Taxing the Middle Class and Poor

Arizona’s Progressive-Democrat Governor Katie Hobbs has vetoed a bill that would have barred cities and municipalities from taxing food purchases. Hobbs’ rationalization went like this:

The bill, originally unveiled as a way to mitigate inflation, does not take effect for more than two years. What’s more, it does nothing for the more than 800,000 Arizonans who use SNAP and WIC benefits for their groceries, as these constituents are already exempt from the tax.

Hobbs’ first beef might seem like a reasonable objection, and one easily corrected. However, it’s reasonable, also, to give those cities and municipalities whose budgets currently use those food taxes time to adjust their budgets.

Hobbs’ second beef, though, is just…silly. It wholly ignores those who aren’t on food stamps, the upper reaches of Arizona’s second income quintile, the third quintile, and into the fourth—the rest of the poor, and the middle class. And those Arizonans who are Evilly Rich and have more money than the Progressive-Democrats think they should have.

Just—pay up, suckers.

Evidence!?

Internationally famed Ersatz Doctor Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services Secretary, is being called on by Senator Jim Risch (R, ID) to produce the evidence that supports “Dr.” Becerra’s and his HHS’ encouragement for actual doctors to perform “gender affirming care”—like hormone therapies and sex-change surgeries—on minors with gender dysphoria.

In a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Risch and nine of his Republican colleagues from the House and Senate said “HHS has a moral responsibility to ensure its recommendations are evidence-based and not driven by a contentious ideology,” and alleged that HHS is encouraging medical providers to perform “gender affirming care.”
“We are increasingly alarmed that HHS’ advocacy has led health professionals to prescribe dangerous and experimental drugs and surgeries to troubled children—in many cases covered with taxpayer dollars,” the lawmakers wrote.
“‘Gender affirming care’ is far from proper health care given the treatments include experimental hormonal and surgical interventions on children’s bodies that cause permanent damage,” they wrote.

Apart from the medical disasters this sort of child abuse inflicts, there is the intrinsic contradiction in the meaning of “minor,” a contradiction that even Becerra must know: the idea that adolescents—and younger(!)—are capable of consenting to their own major medical and other significant life decisions when they are not capable of consenting, for instance, to having sex (see: statutory rape). Never mind the question of whether or how well an adolescent’s troubled mind can give consent, informed or other.

My prediction of Becerra’s response, should he deign make one: weasel words to the effect of “We ain’t got no evidence. We don’t need no stinking evidence.”

It Takes the State

The Progressive-Democrat Hillary Clinton’s claim concerning a village’s role in raising our children was an understatement. What the Progressive-Democrats actually mean, is that it takes the State to raise our children and that we parents have only the role the State chooses to grant us from time to time.

A [Washington State] Senate bill on the cusp of a House floor vote would allow homeless youth shelters to avoid notifying parents of runaway children if the juvenile is seeking “gender affirming treatment” or “reproductive health services.”
Senate Bill 5599 sponsored by Senator Marko Liias, D-Mukilteo, would also allow “host homes” to keep runaway children from their parents or legal guardians for the purpose of helping them access “gender affirmation” surgery or medical procedures. The bill cleared the Senate in a 27-19 vote on March 1.

Because Progressive-Democrat Government knows better than us parents how to raise our children, Progressive-Democrats in Washington’s government actively are looking to sanction child mutilation, and to conceal that abuse from the child’s parents.

[D]espite strong public testimony in opposition, the legislation is moving apace through that State’s government. Because the Progressive-Democrat Government even knows better than their employer, the citizens of Washington at large.

The arrogance is what makes that State-sanctioned child abuse possible.

Idiotic

Some otherwise reputable folks want a six-month moratorium on the continued development and improvement of artificial intelligence software.

Several tech executives and top artificial-intelligence researchers, including Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk and AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio, are calling for a pause in the breakneck development of powerful new AI tools.
A moratorium of six months or more would give the industry time to set safety standards for AI design and head off potential harms of the riskiest AI technologies, the proponents of a pause said.

Cynically, the six months would give the Biden administration, with its empirical preference for DEI over actual defense capability, time to manufacture a permanent “moratorium.”

Aside from that, though, our nation is in a break-neck race for supremacy—even parity—in artificial intelligence and its ability to generate ever improving software, especially in weapons and counterweapons, ever improving production capabilities, and on and on. Even a six-month delay could put us fatally behind in what is, at bottom, an exponential growth curve.

At the very least, we need to continue our own development apace, if only because our enemies are developing AI capabilities as fast as they can, and we need to understand AI capabilities in general and our enemies’ AI capabilities in particular, and we need to know what we need to defend against our enemies’ use of AI against us and to develop those tools.

Because Shut Up

The Progressive-Democratic Party majority in the Colorado House of Representatives is tired of hearing from recalcitrant Republicans demurring from having our 2nd Amendment rights curtailed.

Democrats in the Colorado House of Representatives invoked a rule to limit debate on gun control legislation over the weekend and passed three bills on the matter.
The Democratic-controlled chamber invoked Rule 14 to limit debate on Saturday. The rule allows for debate to be stopped an hour after a motion to end debate is made and after an affirmative vote of a majority of members.

A whole hour.

When we want your opinion, we’ll give it to you. This is the tyranny of the Progressive-Democratic Party.