Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Monday, July 27, 2020
Another misnomer: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
Stanley Kurtz was the investigative reporter who went to Chicago during the 2008 election cycle to uncover the records from the now-defunct Annenberg Challenge, a foundation that funneled funds to far left educational programs and institutions. It was noteworthy because future President Barack Obama and the terrorist Bill Ayers both sat on the board.
Last night, Mark Levin interviewed Stanley Kurtz on his
hour-long Life, Liberty, and Levin. Mr. Kurtz has turned his attention to the Affirmatively
Furthering Fair Housing legislation, and this innocuous-sounding piece of
legislation is, in fact, one of the biggest threats to our way of
life. Candidate Joe Biden is all for
it. The link for Mr. Levin’s broadcast web
page is here (video page here), and if you have difficulty with access, here are a few paragraphs
from Mr. Kurtz’s essay "Biden and Dems Are Set to Abolish the Suburbs" on line (at the Ethics and Public Policy Center):
. . . Biden has actually promised
to go much further than AFFH [Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing]. Biden has
embraced Cory Booker’s strategy for ending single-family zoning in the suburbs
and creating what you might call “little downtowns” in the suburbs. Combine the
Obama-Biden administration’s radical AFFH regulation with Booker’s new
strategy, and I don’t see how the suburbs can retain their ability to govern
themselves. It will mean the end of local control, the end of a style of living
that many people prefer to the city, and therefore the end of meaningful choice
in how Americans can live. Shouldn’t voters know that this is what’s at stake
in the election?
It is no exaggeration to say that
progressive urbanists have long dreamed of abolishing
the suburbs. (In fact, I’ve explained it all in a book.)
Initially, these anti-suburban radicals wanted large cities to simply annex
their surrounding suburbs, like cities did in the 19th century. That way a big
city could fatten up its tax base. Once progressives discovered it had since
become illegal for a city to annex its surrounding suburbs without voter
consent, they cooked up a strategy that would amount to the same thing.
This de facto annexation strategy had
three parts: (1) use a kind of quota system to force “economic integration” on
the suburbs, pushing urban residents outside of the city; (2) close down
suburban growth by regulating development, restricting automobile use, and
limiting highway growth and repair, thus forcing would-be suburbanites back to
the city; (3) use state and federal laws to force suburbs to redistribute tax
revenue to poorer cities in their greater metropolitan region. If you force
urbanites into suburbs, force suburbanites back into cities, and redistribute
suburban tax revenue, then presto! You have effectively abolished the suburbs.
Read the rest here.
Related: Mr. Kurtz’s
article “Suburbs Hold Key to 2020 Presidential Choice” is here.
This is a subject of concern to every friend, associate, or
family member who lives in the suburbs. This is an excellent topic to share
with them.
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Sunday, July 26, 2020
John Solomon on voter fraud
Many news media, political
activists and social media giants have gotten on the bandwagon that voter fraud
is fiction. It is not.
A review of court cases and recent
indictments – including one this week in Philadelphia against a former
congressman – finds there have been at least four dozen cases in criminal and
civil court since the last presidential election in 2016 in which voter fraud
has led to charges, convictions, lawsuits or plea deals.
The schemes have ranged from old
fashion ballot box stuffing to absentee and mail-in ballot fraud.
Here are a dozen of the more
egregious examples.
. . .
Click here to scroll through those dozen cases
(Philadelphia, Alabama, New Jersey, California, Illinois, etc).
Friday, July 24, 2020
Everyone Back to Work
The Pandemic Is Over, Everyone Back to Work
And:
Look, are we in a health crisis requiring business and school closures, social distancing, and all the rest, or are we not?
This is a simple question, and Insanity Wrap knows the answer: It depends.
If you’re a member of the new protected class of rioters, you are free to go about the vital business of destroying whatever is left of America’s economy and social fabric.
If you aren’t, then sit down and shut up and stay home and wear the damn mask, hater.
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Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Heather Mac Donald on government failures: lockdowns and riots
One of our free subscriptions is to Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College. In the latest issue, Heather Mac Donald just published “Four Months of Unprecedented Government Malfeasance” and it is now available online. She is addressing the unnecessary and arbitrary shutdown due to COVID-19, as well as the passive, not to say complicit, government role with the Black Lives Matter-fueled rioting.
Over the last four months,
Americans have lived through what is arguably the most consequential period of
government malfeasance in U.S. history. Public officials’ overreaction to the
novel coronavirus put American cities into a coma; those same officials’
passivity in the face of widespread rioting threatens to deliver the coup
de grĂ¢ce. Together, these back-to-back governmental failures will transform the
American polity and cripple urban life for decades.
Before store windows started
shattering in the name of racial justice, urban existence was already on life
support, thanks to the coronavirus lockdowns. Small businesses—the restaurants
and shops that are the lifeblood of cities—were shuttered, many for good,
leaving desolate rows of “For Rent” signs on street after street in New York
City and elsewhere. Americans huddled in their homes for months on end,
believing that if they went outside, death awaited them.
This panic was occasioned by
epidemiological models predicting wildly unlikely fatalities from the
coronavirus.
On March 30, the infamous Imperial
College London model predicted 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. by September 1,
absent government action. That prediction was absurd on its face, given the
dispersal of the U.S. population and the fact that China’s coronavirus death
toll had already levelled off at a few thousand. The authors of that study soon
revised it radically downwards.
Too late. It had already become the
basis for the exercise of unprecedented government power. California was the
first state to lock down its economy and confine its citizens to their homes;
eventually almost every other state would follow suit, under enormous media
pressure to do so.
Never before had public officials
required millions of lawful businesses to shut their doors, throwing tens of
millions of people out of work. They did so at the command of one particular
group of experts—those in the medical and public health fields—who viewed their
mandate as eliminating one particular health risk with every means put at their
disposal.
If the politicians who followed
their advice weighed a greater set of considerations, balancing the potential
harm from the virus against the harm from the shutdowns, they showed no sign of
it. Instead, governors and mayors started rolling out one emergency decree
after another to terminate economic activity, seemingly heedless of the
consequences.
. . .
The full essay is here.
[Note: my only criticism of MacDonald’s essay is that she implies that the
behavior of the police officer who restrained George Floyd was “grotesquely
callous and contrary to sound tactics.” However, based on the police complaint,
the medical examiner’s report with toxicology report, and reasonable analysis by Clarice Feldman, Floyd died of a heart attack while in police custody; the neck
restraint was consistent with police training in Minneapolis when an officer is
trying to prevent a suspect exhibiting drug-related “excited delirium syndrome” from
inflicting injury on himself.]
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