Democratic governors J. B. Pritzker (Illinois) and Jared Polis (Colorado) revealed on Wednesday that they will spearhead a national gubernatorial initiative to protect against threats to democracy. — nationalreview.com These guys are a little late to the party. If they really cared about threats to democracy, the time to take action would have been the last four years, in which the government was censoring political dissent, censoring “misinformation” (i.e., facts that would expose government lies), criminalizing, prosecuting and imprisoning political enemies, trying to put the Republican presidential candidate in prison before the election, trying to remove his name from the ballot so no one could vote for him. The electorate has already solved these problems by voting out the dictatorial regime that was causing them. Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Government
Women’s Rights Are More Than That One Thing
I also voted for my daughter’s rights. I voted for her right to free speech. I voted for her right to practice her religion. I voted for her right to peacefully assemble and protest a tyrannical government, regardless of her political leanings. I voted for her right to bodily… — Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) November 5, 2024 Read more →
Thomas Jefferson: Election 2024 TL;DR
We’re tired of being condescended to by the Obamas, by Oprah, by rich celebrities, by corporate media people with multi-million dollar salaries, all with large homes in which they live, paid off along with their summer homes in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard, telling us the economy is doing very, very well. We only think that we’re economically struggling because we don’t understand the data. We’re tired of being insulted. We’re not Nazis. We’re not garbage. We want to be able to buy things. We want to be able to walk around our neighborhoods without being harassed or robbed or killed. We don’t want unchecked immigration. We are trying to improve our lives and our jobs and our communities and no one is listening because they’re too busy posting selfies with Alex Soros. We have a government telling us that they’re defending democracy while simultaneously doing things that we thought… Read more →
33 Ways to Leave Your Party
This document should be in the Smithsonian. It should be preserved as part of the written history of American democracy. I can hear the spirit of Thomas Paine saying, "Well done." https://t.co/vSs4BpfBU4 — Paul Epps (@paulepps) October 13, 2024 Read more →
The J21 Coup
My fellow Democrats, I have decided not to accept the nomination and to focus all my energies on my duties as President for the remainder of my term. My very first decision as the party nominee in 2020 was to pick Kamala Harris as my Vice President. And it’s been the best… pic.twitter.com/x8DnvuImJV — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) July 21, 2024 For years now, you could go online every day and see new videos of Joe Biden falling down, mumbling incoherently, wandering around lost and confused. But if you said anything about this out loud, you’d be called a far-right MAGA propagandist (or something similar), accused of spreading disinformation. And by the way, according to Democrats and corporate media, those videos were fake. Then came the Trump-Biden debate. Why Biden would agree to stand next to Trump for 90 minutes and debate, I have no idea. My best guess is that,… Read more →
Freedom of Speech is Too Dangerous
https://t.co/k770FhDgoE — Paul Epps (@paulepps) March 24, 2024 What Justice Jackson said to raise eyebrows was “Your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways in the most important time periods.” Correct! One clear goal of the First Amendment is to hamstring the federal government from doing what it would like to do: control our speech. I would have expected a Supreme Court justice to have learned this in law school, not in on-the-job training. Justice Jackson went on to say, “The government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country . . . by encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information,” she said. There’s always a euphemism handy for “information the government doesn’t want you to know,” e.g., “misinformation” “disinformation,” “harmful information,” etc. We can’t have freedom of speech! It’s too dangerous! As a thought experiment,… Read more →
Failing To Notify Parents When Their Child Changes Gender Is ‘The American Way’?
Dem Governor: Failing To Notify Parents When Their Child Changes Gender Is ‘The American Way’ — freebeacon.com The Democratic governor is Phil Murphy from New Jersey, who says that “outing” LGBTQ students to their parents is a violation of the child’s constitutional rights. Thus, opposing parental notification is “the American way.” “Listen, we took these actions because it’s the right thing to do,” Murphy said. “Let’s protect the rights of these precious kids. Let’s do things the right way, the American way.” I wasn’t even aware that constitutional rights apply to children. Without researching it, I suspect they don’t. I also don’t think that children have the cognitive maturity to make decisions on their own about sexuality and gender identity. Transgenderism, for example, is a mental disorder: gender dysphoria. It’s a diagnosis obtained via medical care and therapy, not obtained via the internet. There almost certainly is not someone at… Read more →
Thomas Jefferson on Bidenomics
My fellow Americans – President Biden is currently on a “Bidenomics” tour. Terrible name, “Bidenomics,” because nobody likes Biden so they’re not going to like anything with his name in it. Call it “Satanomics: The Economy is Stronger Than Hell,” which is a lie but so is everything else he says about the economy. His economic team recently posted a “Here Are the Facts” video, the first of which is, “Under the Biden Harris Administration Inflation Has Fallen.” That’s true — if by “Fallen” you mean “Risen.” The annual inflation rate when Biden took office was 1.4 percent. In May 2023, it was 4 percent, about three times higher. Inflation is lower today than the 9.1 percent peak that we hit last June, but you don’t get credit for pushing it to unprecedented levels and then watching it come back down, particularly since it only came down as the Federal… Read more →
Billionaires
The average billionaire in America pays 8% in federal taxes. Teachers and firefighters pay more than that. That’s why I proposed a minimum tax for billionaires. Republicans are against it, but I’m going to keep fighting for it. — Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 26, 2023 Reading Joe Biden’s Twitter is exquisitely painful, like a sore tooth that you can’t stop pushing on with your tongue. How do these things even go together? Americans are not taxed on their net worth, they’re taxed on their income. At least that’s what I think he’s talking about. Income tax. Although there are a lot of other federal taxes: self-employment tax, gift tax, excise taxes, etc. Is he talking about taxing people’s net worth? I don’t know. I can’t figure it out. I’m not a billionaire myself because I don’t know how to make that happen. If someone has figured out how to do… Read more →
Far-Right ‘Moms for Liberty’ is a Hate Group?
Moms for Liberty, the far-right parental group known for protesting at school board meetings, has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group” for the first time ever. — msn.com “Far-right” is an empty phrase assigned to, as far as I can tell, people who do not subscribe to neoliberal orthodoxy and who question U.S. institutions of power, like government and teachers unions. And the lead paragraph, quoted above, indicates that “protesting at school board meetings,” which is actually a right protected by the Constitution of the United States, will earn you an SPLC designation as a “hate group.” The SPLC also labeled 11 other “right-wing ‘parents’ rights’” groups as extremist groups. The use of quotes in the story is noteworthy. The author has scare-quoted “parents’ rights” and labeled the parents’ rights groups en masse as right-wing, as though the idea that parents have rights is… Read more →
Book Banning
Biden administration to appoint anti-book ban coordinator as part of new LGBTQ protections — cbsnews.com Oh, I’ve got the perfect candidate! This guy: Seriously though, what does LGBTQ have to do with book banning? Book banning has a long history completely unrelated to LGBTQ, and the book banning that is attributed to LGBTQ seems to be either fake or due to the age-inappropriateness of the material. Read more →
DOJ to Work ‘Hand-in-Hand’ With LGBTQ Community To Address ‘Threats’
That’s a good idea because crazy trans hoes in the LGBTQ “community” are the most violent people I’ve ever seen. Riley Gaines doesn’t seem to be able to go out in public without police protection. Matt Walsh has security personnel living in his house. High school girls have been beaten and raped by trans-identifying boys in high school bathrooms. Here’s a nice sign that some trans activists brought to a women’s rally in London: In keeping with the tradition of other violent, lunatic fringe organizations, members of the trans group wore masks over their faces, but from photos in the article, they all seem to be male. I sense a strong aroma of three things: Misogyny Child endangerment Sexual gratification of deviant males I don’t see violence directed at LGBTQ people. America loves gay people. Many trans people are harder to like because they’re too angry and violent and delusional… Read more →
You Don’t Know Jack
Biden Nominee for FAA Chief goes 0-for-7 on Aviation Policy Quiz by Senator Ted Budd. Yes, 0 for 7. The nominee withdrew last night. Victory.pic.twitter.com/ORoo11cHpo — Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) March 27, 2023 I like this technique. I’ve seen it a few times now. Instead of partisan gotchas, the incompetence of Biden nominees is exposed by asking them basic questions about the job for which they’ve been nominated. In this one, the nominee for FAA Chief goes 0-for-7 on questions about aviation policy. I’ve seen judicial nominees who couldn’t answer questions like “As a judge, how do you handle a Brady motion?” or “What does Article 5 of the Constitution do?” Read more →
There Are Only Individual People
Why not . . . hold that some persons have to bear some costs that benefit other persons more, for the sake of the overall social good? But there is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more. What happens is that something is done to him for the sake of the others. Talk of an overall social good covers this up. (Intentionally?) To use a person in this way does not sufficiently respect and take account of the fact that he is a separate person, that his is the only life he has. He does not get some overbalancing good from his sacrifice, and no one is entitled to force this upon… Read more →
What the State of the Union Didn’t Say
The president entered office with a 1.4% inflation rate and spiked it to 7%. 30-year mortgages of 2.7% soared to 6.5% in less than two years. Eggs are $7 a dozen. A thin steak is $15 a pound. A sheet of plywood is $95. Gas averaged $2.39 a gallon when the president took office and even after draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve it is still $3.50 a gallon. In my state, California, gas has recently been over $5 a gallon. The price of natural gas has tripled in less than a year. In two years over 5 million foreign nationals poured into the United States—all illegally across a nonexistent border. The president said that he “lowered” inflation, energy prices and interest rates after sending them to astronomical levels and then seeing them momentarily taper off a bit. Like Nero bragging about rebuilding Circus Maximus after burning it down. He omitted… Read more →
Unemployment Stays Unbelievably Low
Bed Bath & Beyond to Close Three More Stores in Los Angeles, Orange Counties https://t.co/ELCIzMhY3Q — Paul Epps (@paulepps) January 14, 2023 The company is closing about 150 stores overall, plus layoffs in corporate and supply chain. You can swap new company names (Coinbase, Goldman Sachs, etc.) into these layoffs and closing stores stories every day and still get sunny government economic reports based on nothing I can see except unbelievably low unemployment numbers. And when I say “unbelievably low,” I mean literally not believable (see here and here). Read more →
When Empires Start to Collapse
Yeah, I think if you look at history, it’s really interesting when empires start to collapse, when you start to get such a breach between how the elite lives and how the rest of the country lives. There are usually two options: you can either start to placate and appease the vast majority of the country who are living in deprivation — some symbolic gestures of social programs just enough to keep them mollified so they don’t go out into the streets — or you can decide, “You know what, we don’t really care how angry the citizenry gets. What we’re going to do instead is ‘paramilitarize’ the country, we’ll put them under a massive surveillance system. “We’ll keep a really close eye on everything they’re doing, we’ll listen to their communications and we’ll crush, first by demonizing and then, criminalizing and, then, censoring any form of dissent so that… Read more →
Individuals Have Rights
Individuals have rights, and there are things no person or group can do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are those rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. . . . Our main conclusions about the state are that a minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts, and so on, is justified; that any more extensive state will violate persons’ rights not to be forced to do certain things, and is unjustified; and that the minimal state is inspiring as well as right. Two noteworthy implications are that the state may not use its coercive apparatus for the purpose of getting some citizens to aid others, or in order to prohibit activities to people for their own good or protection. — Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia Read more →
Render Unto Ukraine What We Need at Home
Now, I don’t think it’s controversial to note that many Americans here at home are not doing very well. You can pick whatever problem you think is the gravest: lack of wage increases and wage stagnation; the need to work multiple jobs if you have children, especially even if you’re a married couple — the fact that one parent, if they want, can’t stay home and take care of their children any longer, what was a foundational property of American life for decades and that no longer is the case. It’s gone. There aren’t enough good jobs, so people have to work two jobs just to sustain their family, to pay other people to raise their kids, and to pay other people to take care of their elderly parents. Huge numbers of people are without health care. Some of those people without health care got Medicaid benefits during the COVID… Read more →
Ukraine: What is the Benefit?
I regard this as the most important question when it comes to the always profound debate of whether the United States government will involve itself in a war or, for that matter, it’s the most important question when it comes to debates over whether the U.S. government will do anything. In what ways has your life or the lives of your families been improved, secured, or enhanced by the more than $100 billion sent by the U.S. government to fuel this war on the other side of the world? Now, to be fair, there are some Americans whose lives have been materially improved by these expenditures. Those are the tiny sliver of Americans who own large amounts of shares of the leading weapons manufacturers. 2022 has been quite a poor year for the stock market in general. Stocks are down across the board. [NYSE has an overall loss of 13.3%… Read more →