Jts5665

NO AGITATORS/PROVOCATEURS JANUARY 6? He saw four distinct groups of them and J. Michael Waller knows professional agitators when he sees them, having been trained to be one and observing hundreds of demonstrations and protests since the 1970s. Just a sample:

“Then, from the north, a column of uniformed, agile younger men walked briskly, single-file, toward the inaugural stand. They came within two feet of me. Their camouflage uniforms were clean, neat, and with a pattern I couldn’t identify.

“Some had helmets and GoPro cameras. Some uniforms bore subdued insignia, including the Punisher skull. These were the disciplined, uniformed column of attackers. I had seen them in groups of two or three among the marchers on Connecticut Avenue from the Ellipse.

“Now there were a good three dozen of them, moving in a single, snakelike formation. They were organized. They were disciplined. They were prepared. ‘We’re taking the Capitol!’ the first or second announced.”

SAVE THE CONSTITUTION FROM BIG TECH:

Conventional wisdom holds that technology companies are free to regulate content because they are private, and the First Amendment protects only against government censorship. That view is wrong: Google, Facebook and Twitter should be treated as state actors under existing legal doctrines. Using a combination of statutory inducements and regulatory threats, Congress has co-opted Silicon Valley to do through the back door what government cannot directly accomplish under the Constitution.

It is “axiomatic,” the Supreme Court held in Norwood v. Harrison (1973), that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.” That’s what Congress did by enacting Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which not only permits tech companies to censor constitutionally protected speech but immunizes them from liability if they do so.

The justices have long held that the provision of such immunity can turn private action into state action. In Railway Employees’ Department v. Hanson (1956), they found state action in private union-employer closed-shop agreements—which force all employees to join the union—because Congress had passed a statute immunizing such agreements from liability under state law. In Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives Association(1989), the court again found state action in private-party conduct—drug tests for company employees—because federal regulations immunized railroads from liability if they conducted those tests. In both cases, as with Section 230, the federal government didn’t mandate anything; it merely pre-empted state law, protecting certain private parties from lawsuits if they engaged in the conduct Congress was promoting.

Section 230 is the carrot, and there’s also a stick: Congressional Democrats have repeatedly made explicit threats to social-media giants if they failed to censor speech those lawmakers disfavored. In April 2019, Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond warned Facebook and Google that they had “better” restrict what he and his colleagues saw as harmful content or face regulation: “We’re going to make it swift, we’re going to make it strong, and we’re going to hold them very accountable.” New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler added: “Let’s see what happens by just pressuring them.”

Such threats have worked. In September 2019, the day before another congressional grilling was to begin, Facebook announced important new restrictions on “hate speech.” It’s no accident that big tech took its most aggressive steps against Mr. Trump just as Democrats were poised to take control of the White House and Senate. Prominent Democrats promptly voiced approval of big tech’s actions, which Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal expressly attributed to “a shift in the political winds.”

For more than half a century courts have held that governmental threats can turn private conduct into state action. In Bantam Books v. Sullivan (1963), the Supreme Court found a First Amendment violation when a private bookseller stopped selling works state officials deemed “objectionable” after they sent him a veiled threat of prosecution. In Carlin Communications v. Mountain States Telephone & Telegraph Co. (1987), the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found state action when an official induced a telephone company to stop carrying offensive content, again by threat of prosecution.

As the Second Circuit held in Hammerhead Enterprises v. Brezenoff (1983), the test is whether “comments of a government official can reasonably be interpreted as intimating that some form of punishment or adverse regulatory action will follow the failure to accede to the official’s request.” Mr. Richmond’s comments, along with many others, easily meet that test. Notably, the Ninth Circuit held it didn’t matter whether the threats were the “real motivating force” behind the private party’s conduct; state action exists even if he “would have acted as he did independently.”

Either Section 230 or congressional pressure alone might be sufficient to create state action. The combination surely is. Suppose a Republican Congress enacted a statute giving legal immunity to any private party that obstructs access to abortion clinics. Suppose further that Republican congressmen explicitly threatened private companies with punitive laws if they fail to act against abortion clinics. If those companies did as Congress demands, then got an attaboy from lawmakers, progressives would see the constitutional problem.

Sure, but that’s different because reasons.

JUST A LITTLE TOO MUCH ON THE NOSE TO BE FUNNY. Seen around the internet – it’s real, from a workplace mental health organization. I checked, because it was so on the nose that I thought it might be a clever fake. Save it before it’s inevitably purged, or definitions conveniently change.

The post These Three Critical Questions About the Capitol Riot Remain Unanswered appeared first on The Bongino Report.

LIFE UNDER BIDEN’S SUPPORTERS: Woman describes two years in a Chinese re-education camp. “This is something out of Orwell’s 1984 but it’s happening right now. Perhaps a million people have been through this dehumanizing process and many of them are not just being brainwashed, they are forced to work in prison factories.”

But China supports the “right” party in the United States, so shut up.

GLEICHSCHALTUNG: Arizona Librarian Fired for Push to Keep Politics Out of Libraries: ‘Our job as librarians is to provide access to information from all points of view.’

SELF-AWARENESS FAIL: Twitter condemns Ugandan internet shutdowns.

CHUTZPAH: I honestly can’t believe Twitter just tweeted this. But Twitter just tweeted this.

I wrote this on Facebook this morning.

Somebody shared my post about big tech censorship yesterday and in his comments some other guy was barking about how “you don’t get off that easy” and that I can’t just recognize problems but I also have to supply solutions. Then the poster who shared it tagged me to answer. (I get shared thousands of times so please don’t do that) but my response got me thinking, and it’s not just related to our current topic either. If you still think this is all about Trump, you are a fool.

##

Nope. Don’t tag me. I get an endless time suck random moron parade on my own page as it is.

Anyways, it doesn’t matter because that line of thought is a dishonest derailment trap, where if someone notes a problem, the first step is always to speak about the topic. Except to the disingenuous that is insufficient, and talking about the existence of a problem is invalid unless you also provide a solution to said problem. It is just designed to shame/silence opposition, because nobody has all the solutions fully formed when they first note complex issues. It’s the very act of discussion which they are trying to shut down that usually postulates solutions.

Which is another example of why the left only wants the right to be able to discuss issues in spaces they can control or manipulate.

##

That last sentence is key.

For all of history when people have a problem they have been able to talk about it and hash it out. Solutions to complex problems don’t spring fully formed into existence the instant you note the problem. You get ideas from others. Their perspectives help you better articulate the issue and recognize consequences you didn’t expect.

Lawyers know law, engineers know engineering, artists know art, so on. So when there is a big problem that spreads across multiple fields, of course you need to talk it over with people who know those areas, because they know things you don’t. Being smart in one area doesn’t automatically make you an expert in others. We all need help. Big problems require discussion and brainstorming. Even if it isn’t effective, it’s still useful for the clever people who can make solutions to be able to listen to what the regular populace thinks and feels so that they can get the scope and understand how the problem hurts the public.

In the old days these conversations happened at churches, taverns, colleges, that kind of thing. All the famous places where big solutions to big problems were hashed out have a historical marker on them today. For us, those things are now illegal or stifled and we get the internet.

So of course the people who don’t see the problems as problems—or sometimes they are the problem—are trying to stop the rest of us from discussing the problems or they are trying to control where and how the conversations happen. Since they benefit from the problem, they will squash or sabotage people talking about solutions. It is in their best interests to do so, and when you give a bully a stick, they will beat you with it.

The topic of the current problem isn’t the important thing. This is our public square now whether we like it or not. We have foolishly abdicated the public square and now we are paying the price. Of course they can’t just let people they don’t like converse. That’s dangerous to their positions.

So when information they don’t like appears, they hide it. If they can’t hide it, they “fact check” it, and often that’s just a headline screaming false followed by an article full of straw grasping excuses they know most people won’t read. The goal is to shut you up or discredit you.

In the old days, at your pub or church, your drinking buddies or co-religionists probably shared your concerns and faced the same problems. So at least you were working toward a common goal. But now, big tech doesn’t want that. They don’t like groups or forums that don’t share their orthodoxy. They want/need to keep you here, and they need strangers to constantly kick in the doors and blunder in to tell you that you are stupid or crazy, that way we waste time arguing with them. It used to be a village had one idiot. When we talk now we get to deal with a thousand villages worth of idiot.

Of the many things booted or banned this week, one that I found interesting was the email newsletter of a group of former Democrats who have left that party. As far as I am aware not a single member was involved in the event at the Capitol and every member of their leadership condemned it. Yet their private email correspondence was shut down.

Why? I’m sure some bullshit justification will be offered, but really it is because they don’t want you talking somewhere you can’t be browbeaten and shamed back into compliance. Go somewhere else? Make your own thing? So that they can shut that down too?

Most of us who stay here do it because this is where we built an audience/community before the bait and switch. We feel stuck, and thus, we are part of the problem. I personally, am part of the problem. I stay here making content they profit off of, because this is where I’ve got the audience. I’ve been trying to move my audience elsewhere… only to discover that the company that runs my blog server and the company that processes my mailing list are willing to engage in the exact same behavior.

The arguments that this foolishness is to stop the incitement of violence is asinine, when we have literally thousands of examples of worse on these pages that aren’t being removed from app stores. The employees of this page routinely suffer from PTSD from the sick shit they see. The TOS is unevenly applied, so that the left gets a pass on actively coordinating looting and arson while guys like me routinely catch bans for asinine and silly reasons. Twitter bans Republicans, but is okay with literal foreign terrorist organizations and communist propaganda about how the genocide they are currently committing is really a nice thing.

Rules selectively applied are not rules at all. They are a shield for their cronies and a club against their enemies.

But that is where we are.

What do we do now? I don’t know. Try to figure it out… as long as they’ll let us.

The post Leftist Terrorists Bombed the Senate in 1983 – Jerry Nadler Requested They Be Let Out of Prison Early appeared first on The Bongino Report.

The post Glenn Greenwald: Leftists “Overwhelmingly Supportive” of Big Tech Using “Brute Force” Against Conservatives appeared first on The Bongino Report.

SHOT: On the Day Twitter Banned Trump, Parler Downloads Surged by More Than 500%.

CHASER: Bartiromo Says Parler ban coordinated effort ‘to put a competitor out of business.’

How convenient that “doing the right thing” dovetailed with squashing a rival just as they were gaining traction.

LOCKDOWNS TODAY, LOCKDOWNS TOMORROW, LOCKDOWNS FOREVER: UK Government May Only Let People Out ONCE A WEEK. “Most chilling, however, is the revelation that cabinet ministers have privately debated preventing people from talking to each other in the street and in supermarkets, and even preventing people from leaving home more than once per week, and introducing curfews.”

Last week, Joe Biden stated that if the rioters at the Capitol last week had been associated with Black Lives Matters, they would have been treated much more harshly. I heard a segment on NPR this morning with the same theme. The implication is that right-wing and white rioters get treated with kid gloves, while left-wing and minority rioters–and even peaceful protesters–face violent crackdowns. [UPDATE: Here's a link to the NPR audio. If you listened to this report, you would have no idea that there was any violence associated with last Summer's protests, much less that there was looting and rioting all over the country.]

It so happens I have a forthcoming article about the state of Second Amendment rights in light of widespread law enforcement abdication during last summer's riots that followed George Floyd's death. The rioters, to the extent they were political, were leftists, and while there were many white rioters, there were many non-whites as well. So we have an empirical basis to judge Biden and NPR's allegation; how did political leaders and law enforcement actually react last summer? (Note I am not commenting on whether law enforcement treats street criminals differently depending on race, but solely on whether we can discern racial and political bias in how politically-inspired violence has recently been handled).

So let's start with some background. While the vast majority of demonstrations last summer were peaceful, the accompanying rioting across the country was incredibly destructive. There are different ways of measuring the property damage the riots caused, but they are up there with the damage from the 1992 Los Angeles rioting, and the totality of the urban riots of the 1960s.

Looters, rioters, and others connected with the unrest murdered approximately twelve people (approximately because the circumstances of a few deaths are unclear). These include David Dorn,  a retired seventy-seven year-old police captain who looters shot and killed when they broke into a pawn shop; Secoriea Turner, an eight-year-old girl, who was killed during a shooting incident involving armed rioters in Atlanta; and Aaron Danielson,  conservative counter-demonstrator, who a leftist rioter stalked and murdered. The overall death toll was about double the dozen, including individuals shot and killed by police and armed civilians in self-defense, people killed by right-wingers reveling in the chaos, people killed by automobiles whose drivers were trying to escape the rioting, and so forth. The related death toll is much higher, as murder rates have soared in cities throughout the country in the wake of the chaos.

So how did the authorities react to all this? There were some well-publicized incidents of excessive force used by police in a few instances, especially toward the beginning of the rioting. And there are some terrible anecdotes one can find on the internet, though one must keep in mind the statistical context that an estimated 15 to 30 million people took part in BLM protests last summer. In any event, the overall picture is far from the Biden and NPR picture of consistently harsh, violent crackdowns.

Let's take a few examples:

Minneapolis: For the first few days of riots, Minneapolis police focused on defending their embattled 3rd Precinct building located at the center of the unrest. The mayor then ordered the police to stand down and abandon the building to the angry crowd that had surrounded it. The police withdrawal caused the situation to "spin[] out of control in the neighborhood around the precinct house"; the Precinct was burned to the ground, and "nearly every building around it [was] vandalized, looted or set on fire." Order was only restored when Gov. Walz, responding to pleas from local legislators, called in the National Guard. Walz said he didn't "know what the plan [was]" but wasn't "going to wait for the city to tell [him]," adding that the city officials "ha[d] lost control" and that their response was "an abject failure." Mayor Frey, defending his stand down order, acknowledged that police made "only a handful" of arrests across the first two nights of violence.

Seattle: For twenty-three days in June, armed leftists occupied six blocks of the city's Capitol Hill neighborhood, declaring the area a "police-free" zone they called the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone" ("CHAZ"), later changed to "Capitol Hill Occupied Protest" ("CHOP"). Bands of self-appointed, gun-toting "guards" set up encampments and patrolled the area, looted stores, smashed windows, and prevented residents from leaving or visitors from entering—in the process devastating businesses located in the occupied blocks. In early June, as rioters began to overwhelm the affected neighborhood, Mayor Jenny Durkan, over the objection of Police Chief Carmen Best, ordered the Seattle police to abandon its precinct in the area, allowing rioters to trash the building. After the occupation began, Durkan defended it as a mere "block party"—"a peaceful expression of our community's collective grief and their desire to build a better world." City officials "not only permitted the establishment of a police-free zone, but provided infrastructure like concrete barriers and portable toilets to sustain it." Mayor Durkan only changed her tune after armed robberies, shootings and rapes in the zone went out of control.

Nearby, beginning in June, demonstrators took over a stretch of Interstate 5, blocking traffic for nineteen consecutive nights. Although walking on I-5 is illegal, "the Washington State Patrol looked the other way, even setting up barriers" to facilitate demonstrators' blocking of the freeway, and refused to arrest those who obstructed traffic. A State Patrol spokesman told the press that "he doesn't believe WSP surrendered I-5, but reacted appropriately to a unique situation."

Portland: Portland suffered three months of nightly riots. Daryl Turner, head of the Portland Police Association, alleged that Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt limited the city's response to riots in order to appease lawbreakers: "If it is acceptable for rioters to commit acts of violence against community members and to try and burn down occupied buildings, and if this conduct is allowed to continue," Turner said, "then Portland is lost." Oregon State Police, about one hundred of whom had been in Portland for two recent weeks to assist local authorities with quelling violence, announced in mid-August that they were withdrawing from the city in frustration. "We're in a county that's not going to prosecute this criminal behavior," said a State Police spokesman.

Chicago: On a particularly violent weekend in early June, Mayor Lightfoot refused to deploy the National Guard beyond Chicago's central business district, drawing condemnations from officials representing districts on the south and west side of the city, which were left unprotected during Chicago's deadliest weekend in sixty years. Over that weekend, twenty-four people were killed and at least sixty-one injured by gun violence, and the city's 911 dispatchers received 65,000 calls in a single day—50,000 more than normal. As chaos unfolded, one Democratic city councilwoman told the mayor on the phone, "My ward is a shit show …. [Rioters] are shooting at the police. I have never seen the likes of this. I'm scared."

Louisville: Riots left the city's downtown "look[ing] like a war zone," according to a local paper. Louisville Police accused Mayor Greg Fischer of issuing stand-down orders to officers during riots, allowing lawlessness to run rampant. Several hundred officers accordingly walked out on Fischer in protest when he appeared before them to speak in early June, with police leadership calling for the Mayor's resignation.

New York: When violence in New York City erupted in May, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that NYPD officers would use "a light touch" with demonstrators. Days later, de Blasio's "light touch" policy was blasted by a fellow Democrat, Governor Andrew Cuomo, who strongly condemned the city's failure to quell rampant rioting, looting, and violence.

Columbus: Although several highranking city officials denied this, multiple 911 operators informed callers reporting attacks by rioters that police were under orders to stand down: "We were told by our mayor to stand down, so the mayor has given [demonstrators] full range of the street," said one operator.

Long Beach: Video clips showed looters "busting their way out of a boarded-up store … with armloads of clothes as officers watch from a few dozen feet away," as well as "looters bolting past a cluster of officers in riot gear, who are unable to grab a single one of them." City officials, while denying accusations of a stand-down order, admitted that the police response was lackluster; Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna said the department expected only a few hundred peaceful demonstrators, and mistakenly thought that officers should preemptively "back off" in the hope "that people will protest peacefully" and "that there is voluntary compliance."

Indianapolis: In Indianapolis, Mayor Joe Hogsett denied allegations of a stand-down order, but the city's police chief admitted, "We did allow the protesters"— who, the Chief claimed, were initially peaceful—"to have a little more space in the circle"; although officers remained in the vicinity, he said, "We simply backed off in an effort to give them space and to oblige their requests." According to local news, "[m]any business owners in downtown … are angry because they believe it is the choice to back off which gave instigators enough room to cause destruction, and by that time, officers were no longer in a position to handle it."

Raleigh: The weak law enforcement response to rioting and looting led many downtown observers to "question[] why police at times were nowhere to be found as protesters damaged property." Officers' absence was partly explained by the city police chief's self-described refusal to put "an officer in harm's way to protect the property inside a building because insurance is most likely going to cover that."

Denver: Police leadership in Denver was accused by Nick Rogers, head of the local police union, of ordering officers withdraw from a July pro-police rally and effectively permit demonstrators to be attacked by counter-protestors—though, according to Rogers, one SWAT lieutenant on the scene disregarded the order and refused to retreat. A Denver police spokesmen declined to comment on the incident.

But what if rioters were threatening an important federal building? Surely if BLM protestors had approached the Capitol or the White House, there would have been out-of-control law enforcement violence and mass arrests? Well, no. Let's go to Wikipedia:

The White House was on lockdown the night of May 29 in response to protests reaching the gates…. The protesters came into conflict with the United States Secret Service. … At one point the protesters were pepper sprayed. Several Secret Service agents reportedly suffered broken bones due to rocks and bottles of urine and alcohol thrown at them by rioters.

As a result of the protests, the Secret Service rushed President Donald Trump to shelter in the White House underground bunker, where he remained for almost one hour. This occurred after some protesters crossed temporary barricades set up near the Treasury Department buildings. Around that time, the Secret Service alert level was raised to "red". The president's wife and son were also brought to the bunker…. The Secret Service reported that six people were arrested in Lafayette Square within President's Park, directly north of the White House.

The Capitol Police were woefully understaffed and under-prepared for last Wednesday's riot. The reasons for that need to be thoroughly investigated. But the notion that right-wing mostly white rioters get special treatment while BLM-associated lawless behavior attracts violent, harsh, crackdown is at odds with what actually happened last summer.

NOT THE BEE: Instagram just pulled one of our posts for “violence and incitement” … It was a screenshot of Twitter’s trending topics. The irony is beautiful.

FIGHT THE POWER: Parler CEO ‘Prepared to Take Full Legal Action’ After Big Tech Companies Target Platform. I remember one year when Michael Yon made more money suing people for stealing his photos than from selling his photos. “Matze said on his Parler account late Jan. 9 that he believes Amazon, Google, and Apple coordinated to ‘try and ensure they don’t have competition.'” Likewise, this lawsuit may turn out to be the most profitable thing Parler does.

Plus, motes and beams: “Parler has no groups-style feature, and Facebook was the number one tool for coordinating meetups for that event.”

Also, “Twitter let ‘Hang Mike Pence’ trend the same day Parler was banned from Google … the double standard is obvious.”

Meanwhile I’m watching an NFL Black Lives Matter ad right now that says “No Justice, No Peace!” But that’s different because shut up.

Related: Rep. Nunes Calls for Racketeering Investigation Into Big Tech Companies Following Parler Ban.

THEY REALLY KNOW HOW TO BUILD THE MEMORY HOLE AT CNN:

Flashbacks:

● ‘Happy Anniversary’ Al Sharpton: 25 Years Since He Incited Freddy’s Massacre.

● Massacre at Freddy’s In Harlem: Fire Fueled by Anti-Semitism Kills 8.

● Al Sharpton: Power Dem.

● “Sharpton paid to keep quiet about lack of black TV programming: suit.”

● Return of the kingmaker.

If you ask normal people about the biggest thing that happened in 2020, they’ll probably pick coronavirus, though some might say the 2020 election.

But if you ask a policy wonk, you may get a different answer. Especially if we’re allowed to tweak the question a bit and contemplate the most under-appreciated development of 2020.

In which case, my answer would be interstate tax migration.

I’ve been writing about this topic for years, but it seems that there’s been an acceleration. And, as illustrated by this map, people are moving from high-tax states to low-tax states.

The map comes from an article by Scott Sumner of the Mercatus Center, and here’s some of his analysis.

The movement of these industries is toward three states that have one thing in common—no state income tax. …Progressives often discount the supply side effects of tax changes, pointing to examples such as Kansas where tax cuts had little effect. But Kansas…tax cuts were relatively modest. If you are looking for a low tax state on the Great Plains, South Dakota has no state income tax at all. The top rate in Kansas (5.7%) is higher than in Massachusetts (5.0%). That won’t get the job done. …I’m certainly not a rabid supply sider who thinks that tax rates are all important. But a person would have to be pretty blind to ignore the migration of firms from places like New York, New Jersey and California, to lower tax places. …Washington State has no income tax, which is unique for a northern state with a big city. Washington is also home to the two of the three richest people on the planet (the other–Elon Musk–just announced he’s moving from California to Texas.) …Washington is also experiencing rapid population growth, which is also unique for a northern state with a big city. …last year more that half of the US population growth occurred in just two states—Texas and Florida. …Add in Tennessee and Washington and you are at nearly two thirds of the nation’s population growth.

Wow, four states (all with no income tax) accounted for the bulk of America’s population growth. That’s a non-trivial factoid.

And I also think his observations about Kansas are spot on. Yes, the state improved it’s tax system, but it should have been bolder, like North Carolina.

The Washington Examiner recently opined on internal migration and also noted that people are escaping high-tax states.

…the state of Illinois has been a laggard in population growth. It has lost eight congressional districts since the 1950s. But new census estimates show that this decade, something very special has happened. …the land of Lincoln has lost a net 308,000 residents over the last seven years… And Illinois’s rapid shrinkage is occurring even as the United States grew by nearly 7% since the last census. …Illinois is not alone. The same census data point to two other big states that are also driving away residents with similarly impractical, ideologically leftist policies ⁠— California and New York. …New York, as a consequence, has also lost about 42,000 residents in the last decade. Its population peaked in 2015, and in the time since, it has lost about 320,000. A similar phenomenon is occurring in California, …with about 70,000 net residents vanishing in 2020. …residents are actually giving up and abandoning its beautiful, scenic inhabited areas. …the same census numbers show that people are gravitating toward states that have low or no income tax.

The mess in jurisdictions such as New York, California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Connecticut is so severe that I wasn’t sure how to vote in the first-to-bankruptcy poll.

And a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal echoed these findings.

California’s population shrank for the first time as far back as records go (-69,532). According to a separate state government survey, a net 261,000 residents moved to other states during the period…many large businesses are shifting workforces to other states. …Last year Charles Schwab announced it is relocating its corporate headquarters to the Dallas region from San Francisco. Apple is building a new campus in Austin. Facebook this fall bought REI’s headquarters outside of Seattle. Oracle and Hewlett Packard Enterprise recently announced relocations to Texas. …Over the last decade, Illinois has lost 243,102 in population, about the size of Peoria and Naperville combined. …Democratic states in the Northeast last year lost population, led by New York (-126,355), Connecticut (-9,016) and New Jersey (-8,887). …By raising taxes again and again to pay for generous collective-bargained benefits, public unions are making Democratic states less competitive.

The final sentence is the above excerpt is especially insightful.

Among the states facing fiscal challenges, a common theme is that politicians and bureaucrats have a very cozy and corrupt relationship resulting in absurdly lavish (and unaffordable) compensation levels.

Let’s close with a bit of humor from the great cartoonist, Eric Allie. With all the interstate migration that happened last year, no wonder Santa Claus had some problems.

P.S. I also recommend this Lisa Benson cartoon, this Redpanels cartoon strip, and this Steven Breen Cartoon.

P.P.S. Even though it would be a massive tax cut for the rich, Democrats want to restore the state and local tax deduction. Even if they are successful, though, I suspect that change would only slow down the decline of blue states.

FLASHBACK: Government drops charges against all inauguration protesters: “The solidarity we showed as defendants won out,” said one activist whose charges were previously dropped.

Federal prosecutors on Friday moved to drop charges against the last 39 people accused of participating in a violent protest on the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The motion to dismiss charges by the U.S. attorney’s office seemingly ends an 18-month saga that started with the Justice Department attempting to convict more than 190 people.

That effort saw the government facing off against an intensely coordinated grassroots political opposition network that made Washington the focus of a nationwide support campaign — offering free lodging for defendants, legal coordination and other support.

That’s how the left does it. And the press plays along.

AGAIN!  MY, SUCH AN ORDERLY “CHARGE”!  IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE MSM YOU WOULD NEVER KNOW THEY WERE RIOTING! SO PERHAPS YOU SHOUDN’T LISTEN TO THE MSM:  Video shows police officers stand by as rioters charge into US Capitol.

STRONG LANGUAGE, NO STRONGER THAN IT NEEDS TO BE: Larry Correia points the problem with the assumptions on the situation.

SCOTT ADAMS:

There’s massive mistrust of our electoral system now. Why don’t we adopt the sort of safeguards other democracies routinely use?

KOWTOWING: The Economist Refers To Chinese Businessman Disappearance As ‘Regulation’ And ‘Boosting Competition.’

AND THE BEARDS HAVE ALL GROWN LONGER OVERNIGHT: Same Vox writer who said riots could lead to serious social reforms also wants all the Capitol rioters arrested.

Hong Kong police arrested 53 former lawmakers and democracy activists under the security law imposed by Beijing six months ago. Nearly all of those arrested ran in Hong Kong’s legislative council elections in 2020. Others include academics and U.S. lawyer

THAT’S BECAUSE THEY HAVE A LOT TO HIDE: China blocks entry to WHO team studying Covid’s origins.

REPORT: U.S. Funded Specific Research at Wuhan Lab that Led to Coronavirus.

NOW THIS IS MORE LIKE THE 21ST CENTURY I’D BEEN HOPING FOR: Quadriplegic Man, Using Two Robot Arms, Can Feed Himself Again.

When you run a business you will get audited by the government. If something your company does raises a red flag with the government, they will audit you. If there is an anomaly in your government mandated paperwork you must legally submit, it can trigger an audit. And sometimes, various agencies will just randomly audit you to make sure you are obeying all their regulations.

The IRS audits everyone’s financials to make sure they are paying all their taxes. That’s federal, but you will also be audited by your state tax commission. If your state has sales tax you will eventually undergo a sales tax audit.

If you have employees you will get random audits to make sure your EEOC paperwork is in order, and you can have ICE audits to make sure all your employees are citizens or have their immigration paperwork in order.

Your workplace will eventually be audited by OSHA to make sure it is compliant with health and safety regulations. If you process food products, you will be audited by the USDA inspectors. They even have people to check your dairy cows.

If you own a restaurant you’ve surely met your state Health Inspectors many times. Are you building a house? That’s getting inspected by a building inspector to make sure it is up to code.

If you are involved in military contracting you will be audited by the DCAA. Every single invoice, every part, and every single billable hour had better match what you reported to the government. (and trust me, this one is basically a colonoscopy).

If you are part of any small business programs you will be audited by the SBA. If you sell or manufacture firearms you will be audited by the BATFE. In preparing this post I did a quick search for government auditor positions, and there were jobs for agencies I’d never even heard of before.

In between all of these various government audits, companies employ internal auditors to continually check all their systems to make sure they are in compliance, and then they bring in outside 3rd party CPA firms to test them as well, all to get ready and fix any potential problems before the various government auditors show up. Because if the government catches you doing something wrong they can fine you, shut you down, or even throw you in jail.

Every government department has auditors to check on every single entity under their purview. Every single government program that does business with the private sector has auditors to check those businesses for compliance. Every single state and city that gets money from some government department gets audited by that government department, and then those local governments check all the people and businesses they work with too. Every step of the way the government audits the people, and if you don’t obey their rules, you will be corrected, punished, fined, or imprisoned.

It is a great big audit jamboree of everybody checking everybody else’s work, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because it is always safe to assume in any given endeavor human beings make mistakes and sometimes they are dishonest.

Except for elections. Elections are special.

Apparently elections are a sainted process, and people would never lie and cheat there, and the people over the controls would never obfuscate and cover their asses if their controls were insufficient. That only happens in literally every other industry on Earth… but not in elections. They are different.

Because the government gets to audit the people, but the people don’t get to audit the government. Nope. At best we get recounts, where we simply count the fraudulent data twice. And if you don’t like it, shut up.

If your company has glaring statistical anomalies that all benefit the same party, or there were tips saying you’d violated some regulation, government auditors would perform an audit on you. You could be innocent, and there could be a perfectly rational explanation for those flags. But that doesn’t matter, a full audit would still be performed, because the government would make sure you hadn’t wronged it.

But that’s a one way street. If the people feel they have been wrong in an election, no audits are performed. Sure, you might get a cursory spot check here or there, but the idea of having outside auditors come in and give them access to the data to check to make sure it is valid? (like is required in every other thing in the world) That’s crazy!

No. Checking an election consists of the system asking the system if the system is okay and the system declaring the system is fine. Then they call that an “audit” and you should just suck it up. In elections you can just make up whatever excuse you want to explain the flags, and that’s cool. If anyone questions this, they obviously hate democracy.

And even if you’re like me, and you’ve got a professional background of going through many different kinds of audits from various federal and state agencies, if you think the election result should be audited with the same level of scrutiny the government would apply to any of our businesses or personal financials, you are a terrible conspiracy theorist, and should be shamed into silence. Now enjoy these “fact checks” written by journalism majors who can’t balance their checkbooks.

I’m kind of bummed that I got that accounting degree, and then spent all those years being audited in various industries, when all I had to do is declare “I checked myself and everything is fine here” and that’s sufficient.

Now watch. As you share this a horde of gas lighting morons will arrive on your page to shame you into silence. We already know what they’ll say. They’ll cite court cases being tossed, even though most of those were on standing or legal procedures, not fraud. Most of the fraud stuff has never been presented in court, and even if it did, it was compiled by outsiders using data available to the public, not real auditors with access to source data, which is what is necessary in order to prove fraud. Or they’ll cite some of the weak sauce “audits” which have happened around the country, even though at best those are spot checks (sometimes in the wrong spot!) not audits, and they were conducted by the same people who probably fucked it up to begin with. Don’t worry. None of them will read this far. Just watch.

So in conclusion, the government loves auditing everything the people do because we are incompetent, untrustworthy, cheaters. But if the people want to audit election results, we are terrible bad conspiracy theorists who need to be shamed into silence. Them auditing us is good and necessary. Us auditing them is silly foolishness.

I’m glad we got that cleared up.