Month: October 2022
Cuba Liberalizes Economy as Economic Crisis and Protests Grow
“In a major departure from established economic policy, the Cuban government has announced it will allow foreign investors into Cuba’s retail and wholesale industries for the first time since Fidel Castro nationalized those industries in 1969.
The move comes as Cuba faces one of its worst economic crises and a new wave of protests against the communist government in Havana. Though the communist government had recovered much of its political footing since unprecedented protests broke out all over the island last July over quality of life and repression of artists and musicians, the regime has seen its standing slip over the last month. Protests have emerged across the country as Cubans have voiced their discontent with days-long blackouts that have hit rural and interior areas of the island. Notable videos have circulated on social media of protests in Santiago de Cuba, Cienfuegos, and Holguin provinces as Cuba have taken to the streets in the dead of night.”
The Pandemic Home-Building Boom Is Over
Fact-Checking Industry Continues Providing Cover for White House’s Unbelievable IRS Claims
“According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), the Inflation Reduction Act directs the $80 billion in additional IRS funding to the following four enumerated divisions: “enforcement” ($45.7 billion), “operations support” ($25.3 billion), “business systems modernization” ($4.7 billion), and “taxpayer services” ($3.2 billion)”
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“The Treasury Department spokesperson would have us believe that 50.01 percent of newly created positions funded by this $80 billion injection will work in the divisions receiving just 10 percent of the money.”
Number of American Mass Murders Relatively Steady Since 2006
“The data come from USA Today, Northeastern University, and the Associated Press, which tracked mass murders in which four or more people (excluding the killer) were killed in a 24-hour period.”
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“Needless to say, murders of any kind are tragic. But the database challenges the conventional wisdom about mass murders, showing that their frequency has held relatively steady since 2006.
In 2006, there were 38 mass killings—the second highest number in the database. The year with the highest number was 2019, with 45 incidents (including 8 public shootings, 25 non-public shootings, and 12 non-shooting incidents). In 2008, there were 36 mass killings and 35 in 2021. On the lower end, there were 22 mass killings in 2012; there were 25 each in 2013, 2014, and 2018; and there were 26 in 2007. There have been 19 incidents so far in 2022.”
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“”A guy who kills his wife and children and sometimes kills himself is the most common type of mass killing,” Fox told USA Today. “Mass killings take place far more often in private homes than in schools, markets or churches.””
11,000 Federal Inmates Were Sent Home During the Pandemic. Only 17 Were Arrested for New Crimes.
“Of the more than 11,000 federal inmates who were released to home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, 17 were returned to prison for committing new crimes, according to the Bureau of Prisons (BOP).”
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“of the 17, 10 committed drug crimes, while the rest of the charges included smuggling non-citizens, nonviolent domestic disturbance, theft, aggravated assault, and DUI.”
John Vervaeke: Meaning Crisis, Atheism, Religion & the Search for Wisdom | Lex Fridman Podcast #317
The New Abortion Prohibition Era
“even if large majorities shared the pro-life view, anti-abortion laws are still very different from laws against murder in an important respect. When there is such deep, sincerely held disagreement about matters of such personal import, when hundreds of thousands of women every year personally weigh the factors and decide that an abortion is the right choice, that is a signal that new prohibition regimes will be extremely costly, and perhaps ultimately unjustifiable. Not everything bad must be banned. In the last three decades, abortions have fallen precipitously, from a high of 1.4 million in 1990, even as the law has remained largely unchanged, suggesting that even those who believe abortion to be a moral nightmare have other options at their disposal and that those other tools were working. We should seriously consider whether the outcomes are better all around if governments leave it to individuals to persuade each other, help each other, and talk to each other.
To do that, Americans need to be able to speak freely about abortion. They will need to share information about how abortions work and who gets them. And they’ll need to do that in broad daylight, so that bad information doesn’t go unchecked. This will be more difficult in states that choose more draconian criminalization regimes.”
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“As with other prohibitions, poor people and minorities will suffer most. People without resources in states with harsh restrictions will carry unwanted babies to term and, if current trends hold, they will most often keep them despite financial or personal difficulties they will face in doing so. Wealthy women will be able to travel to get abortions, and they will be able to hire lawyers to get them out of trouble when they get caught. In those cases, the new laws won’t stop those women from getting abortions; instead they will simply get abortions secretly, unsupported, at greater expense, and far from home.
It’s been a while since first-trimester abortions were illegal anywhere in the United States. But we have spent the decades since Roe experimenting with all kinds of other prohibitions, and all we have for our trouble is a trail of death and destruction.”
Why Won’t the Biden Administration Join Gorsuch in Seeking To Overrule These Racist SCOTUS Precedents?
“Between 1901 and 1904, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a series of cases, collectively known as the Insular Cases, which asked whether the Constitution should fully apply to the residents of Puerto Rico and other territories recently acquired by the U.S. after its victory in the Spanish-American War. The Court held that the Constitution did not fully apply in those U.S.-held territories.
The Insular Cases have been severely criticized—then and now—for being the product of racist and imperialist thinking. The legal scholar Walter F. Pratt Jr., author of The Insular Cases: The Role of the Judiciary in American Expansionism, described the legal arguments involved as “largely racially motivated,” since the Court effectively held that “the people of the new territories were unfit to become citizens.”
A similar criticism of the Insular Cases was recently voiced by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who argued that “the Insular Cases have no foundation in the Constitution and rest instead on racial stereotypes. They deserve no place in our law.””
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“Gorsuch also added his voice to those calling for the Insular Cases to be wiped off the books. “The time has come to recognize that the Insular Cases rest on a rotten foundation,” Gorsuch wrote. “And I hope the day comes soon when the Court squarely overrules them.”
Alas, the Department of Justice under President Joe Biden apparently sees things differently. As The Washington Post’s Robert Barnes recently reported, “the Biden administration told the Supreme Court Monday that it should not take up a case [Fitisemanu v. United States] about citizenship rights for American Samoa even though advocates say it would give justices a chance to upend a series of century-old precedents that have been roundly denounced as racist.””
The Biden Administration Is Taking From the Poor and Giving to the Rich
“Biden announced that he will—unilaterally, mind you, and for no apparent reason that I can see—extend the pause on student loan payments until the end of the year and forgive up to $10,000 for those persons making less than $125,000 a year. This generosity with other people’s money extends up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.
As David Stockman, a former director of the Congressional Office of Management and Budget, reported recently, “Only 37% of Americans have a 4-year college degree, only 13% have graduate degrees and just 3% have a PhD or similar professional degree. Yet a full 56% of student loan debt is held by people who went to grad school and 20% is owed by the tiny 3% sliver with PhDs.”
Picture two young married lawyers who together earn just under $250,000 and are on their way to making even more mon ey in the future. They will be able to collect from Uncle Joe a nice bonus of $40,000, taken from the pockets of the many people who didn’t go to college—perhaps because they did not want to take on debt—and from those who have responsibly already paid back their debt.”