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Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds
“…More than 1 in 10 Illinoisans – 1.1 million, or about 11.4% of the adult population – are members of an Illinois public pension system.
Those government retirment systems are sitting on mountains of debt. There’s $144 billion in debt just in the five statewide systems, by the state’s conservative estimate, or $261 billion by a more realistic, independent estimate. They average only 40% of the funds needed to pay out retiree benefits long-term.
If you add in local pension debt, Illinois’ unfunded pension liability totals more than $200 billion by the state’s measure, and that amount grows every year. Another shock such as the Great Recession could cause the first pension fund to run out of money by 2039, according to actuarial analysis.
That amounts to a broken promise not only to retirees who are banking on having their pensions to support them, but also to the taxpayers who continue getting hit with higher taxes just to keep things from tanking.
Illinois politicians have enhanced benefits without funding them and pushed off the financial reckoning for decades. As a result, pension costs, which took up just 4% of the state’s budget in the 1990s, have increased by more than 500% during the past 20 years, growing to consume more than 25% of budgets in recent years – rapidly approaching 30%.
What’s more, generous retirement perks have been promised, time and time again, than can’t securely be delivered without financial hardship to the rest of the state. With employee contributions and benefits both fixed by state law, shortfalls in investment returns must be made up by taxpayers…”
Rep. @BurgessOwens rips comparisons of Georgia's voting law to Jim Crow:
"What I find extremely offensive is the narrative from the left that black people are not smart enough, not educated education… to do what every other culture and race does in this country: get an ID." pic.twitter.com/oZzSD3wovB
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 20, 2021
Polk County, Florida Sheriff Grady Judd to the "millions and millions" of people moving to Florida:
"Welcome to Florida. But don't register to vote and vote the stupid way you did up north. You'll get what they got." pic.twitter.com/jsSaID4LM3
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 19, 2021
“…Just as with the Russia Bounty debacle, they will never acknowledge what they did. Their audience wants to be lied to for partisan gain and emotional pleasure…”
Chauvin trial judge Cahill is visibly upset by elected officials like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) sharing their opinions on the Floyd trial, but he believes it's not enough to constitute a mistrial. pic.twitter.com/G5kHpTXpU0
— The Recount (@therecount) April 19, 2021
JUST IN: Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick died of natural causes, medical examiner rules https://t.co/nrceHL2P3L
— The Washington Times (@WashTimes) April 19, 2021
Fake news, fake media, fake politicians, fake Big Tech, fake woke corporations.
It is fake from top to bottom. If you believe their crap, it’s on you.
Brooklyn Center, MN pic.twitter.com/4eepsxzZcz
— Logan Ratick (@Logan_Ratick) April 19, 2021
Brooklyn Center, Minnesota….not Tehran pic.twitter.com/d538mSMg0t
— Logan Ratick (@Logan_Ratick) April 19, 2021
Related:
National Democrat inflames tensions in Minneapolis. Defund the police, but fund her personal bodyguards.
The face of the new American racism.
Wen Wryte:
“…With the composite president known as “Joe Biden” pushing ahead with implementing the Green New Deal, the climate-alarmist industrial complex will be ramping up its propaganda to scare as many people as possible into believing that Planet Earth is about to burn up. Unless, that is, we — the people — allow our freedoms and prosperity to be whittled away until freedom and prosperity are for most people half-forgotten memories.
So now is a good time to explore the biggest fallacy of all underlying climate-alarmist junk science. This is the “base-line fallacy,” which is a cousin of the statistical “base-rate fallacy”; both result from probabilistic errors when assessing the likelihood of scenarios based on the pattern of prior events.
The “base-line fallacy” involves the selection of a starting-point in the dataset which conveniently omits confounding data, so that the conclusion reached is determined not by objective patterns in the whole dataset but by short-term trends in the partial snapshot of data used in the study. This outcome may be the result of an innocent error by the researchers, and peer-review should pick this up and cause it to be corrected. But this does not appear to have happened with climate-alarmist research. Instead, it is beyond doubt that the base-line fallacy is embedded in the research methodology of such studies and is actually normal practice. This is not credible science. It is political ideology masquerading as — at best — junk science. It’s possibly the biggest intellectual fraud thus far in the history of science…”
“…Grocery chain Kroger said it closed down two California stores Saturday after the Long Beach City Council approved a COVID-19-related “hero pay” ordinance that increased wages by $4 per hour.
The pay increase, mandated in January, was for workers who were employed at pharmacies and retail stores with 300 or more employees in the Southern California city.
The move was announced earlier this year, but the Ralph’s and Food 4 Less—both operated by Kroger—were shut down on April 17, employees told local media outlets.
“As a result of the City of Long Beach’s decision to pass an ordinance mandating Extra Pay for grocery workers, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close long-struggling store locations in Long Beach,” said a spokesperson for Kroger several weeks ago. “This misguided action by the Long Beach City Council oversteps the traditional bargaining process and applies to some, but not all, grocery workers in the city.”
Last month, Kroger also announced it would close down three stores—two Ralphs and one Food 4 Less—in nearby Los Angeles, which passed its own $5-per-hour “hero pay” boost to workers amid the pandemic…”
“…CNN technical director Charles Chester to blab on what he thought were dates after connecting on Tinder.
In the tapes, Chester casually explains how his network preys on fear to squeeze out higher ratings. CNN President Jeff Zucker regularly called in on a special red phone call, for example, telling his “news” team to play up the COVID death toll whenever the regular news is too dull.
Chester callously explained that the virus that has taken more than 3 million lives drives “gangbuster” ratings. He even admitted that he himself had been guilty of looking at the daily death count and saying, “Let’s make it higher.”
And when the pandemic becomes old news, he added, CNN will turn to exploiting climate change for fear-driven ratings.
Objectivity is out the window: Chester explains to his “date” that there is “no such thing as unbiased news.” Indeed, he bragged, the only people CNN allows on the air are those with “a proven track record of taking the bait” that reporters feed them of exactly what opinions to express.
He also brags that he went to the network in the first place to “be a part of” getting President Trump voted out of office. Indeed, he said CNN’s entire “focus was to get Trump out of office,” so it resorted to fake stories and “propaganda.”…”
The biggest threat to young black men is other young black men. Criminal statistics demonstrate this year after year. Media ignores it.
Related:
Michigan: ‘Strongest public health order in the Midwest’ now requires masks for 2-year-olds
Mindless, petty tyrant nonsense. Think about that rule. What parent would take a sick, 2 year old child out in crowded public spaces or out anywhere except a doctor’s office or hospital.
Democrat governor.
Vote for Democrats and this is what you get.
Rafael A. Mangual:
“…Last night, as I scrolled through my newsfeed on Facebook, I saw multiple posts referring to the shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by Chicago police officer Eric Stillman, video (warning: graphic) of which had just been released by the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
All the posts linked to news stories with headlines emphasizing one detail: at the moment Toledo was struck by the officer’s gunfire, his hands were raised and appeared to be empty. A sampling of the news headlines:
Slate: “Video Shows Chicago Police Shoot 13-Year-Old Adam Toledo With His Hands Up”
BuzzFeed News: “Video Shows 13-Year-Old Adam Toledo Had His Hands Up When A Police Officer Fatally Shot Him”
NBC 5 Chicago: “Attorney: Adam Toledo Did Not Have Gun In His Hand When He Was Shot By Chicago Police”
Mic: “13-year-old Adam Toledo put his hands up. Chicago police killed him anyway”
USA Today: “‘We failed Adam’: Body camera videos show 13-year-old Adam Toledo put hands up before fatal police shooting in Chicago” (the quote belongs to Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot)
The Associated Press: “Video: Chicago boy wasn’t holding gun when shot by officer”
The implication from these headlines is clear: the boy was unarmed and raising his hands in surrender when he was shot—ergo, this was a bad shooting.
Those were just the news pieces. The commentary was more explicit. In The Hill, a piece entitled “Lawmakers demand justice for Adam Toledo: ‘His hands were up. He was unarmed’” quotes, among many other Democratic lawmakers, California congresswoman Karen Bass, who tweeted, “Adam Toledo was 13 years old. Those responsible for taking the rest of his life away from him must be held accountable.” A local community organizer told an audience on Democracy Now! that “There is no other way to describe what we saw in the video, as a cold-blooded murder.” During a press conference, the attorney representing Toledo’s family said, “If you’re shooting an unarmed child with his hands in the air, it is an assassination.” The Los Angeles Times quoted “neighbors” in Little Village, where the shooting took place, who referred to the shooting as “an execution.”
New York City mayoral hopeful Andrew Yang distilled the relevant facts to just three: “He was 13. He was unarmed. His hands were up.” Law professor Paul Butler (with whom I recently debated police reform) asked, on MSNBC, “Where is the bottom?”—suggesting that this shooting was clearly wrong. Butler went on to note that the officer fired his weapon “within 20 seconds of leaving his car.” Similarly, MSNBC’s Joy Reid said of the police in this case, “They didn’t wait ten seconds before opening up on him like it was a drive-by.” What Butler and Reid don’t seem to understand is that it takes a lot less than ten seconds for an armed suspect to shoot a police officer.
Such inflammatory comments have become par for the course for modern media. A close analysis of the available video evidence also shows just how detached from reality these comments are…”