Modern Marxism – Page 3 – Libertate Virtute (Virtue + Liberty)

June 9, 2024June 10, 2024

Do People Understand that Progressivism Is the Problem?

We don’t have to look very far for the cause of our discontents. California is the template for what ails us. It’s the Vatican of new wave progressivism, a movement with the mental genetics of Robespierre, Lenin, and every visionary with the ambition to make an entire population’s thoughts, actions, and way of life conform to their dream. Woe be to you if you refuse to fit in. Nothing is allowed to stand in the way, not our institutions, standards of decency, or principles of fair play. Yep, California is our future . . . if we let it.

This progressivism is monstrous. It’s an agent of desolation. Watch them as they go after Trump, or Steve Bannon, or your kids which, in their clutches, are radicalized or placed under the care of the transgender coven. Watch them as they lay waste to prosperity, your prosperity. It’s a ticket to Sheol (Hell).

All of us are living it. The Trump trial and verdict is a hot mess. As for the Bannon conviction and sentence, it’s technically correct, but also a clear example of politically advantageous prosecution. Forget about equal treatment before the law, treating like cases alike. The progressive’s Lady Justice lifts the blindfold from one eye. If you’re Bannon, you get a broadside. If you’re Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, sail on.

Pres. Obama’s AG, Eric Holder, testifying before Congress at the time of the Fast and Furious scandal

May be an image of 5 people — Steve Bannon sits during his appearance at New York Supreme Court after a hearing in New York City, January 12, 2023. (photo: Steve Hirsch/Pool via Reuters)

Compare the two. Eric Holder in 2011 falsely testified before Congress that he had been aware of Fast and Furious for only few weeks prior to his testimony. He’s contradicted by the facts. Justice Department emails to Holder from underlings discussing Fast and Furious date back to July of the previous year. Holder slow-walks congressional subpoenas for more information and President Obama puts the kibosh to any more cooperation, shielding his AG from congressional oversight under a blanket of executive immunity. Shortly thereafter, tired of all the nonsense, the House Oversight Committee voted to hold Holder in contempt of Congress. What happened to Holder’s contempt charge? Nothing. It fell into the abyss (see #1-3 below).

Not true for Bannon. For Biden’s DOJ under AG Merick Garland, it’s full speed ahead. Bannon is accused of obstructing a congressional investigation, like Holder, because he falsely believed that he was covered by President Trump’s claim of executive immunity. I say falsely because Bannon wasn’t a presidential aide to be covered by executive immunity, nor was the information in the subpoena probably protected by presidential immunity. Technically, in accordance with law, Bannon is guilty. So, don’t blame the judge for sentencing him to jail time. But Holder should also be wearing an orange jumpsuit if America is still a nation that adheres to basic principles of fair play.

We aren’t that kind of nation any longer. Thanks, progressives.

Progressives rabidly wanted to get their man, Trump and any person around him, by creating in 2021 a bogus committee, the J6 Committee, to target Trump and his people. The committee was not legitimate since the minority party (Republicans) weren’t allowed their choices to be on it. Instead, the thing was stacked with zealous Democrats and a couple of carefully selected Republicans with a publicly announced hatred of Trump. Any legal actions taken by it were tainted by over-the-top partisanship.

It parallels the Democrats’ other shambolic distortions of justice in the Democrat Jim Crow South.

A Ku Klux Klan rally in Frederick, Maryland, 1980. — A Ku Klux Klan rally in Frederick, Maryland, in 1980. They’re the Democrats’ version of civil society in the old Jim Crow South.

Hanging judges and juries and jury nullification were the stock and trade of Democrat white southerners in charge of the deep South. It’s in the Democrats’ DNA. Like the couple of whites accused in the torture and murder of Emmitt Till standing before a bigotedly sympathetic jury, Trump and Bannon were similarly hauled before a stacked hearing. No apologies, just convictions.

Emmett Till's mother, Mamie, weeps as the body of her slain son arrives at a Chicago Rail ... — Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie, weeps as the body of her slain son arrives at a Chicago Rail Station, Sep. 1955

The sad saga doesn’t end there. Desolation is the consequence of progressivism. Look at the poster child of progressivism, California, its cities, combustible wildlands, teetering grid, collapsing infrastructure, broad assault on the retail trade, fleeing middle class and businesses, overall sense of ugliness and lawlessness, burgeoning public indebtedness, failing schools, eco-fanaticism, etc. It’s a mess, and some of the progressively minded are beginning to notice it to their chagrin. They didn’t sign up for this. Who would?

A mom is still a mom without regard to her party registration. The progressive agenda is well and good . . . until it places her child in its maw. It happened to Erin Friday whose daughter was gender transitioned behind her back by public school authorities. A progressive, Democrat, and supporter of much of the LGBTQ agenda, she was so incensed by this affront to her basic parental authority that she helped organize the Protect Kids Initiative to prevent this from happening to another mother and child in the state (see #6-7 below).

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'RESERVED SB SB107 107 Wiener GENDER-AFFIRMING HEAL AL TH CARE GENDER AFFIRMING HE California State Assembly 농의만합전' — Erin Friday testifying before the California State Assembly

Then she ran into another maw, the new wave progressives who run the state of California. Their shenanigans killed the Protect Kids Initiative. How? Simply make it difficult to collect the required number of signatures. The antics of state Attorney General Rob Bonta was a dagger to its heart. State law gives power to the AG to provide a title and summary for the initiative. The “Protect Kids Initiative” became “Restricts Rights of Transgender Youth”. The attached summary asserted that the initiative “prohibits gender-affirming health care for transgender patients under 18, even if parents [sic] consent or treatment is medically recommended”. It’s hard to gain support from an ill-informed California electorate when having to face frowns after reading “Restricts rights” and “prohibits … health care”. The AG’s hostile language was upheld by a California court. The thing is dead, dead.

7th California School District Adopts Policy to Notify Parents of Child’s Gender Status Change ... — Rob Bonta, the radical left-wing attorney general of California

On top of everything else that the popularly elected progressive ruling class is doing to the state, parents can’t protect their kids from mental and medical interventions that will scar them for life. This state is just hostile to children from aborting them up to and including their passage down the birth canal to mutilating them for life, all at public expense. It’s a malevolent state that has become an Auschwitz for children.

Electing progressives is an invitation to disaster. For some, they think that their only recourse is Trump, or some such acolyte, which they find distasteful. Well, how distasteful is our ruined constitutional order or our kids scarred beyond belief? If California is our national future, flee, flee now to some lonely and isolated outpost in Australia’s outback. Get out, or vote against any Democrat before they get a chance to bring California to your town.

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RogerG

Sources:

1. “Steve Bannon’s Remand Is Consistent with the Law”, Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 6/8/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/06/steve-bannons-remand-is-consistent-with-the-law/
2. “Why Eric Holder Will Regret His Recklessness”, John Yoo, National Review, 9/25/2014, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-eric-holder-will-regret-his-recklessness-john-yoo/
3. “Fast, Furious, and Loose with the Facts”, The Editors, National Review, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2011/10/fast-furious-and-loose-facts-editors/
4. “Eric Holder, Once Cited for Contempt in Fast and Furious Probe, Criticizes Barr for ‘Protecting the President’”, Matt Naham, Law and Crime, 5/1/2019, at https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/eric-holder-once-cited-for-contempt-in-fast-and-furious-probe-criticizes-barr-for-protecting-the-president/
5. “Eric Holder’s Contempt Case Trends Amid Bannon Sentence ‘Double Standards’”, Newsweek, 10/21/2022, at https://www.newsweek.com/eric-holder-contempt-case-steve-bannon-sentence-double-standards-1753963
6. “California Parents Are Afraid of Losing Their Kids | Erin Friday”, California Insider (video), with Siyamak Khorrami, at https://californiainsider.com/california-news/videos/california-insider-show/california-parents-are-afraid-of-losing-their-kids-erin-friday-5608600
7. “Parent Group to Sue California Official Over Alleged Misleading Ballot Title, Summary”, Brad Jones, California Insider, 1/9/2024, at https://californiainsider.com/california-news/parent-group-to-sue-california-official-over-alleged-misleading-ballot-title-summary-5560682

June 6, 2024June 7, 2024

The U.S., A Third-Rate Country? Part II of the Trump Verdict

Trump guilty verdict: What happened in court as judge read decision — Alvin Bragg, Manhattan DA

Who Is Justice Juan Merchan? — Judge Merchan in the so-called Trump hush-money trail

In the old parlance of the Cold War, the world was divided between a First World (the wealthy nations mostly aligned with the West), a Second World (the communist bloc), and a Third World (everyone else, mostly the poor, corrupt, and so-called nonaligned). The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR blotted out most of the Second, leaving the First and an amorphous blob of everyone else. As the widely recognized head of the First, the U.S. of today has willfully, not inevitably, decided to make its way down into the blob. No better sign of the descent into the corruption thicket can be found than the recent Trump verdict.

It’s more than the political prosecution of an obscure local politician that occurs from time to time. It’s the chutzpah to target one of highest profile figures in this important decision-making year, the chief opponent of the reigning president, and to do so on alarmingly spurious charges. One is left to only admire the ingeniousness in crafting a malign charade out of a patchwork of legal mumbo-jumbo. In the America of today, there’s no need for a seizure of the presidential compound and barbarous firing squads. Just use our mountainous legal code to accomplish the same end. The gambit is all Third World.

Let’s take a look at the travesty. It begins with a jumbled understanding of a “conspiracy” (see #1 below). In the law, a criminal conspiracy is one or more people coordinating the means to achieve an illegal objective, a crime. Absent a criminal end, there is no conspiracy. Think it through. For a bank robbery, you might have three people: one to buy the masks and gun, one to drive the getaway car, and one to rush into the bank to take the money. There are two crimes: the robbery which makes for the second crime, the conspiracy to do it. Without the criminal objective, the disguises were for a masked ball, the driver is a chauffeur, and the third person is making a savings account withdrawal.

In the Trump saga, where’s the crime? Non-disclosure agreements (NDA) aren’t illegal. The bookkeeping entries for payments in the NDAs may or may not be infractions (misdemeanors), but that’s irrelevant since the 2-year statute of limitations had long since expired. When your paramount goal is not to lose power, just use obscure laws in convoluted ways in an intensely partisan jurisdiction before an intensely partisan judge and jury to hang your opponent; and you too can have your country join the ranks of Burundi-style electioneering (in Africa, the Fund for Peace’s most unstable country).

Rest assured; they won’t let a little thing like a statute of limitations stand in the way any more than a generalissimo would. Just magically turn the misdemeanors into felonies and therefore leap over the time limit. The cabal needs a second crime though. How to manufacture one? Establish a conspiracy using the highly dubious Article 17-152 of New York’s election law which oddly defines conspiracy as the use of unlawful means to “to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office” (see #1 below). Let that sink in. Normally, the means become unlawful because the objective is a crime, but promoting or negatively campaigning against a person for office is not a crime. It can’t be. It’s the stuff of campaigns. Bragg did not even prove an “unlawful means” for the second crime that translates the misdemeanor charges of falsifying business records into felonies.

Instead, Bragg and the judge gave the jury a choice of three unindicted possibilities (whew, think that one through): a Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) violation, hypothetical bookkeeping infractions other than the original 34, or some other tax illegality. The whole thing is rubbish. Bragg and a Manhattan court aren’t empowered to enforce FECA, a federal law forbidding Bragg’s, Judge Merchan’s, and a dimwitted jury’s meddling. Regarding the other two, while keeping them silent in the indictment, Bragg and the trial court stampeded over Trump’s Sixth Amendment right to know the charges.

And then for the legal morass to work, proof of intent is still required – evidence of Trump’s state of mind to commit fraud – which Bragg never established for charges that he never indicted. The trial and the verdict are an absolute disgrace.

Not surprisingly, Biden’s number three at DOJ, Matthew Colangelo, left in December 2022 to join Bragg’s team. Coincidence? Call me . . . skeptical. Who leaves a high-status DC post to be an underling to a local DA unless something else is afoot? This stinks to high heaven.

It’s an embarrassment to the U.S. and us, its citizens. Bragg, Merchan, and the numbskull jury made us a laughingstock to the world. What makes our “justice” any different from the CCP’s “People’s Tribunals” to imprison or execute “enemies of the people”? Some say democracy is messy. No, that’s too nice. This makes us third-rate, all of us.

RogerG

Sources:

1. Andrew C. McCarthy’s work on the trial is invaluable in his “The ‘Other Crime’ in the Trump Trial: Conflating Ends and Means”, National Review, 6/3/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/06/the-other-crime-in-the-trump-trial-conflating-ends-and-means/

May 31, 2024June 1, 2024

Progressivism’s Totalitarian Streak Exposed: The Trump Verdict

May be an image of 2 people — Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg (l)

What is totalitarianism? Some described it this way: authoritarianism wants obedience; totalitarianism wants belief. An authoritarian controls what you do; a totalitarian controls that and what you think, what’s in your head and heart. Today’s progressivism is developing before our eyes the authoritarian means to pursue totalitarian ends. The Trump verdict is the latest piece in this sordid puzzle.

The case is absurd. The highly debatable misdemeanor bookkeeping violations in New York law were legally dead having gone beyond New York’s statute of limitations. The “fraud” was Trump doing what Bill Clinton did: allegedly attempting to hide adultery. The shame of adultery is not a crime. Perjury is; nondisclosure agreements are not. According to Andrew C. McCarthy on the principal Bragg allegation of fraud in the bookkeeping to hide a campaign expense, “… [a campaign] expense has to be an obligation that relates directly to the campaign and would not exist absent the campaign” (see #1 below). This clearly wasn’t, which explains why the feds didn’t pursue it. The 34 charges were one charge cloned 34 times to embellish this Bragg quackery. The resuscitation of the defunct minor allegations, and the elevation of the flummery to felonies, was conjured by connecting these to a mysterious fraud in hypothetical and uncharged federal campaign finance violations or some other unknown and unproven derelictions, a clear and unmistakable violation of the Sixth Amendment’s right of a defendant to know the charges, even the hidden one used to leap over the statute of limitations and into a felony. The judge’s behavior was egregiously partisan. This trial and verdict have “reversible error” (overturned on appeal) written all over them.

But the dam of restraint on political prosecutions has been breached. A hideous precedent is set. Blue-state and blue-precinct soviets are quickly becoming the ruling norm in pockets around the country. The template to be the target of this Beria brand of persecution (Stalin’s NKVD head: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”) is now established: be conservative, occupy a position of influence, be outspoken, and be a political threat to the reigning soviet, and “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” comes into play.

Lavrenti Beria – Soviet politician - Russian Personalities — Lavrenti Beria (l) and Stalin, 1930s or 40s

Stalin only carried the title of General Secretary of the Communist Party throughout his entire tenure at the head of the country. So, a powerful party is essential to spearhead the complete revolution in thought and action. We have one in the Democratic Party as the ideological home for this revolution. And now they do not shrink from Beria-like actions, rule of law be damned.

The Party is not alone in the endeavor. Their sympathizers dominate in newsrooms, academia, much of the c-suite, the media, and entertainment, almost complete domination of the cultural commanding heights, to assist the Party in building their new order. They’re free to sexualize your kids into transgenderism, indoctrinate them in the neo-Marxism of oppressor/oppressed, shoehorn every facet of your existence into their eco-vision, and reserve the power to force not only compliance but also love for their revolution. And this isn’t totalitarianism in practice?

China’s CCP only replicates what Bragg achieved before a Manhattan judge and jury in the CCP’s recent arrest and persecution of dissidents in Hong Kong. It’d be rank hypocrisy for anyone in the donkey party to complain. The jargon of “hatred” and “incite netizens [sic] to organize or participate in illegal activities” could have easily come out of Bragg’s or Jack Smith’s offices (see #2 below). Our soviets in New York and Washington, D.C., have no grounds to condemn Red China’s CCP after imitating them in a Manhattan courtroom. Beijing has “courtrooms” too.

None are safe from the drumbeat. The conservative, original-intent majority on the Supreme Court is particularly in the Party’s crosshairs. After decades of dominating the Court, they now want to pillory the new majority that might contest the Constitutional worthiness of the Party’s designs. From attacks on flags to accusations of “extreme closeness to his wife” (see #3 below), the Party’s minions shower invective to silence opposing voices. In Congress, they strive to pack the Court with fellow travelers, impeach and recuse dissenters, and extend an unconstitutional executive and legislative branch jurisdiction over the Court, anything to force the Court into conformity, like everyone else.

It’s enough to turn a Trump skeptic into a Trump supporter, if for no other reason than to stop this totalitarian trainwreck. John Yoo of UC Berkeley’s school of law put it succinctly (see #4 below): “To limit and undo that damage and restore the rule of law, Republicans may have no choice but to respond in kind.” In order to reestablish deterrence against this kind of behavior, the revolution’s partisans must experience the sting of a political prosecution that they enunciated. Think of it as engendering a new respect for mutual assured destruction. Watch out Barack Obama, Hunter Biden, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, et al, as one red state AG or DA after another hauls you before a local grand jury and into a local criminal court before a local judge. I can envisage criminal charges stemming from the assassination of an American citizen overseas, criminal misuse of sensitive government communications (emails), influence peddling as Vice President or acting as an unregistered foreign agent, being a middle man funneling bribes to the “big man”, inflicting harm on border communities due to willful dereliction of legally mandated responsibilities, etc.

Additionally, Republican officeholders, don’t step foot into DC, New York City, Chicago, California, any city dominated by a college campus, or any other blue bastion. Go further. Move all federal offices outside the reach of the Alvin Braggs and Fani Willises of the world. If need be, Zoom it.

In the meantime, prepare for a hurricane.

RogerG

Sources:

1. “Bragg Falsifies Business-Records Charges against Trump”, Andrew C. McCarthy, National Review, 3/23/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/03/bragg-falsifies-business-records-charges-against-trump/
2. “Hong Kong police arrest 6 people accused of violating the city’s new national security law”, Kanis Leung, AP, 5/28/2024, at https://www.abc27.com/international/ap-hong-kong-police-arrest-6-people-accused-of-violating-the-citys-new-national-security-law/
3. “New York Times Op-Ed: Does Clarence Thomas Love His Wife Too Much?”, Noah Rothman, National Review, 5/21/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/new-york-times-op-ed-does-clarence-thomas-love-his-wife-too-much/
4. “Trump’s Trial Has Already Damaged the Office of the Presidency”, John Yoo, National Review, 5/29/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/05/trumps-trial-has-already-damaged-the-office-of-the-presidency/

May 25, 2024May 27, 2024

Next Stop for Carnage: UCLA’s Medical School

The state’s elite medical schools, such as UCLA’s Geffen School of Medicine, aren’t immune from the broad carnage that has swept K-12 in California. Let’s start off, though, with the lower grades, then move to the current ravaging of UCLA’s med school.

Overall primary and secondary education in California is miserable. In no educational measure is the state an exemplar. From Wallet Hub to the Nation’s Report Card, it’s a trail of tears for the state’s K-12 schools (see #1 below). Quoting one source (see #2 below):

“A new study by Wallet Hub [2015], a financial advice company, puts California schools at the bottom of the pack. California school systems are the ninth worse in the nation.”

The above report was from 9 years ago, and it hasn’t gotten any better; though, teacher salaries have, with a top-ranked annual average of over $95,000 (see #3 below). But that is eaten up by the humungous cost of living (see #4 below). It’s big money when compared to other states, but that number relegates a California teacher in their prime to tenement life in LA or the Bay Area. Forget about a coastal bungalow.

So, why the stratospheric cost of living? It’s more than the attraction of the climate driving up demand, if that’s what you’re thinking. The state is all into central planning, copying Lenin’s economic playbook – the state dominating the “commanding heights” kind of thing. “Transitioning the economy” is central planning. DEI is central planning. Official sanctification and propagation of transgenderism is central planning. What isn’t central planning on the progressive’s wish list?

And central planning is expensive, always has been, in more ways than one. It’s expensive because it’ll come out of your hide in more than prices, like shortages, blackouts, and declining opportunities. It’s a replay of the Soviet Union.

California is centrally planned into a housing crisis. Look at your centrally planned utility bills. The high cost of fuel extends beyond the pump and into sticker prices on everything on store shelves. The centrally planned jump in the state’s minimum wage is driving up fast food prices and driving out jobs. Wait for the centrally planned EV mandates to slap you in the face. Try to build anything in the state as you face the daunting gauntlet of layers of litigation and fees and approvals and disapprovals, and the state’s burgeoning activist groups. They’ve even managed to centrally plan homelessness into a catastrophe. The crime problem is centrally planned with “restorative justice” and “equity”. Filth and crime join unaffordability in the state’s reputation. For a teacher, $95,000 is as meaningful as 95,000 Weimar Reichsmarks in 1922 (50,000 marks for a pound of potatoes).

Now, what the state’s central planners have done to the cost of living and K-12, they’re excited to bring to the med schools. UCLA is the epicenter of more than antisemitic encampments and mobs. The med school’s newly minted admissions approach magically turned the unqualified into qualified by reliance on melanin count, genitalia, home language, and other such markers of medical excellence, sarcastically speaking (see #5 below). No GPA in the hard sciences or MCAT for these DEI grand viziers. But it’s one thing to have the unqualified in sociology, quite another to have one in the operating room. Do you think I’m kidding?

Some federal judges are refusing to offer clerkships to Ivy League law students, the law being replaced by revolutionary doctrines in these law schools. The same reaction might soon be true of hospitals and patients for graduates of the UCLA Medical School. A big framed UCLA diploma on the wall behind the newly licensed doctor might be your cue to bolt for the door. The alarm is sounding. The Washington Free Beacon is working the story, as are many other outlets (see #5 and #6 below).

They are finding sources in the med school willing to speak up. The Free Beacon writes,

“In interviews with the Free Beacon and complaints to UCLA officials, including investigators in the university’s Discrimination Prevention Office, faculty members with firsthand knowledge of the admissions process say it has prioritized diversity over merit, resulting in progressively less qualified classes that are now struggling to succeed.”

At the tip of the spear in debasing medical education at UCLA is Jennifer Lucero, Associate Dean for Admissions at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM), and the Vice Chair for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) for the Department of Anesthesiology.

May be an image of 1 person and text that says 'Americar AmericanSocietyof can Society Anesthesiologists JENNIFER LUCERO, MD, MA ANESTHESIOLOGY AND PERIOPERATIVE MEDICINE'

She has openly berated med school admissions committee members for raising questions about the poor qualifications of some matriculants if they happen to fall into one of her “protected” identities, this after she has stacked the committee with fellow believers. From The Free Beacon: “Speaking on the condition of anonymity, six people who’ve worked with her described a pattern of racially charged incidents that has dispirited officials and pushed some of them to resign from the committee.”

She’s a mess creating a mess. Staff and faculty complaints about her have been lodged with the school’s Discrimination Prevention Office. They have much to complain about, and it goes beyond personal treatment. Each year since her elevation to power, the danger increases that the unqualified and unmerited will slip through the school and into medical practice to the detriment of patients and the school’s reputation. One admissions committee member recounted,

“I have students on their rotation who don’t know anything. People get in and they struggle.”

One student assisting in an operation couldn’t identify the major artery when asked. She then verbally attacked her professor for putting her on the spot. One professor confessed, “Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students.”

Anecdotes abound. And it shows in shelf tests, the examinations administered at the end of each clinical rotation. The failure rate increased ten-fold under her stewardship. Almost a quarter of the school’s students in the class of 2025 have failed 3 or 4 such tests. Another professor admitted, “… a third to a half of the medical school is incredibly unqualified.” If one of these practitioners should be supervising your medical treatment after a car accident, when you come to, demand to see their resume’ and look for an escape.

Major airlines promise to adopt the same approach for pilots. I may not fly again. Merit has a place, and it really has a place for 150 passengers at 30,000 feet.

The problems with California run deeper than its so-called ruling elites. It’s more than governors, legislators, mayors, or even college deans. All of them, directly or indirectly, owe their positions to popular choices in elections. People vote for this stuff by electing the people who bring this stuff. A dean of admissions couldn’t declare war on merit if she wasn’t protected by the nest of an agreed-upon agenda that can be traced back to the elected. The war on merit is a popular choice, whether understood by the electorate or not.

I refer to H.L. Mencken once again,

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”

Yes, the great masses of the plain people of California.

It’s the difference between government and regime. Think of “government” as the outward signs of rule: offices, constitutions, its structure and institutions. In contrast, “regime” runs much deeper. Often used to identify authoritarian systems, it nonetheless has application to democracies. A particular approach to governance becomes a pattern – red and blue states for instance – due to pervasive and endemic cultural and social norms. Elections occur within this social matrix, and the “regime” rears its head.

You can’t have an official nod to teenage genital mutilation without at least a vaguely popular toleration of the ideology of transgenderism. You can’t have a broad war on merit without at least a vaguely popular toleration of the assault. What else accounts for the ritual pattern of choosing people who bring these policies? California’s regime, which originates with the state’s people and their tendencies, is responsible. If anyone is to blame, blame the people of the state.

Those people are a huge part of a socio-political eco-system favoring the advancement of the unqualified. But who has the time and resources to investigate their doctor to uncover whether they emanated out of this cauldron? California schools are proving that they don’t come with the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. We are left with a rule of thumb. If your doctor came out of California, and especially its med schools, play it safe by shopping around. You’ve got at least 30 or more states to choose from. A state’s reputation now matters, and matters a lot.

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RogerG

Sources:

1. The Nation’s Report Card at https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=NP&chort=1&sub=MAT&sj=&st=MN&year=2022R3
2. “How Do California Schools Rank Compare to the Rest of the Nation?”, Patch, 8/1/2015, ahttps://patch.com/california/santamonica/how-do-california-schools-rank-compare-rest-nationt
3. “California teachers struggle despite having the highest salaries in the nation”, Malekka Seshardi, EdSource, 5/13/2024, at https://edsource.org/updates/california-teachers-struggle-despite-having-the-highest-salaries-in-the-nation
4. “California ranks last in opportunity due to cost living: U.S. News”, Kenneth Schrupp, The Central Square: California, 5/16/2024, at https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_f06f4eec-13c9-11ef-a68c-6f1b9d775308.html
5. “’ A Failed Medical School’: How Racial Preferences, Supposedly Outlawed in California, Have Persisted at UCLA”, Aaron Sibarium, Washington Free Beacon, 5/23/2024, at https://freebeacon.com/campus/a-failed-medical-school-how-racial-preferences-supposedly-outlawed-in-california-have-persisted-at-ucla/
6. “‘Shocking decline’: UCLA med school prioritized racial diversity, leading to decline, report says”, The College Fix, staff, 5/23/2024, at https://www.thecollegefix.com/shocking-decline-ucla-med-school-prioritized-racial-diversity-leading-to-decline-report-says/
7. Special thanks to Jeffrey Blehar in “DEI Will Destroy Our Trust in Doctors”, National Review, 5/23/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dei-will-destroy-our-trust-in-doctors/

May 23, 2024May 27, 2024

This Is What College Kids in America Support

3 minutes of horror – Chilling footage from kidnapping of IDF female troops aired — Screenshot of female IDF soldiers taken captive by Hamas on 10/7

Below is raw Hamas footage of the taking of female IDF soldiers at a base near the Gaza/Israel border on 10/7. How many of them were raped? How many of them will survive? It’s hard to say.

But we don’t need to see American politicians and a bunch of college kids preaching to us about “genocide” and a “ceasefire”. The only genocide occurred on 10/7 and a ceasefire is a Hamas rescue mission.

Let’s not forget that these savages took them back into Gaza for more torture amid the cheers of Gazan spectators along the way. The savages then hunkered down among the mostly cheerleading civilians, using the population of Gaza as one big human shield, waiting for our decrepit youth and politicians to come to the rescue.

Many of our college kids are proving themselves to be underserving of the largesse showered upon them. They are proving that much of college is toxic.

Please watch the video. Double click or got to youtu.be/PZRlrWHHRoU?si=bsJDjkcgHOumb3mw to see the video.

RogerG

May 10, 2024May 23, 2024

Antisemitism Is in the Money

The song – “We’re in the Money” – immediately came to mind after learning of the money trail for the misnamed Jewish Voices for Peace. They’ve been active with anti-Israel malcontents since the October 7 massacre. Radicalism on the Left is an ecumenical ideology not restricted to the fashionable identities. Your physical characteristics, background, and choice of bed partner says little about what is rolling around in your head. There are Jews who are all into self-negation as there are in any group in or out of the “protected classes”. And a Daddy War Bucks can always be found to fund your efforts at self-negation.

Take the aforementioned Jewish Voices for Peace (JVP). Here’s a list of the fat cats who dug deep to bankroll the extremist group (and the fellow-travelling IfNotNow) from 2019 to 2021 (see Sources below). The Daddies War Bucks include the $650,000 from Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Kaphan Foundation’s $441,510, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s $340,000, the Schwab Charitable Fund’s $654,233, the Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund’s $260,705, $175,600 from Morgan Stanley Global Impact, the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program’s $98,650, and the Tides Foundation’s $75,000. No mere chump change, lefty revolution is expensive.

No wonder the encampments seemed so well provisioned and coached. It’s because they could sing along, “We’re in the money, we’re in the money . . . “. Enjoy the rendition in the clip below as you view the campus chaos.

RogerG

Sources:

1. “George Soros Funds Groups Behind DNC Riot Where Protesters Assaulted Cops”, Chuck Ross, The Washington Free Beacon, 11/16/23, at https://freebeacon.com/democrats/george-soros-funds-groups-behind-dnc-riot-where-protesters-assaulted-cops/
2. “Jewish Voice for Peace’s Funding Network”, NGO Monitor, 11/13/23, at https://www.ngo-monitor.org/reports/jewish-voice-for-peaces-funding-network/
3. A special thanks to Brittany Bernstein in “Activist Groups behind Violent DNC Protest Have Long History of Defending Terrorism, Receive Funding from Major Corporations”, National Review, 11/17/23, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/activist-groups-behind-violent-dnc-protest-have-long-history-of-defending-terrorism-receive-funding-from-major-corporations/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=more-in-tag&utm_term=second

May 3, 2024

An Israeli PhD Student at Stanford Mugged by Reality

May be an image of 10 people and phone — A man in a Hamas terrorist costume this week at Stanford University (photo from Daniel Gordis’s post)

Irving Kristol once wrote, “[A neoconservative is] a liberal who has been mugged by reality. A neoliberal is a liberal who got mugged by reality but has not pressed charges.”

Below (Sources #1) is a link to a liberal Israeli PhD student at Stanford who was “mugged by reality”. His account is enlightening because it comes from the ground at one of America’s “elite” universities (the word “elite” is in quotes because they are tarnishing the title).

A key takeaway from his piece is his sudden realization of the popularity of Donald Trump, from a person who would never vote for him if he could.

“This year I finally got it [Trump’s popularity in America]. No, if I were an American I still wouldn’t vote for Trump. But I now understand those who vote for him. Donald Trump is some Americans’ answer to the madness on the other side, a madness I didn’t notice until it turned its face in my direction. A madness no less terrible than Trumps’s madness. No, if I had the right to vote, I would not vote for Donald Trump. But America deserves him.”

The madness isn’t only epidemic on college campuses. High schoolers are seeking to join the madness (see #2 below). Chicago area high schools are a hotbed of pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas activism, many of them “elite” prep schools. Add Seattle schools to the educational sink hole. How did we get to a place where 16 and 17-year-olds rush to join the madness in higher ed? The answer lies in the curricular rot from teacher training and their undergrad coursework to the textbooks. When you drop your kid off at school or the bus stop, your kid is getting a steady diet of the oppressor/oppressed Marxist schtick.

And you thought your kid was learning the three R’s. Let me clue you, they’re getting much more than Algebra.

It’s everywhere. It’s on YouTube. For example, recently I watched a Gen X or Millennial academic who was commenting on something as innocuous as British castles and couldn’t resist continual references to the oppression of the lower classes. It’s a highly distorted portrayal of a period that lasted half a millennium or more. No concession was made to the possible benefits of socio-political hierarchy, let alone a moral hierarchy (some things are objectively good or bad). It was a simple message repeated ad nauseum: the rich and powerful bad, poor folk good. 16-year-old kiddies sitting in their desks, imbibing this blinkered view of the world, have their minds prepped for tramping on over to DePaul or University of Chicago in the “Chicago Youth For Justice” to link arms with an “abolitionist, anti-imperialist network of students”. You know the banter.

This Israeli PHD student noticed the mental rot right away. Most fundamentally, these firebrands are attacking more than Israel but lurking underneath is an assault on logic and reason itself. For these young people, everything is subjective, there being no objective truth, no facts, only feelings. Quoting him:

“I’m not referring here to those who express the opinion that it is difficult to get to the truth, or who think that the courts do not always succeed in finding out what the facts are, or who hold that different ideas are perceived differently through different eyes. I’m speaking about those who say unequivocally that there is no such thing as truth. They are not interested in presenting facts to support their arguments because they do not believe there is such a thing as facts, and they say so explicitly. They think that it is forbidden to use the term “jihadist” in front of jihadists, or to call supporters of terrorism by their names, because feelings are more important than facts (although, of course, first and foremost their feelings).”

Parents, sit down with your kids and query them about whether they believe in objective truth. You might be surprised at the answer.

There’s nothing like being mugged by reality to focus the mind. The sad reality is that this foreign student was mugged by American college students who, in turn, were mugged by their schooling in the good ol’ USA.

May be an image of text

RogerG

Sources:
1. “I saw the American progressive movement … as an ally. That was a mistake.”, by Yotam Berger, in Daniel Gordis’s Israel from the Inside, at https://danielgordis.substack.com/p/i-saw-the-american-progressive-movement
2. “Pro-Hamas Craze Starts in K–12”, Haley Strack, National Review Online, 5/2/24, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/pro-hamas-craze-starts-in-k-12/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

April 28, 2024April 29, 2024

Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be . . . College Students

Students spray paint pro-Palestinian messages at a protest encampment at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash., April 28, 2024. (David Ryder/Reuters)

Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings in a song admonished mothers to not “… let your babies grow up to be cowboys”. As the saying goes, that was then, this is now. It’s not cowboys that we ought to be worried about. It’s college students. College is in the process of demolishing itself. Look no further than the Ivy League. From there, a degradation has taken root that has spread like a cerebral small pox epidemic, infecting the vast majority of campuses. They’re proving themselves to be embarrassments. The rot extends right through the administrations to the faculty and passes into the students. Beware, parents, your kids may leave the house leaning right but may return with a criminal record for defacing veterans’ cemeteries.

To be fair, not all of higher ed is an intellectual cesspool, but the problem is so pervasive that it has begun to besmirch nearly anyone with a degree on their resumé. Add Sociology or Humanities or English Lit or any of the “soft sciences” and their paper bio could be well on its way to the circular file.

The recent antisemitic pro-Palestinian encampments and protests are telling us the time of day. The fixation with the “marginalized” now includes a sanction for the genocidal butchery of 10/7. So warped is the thinking that the charge of “genocidal butchery” has become monopolized by those who committed actual “genocidal butchery” – the kind that you saw with your own eyes on 10/7 – and daily perform war crimes using civilian human shields, not shirking from hiding their military caches and facilities in and under schools, hospitals, orphanages, and housing complexes. Thus, savagery is excused. The natural apprehension about civilian casualties is distorted to pardon unspeakable barbarism in practice. What a warped universe.

Israeli soldiers carry the body of a victim of an attack at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, on October 10. — sraeli soldiers carry the body of a victim of an attack at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, in southern Israel, on October 10. (Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters)

Hamas terror attacks — Hamas body cam photo of terrorist shooting indiscriminately into a house in Israeli kibbutz near Gaza border. (Israel Defense Forces via AP)

Don’t expect many of today’s college students to get it, having been raised on a steady diet of the oppressor/oppressed falderol throughout K-grad school, from public and elite prep schools all the way to the identity-mongering college curriculums. The curriculum of entire college academic departments, many of them mandatory for graduation, are based on this narrow little looking glass. The kids’ minds are forced shut, unable to exercise any kind of self-examination.

Student demonstrators occupy the pro-Palestinian "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" on the West Lawn of Columbia University on April 24, in New York City. — Anti-Israel tent encampment at Columbia University

Pro-Palestinian student protesters continue demonstrations on the eighth day of the 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' at Columbia University in New York on April 24. — Pro-Palestinian student protesters continue demonstrations on the eighth day of the ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ at Columbia University in New York on April 24. (Fatih Aktas/Anadolu/Getty Images)

For instance, a radicalized Columbia faculty senate in a 62-14 vote on Friday (4/26/24) approved a resolution to investigate the administration of an already weak and vacillating college president for finally taking action against an illegal campus encampment and student-led pogrom targeting Jewish students. Aleksander Solzhenitsyn wrote of a strikingly similar situation in his three-volume The Red Wheel, a novelized account of the socio-political setting leading up to the Bolshevik Revolution. He’s got the same mix of characters of academic adults and youths who’ve been radicalized. There’s something about the violent potential in socialism.

Not that all socialists are militant fanatics, mind you. It’s just that socialism is a systematic critique of a society, and there’s few things more thrilling for those immersed in a bubble divorced from realities, for four years or in a life of tenure, than the exciting prospect of overthrowing everything. Bulls in china shops are electrifying things to be for such young and stilted minds. The narrow-minded don’t know that they’re blinkered because they don’t know or understand or appreciate any alternatives. These are the reincarnated “comrade children” of the Khmer Rouge, alongside their adult abettors. Welcome to Columbia’s faculty senate and a chunk of the student body. The best and brightest or the worst and barbaric?

Not surprisingly, the faculty is as extreme as the youths given the fact that they curated this mess. It doesn’t take much to uncover the concomitant antisemitic student rage. Take, for instance, Khymani James, leader of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) cell who announced (see #1 below), “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” Such bombast would be treated as isolated anecdote until one notices that the school’s Jewish students were advised to stay home due to rampant Jew-hatred on campus (see #2 below).

Khymani James, shown in this photo from 2021

Ya think? This neo-Marxist antisemitism is in the academic ether, and in more than faculty offices and campus greens. George Washington University exploded and since the Jacobins also control the Washington, D.C., city government, the city won’t help the school enforce its rules. It declined the school’s request for police assistance. In the worst governed cities, we find the worst behavior. Get out of DC if you can and move the college to more civilized environs. The nation’s capital is a hot mess, and has been for quite some time.

As usual, Texas is showing how to handle the miscreants. The Austin chapter of the Palestine Solidarity Committee called for another one of these campus intifadas and were promptly arrested and carted off. UT’s Office of the Dean of Students declared to the group, “The University of Texas at Austin will not allow this campus to be ‘taken’ and protesters to derail our mission in ways that groups affiliated with your national organization have accomplished elsewhere.” Enough said. Call momma for the bail money.

Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate at the University of Texas on April 24, in Austin, Texas. — Pro-Palestinian protesters on the campus of UT, Austin

Yale and Princeton followed suit in showing more backbone than Columbia. As soon as the tents went up on Princeton, the school authorities ordered them down “now”. Down they went and the waifs then resorted to their usual standby, a sit-in. Yale’s campus police did the work of clearing the foolishness by arresting around 45 (see #4 below). Mom, expect a call.

Los Angeles’s USC constructed a pickle for itself. It’s got the usual intifada circus on campus but it is happening at graduation time. They really stepped into it when they chose a self-styled pro-Palestinian activist to be the valedictorian, Asna Tabassum. This one is a real winner. Her Instagram profile links to a pro-Palestinian website that proclaims,

“Zionism is a racist settler-colonialist ideology. One Palestinian state would mean Palestinian liberation and the complete abolishment of the state of Israel.”

USC student Asna Tabassum speaks to ABC News, April 16, 2024 (Video screenshot)

The choice of speaker amid the broader call for intifada ignited a real hornet’s nest. The school canceled the school-wide graduation (see #4 below).

How did this person get into a position to be valedictorian? Good grades, high GPA? Well, today, given rampant grade hyper-inflation, they have as much value as the Turkish lira (54.8% inflation). Watch her tying herself in knots in an attempt to avoid the charge of Jew-hatred. Like many of her fellow protesters, she is a contortionist in concocting a hypothetical distinction between venom for Zionism and antisemitism. It’s a difference without a difference.

An overly inflated GPA must be the culprit since one need not be a genius to see that a one-state “river to the sea”, with the obvious right of return, would lead to another wholesale slaughter of the Jews. Just take today’s Iran and graft it onto the narrow trip between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Combine the Sharia viciousness of Hamas and gross misgovernance of the PLO and see what you get. Get the idea?

Living cheek by jowl with people who’ve been raised on a steady diet of characterizations of you as evil incarnate isn’t a recipe for kumbaya (see #5 below). Sorry, Miss Tabassum. Ditto for the munchkins in our classrooms. Parents, another four years in a neo-Marxist bubble isn’t necessarily a pathway to betterment for your offspring. As the song goes, mommas don’t let your babies grow up to be . . . college students. Beware, oh, beware.

May be an image of 3 people and text that says 'RANIRZ LASVFGASFEVITN-JOURNAL 2024@CREATCRS.COM FROM FROMtheRIVER the RIVER か the SEA SUPPORT HAMAS HAMAS ERRORSTS STUDENT PROTESTERS ADVINISTRATOS NISTRA ΓM WITH STUPID SEE EENOEVIL. NO EVIL. X@Ramireztoons HEAR NO EVIL. EVIL. michaclpramirez.com'

RogerG

Sources:

1. “‘Zionists Don’t Deserve To Live’: Meet The Leader Of Columbia University’s Anti-Israel Encampment”, Kassy Akiva, The Daily Wire, 4/25/24, at https://www.dailywire.com/news/zionists-dont-deserve-to-live-meet-the-leader-of-columbia-universitys-anti-israel-encampment
2. “Columbia rabbi warns Jewish students to go home, don’t come back to campus because of ‘extreme antisemitism’”, Doree Lewak and Isabel Keane, New York Post, 4/21/24, at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/columbia-rabbi-warns-jewish-students-to-go-home-don-t-come-back-to-campus-because-of-extreme-antisemitism/ar-AA1nouyc
3. “George Washington University Suspends Students for Organizing Anti-Israel Encampment”, James Lynch, National Review Online, 4/27/24, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/george-washington-university-suspends-students-for-organizing-anti-israel-encampment/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second
4. “USC Cancels Graduation Ceremony over Anti-Israel Protests”, Brittany Bernstein, National Review Online, 4/25/24, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/usc-cancels-graduation-ceremony-over-anti-israel-protests/
5. An accurate window into what Israel is facing can be found at the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) at https://www.memri.org/

April 26, 2024April 29, 2024

Grandma Is a Lefty

These four climate cases are changing how we can tackle climate change - Greenpeace International — The Senior Women for Climate Protection (KlimaSeniorinnen)

Here’s a story that caught my eye a while back. In March, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) declared that the Swiss government is a human rights abuser on a par with Iran, North Korea, the CCP, et al. How did the ECHR get to this judgment? Do the Swiss possess a pervasive secret police that piles people into dark, dank prisons never to be heard from again, like the CCP does to the Uyghurs? No. Switzerland became a target of opportunity for the usual assemblage of lefties that crops up from time to time to shout and litigate their way to imposing their views on everybody else.

This one, the Senior Women for Climate Protection (KlimaSeniorinnen), made up of lefty oldsters, brought suit against the Swiss government for not capping greenhouse gas emissions. In a story in the NYT (see below) on the Court ruling, it read in part,

“By not acting ‘in good time and in an appropriate and consistent manner,’ the ruling said, the Swiss government had failed to protect its citizens’ rights”.

The Court became a legislature. A legislature is the legitimate place where partisan contests are settled, among the people’s elected representatives, not a court. The “climate change” brouhaha is, most emphatically, a battle of competing viewpoints. There’s much to debate about the issue; there’s much unsettled about the issue. If the people want caps on such emissions, their reps can pass a law. If they want to remove the caps, they can do that also. The Court, instead, took the partisan opinion of a partisan group of lefty old folks and made their opinion a matter of law where there is no law.

May be an image of 4 people — The European Court of Human Rights

Remember that’s the complaint of the lefty grandmas. They want a law even though their elected reps have chosen not to make one. Rather, they have taken their little opinion and wrapped it into a lawsuit that asked the Court to act as if there was one. The tortilla for this partisan burrito was “human rights”. According to the ECHR, the opinion of a narrow group of lefties is to be shoved down the throats of the entire population of Switzerland, just under the guise of “human rights”. Now, it’s a “human right” to handcuff, and impoverish, a people against their will.

Without doubt, the so-called “caps” that have been morphed into a “human right” would turn the people’s lives upside down. Getting real, the “caps”, and its cousin “decarbonization”, would mean more intense electrification – i.e., reliance on a grid made more unstable by greenie generation (wind, solar, tides, you name it). The costs of the “transition” are mammoth. As a result, a lot of somebodies are going to be “ground down by the wheel of history” (a little Bolshevik lingo).

Tractors stop traffic in the Netherlands in protest of enviro rules — Farmers gather with their vehicles next to a Germany/Netherlands border sign during a protest on the A1 highway, near Rijssen, on June 29, 2022, against the Dutch Government’s nitrogen plans. (Photo by Vincent Jannink / ANP / AFP)

If the “caps” are a “human right”, is avoidance of the costs of the caps also a human right? Increasing the financial stress on a beleaguered population must be a threat to human rights. Ipso facto, the Senior Women for Climate Protection are human rights abusers. Should they be incarcerated to join the Uyghurs to protect our right not be subjected to their nonsense? The logic is inescapable.

Lefty grandmas are no different from lefty youngsters shutting down the colleges in an exercise of Hamas-love.

RogerG

Sources:

1. “In Landmark Climate Ruling, European Court Faults Switzerland”, Isabel Kwai and Emma Bubola, New York Times, 4/9/2024, at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/09/world/europe/climate-human-rights.html?auth=login-google1tap&login=google1tap

March 31, 2024April 5, 2024

A Green Totalitarianism Is Descending Upon Us

They are coming for more than your family sedan. They are going to upend, disrupt the entire system that brings everything to your home, grocery store, et al. You’re going to be hit big time in your pocketbook and in every facet of your life. Get prepared for it is coming, if not stopped.

Is Biden determined to turn me into a Trump voter? Trump, no doubt, is the ugly face of my party, but Biden and his donkey party are trying to construct a totalitarian state on a preposterous green agenda. Animating the whole venture, as is true with all totalitarian crusades, is a belief system on how best to organize and control people. To gain popular traction, it’s best for all such crusades to contain a strong apocalyptic element, one powerful enough to justify stampeding the people into acceptance of its dictates and regimentation. It’s happening before our eyes, right now! Say goodbye to the republic and hello to the Soviet.

The EPA is the chief engine of the transformation from citizen republic to rule by all-powerful commissars. Under the guise of “climate change”, we are being ordered to scrap our already immense sunk costs in affordable and reliable transportation for the mirage of something that doesn’t exist, and if it does, it’s a catastrophe as a replacement. Prepare for a calamity, one that’ll conspicuously fall more seriously upon our children and generations to come. Your kids will be the real victims.

March is turning into a deadly month for the health of our constitutional republic. The EPA earlier in the month announced its intention to follow the template of California, one of a few states famous for turning many of its residents into refugees. Like the authoritarian clown car in Sacramento, tighter emissions for “light duty” vehicles (cars, trucks, many SUV’s) will be imposed from 2027 through 2032, eventually sealing the death warrant for the production of nearly anything with an internal combustion engine (see #1 below). Say goodbye to more than the citizen republic. Say goodbye to that thing in your garage that allows you to get the kids to school, or you to work, or pay a visit to grandma for Thanksgiving, for its life will be wrung out of it by regulating and taxing it to death in escalating licensing fees and costs for upkeep, parts, and fuel. Manufacturers will be forced to eliminate their production. The comrades in power plan to leave you with no way out but into their approved and glorified golf cart. This is nothing but totalitarianism “for your own good”. And, of course, they know better about what’s good for you. Right?

On the heels of that monstrosity, the commissars proclaimed a similar rule for the fleet of big vehicles that bring everything from produce to your grocery store to all things from an Amazon distribution center, everything that fills a shelf (see #3 below). It’ll be much worse for those people who choose to live outside the controllable and tight confines of an urban area. Think about it, all that stuff that was affordably made available at your fingertips will be crammed onto battery-powered big rigs (fuel cells create their own immense problems, see #2 below) of limited capacity, range, and tremendous recharging difficulties.

The mammoth costs of so-called “innovating” our way out of these imposed problems will only short-circuit the necessary wealth to satisfy other necessities of life. These blinkered potentates have no understanding of the gargantuan trade-offs that they are inflicting on us. Either that or they don’t care.

My bet is that they don’t care. Why? They possess a religious fervor for an ideology that justifies, in their mind, taking over more and more of your life. For them, they are busy saving the planet, even if it means destroying your standard of living. You see, their religio-ideology is founded upon a robust, promethean definition of “social cost” and “externalities”. Like a canon law in the church, their “church”, the two doctrines give overriding weight to real or imagined costs for all of society for everything that you do. Where’s the limits? Practically, there aren’t any. Thus, the creeds become the supreme, open-ended excuses for the EPA, or any commissariat for that matter, to do anything that they want.

In the past, it was national socialist race justice to prevent defilement of the “race”, or the dictatorship of the proletariat to cram equality of condition on all of humanity to prevent exploitation. Today, it’s saving the climate, leaving aside the lack of any credible, peer reviewed evidence that anything that they’re doing will positively affect a global atmosphere under which billions of people are acting independently and beyond the reach of the EPA. Pardon me for concluding that this is nothing but pure stupidity.

In the end, the Biden claque and his Democratic Party are seemingly intent on destroying our way of life and replacing our citizen republic with rule by totalitarian zealots. It’s Petrograd 1917, Berlin 1933, or Beijing 1949. Keeping this crowd in power would have us see the end of much that we cherish. So, if the choice is between the abominable Trump or this gang of totalitarian fanatics, one can be forgiven for preferring boorishness to Big Brother.

RogerG

Sources:

1. In Orwellian language, the EPA announcement: “Biden-Harris Administration finalizes strongest-ever pollution standards for cars that position U.S. companies and workers to lead the clean vehicle future, protect public health, address the climate crisis, save drivers money”, March 20, 2024, at https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-finalizes-strongest-ever-pollution-standards-cars-position
2. A survey of the literature on the shortcomings of fuel cells:
* “Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Vehicles: Everything You Need to Know”, Car and Driver, 9/26/2022, at https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a41103863/hydrogen-cars-fcev/
* “A review of PEM hydrogen fuel cell contamination: Impacts, mechanisms, and mitigation”, ScienceDirect, 3/20/2007, at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378775306025304
* “Fuel Cells”, University of Illinois, at https://publish.illinois.edu/fuel-cells/benefits-and-disadvantages/
* “How Fuel Cells Work”, How Stuff Works, at https://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/alternative-fuels/fuel-cell.htm

3. The same Orwellian language for heavy-duty vehicles: “Biden-Harris Administration Finalizes Strongest Ever Greenhouse Gas Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles to Protect Public Health and Address the Climate Crisis While Keeping the American Economy Moving”, EPA, 3/29/2024, at https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-finalizes-strongest-ever-greenhouse-gas-standards-heavy

4. National Review articles that provide excellent overviews of the issues:
* “Biden’s Vehicle-Emissions Gaslighting”, Luther Ray Abel, 3/20/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-vehicle-emissions-gaslighting/
* “Electric Vehicles: The EPA’s Fast Track to Fiasco”, Andrew Stuttaford, 3/25/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/03/electric-vehicles-the-epas-fast-track-to-fiasco/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=capital-matters&utm_term=second
* “Biden Admin Imposes Strict Pollution Standards for Buses and Heavy-Duty Vehicles”, Caroline Downey, 3/29/2024, at https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-admin-imposes-strict-pollution-standards-for-buses-and-heavy-duty-vehicles/