And There It Is

A full embrace of socialism in response to the conservative movement.  It’s remarkable. Do the democrats suspect that they have finally reached the tipping point where enough academicians, government workers, spoon-fed students, virtue signalers, immigrants, and those on the dole account for a large enough percentage of the electorate to make a move and show their true colors? Surely Rhode Island is there already, Massachusetts not far behind, and heavily populated urban enclaves like New York, LA, and Chicago dominate state races, skewing the results to the left. Not enough for national politics, mind you, but the socialists are surely making inroads in cities, the left coast, and the northeast. Hopefully, they will fail in those leftist strongholds so miserably that this socialist bloom will die on the vine. But look at the miserable crime and urban blight the voters are willing to tolerate in exchange for empty promises, as they continue to vote the same democrats back into office. Not a very encouraging prospect.

I Am Bemused

With a great deal of hilarity and equal parts disgust, I watch the clamor arising over Trump attempting to restore law and order in Washington, DC.  Seriously?  We now have evidence that senior police officials have been cooking the books to alter statistics to make it appear that crime rates are falling. Independent statistics show that DC has a crime rate up to 5 times higher than places like Islamabad and nearly 10 times higher than Western cities in decline like London and Paris. Our cities are a national disgrace. Sure, the tourist traps are well scrubbed, Boston’s Quincy Market, Baltimore’s waterfront, and New York’s South Street Seaport, for example, but to get there, you have to drive through urban blight: graffiti, crumbling infrastructure, trash-strewn thoroughfares, and homeless encampments. That teenager in the lawn chair on the street corner with a cellphone, a paid lookout for the gang selling drugs, junkies in a stupor in city parks, itinerant youth congregating to harass shopkeepers and citizens going about their day. And not a cop in sight. We are devolving into a dystopian urban scene from Blade Runner. And then we hear the district attorney from DC claim that we “can’t arrest our way out of crime.” His solution?  More resources for our youth. Translation: more cash. Of course. The democrat solution for everything. The DC police actually issued a laundry list of dos and don’ts to prevent carjacking, in addition to distributing Apple Air Tags to track your stolen vehicle. Among them, keep your windows closed, keep your car locked, drive in the center lane, never drive alone, and always leave a car length between you and the car in front when stopped to provide an escape route. You have to be kidding me. A former surgery resident who served his training in Newark, NJ, told me those instructions, minus the air tags, were part of his job briefing 30 years ago, along with keeping your sunroof closed and never put valuables on the passenger seat in view and after a sham fender bender, never, ever get out if your vehicle. Nice to know that 30 years of Democrat rule in our cities has yielded no improvement. But taking a look at recidivism tells us a different story. As reported by Mike Slater on Breitbart, 40 percent of Crime in Atlanta is perpetrated by 1000 repeat offenders. Eighty percent of incarcerated criminals are repeat offenders. So in response to the DA: yes, we can arrest our way out of crime, you idiot. And we all know what the problem is, you just can’t say it in polite society. Urban youth and a deteriorating public education system, coupled with single-parent households and an ever-increasing disregard for law enforcement, with government rewards for sloth and underachievers, have given us a generation of inner city youth intent on lawlessness. And apparently, the left looks at these folks as their voting base and intends to tolerate the disorder and throw more money at it. Enough. We tried it your way, and it doesn’t work. Witness the vacant mall space that everyone attributes to Walmart and the internet. Is the decline in foot traffic really the result of internet shopping or safety concerns? Livingston Mall in New Jersey was once a thriving shopping center until the geniuses decided providing bus service from inner city Newark to the mall was a good idea. Access for all, including a segment of the population without the socioeconomic means to support the mall’s tenants. Brilliant. Unsavory individuals began using the mall as a social center without intending to buy anything. Assaults became commonplace, and carjacking soared as inner city youth simply took the bus to the mall and drove home in the vehicle of their choice, found stripped and on blocks days later in Newark’s less affluent neighborhoods. The mall suffered a premature demise. Providence, RI, installed an upscale mall downtown with big-name flagship stores. A dispute arose over a fancy hotel, whose lobby provided access to the mall from the city side, when they policed their lobby, not allowing inner city youth to congregate, use the access to the mall, and scare off hotel guests. The city won the argument to allow unfettered access, the hotel saw booking decline, then sold out to a lesser quality chain, and the mall, whose crime rate soared when invaded by inner city thugs, saw its foot traffic crater, the flagship stores left, and the mall deteriorated in quality and return on investment. Well done, Providence. In Syracuse, NY, the expanding Destiny Mall has, for years, hidden an increasing crime problem. Once again, inner city miscreants used the mall as a hangout, and violence was on the rise. Carjackings increased, theft was accepted as the cost of doing business, assaults in the parking garage and bathrooms became commonplace, and shootings in the food court and fights on the mall concourse made local news as the bored inner city youth resolved their petty disputes with violence. Store employees recounted horrific tales of being told not to confront shoplifters, and to tolerate returns for cash on merchandise that had been stolen with damage from removing anti-theft tags and, in some cases, urine stains from the common practice of peeing on the sensors to disable them. Yuck. And you, the law-abiding consumer, pay for that theft with increased prices to compensate for the loss. Flagship stores left, and mall traffic decreased as it became well known that it was not a place to be after dark. Only when the wife of Syracuse University basketball coach Jim Boeheim was robbed at gunpoint by a teenager did the mall’s problems make the nightly news. 

Why must we tolerate this mayhem in democrat controlled cities?  Do we really want our cities to resemble third-world hellholes, degenerating into breeding grounds for crime and sinkholes for an ever-expanding welfare state?  Of course not. And we should not. Punish the small minority of offenders with jail time. Restore our inner city parks and schools to safe zones for learning and community gatherings, and let’s take pride in our cities once again as centers for culture, entertainment, and the arts. And to do that we have to rethink the path that Democrat rule has put us on and that’s going to require those that live in the inner city to reprogram and help themselves take their cities back. And that may require Trump’s help. Enough already, we don’t have to live like this. 

The Constitution Must Prevail

WSJ: “This week [Trump] called for the Commerce Department to start working on a census that excludes immigrants who are in the country illegally, a move that would face court challenges.” What an obvious and patently biased statement by reporter Aaron Zitner, suggesting that it is somehow illegal. Tell me something I don’t know already. Of course, it will face court challenges because everything Trump does provokes a response by some socialist district judge in some blue-state enclave. I’m sure Judge Boasberg is drawing up the papers now. And it’s somewhat disingenuous to say illegal immigrants would be “excluded.”  They will be counted because we want to know how many are here. The census is not a checklist for deportation proceedings, and the information is not passed on to ICE so they can round them up. But we should know how many people are in the country, regardless of their citizenship status, don’t you think?  And remember the whole rationale behind a recount: the last one was flawed. Period. Congressional seats and federal money are doled out based on the population of citizens.  It has been estimated that at least 14 states have miscounted due to the inclusion of illegal immigrants in that tally. These are not US citizens and therefore do not have the right to vote. Thus, they are not eligible to be represented by a congressional seat, nor should they receive federal handouts of taxpayer money. It's not an opinion; it’s that pesky constitution again.

And regarding all the noise that Trump is not allowed to conduct a census because the entirely trustworthy and transparent Biden Administration already did. Well, c’mon, man.  The constitution states that a census should be performed WITHIN ten years. Not every ten years, not after ten years, but within. Look it up. I’m sure those 14 states, 13 blue incidentally, are perfectly content with the. Census results as they wallow in federal cash and revel in sending more democrats to Congress. But they are gaming the system again. And how do we know that the census was miscounted?  They admitted to it!

Diabolical Supterfuge

Unfortunately, we in the northeast are barraged with Democrat subterfuge. And, Massachusetts is an absolute disgrace. Nearly 40 percent voted for Trump, with precisely ZERO Republican congressional districts being represented. Ironic Massachusetts, the birthplace of the revolution, is now the poster child for taxation without representation. What’s really disturbing is the current census and gerrymandering hoopla. The left has been gerrymandering for decades to their advantage, and now it appears that they have also skewed the census results by overcounting population by adding illegal immigrants into the count, giving them more seats in Congress and more federal payouts. It’s diabolical. Now that they’ve been exposed in the Texas Republican redistricting debate, they’re squealing about democracy being threatened. They have no shame. 

Refute of Secretary Bessent

Interesting exchange between Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Gene Robinson on MSNBC, who was playing “gotcha” journalism, that the left is claiming to be a vindication that tariffs are bad for the American consumer and, by the transitive property of equality, Trump is therefore bad for America. There was wild celebration and gloating on the left. Headlines announced that Bessent was “trapped, “cornered”, and “brutally dismantled” by lightweight media sources such as rawstory.com, the New Republic, Yahoo Finance, and the most imbecilic of news sources: Facebook. What, nothing from The View? Please. Alas, the progressives are again showing a profound ignorance of exactly how capitalism works. But what do you expect from an entire class of partisans who have either never run a business or never worked in the private sector? Bessent attempted to explain the complexity of raising tariffs on Brazil, in this case, but was cut off when Robinson repeatedly asked who actually pays for those tariffs. Bessent’s answer was finally whittled down to conclude that the receiver of the goods ultimately pays the tariff, which may then be passed on to the consumer, AHA, screamed the left as Robinson spiked the football. So, are American businesses and consumers paying more for Brazilian goods? Not so fast, simpletons. 

Ribibson should have allowed Mr. Bessent, who, along with Messrs. Trump and Lutnick, knows much more about economics and markets than… virtually anyone on the left. If Americans are ultimately footing the bill for tariffs, then why is the world clamoring to cut deals with the Trump administration to balance trade? Hmmm, says the intelligent American, likely not a person with blue hair and a septum piercing. Or an associate editor of the Washington Post. Shall we begin? 

Let’s use coffee as an example. Scenario number one: If the price of Brazilian coffee increases significantly because the American business is forced to pass the tariff cost on to the consumer, the consumer may choose to buy Colombian coffee instead. The American business selling the coffee sees this trend as a reduction in sales and stops purchasing Brazilian coffee, thus avoiding paying the tariff altogether. The Brazilian coffee grower and, in turn, the Brazilian economy suffer as a result. The only downside is that the American consumer has to forego their Brazilian coffee fix. 

Scenario number two: The American business may decide unilaterally that Brazilian coffee is too expensive with the added tariffs and will seek alternative suppliers in countries with lesser tariffs or those offering their coffee at reduced prices. The Brazilian economy and the Brazilian coffee grower suffer as a result. The American consumer only suffers from being unable to procure Brazilian coffee from that particular American business. 

Scenario number three: The Brazilian coffee grower is faced with a choice: He can significantly reduce the price of his coffee to offset the tariff, essentially paying the tariff. This results in a reduction in Brazil's GDP and lost revenues for the Brazilian coffee grower. American businesses and American consumers are unaffected by this scenario. 

Scenario number four: Brazil cuts a deal with the Trump Administration to reduce tariffs on Brazilian products, including coffee, and American goods exported to Brazil. Everyone wins. 

So, in short, there may be pain in the short term if Americans can no longer afford certain products, such as Brazilian coffee, German cars, French wine, or Swiss chocolate. Of course, if spoiled Americans absolutely have to have those items, then yes, in scenarios one and two, they will have to pay more. However, as the largest economy in the world, market pressure will ultimately come to bear. Thus far, we have seen countries lining up to make trade deals with this administration, which represents the largest consumer market in the world. Yes, Gene you are apparently unaware, that would be us.

Hochul Hypocrisy

I still can’t understand the Democrats' outrage over Republicans' gerrymandering when they are avid students of the craft. And to have beaver-toothed and largely ineffective New York governor Kathy Hochul labelling it as “legal insurrection” and claiming “we are at war” while puffing out her chest, telling republicans to “bring it on” in a fit of bravado is just ridiculous. New York is the poster child for political gerrymandering, and even Politico, far from a conservative publication, ran the headline that she is “embracing” gerrymandering. So they just noticed? This is all political theater brought to you by the disingenuous actors on the left. Recall that Trump won 40% of the vote in California, Massachusetts, Illinois, and New York, yet the combined congressional seats slant 90 democrats to 27 republicans. For those on the left who are traditionally mathematically impaired, only 23% of the seats are Republican. How exactly do you think that happened?  Blue states have been up to these shenanigans for decades, and it is only now that Republicans are catching on, making the Democrats' outrage less about the actual practice and more about the annoyance that their tactics have been discovered and co-opted by the right. 

Hamas Rewarded

So Canada, France and the UK have decided to reward Hamas for their barbaric behavior by recognizing Palestinian statehood. Whats wrong with you prople?Hamas is winning the public relations war despite starving their own people, using civilians as shields, and starting the war in the first place by slaughtering Israeli civilians in an unprovoked, and particularly heinous attack on October 7, 2023. On that day Hamas took 251 hostages, some of whom are still suffering in captivity. Since then Israeli has suffered through a propaganda war with western media, universities and the left allied against them in a brazen display of anti-semitism. The New York Times and Politico were recently exposed for using images of Palestinian children with unrelated genetic diseases to support the claim that Israel is starving them. All this despite Israel airlifting one of the children with CF to Italy for medical treatment. Recall that as Gaza burns and the populace suffers, the impotent UN is allowing food to rot in the sun because they prefer Hamas protection to either the IDF or American supported security forces. Food warehouses for Hamas fighters remain well stocked while the civilians scramble for supplies and Hamas leadership lives in luxury in Qatar having used Gaza as their piggy bank for decades. And meanwhile the Arab world refuses to take in Palestinian refugees and, most recently,  Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have called on Hamas to disarm, release the remaining hostages and not to be involved in a post-war government. Perhaps they know something that Canada, France and the UK don’t. But alas stupidity  isn’t the likely cause. It’s more cowardice. Canada’s Muslim population is 5%, the second largest religious group behind Christianity. The UK is at 6% and France a whopping 13% of their population. With no intention of assimilation. The west has opened their doors to unfettered immigration, particularly from Muslim countries, and as their numbers grow, the governments fear unrest will follow unless they cave to public opinion of a growing segment of the populace. We are being invaded, and as our democracies are used against us, with Muslim politicians rising in major cities, we will be responsible for our own demise.