hand over the rule of law and decency. These, indeed, are tumultuous times. We must keep our heads on straight in this period of malevolent madness.
RogerG
A Lesson For All Seasons
The movie, “A Man For All Seasons”, has a pertinent exchange between Sir Thomas More and his daughter’s fiancée, William Roper. Roper proclaims his desire to steamroll any law to suppress an evil. More counters with this: “And when the last law was down – and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?” As the kids in the backseat would say, “Are we there yet?” Are our laws, like the Bill of Rights, made flat?
I don’t know, but we seem to be close. The Biden posse is coming after guns, embarking on a crusade against its political foes under the banner of the fight against the illusory “White Supremacy”, and rigging the federal election system to sustain its grip on power by making it easier to vote and easier to cheat. We are quickly becoming a banana republic with Stalinistic overtones.
“A Man For All Seasons” is worth a look. It isn’t the cup if tea for those raised on films with thin dialogue and abundant eye candy, but it more than makes up for it in gripping moral lessons.
RogerG
Have You Heard of California’s Exit Tax?
I’ve known for some time that the state’s power class has wanted to do it – i.e., tax its refugees. People are fleeing the state for its institutional cancel culture, crumbling quality of life, taxes, and regulations but Sacramento’s tenured political grifters are still trying to keep their hands in the pockets of even the escapees.
AB 2088 is the latest attempt at cross-border taxation. It would create a wealth tax that could be assessed for 10 years after a person has left the state. It rides on the back of AB 1253 which established the job-crushing wealth tax. Residents punished with the highest taxes in the nation will continue to be flogged after they flee if the influential have their way.
Read about the bill here.
The state’s Commissariat of Revenue – Franchise Tax Board – reserves to itself the omnipotent power to define a resident without any deference or recognition of any other state’s laws. To boil the issue down to simple terms, another state’s residents get the privilege of paying California taxes. That’s right, if a person meets the residency requirements of their new state, California can override that state’s laws, impose its byzantine formula for California residency, and still hold them financially hostage.
Somehow, the Constitutional provisions over interstate commerce and the right travel would seem to have some relevance here. They do! The gambit is blatantly unconstitutional.
California, you need to be reminded that you are only one state in fifty. A person can only be a “resident” of a state, but he or she is a “citizen” of the United States. My US citizenship trumps your ham-handed attempt to avoid the consequences of transforming your state into a decaying one-party nightmare.
Watch that space. I certainly will since I am one of those refugees.
RogerG
Calling All Whistleblowers
Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R, Tx.)
Dan Crenshaw (R, Tx., below) has a website for those in the military to report instances of woke politicization of the ranks. Anonymity is guaranteed. The web page for the whistleblower form can be found here.
The services aren’t so insulated from the rest of us that crass left-wing indoctrination should be able to avoid an exposure to sunlight. We ought to know what the woke careerists in the Pentagon are doing to our husbands and wives, sons and daughters, and moms and dads in uniform.
To our people in uniform, think of it as your oath to a higher authority. Rudolph Eichmann and Pol Pot faced a higher justice, and the excuse that I was “following orders” afforded no respite from accountability. This extremist brainwashing is a dagger at the heart of the nation. Crenshaw, a combat veteran who wears the scars of battle, and federal law protects you as you do your duty.
Turn in the malefactors.
RogerG
A Woke Defense Is No Defense
Our military isn’t to be political. Our Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, is making it so. One could be excused for concluding that the Squad is running the Defense Department as it does the Democratic Party.
In a CNN interview, Austin tried to rebut claims that the military is “soft” because of its embrace of wokeness. No, he’s dangerously wrong. Secretary Austin is undermining the most important asset of a fighting unit: the willingness of its members to sacrifice for each other. Tell me how cramming down the throats of our fighting men and women racist and identity-mongering screeds will lead to combat effectiveness.
(Read about the interview here.)
Treason is defined as making war on the United States. This isn’t treason, but it has the effect of treason. It destroys the ability of the country to defend itself by dividing the troops into squabbling camps of identity groups.
The Navy came out with a reading list for the “growth and development” of sailors that included Ibram X. Kendi’s extremist tirade, “How to Be an Antiracist”. The Navy’s Second Fleet created a book club for discussing and reading Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility”. Vice admiral Andrew L. Lewis, you should be ashamed of yourself. These are extremist left-wing spiels that are being normalized in the ranks.
Austin uses the left-wing jargon of “look like America” which in reality will compete with competence. Do you want an engineer “to look like America” or do you want a bridge that won’t collapse under your car? This is not only nonsense; it’s dangerous nonsense when it’s given a stamp of approval from the top.
The Army is running ads about “Heather has Two Mommies” in the ranks. What effect does all this identity obsessiveness have on morale? It produces nothing good. A constant refrain that encourages prickliness is a threat to the nation, and is not just another policy choice. For this reason alone, Austin is deserving of censure.
He may want a military that “looks like America”, but it won’t look, or act, like an effective fighting force. See, Lloyd, looks can be deceiving.
RogerG