Category Archives: Politics

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Philadelphia: nickel-and-diming people

After fifteen years in the Keystone State, my wife and I retired back to our home in Kentucky. Pennsylvania has an individual income tax rate of 3.07%, which is a fairly low rate among those states which have income taxes. Kentucky had an individual income tax rate of 5.0%, but this has been lowered to 4.5% for tax year 2023, and again to 4.0% for 2024.

But, unlike Pennsylvania, the Bluegrass State doesn’t try to nickel-and-dime people to death for every little thing. And thus we come to this, in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A paper bag fee, new protections for building workers, and a send-off for Council President Darrell L. Clarke | Council roundup

The final meeting of Council’s four-year term included a flurry of legislation and speeches praising outgoing Council President Darrell L. Clarke.

by Sean Collins Walsh | Thursday, December 14, 2023 | 3:42 PM EST

Philadelphia City Council on Thursday approved a new 15-cent fee for consumers who need paper bags at retail stores.

Continue reading →

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The Usual Suspects are very, very upset that Andy Beshear hasn’t supported Hamas

On Tuesday, November 7th, Kentuckians will go to the polls to elect our governor for the next four years, and while a very recent poll puts Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) and state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, the Republican nominee, at a 47-47% tie, Mr Beshear has been the strong leader in previous polls, I would be surprised if Mr Cameron comes out ahead.

With the month-long war between Israel and Hamas, a lot of people have taken sides, but, other than his initial statements condemning Hamas attacks, Mr Beshear has pretty much kept his mouth shut on the issue.

That, of course, annoys the Usual Suspects, “a coalition of Kentucky organizations” published an ‘open letter’ to the Governor in today’s Lexington Herald-Leader:

An open letter to Andy Beshear: Your silence on Gaza endorses persecution of innocents

by A Coalition of KY Organizations | Friday, November 3, 2023 | 9:26 AM EDT

Dear Governor Andy Beshear,

This letter is on behalf of your Kentuckian constituents regarding the ongoing crisis in Gaza, and your response regarding the violence in the region. As Kentuckians, we are proud to call this state our home. That said, we deeply mourn the innocent Palestinian and Israeli lives lost and urgently call for an immediate ceasefire within Gaza. Continue reading →

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The left sure like Christians, right up until they seem to be actual Christians!

We have been told what a devout Catholic President Biden is, and how former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was a good, believing Catholic. President Trump, on the other hand, showed us how fake a Christian he is, because he almost never attended religious services. Clearly, for the left, being a faithful Christian of some denomination or other was a pretty good thing. Or at least it was until someone who is actually a Christian becomes Speaker of the House! Continue reading →

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Was Deep Space Nine prescient?

It was a single paragraph in The New York Times which caught my attention:

About 171,000 people living in California are homeless, a total that, stunningly, accounts for nearly one-third of all the homeless people in the United States.

According to the Census Bureau’s July 1, 2022 guesstimates of population, California had 39,029,342 residents, out of a total of 333,287,557 people in the United States. 39,029,342 ÷ 333,287,557 = 0.11710410779, or the Pyrite State having 11.71% of our total population. Why, then, does California have “nearly one-third of all the homeless people in the United States”? Continue reading →

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The Democrats want Mitch McConnell out! They're hoping that Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, can steal the seat for his party.

The Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal have noticed what everyone else knows:

Mitch McConnell Agonistes

The Beltway double standard on the health of public officials is something to behold.

by The Editorial Board | Friday, September 1, 2023 | 6:44 PM EDT

You can tell who’s loved and hated in Washington by the way they’re treated when they have a health issue. President Biden stumbles through his first term, and is tripping toward another, with nary a notice from the Democratic-media complex about his obvious physical and mental decline. But GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell freezes up twice in five weeks before the cameras and he’s supposed to resign forthwith.

Mr. McConnell, who is 81 years old, clearly isn’t the same since he fell and suffered a concussion in March. His speech has long been slow but it seems more labored now. The moments when he has frozen for 20 seconds or so, and had to be helped by colleagues or aides, are difficult to watch. Continue reading →

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The Philadelphia Inquirer does some good reporting . . . and then they hide it

We have previously noted some articles in The Philadelphia Inquirer marked as exclusive for paid subscribers. The newspaper has a digital paywall which allows non-subscribers a limited number of articles a month before it descends and blocks access to all articles, but even if you haven’t tried to open an Inky article for months, the subscribers only block will stop you from accessing those stories. Nevertheless, the story below is one that should have been available to more Philadelphia readers!

Yes, the Inquirer does have to make money to stay in business, and the economic condition has been serious enough that the Leftist Lenfest Institute for Journalism has sent out begging letters to subscribers at least thrice that I have documented, so perhaps the $285.48 that I’ve been paying still isn’t enough.

Jim Kenney raised money to boost progressive candidates but spent it on consultants and restaurant tabs

Of the more than $780,000 that Kenney PAC has spent over the last three years, only about $60,000 went to other campaigns. The money has also gone to political operatives and miscellaneous expenses.

by Sean Collins Walsh | Monday, August 7, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

In early 2020, things were looking good for Mayor Jim Kenney, who had just coasted to reelection after a productive first term and was eyeing statewide office.

In June of that year, he launched Kenney PAC, a political action committee that he said would “help progressive candidates in the forthcoming legislative races in Pennsylvania defeat extremist pro-Trump Republicans.”

Giving money to Democrats across the state would have built goodwill for a mayor little known outside Southeastern Pennsylvania, and news of the PAC helped fuel speculation that Kenney might run for U.S. Senate or governor in 2022.

Well, those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” haven’t had much success in the Keystone State, but the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania sure hasn’t benefitted under those ‘progressive’ Democrats! Under Mayor Kenney, the City of Brotherly Love, the town he was (supposedly) running, in 2020, the year he launched Kenney PAC, went from 356 homicides — which the Philadelphia Police have now revised down to 353 — to 499, and there are serious reasons to believe that the number was actually 502, as initially reported.

We have noted, several times, the change in the Philadelphia Police Department’s statistics, down from the 502 homicides initially reported for 2020, down to 499, one short of the then-all-time record of 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, under the ‘leadership’ of then-Mayor Wilson Goode, he of MOVE bombing fame. I made a totally rookie mistake, and failed to get a screen capture of that, but a Twitter fellow styling himself NDJinPhilly was apparently smarter than me that particular time, took the screen shot, and then tweeted it to me.

2020 was the year of the unfortunate death while resisting arrest of the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled convicted felon George Floyd in Minneapolis, and riots broke out in many cities, including Philly, but the change in attitudes continued far beyond 2020; Philly saw a whopping 562 homicides in 2021, a number which blew the old record completely apart, along with 190 deaths marked ‘suspicious’. 2022 saw an improvement of sorts, with the official number of homicides down to 516, which was still second all time.

Why, it’s almost as though Philly could have used those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” running the city!

Back to the Inky:

But of the more than $780,000 that Kenney PAC has spent over the last three years, only about $60,000 went to other campaigns, according to an analysis of campaign finance reports. Instead, the PAC’s money has primarily gone to benefit operatives close to Kenney — who abandoned his hopes of higher office after his popularity tanked starting in 2020 — and to pay for miscellaneous expenses, such as events, hotel rooms, and restaurant bills.

You know what that is? That’s actually good, investigative reporting, which makes me wonder why the newspaper’s Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Gabriel Escobar decided to restrict the article to subscribers only. If there’s anything in the Inquirer’s reporting which should draw in new subscribers, it’s the “high-impact journalism“, “speaking truth to power“, and “high-impact election reporting” the Leftist Lenfest Institute told us the newspaper delivered, yet that’s just what Mr Escobar, or possibly one of his minions, restricted.

I’ve quoted a lot of the article, and cited my sources, as always, but unless you are a subscriber, you can’t even check to see if I’ve lied to you; that bothers me.

I can’t simply quote the whole thing, and I really wish that more people could read it for themselves, but I’ll note briefly here that reporter Sean Collins Walsh pointed out that the top ten donors to Kenney PAC, roughly $399,000 out of $850,000, were all building trade unions; the unions had also been the primary contributors to the Mayor’s two campaigns. Mayor Jim Kenney has just plain checked out, marking time until he’s no longer in the job. The members of those very same unions are the working men of the city who are at risk from the bullets flying around town, especially in the working-class neighborhoods.

What the unions bought with their support of Mr Kenney is greater danger for their members and their families! Perhaps some of those “extremist pro-Trump Republicans” could have done a better job? After all, it hardly seems that they could have done worse!

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Black Democrats in Alabama dump ‘LGBTQ+’ caucus

Thanks to a tweet from Kirby McCain, I found this story:

‘You be quiet, girl:’ Alabama Democrats’ board meeting made private after members protest

By Alander Rocha Alabama Reflector | Saturday, July 29, 2023 | 7:22 PM EDT

The leadership of the Alabama Democratic Party (ADP) Saturday kicked members of the public out of a meeting without starting it.

ADP Chair Randy Kelley said in an interview Saturday afternoon that they had to conduct the meeting in an executive session because members of the public were being disruptive.

“They weren’t on the committee,” he said. “They were a guest. And we didn’t know who those people were.”

The motion at the first meeting since the party leaders passed new bylaws and eliminated diversity caucuses in May, came amid a protest from about 15 members of the eliminated groups and supporters.

As a result of eliminating diversity caucuses, 53 members lost a seat on the party’s State Democratic Executive Committee (SDEC). The state Democratic Party faces an investigation by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) over the bylaw changes and elimination of caucuses.

There’s more at the original.

Being a numbers kind of guy, I asked myself, “Self, what percentage of the Alabama Democratic Party are black?” While it’s well-known that roughly 90% of black voters cast their ballots for Democrats, I found this from Pew Research:

In an August 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 70% of Black registered voters said they would vote for or were leaning to the Democratic U.S. House candidate in their district in the coming election. Another 24% were either unsure or said they would back another candidate. Just 6% of Black registered voters said they would back the Republican candidate in the race to represent their district in the House of Representatives.

According to the Census Bureau’s guesstimates, 68.9% are white, 64.7% and non-Hispanic white, and 26.8% of Alabama’s population are black. And in the 2022 United States Senate race, one in which there was no incumbent running, Republican Katie Britt received 942,154 votes (66.62%) to Will Boyd’s 436,746 (30.88%).The Democratic nominee was so insignificant that there is no Wikipedia page for him.

Mrs Britt carried six of Alabama’s seven congressional districts, the six represented by Republicans, while Mr Boyd won the 7th Congressional District, 61% to 37%. The 7th District, represented by Democrat Terri Sewell, is described in Miss Sewell’s Wikipedia page as:

includ(ing) most of the Black Belt, as well as most of the predominantly black portions of Birmingham, Tuscaloosa, and Montgomery.

I think it fair to say, at this point, that the Alabama Democratic Party is an overwhelmingly black party. Is anyone surprised that black Alabamians would dump “LGBTQ+” caucuses?

I am amused.

 

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Odd question: will LGBTQ+ population decrease with end of Affirmative Action?

The Wall Street Journal is on top of the trends in business, as you’d expect, and reported that Chief Information Officers are worrying that employee ‘diversity’ — and how I’ve come to hate that word — will decrease following the Supreme Court’s  decision  in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, declaring what we all knew, that the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment prohibited Affirmative Action using racial preferences in collegiate admissions.

CIOs Say Affirmative Action Ruling Could Set Back Progress in Tech Diversity

Executives are questioning what a landmark Supreme Court decision on college admissions means for diversity hiring efforts

by Belle Lin | Monday, July 17, 2023 | 7:00 AM EDT

Business technology leaders said that last month’s Supreme Court’s ruling that colleges can’t consider race in admissions policies could have a chilling effect on initiatives aimed at diversifying the information-technology workforce.

The court’s decision is likely to alter the pipeline of diverse graduates entering the job market, they said, and may introduce challenges to companies’ existing hiring and promotion practices.

By removing race from college admission considerations, the pool of tech talent entering the workforce may not only be less diverse, it could also be smaller if underrepresented minorities don’t see the field as a welcoming or viable option, those executive say.

There’s more at the original.

The Court’s decision applied to universities, public and private, that accept federal money, including in the form of student financial aid. However, as Chief Justice John Roberts noted in the Court’s opinion, roughly 60% of colleges and universities admit all applicants. If the pool of graduates from certain technical specialties from Ivy League colleges becomes less diverse — there’s that word again! — then corporations might look at graduates from Middle Tennessee State (Acceptance rate = 87.1%) or Eastern Kentucky (Acceptance rate = 98.3%) or Jacksonville State University of Alabama (Acceptance rate = 76.3%), Robert Stacy McCain’s alma mater. After all, Alissa Heinerscheid proved that being a Hahvahd graduate was no guarantee that stupid decisions wouldn’t be taken!

Then I saw these interesting paragraphs in another Journal article:

The elevation of victimhood over achievement has led many to misrepresent their racial and gender identities in pursuit of advantages in professional and academic positions. Students at selective colleges are identifying as non-heterosexual at rates several times higher than historic or national averages, though University of London political scientist Eric Kaufmann noted that there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in sexual behavior tied to those identities. I’ve heard of parents at elite private high schools using genetic testing services hoping to identify any ethnic heritage that would boost their children’s college applications and of young professionals falsely identifying as bisexual for a career boost.

Racial and gender quotas result in liberals’ willful hypocrisy and convoluted rationalizations when they are confronted with the reality that aptitudes, interests and effort aren’t always evenly distributed among their superficial and shifting politicized racial categories. Liberals have translated their calls for increased diversity into demands that colleges admit and employers hire black and Hispanic applicants in proportion to their group’s share of the U.S. population.

Wait, what? “Students at selective colleges are identifying as non-heterosexual at rates several times higher than historic or national averages” but “there hasn’t been a corresponding increase in sexual behavior tied to those identities”? From the linked report:

  • When we look at homosexual behavior, we find that it has grown much less rapidly than LGBT identification. Men and women under 30 who reported a sexual partner in the last five years dropped from around 96% exclusively heterosexual in the 1990s to 92% exclusively heterosexual in 2021. Whereas in 2008 attitudes and behavior were similar, by 2021 LGBT identification was running at twice the rate of LGBT sexual behavior.
  • The author provides a high-point estimate of an 11-point increase in LGBT identity between 2008 and 2021 among Americans under 30. Of that, around 4 points can be explained by an increase in same-sex behavior. The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves.
  • Very liberal ideology is associated with identifying as LGBT among those with heterosexual behavior, especially women. It seems that an underlying psychological disposition is inclining people with heterosexual behavior to identify both as LGBT and very liberal. The most liberal respondents have moved from 10-15% non-heterosexual identification in 2016 to 33% in 2021. Other ideological groups are more stable.

So, what do we have here? A significant increase in the number of younger people who are also mostly self-identified liberals? Does this mean that these people might be more open to take a walk on the wild side, but mostly haven’t yet, or is it some sort of ‘siding with the oppressed’ help, or could it possibly, just possibly, going the Elizabeth Warren/Rachel Dolezal route of ‘identifying’ with a particular minority for some real or perceived Affirmative Action benefit?

  • Very liberal ideology and LGBT identification are associated with anxiety and depression in young people. Very liberal young Americans are twice as likely as others to experience these problems. 27% of young Americans with anxiety or depression were LGBT in 2021. This relationship appears to have strengthened since 2010.
  • Among young people, mental health problems, liberal ideology, and LGBT identity are strongly correlated. Using factor analysis in two different studies shows that assuming one common variable between all three traits explains 40-50% of the variation.

LOL! I have long believed that “very liberal ideology” is indicative of some sort of mental problem, because, especially with the new #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading left, to be that far left requires a delusional mindset, ignoring the reality that is all around us. As we have previously reported, the areas in Philadelphia which were most seriously impacted by violent crime recently voted for a tougher-on-crime candidate, while the more ‘progressive’ candidates had far greater support in the wealthier, whiter — Philly is very internally segregated — areas.

You can’t pay attention to the news in Philadelphia without realizing that crime is a serious problem, but the anti-police, anti-incarceration leftist candidate won her votes in the areas experiencing far less crime.

There is, at least at the margins, some socialization concerning what is and is not acceptable when it comes to sex. For boys growing up, the idea of fellating another boy, or receiving anal intercourse from such, is strongly reinforced as something which is humiliating, completely unmanly, and just about every other negative connotation that can be put on it. It is at least arguable that forces pushing acceptance of male homosexuality can lessen the effects of the normal socialization, and perhaps some teenaged and twenty-something males might not be quite so averse to trying something, if the right situation arose. Porn has lessened the stigma against female homosexual liaisons.

But if actual homosexual activity is being reported at significantly lower rates than abnormal sexual identification — and let me be explicit here: anything other than strictly heterosexual identification is considered abnormal by me — then there must be some other incentive for people to identify as something other than normal.

  • College students majoring in the social sciences and humanities are about 10 points more LGBT than those in STEM. Meanwhile, 52% of students taking highly political majors such as race or gender studies identify as LGBT, compared to 25% among students overall.

Realistically, what can the incentive be other than politics or some perceived advantage to be gained? And if the perceived advantage would be the shortcuts offered by Affirmative Action, shouldn’t the elimination of Affirmative Action in collegiate admissions reduce the percentage of those claiming abnormal sexual orientations and identities?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Special Snowflake™ melts down.

Unfortunately, I have to make a trip to Ashland today, but I felt the need to screen capture a few things before Erica Marsh decides to block me or protect or delete her tweets.

Miss Marsh described herself as a “Proud Democrat: Former Field Organizer to elect President Biden. Volunteer for the Obama Foundation.” And then she included her ‘pronouns,’ as though anyone looking at her photo couldn’t tell that she’s female.

On June 10th, she tweeted:

My name is Erica (She/Her), I’m a Proud Democrat, fully vaccinated and boosted, still wear 2 masks whenever I go out and support Ukraine 🇺🇦. I will never stop advocating for progressive candidates and causes fighting against the fascist ULTRA MAGA. RT IF YOU ARE WITH ME

Naturally, there was a Ukrainian flag in the tweet, but, significantly enough, no American flag. I think that says something. That she “still wears two masks” says something else

Well, on Thursday, she said something pretty stupid:

Today’s Supreme Court decision is a direct attack on Black people. No Black person will be able to succeed in a merit-based system which is exactly why affirmative-action based programs were needed. Today’s decision is a TRAVESTY!!!

Apparently Miss Marsh believes that black Americans are just plain inferior. What other way is there to read what she tweeted?

Of course, after people pointed it out to her, she quickly realized what she had said, and had to issue a clarification:

Allow me to clarify this tweet, which is being manipulated for propaganda and misinformation by ULTRA MAGA.

The intention of my tweet is to highlight that prior to affirmative action, there existed a supposedly merit-based system for Black individuals to gain admission to colleges. However, these institutions employed racial profiling to prevent Black individuals from attending under the guise of this “merit” system.

I want to emphasize that my statement in no way suggests that Black individuals are less intelligent than people of other races.

Perhaps she didn’t realize what she wrote, but it was in the past tense, “prior to affirmative action.” If she had actually read the ruling, or Grutter v Bollinger, she’d have realized that the Supreme Court had previously required an end date for Affirmative Action programs, June 23, 2028 under Grutter, but as Chief Justice John Roberts noted in the ruling at hand, neither Harvard University nor the University of North Carolina, the two colleges part of the case, had specified how they were going to taper off their race-based preference systems by that date, had made any progress to doing so, nor could give any projected date for its end.

A lot of people criticized Miss Marsh’s tweets, but hey, when you speak in public criticism is something you can get.

Finally, she went all Special Snowflake™, because she apparently got her precious little feelings hurted.

If anyone is a defamation lawyer who works on contingency, please (direct message) me. Thanks.

President Harry Truman once said, “If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” That’s pretty good advice for Miss Marsh. But I checked just before posting this, and at least she hasn’t blocked her critics — at least not me, anyway — or ‘protected’ her account.