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Out-of-control ‘wilding’ teens run Wawa out of Center City, so Josh Kruger blames not the brats, but Wawa

I’ve said it before: Wawa coffee is the best you can buy! Better than Starbucks, better than Doughdaddy’s, better than Dunkin’ Donuts. And in Philadelphia, Wawa sponsors the Independence Day fireworks, as though the city can’t produce fireworks on its own. But Josh Kruger is mad at Wawa!

Hey Wawa, we’ll take Center City stores over fireworks, please

The way Wawa has treated us is hardly worth a parade or fireworks or title sponsor recognition.

by Josh Kruger | Independence Day, July 4, 2023 | 6:00 AM EDT

By now, you’ve seen the commercials and swirling, groovy banners for Wawa Hoagiefest. You might’ve even eaten one of the beloved local brand’s sandwiches at a discount as part of this year’s 15th anniversary of “Hoagie Love” — at least that’s what the convenience chain calls it. Or maybe you’re participating in any one of over 40 Wawa Welcome America community events celebrating America’s independence.

That’s all well and good — if you don’t mind fraternizing with a company that sees you as the enemy.

If you’re confused, that’s OK. I, too, was disconcerted when I came to the realization that Wawa is no good anymore.

Really, folks, if we have any respect for ourselves, we’ll stop this charade and simply speak the truth: It’s time that we as a city broke up with the idea that we are into Wawa because Wawa is definitely not into us. Not when it counts, at least.

Good heavens, what has Wawa done that has so upset Mr Kruger? After a paragraph in which he trashes Wawa’s quick foods, he continued:

Bad food is one thing. Bad manners exhibited by a company that scapegoats the community we live, work, and play in is another matter altogether. This, unlike the terrible food, is personal.

You might remember this dastardly move as Wawa announced the closure of some Center City locations, citing public safety concerns. Just recently, it announced the impending July 16 closure of the landmark Second and South Streets location, too, following neighborhood complaints of public disorder and crime.

After news of the first two closures, The Inquirer’s own Editorial Board somberly wept that the action was a “dire statement about public safety in Philadelphia.”

To me, it was more a dire statement about the ethics of the privately held corporation’s executive leadership.

One would hope that this alleged “dire statement about the ethics of the privately held corporation’s executive leadership” is a statement that the corporation’s executive leadership doesn’t want to see its employees assaulted, injured, or even killed. Such would seem to me to be a pretty positive statement about the leadership!

Mr Kruger combitched that, Heaven forfend!, Wawa was moving into more suburban areas, and starting to sell gasoline. As we have previously noted, at least some Wawas are also installing Tesla charging stations. Gosh, moving into areas with less crime, and meeting a potential customer demand? How evil is that!?!

But then the author complained that Wawa was moving into other dangerous areas:

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain: Democrats Kill Each Other in Baltimore; Mayor Blames … Texas, Florida, Alabama?

In 2019, Wawa cheerily announced it was expanding into Baltimore, despite Baltimore’s murder rate of 58 homicides per 100,000 residents. Philly’s rate was a comparatively less horrific 22 that year. Likewise, Wawa has moved aggressively into locations in Florida — such as Jacksonville, where the homicide rate is only slightly better than Philly’s. Other Florida cities like Miami Gardens — also home to multiple Wawas — have homicide rates that are nearly identical to Philly’s.

This is hugely oversimplistic. Yes, the homicide rate in ‘Charm City,’ as Baltimore has sometimes been called, is horrible, far, far worse than Philly’s, but it isn’t just the homicide rate. The editorial Mr Kruger cited pointed out:

The closings come just weeks after about 100 teens ransacked a Wawa in Mayfair. In February, a man was stabbed to death outside of a Wawa in South Philadelphia. On Thursday, a Wawa employee in University City was pepper sprayed during a robbery involving five suspects. In 2020, Wawa cited the pandemic as the reason to close its flagship store at Broad and Walnut Streets.

What foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia is seeing is not just a terrible homicide and shooting rate, but stores robbed and simply trashed, and a law enforcement system that just flat doesn’t care. Philadelphia’s District Attorney, Larry Krasner, a police-hating former defense mouthpiece who believes in ‘restorative justice‘ rather than punishing criminals, has aided and abetted the crime, and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is, put as charitably as possible, overworked and overwhelmed in Philly, though many would say that she’s just plain incompetent and marking time until she can get another job. The Philadelphia Police Department is seriously undermanned, and crimes like ransacking a Wawa just fall far down the ladder in police priorities.

Then there’s Mayor Jim Kenney, who has just plain checked out, marking time until he’s no longer in the job. Mr Kenney says stuff, but doesn’t actually do anything.

With all that money coming in, you’re telling me the company had no more resources to devote to safety in Philly? Was it even efficiently protecting Philly stores?

Can we tell the truth here? The out-of-control teens who have been trashing the Center City stores have been primarily out-of-control black teens, and any resources that Wawa put into “efficiently protecting (its) Philly stores” would quickly be characterized as racist attempts to keep black teens out of the stores, and the Inquirer, the Editorial Board of which so lamented the closing of Center City Wawas, would be among the first to point that out. A committed leftist — or so I judge from his Twitter feed — Mr Kruger probably would as well.

You know, I get it: Mr Kruger, who has admitted that he “used to do a lot of meth,” loves his Wawa coffee — I do, too, and was heartened by the news that Wawa is expanding into the Bluegrass State — but he’s blaming Wawa and its corporate executives for abandoning Center City, when the truth is that Philadelphians, the out-of-control teens and the rotten parents who reared them, have actually run Wawa off.

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Today’s left really, really, really hate Freedom of Speech, and normality

There has been all sorts of leftist angst and hollering and combitching about laws, passed in several states, which ban hormone and surgical ‘treatments’ for minors who believe themselves to have been born the wrong sex. It’s discriminatory, it’s wrong, it will hurt people, and lead to suicides, we are told.

Yet, oddly enough, I never read one thing about this, in a single sentence from Newsweek:

Last week, Michigan banned conversion therapy, the controversial practice trying to “cure” LGBTQ+ people of their sexual orientation and gender identity, for minors in the state.

Yet:

Research shows that lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) teens are at increased risk of suicide and mental health issues like depression and anxiety. One of the most startling statistics: LGBTQ teens consider suicide and make suicide attempts at about twice the national rate for all adolescents.

So, if the left are arguing that not allowing minors who believe themselves to be the opposite ‘gender’ from the sex they were born to receive ‘gender-affirming’ care increases suicide risk, why would they concomitantly want to ban homosexual minors from treatment for their homosexuality if being homosexual increases their risk of suicide?

The homosexual lobby contend that conversion therapy is both harmful and ineffective, and whether it is ineffective medically, those claims have certainly been effective politically. But the real issue is one of reproduction: since homosexuals cannot naturally reproduce without stepping into heterosexuality, ‘losing’ homosexuals to normal sex is an attack on all of them. They hate being called “groomers”, but what else is it when they try their hardest to keep every kid growing up sexually confused, and to reduce the societal stigma attached to homosexuality, what else can we call it?

And now we have this:

Michigan Pronouns Law Declared an ‘Abomination’ by Former Judge

by Giulia Carbonaro | Monday, July 3, 2023 | 9:00 AM EDT

Michigan’s recent bill making it a felony for people to harass or intimidate someone by misgendering them and using the wrong pronouns has sparked controversy in the state, with former judge and television personality Joe Brown calling the measure an “abomination.”

The new measure, House Bill 4474, is part of a package of legislation that would replace Michigan’s existing Ethnic Intimidation Act and would make it a hate crime to cause someone to “feel terrorized, frightened, or threatened” with words.

It expands the existing law to cover sex, sexual orientation, age, gender identity or expression, and physical or mental disability. Religion, ethnicity and race were already included in the previous legislation and will still be covered under the new law.

Michigan has recently been pushing reforms and new measures that would expand the protection of LGBTQ+ rights in the state, going against a nationwide trend that has seen other states moving to limit rights for transgender youth.

There’s more at the original.

Apparently the great state of Michigan, in which Governor Gretchen Whitless Whitmer, a Democrat of course, imposed illegal and draconian executive orders to fight the COVID-19 panicdemic, believes that the Freedom of Speech guaranteed to all of us under the Constitution of the United States can, should, and must be regulated to spare the precious feelings of the ‘transgendered.’ I wonder: while I do not live in Michigan, and have never set foot in that state, could I be punished because my website is available there?

Under the bill — which makes it a hate crime for a person to threaten another by deliberately using the wrong pronouns with an intimidating purpose — offenders would be guilty “of a felony punishable by imprisonment for not more than 5 years, or by a fine of not more than $10,000.”

This is what today’s left do: they elevate ‘group rights’ over those of the individual, to support the goals of the State — at least, as long as they control the State — above the individual rights protected by our Constitution. If the law passes, which has not yet happened, it will take someone actually charged and convicted of this ‘crime’, appealing the conviction through multiple layers of courts, to get it reversed, even though simply referring to Bruce Jenner as Bruce Jenner doesn’t hurt anyone. Such a person could wind up serving a sentence in prison before it could ever be reversed.

If someone wants to refer to Bradley Manning as ‘Chelsea,’ that’s perfectly up to them, and no skin of my nose, even if I see it as both silly and stupid; that’s within their free speech rights. But the lower house of the Michigan state legislature would make it a crime to refer to Mr Manning as Bradley, or as Mr Manning.

Bill Blankschaen and Erick Erickson coined the phrase, “You will be made to care“. An issue about which most sensible people would not care — it’s none of my business if Harry wants to become Sally — is becoming one in which the homosexual/transgender lobby are trying to use the power of the State to force people to go along with their kinks and delusions; that makes it other people’s business.

We have pointed it out previously: the left are smart enough to know that if they can control the language used, they can subtly, and perhaps not-so-subtly, direct your thinking. If you can get acclimated to calling someone like Richard Levine “Rachel,” and referring to him with the feminine pronouns, the job of the left is half-way done. That some of us stubbornly insist on calling the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names — if we can find them; sometimes I cannot — and using the pronouns and honorifics appropriate to their actual sex not only fights back against the left, but angers them so much that at least some of them want to make it illegal shows just how important they believe it to be.

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A great Mexican family

We are having to renovate the rectory at St Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, which was, to put it bluntly, somewhat neglected for almost twenty years; our previous pastor was an uncomplaining man, and even in very warm, humid Kentucky, never even wanted air conditioning, save for a single, 110-volt window unit.

Now, we are having to catch up, and our new priest, who is Mexican and very well-liked by the Hispanic communities in the surrounding counties — our county really has few Latinos — and a Mexican family who have their own construction and remodeling company volunteered, volunteered I stress, to help us do some major work. They are not even parishioners here, but at St Mark’s in Richmond, where our priest, Fr Enrico Montoya, has been saying the 1:00 PM Mass in Spanish One thing is certain: though I did a lot of work myself, two contractors in their forties can do more work than my 70-year-old body can do! 🙂

On Saturday, our project was to remove the old carpeting from the rectory. After twenty years of our previous pastor, a child of the Depression who hated spending money, things were just plain not clean.

The brothers, Casiano and Anesimo — I’m not going to use their last names here — showed up, with two sons, in their late teens or early twenties, and we started work. I will say one thing: these guys worked! We cut out the carpets, removed them, and removed the ancient padding under them, to expose the hardwood floors beneath them. Pulling the carpets wasn’t that bad; it was cleaning the floors underneath them! The old padding had stuck to the finish on the original floors, not in one piece, but in small pieces across the entire area. We — including me! — were on our hands and knees, scraping the floors, pulling up staples and the nailer strips that hold wall-to-wall carpets in place. I might have said darn or heck or even shoot a couple of times, had our priest not been there.

The doors of St Elizabeth’s Church, after I refinished them last Fall.

Around 11:30, the men’s wives and families showed up. They set up a long table on the covered front porch, and they had brought a ton of food, for everybody. This was real Mexican food, not what you get at Taco Bell or other Mexican restaurants in the United States, and it was great. I’d never pictured real Mexican food as being anything like this, and Anesimo — I wound up closer friends with him than any of the others — told me that they don’t really consider what we see served in Mexican restaurants around here to be Mexican; their families are from far south in Mexico, near the Guatemalan border, so the cuisine is probably different from closer to the United States.

The family are huge! Lots of kids and grandkids, and the older wives joined right in with their husbands in pulling staples from the floor. They all spoke English, though among themselves, Spanish. And my thoughts were simple: these are the kind of immigrants the United States needs!

I do not know, and certainly didn’t ask, if Anesimo and Casiano and their wives were here legally. Considering that they had built companies in Kentucky, the younger kids were almost certainly born in the United States, and are citizens.

But what we need is the kind of border security that allows families like this into our country, to become citizens, while keeping the riff-raff out. And if the family with which I worked Saturday are here illegally, why don’t we just keep them, and deport some lazy, good-for-nothing Americans sucking up welfare in their place?

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The ‘Wise Latina’ says the quiet part out loud.

At the annual Mario G. Olmos Law and Cultural Diversity Lecture at UC-Berkeley in 2001, Federal Judge Sonia Sotomayor said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Those words were fished out after President Barack Hussein Obama nominated her to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. What can those words mean other than, as a jurist, Hudge Sotomayor would take her decisions, at least in part, based not on the law, but on her race, sex, and ethnicity.

She backed away from that statement in her confirmation hearings, “declaring it ‘a rhetorical flourish that fell flat’ and stating that ‘I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judgment,'” and she was ultimately confirmed, 68 to 31.

Well, today Associate Justice told us, once again, that it isn’t what is written in the law, or the Constitution, that is important, but people’s feelings! In her dissent in 303 Creative v Elenis, she wrote:

The meaning of our Constitution is not found in any law volume, but in the spirit of the people who live under it.[1]303 Creative v Elenis, , page 38 of dissent, page 70 of the .pdf file.

This is rather remarkable. The Justice, utterly horrified by the decision that a Colorado web designer could not be compelled to create a website for a same-sex ‘wedding,’ cited precedent after precedent telling us that the government could, and has, gotten away with both restricting and compelling various forms of commercial speech, along with dozens of citations of laws and court cases concerning equal access to commerce and commercial enterprises. Yet, after all of that long dissent, she broke down and told us that what was written in the law just flat didn’t matter. What mattered, according to our ‘wise Latina,’ is how the people who live in the United States feel about things.

This is a hugely dangerous position, but one which is hardly unexpected. Justice Sotomayor voted against religious freedom in the cases of Calvary Chapel Dayton Valley v. Sisolak and South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom, but railed against the decision, this time supporting the freedom of religion and assembly in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v Cuomo. The cases were all about the same thing: the states forcing churches to close, due to the COVID-19 penicdemic, and Justice Sotomayor believed that the virus trumped the Constitution of the United States.

The good Justice also saw nothing wrong with restricting our Second Amendment rights in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen and McDonald v City of Chicago, or upholding equal protection under the law in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The plain words of the Constitution meant nothing to Justice Sotomayor, or the other liberals on the Court, as they went through all sorts of contortions to say that somehow, some way, the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution just didn’t matter when it came to liberal policies.

The liberals on the Court are hardly the only ones who want to massage the words of the Constitution to mean something other than what they say. The Editorial Board of The New York Times opined:

In striking down affirmative action in higher education on Thursday, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority said it had to do so because the Constitution forbids any form of racial distinction. With a single opinion, the justices overturned decades of precedents that upheld race-conscious admissions policies as consistent with the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and ignored the reality of modern America, where prejudice and racism endure.

The Editorial Board spend many words telling us why Affirmative Action is so desperately needed, yet never manage to give us a reason as to how it fits under the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Thursday’s ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts and joined by all of the Republican-appointed justices, takes a long time to make a simple — and simplistic — point: There is no real difference between the centuries of racial discrimination against Black people and targeted race-conscious efforts to help Black people. Both are equally bad, in this view.

Left unaddressed was one of the Chief Justice’s points, that, in the context of university admissions, which are a zero-sum game, helping black applicants has another effect, hurting white and Asian applicants.

There is so much more that could be said, but, in the end, it boils down to this: the left have programs in mind which elevate the programs of the government over the rights of individuals, and today’s left are fine with that. And that is why sensible people must fight the left, fight for our rights, because the left won’t help us.

References

References
↑1 303 Creative v Elenis, , page 38 of dissent, page 70 of the .pdf file.
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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.

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Dumb as a box of rocks

Were intelligence indicated by a light, there is a good chance that Dylan Mulvaney would be represented by a 15-watt refrigerator bulb. The backlash against Bud Light for using Mr Mulvaney in any form resulted in a customer backlash and boycott that not only hasn’t faded, but seems to be gaining steam three months after the incident. Executives Alissa Heinerscheid and Daniel Blake, initially reported to have taken ‘leaves of absence,’ have reportedly been terminated.

Transgender Influencer Speaks Out After Backlash Against Bud Light

Dylan Mulvaney has faced stalking and personal attacks since featuring Bud Light on her (sic) social media in April, she (sic) said, adding that the beer maker did not contact her (sic) in light of the hostility.

by John Yoon | Thursday, June 29, 2023 | 6:49 PM EDT

A transgender influencer whose social media promotion of Bud Light drew attacks from conservatives and a boycott of the brand spoke directly about the controversy for the first time on Thursday, saying that she (sic) had been bullied and that the beer maker had failed to contact her (sic) in light of the hostility.

Since April, when the influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, featured Bud Light in an Instagram video, she (sic) has faced stalking and personal attacks, she (sic) said in videos she (sic) posted on social media.

“What transpired from that video was more bullying and transphobia than I could have ever imagined,” Ms. (sic) Mulvaney, 26, said. “I’ve been followed, and I have felt a loneliness that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.”

Throughout the controversy, she (sic) continued, Bud Light has not reached out to her (sic). She (sic) was scared to leave her (sic) home while the company failed to stand by her (sic), she (sic) said.

“I was waiting for the brand to reach out to me, but they never did,” she (sic) said. “For a company to hire a trans person and then not publicly stand by them is worse, in my opinion, than not hiring a trans person at all.”

As per our Stylebook, The First Street Journal does not change the direct quotations of others. And while we realize that many professional media organizations specify using the names and pronouns that the ‘transgendered’ claim for themselves, the use of fifteen separate pronouns plus a feminine honorific to refer to Mr Mulvaney, in the subtitle and five short paragraphs, just 191 words of story text plus 34 words of the subtitle, 7.11% of the total words in the story, seems so excessive in normal prose that we believed we needed to note each erroneous usage.

As for Mr Mulvaney’s complaint that no one at Anheuser-Busch BUD: (%) has “reached out” to him, he, and really anyone brighter than the aforementioned 15-watt refrigerator bulb, ought to realize that he’s simply toxic. Who at Anheuser-Busch, unless directly ordered to by CEO Brendan Whitworth — who has been doing his best to isolate himself from the decisions of his minions — would contact Mr Mulvaney in any way, after seeing what happened to Mr Blake and Mrs Heinerscheid? Anything that anyone from the company said to Mr Mulvaney would be reported to the media by him, possibly with a recording. If it was sympathetic to Mr Mulvaney and his plight, such would be used against the company yet again, potentially costing Bud Light even more sales. If it was of the “Get lost and stay lost” variety, it would also be used against the company, to show that they were just [insert plural slang term for the rectum here]. Any contact with Mr Mulvaney is a lose/lose proposition for Anheuser-Busch at this point. And it would be a Career Limiting Move for anyone to do unless so directed by Mr Whitworth.

Calls for a boycott followed, fueled in part by those who had previously attacked the transgender community. One of the most prominent voices included the musician Kid Rock, who posted a video of himself shooting a stack of Bud Light cases.

Bud Light’s sales plummeted. Since then, two of the company’s marketing executives have gone on leave. The company also said in May that it would focus marketing campaigns on sports and music. This month, Bud Light was dethroned as the nation’s top-selling beer. The brand is still struggling to win back customers.

Bud Light has been criticized by some members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community for its tepid response to the backlash.

But the conservative outburst has spread to brand partnerships that other companies have struck with transgender people. Like Bud Light, the retail company Target shifted its marketing because of opposition to the company’s inclusion of L.G.B.T.Q. communities. The country singer Garth Brooks was criticized when he said at a music event that his new bar in Nashville would serve many types of beer, including Bud Light.

Simply put, it doesn’t matter what the #woke think. Not everyone is ‘woke,’ and when a lot of your customers don’t go along with the far-left ideology, leave politics out of your advertising, or those customers will leave dollars out of your pocket.

“Supporting trans people shouldn’t be political,” she (sic) said. “There should be nothing controversial or divisive about working with us.”

Sorry, but regardless of how Mr Mulvaney thinks things should be, ‘transgenderism’ is controversial and divisive. While Hahvahd educated Mrs Heinerscheid wasn’t as bright as that 15-watt bulb, almost everyone else can see that it is.

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The Supreme Court destroys all chances of race-based ‘reparations’

It was 2003 when the Supreme Court released its decision in Grutter v Bollinger, 539 U. S. ____ (2003), in which a bare majority allowed the University of Michigan Law School to continue to consider race in its admissions decisions. Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor concluded, in something we have cited previously:

We take the Law School at its word that it would like nothing better than to find a race-neutral admissions formula and will terminate its race-conscious admissions program as soon as practicable. See Brief for Respondents Bollinger et al. 34; Bakke, supra, at 317ñ318 (opinion of Powell, J.) (presuming good faith of university officials in the absence of a showing to the contrary). It has been 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to further an interest in student body diversity in the context of public higher education. Since that time, the number of minority applicants with high grades and test scores has indeed increased. We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.[1]Grutter v Bollinger, Decision of the Court, page 31 of the .pdf file.

I have long said that it was internally both significant and stupid that the Supreme Court allowed something it said would be unconstitutional come June 23, 2028 to be allowable up until that time. Well, it has taken 20 of those 25 years, but the Supreme Court has finally righted that wrong. The Supreme Court finally released its decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.

To hear the principal dissent tell it, Grutter blessed such programs indefinitely, until “racial inequality will end.” Post, at 54 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). But Grutter did no such thing. It emphasized—not once or twice, but at least six separate times—that race-based admissions programs “must have reasonable durational limits” and that their “deviation from the norm of equal treatment” must be “a temporary matter.” 539 U. S., at 342. The Court also disclaimed “[e]nshrining a permanent justification for racial preferences.” Ibid. Yet the justification for race-based admissions that the dissent latches on to is just that—unceasing.[2]Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Decision of the Court, page 36-37 of the decision, and pages 44-45 of the .pdf file.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, emphasized what we have known all along: the racially biased admissions structure being used by colleges and universities was not moving steadily, or in any way at all, to a terminal date in 2028, and that the schools which were party to this case, Harvard University and the University of North Carolina made no claims that they were proceeding toward that end.

In what may be an underappreciated footnote number 9, the Chief Justice noted:

The principal dissent rebukes the Court for not considering adequately the reliance interests respondents and other universities had in Grutter. But as we have explained, Grutter itself limited the reliance that could be placed upon it by insisting, over and over again, that race-based admissions programs be limited in time. See supra, at 20. Grutter indeed went so far as to suggest a specific period of reliance — 25 years — precluding the indefinite reliance interests that the dissent articulates. Cf. post, at 2–4 (KAVANAUGH, J., concurring). Those interests are, moreover, vastly overstated on their own terms. Three out of every five American universities do not consider race in their admissions decisions. See Brief for Respondent in No. 20–1199, p. 40. And several States — including some of the most populous (California, Florida, and Michigan) — have prohibited race-based admissions outright. See Brief for Oklahoma et al. as Amici Curiae 9, n. 6.[3]Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Decision of the Court, page 38 of the decision, and page 46 of the .pdf file.

If roughly 60% of American colleges and universities do not consider race at all in their admissions decisions, then it becomes clear that the consideration of race is unnecessary.

Court decisions are difficult to read, in large part due to all of the internal citations, but also because lawyers are, let’s face it, not usually all that great with prose. Nevertheless, I’d invite all of my readers — both of them! — to follow the link and read the decision.

There will be thousands of articles about this decision, and at least in our nation’s professional media, most will be negative. Solomon Jones in The Philadelphia Inquirer has a column entitled “Affirmative action is racial justice. The Supreme Court ruling is a step backwards. To be blunt, right-wing activists aren’t fighting to abolish racial preferences. They’re fighting to maintain them.” Mr Jones went through many of the reasons he believes we need Affirmative Action, but his column is noteworthy in one major way: he made no argument at all that the Court’s decision was based on a faulty reading of the Constitution.[4]Actually, Mr Jones’ column reads very much as though it was written before the Court’s decision was released, and that he had not been able to read the decision before he wrote his piece.

In a mostly straight news article, Susan Snyder reported on how some Pennsylvania universities will deal with the decision, noting the sole exception the Chief Justice allowed, that in individual admission essays, the way racial discrimination impacted an individual applicant, and how he overcame them, could be considered. Count on admissions departments to start advising applicants to write about that!

The Editorial Board also weighed in on the subject.

But there was one brief point in the decision that seemed very important to me, and which I haven’t seen mentioned by anyone else:

The Court soon adopted Justice Powell’s analysis as its own. In the years after Bakke, the Court repeatedly held that ameliorating societal discrimination does not constitute a compelling interest that justifies race-based state action. “[A]n effort to alleviate the effects of societal discrimination is not a compelling interest,” we said plainly in Hunt, a 1996 case about the Voting Rights Act. 517 U. S., at 909–910. We reached the same conclusion in Croson, a case that concerned a preferential government contracting program. Permitting “past societal discrimination” to “serve as the basis for rigid racial preferences would be to open the door to competing claims for ‘remedial relief ’ for every disadvantaged group.” 488 U. S., at 505. Opening that door would shutter another—“[t]he dream of a Nation of equal citizens . . . would be lost,” we observed, “in a mosaic of shifting preferences based on inherently unmeasurable claims of past wrongs.” Id., at 505–506. “[S]uch a result would be contrary to both the letter and spirit of a constitutional provision whose central command is equality.”[5]Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Decision of the Court, page 35-36 of the decision, and pages 43-44 of the .pdf file.

The Chief Justice spent a significant amount of time, earlier in the decision, noting how the Fourteenth Amendment specified equal protection of the law, and that many subsequent decisions, as well as statements by elected officials and others, meant that equal protection of the law meant that all were equal under the law, regardless of race. With the paragraph above, the Court said that neither “ameliorating societal discrimination” nor allowing “past societal discrimination” to “serve as the basis for rigid racial preferences would be to open the door to competing claims for ‘remedial relief ’ for every disadvantaged group” was constitutionally allowable, and that must certainly mean that payments or advantages given to black Americans, from the taxes of white Americans, for the enslavement of their distant ancestors, can be legal.

Robert Stacy McCain noted, amusingly enough, that only Donald Trump, among all living Presidents, is not the descendant of slave owners, as Mr Trump’s family did not arrive on these shores until after slavery had been ended. Since only direct injury, caused by a specifiable person or institution, is the basis for restorative payments, and there are no living Americans who were enslaved, it is impossible, under the Court’s standard to allow all black Americans, none of whom were directly injured by slavery, to be paid by white Americans, none of whom owned slaves and most of whom cannot be traced back to a slaveowner.

Naturally, the Usual Suspects are aghast that the Court said that racial preferences violate the Fourteenth Amendment, but the Court has, for at least 45 years since Regents of the University of California v Bakke tried to massage the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to mean something other than what it actually says. Now, at last, the Court has decided that yes, equal protection of the laws actually means equal protection of the laws.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.
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References

References
↑1 Grutter v Bollinger, Decision of the Court, page 31 of the .pdf file.
↑2 Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Decision of the Court, page 36-37 of the decision, and pages 44-45 of the .pdf file.
↑3 Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Decision of the Court, page 38 of the decision, and page 46 of the .pdf file.
↑4 Actually, Mr Jones’ column reads very much as though it was written before the Court’s decision was released, and that he had not been able to read the decision before he wrote his piece.
↑5 Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, Decision of the Court, page 35-36 of the decision, and pages 43-44 of the .pdf file.
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Today’s #woke left sure do hate Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, and democracy . . . when those things go against leftist values

I will admit it up front: when I saw the article on the front page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website main page, and cited below, I expected one dripping with liberal bias, but it was actually mostly balanced reporting.

Why Moms for Liberty was designated an ‘extremist’ group by the Southern Poverty Law Center

Born out of opposition to COVID-19 mandates in schools, Moms of Liberty pivoted to targeting diversity education and how LGBTQ issues are handled by schools.

by Maddie Hanna | Wednesday, June 28, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Moms for Liberty calls itself a parent empowerment group. But as the polarizing organization arrives in Philadelphia this week for its annual summit, it’s being identified as something else: an “antigovernment extremist group.”

That’s according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the veteran civil rights organization that tracks domestic extremism. This year, the group added a number of “parental rights” groups — the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to them as “anti-student-inclusion” — to its tally of hate and antigovernment extremist groups.

Robert Stacy McCain has done a lot of reporting on the Southern Poverty Law Center, SPLC, and pointed out, in an article asking “What counts as hate?“, writing:

by continually expanding the definition of “hate” and “extremism,” and by encouraging censorship and suppression of anyone who dissents from their liberal agenda, the SPLC compels people with more or less mainstream beliefs to engage in the kind of activism practiced by Moms for Liberty. Furthermore  (and, again, I think SPLC staff are too stupid to grasp this), by denoting mainstream groups as proponents of “hate,” the SPLC undermines its own credibility and causes people who are not remotely “extremist” to question the whole rationale of this type of “hate”-hunting enterprise. Like, why should we even care if someone is prejudiced against gay people or black people or Jews or whatever? So long as they are not engaged in any actual criminal behavior, or advocating violence against others, people are free to form their own opinions. This whole business of “exposing” people as holding allegedly dangerous beliefs — which is to say, acting as Thought Police — is antithetical to liberty. And I think more Americans are beginning to reject the type of Thought Police agenda that SPLC pursues.

Of course, in heavily Democratic Philadelphia, where so many seem to despise freedom of speech for the people they oppose, the staff at the American Revolution Museum in Philadelphia, a revolution against the British government spread by freedom of speech and of the press, don’t support allowing the Moms being allowed to speak.

Back to the Inquirer:

Moms for Liberty has accused the Southern Poverty Law Center of espousing “hate” toward its members. Here’s why the organization says Moms for Liberty warrants the designation:

What makes Moms for Liberty an antigovernment group?

Founded in Florida in 2021, Moms for Liberty was born out of opposition to COVID-19 mandates in schools and now claims 285 chapters across 45 states. It pivoted to targeting diversity education and how LGBTQ issues are handled by schools, as part of a broader conservative movement that has accused schools of indoctrinating students around race, gender, and sexuality.

Heaven forfend! Some parents are opposed to the public schools, which have, due to the compulsory education laws in every state, what is, in effect, a captive audience, been teaching, been indoctrinating, beliefs which are opposed to some people’s religious beliefs, and opposed to simple, common sense. It wasn’t so very long ago that girls who like rough-and-tumble, who would go out and get dirty and sweaty playing ball with the boys were called, sometimes admiringly and sometimes not, tomboys, but everyone knew that they were still girls. There was a time in which boys who liked to play with dolls or do somewhat ‘girly’ things were called, never admiringly, sissies, but everyone knew that they were still boys. Now? Now, they’re not what they were born, but one of 1 × 10n new ‘genders,’ you’ve got to call them that, and it’s time to reach for the puberty blockers and surgical scalpel. No one would ever say that public school libraries should have materials showing girls fellating boys, but today’s left — which includes a lot of public school teachers and administrators — are aghast that some people are opposed to having materials in public school libraries which depict boys fellating boys. Many concerned parents do not want this kind of stuff normalized, but if you are a parent who doesn’t want that, the SPLC says that you are a hater and an anti-government extremist.

That messaging is what landed Moms for Liberty on the SPLC’s list, said Maya Henson Carey, a research analyst with SPLC’s Intelligence Project.

“It’s really looking at their overall narrative: that public educators and public schools are attempting to indoctrinate and sexualize children through this radical Marxist agenda,” Carey said.

The SPLC notes statements from Moms for Liberty leaders, including the group’s slogan that “we do not co-parent with the government,” comments referring to “government schools,” support for abolishing the federal Department of Education, and accusations that teachers unions are responsible for indoctrination.

In one example flagged by the SPLC, Moms for Liberty said last year that “the K-12 cartel — also known as the national teachers union (NEA) — met and drafted a proposal to replace the word ‘mother’ with ‘birthing person.’” Describing the proposal as “insane,” Moms for Liberty said that “as the teachers union pushes an agenda focused on everything but educating our children, American parents are rising up, taking back our school districts and putting the focus back on educating our children.”

We have previously reported how The Washington Post kowtowed to the #woke by headlining an article with “pregnant people” in both the title and body, and a site search of the Inquirer’s website returned 2,905 references to “pregnant people,” 1,062 references to “pregnant person,” 1,643 references to “birthing person,” and 4,669 references to “birthing people.” Is that what the Inky’s stylebook now requires? Is it surprising that sensible people would note these assaults on language and attempts to normalize transgenderism and the notion that men can get pregnant and have babies?

Well, perhaps the SPLC were not surprised at that, but Maya Henson Carey said that the SPLC cited such objections as part of the reason Moms for Liberty was declared to be an “anti-government extremist” group.

After several paragraphs in which Dr Carey claimed that the Moms must be raaaaacist, comparing their objections to critical race theory, the education of which has a strong political component, she went on:

Moms for Liberty has also opposed policies accommodating transgender students and has referred to gender dysphoria as being “normalized by predators.” And while Moms for Liberty has said it’s focused on removing inappropriate sexual content, efforts to ban books from libraries have disproportionately targeted stories about LGBTQ people or people of color, Carey said.

It’s certainly true that the Moms are fighting the normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism in the public schools, but that’s what they should be doing. It’s an obvious question: why on earth would the public schools be pushing normalization of homosexuality and transgenderism in the first place? Why would the public schools be pushing something which is opposed by many religions, why would they be pushing something that is directly contrary to the religious faiths of many parents?

Is not the state pushing a particular issue which violates a lot of people’s religious faith in itself a state establishment of religion?

Carey said the education groups represent a trend of “a shift to public spaces” by extremist groups, that “comes with them showing up for school board meetings and running for public office. A lot of these antigovernment and hate groups are really infiltrating the lives of everyday Americans.”

And there you have it: an SPLC spokeswoman is complaining that conservatives are exercising their freedom of speech, and, in what must surely be a horrific attack on democracy, are doing something really radical like running for office in democratic elections!

 

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Get #woke, go broke!

We have previously reported on the self-inflicted brand wound Budweiser and Bud Light suffered. Bud Light Vice President for Marketing Alissa Heinerscheid and her boss Daniel Blake, who oversees marketing for Anheuser-Busch’s mainstream brands, took ‘leaves of absence’ in April, leaves which were reported to not have been voluntary.

Report: Bud Light Makes Decision On Execs Responsible For March Madness Controversy

Story by Chris Rosvoglou • Tuesday, June 27, 2023

According to a report from the Daily Caller, the executives at Anheuser-Busch responsible for the Bud Light controversy that took place during March Madness are out.

Bud Light partnered up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney during the NCAA Tournament. That didn’t sit well with a large portion of Bud Light’s consumer demographic.

The Daily Caller was told that group vice president for marketing Daniel Blake and Bud Light marketing vice president Alissa Heinerscheid are “gone gone.”

Assuming that this report is accurate, it sends a strong message to other corporate executives: f(ornicate) up like this, and you are toast. Not just toast, but toast which has fallen on the floor, buttered side down.

Just Embarrassing! Bud Light Hits New Weekly Low In Sales After Dylan Mulvaney Disaster, Down Nearly A Whopping 30%

Story by Andrew Powell • Monday, June 26, 2023

It just gets worse and worse for Bud Light.

Also see: William Teach: Bud Light Continues Digging, Brings Back “Old” Mascot

Under the Anheuser-Busch umbrella, Bud Light has been tanking in sales ever since their horrendously bad decision to partner with Dylan Mulvaney. And judging by the latest sales data, it doesn’t look like the bleeding will stop anytime soon. As a matter of fact, the blows to Bud Light have gotten worse.

Compared to the same time period of 2022, sales for the beer company are down a whopping 28.5%, according to data for the week ending June 17 from Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ via the New York Post.

Last week, Bud Light’s decline was at 26.8%, making this week actually worse than prior.

When it comes to the Anheuser-Busch brand altogether, Bud Light isn’t their only beer taking a hit because of their “wokeness.” With their other drinks, Budweiser’s sales are down 12.3%, while Busch Light has dipped 8.1% and Michelob Ultra took a 4% slide, according to Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ data.

Bud Light’s competition, meanwhile, is taking complete advantage of their collapse with skyrocketing numbers. Rival Yuengling Lager has shot up 25.1%, while Coors Light is seeing green at 21.8% and Miller Lite is at 16%.

It’s not just sales either. The stock price of Anheuser-Busch has slipped 15.33% since the Mulvaney campaign. At the end of March around the time of the NCAA college basketball tournament, the beer corporation’s stock was at $66.73. As of Monday afternoon, it’s down to $56.50. In total, Anheuser-Busch’s stock has seen a 15% decline.

There’s more at the original, and while I hate to see anyone get fired, Mr Blake and Mrs Heinerscheid caused a backlash that has cost Bud Light more than a quarter of its total sales. I’m guessing that the lawyers have managed to get some non-disclosure agreement contract buyout for the former execs, but tanking your company’s sales by more than a quarter is an unrecoverable error.