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July 2023

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The DeSantis Campaign Ain’t Dead. Here’s Why. By Matt Margolis

By on July 11th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/07/10/the-desantis-campaign-aint-dead-heres-why-n1709545

It’s hard to go on social media and not find someone pronouncing the DeSantis campaign as being dead in the water. I’ve seen enough posts desperately making the argument that he GOP primary was over long before it began, and anything other than crowning Trump the victor before a single debate is even held or a single vote cast is met with a chorus of mockery. I should know as I get plenty of hate mail for pointing out that DeSantis has plenty of time to eclipse Trump.

It’s not just the liberal media that seems to thrive on the narrative that DeSantis is choking. One of the common narratives is that his campaign launch was a disaster, even though the launch brought in record-breaking haul of $8.2 million in campaign donations  in the first 24 hours following the announcement. Clearly, there is a considerable base of individuals who believe in his leadership and policy agenda.

Last week, the DeSantis campaign released its first quarter fundraising numbers, and they showed he raised a whopping $20 million since launching his campaign on May 24.  The campaign noted it was the “largest first-quarter filing from any non-incumbent Republican candidate in more than a decade,” and that it even “bests the $18.3 million former president and quasi-incumbent Donald Trump’s campaign raised during his first two fundraising quarters as a candidate ($3.8 in Q4 2022 and $14.5 in Q1 2023).”

Nevertheless the narrative continues. On Fox News on Sunday, host Maria Bartiromo implied DeSantis is dying politically, and asked him outright, “[W]hat’s going on with your campaign? There was a lot of optimism about you running for president earlier in the year.” Then she cited some media headlines about his supposedly lackluster campaign.

“Maria, these are narratives. The media does not want me to be the nominee,” DeSantis explained. “I think that’s very clear. Why? Because they know I’ll beat Biden but even more importantly, they know that I will actually deliver on all these things. We will stop the invasion at the border. We will take on the drug cartels. We will curtail the administrative state. We will get spending under control. We will do all the things that they don’t want to see done and so they are going to continue doing the type of narrative. I can tell you we understand that this is a state-by-state process.”

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Global Warming An Infinite Number Of Days To Flatten The CO2 Curve

By on July 11th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/07/11/an-infinite-number-of-days-to-flatten-the-co2-curve/

“What we should have learned from the COVID lockdowns is that tolerating petty tyranny leads to absolute tyranny. We’re not there yet, but we’re well on the road to it and it has been paved with malicious intent.”

When three years ago we were told that if we stayed inside for 15 days we could flatten the curve of COVID-19 cases, there was no real effort to respond with civil disobedience. It was a profound mistake, one we paid dearly for and will again, if we don’t stand up to the tyranny.

Yes, we know it was President Donald Trump who issued in March 2020 a set of guidelines that called for 15 days to slow the spread by limiting our travel and staying away from social settings. At the end of March, under more pressure from “experts” he should have fired, he extended the guidelines for another month.

Trump eventually, though tacitly, acknowledged that he made a mistake, when during the summer he said, to great caterwauling from the “closers” on the left, that it was “important for all Americans to recognize that a permanent lockdown is not a viable path forward and would ultimately inflict more harm than it would prevent.”

It was an admission no single Democrat ever made. Indeed, the Democrats wanted the lockdowns to be open-ended. They not only enjoyed taking captive society and commerce in the way that true authoritarians amuse themselves by being in control of others, they took notes so that the next time they will be able to more easily bump restrictions to the next level.

And when might that be? Impossible to say. All we can know is that attempts will be made.

In what other way can we read proposals such as the ​​“climate emergency” initiative referred to by Joseph Goffman, who holds an appointed position at the Environmental Protection Agency? How would the government deal with a climate emergency outside of placing limits on our movements as a free people?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The States in America Where Incomes Grow Faster New federal data show a striking divergence between earnings growth in GOP-led states and progressive states.

By on July 11th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gop-states-incomes-economic-growth-bureau-of-economic-analysis-465ce23?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden will never admit it, but he has Republican-led states to thank for the resilient U.S. economy and labor market. Witness how an earnings surge in right-leaning states is helping compensate for sluggish growth in progressive ones.

New state personal income data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis highlights how aggregate worker and proprietor earnings in red states grew significantly more in the last year than in the blues. The disparity owes to GOP-led states adding more jobs, including in higher-paying industries like tech and finance, along with faster-growing wages.

Earnings nationwide rose 5.4% on average between the first quarters of 2022 and 2023, but much less in New York (2.6%), Indiana (2.6%), California (2.9%), Connecticut (3.4%), Rhode Island (3.6%), Maryland (4%), New Jersey (4.3%), Oregon (4.5%) and Illinois (4.6%). Apart from Indiana, these states are run by Democrats—and most have been for years. They boast high taxes and a high cost of living, which along with Covid lockdowns spurred increased out-migration during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, earnings in the same period surged in North Dakota (9.7%), New Mexico (9.6%), Nevada (9.1%), Florida (9.1%), Nebraska (8.6%), Hawaii (8%), South Carolina (8%), Alaska (7.9%) and Texas (7.7%).

How to explain this? California suffered from tech layoffs. Hawaii, Florida and Nevada benefited from a tourism resurgence after Covid’s Omicron wave ebbed. Higher oil and gas prices and production boosted earnings in New Mexico, North Dakota and Alaska, though less so in Texas, which has a more diverse economy.

States with higher earnings growth also tend to have lower tax rates as well as fast-growing populations. Consider neighboring Utah (7.2%) and Colorado (4.9%), which have similar economies but diverging political climates as Colorado becomes more like California. Could that be affecting its earnings growth?

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Affirmative Action Bred 50 Years of ‘Mismatch’ Thinking elite schools are the only path to success for students is a form of intellectual snobbery. By Heather Mac Donald

By on July 11th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/racial-preferences-bred-50-years-of-mismatch-harvard-sat-scores-equality-7942bd8e?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Justice Sonia Sotomayor had harsh words for her colleagues who voted last month to bar the use of race in college admissions. She alleged in her dissenting opinion that the six-justice majority in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard had subverted the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law, not upheld it, by “further entrenching racial inequality in education.” Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion slammed shut the door of opportunity to underrepresented minorities, especially black students, who still fight against a society that is “inherently unequal,” she wrote.

Many in academia agreed with Justice Sotomayor. Incoming Harvard president Claudine Gay warned in a video statement that the decision “means the real possibility that opportunities will be foreclosed.” David A. Thomas, president of historically black Morehouse College, asserted that in the absence of racial preferences, black students will rightly conclude that they are “not wanted.” Students “of color” may not feel that they “matter,” according to Angel B. Pérez, chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling.

The charge that colorblind admissions will foreclose educational opportunities for blacks rests on a breathtakingly elitist view of education. And the idea that minority students should now conclude that they aren’t “wanted” on college campuses defies reality. Black students will attend college in the same numbers after affirmative action as they did before, if they so choose. Colleges will be as eager to have them. The only difference, assuming compliance with the ruling (a big if), is that such students will attend college on the same footing as most students from unpreferred racial groups: admitted to schools for which their academic skills qualify them.

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