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Unleash Prosperity Hotline – Weekend Edition
Issue #724
03/03/2023, 03/04/2023, 03/05/2023
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1) In Epic Flip-Flop, Biden Now Plans To Sign DC Crime Bill

President Biden must have watched Lori Lightfoot crash and burn over the crime issue in Chicago on Tuesday because he has suddenly changed his mind and will sign the bill to block the DC Council's law that REDUCES penalties imposed on violent criminals. 
 

Sadly, 173 House Democrats voted NO on the bill that Biden will now sign.

https://clerk.house.gov/evs/2023/roll119.xml
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2) High On The Hogs! Arkansas House Passes School Choice

We've been predicting that 2023 would be the year of school choice and the evidence keeps pouring in. The latest victory in Arkansas where we stand in awe of what Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders just accomplished. Many of us have been pushing for decades to advance the principle that parents should control the education dollars for their children. Governor Sanders made it a reality in two weeks: last week in the state Senate and this week in the House.
 

Congratulations to the governor for taking on the teachers' unions and siding Arkansas families. Which state is next? Maybe Texas? Oklahoma? Florida?
 
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3) To Get More Jobs And Businesses, End Occupational Licensing

In his masterpiece, Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman argued against occupational licensing requirements by making the case that in a free society, you shouldn’t even need a certificate or degree to practice medicine or law.  Whether you agree with Friedman on this or not on these two tough examples (we do) his main point was that there is no reason for licensing requirements for realtors or plumbers or moving companies or barbers. These are just restraints on trade that hurt lower-income minorities trying to enter the trades and raise consumer prices. 

That's why we were thrilled when CTUP hosted a lunch this week for Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, and he announced that he has signed a law to make it easier for experienced, skilled, and already licensed out-of-state professionals in 85 fields to join Virginia’s workforce.  

The overall share of U.S. jobs requiring an occupational license increased from 5 percent in the 1950s to 23 percent in 2021.   
 

Eight states have passed comprehensive reform (list below) recently. Three others (New Hampshire, Nevada, and Ohio) are on the verge of passing bills into law.

Arizona
Missouri
Utah
Idaho
Montana
Iowa
Pennsylvania
Virginia 

If your state isn’t on the list, contact your state legislators and urge them to follow the example of Governor Youngkin and other leaders in opening up job opportunities in occupations that range from a makeup artist (41 states) to hair braiding (16 states). 
 
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4) More And More Neighborhoods Want To Secede From Dysfunctional Woke Blue Cities 

We strongly support the strengthening movement across the country of allowing cities and counties along the borders of two states to redraw the lines and secede from one (usually blue) state and join the other (red). Self-determination is an important principle. 

Keep an eye on the “home rule” movement of neighborhoods and townships within states, attempting to secede from the large and often dysfunctional blue cities. These areas want to escape from the high taxes, high crime, poor public services, and incompetent/corrupt political leadership of big cities. This movement for “independence” is called “cityhood.”

Atlanta is a prime example. Since 2005, more than a dozen new cities have been incorporated independently, including Sandy Springs. It now has 108,000 people, is hugely successful, and is the 7th largest city in the states.

Now the residents of the booming Buckhead district of Atlanta want to break off from Atlanta. Buckhead was annexed by Atlanta in the 1950s and now feels it’s being held hostage by a corrupt government. It has one-fifth of Atlanta’s population but supplies 40% of its revenue - while getting little in effective services in return.
 

Last week, a Georgia Senate committee passed two bills along party lines that would allow Buckhead to vote on leaving Atlanta. Should they pass the legislature and be signed by Governor Brian Kemp, Buckhead residents could vote to form their own city without having to get permission from Atlanta City Hall.

"Too many times in local communities, elected officials forget who they work for. So when movements happen that remind elected officials who the real bosses are, then I have to support that," Senator Randy Robertson, the sponsor of the Buckhead bills, says.

We stand with Buckhead. 

https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-news/senate-committee-backs-buckhead-cityhood-bills/J4W35ITXENCWXDCUWZH5OBOKFE/
 
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5) Why The Media And The “Science” Was So Wrong About COVID

With each passing week we get more information confirming what we have been saying for three years: the “experts” and the media were tragically wrong in much of what they were telling us about COVID and the government’s response. They even covered up the origins of the virus. Why? Here’s a short but highly plausible explanation from the Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro for the endless falsehoods:

“As Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com correctly noted, 'The Bad People [Trump and conservatives] thought the China lab leak might be true, therefore as journalists we couldn’t be expected to actually evaluate the evidence for it.'

Herein lies a lesson: A huge number of people have decided that there are a cadre of [conservatives] who are so vile that any opinion they touch is immediately toxified beyond investigation. Claims are not to be evaluated on their own merits; instead, we can simply determine whether a claim ought to be supported based on those who posit it…

That’s precisely what happened with COVID-19. Whether it was ignoring the actual evidence regarding masks and mask mandates, the evidence regarding post-vaccination transmissibility or the evidence regarding the lab leak theory, experts decided that the wrong people had to be ignored. But they were wrong. And now they have no credibility left.


The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, writing on how mainstream media outlets dismissed the idea that COVID had origins in a Chinese lab.

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/ben-shapiro/2023/03/02/greatest-cover-human-history
 
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6) Bye, Bye Lori 

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