1) Stat Of The Day – Spending At The Speed Of Light
Did you know that Congress hasn’t just broken the sound barrier, but even the speed of light with its reckless spending?
That’s the conclusion of our friend Jim Carter of the America First Principles Institute:
Following Congress's latest spending frenzy, the Congressional Budget Office raised its spending estimate for fiscal year 2023 to $6.221 trillion, or more than $197,000 per second. Ironically, that’s a bit higher than the speed of light (186,282 miles per second).
This headline from The Financial Times caught our attention.
According to the Finacial Times: “the U.S. seems to have taken the lead” in regulation. We checked it out and it is true that Biden has been a record-breaker in new regulations:
The costs of these new regs are easily in the hundreds of billions a year. But what’s odd about the article is that the Finacial Times sees the Biden regulatory onslaught as heroic: "American regulators have become more ambitious because they believe the stakes are so high. They view their work not in technocratic but existential terms; a battle against the risk of corporate oligopoly which threatens liberal democracy."
We would say that the real risk to democracy (and prosperity) in America today is the risk of an all-powerful government oligopoly.
Governor Ron DeSantis is clearly having fun visiting the home states of his leading Democratic critics and humorously taking them apart.
Last month, it was Illinois Governor J.D. Pritzker’s turn to be skewered. DeSantis pointed out that Pritzker “sent his family to Florida during the lockdowns….Our worst critics always somehow find a way to be in Florida.”
Over the weekend, DeSantis went to the Reagan Library in California and turned his guns on California Governor Gavin Newsom. Last year, Newsom ran an ad in Florida warning “Freedom is under attack in your state.”
To which DeSantis responded: “your governor [Newsom] spends so much time attacking me, I guess I am living rent-free in his head. I wonder if I have to pay California taxes on that rent?"
Many political prognosticators are predicting an eventual Newsom-DeSantis square-off in the 2024 presidential race. By the way here is what has happened to domestic migration in these two states over the last decade:
Who would make the better President: Newsom or DeSantis? You decide.
4) Brian Kemp Kills Effort To Let Buckhead's People Go
Last week, we celebrated a Georgia State Senate committee’s vote to allow the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta to file for divorce and form its own city in response to a soaring crime rate and collapsing public services.
Our optimism was premature. When the bill came up for a vote before the full Senate, ten out of 33 Republicans voted against it and killed the measure. The "nail in the coffin" was a leaked memo from GOP Governor Brian Kemp's legal counsel that warned of confusion in the transfer of public properties and deciding where children in the new city would go to school. (Full school choice in Georgia would make that problem go away).
We’re profoundly disappointed in Brian Kemp – who is considering a run for president – and Republicans in the legislature for conspiring against self-determination for the residents of Buckhead.
"If we jerk the heart out of the city of Atlanta, which is Buckhead, I know our capital city will die," said Republican Senator Frank Ginn. Hello? Central Atlanta has been dying for years because of bad woke liberal policies. Why allow those anti-growth policies to spread like a virus to other cities?
The best way to incentivize our once-great cities to reform themselves is by letting surrounding areas out of the clutches of their dysfunctional policies. This means getting rid of crime, fixing schools, and lowering taxes.
Is there any government in the world that told the truth about COVID?
Our British cousins followed the same disastrous maximum panic COVID strategy favored by Fauci and the CDC – and the feeling that new variants were deliberately overhyped to stoke fear and manipulate behavior is now confirmed on that side of the Atlantic.
ERRATUM: Our table on outmigration from blue states over the last decade is NOT 5.4 billion people – which is a little less than the entire world population. It’s 5.4 MILLION movers.
Sorry for the error. Thanks to the many eagle-eyed readers who pointed out the misprint. And rest assured the HOTLINE editor has been taken to the woodshed – for a severe verbal whipping.
