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California is down 11% in personal income tax revenue versus expectations and 8% below forecast.
California Sees Warning Sign From Weak Tax Revenue Collections (msn.com)
Not surprising as California depends on revenue from the rich, and a tanking market hammers technology. Apple, Alphaet, Netflix, Lyft, Nvidia, all hurting.
The not-so-secret secret is that California has salted away surplus funds for just such an emergency.
200 homeless were moved from the 40 acre Guadalupe Gardens homeless encampment. I’d seen Guadalupe Gardens before the homeless had moved it, it was quite attractive and meshed well with the surrounding topography. Humans there, as everywhere else, are hard on the environment. The residents had been warned for months that this would happen. Since March, San Jose has moved 1.3 million pounds of debris and 84 cars and trucks that don’t run. San Jose Resumes Homeless Encampment Cleanup Near Airport – NBC Bay Area
Denver is spending $2 million from the American Rescue Plan Act.
Others that I didn’t mention, such as when Trump redirected funds that had been appropriated to other U.S. government operations to cover the cost of building his wall. As I said, I don’t like how this was done. And I suspect it will be challenged as unconstitutional.
Apparently, Biden is restarting the construction of the wall…
Joe Biden Resumes Construction of Trump’s Border Wall (theintercept.com)
I recall listening to a debate between a lefty and righty about the impact of standard media bias. Lefty (editor) says there’s no such thing, we report the news and only the news. We don’t editorialize at our publication. Righty (politician) says “True or false. You literally get to decide what is news by selecting which news is fit to print. You create bias when you publish one story over another or publish one side of a story or another. True or false?” To his amazement, the editor agreed.
So your sister is a closet conservative? 🙂
I would say she is a partially-out-of-the-closet conservative. Definitely a social progressive but with conservative financial leanings.
My Stanford PhD sister was always, always the Progressive’s Progressive. She used to have an interesting interpretation of Marx’s “From-each-according-to-his-ability, to-each-according-to-their-need” slogan. Her twist was that ability in that context should also be infused with inclination.
In other words, as she once told me, she should get paid the same amount for working 20 hours a week that I got paid for working 60 hours a week “because working’s your thing, man, it’s not my thing.” Direct quote.
Of course, these days, she’s employed her Stanford PhD to make some decent money, and she’s watching how much she’s paying in taxes, and — naturally — feels that she’s paying too much.
Other than extending the life of Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, does California have any more power plants on the design table to help comply with the mandates?
Ha, ha, ha. Just kidding. We all know the answer to that question.
I think lots of high achievers, cut off from support, are at risk for suicide. Middle-aged white males take their own lives at 3.54x more than women. It’s a perfect storm of factors.
Why are middle-aged white men more likely to die by suicide? | SSM Health
I love my dear mother, who occupies a planet far, far away from this one. Her favorite politician is Bernie Sanders. Sigh.
There’s no difference. 41,968 terror attacks sponsored by the Religion of Peace since 9/11.
Islam: The Politically Incorrect Truth (thereligionofpeace.com)
BTW, take a look at the Atrocity of the Week link. It concerns the murder of four Albuquerque, New Mexico Muslims last week. The articles I’ve read implied that evil caucasians committed these hate crimes. Turns out, the four Muslims were Shiite Muslims, and the murderer was a Shia Muslim, according to the AotW link.
An Afghan Muslim Refugee Carried Out America’s Worst Islamophobic Killings | FrontpageMag
BTW #2: an oddity of this board indicates that you are misspelling the word “Muslim” if you don’t capitalize it, same with the words “Jew” or “Christian”. “catholic” on the other hand, doesn’t appear as misspelled if you don’t capitalize it. Funny.
Salman Rushdie attack: details emerge about New Jersey suspect | Salman Rushdie | The Guardian
Hadi Matar, 24, born in USA of Lebanese parents, sympathetic to extreme Shia causes and Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, per his social media accounts. Iran’s dictator/Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei said that “a thousand bravos” should be bestowed upon the “brave and dutiful person who attacked the apostate and evil Salman Rushdie in New York”.
I was surprised to see reference to cali being wildly successful here. Pretty much nobody wants to move to california for the policies. They all want the weather and natural beauty. Any governor of california has the wind at their back. I think Gavin has wildly underperformed as a leader. He is a savvy politician but look who he is related to.
To be clear, I’m referring to the state’s image across the country, not the reality. People don’t realize that if you cleaved California in two, you’d have both the richest and the poorest states in the country. What’s been done to rural and agricultural California is heinous. Rest assured, no one will ever be called to account, least of all Dem politicians.
I think Newsom ends up leading the ticket in two years.
China has a number of issues:
- Wealth Gap/Economic imbalances that make Brazil’s look like Sweden.
- Rapidly aging population.
- Stalled reforms.
- Supply chain disruption.
- Credit issues.
- Unbalanced regional development.
- Overreliance on foreign commercial partners.
- Underconsumption by domestic households.
- A devastated environment (a friend of mine from China says this is their single greatest challenge by far).
- Push to assert party control over private business (and private business ain’t havin’ it).
- Inflation, spiraling costs of housing, health care and education.
- Real Estate downturn.
- Slowing growth.
- Government is attempting to turn private industry into state controlled entities.
- Too many “sell” signals in their internal tech sector caused by communist party policies.
- Uigher genocide/concentration camps/general lack of human rights.
- COVID issues.
- Risky external loans to failing countries; e.g., the Belt and Road initiative is backfiring.
- China’s globalization may stall due to their backing of Russia.
- Taiwan
- United States
- Potential social unrest due to all of the above.
Biden approval less than Trump’s, May 20; FiveThirtyEight:
Joe Biden’s Approval Rating Sinks Below Donald Trump’s (newsweek.com)
Biden approval new low, 37%; Deseret News, AP NORC Center for Public Research, Democrat approval less than 73%:
Biden approval rating: War in Ukraine, baby formula shortage lead to new low – Deseret News
Biden approval at 39%, down from a peak of 63%:
Biden’s approval dips to lowest of presidency: AP-NORC poll | AP News
The Big Picture:
Democrats’ midterm anxiety spikes after brutal NBC News poll (axios.com)
Only 1/3rd of Democrats say the country is moving in the right direction, down from 49% in April:
Biden’s Approval Rating Hits Record Low, Poll Finds (forbes.com)
Viewed graphically:
