Posted on 12/01/2021 9:25:14 AM PST by weston
Good morning lysie, late this morning, dd not sleep well last night.
Went to g’sons baseball games yesterday, beautiful day, they won one and lost the other.
Stopped at a few places and thought I was in Mexico, I cannot imagine what Texas is like.
FREEDOM IN THE 50 STATES
AN INDEX OF PERSONAL AND ECONOMIC FREEDOM
The overall freedom ranking is a combination of personal and economic freedoms.
There’s a map where you can click on any state to see how they rate.
Texas #21
Texas talks a good game about freedom but could stand to deliver a more freedom-oriented policy regime. It comes in only at 21st in this edition, rescued largely by its top-10 economic freedom score, and it has never been higher than 15th overall. The problem is that Texas has always been a less free state for personal freedom and now is the second-worst state on that margin despite some absolute improvement over time. Its economic freedom is likely one reason it hasn’t slipped out of the top half states and why it’s been such a job-producing and population-attracting machine. It does especially well on fiscal policy where it ranks 12th. It is also a solidly above-average state on regulatory policy, but not as good as one might expect at 22nd.
Texas’s fiscal policy is very good. It is a fiscally decentralized state, with local taxes at about 4.9 percent of adjusted personal income, above the national average, and state taxes at about 3.5 percent of income, quite far below the national average of 5.7 percent. However, Texans have little choice of local government, with only 0.39 jurisdictions per 100 square miles. State and local debt is above average at 21.2 percent of income, with the biggest problem being local debt burdens, but the overall debt burden has come down noticeably since FY 2010. Public employment has fallen to significantly below average, at 10.7 percent of private employment, and government share of GDP is only 9.7 percent, below the national average of 10.3 percent. If Texas could get a handle on local taxes and debt, it could improve on its top-10 economic freedom score and become an even greater economic powerhouse.
Texas’s land-use freedom keeps housing abundant and affordable, but it has slipped a bit lately. The state has a renewable portfolio standard, but it has not been raised in years. Texas is our top state for labor-market freedom. Workers’ compensation coverage is optional for employers; most employees are covered, but not all. The state has a right-to-work law, no minimum wage, and a federally consistent anti-discrimination law. Cable and telecommunications have been liberalized. However, health insurance mandates are way above average, and the gatekeeper model of managed care has been banned. The individual health insurance mandate was removed federally in 2019 and was not replaced at the state level. The extent of occupational licensing is high, but the state enacted a sunrise review requirement for new licensure proposals in 2013. Time will tell whether it is at all effective. Nurse practitioners enjoy no freedom of independent practice. Texas does not have many cronyist entry and price regulations, but it does have a price-gouging law, and Tesla’s direct sales model is still illegal. Texas suffered a marked deterioration in homeowner’s insurance regulation in 2015, resulting in a large residual market, but the state reformed it back to file and use in 2018. The civil liability system used to be terrible, but now it is merely below average. The state abolished joint and several liability in 2003, but it could do more to cap punitive damages and end political parties’ role in judicial elections.
Personal freedom is abysmally low in Texas, especially given how we operationalize it. Criminal justice policies are generally aggressive, but reforms have been ongoing in the state for some time. Even controlling for crime rates, the incarceration rate is far above the national average but has been improving. Drug arrests have fallen over time and are now about average for the user base. Nondrug victimless crime arrests have also fallen over time and are now much below the national average. This change would seem to show the power of the criminal justice reform efforts. Asset forfeiture is mostly unreformed, but law enforcement participation in equitable sharing has declined with regard to revenues. Cannabis laws are harsh. A single offense not involving minors can carry a life sentence. Even cultivating a tiny amount carries a mandatory minimum of six months. In 2013/14, the state banned the mostly harmless psychedelic Salvia divinorum. Medical marijuana was further expanded in 2021. Travel freedom is low. The state takes a fingerprint for driver’s licenses and does not regulate automated license plate readers. It has little legal gambling; sports betting remains illegal. Texas has no private school choice programs, but at least private schools and homeschools are basically unregulated. Tobacco freedom is moderate, as smoking bans have not gone as far as in other states. But the state did add a minimum age of purchase increase in 2019. Gun rights have been moderately above average, but the state wasn’t even in the top half of the states despite Texas’s reputation. Open carry was legalized in 2015. The big positive reform came in 2021 with the passage of constitutional carry. Alcohol freedom is above average, with taxes low. Texas has virtually no campaign finance regulations.
https://www.freedominthe50states.org/
In overall freedom, the top 10 states are:
New Hampshire - Republican Governor
Florida - Republican Governor
Nevada - Democratic Governor
Tennessee - Republican - Governor
South Dakota - Republican Governor
Indiana - Republican Governor
Michigan - Democratic Governor
Georgia - Republican Governor
Arizona - Republican Governor
Idaho - Republican Governor
https://www.theblaze.com/news/states-most-freedom-cato-index
15 seconds is an eternity in a race. Usually it is tenths or hundredths of a second.
Wonderful to see Arizona in the top 10 in spite of out wacko governor.
It IS stunning that a man would pretend to be a woman to win at anything. There is an extreme shortage of testosterone in western culture today. Maybe it’s off-shore in one of those big boats that can’t unload.
When Progressives realized there was no support for Defunding the Police, they came up with another approach: they emptied jails, set zero bail, stopped prosecuting many crimes, and dropped sentencing enhancements. In other words, they defunded the entire system.— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) December 5, 2021
Progressives want police, but national Police they can control. But they have the break the system first to bring it about.
Another stupid liberal question.
👍👍
Bob Dole has passed away. RIP
I make soup in my crockpot and freeze it in one cup containers. I do not want to eat processed food but also want to spend minimal time cooking. Various extra vegetables can be added to the delicious soup for many meals. Having several varieties in my freezer keeps it from being too boring.
Was it just to win or did he have a lifestyle change?
Yeah I’d think any real male would rather lose than pretend to be a woman
There is that weightlifter in the Olympics. But he bowed out early, I’m not sure what he did it for but he obviously didn’t want to win the medals. Maybe to make a point.
Not just soup, but when I cook, I usually freeze in single serve containers. Quiche is great, fast to warm up.
Epstein‘s black book would’ve been leaked years ago if he had been a conservative.
Thanks for the reminder sweetie. I’ve been doing that for a few months now and feel great. And I’ve discovered I love grapefruit! Just not the taste of the peels, yuck 🤢
I agree. For someone to change gender just to win at sports would be REALLY nuts.
I am going to make quiche. I had not thought of freezing it and it’s too much work (and food) for me to make for a single meal. Thanks for the idea.
2021 Was the Year of Vindication for Trump › American Greatness
“For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.”
— Luke 12:2 (KJV)
The year could not have started any worse for former President Trump. Thousands of his supporters from all over the country, of all different races and religions gathered at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., to show their support for a president who for four years fought for the forgotten men and women of this country.
They were proud of his many accomplishments.
Even with four years of lies and conspiracy theories about Russian collusion, and a bogus quid pro quo charge involving the president of Ukraine that led to an embarrassing impeachment, Trump still managed to cut taxes, reduce regulations, and preside over the highest labor force participation rate ever recorded in U.S. history, with 157 million Americans working—until the Chinese coronavirus decimated our economy.
Although the Left painted Trump as a sexist and a racist, he started a $50 million initiative to help create employment opportunities for women, offered new mothers the first ever paid family leave plan, and signed a bill that would permanently provide more than $250 million annually to historically black colleges and universities.
Trump rebuilt our military, increased national defense spending, eliminated the ISIS caliphate, negotiated peace treaties in the Middle East, secured our southern border by beginning construction of a wall and through robust law enforcement. He renegotiated unfair trade agreements, stood up to China, and delivered three vaccines and therapeutics during a once-in-a-century pandemic.
He fought for the factory workers in Indiana, the farmers in Michigan, the ranchers in Texas, the truckers in Pennsylvania, the military who kept the peace, and the police officers who kept us safe.
But in the blink of an eye, the real estate magnate-turned-politician was shunted back to Mar-a-Lago after supposedly losing the first ever mail-in ballot election to a 77-year-old feeble and often confused man who campaigned almost exclusively from his basement on the lie that he would restore our national unity.
The ruling class told us we weren’t allowed to question the outcome of the most bizarre and corrupt election in history, one in which tens of millions of ballots were mailed out, without proper safeguards in place to ensure that the identity of the voter could be verified, and where several Democratic secretaries of state illegally changed election laws in defiance of state legislators.
Trump’s 75 million supporters were rightfully outraged, as they saw his election night lead slip away in the wee hours of the morning, while being labeled rubes and conspiracy theorists by the ruling class.
Before Trump had even finished speaking on January 6, and told his supporters to “peacefully and patriotically” make their voices heard, hundreds of people had already stormed the Capitol building as a riot ensued.
No one who illegally trespassed should be excused from breaking the law. But contrary to false media reports, the only two people who were killed on that day were two unarmed female Trump supporters, Ashli Babbitt and Rosanne Boyland. Most consumers of the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC are probably unaware of that fact, and probably still believe that Officer Brian Sicknick was killed at the rally by deranged QAnon followers.
The leftist corporate media and the Democrats would use the events of January 6 as their final “big lie” of Trump’s presidency, and absurdly claim he had incited an insurrection. Big Tech would subsequently use January 6 as a pretext for deplatforming him from Facebook and Twitter, and a second impeachment farce occurred while he was no longer in office.
According to the Fourth Estate, that event was worse than two 110-story buildings disappearing from the New York City skyline, a gaping hole in one side of the Pentagon, a plane crashing into a field in Shanksville, and 2,977 people murdered in a single day on September 11, 2001.
The goal for these corrupt entities was always very clear: Punish Trump and any of his supporters to ensure that he could never be elected president again.
But try as they may, the ruling class has once again failed at disarming Trump. Most, if not all of the false stories and intentional lies that were peddled about him during the course of his presidency—an in-kind contribution to the Democratic Party—have been completely disproved in the last several months.
We now know, as many of us already did during his presidency, that hydroxychloroquine works, and has been proven to be an effective treatment at fighting COVID-19. And we now know the China virus in all likelihood originated from a Chinese lab.
We know, as we did all along, that Hunter Biden’s laptop documenting his family’s corruption and pay for play schemes was real, and was not “Russian disinformation.”
We now know that Lafayette Square was not cleared for a photo op, and the Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters who refused to disperse, after being told to do so by law enforcement, were not generally “peaceful.”
We know now as we did then that Kyle Rittenhouse never was a Trump-supporting white supremacist, but rather a good Samaritan who acted in self-defense, while protecting his friends’ business from being burned to the ground.
We now know as we did then that the “Russian bounties” story was fake, and we know that Trump who loved our military and our soldiers never did call them “suckers and losers.” We know now as we did then that blue state lockdowns didn’t work, and schools should be opened for in-person learning.
We now know that critical race theory is being practiced in our K-12 schools, even if the mouthpieces on CNN and MSNBC continue to deny it, and Trump’s southern border security program was successful before Biden reversed it.
We knew all along that both of the Trump-hating Cuomo brothers were corrupt partisan hacks who are no longer useful for the Left and got the fate they deserved.
We began to wonder, but we now know it was only a matter of time before associates of Hillary Clinton and the DNC were finally indicted for orchestrating a plot to overthrow the president.
And we now know that the current occupant of the White House was exactly who we thought he was. A man who never once had an original thought, an individual who always had a tenuous relationship with the truth, a race-baiting huckster, whose cognitive decline appears to be worsening by the day. A grifter who is owned by the far-Left radical wing of his party, and who does whatever his puppetmasters tell him to do, while they destroy our country, and turn it into a socialist hellhole, all in the name of equity.
It turns out Trump knew who the real enemy of the people was all along. But at least now their lies are now in plain sight.
https://amgreatness.com/2021/12/04/2021-was-the-year-of-vindication-for-trump/
I usually make 2 pies. What I don’t eat in a few days, I freeze in slices. My quiche is less expensive and much better than buying ready made.
I do the same with pizza, although I don’t make them from scratch anymore.
I live alone and don’t like to cook like I used to, just for me.
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