Champion of Truth
“in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 2021, city voters passed a ballot initiative that imposed a 3 percent annual cap on rent increases without exemptions for new construction or allowances for inflation.
The result? Developers fled town en masse, walking away from already in-progress projects and canceling permit applications. The city hurriedly worked to weaken the voter-passed law.”
“Since 2013, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have all passed legislation mandating that teachers be trained in the “science of reading”—methods that typically center around phonics, an approach in which children are taught to read words by decoding the sounds that different letters or groups of letters make. Since these policies’ implementation, reading performance in these states has dramatically improved, even though reading scores there have historically been among the lowest in the nation.”
“DeSantis wants us to believe that preventing a dietician, a property manager, or a professor from buying property in Florida, based purely on their national origin and non-immigrant status, somehow strikes a blow against “the Chinese Communist Party” and “crack[s] down on Communist China.” But it is hard to see why innocent people should suffer for the crimes of an oppressive regime they left behind.”
“If your net wealth is approximately $135,000 or more and you live in Norway, you’ve long been subject to a 0.85 percent wealth tax. That rate has, as of this year, been hiked to 1.1 percent by the center-left government, and even more gobs of cash will be taken from rich people worth roughly $1.8 million, who will be taxed at a rate of 1.3 percent.
Unfortunately for the Norwegian lefties—and their American counterparts who argue for similar taxes to be instituted here—this wealth tax hasn’t really generated the revenue they’d expected. It has instead resulted in rich people boarding their superyachts and leaving those fjords behind forevermore.
Per the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Næringsliv, 30 of the country’s multimillionaires and billionaires left the country last year in advance of the wealth tax hike. “This was more than the total number of super-rich people who left the country during the previous 13 years, it added,” noted The Guardian. “Even more super-rich individuals are expected to leave this year because of the increase in wealth tax in November, costing the government tens of millions in lost tax receipts.””
“The report—authored by independent journalists Matt Taibbi, Michael Shellenberger, and Alex Gutentag, and published on Substack—names Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu as “three of the earliest people to become infected with SARS-CoV-2” in fall 2019. Not only did these three scientists work at the WIV, but they worked specifically on gain-of-function research; Hu in particular was considered a “star pupil” of Shi Zhengli, dubbed the “bat woman” for her work studying coronaviruses in bats.”
…
“The report’s authors spoke with multiple sources inside the U.S. government who provided the information. These sources, whose names were withheld to protect their anonymity, said there is little doubt that the laboratory is where the pandemic started.”
“Like a good neighbor, State Farm Insurance is warning Californians to stop living and building in high wildfire-risk zones. That is the upshot of a press release in which the insurer states that the company, as a “provider of homeowners insurance in California, will cease accepting new applications including all business and personal lines property and casualty insurance, effective May 27, 2023.” State Farm is taking this step largely because the California Department of Insurance’s system of price controls does not allow it and other insurance companies to charge premiums commensurate with the potential losses they face.
Consequently, State Farm is no longer willing to sell new homeowner insurance policies because the company calculates that it cannot cover potential losses in the face of increasing wildfire risks, fast-rising rebuilding costs, and steep increases in reinsurance rates. Higher rebuilding costs boost the values of the houses and businesses that companies currently insure.”
“Starting your own medical practice is hard. In some states, it’s almost impossible due to the monopoly power of politically connected hospital associations. Independent doctors and patients tried for 10 years in South Carolina before finally scoring a victory last month.
On May 16, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed legislation to repeal most of the state’s medical certificate of need (CON) laws. A CON is a government permission slip that health care providers must obtain before they can launch or expand services. Spending money to provide safe, affordable care is illegal without this piece of paper.
Big hospitals love the red tape. Instead of competing with would-be rivals on a level playing field, they can claim their turf and defend it using government interference on their behalf. Many states even allow established providers to object to rival CON applications, giving them something like veto power.
If McDonald’s had the same authority, local franchisees could block mom-and-pop burger joints from opening nearby. The Home Depot could block family hardware stores. And LA Fitness could block independent gyms.”
“Drug prohibition sows the seeds of its own defeat by creating a highly lucrative and resilient black market that is always adjusting to enforcement efforts. When police arrest a drug dealer, someone else takes his place. Even dismantling an entire trafficking operation does not have a substantial and lasting impact on retail prices or consumption because it creates opportunities that other organizations are happy to seize.”
“Maurice Jimmerson has been behind bars for 10 years but hasn’t been convicted of a crime. Due to a series of bureaucratic holdups, Jimmerson has been held in a Dougherty County, Georgia, jail since he was charged with murder in 2013—a crime for which two of his codefendants have already been acquitted. Making matters worse, Jimmerson recently spent eight months without any lawyer at all.
After local journalists uncovered Jimmerson’s case in April, an Atlanta criminal defense attorney stepped in to represent Jimmerson pro bono—and he’s motioned to dismiss the charges altogether.”