1) LA and NYC: More Money, a Bigger Education Blob, Fewer Students
These charts from Georgetown professor Marguerite Roza paint a stark picture of education finance in America's biggest cities:
Throwing huge amounts of money at the public school systems in these big cities hasn't improved test scores or any measure of school quality, but it has corresponded with a stampede of kids out of the school system. Some families have chosen private schools. Others have moved out. The poorest families—mostly minorities—who can’t afford private alternatives are the victims. Don’t the lives of Black and Hispanic children matter?
A recent Punchbowl News survey of Democratic influencers found that if Joe Biden does not run again, they prefer Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. The "Lockdown Queen" was the top choice of 49 percent, with Vice President Kamala Harris and California Governor Gavin Newsom running behind.
This could be problematic for the Democrats because of Whitmer’s abysmal record of dealing with COVID. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis noted in a speech in Midland, MI, “I do remember during COVID people fleeing those lockdowns in Michigan… People were treated very, very poorly and parents were upset with the schools and everything else…”
While Whitmer was just signing a bill repealing right to work in Michigan—thus forcing workers to join a union—DeSantis was standing up to teacher unions. He recently signed a bill allowing all Florida parents to have the freedom to choose any school in the state they wish for their kids.
Last year, Florida’s job growth was second best in the nation at 4.6 percent, compared to Michigan’s anemic 2.1 percent. Florida also had the largest population increase of any state from 2021 to 2022, while Michigan lost people.
3) Mark Our Words: The Government Will Soon Ban Gas Cars
We’ve sounded the alarm that the Biden Administration and the climate change alarmists who seem to have a stranglehold over the Democrat party, are moving swiftly to get rid of gas-fueled cars. This headline from the Sunday New York Times only reinforces our suspicions that abolition is the master plan:
The Times notes that these rules “would be intended to ensure that electric cars represent between 54 and 60 percent of all new cars sold in the United States by 2030, with that figure rising to 64 to 67 percent of new car sales by 2032.”
Hello! That’s just nine years from now. Today, less than six percent of cars are electric. This is going to take quite a Soviet-style plan to come anywhere close to that goal.
The current 6% number of EV owners is pathetically low given that the government is bribing people with up to $7,500 to buy Teslas, etc. Uncle Sam is also guaranteeing free battery charging, providing tens of billions of subsidies to the battery producers, and offering primo parking spaces to EVs with charging stations at nearly every shopping center in America.
And people STILL aren’t buying them. The purpose of the new EPA regs is to simply regulate cars with combustible engines out of business by making the rules so stringent that car companies can’t comply. This is a de facto moratorium.
4) New Study: Even in Hospitals Mask Mandate Had Little to No Effect
We were infuriated when a few weeks ago the Wall Street Journal published a long Weekend Review article claiming that masks were an effective way to stop the spread. That conclusion runs contrary to most of the evidence.
Here's an important new study that, as far as we know, no US hospital bothered to do. St. George's Hospital in The UK ended its mask mandate for staff and visitors for some – but not all – wards and compared the outcomes for hospital-acquired COVID infections before and after the mandate was lifted in both the intervention and control groups.
The study says: “Utilising a robust quasi-experimental approach, we found no evidence that a mask policy significantly impacts the rate of nosocomial SARS-CoV-2 infection with the Omicron variant. While these data do not preclude a small effect, the real-world benefit of this mitigation measure in isolation is likely to be modest within a healthcare setting.”
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind is an American classic—up there with Huckleberry Finn—as one of the greatest novels ever written.
The 1939 film remains the top-grossing movie of all time after adjusting for inflation. It won 10 Oscars, including one for Hattie McDaniel, the first African-American actress to be honored with one.
But now the “woke” police have come for it. A couple of years ago, HBO banned the film for engaging in racist stereotypes. Now the book will include “trigger warnings” inserted by the publisher Pan Macmillan. It cautions readers that the book is “racist” and could be “hurtful or indeed harmful.” The publisher has even added an essay in the latest edition of the book apologizing for the “white supremacy” undertones.
Leave this classic alone. If some people have their feelings hurt, well, “Frankly, my dears, we don’t give a damn.”
