Another Reason to Not Take Federal Dollars

Aside from the fact that those dollars aren’t actually Federal government dollars; they’re OPM, the tax remittances of us ordinary Americans from all over our nation that then get transferred to other jurisdictions than the ones we live in.

Here’s the latest reason.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is proposing a rule that would require towns that receive federal money to create “equity plans” for fair housing and take action to end racially unbalanced neighborhoods.

In other words, as the Wall Street Journal‘s editors put it,

the Biden bureaucracy wants to socially engineer suburban neighborhoods to its racial and ethnic liking.

Not to the liking of us citizens.

Never mind that such plans are intrinsically racist, handing out funds as they do based on race, no matter the high-minded pretenses of the politician pushers. And never mind that “racially unbalanced neighborhoods” would balance out on their own—to some extent—in an unfettered free market. “Some” because in that free market, buyers and sellers would make their own decisions on where to live and among whom, and many free Americans would choose freely to live in the company of others like themselves.

In the end, the way to be free of Government strings attached to Government funds transfers is to stop taking Government funds. Breaking the addiction to OPM, as with any other addiction, will be deucedly hard. But hard means possible.

Punishing Success

You’ve earned your wages; husbanded them carefully; spent wisely, living within your means; paid your debts promptly and in full. As a result, you’ve gained an excellent credit rating.

Your reward? An artificially inflated mortgage cost, courtesy of the Progressive-Democratic Party-run Executive Branch, and redistribution of the fruits of your success, arbitrarily, to those who haven’t done those things.

A Biden administration rule is set to take effect that will force good-credit home buyers to pay more for their mortgages to subsidize loans to higher-risk borrowers.
Experts believe that borrowers with a credit score of about 680 would pay around $40 more per month on a $400,000 mortgage under rules from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that go into effect May 1, costs that will help subsidize people with lower credit ratings also looking for a mortgage, according to a Washington Times report Tuesday.

But. But, but, but. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the Biden administration entity responsibility for this nonsense has long sought to give consumers more affordable housing options.

Under the new rules, consumers with lower credit ratings and less money for a down payment would qualify for better mortgage rates than they otherwise would have.

This is silly. The transfer of wealth from those who’ve earned good credit scores to those who have not will not make the latter better credit risks. It will increase the rate of default.

Here’s a thought: cut back on the regulations related to banking, lending, housing, landlording, construction, and utilities so as to bring down the cost of housing generally. See if that will give consumers more affordable housing options.

Stop punishing success; instead, encourage folks to work toward success.

Ban Assault Weapons

President Joe Biden (D) wants to ban assault weapons completely.

His Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Director Steve Dettelbach, testifying under oath before a House Appropriations subcommittee, flat refused to say what an assault weapon was when asked by Congressman Jake Ellzey (R, TX).

…if Congress wishes to take that up, I think Congress would have to do the work, but we would be there to provide technical assistance. I, unlike you, am not a firearms expert to the same extent as you maybe, but we have people at ATF who can talk about velocity of firearms, what damage different kinds of firearms cause, so that whatever determination you chose to make would be an informed one.

Weasel words. You define the term, Dettelbach said, we’ll “help.” After all, he could have provided his own definition; those same experts could have advised him as he prepared for his testimony.

Biden wants to ban, and his ATF honcho—the man and the agency responsible for “regulating” the weapons us American citizens choose to keep and bear—refuses to say what it is that this administration would ban.

The obvious, and only logical, conclusion from this deliberate obfuscation is that Biden and his fellow Progressive-Democratic Party syndicate members intend to ban all of our firearms.

Biden Censorship

Now President Joe Biden (D) is moving to add his censorship requirements to artificial intelligence programming, to go along with his censorship actions vis-à-vis social media.

The Biden administration is pursuing regulations for artificial intelligence systems that would require government audits to ensure they produce trustworthy outputs, which could include assessments of whether AI is promoting “misinformation” and “disinformation.”

Here is the leader of the Progressive-Democratic Party once again asserting that Government definitions of misinformation and disinformation, and by extension true information, are the only valid definitions, and Government will inflict those definitions on us ordinary Americans.

And one more Government dictated definition, from Alan Davidson, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information:

The Biden administration supports the advancement of trustworthy AI. We are devoting a lot of energy to that goal across government.

Trustworthy—it’s what Government says it is.

The Progressive-Democratic Party as an institution, and its constituent politicians individually and collectively, are increasingly pushing their Newspeak Dictionary on us, seeking to replace our American dictionaries. This is right out of the playbook of the Left’s icon, Saul Alinsky:

He who controls the language controls the masses.

Defenseless

Wisconsin State Congressman Scott Allen is proposing a state law that would give local school boards the ability to decide for themselves whether to allow firearms in their districts rather than being hamstrung (in several senses) by a Statewide ban on firearms in all schools. Allen, on the origin of his bill:

This bill came about at the request of the Germantown School Board who wrote that the “gun free school zone” signs do nothing but notify a criminal that there will be few, if any, people in the building that can defend themselves. Schools provide soft targets for those looking to do harm, and this bill gives school boards the option to change that.

That’s a pretty sensible step toward Wisconsin’s citizens being able to defend themselves and their children until the second responders, the police, arrive on the scene just a very few minutes later. Those very few minutes are when the shooter’s butchery occurs unless the first responders, the citizens already present, can defend.

Wisconsin’s Progressive-Democratic Party Governor, Tony Evers, says otherwise.

This bill shouldn’t make it to my desk—but if it does, I’ll veto it. Plain and simple. I already vetoed Republicans’ bill to allow loaded guns on school grounds because increasing firearms on school grounds won’t make our schools or our kids safer. So, let me be clear: I’ll veto any bill that weakens Wisconsin’s gun-free school zone law. Period.

Evers doesn’t take Germantown’s school board seriously; he wants that Gun-Free Zone sign posted and that exposure proclaimed. Evers is showing that he doesn’t want common sense firearm laws, his claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Evers is insisting, instead, that he wants Wisconsin’s schools to be target zones for shooters.

Evers plainly wants Wisconsin’s school children, teachers, and school staff to be as defenseless in those critical minutes as is his gun control ideology.