2) Sweeping School Choice Bill Passes in Louisiana
And now for some great news. The headline below says it all:
We don’t know all the details yet, but this appears to be a major victory that allows universal school choice with few restrictions.
Our school choice coalition with ALEC and other education freedom groups has been committed to promoting the virtues of choice for parents and kids in Louisiana. Congrats to first-year Governor Jeff Landry for his never-take-no for an answer campaign to get this passed.
This remarkable map was shared with us yesterday by a reader.
If Texas were a separate country, it would be the third largest oil producer in the world. Drill, baby drill.
We looked up the latest annual figures from EIA and it checks out. Since 2019, Texas has outproduced every country in the world besides Russia and Saudi Arabia:
It’s impressive evidence of the great ingenuity of the industry that production has risen in recent years even with the onslaught of anti-oil policies from the Biden administration.
But we do have to note how much more quickly Texas oil production was rising when Trump was president – which also happens to be when Texas passed Canada, Iraq, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates in production. Venezuela is no longer a top oil producer, but we included them here as a cautionary tale.
4) Illinois Imposes a Zero Credit Card Price Control on Sales Tax
Last year we helped ring the alarm on this hare-brained scheme when it was proposed in Florida.
Now a blue state, Illinois, has become the first to mandate an exclusion from credit card interchange fees for sales tax.
Governor Pritzker shoved it through the legislature over the Memorial Day weekend, with final passage early Wednesday morning.
To comply, restaurants and retailers will have to run your credit card twice -- once for the total before tax and tip (also excluded under this bill), and then again for tax and tip, with no interchange charged on the second transaction.
This is a clumsier, even worse way to impose the same goal as other price control legislation, with the same likely adverse consequences of less fraud protection, erosion of rewards programs, less availability of credit for low-income customers, etc.
It's going to be yet another huge inconvenience for the people of Illinois and anybody who still visits the once-great city of Chicago.
5) IRS Leaker Chaz Littlejohn Stole Tax Returns From 50,000+ Taxpayers and Gets Slap on the Wrist
Chaz Littljohn got a sweetheart plea deal from the Biden DOJ for a single count of stealing tax returns, even though DOJ said he stole up to 15 years of returns from "thousands" of taxpayers. It has now been confirmed that he stole returns from at least 50,000 and maybe 70,000 taxpayers.
We would have to conclude that the Biden administration WANTED these private records released so they could have access to the private financial records of their political enemies, and publicize the tax returns of the rich.
An individual's tax returns are confidential and disclosing them undermines trust in, and compliance with the tax system.
These tax returns were leaked to the liberal group ProPublica, which has been allowed to keep all of these stolen documents and publicize them.
Isn't knowingly taking possession of stolen property a crime? Do they have our returns? Or yours? Maybe. We're told thousands of the victims have still not been notified.
6) Scary, but It Turns Out This Babylon Bee Spoof Was 100% Accurate
Steve Moore's radio show, "Moore Money", is on TOMORROW from 1-3 PM on the world-famous 77 WABC in New York City. Steve will do round-up of some of the most important items you need to know from this week, and catch up with expert guests. THE GOOD NEWS: you don't have to live in NYC to listen!