Biden is Su-ing America Inside the incompetent, anti-worker and unaccountable world of Labor Secretary pick Julie Su. by Lloyd Billingsley

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-is-su-ing-america/

Joe Biden hails Julie Su as a “tested and experienced leader” and has tapped her for Labor Secretary, subject to confirmation by the Senate. The hearing gives senators a chance to expose Su’s leadership of California’s Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA) which oversees the Employment Development Department (EDD) responsible for unemployment claims.

On Su’s Watch the EDD sent more than $31 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims to people in California, out of state, and even out of the country. In 2020 alone, Su confirmed, fraudsters stole at least $11.4 billion in California unemployment benefits. As it happens, fraud was not a new problem at the EDD.

As California’s state auditor reported, “EDD had no comprehensive plan for how it would respond if California experienced a recession and UI claims increased accordingly.” Su had failed to modernize outdated EDD technology, and in the early days of the pandemic relaxed eligibility requirements for EDD claims. Criminals took full advantage.

The state approved more than $140 million for at least 20,000 prisoners. Convicts who made fraudulent claims included convicted murderers Scott Peterson and Cary Stayner. Death row inmates accounted for at least 158 claims landing more than $420,000 in benefits.

Inmates used their real names, fake names and fake Social Security numbers. One convict filed a claim under the name “poopy britches,” but Fontrell Antonio Baines of Memphis, Tennessee, took it to another level. The rapper obtained debit cards pre-loaded with unemployment benefits administered by the California Employment Development Department, issued in the names of third parties and victims of identity theft.

Baines, also known as “Nuke Bizzle,” posted a video titled “EDD,” bragging about “my swagger for EDD,” as a second rapper says “You gotta sell cocaine. I just file a claim.” And as Nuke Bizzle explains,  “I done got rich off EDD. . .I just might swipe me a lump sum. I’m in Dior havin’ money fun. . . Ten cards, I’m swiping 10K a day. Counting up bills like a CPA.”

5 of the Most Important Stories in the History of America All in one week. by Wayne Allyn Root

https://www.frontpagemag.com/5-of-the-most-important-stories-in-the-history-of-america/

I’ve written literally thousands of commentaries, and I’ve never had this problem before. I have five of the biggest stories in the history of America to tell you about — all at the same time. They’re all so important, I can’t decide which one to write about. So, I’m going to write about all five.

I’ll let you choose which one I should write about in expanded detail next week. Send me an email. Vote for the story you’d like me to write about in detail: WayneRoot@gmail.com

In the meantime, here is a short and sweet “Cliff Notes” version of all five.

STORY No. 1: Of Course China Likely Intentionally Released COVID-19. But Even More Shocking is Who Helped Them

Everyone in power is finally in agreement that COVID-19 most likely came from a Chinese biowarfare lab. I told you that three years ago. But even that is not the real shocker. Tucker Carlson had a doctor who escaped China on his show this week. She says China intentionally released COVID-19 to destroy America and the Western economies. This was a planned attack upon America.

I’ve been predicting that story for three years too. China had just lost the trade war. Their entire economy was about to collapse. At that exact moment, COVID-19 was unleashed on America and the Western world. That was never a coincidence. But I’ve got an even bigger shocker…

The biggest story is that China did not do this alone.

Stanley Kurtz:DeSantis Is Putting the Public Back in Public Universities Florida’s extraordinary House Bill 999 is the most ambitious legislative pushback against the woke university yet.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/desantis-is-putting-the-public-back-in-public-universities/?utm_

Florida’s extraordinary House Bill 999 is the most ambitious legislative pushback against the woke university yet. Sponsored by Representative Alex Andrade, H.B. 999 is the legislative flagship in Governor Ron DeSantis’s armada of higher-education reforms.

It has been introduced in the Florida house, and a hearing has been scheduled.

To be sure, H.B. 999 has its problems. In a follow-up piece, I’ll speak to the need to pare back some of the overreach that’s left critics of DeSantis in a dither. Yet the thrust of H.B. 999 is most welcome — and long overdue. Dealing with the bill’s many initiatives and controversies will take several posts. Last week, I defended H.B. 999’s provisions on faculty appointments. Today, I want to examine the bill’s mandates for civic education and the study of Western civilization.

H.B. 999 directs Florida’s public universities to build general-education requirements around courses that “promote the education for citizenship of the constitutional republic.” H.B. 999 also insists that general-education courses “promote the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization.” On top of that, the bill requires that general-education courses, where appropriate, include “studies of this nation’s historical documents, including the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments thereto, and the Federalist Papers.”

Are you shocked yet? Most people, of course, will find these provisions perfectly ordinary and acceptable. Many professors, on the other hand, see these requirements as downright scary.

The critics will tell you that it’s not so much the content of these requirements that bothers them as the principle at stake. Actually, for many, the content is what they object to. In any case, the principle in play is articulated by liberal campus-free-speech expert Keith Whittington, who frets that “Florida is breaking new ground in insisting that state universities convey the government’s favored message in its classes.” New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall worries about DeSantis laying out “what must be taught.” In Edsall’s view, politicians ought not to be leveraging public universities “in the service of their own agenda.” (Civics and Western civilization: DeSantis’s nefarious agenda exposed!) John Sensbach, chairman of the history department at the University of Florida, says he’s “not convinced that the founding fathers would have endorsed” such an approach.

Some Walls Might Be Closing in on the Biden Crime Family By Stephen Kruiser

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/03/13/the-morning-briefing-some-walls-might-be-closing-in-on-the-biden-crime-family-n1677755

We here on the right have long known that the Biden family has business ties all over the place that are rather unsavory. Honestly, most people on the left do too, they just don’t care. That’s why various forms of leftmedia were scrambling before the 2020 election to pretend Hunter Biden’s laptop was a nothingburger story. Their overreaction was the only reaction we needed to know that we were correct.

There is no bombshell news, but it looks like some progress has been made in exposing the depths of the Biden business depravity, especially when it comes to the commies in the country with which we will soon be fighting a war.

Kevin was the bearer of good news over the weekend:

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo on Sunday that people are finally starting to cooperate in the investigation into Hunter Biden’s “business dealings” with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Of course, that’s been the problem thus far. Papa B has been using the full power the federal government that’s under his control to block any inquiries into what his ne’er-do-well son has been doing as a side hustle to support his art career.

My friend Stephen Green is fond of saying that “Joe Biden is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party.” Obviously, the ChiComs got a package deal and Hunter was thrown in.

The Toxic Intersection Of Climate Alarmism And Communism

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/03/13/the-toxic-intersection-of-climate-alarmism-and-communism/

Environmentalists, it’s been said, are like watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside. The term has been around for some time, but it’s just as true as it ever was. Environmentalism has far too much in common with communism. In fact, the parts are so interchangeable that it can be hard to tell the difference.

We are reminded of this by the “degrowth” movement. In the words of some of its adherents, degrowth prioritizes “social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption. This requires radical redistribution, reduction in the material size of the global economy, and a shift in common values towards care, solidarity and autonomy.” 

In other words, economic growth has to be reversed to save the planet. Poverty, then, is not only locked in, since the economic pie cannot grow larger, it also begins to spread, dragging those who had escaped it back into its grasp.

​​Kohei Saito, an associate professor at Tokyo University, makes the case for strangling economies in his new book “Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism,” which has brought him a fair amount of attention. Maybe he should next consult with the staff of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who introduced the New Green Deal, not as an environmental protection policy but rather as a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing.” It would be a fitting match, maybe even become a contest of who could produce the most deranged thinking.

Post-decency politics: House Democrats use a hearing to attack free speech and a free press by Jonathan Turley

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/3895242-post-decency-politics-house-democrats-use-a-hearing-to-attack-free-speech-and-a-free-press/

“At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” Those words were first asked by lawyer Joseph Welch in his confrontation with Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) during the Senate’s infamous Army-McCarthy hearings. This week, nearly 70 years later, Welch’s words seem more relevant than ever after House Democrats savaged two journalists who attempted to explain a government effort to censor citizens. 

It was only the latest of a series of hearings in which FBI agents and other whistleblowers, experts and journalists have been personally attacked for raising free-speech concerns. This week’s hearing showed definitively that we live in a post-decency era.

The latest attacks came as journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified about breaking the “Twitter Files” story, detailing how the FBI and other agencies secretly sought to censor or ban citizens from social media. In her opening statement, Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), the ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee, attacked them as “so-called journalists” and said they were “a direct threat” to the safety of others by reporting the censorship story.

Taibbi pushed back, saying that “I’m not a ‘so-called journalist’” and giving a brief description of his award-winning career at Rolling Stone magazine and other publications. Yet other committee members also attacked the honesty of the two journalists. And after failed efforts to claim they were Elon Musk’s corrupt “scribes,” or limited by him in their investigations, the committee members attacked their ethics.

The witnesses were attacked on everything but their choice of socks.

Protest Porn The pleasure-seeking behind today’s righteous causes:righteous causes by Liel Leibovitz

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/protest-porn

A few days after the November 2016 elections, I sat down to write out my feelings, which consisted mainly of fear and loathing. The president-elect, I intoned, was a dangerous lunatic, one likely to recall the ghosts of Fuehrers past. His election meant the death of America, of democracy itself, and maybe even scores of Americans. “Assume the worst is imminent,” I advised. Celebrities I’d admired my entire life praised the piece on Twitter. NPR came calling. Seven years later, my cri de coeur remains one of Tablet’s most widely read articles. As a piece of writing, it was moving, forceful, and … entirely wrong.

You can find much to dislike about Trump—his policies, his personality, and an assortment of other failings—and, over the next four years, I did just that, often and with gusto. But my piece remains an embarrassment, more hysterical ululation than an attempt at the kind of useful or correct analysis that readers deserve. Reading it today, I realize that, for a brief moment there, I lost my goddamned mind.

So, what happened? It’s important for all of us, but particularly for those of us who make a living asking others for their trust, to give an honest accounting of our mistakes, so here’s a very brief one of mine. Trump’s ascendance was a time of uncertainty, and I felt scared. The language of moral absolutes offered some solace; so did the company of so many others who treated me to encomia like “morally courageous” or “a fierce and clear-eyed defender of democracy,” and with whom I relished text threads in which we shared articles and tweets and posts that enabled us to soak together in a pool of ever-expanding righteous fury.

The resistance offered purpose and community, and something else too: It offered the pleasure of letting yourself get caught up in something. The Women’s March, BLM, Russiagate—they all seemed to offer, in the moment, the irresistible possibility of coming-together-ness to promote or defend justice. And in every single one of these cases, the core leadership or premise which we held as solid was later proven wrong, or worse.

And now, the same fever is taking over Israel.

SVB Doesn’t Deserve a Taxpayer Bailout Ignore Silicon Valley fear-mongering about bank runs. This is a simple case of bad risk management. By Vivek Ramaswamy

https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-bank-doesnt-deserve-a-taxpayer-bailout-federal-reserve-fdic-risk-startups-treasury-interest-rates-ad440fe9?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Mr. Ramaswamy, a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, is a co-founder of Strive Asset Management.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced Sunday evening that Silicon Valley Bank’s uninsured depositors would gain access to their deposits on Monday. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. insures only deposits up to $250,000. The bailout creates incentives for risky behavior, teaching large depositors that they can throw money at risky banks without diversifying or conducting diligence. SVB long lobbied for looser risk limits by arguing that its failure wouldn’t create systemic risk and thus didn’t merit special intervention by the U.S. government. Yet on Sunday, Treasury deemed SVB “systemically important.”

To the extent that failing to make SVB’s uninsured depositors whole would have heightened the risk of a run on other banks, the Federal Reserve should have played its role as lender of last resort. Another option would have been to increase the FDIC coverage limit to a level that would avert a run, shoring up public confidence in other U.S. banks without showing favoritism toward SVB.

SVB’s situation is different from that of most U.S. banks. Only 11% of its deposits were insured. While the operating accounts of small businesses often exceed the FDIC limit, large banks usually sweep the excess into cash-management programs that buy Treasury bills and other securities. As the nation’s 16th-largest bank, SVB simply chose not to do so. For some reason Roku, the publicly traded maker of streaming devices, had a $487 million balance with the bank.

The Real Price of Wind and Solar First pay for renewables. Then pay again to pick up all the slack.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/renewable-energy-balancing-costs-united-kingdom-energy-bills-9795e48d?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

A billion here, a billion there, and soon you’re talking about real costs from politicians’ headlong rush toward net zero carbon emissions. United Kingdom households received a reminder of this truth recently with the latest data on how renewables drive up their energy bills.

The British electric-grid operator spent £4.2 billion in 2022 balancing supply and demand on the network, a record amount. This works out to £150 per household, according to the Nuclear Industry Association, the lobbying group that crunched the numbers based on data released by National Grid.

These charges arise because with current technology it’s impossible to store large amounts of electricity for long. The grid must balance supply and demand on a minute-by-minute basis, and the task becomes urgent and costly as renewables take up a greater share of installed generation. Whenever the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining—which is often in northern Europe—the grid operator must rack up high fees buying emergency power from conventional generators.

These balancing costs constitute a growing burden on British households and businesses that already have seen their bills skyrocket by up to 230% over the past year, prompting the government to step in with as-yet incalculable subsidies to reduce the amount people must actually pay. The annual balancing cost was about £1.2 billion as recently as 2019.

What is the legal origin of self-defence? Diane Bederman

https://dianebederman.com/what-is-the-legal-origin-of-self-defence/

Is self-defence a God Given right? Are our Courts breaking God’s law?

We begin with one of the most important statements from the Bible:

All life is sacred.

There are millions who say that individuals have the right to self-defence. This right has been questioned in America and Canada.

In America we watched the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse who was ultimately found not guilty for the act of self defense.

“Self-defence law in Wisconsin, which is generally consistent across the states, allows for an individual to use deadly force when they reasonably believe deadly force or serious force that could cause great bodily harm or death is about to be used against them.”

In Canada, a man was charged with murder for killing an intruder in his house who was also carrying a gun.

“An Ontario case raises the thorny question of how far Canadians can go to protect themselves and their property from attack — and avoid criminal charges.”

Lisa Dufraimont, a criminal law professor at York University’s Osgoode Hall law school said:

“What we’re trying to do here is to balance the security of the person who is being subjected to some sort of attack or assault on the one hand, with the security of the person who might get shot…. We don’t want to undervalue either of those lives.”

Because we start with the teaching: all life is sacred.