RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coming-biden-bailout-of-blue-states-and-cities-rhode-island-california-pension-liability-underwater-rates-svb-5033c1e5?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The Federal Reserve’s latest interest-rate hike paired with the continuing bank panic is causing credit conditions to tighten. State and local governments could be the next sinking ships that Washington gets called on to rescue.

More than a decade of near-zero rates allowed state and local governments to borrow cheaply. At the same time, the Fed’s quantitative easing inflated asset values and prompted pension funds chasing high returns to pile into riskier higher-yielding investments. Now that the music has stopped, the bills for years’ worth of monetary exuberance are coming due.

The balance-sheet risks for mismanaged states and municipalities have been hiding in plain sight just as they were at Silicon Valley Bank. Continued financial-market turmoil and a prolonged economic downturn could cause some pension funds to collapse and cities to declare bankruptcy. Taxpayers will invariably wind up on the hook for politicians’ bad financial bets.

Local government economic-development projects are already growing more expensive and less attractive to private investors owing to rising rates. Consider the $124 million minor-league soccer stadium in Pawtucket, R.I., set to receive about $60 million in state tax credits, federal Covid aid and public debt. Construction started over the winter, but the project’s developer is struggling to raise money to complete it as credit conditions tighten. That means taxpayers could wind up paying more of the costs, which explains Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee’s outburst at the central bank last week.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/01/banana-time-for-the-rule-of-law/

The Czech novelist Milan Kundera published The Joke, his first novel, in 1967. It traces the fortunes of Ludvik, a young student, after his politically correct girlfriend shows the Communist authorities a postcard he had written to her as a joke: “Optimism is the opium of the people! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky! Ludvik.” As a result of this whimsy, Ludvik finds himself expelled from the Communist Party, the university, and is eventually conscripted to work in the mines. 

That’s the way things are in totalitarian societies. No jokes allowed, especially not jokes told at the expense of the regime. 

Thus it is that North Korea banned sarcasm and irony. 

Poor Ludvik suffered for his joke. But he got off easy compared to Douglass Mackey, a social media “influencer” who wrote under the pen name “Ricky Vaughn.” 

During the 2016 election cycle, Mackey/Vaughn posted a funny meme urging Hillary voters to “avoid the line and vote from home” by texting “Hillary” to a certain number. 

Who would be stupid enough to fall for such a joke? No one. But his satire was effective enough to get him banned from the pre-Elon Musk era Twitter. And the feds thought—or said they thought—that it was part of a “plot to disenfranchise black and women voters.” I guess that shows you what they think of black and women voters. 

It sounds stupid. It is stupid. But Mackey was charged with a felony and on Friday was convicted in the Eastern District of New York. He faces up to 10 years in jail for (as an official announcement crows) “his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.”

https://pjmedia.com/culture/chris-queen/2023/04/01/winsome-sears-gives-real-time-some-real-talk-about-parenting-and-gender-n1683630

Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears (R-Va.) is a national treasure. She’s the first woman to serve as Virginia’s lieutenant governor and the first black woman to hold a statewide office in that state. She’s a veteran and has an inspiring story as an immigrant from Jamaica to the U.S. She’s also a compelling speaker and gives delightful interviews — so much so that she lives up to her first name.

Sears’ appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher on Friday night demonstrates how wonderful of a voice she is when it comes to conservatism and traditional values. Appearing on a panel with Tablet columnist James Kirchick and Gov. Chris Sununu (R-N.H.), she gave Maher’s audience a dose of perspective about the recent Nashville shooting and tied it in with the rights of parents to protect their children from the state.

The video clip begins in the middle of Kirchick talking about how the media has treated the Nashville shooter’s gender identity mess differently than it usually treats transgender people.

“They are referring to the murderer by their given name, not their chosen name, and by their referring to her as a woman, as opposed to what her identity apparently was, was a man, which is not the way the media usually does these things,” Kirchick says. “They’re usually very particular about the subjective sense of gender identity and respecting that if someone says they’re a man, then they’re a man, but in this case, they’re not doing that.”

But then Sears jumps in with some unvarnished truth.

“Hang on,” she begins. “You know what? This person murdered six people. I don’t really care who you say you are. You murdered six people, and three of them were children. You don’t get a say — well, she’s dead now, so, you know — but you don’t get a say in telling us who you are and what you’re about. You killed six people.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/04/01/bill-maher-and-j-k-rowling-are-asking-questions-about-transgenderism-that-many-on-the-left-wont-n1683725

A Gallup poll from last year found that the percentage of Americans identifying as LGBT increases with each generation, with less than 1% of those born before 1946, 2.6% of Baby Boomers, 4.2% of Generation X, 10.5% of millennials, and 20.8% of Gen Z. Does that look organic? Of course, it doesn’t; it’s a social contagion. Even left-wing comedian Bill Maher recognizes what’s happening: that being LGBT, particularly transgender, is trendy.

Transgenderism was once extremely rare and limited to middle-aged men. However, it has become increasingly prevalent among children in recent years, with a surge in young girls expressing a desire to transition.

“I think most who do it, you know I’ve talked to parents about this, a lot of times you just know that kid is not gay, you know, there was just, the factory installed equipment didn’t match, ok, that’s a real thing, it happens, it’s rare but it happens. But, and you’re talking about, there are other ones now because it is also somewhat trendy, I know people hate to hear that but it’s obviously true, there is an element of social contagion, or else it wouldn’t be so prevalent in here [California] and not in Indiana, it wouldn’t be regional,” Maher said.

This is not the first time that Maher acknowledged the transgender social contagion.

“If we can’t admit that, in certain enclaves, there is some level of trendiness to the idea of being anything other than straight, then this is not a serious, science-based discussion. It’s a blow being struck in the culture wars using children as cannon fodder,” he said last year.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/31/from-stanford-to-israel-mobocracy-triumphs-over-deliberation/

The very notion of republican self-governance, which has been a core tenet of Western Civilization since the demise of the great monarchs of Europe, depends upon the willingness of citizens to debate and deliberate the most pressing issues of society. Sadly, high-profile recent examples, from the tony terrain of Stanford University all the way to the raucous streets of Tel Aviv, Israel, underscore the extent to which Western societies have given up on reasoned deliberation and capitulated to mobocracy. Where this civilizational decline ultimately ends is anyone’s guess.

Earlier this month, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan was relentlessly heckled and successfully shouted down by a frothing mob of mini-Robespierre jackals who call themselves Stanford Law School students. The mob was simultaneously juvenile and outright vile, with one student unconscionably yelling to the esteemed jurist, “We hope your daughters get raped!” Even more galling, “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach finally rose up upon the judge’s plea to restore order . . . and, in prepared remarks, sided with the protesters and ludicrously asked whether the “juice” (of Judge Duncan’s planned remarks) was worth the “squeeze” of the alleged “harm” to the pampered brat students that Duncan’s mere presence caused. (Steinbach has since been placed on administrative leave by Dean Jenny Martinez, although the culpable students have tragically escaped thus far with impunity.)

Earlier this week in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose conservative governing coalition has for months been pushing a set of anodyne, sorely needed and long-overdue reforms to the unaccountable and almighty Israeli Supreme Court, agreed to pause his legislative push amidst unprecedented pushback and widespread societal meltdown. The at-times hundreds of thousands of rioters in the streets, who blocked highways and tracked down and physically intimidated leading pro-reform legislators and even Netanyahu’s wife, had reached a debilitating fever pitch. A disturbing number of Israel Defense Forces reservists had reneged upon their military duties. Powerful unions had successfully temporarily grounded all departing flights from Ben Gurion International Airport. Venture capitalists had pulled billions of U.S. dollars’ worth of investment out of Israel’s thriving high-tech sector. All this, despite the left-wing opposition categorically refusing to sit down and negotiate in good faith on the judicial reform legislation.