Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past.
…
Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police.

-1984, George Orwell

On Wednesday at a budget hearing before the Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Mayorkas made some news in revealing a new Disinformation Governance Board. (His written testimony made no mention of it.) This came in an exchange with Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ohio). Video of the hearing is here, the exchange starts at about the 1:39:54 mark.

Underwood: Another huge threat to our homeland is mis- and disinformation. You noted that it’s a concern of yours at the border with human smuggling organizations peddling information to exploint vulnerable migrants for profit.

One of my main concerns about disinformation is that foreign adversaries attempt to destabilize our elections by targeting people of color with disinformation campaigns. After it became clear that there was more meddling in our 2016 election, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence authored a report on the disinformation tactics used by Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the IRA, to interfere in the election. The report found that “no single group of Americans was targeted by the IRA information operatives more than African Americans.”

A newer trend that we saw in the 2020 election and already in the 2022 midterms is that disinformation is being heavily targeted at Spanish speaking voters, sparking and fueling conspiracy theories. DHS and its components play a big role in addressing mis- and disinformation in Spanish and other languages. Can you share what steps you’ve taken and what future plans you have to address Spanish language mis- and disinformation throug department-wide approach?

Mayorkas: Our Under-Secretary for Policy, Rob Silvers, is co-chair with our principal deputy general counsel, Jennifer Daskal, in leading a just recently constituted Disinformation Governance Board. The goal is to bring the resources of the department together to address this threat. I just read a very interesting study that underscores the importance of the point that you make, the spread of mis- and disinformation in minority communities specifically, and we are focused on that in the context of our CP3 and other efforts.

When asked about it, the odious Jen Psaki let the mask slip and mentioned COVID as a topic where the heavy hand of the government may be needed to keep the peasants in line.

“We know there has been a range of [disinformation] out there about a range of topics, I mean, including COVID for example, and also elections and eligibility,” Psaki said, adding that she would check for additional information on what the board plans to do.

The American Experiment also points out that SitD’s own Senator Klobuchar is in on the act, tackling “health misinformation.”

At a recent conference hosted by the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, Senator Amy Klobuchar failed to answer a reporter’s direct question about the nature of her proposed bill, the “Health Misinformation Act,” leaving open the possibility of government and bureaucratic control over what constitutes internet misinformation and who has the power to make that decision.

Sitting on a panel at the “Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy” conference on April 8, Klobuchar was asked a direct question about her proposed bill by Chicago Thinker co-founder and Managing Editor Evita Duffy: “If I were to say there are only two sexes — male and female — would that be considered misinformation that you think should be banned speech on social media platforms?” Klobuchar proceeded to give a light chuckle and insisted it pertained to vaccine misinformation during a “public health crisis.” She refused to define misinformation and the parameters under which the proposed bill’s carveout would go into effect.

Klobuchar’s bill seeks to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives internet platforms protection from civil liability for published content. The amendment creates a carveout that would strike immunity from those platforms that use algorithms promoting content and permit the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), “in consultation with the heads of other relevant Federal agencies and outside experts determined appropriate by the Secretary, shall issue guidance regarding what constitutes health misinformation…”

Klobuchar’s evasive “answer” is not surprising considering the actual language of the bill has zero mention of vaccines and fails to define “misinformation.” But this lack of specific language and purpose in the bill — despite what Klobuchar may say at a conference — is very troubling. It leaves the door open for politicians and unelected bureaucrats in public health to determine what can and cannot be promoted on sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, harnessing the power of the federal government to punish platforms disseminating speech it deems “misinformation.”

As Scott Johnson pointed out at Powerline, there is clearly a coordinated effort going on that has led to the creation of this board. In early April, at a conference entitled Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy, at which Rep. Underwood was a featured speaker by the way, Barack Obama gave a lengthy address entitled “Disinformation Is a Threat to Our Democracy”. He said:

All right. With that as my starting point, I believe we have to address not just the supply of toxic information, but also the demand for it. On the supply side, tech platforms need to accept that the play a unique role in how we, as a people and people around the world, are consuming information and that their decisions have an impact on every aspect of society. With that power comes accountability, and in democracies like ours, at least, the need for some democratic oversight.

For years, social media companies have resisted that kind of accountability. They’re not unique in that regard. Every private corporation wants to do anything it wants. So, the social media platforms called themselves neutral platforms with no editorial role in what their users saw. They insisted that the content people see on social media has no impact on their beliefs or behavior — (laughter) — even though their business models and their profits are based on telling advertisers the exact opposite.
…
We do expect these companies to affirm the importance of our democratic institutions, not dismiss them, and to work to find the right combination of regulation and industry standards that will make democracy stronger. And because companies recognize the often dangerous relationship between social media, nationalism, domestic hate groups, they do need to engage with vulnerable populations about how to put better safeguards in place to protect minority populations, ethnic populations, religious minorities, wherever they operate.

For example, in the United States, they should be working with, not always contrary to, those groups that are trying to prevent voter suppression and specifically has targeted black and brown communities. In other words, these companies need to have some other North Star other than just making money and increasing market share. Fix the problem that, in part, they helped create, but also to stand for something bigger.

This announcement naturally gave rise to accusations that this board would be a new Ministry of Truth. I don’t think that is the right analogy, though. In Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth was the propaganda factory. It was responsible for spreading Newspeak and rewriting history.

I think a better analogy from Orwell would be the Thought Police. This organization was responsible for enforcing not only what people could say, but what they could think. It’s why the Thought Police needed to be the only effective organization. If the people are controlled, and there’s no outlet to inspire other people to action, all else falls into place.

Orwell’s insight about the Thought Police was that they knew the truth, they knew the past. They had to in order to know how to change it. Someone knew the lies, and spread them anyway.

There was no mention from Rep. Underwood about efforts to declare the Hunter Biden laptop story as disinformation, and how people and organizations have been thrown off of public platforms for mentioning it and other “unapproved” thoughts.

The threat from boards like this and where they can go isn’t that government official truly believe things such as the Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, or that Trump colluded with the Russians, or that men can be women, or that America is a systematically racist country. It’s that they know these to be lies yet spread them anyway, and worse, work to suppress your opportunities to say otherwise.

The Minneapolis Police have problems.

It’s been the most open secret in the world for as long as I’ve lived in the Twin Cities. Minneapolis cops leaning on black and minority drivers, being more willing to take off the gloves when operating in black neighborhoods – this was news in the mid-80s. It’s like most police departments – a few bad apples among a lot of good cops – only seemingly moreso.

Minneapolis has problems.

If you didn’t see it three years ago, you should have noticed it in the past two years. They had a city council president who said in as many words that expecting law and order came from a place of “privilege” (a privilege she was happy to enjoy with $1K a day in taxpayer-funded private security, of course), and a council that backed that up with policy, to the point whereJacob Freaking Frey looks like a law and order conservative (whenever there’s not a crisis, anyway).

It’s a city that seriously believes the answer to crime is to transfer more taxpayer money to “community” “non-profits” – the same people who’ve been profiting from the status quo, and code for “the DFL’s political farm team”. (It’s the same answer they have for education, economic development, and pretty much everything else).

The Minnesota DFL has a problem.

Polling for mid-terms is abysmal – potentially catastrophic. Early signs are they could lose the House of Representatives and fall further behind in the Senate; it’s even hypothetically possible the hapless MNGOP could finally get a governor.

The economy shows every sign of starting to slow down (at best) – something the media will try to spin until after a new, GOP-controlled Congress and Legislature take over, but for now, things seem to be getting away from ’em.

But…

The DFL controls the state bureaucracy.

The report that was issued by the MN Department of Human Rights – which is like one of those non-profits we mentioned above, only part of the executive branch – earlier this week could have been issued at any time in the past 35 years. It should have been issued at any time in the past 35 years; you don’t have to be a black community activist to notice the MPD has issues. If the DFLers who created the Human Rights department, and who have always staffed it, had needed to issue it at any point in the past 35 years, they would have.

But they didn’t need to issue it then. It might be excessively cynical to say a city full of people angry about their police suited them, per se – but it wasn’t against their interest.

But now? As Democrats nationwide are being weighed down (justifiably!) by their performance on law and order issues – now the MNDoHR comes out with a report on the MPD?

Right around the time the DFL statewide needs to deflect the “conversation” about crime away to…anything but six decades of failed DFL rule?

• DFL-caused problem (problems, really – crime in Minneapolis is the DFL’s baby, and the DFL has controlled the MPD for three generations).
• DFL-controlled bureaucracy.
• Report that tries to shift blame for crime away from the DFL, which has controlled literally all the factors leading to the problem since Eisenhower was President.

Seeing a pattern, here?

Minneapolis extremists and the DFL – pardon the redundancy – are going to start portraying themselves as the victims of this past couple of years:

Note to Minneapolis progressives: whatever the Minneapolis Police Department’s problems, your “progressive” council members were not the ones being “victimized”.

What kid hasn’t dreamed about having his own private air force?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

So let’s get Brandon’s energy policy summed up: oil that Americans aren’t allowed to drill but must be imported from nations that hate or are actively planning war against us, can be given away to “allies” who’ve spent the past three decades actively making themselves dependent on our (and, unbeknownst to them, their) enemies, that being preferable to America drilling its own oil (forget about building more nukes).

I think I got it.

The 1st Biden Air Cav will soon start spraying Agent Green, exfoliating with borrowed dollars whatever canopy of fiscal sanity still remains below.

President Biden told reporters on Thursday that he is considering taking executive action to broadly cancel student loan debt, and a decision may be imminent.

“I am considering dealing with some [student] debt reduction,” Biden said today. However, he appeared to conclusively rule out $50,000 or more in student loan forgiveness. “I am not considering $50,000 [student] debt reduction,” he said. His comment confirms his earlier statements rejecting larger amounts of student loan forgiveness, and would seem to contradict suggestions made earlier this week by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that Biden was seriously considering cancelling $50,000 or more in student loan debt.

Biden did not specify an exact amount of student loan forgiveness that he is considering, although clearly it would be under $50,000. He also did not address rumors that he is considering imposing income restrictions on student debt cancellation.

The proposed debt cancellation would “only” be for the federal student loan program. Even the Socialist Squadrons at Camp Joe don’t yet dare force private lenders to forgive debt.

Schumer wants the $50,000 per snowflake. Biden may opt for $10,000 per, another number mentioned as a possibility.

Whatever the final number, there will be a cost to the taxpayer. Whatever Treasury bonds were used to lend the money still exist, and would need to paid back and are still charging interest. A freebie amount of $50,000 would cost around a trillion.

Then there’s the moral hazard. If the debt can be forgiven once, it can just as easily be forgiven again. Students will start to borrow with the expectation they won’t have to pay back the loans.

So, this is a step out the back door towards “free” education.

Another aspect that Biden needs to tap dance around is a means test, or some kind of income limit. Student loans are held by more higher income people than lower income. Biden can’t be seen to be handing stacks of cash to “rich” kids. (A lot of student debt goes for graduate schools.) So, he might just make it a welfare program and forgive debt only for lower income people.

Perhaps with their free money, the kiddies can take an economics class or two and discuss the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch.

A heavy fog had enveloped Ville-devant-Chaumont, just north of Verdun, obscuring the view even just meters away for the American troops of the 313th Infantry Regiment of the 79th “Liberty” Division.  The regiment, called “Baltimore’s Own” due to the high number of locals from that city, was utterly exhausted having been on the front lines of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive for nearly two months.  They could hear the crackling fire of German machine guns ahead of them, but were more interested in the running footsteps to their rear.  It was a communique from their commanding officer to hold their position and to neither advance nor retreat until following orders were given.

The 313th was relieved, with one exception – 23 year-old Private Henry Gunther.  Gunther had left a fiancé and a successful early career as a banker in Baltimore when he was drafted.  The son of German immigrants, Gunther arrived in France eager to prove his patriotism yet quickly became discouraged amid the slaughter of the trenches.  Gunther wrote to a friend complaining of his life in France and encouraging his friend not to volunteer.  Army censors read the letter and demoted Gunther.  In response, the former banker began to volunteer for dangerous assignments to prove his loyalty, even being hit with shrapnel as a runner that could have sent him home.  Gunther refused; he still hadn’t regained his honor.

Injury and risky service didn’t return his rank or apparently his unit’s respect and it cost him at home.  Gunther’s fiancé wrote that she was ending the relationship, further sending Gunther into a spiral of reckless heroism.  His fellow soldiers noted that as the war seemed to be coming to an end Gunther became more and more withdrawn, perhaps knowing that his opportunities to find redemption or meaning amid the bloodshed were dwindling.  Gunther wasn’t going to obey any orders to hold his position on this day – he was going to attack.

On the other side of the line, the German machine gun nest saw a figure emerge from the fog, charging at them with a fixed bayonet.  They fired, careful to avoid hitting him, hoping that he’d stop or retreat.  Gunther jumped to the ground but quickly rose again, resuming his charge.  In broken english, the Germans yelled at Gunther, frantically waiving their arms to tell him to stop; “Baltimore’s Own” wouldn’t be discouraged.  At last, fearing for their own lives, the German machine gunners fired off a five-round burst, striking Gunther in the head, killing him instantly.

It was 10:59am on November 11th, 1918.  The last combat casualty of the Great War had fallen.

Henry Gunther’s grave site in France.  Gunther is widely acknowledged as the last combat death of the First World War before the armistice.  More would die in accidents or sporadic fighting after 11am, to say nothing of the war in the East

Four days earlier a far different sight could be seen by French soldiers in their trenches near the town of La Capelle.  Three large cars, each with the black eagle of Imperial Germany on their sides, approached the front lines with their headlights on. Two German soldiers were perched on the running boards of the lead car, one waving a white flag, the other, with a long silver bugle, blowing the call for ceasefire – a single high tone repeated in rapid succession four times, then four times again, with the last note lingering.  The German delegation to discuss an armistice had arrived.  (more…)

Erin Murphy – who was too extreme even for DFL Primary voters, after being endorsed for Governor four years ago – apparently held off on giving Twitter the ol’ heave-ho long enough to dump this bit of brilliance onto the world:

Saint Paul’s gullible and illiterate voters – many of whom vote for Murphy – believe city government has the legal prerogative to tell landlords what they can charge for their property. Checking and balancing that overreach is the same as trying to nullify an election (for sake of argument) by force.

It’s not just metro demigogues like Murphy:

So someday when a referendum in a western state bans abortion, Murphy and Port won’t support litigation?

Because it’d be “overturning an election”?

Tens of thousands of blue-checks who were supposed to have moved to Canada in 2017, and who threatened to leave Twitter if Elon Musk managed to buy the platform, are apperently still there.

As of last night, Mr. Blow has not, er, blown this pop stand.

Weird.

As noted in countless other venues, the cognitive dissonance among the blue-checks nearly violates the laws of physics:

Infinitely more dangerous than peeish blue checks? A bureaucracy run amok.

The EU wants Big Tech to do its censoring for it.

Out: Russian Bots

In: EUBots.

This piece from the NCR highlights one of the factors in the upcoming election, the Latino Catholic vote.

This disconnect with immigrant voters and their values accounted in large part for the most remarkable fact about the 2020 election: Donald Trump did better among Latinos than he had done in 2016, and also among Black voters in some states.
…
He noted, too, that in any election, a Republican is likely to get at least 25% of the Latino vote, that the demographic has never been as monolithic as one might think listening to talking heads on television breezily pontificate on “the Latino vote.”

Fraga also noted that the disconnect between young activists and the voters they seek to reach can be “a very significant problem.” For example, the website at the voter mobilization group Voto Latino repeatedly uses the term “Latinx,” despite the fact that the Pew Research Center found most Latinos are unfamiliar with the term and do not use it.

“The best way to contact a Latino voter is with someone who is a co-ethnic and who refers to the demographic in the same way they do in the local community,” Fraga explained. In some areas, “Hispanic” is more common, and in others “Latino” is typical. Only among academics and students is “Latinx” even used.

Democrats need to figure this all out, and soon. According the projections from the nonpartisan National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Education Fund (NALEO), “At least 11.6 million Latinos will cast ballots in 2022, a 71.4 percent increase in the number of Latino voters from 2014.” That increase is expected to be in key battleground states where both parties have recognized the need to invest in voter outreach to the Latino community. “Latino voter turnout in 2022 is projected to increase from 2018 in the key battleground states Arizona (9.6 percent), Colorado (8.9 percent), and Nevada (5.8 percent),” the group said.

The Left has long had a problem talking to people of faith (ie people who actually believe something and take their faith seriously) because the Left’s default position towards such people is hostility. Biden’s campaign site had a long of list of “plans” that were going to solve everything everywhere. One such plan was for Catholics. It reads like someone who forgot to complete the essay assignment due later that same day, and so just grabbed another document out of the policy filing cabinet, erased “Labor, Women and Minorities” and penciled in “Catholics.”

First of all, the second paragraph:

Vice President Joe Biden believes that in America, no matter where you start in life, everyone should be able to live up to their God-given potential. He knows that we need to rebuild the middle class, and this time make sure everybody comes along—regardless of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.

While that laundry list might make the ladies of the ELCA swoon, it’s not an especially Catholic-specific conversation, is it. Then, the points that follow are:

Build an economy where everyone comes along and we protect the “least of these”
Respect the dignity of work and give workers back the power to earn what they’re wort
Ensure that affordable, quality health care is a right for all Americans
Pursue a humane immigration policy that keeps families together, strengthens our economy, and secures our border
Serve as stewards of our creation and protect our planet against climate change

(And in case you were wondering, not a hint of abortion.)

Nice try. And good luck fooling those Latino Catholics who take their faith seriously. The kind of young people that David Shor wrote about last fall, the ones who have yanked the steering wheel of the Democrat Party far to the left and are standing on the gas pedal, have no idea how to reach faith voters, and it shows. Predictable results to follow in November.

Name something a Republican governor – especially a conservative woman, given how Berg’s 16th Law works – can do that a Democratic governor can’t?

Easy – get “journalists” to report on government!

In this case, the relentlessly Democrat Sioux Falls Argus Leader:

If a Republican beats Tim Walz this fall, I suspect the Strib will develop a similar interest.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

An individual who kills an eagle can be fined $100,000 and sentenced to a year in jail.  An organization, $200,000.  Penalties increase for subsequent offenses.

But a windmill energy company will be paying less than $30,000 each for dead eagles, with no jail at all. 

Quite a deal:  a bulk discount on dead birds and immunity from imprisonment.  I guess that’s the price Mother Nature pays for saving the planet from global warming. 

Joe Doakes

I’m imagining people working on wind farms playing games with “perverse incentives”, trying to maneuver the windmills to knock off eagles on the cheap.

I’m weird like that.

The answer may be “in a cave up in the mountains, taking a guard duty shift at the mouth of the cave, projecting how long the canned food can last before another supply run is needed.”

Here is a screen capture from the White House proposed budget for 2022. It shows “accounts payable” and “accounts receivable” over the next nine years. It projects budget deficits in the 1.3-1.5 trillion dollar range.

In addition, it shows expected mandatory outlays. These start at 4 trillion and go to about 5.5 trillion. Dollars. These are things like Granny’s social security check.

Discretionary outlays are in the 1.6-1.8 trillion dollar range.

So, a little back of the envelope math. Public debt is “officially” around 23 trillion dollars, and as seen here only continues to increase at a yearly clip of over a trillion dollars.

How might we get the debt and deficits under control? Well, we could take an axe to discretionary spending and just completely wipe it out. No defense spending, nothing. Does that sound likely? No.

Or, we can cut social spending by a trillion and a half each year. Does that sound likely? No.

Trouble is, reality may do that for us, though. And how smoothly do you think those social changes will go? This from a 2020 SS Trustees report:

Under the Trustees’ intermediate assumptions, OASDI cost is projected to exceed total income starting in 2021, and the dollar level of the hypothetical combined trust fund reserves declines until reserves become depleted in 2035. Figure II.D2 shows the implications of reserve depletion for the combined OASI and DI Trust Funds. Considered separately, the OASI Trust Fund reserves become depleted in 2034 and the DI Trust Fund reserves become depleted in 2065.2 In last year’s report, the projected reserve depletion years were 2035 for OASDI, 2034 for OASI, and 2052 for DI.

2021 was last year by the way, and just after these budget projects run out, Social Security keels over.

How about Medicare? Same story.

The trust fund for Medicare Part A will be able to pay full benefits until 2026 before reserves will be depleted.

That’s the same year as predicted in 2020, according to a summary of the trustees 2021 report, which was released on Tuesday. If the reserves run out for the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, then the program’s income should be able to cover 91% of scheduled benefits. Medicare Part A covers hospital care for enrollees.

Then there’s interest on the debt. From projections, just the interest on the debt runs from about 8% of net mandatory outlays up to around 17%. And that doesn’t take into account interest rates going higher.

Then there’s interest on the debt. From projections, just the interest on the debt runs from about 8% of net mandatory outlays up to around 17%. And that doesn’t take into account interest rates going higher.

The roughly $300 billion the federal government will spend on interest payments this fiscal year is more than it is expected to spend on veterans’ services and military retirement ($185 billion); transportation ($188 billion); food and nutrition services ($172 billion), including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (“food stamps”); housing ($100 billion); K-12 and vocational education ($77 billion); and higher education ($42 billion). By FY 2031, interest costs are projected to be larger than federal spending on Medicaid and unemployment compensation, and over 90 percent as large as defense spending.
…
Under current law, we project interest spending will total $5.1 trillion over the 2021 to 2031 budget window. If interest rates on the projected annual debt stock were 50 basis points (0.5 percentage points) higher than CBO currently projects – reflecting the continuation of the current disparity between projections and reality – interest costs would increase by $1.7 trillion, to $6.8 trillion total. If interest rates were 100 basis points (one full percentage point) above CBO’s forecast, interest costs would total $8.6 trillion over that period, which is a $3.6 trillion increase over current law.

If interest rates begin at 50 basis points (0.5 percentage points) above CBO’s projections and gradually rise to 200 basis points (2 percentage points) above CBO’s forecast – bringing ten-year rates to just above their 30-year average of 4.3 percent by 2031 – interest costs would total $11.1 trillion over the 2021-2031 budget window, which is $6.0 trillion more than under current law.

The asteroid is heading for Earth. Impact is projected to be smack in the middle of North America. And no laser in existence is going to deflect it.

So, be careful on that supply run down into the valley. The cannibal gangs are merciless.

Asking for voter ID is the next step toward a government run by the KKK.

Unless you’re actually a DFLer.

Then…:

To be a delegate at DFL State convention, you need:

Photo ID, proof of vaccination, and qa negative test result?

The DFL does know that Black men are the least-vaccinated population in Minnesota, right?

It’s almost as if they’re trying to…

…keep black men from participating?

Mid-2010s. Democrats chatter up a storm about Kansas, whose conservative governor and legislature lowered taxes without cutting spending, leading to all sorts of financial issues. Democrats (pointedly ignoring the success of many conservative states that held lines on both taxes and spending with superlative results) railed on Kansas as a sign that conservative governance couldn’t work.

2022: Democrats cut taxes for short-term gain, ignoring spending.

But this runnin’ with the Bidens, boy, just ain’t where it’s at:

Hunter Biden’s closest business partner made at least 19 visits to the White House and other official locations between 2009 and 2015, including a sitdown with then-Vice President Joe Biden in the West Wing.

Visitor logs from the White House of former President Barack Obama reviewed by The Post cast further doubt over Joe Biden’s claims that he knew nothing of his son’s dealings.

If Biden claims he knows nothing about such things now, I tend to believe him. He doesn’t appear to know much of anything. That ol’ historical record is an issue, though:

Eric Schwerin met with Vice President Biden on November 17, 2010 in the West Wing, when he was the president of the since-dissolved investment fund Rosemont Seneca Partners.

The logs also reveal that Schwerin met with various close aides of both Joe and Jill Biden at key moments in Hunter’s life when he was striking multi-million dollar deals in foreign countries, including China. Yet President Biden has long insisted he had no involvement in his son’s foreign affairs. “I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” he said in 2019.

Does Biden’s denial beggar belief? Of course. If Hunter Biden’s surname had been, I dunno, Doakes, a guy like Schwerin would have been as welcome roaming the halls of power as the guy with the facepaint and the Buffalo headgear was on Jan. 6. But as an associate of Biden the younger, he had the golden ticket. 

”Not everyone gets to meet the Vice President of the United States in the White House. The press should be asking why Hunter Biden’s business associates — like Eric Schwerin — had that privilege and were given access to the Obama White House,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin). “This is additional evidence that Joe Biden lied when he said he never discussed Hunter’s foreign business dealings. It’s well past time for the corporate media to demand the truth from Joe Biden. The corruption of Biden Inc. must be exposed.”

Strictly speaking, the logs don’t prove Biden lied, but it’s certainly the way to bet. And while Senator Johnson is correct in asserting the press ought to be asking questions, I would not count on any investigative reporting happening any time soon. There’s a lot more at the link, including this reminder of how incestuous the power structure is in Washington:

In October 2009, just months after Hunter co-founded Rosemont Seneca, Schwerin met with Evan Ryan, Vice President Biden’s assistant for intergovernmental affairs and public liaison, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building where the vice president’s office is based, according to the visitor logs.

While working in the halls of power Ryan acted as a conduit for Hunter Biden and his cronies, hard drive emails show.

Ms. Ryan is now the Cabinet Secretary for Biden. And speaking of Biden’s cabinet. . .

Ryan went on to marry Antony Blinken, who now serves as President Biden’s Secretary of State, while she herself was appointed to a plum gig as White House Cabinet Secretary in January 2021.

It’s all in the family.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Number of illegal aliens apprehended at the Mexico border during February: 221,000.

Number of people living in St. Paul: 285,068. Don’t panic – we’re nowhere near replacing every man, woman and child in the city with illegal aliens, every month.

Number of people living in St. Cloud, Moorhead, Austin, Marshall, Faribault, Thief River Falls and Winona combined: 219,000.

We’re replacing out-state Minnesota, instead.

But Title 42 expires soon and then . . . .

Joe Doakes

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Rule #8 in Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals is “Keep the pressure on.” In Florida, Gov. DeSantis is taking a lot of stick because he is turning that back on the radicals, and for the Left, this is an unforgiveable sin.

The Florida legislature recently fired two salvos against the advancing Forces of Wokeness. House Bill 7 was passed last month to ban “woke indoctrination.”

Today, Governor Ron DeSantis signed House Bill (HB) 7, to give businesses, employees, children and families tools to stand up against discrimination and woke indoctrination. The bill includes provisions to prevent discriminatory instruction in the workplace and in public schools and defines individual freedoms based on the fundamental truth that all individuals are equal before the law and have inalienable rights. This legislation is the first of its kind in the nation to take on both corporate wokeness and Critical Race Theory in schools in one act. Read more here.

“No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”

The more publicized action was of course to pass HB 1557: Parental Rights in Education, taking a page from Virginia’s parental rights acts. The text of the bill is here. The core of the bill was to add Paragraph 8, which has 7 points under it. Five of them explicitly have to do with parental rights and what parents are to be informed of or give their consent to when it comes to their kids’ health or education.

Unless you’ve been vacationing on Pluto though, which is warmer than Minnesota these days, you know well that these have been overlooked and Point 3 is what set the fox among the chickens.

Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.

The Walt Disney Company, understandably playing by what it thought are the customary long standing rules where conservatives may not oppose any lefty advances on the culture front, lambasted the bill and the echo chamber weighed in with the entirely predictable suite of Dezinformatsiya, that Republicans are the ones driving the culture war, conservatives are hateful intolerant bigots and the rest. In a shocking creative story-telling plot twist, DeSantis did not lie down and grovel.

The Walt Disney Company’s self-described mission statement is “The mission of The Walt Disney Company is to entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling.”

Here’s an example of that “unparalleled storytelling.” Hulu is owned by the Disney Megacorp, and Hulu is home to The Hardy Boys, now in its second season.

I loved the Hardy Boys books as a kid, and still have a box in the basement with all the blue hardcover books in the series. Despite fears based on experience of what the modern day entertainment complex might do to a series of books that celebrated traditional values, I gave it a try. Alas, the Hulu show is the Hardy Boys in name only.

There was a supernatural element in the first season, which was fine, though an obvious attempt by these oh so creative and imaginative minds to go after the Stranger Things fan base.

The show inevitably features the rainbow coalition. The ethnic background of the cast is not the issue, but the casting was not done for story purposes, but for check-the-box purposes, and that is the issue.

The actress who plays Callie, Frank’s girlfriend, has family roots in Ecuador. Chet is black. Biff is now a girl.

Biff’s mom is an Asian woman. Trudy, the Hardy boys’ unmarried aunt, is white, and in the first season there were hints that Trudy and Biff’s mom were in a lesbian relationship. That was made explicit in season two. In addition, in season two there is a new character, a black girl who is shaping up to be Chet’s girlfriend, but she has been revealed to be bisexual. (This was the point where I stopped watching.)

This in a show about and geared towards youth, a show that shamelessly strip mines its namesake in order to attract an audience, then gleefully subverts it.

The culture war is widening. We may want to stay on the homefront and cheer on those at the front, like DeSantis, and send them care packages, but we will all need to do our part and serve in the resistance.

From the “Democrats can say anything they want, because they know their voters just don’t think very critcally” department.

Angie Craig is telling people that she gets most of her donations from small donors:

Well, duh.

And if you have 100 donors, and 99 of them donate $1 piece, and Michael Bloomberg donates $10 million, then 99% of your donors are “small” – and you’ve got $10,000,099!

Which pretty much describes the dishonesty of the DFL’s “we’re running on money from the little guy!” claim:

Looking forward to talking with Tyler Kistner, who was endorsed unopposed to run against her again at the CD2 convention a while back.

SCENE: The year is 2028. Mitch BERG has just been sworn in as governor of Minnesota, via a series of happenstances too bizarre to go into. He is speaking to a press conference.

BERG: As the first phase of my plan, as promised, I’m directing the state Department of Education to begin mandatory instruction in grades K-12, and in state post-secondary schools, of “Critical Marksmanship Theory”.

“CMT” teaches a few tenets that are vital for a child’s moral and social development:

1. It teaches them the essentials of the Second Amendment – how it deters tyranny.
2. Children will learn, as part of that, that throughout American history, from the Revolution through the Civil Rights movement to the “Anti”-Fa War of 2026, those with firearms have been the ones able to defend their, and their neighbors’, freedom.
3. Kids will learn that, throughout our history, the right to keep and bear arms has been a bellwether for the state of liberty, and a key defining line between citizenship and subjection.
4. It teaches that societies that exalt and propagate marksmanship are superior, more free, more prosperous and more inclusive than those that don’t.
5. It teaches kids the essentials firearm safety, which should slash the number of accidental shootings of children.
6. Finallly, it teaches kids – all kids, from all backgrounds, races, creeds, genders – how to shoot, enabling them to participate in shooting sports, self-defense, and of course the main intent of the Second Amendment, deterring tyranny.

This will begin in the second semester of this school year, which starts (checks watch) tomorrow.

Questions?

MYLYSSA SILBERMAN (Reporter for National Public Radio’s Saint Paul bureau, covering the “Fake News” and “Diversity” beats): Yes, Mr. Berg…

BERG: Governor.

SILBERMAN (Winces): Right. Governor Berg. What if parents object to teaching kids how to shoot, and all this history about guns?

BERG: Teachers know better than parents. Next…you.

LEAKY THE BEAGLE (A dog, writing under a pseudonym for the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.  ) Govenah Burrrgk – vot is ze sense of forcink…

BERG: Was ist den mit deine fürchtbare Deutsche accent?

LEAKY THE BEAGLE: Huh?

BERG: That’s what I thought. Security!

(Security guards push LEAKY THE BEAGLE to the ground, stomp him into incoherence, throw him out).

Next.

CAT SCAT: (The designated “fact checker” at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “”MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“, she is the office manager at a small phrenology practice. ) Why would you teach children…

BERG: Because parents in half of Metro households don’t actually teach their kids the reality of history – that unarmed people are basically meat on the hoof for dictators. We want our children to learn that history. Some people don’t. We have the power, so we don’t really care what they think. Yes, you?

MATT MCNEIL: (Rises,, face flushed, hands shaking. As a wet spot stains the front of his chinos, he runs fron the building.

BERG: Huh. OK. You.

Betty Rae TORSTENGAARDSEN (A writer at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com“.  She was Lac Qui Parle County Dairy Princess in 1987, and voted “most likely to end up as a freelance political writer” by her sorority at U of M Morris in 1992.): Yes, Governor Berg. “Critical Marksmanship Theory” seems like a massive incursion into parental rights.

BERG: You’ve seen the handout, right?

TORSTENGAARDSEN: Er…no?

BERG: Then it’s not CRM. We’re just teaching kids to shoot, as far as you know.

TORSTENGAARDSEN: What about parents who object to their kids being indoctrinated in the Second Amendment?

BERG: So you’re saying there are parents who want their kids to be ignorant of history, and ripe for the picking by criminals, tyrants and perverts?

TORSTENGAARDSEN: I’m not sure…

BERG. They sound like terrible, negligent parents to me.

TORSTENGAARDSEN: Uh…

BERG: But again, we’re not teaching kids about guns right this minute, as we stand here, so quit your whining.

(TORSTENGAARDSEN, SCAT and SILBERMAN confer, briefly).

SILBERMAN: He’s right. He’s got us there.

BERG: Good. Onward…

And SCENE

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The results of a two-year-long nation-wide experiment are conclusive. We nay-sayers were right all along: mask mandates do not stop the spread of Covid.

I’m ready to accept my apology. Let the crow-eating begin.

Joe Doakes

Just as many of us were saying two years ago; masks make useful personal infection control in relatively controlled environments. As a public health measure, they are about as useful as, well, not wearing a mask.

Find out more about the plan to house homeless veterans here.

Dennis Smith is running for Attorney General.

The California Legislature is currently gestating a bill declaring the work week shall be 32 hours for companies with more than 500 employees. Worse, the bill would mandate that the pay rate remain what it was for 40 years, and cannot be reduced. But wait, there’s more!

If the beleaguered employer tries to get its employers to work more hours to make up for the lost productivity, they have to pay time and a half over 32 hours. Or, the beleaguered employer can take on the added expense of part-time works to make up the lost hours.

From the text of the bill:

Existing law defines and regulates the terms and conditions of employment. Existing law generally defines “workweek” for these purposes and requires that work in excess of 40 hours in a workweek be compensated at a rate of at least 1 1/2 times the employee’s regular rate of pay, subject to certain exceptions. Existing law makes a violation of these provisions a misdemeanor.

This bill would instead require that work in excess of 32 hours in a workweek be compensated at the rate of no less than 1 1/2 times the employee’s regular rate of pay. The bill would require the compensation rate of pay at 32 hours to reflect the previous compensation rate of pay at 40 hours and would prohibit an employer from reducing an employee’s regular rate of pay as a result of this reduced hourly workweek requirement. The bill would exempt an employer with no more than 500 employees from the above provisions. By expanding the scope of a crime, this bill would impose a state-mandated local program.

What’s the worry, you say? A number of companies have experimented with a four-day work week.

I realize that when classroom instruction time is taken up with inculcating little Brandon and Ashley Snowflake on the nuances of gender bending there is less time to spend on basic economics. But, there is a difference between a private company choosing the hours their workers put in and what they get paid, and the government mandating that an employee can work 20% less for the same pay, and that the employer must bear the added cost.

While I would love to see this bill pass in California, as it would only hasten the demise of that state, and perhaps something useful could be rebuilt from the rubble, a Democrat Congressman has introduced a similar bill at the federal level. (Co-sponsored by Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.)

Prices are often described as signals because they convey information to both producer and consumer who can make rational decisions based on that information. Producers make decisions on whether to produce more or less. Consumers make decisions about consuming more or less.

The price of labor is no different. It conveys information that employers take into account when deciding how many employers it can afford, and employees decided if it is worth it for them to work at a given pay rate, or if they can find a better rate elsewhere.

When the government interferes in markets, and things like minimum wages and rent control are interferences, it introduces distortions. Distortions lead to bad information, and with bad information, producers and consumers make decisions they wouldn’t have made otherwise had they had good information.

These distortions have ripple effects. Employers cannot just absorb 20% less work for the same pay, and so these costs are passed on either in higher prices for goods, or fewer employees.

Do the people behind these bills care about the distortions they would introduce? One problem is they can’t know all the distortions they would cause. Prices are the signals that imbalances are present, and the prices would be wrong. The authors of these bills think they bribe voters by giving them other people’s money. Only a simpleton would think such a bribe wouldn’t cause problems, and only a fool wouldn’t worry that these problems can’t be completely known.

One completely predictable outcome is when you elect socialists, you wind up living under socialism.

Kevin Williamson put it this way:

We want to simplify the complex. And we want to bring down that which is high to a lower level where it’s easy to understand. So if the thing that’s wrong with the country is there are people we don’t like, and they’re getting rich by screwing us. And by messing everything up behind the scenes. That’s a pretty comforting story. If the actual story is “wow, the world is complex and we can’t actually accomplish a lot of the things that we want to. And the government can’t necessarily do the right thing even if we all agree on what it is because there are information problems and there are problems of incentives and problems having to do with complexity, that make things come out not the way we intended, and that all of our best intentions and our purest motives can produce horrifying results as they as they have over the years.” You see this in the really extreme political outcomes.

You know, the people who fought the Russian Revolution, didn’t want to build a nightmare state of gulags, but that’s where they ended up. I don’t think most of the people around the Chinese Communists in Mao’s era wanted to inflict the kind of nightmare on their people that they did. But they did. Now our situation isn’t that extreme, obviously. But it’s the same principle in the sense that nobody wants the current situation. Nobody really wants these outcomes. No one wants our healthcare system to look the way it does. No one wants K through 12 education to suck as hard as it does around the country. No one wants police who are irresponsible and trigger happy. But this is the system we’ve nonetheless managed to build for ourselves out of the interaction of our conflicting motives and incentives and information.

Every guy’s got a first love.

Sometimes it’s tragic, sometimes comic, often wistful or bittersweet – but it lurks in the background, occasionally sliding into the back, occasionally the front, of the mind, whispering “think about what might have been”.

Sometimes its a girl – a misty memory of a smile, a glint from her eyes, a wisp of hair that accents a charged ocnversation over school desks or across a bar or over a counter bookshelf or endcap at a store, a bit of vocal tone that drills into your memory and, on occasion, giggles at your joke across the years.

Sometimes it’s a guitar – to a non-guitaraist, an inert assembly of wood and wire and metal that looks cool; to you, a heft and a tone and a feel that drills into your brain and gives what’s in there a direct path straight out through your fingers, in ways you’d thought were just verbal unicorn-farts from other guitar players, but that you suddenly understand – and, deterred by timing and budget and your current reality, go back up on the stand, to remain in your mind, whspering “what if”.

It can be a job – a time or place where you felt all the things that humans seek and, in our modern world, miss all too often; accomplishment and compensation, sure, but companionship and respect and common goals, a time in your working life when earning a living, enjoying your day and feeling fulfilled in your life weren’t mutually exclusive.

A car? Sure – one that fit your life and your self-image so perfectly people remember you and that car in the same breath to this day?

Sure!

And sometimes?

A friend of the blog emails:

This is the 2nd time this year that a driver has driven into a utility pole on St Anthony Ave in Saint Paul and has caused power outages in the city. St Anthony Ave is a street that has been “traffic calmed”- bike lanes added, parking removed in some places, speed limit “reduced”.

It’s funny, because before we started calming traffic, I don’t recall things like this happening with as much frequency.

Yet, I am seeing people on social media asking for more traffic calming, speed bumps, bump outs, etc and I am seeing CM Jalali agreeing.

What are they not asking for? More traffic violation enforcement, more enforcement of impaired driving violations, more enforcement of drug and crime laws- you know, things that would actually help solve problems like these.

“Traffic calming“ is to “calm”, what a straitjacket is to “sane”.