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A billion-dollar boondoggle

Posted: May 16, 2023 by chrisharper in Uncategorized
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By Christopher Harper

Pennsylvania voters won’t get an opportunity to vote in today’s primary on one of the biggest boondoggles in the state: the Philadelphia public transportation system.

The system, called the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, is a billion-dollar mess!

The latest issue with SEPTA centers on the fare cards that don’t work well, causing the organization to dump the system after spending $285 million on the flawed system. That’s more than double the original budget.

Announced with much fanfare, the delayed 2016 rollout left many residents wishing the agency had remained in the analog age. The cards have been unreliable from the start, the vending machines that distribute them are slow and confusing, and SEPTA’s choice to use proprietary systems left the agency at the mercy of the manufacturer of the cards.

It’s unclear whether SEPTA and Conduent Inc., the company has cashed in, are incompetent or corrupt, but it’s probably a bit of both.

In 2011, SEPTA hired Conduent, a Xerox spin-off headquartered in Florham Park, N.J., to design and build the Key Card system for $129.5 million. It was supposed to be operational by 2014, and Conduent has come under fire over other projects. Last December, for instance, Conduent settled for $32 million in a class-action lawsuit brought by investors who said the company misled them about its progress in updating its information technology for toll-collecting systems.

SEPTA’s 50-year history has often been a tumultuous one. Railpace Newsmagazine contributor Gerry Williams observed that SEPTA regularly staggers from crisis to crisis. It has a long history of being at odds with the riding public and both county and state officials and has had more labor strikes than any other transit agency in the U.S., occurring in 1977, 1981, 1983, 1986, 1995, 1998, 2005, 2009, 2014, and 2016.

Williams commented that there is a notable lack of “any group… influential enough to bring shame on SEPTA,” adding that the organization’s chronic ills “merely reflect the broader problems of local provincialism and petty political squabbles which are so rampant within the region.”

Since taxpayers, including those far from Philly, pony up about $1 billion a year to run the system, letting the voters have a more significant say in what goes on would make sense. The 15 board members should be elected rather than chosen by government officials who hand out favors rather than balance budgets.

I — I couldn’t take a blow, sir. I suppose I’ve been too long with gentlemen”

Among gentlemen a blow could be wiped out only in blood; among the lower orders a blow was something to be received without even a word.

C. S. Forester: Hornblower and the Hotspur 1962 p 301

If you want to know why the left in California are not bothered by what is happening in San Francisco Kurt Schlichter nails it in one sentence in an excellent paragraph:

As in California, all the good ones are leaving. There are a lot of complaints about blue state denizens shifting to red places and bringing their clown show politics with them, but in my experience it’s the red people who are saying “The hell with this” and checking out. The poor libs can’t move and the rich ones don’t need to – their little enclaves are relatively safe. The subways may be a concrete jungle where freaks with meat cleavers wander and you might get pushed into an oncoming train by some schizo with 100 arrests and no real jail time on his rap sheet, but the cops are still empowered to act in the well-heeled precincts. People ask how I can stay in LA, but I’m not actually in LA – I’m in a city by the beach where the cops actually cop. The chaos is for the poors on the uncool side of the 405; my neighbors vote for Ted Lieu and let the consequences of their moral preening fall on the people who don’t work via Zoom

Emphasis Mine

There is a word for this. It’s not “socialism” it FEUDALISM.

I’ve been writing about the left’s actions as Feudalism for over 10 years: and it’s become more and more clear that what the left really wants is the status that comes from being better than those who they consider beneath them. After all if everyone has peace and prosperity what makes you special?

As I said a decade ago:

Can’t the doorman and driver understand that, like the Lords of old, the Pelosis in Washington like and the Mahers in Hollywood seek power and status simply for the good of all? Don’t they realize if they support the great Lords in DC and Hollywood, as trusted retainers, they might expect advancement from the state, a better job in a growing federal government? Don’t they understand that by keeping an underclass on assistance they provide protection to the retainer like themselves to keep them from revolt (remember Occupy)?

And if such assistance goes to the 2nd or third generation it is a good thing because like those who came before them, they are repaying their bounty with votes that keep the enlightened lords in power.

This entire philosophy & mindset is contrary to the entire march of Western Civilization from Magna Carta to the Declaration of Independence. It is the idea that some laws can be enforced while others are not, why some standards apply to some and not to others. It’s the idea that the rights are granted by other men, the elites like themselves and not from God

American Greatness nailed it three years ago as well:

If one were to examine the concept of California as a feudal state, all the pieces would be identifiable. The aristocracy is the wealthy billionaires and the titans of the high tech industry. The knights and the nobles are the public employees. The clerisy consists of the academics and the nonprofit activists, which include environmentalists, homeless and low-income housing advocates, and social justice warriors. Everyone else would be serfs.

California’s serfs would either be members of the state’s dwindling middle-class and small-business owners, paying crippling tithes to the feudal regime, or they would be low income workers and the unemployed, who would rely on alms from the nobles for their sustenance.

You can’t be a lord without serfs, California is returning to it’s Spanish and Mexican roots, Caballeros and Peons and the money that is voted to allow the peons to have drugs and the willingness to let them steal without consequence, that’s today’s version of Noblesse Oblige.

It’s just that it’s not that “noble” and it’s done using other people’s money.

“Where’s the Fat People?”

Posted: May 14, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized

Joe Rogan on the so called “patriot front” for the win:

You’d have to be a brainwashed members of a cult to think this is real…which is why the left media fall for it hook, line and sinker

For decades the political has left waged a guerilla style war here in the United States.  It was a cultural war fought with destructive ideas rather than the type of war fought with guns and other physical weapons.  It was a war they fought unopposed because most of us on the political right did not think this conflict was worth our attention.  We were so very wrong.

A small minority of us Conservatives and Libertarians saw what was taking place and tried desperately to raise the alarm.  We were all but ignored.

Now that this culture war is all but won by the Marxist Left, a sizable percentage of those of us on the Right have finally taken notice and have begin to fight back.  The hugely effective boycott of Bud Light is strong evidence that we have effective weapons in our arsenal.

The political left has targeted children from the very beginning.  This article explains the two fold rational behind this.

Leftists aren’t building a robust generation of people who can fight wars and control countries. Instead, they are creating a broken generation of people who will be physically and mentally dependent on government care for the rest of their lives.

Lenin understood how important children are to any revolution. The most famous quotation attributed to him is, “Give us the child for eight years, and it will be a Bolshevik forever.” An alternative is, “Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.”

As you can see from this article, the strategy employed by the left was devious and effective.

Much as America’s enemies historically used its (formerly) free press and the nature of its open society against it, Constitution-disdaining leftists used conservatives’ adherence to the Constitution — and its mandate for limited government, the rule of law, and equal justice under that law — against them in their now successful bid to get control over virtually all of the country’s institutions and levers of power.

They now ruthlessly use the self-same institutions they used to protest — but now own — to spy on, castigate, deplatform, silence, slander, “cancel,” and even incarcerate those with whom they disagree.  They eschew dialogue and debate and simply scream “racist!” or “transphobe!” at any- and everyone who dares to dissent from their preposterous narrative.

Corporate media proved to be the most effective arsenal the left employed in this culture war.

IF you can control the information flow, you can control an entire society. Gone are the days of trusting your reporters and news outlets to provide unbiased and factual pieces to keep you informed on the state of your country.

Perhaps I’ve watched too many “X-Files” episodes, but I now embrace the same principle of Fox Mulder: trust no one. To get to the bottom of any story as a citizen, you’d have to read reports of the same incident on at least 30 different outlets to get a sliver of truth.

The hard reality is that traditional media outlets have been not just complicit, but happy little manipulation warriors bent on ensuring your mind and views fall in line with their chosen narrative.

Over the last decade, their narrative of choice: You’re a racist. 

According to Lexus Nexus, there has been a marked increase in specific phrases and words since 2014. As an example, below is a taste of some of these terms: white privilege, system racism, diversity and inclusion, unconscious bias, whiteness, intersectionality, diversity training, police brutality

How sharp is this increase? For example, between 2011 and 2019, the New York Times and Washington Post increased using words like ‘racist,’ ‘racists,’ and ‘racism’ increased by over 700% and 1,000%, respectively. 

Furthermore, between 2013 and 2019, the same two publications increased their usage of terms like ‘systemic racism,’ ‘structural racism,’ and ‘institutional racism’ by 1,000%. And during that same timeframe, the two liberal heavyweights of print used ‘white privilege’ and ‘racial privilege’ at an increased rate of 1,200% and 1,500%, respectively.

College campuses have also been the primary battlefields where this culture war has been fought and won by the left.  Checkout this article.

Hundreds of professors at the University of North Carolina signed a public letter Tuesday opposing legislation that would require university students to take courses on America’s government and founding documents.

The 673 UNC Chapel Hill professors revealed the public letter Tuesday, arguing the new courses and another bill in the North Carolina House of Representatives would constitute an infringement on the university’s “academic freedom.”

The first piece of legislation, House Bill 96, would require students to take a 3 credit-hour course covering America’s founding and history. Required reading for the course would include the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, at least five essays from the Federalist Papers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail and the Gettysburg Address.

The author if this American Thinker article has it absolutely correct.

Put simply, the big mistake in thinking the culture war isn’t the most critical issue heading into 2024 is that all of American politics is now one big culture war. The culture war is the only issue because the cultural war is everything now. When one side stakes its claim to political power on offering abortion up until birth and transgender operations for 8-year-olds, and holds out these policies as proof of its moral authority, we’re way past arguing over how to get the economy back on track. There’s no going back to that kind of politics.

Tucker Carlson hit on this at the end of his big speech at Heritage recently. He compared the values of the political left to the values of the Aztecs, who sacrificed children to their bloodthirsty gods — and he wasn’t wrong.