Category: Gradually Then Suddenly

Don’t Mess With Texas

CreepyJoeBiden Gradually Then Suddenly 24 Comments

It’s on.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a defiant statement on Wednesday pushing back against President Joe Biden’s attempts to stop Texas from securing its borders against the millions of illegal aliens pouring into the state thanks to Biden’s reckless border policies.

Abbott’s statement comes after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration earlier this week, ruling that it could remove or cut through razor wire the state has deployed to stop illegal aliens from crossing the Rio Grande into the state.

Read it here.

“The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now,” reads the statement. “President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”

Universal Basic Insolvency

Alternative Subsidy Gradually Then Suddenly nannystate 28 Comments

If our experience with pandemic “emergency benefits” is any guide, when you pay people not to work, then lo and behold they are unlikely to…work. It will be no different if the magical non-concept of Universal Basic Income ever sees the light of day.

As for the notion that under UBI people will be free to become “care givers” to loved ones, I can foresee a whole lot of youngsters becoming “care givers” to their PlayStation instead.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer produced an analysis in 2021 that concluded that a national guaranteed basic income using parameters of Ontario’s 2017 pilot project could cut Canada’s poverty rate by half in just one year, but at a hefty cost of $91 billion in 2024–25 and $93 billion in 2025–26. That’s nearly double what Ottawa spends, for example, on health transfers to the provinces.

Blind Faith

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing 16 Comments

These days, South Africa is starting to look like a real-life enactment of the last few chapters of Atlas Shrugged.

Rampant cable theft has damaged South Africa’s railway signalling systems to the extent that train operators are effectively forced to operate “blindly”, necessitating frequent stops at railway transfer stations and manual phone-ins to avoid train collisions.

Pereira said a trip between Ermelo in Mpumalanga and Richards Bay in KwaZulu-Natal that typically lasted nine hours would now take over double that time.

That is because each stop can take about 20 minutes, provided the machinist has cellphone signal.

On the rare occasion that they are unable to communicate to the CTC due to no reception, the stop could add another two to three hours to the total trip time.

What the teachers strike is really about

Baiting The Left Books Gradually Then Suddenly Insufferable Twits youmightbeinsaskatchewan 40 Comments
This 2010 book foretold the problems teachers are striking over today.

This Saskatchewan teachers strike is about something no one wants to say openly.

Passing kids who should have failed, mainstreaming everyone, overcrowding and not enough ESL are all part of “classroom complexity.” But we’ve had ample warning this was going to happen, from a guy I’ve known for 30 years. He wrote a book about this in 2010.

Believe it or not, I used to write opinion columns for 28 years on everything under the sun before launching Pipeline Online. And this teachers strike in Saskatchewan got under my skin enough that I had to write about it.

 

A Revolutionary Culture

Forward! Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism 25 Comments

South Africa made some strides in cleaning up rampant criminality when it hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2010 but that all seems to be a distant memory now. The reality is that the ANC is returning to its ideological roots, where anarchy and lawlessness play a role in cultivating the ground for a revolution that they hope to cash in on. The end goal: make society so chaotic that a traumatized citizenry will accept a dictatorship of the proletariat.

Security vans carrying money are rammed off busy daytime roads by deliberate attacks with vehicles, with guards set upon by heavily armed men who use bombs to blow open safes.

Robberies can last extended periods, with motorway traffic continuing normally on the other side of the road while gangs prime their explosives and rove about with automatic weapons, sometimes filmed by onlookers.

The murder rate fell in the years after the end of apartheid, reaching a low point around a decade ago. Since then, it has increased 77% to the current level – back to where it was 20 years ago.

Detection rates have fallen in tandem, down more than 60% since 2012, leading to the situation where so few murders are solved.

It’s a Trap!

Gradually Then Suddenly Shiny Pony 24 Comments

Globe and Mail- An immigration system that’s lowering national wealth? Yes, the Liberals did that

Ottawa has put the country into a bind known as a “population trap.” That’s the conclusion of National Bank of Canada chief economist Stéfane Marion. A population trap is an unhappy state of affairs familiar to poor countries with very high birth rates. It’s unheard of in the developed world. Yet it’s what is happening in Canada today.

Canada’s population growth through immigration has been so high that it has outpaced the country’s savings, and its ability to invest in new capital stock. In plain English, the number of forks in the economic pie is growing faster than the pie, and faster than our capacity to invest in more ovens to bake more pie. The result is less pie per Canadian – declining GDP per capita, and declining living standards.

Don’t Bump That Sparky Car!

Climate Cult Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing 34 Comments

It’s going to take some time to accumulate actuarial data, but a showdown between EV makers and insurance companies seems to be on the horizon.

The main reason that EVs are being scrapped is due to the fact that there is no viable way to repair even slightly damaged batteries which are turning out to be a disaster for insurance companies whilst also increasing motor insurance for drivers across the board.

Even when it is possible to repair a battery, insurance companies are still wary of doing so as they fear litigation cases if the car happens to be involved in another accident.

Another Zero Percent Interest Miracle!

Cronies Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing 13 Comments

Despite the official pronouncements, the main concern of central banks is not inflation or unemployment, but rather the solvency of the banks within their purview. When a bank runs into balance sheet trouble, the go-to solution is to quietly extend more credit on easier terms. The public will be the last to know which bank received the bailout just so depositors don’t get spooked.

Honk, Honk

Climate Cult Gradually Then Suddenly 16 Comments

EUGYPPIUS- 69% of Germans Support the Farmers’ Protest

You might think that this would encourage the press to moderate their ongoing smear campaign, but that would be wrong. Der Spiegel, a consistent pioneer in journalistic dishonesty, today has this dubious item drawing an ominous historical analogy with the Landvolkbewegung, or Rural People’s Movement, from the Weimar Republic:

EUGYPPIUS- The Great German Farmer Protests Have Begun

First came the farmers’ protests in the Netherlands, then the Freedom Convoy in Canada. Now the farm protests have reached Germany.

Don’t Worry, It’s Transitory

Democrats Gradually Then Suddenly 18 Comments

But they got the headlines they wanted;

There’s something wrong with previous U.S. jobs reports.

The government quietly erased 439,000 jobs through November 2023, a closer look at the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows. That means its initial jobs results were inflated by 439,000 positions, and the job market is not as healthy as the government suggests.

Since the government wiped out 439,000 jobs after the fact, the total percentage of jobs created by the government last year is even higher. Increased government hiring has been driving the jobs numbers higher.

Welfare Mentality

entitlement generation Gradually Then Suddenly 33 Comments

Manitoba has not seen itself as a “can-do” province for decades now, with voters seeming to prefer the passivity of a “have-not” attitude instead. That same outlook has predictably infected the City of Winnipeg as well. One supposes that the main response to the city’s budgetary woes will be to go cap in hand to the province…who will predictably go cap in hand to the Feds. In the meantime, expect infrastructure to continue to crumble and crime to soar.

An accelerated regional road renewal program, funded by the federal government, has come to an end, so there will be less work done on road repairs, he said.

There is also no new money to transition Winnipeg Transit’s bus fleet to zero-emission buses, beyond what council has already committed to, nor to add more buses to the fleet.

Last month, the city released a budget projection that estimated Winnipeg would overspend its budget by $3.1 million, based on financial data from the end of September.

At the same time, the city must replenish a rainy-day fund that was nearly emptied during the pandemic.

Bursting Bubbles

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism 10 Comments

I remember being told back in the 80s that the West needed to emulate the Japanese model which had allegedly conquered the business cycle with by meshing private businesses with a careful dose of central planning. Fueled by easy credit, the marriage of private and public interests turned out to be a sham and to this day the only solution offered is even more easy credit.

“I was still a student in the 90s. Life was great. I went out drinking almost every day wasting money on women, gambling, and putting anything I had left into all kinds of investments. Everything was going up and it felt like every Yen I spent was going to double next year. Our brains had been so thoroughly poisoned by the bubble of the past few years that we were all insanely optimistic. Most of us didn’t even consider that the prosperity could ever come to an end.”

Monetary Bonfire

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing 7 Comments

Ever since interest rates spiked up over the last year, every central bank is now paying out more in interest to depositors than it earns on its bond portfolio. For the U.S. Federal Reserve, those losses are now over $130 billion. In an attempt to get around the elephant in the room, the Fed has created a “deferred asset” which is a promise to pay back all those losses once interest rates fall and they can once again earn more that they pay out. Accounting gimmicks are such a sweet deal when you hold all the cards. Here’s a link to the chart at the St. Louis Fed.

 

More Of The Same

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough 11 Comments

Meet the new central planner, same as the old central planner. If even Danielle Smith cannot challenge the ludicrous premise behind single payer health care, then “reform” just means shuffling the waiting lists around.

Smith’s United Conservative Party government is expected in the spring sitting to begin passing laws to make good on her plan to dismantle Alberta Health Services, the centralized body that oversees health delivery on everything from acute care to community care.

AHS is to be replaced by four agencies, while being reduced to the role of service provider in acute care.

No Jobs For You!

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing nannystate 21 Comments

Defenders of minimum wage hikes usually claim that businesses will either effortlessly pass on the increased costs or accept a lower profit margin. There’s another way to get around such mandates, however: eliminate positions entirely.

Pizza Hut is laying off more than 1,200 delivery drivers in California.

The layoffs, which will take place through the end of February, come as California’s minimum wage is about to go up by $4. Fast-food workers in the state are set to get a pay bump of close to 30% in April as the minimum wages rises from $16 to $20 an hour.

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