Reparations: Foolish Whites Reap What They Sow

 

JARED TAYLOR • APRIL 21, 2023

“All the stores will open if you say the magic words.”

https://rumble.com/embed/v2h2w50/

Do you remember Freddie Gray? Another black criminal who died at the hands of the police. In Baltimore in 2015.

There were days of rioting, a curfew, and 2,000 national guard troops.

The day of Freddie Gray’s funeral, blacks looted and burned a CVS that the city had begged to be build in an “underserved” part of town.

The mob set 14 other buildings on fire and burned 144 cars.

The more mayhem, the more pressure to indict. Local black DA Marilyn Mosby charged six officers with manslaughter and other crimes.

Not one was convicted, and a federal investigation went nowhere.

The charges were so absurd that a “Judge allow[ed] [a] malicious prosecution lawsuit against Mosby to proceed.”

The New York Times asked a young black man why there was rioting. I’ll never forget his reply:

“We’re just angry at the surroundings, like this is all that is given to us, and we’re tired of this, like nobody wants to wake up and see broken-down buildings. They take away the community centers, they take away our fathers, and now we have traffic lights that don’t work, we have houses that are crumbling, falling down.”

This perfectly captures the black mentality. Blacks live in neighborhoods that they, themselves, wrecked and then ask, “This is all that is given to us?” Hard-working white people built those now “broken-down” buildings. Many had craftsmanship and detailing you won’t find in anything built today.

All over the country, blacks got beautiful neighborhoods they could never have built and now they complain about “crumbling houses.” The solution to crumbling houses is fix them up. But no, it’s “Is this all that is given to us?”

I won’t even go into “they take our fathers and community centers away,” except to say that if “they” meant anyone other than their own pitiful selves, it was the black mayor of Baltimore, black DA, black police chief, black fire chief and black city council. If you think this guy was pathetic and self-absorbed, just imagine him today.

The San Francisco board of supervisors just voted unanimously to accept a report on reparations to blacks for all the awful things the city did to them. Note the Kente cloth border.

You have heard about some of the recommendations: $5 million in cash, cancellation of all personal debt, a guaranteed income of $97,000 a year – for 250 years. Blacks could buy any public housing unit in the city for one dollar.

There is a list of more than 100 gimmes, including this: “Create, improve and allocate culturally specific Black spaces.”

Disney Is Going To Lose (Again) to DeSantis

Disney's farcical attempt to avoid its well-deserved fate with the Reedy Creek Improvement District was, and remains, blatantly illegal on its face.

posted by Josh Hammer at American Greatness

The first round of the “Florida and Gov. Ron DeSantis v. The Walt Disney Company” fight, held last spring, ended in a clear DeSantis victory and Disney defeat. Following Disney’s vocal opposition to Florida’s commonsense Parental Rights in Education Act, misleadingly dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, Florida passed a law to abolish the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which in 1967 incentivized Disney’s initial planting of a flag in Central Florida by giving the corporation unparalleled government-like powers over basic municipal services such as zoning, building codes, and waste treatment.

Disney thus paid the price for coming out in favor of indoctrinating impressionable kindergarteners in vogue gender ideology and queer theory by having its gratuitous, extra-legal corporate welfare rescinded, putting it on an equal playing field with every other corporation operating in the state of Florida.

Not content to merely get smacked around once, apparently, Disney under former and since-reinstated CEO Bob Iger has opted to attempt a not-so-clever end-around that would thwart the will of Floridians, as represented by the Florida Legislature, and entrench Disney’s peculiar legal arrangement in Central Florida for another 30 years. Try as Disney might, the forthcoming result will be a familiar one: Florida and DeSantis are going to win again, and Disney is going to lose again.

On February 10, Florida passed HB 9B, which formally superseded the Disney-dominated Reedy Creek Improvement District with the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. The practical effect was to replace the old board’s five Disney-controlled members with the new board’s five DeSantis-appointed members. The new board went into effect on February 27.

So far, so good.

But, as it turns out, the outgoing Reedy Creek Improvement District board, in the final lead-up to HB 9B’s passage into law, purported to enter into a binding development agreement with Disney. The purported contract would explicitly give full control over zoning, building development rights, and other areas to Disney for another 30 years—thus going even further than the already favorable treatment Disney enjoyed under the Reedy Creek Improvement District, and stripping the new Central Florida Tourism Oversight District of any meaningful regulatory teeth. In a comically self-serving move, the development agreement even mandates—surprise!—that the new district spend property tax revenue on roads to benefit Disney pet projects.

There is just one glaring problem with the purported development agreement between the outgoing Reedy Creek Improvement District board and The Walt Disney Company: It is a blatantly illegal contract. The purported development agreement flouted the normal procedural mechanisms that regulate such governmental activity in Florida, and also violated some of the most rudimentary principles of contract law that every first-year law student in America learns in contracts class.

First, as a purported contract, the development agreement between Disney and the outgoing board requires “consideration” by both contracting parties; in other words, each side would need to make some sort of promise, or vow some sort of specific action, with respect to the counterparty. This purported development agreement, which was rushed through last-minute in ham-fisted fashion, lacks consideration, perhaps the most basic element in all of contract law: Here, the outgoing board purported to give Disney everything, but it received nothing in return. Absent consideration, the purported development agreement was void ab initio.

Second, under Florida’s well-known, powerful Sunshine Law, a local government must comply with certain notice requirements for residents in order for the matters addressed at a government’s board meeting to be valid and binding. Public notice of a meeting is mandatory under Florida law; and specifically, for an action of this sort to be binding, notice of the underlying meeting must be mailed to local property owners. Disney and the outgoing board simply did not do that; they rushed their first public board meeting on the development agreement on January 25, and their second meeting on February 8, in their sloppy attempt to thwart at the last minute the Florida legislature and the will of the Florida people. Unfortunately for Disney, Florida courts have consistently held that when the Sunshine Law is violated, a purported governmental action is void ab initio.

Third, the Florida Constitution specifically stipulates that new revenue-raising measured based on ad valorem (i.e., proportional) taxation, which the purported development agreement entailed, can only be ratified via a direct referendum of a district. That condition was also not met here; rather, in another comically self-dealing move for Disney, the purported development agreement contained a provision that the district “shall fund” certain Disney prerogatives. This, too, is blatantly illegal.

Finally, the purported development agreement violates yet another basic tenet of contract law: that a contract not be procedurally or substantively “unconscionable.” In fact, the purported development agreement is both. 

It is procedurally unconscionable because the very nature of private Disney lawyers “negotiating” with the Reedy Creek Improvement District’s outside counsel and drafting statements for a public hearing is blatantly self-dealing conduct; one source with close knowledge tells me that Disney’s lawyer, in the lead-up to the outgoing board’s two hearings, candidly confessed that the “optics look bad” for his name to be on the contract as the drafter, suggesting instead that the outgoing district’s counsel have his name listed notwithstanding the obvious falsity. And the purported development agreement is substantively unconscionable because the entire purpose of this charade is to evade the will of the people of Florida, whose duly elected representatives wanted to replace the Disney-dominated Reedy Creek Improvement District board with the DeSantis-selected Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board.

Earlier this week, DeSantis announced that the Republican-dominated Florida Legislature, which is now nearing the end of its legislative session, would look to formally override and nullify the purported development agreement. That is certainly proper, and such action is well within the legitimate ambit of the Florida Legislature’s authority. But it is important to also recognize that Disney’s farcical attempt to avoid its well-deserved fate was, and remains, blatantly illegal on its face.

One way or another, Mickey Mouse the groomer is going to lose again to Ron DeSantis and the free state of Florida.

X22, And we Know, and more- April 22

 

Everywhere in the American West All at Once

posted by Kino Fray at im1776 

The American West is undergoing an accelerating economic, cultural, and demographic shift. In Arizona, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming, hedge fund managers, crypto-homesteaders, and apocalyptic city-state entrepreneurs are buying up every available piece of land to LARP like extras on the set of Yellowstone. Mainstream media is beginning to notice. James Pogue’s recent piece ‘Inside the New Right’s Next Frontier: The American West’ in Vanity Fair follows Isaac Simpson’s ‘There’s Gonna Be a War in Montana’ and tracked similar themes: natives’ rejection of coastal monoculture, the inability to compete economically with wealthy migrants, and fear of natives becoming a servant class for newcomers. As a result of these trends, anti-growth sentiment has become a central issue in the American West. Although born of resentment, the underlying dynamic is people’s innate desire for their own space and identity; the United States is being crushed by a joyless, media-driven monoculture that people want to escape from. Distinct regional variations were a key feature of America’s older, more pluralistic society, and these variations are being permanently erased.

Let’s say I had the ‘misfortune’ of being born in Bisbee, Arizona, which has become a hotspot for transplants and hippie Boomers. I’d attend Bisbee High School (ranked a ‘C’ letter grade by the Arizona State Board of Education) and then make a decision to leave to attend college or begin working. If I want to work in Bisbee, I won’t make much – the median household income is $41,094 (2021 data) – and the main jobs requiring a 4-year degree are those tied to county services as Bisbee is the seat of government for Cochise County. The median home price was $317,000 in January 2023. Without inheriting property or a commercial business, the lack of economic activity and mobility intertwined with a poor education infrastructure guarantees that people raised there aspiring to the middle class will be forced to leave. A nearby larger city, like Tucson, still offers some respite though housing prices are $100,000 higher than they were a year ago and have continued to increase even in the face of higher interest rates. The economic trend is directionally opposed to young natives who have few or no assets, and is still continuing. The outcome is that critical life choices (living and raising a family near parents or extended family) will never be available to them.

To illustrate the point further, my wife and I took a day trip several months ago to Patagonia which has a lower median income than Bisbee ($33,077 in 2020) and where listed home prices are a median of $569,000. Eating an early lunch at the Wagon Wheel Restaurant in town, we overheard the waitress (proudly raised in Patagonia she said) speaking to a customer about how she couldn’t afford her rent in the city any longer and was moving in with her niece in Nogales. This isn’t New York City or San Francisco or Aspen or Jackson Hole: this is Pata-fucking-gonia in Southern Arizona.

There are people who are benefitting from this growth. The local real estate agent obviously enjoys the hot market. Local business owners have a steadier and wealthier clientele. Those with land or property can offload a significant tax burden by selling it. I cannot count the instances I’ve seen where ranch land passed between generations in a will and it was up on the market before the rancher’s body was cold. This isn’t sabotage; it’s economic opportunity that most people would jump at if in the same situation. Generations of families who led subsistence lives now can finally make a step-function improvement on the economic ladder.

But the cultural aspect to many natives is more crushing than the economic factor. Perhaps I am biased, but I believe the American West is the most unique and incredible region in this country. A limitless expanse in all directions, massive and wondrous, a richness of history tied to the spirit of a land and a people who suffered incredible hardship to build on it. When you’re bound to the land, to see it turned into another iteration of the playground of entropy that has decayed liberal cities across the country evokes a visceral reaction. 

The Left is now so captured by national politics that a leftist in San Francisco is indistinguishable from a leftist in Shamrock, Texas. They cannot form an opposition to the Monoculture. For this reason, the Right, which is more decentralized, has assumed that role. I once could find common cause with environmentalists to oppose growth, but there are far fewer real environmentalists these days. Environmentalism has been hijacked by climate change and hitched to other issues, including uncontrolled immigration from the Global South.

Reactionary politics is a natural response to the sense that one’s culture and identity is being erased. The countryside isn’t emptying out, as in many rural areas in Europe, it’s being specifically targeted, invaded, and altered to fit the personal preferences of people who have no connection to where they’re living. One profile in Pogue’s article that stood out was by Julie Fredrickson who tells of growing up in Boulder, Colorado and now living in Montana (via New York City). Although she recognizes she isn’t a native, she dismisses being an interloper since she grew up in the American West. The statement stuck with me because it would be akin to me comparing my hometown to Albuquerque, New Mexico. To draw a 450-mile diameter circle on a map (the distance from Boulder to Montana) and insist “I’m from here” is absurd. The natives see that and assume the worst.

Still, it is the local beneficiaries of the new growth in the American West who have enabled this. Housing developers, local real estate investment firms, and car dealership moguls love growth and they make up a significant portion of campaign contributions to our local politicians. I often tell the story of Arizona’s brief flirtation with anti-growth populism: the 1986 election of Evan Mecham to the Governor’s office which strangely united members of the John Birch Society with the Audubon Society and ended with Mecham being impeached and removed from office after running afoul of Chamber of Commerce Republicanism. Any serious opposition to growth will be met with overwhelming force.

Is there a political solution? A way to turn the tide in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming? (I hold no hope of such a turn in Arizona or Colorado.) Perhaps, but only if the natives in those states can form a political block that forces the state government to prioritize their needs. This means becoming more insular but it should be clear that this reflects a positive social and political culture in the state. Resentment, while a powerful motivator, needs to be channeled into a platform that does not alienate the local power brokers. Their families, businesses, and homes must also prosper under a more localist regime.

People need to own their space. Local culture, derived from the history of a locality, should be promoted. Statues should be built to pioneers and founders, vernacular architectural aesthetics should be developed, school curriculums molded around the immediate surroundings. Controlling immigration from the rest of the United States is critically important to empower economic and political activity for native residents. Because it’s impractical and illegal to prevent people from moving between states in the United State, we should take a page from the wealthy liberal playbook and make our states more like gated communities with prohibitive zoning laws to keep non-locals out. 

Scholarships to state colleges should be made available to children born and raised in the state and caps placed on the number of out-of-state (and international) students. Technical colleges can be located in areas where education is underserved; apprenticeships should be state-subsidized to promote training (or retraining) of blue-collar workers. Large companies can be offered tax benefits for hiring workers who live within a certain defined geography. Regulatory barriers to farmers and ranchers taking their products directly to market can be eliminated. Extractive industry, with strict environmental controls, can be reinvigorated. Tax policy can be updated to enact additional taxes on real estate for out-of-state buyers. Out-of-state investment firms should be banned from purchasing residential property or forced to be minority shareholders with a local firm. Taxes on land can be progressively reduced as it passes between generations to incentivize future generations to hold on to family property. Smart and targeted policy changes can open a path for multi-generational roots to flourish. 

It is said that change is commonly gradual and then it happens all at once. As America becomes more atomized, more divided, and yet as culture becomes more homogenous, the elements of the West that can retain a semblance of sovereignty will remain beacons for all of us in remembering the frontier spirit of this nation. 

Republicans Wide-Open Door to Win in 2024

Republicans can defeat the extremism of Democrats by appealing to middle-class voters. But it will take disciplined hardball from strong candidates in take-no-prisoners campaigning.

by Rod Thomson for American Greatness 

Democrats have left the back door off the hinges with working-class, middle-class, and even suburban voters as they have morphed into the party of the front-door rich and elite. Their policies increasingly reflect this new dynamic and, media tropes aside, Republicans can pounce on this wide-open opportunity with aggressive, disciplined messaging encompassing plenty of strategic punching back.

The media is working overtime to bury this truth about the Democratic Party, but with every election, the Republican Party is becoming the de facto party of the middle class, working class, and working minorities, while the Democratic Party is increasingly the party of wealthy white elites. 

Axios reported this obvious shift just last week under the headline: “Dramatic realignment swings working-class districts toward GOP.” And Democrats now represent nine of the 10 wealthiest congressional districts. It’s clear in fundraising and policies from mandatory electric vehicles that are financially out of reach for middle-class Americans to siccing the IRS on the gig economy of side hustles by requiring the reporting of $600 and above through Venmo, Paypal, and others.

This is low-hanging fruit in a general election for the GOP, GOP candidates, and associated PACs. 

It’s simple: Build a platform around the economy, inflation, crime, uncertainty about future jobs, and parental rights. These are bread and butter issues already part of the GOP that connect with a broad swath of Americans in ways that some of the culture-war battles and presidential political dramas just do not.

This is where messaging discipline is hard, but the key is not to focus on abortion, trans issues, or for the sake of all that is good, the 2020 election. While these are all variously important issues, they can only be dealt with by winning first. During a campaign, these are weights with the middle electorate. The way you know this is true is that the media will constantly try to force Republicans to talk about only those issues—because they know it hurts them in a general election.

Further, Republicans cannot get sucked directly into the weaponization of the judicial system, as true as that may be, because, in one step, that will devolve into being forced to defend Donald Trump. Good for the Trump team. Bad for attracting the middle voters who sway elections. Win first.

So the GOP needs candidates who can articulately stay on message about kitchen table issues for middle-class Americans while at the same allowing PACs to target the most egregious cultural issues from the Left, and those are some big targets—transgenderism, abortion up to birth, boys in girls’ locker rooms, open borders leading to human trafficking and atrocious levels of fentanyl deaths, and the two-tiered justice system. 

It’s about to get even easier. Joe Biden is ready to gift the GOP and particularly PACs with self-writing ads as he has promised to veto a bill that would prevent biological males from playing in women’s sports. This is tailor-made as Biden’s position is deeply unpopular among Americans, but elites like it. The thing about elites is that, by definition, there are not that many of them.

PACs can bypass the media, and Republican candidates can explain when asked that the PACs are independent actors, and then surgically strike against the media when there is an opportune moment. Always put the media on defense in public press conferences when all the video is rolling.

And every candidate needs to realize that he can, and should, ignore the corporate media in “editable” situations. Think of newspapers, written content, and TV or online shows where the reporter interviews a candidate for an hour and then uses two out-of-context quotes. Never do those. Consent only to live interviews or press conferences where everyone sees everything. The old-school, former mainstream media has been completely unmasked as the propagandist arm of the Democratic Party and allied statist interests. Any Republican candidate who does not understand this is not the right person for the job. Period. 

GOP candidates still trying to play nice and grant interviews to CNN, ABC/CBS/NBC, NPR, the New York Times, Washington Post, or the rest of the compendium of nefarious outlets are just out of touch with the new rules. They will be screwed by those outlets, and more importantly, they don’t need them. 

Republican voters already understand this. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis proved the worth of this strategy. In his first term, he went to war with the media, not with flailing haymakers, but with brutal surgical take-downs in press conference settings, and then only did sit-down interviews with friendly media. And he went from a 2018 win of a fraction of a percent, to winning by 19 points four years later in a state with almost exactly equal registration between Republicans and Democrats. Republicans must understand that the old media is Democratic media operatives, but they have the option to use the alternative media that provides the kind of friendly setting Democrats get from the aforementioned dinosaur media.

Remember Joe Biden sold himself as a return to normalcy, a traditional American president after the Trump years, but has governed as the most radical, leftist president in history, breaking every norm and tradition. Lunchbucket Joe wants men to be allowed to strip down and change in women’s locker rooms and bathrooms. Good Ol’ Joe wants abortions up to the moment that the baby is exiting the birth canal. Blue Collar Joe wants Christians to be forced against their beliefs to bake a cake for a gay wedding when there are a hundred willing bakers available.

But Biden did not run on any of those issues. Well, he barely ran at all. And that is the point. His reputation as a traditionalist returning the White House to normalcy was his campaign.

The rules have changed, and Republicans who don’t catch up will not be winning. So catch up, play hardball by the new harsh rules, see the media as the enemy, hammer on kitchen table issues, let PACs savage opponents, and then walk through the wide open back door to the votes of the vast middle class. This will work up and down the ballot because the Democratic base will not allow their candidates to back off anything.

This may sound distasteful, but we are in a nauseating time of trying to save America from the hate-America-first deconstructionists. Distastefulness is only part of the price to pay if Republicans and conservatives really want to save the nation, and not just be liked by elites.

Trump's Chances of Winning GOP Nomination Have Grown Stronger - but It’s Not a Sure Thing Yet

posted by Jeff Charles at RedStateVIP 

When it comes to the GOP presidential nomination, the situation is looking even better for former President Donald Trump. I think that at this point, it is more than fair to say that the nomination is his to lose, and barring any drastic development, he will likely win.

Current polling shows that the former president is still leading the field by a healthy margin. It does not seem that his support has waned over the past few months and the politically-motivated New York indictment against Trump is only helping him.

A Wall Street Journal poll published on Friday revealed that Trump is trouncing his competition:

Mr. DeSantis’s 14-point advantage in December has fallen to a 13-point deficit, and he now trails Mr. Trump 51% to 38% among likely Republican primary voters in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup.

The GOP candidate field is still developing, and the first primary balloting is more than eight months away. But as of now, Mr. Trump also trounces all competitors in a test of a fuller, potential field of 12 Republican contenders, winning 48% support to 24% for Mr. DeSantis

Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, draws 5% support, and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott draws 3% in the survey, which included 600 likely GOP primary voters. All other candidates had 2% support or less.

Of course, these numbers could easily change – but with the makeup of the GOP presidential field, Trump could afford to lose support and still be in a good position to secure the nomination. Conservative radio talk show host Larry Elder recently threw his hat in the ring, which only makes Trump’s chances even better.

To put it simply, the more candidates who decide to seek the GOP nomination, the better it is for Trump. Having more prominent conservatives running for the GOP nod will dilute the field of opposition to the former president’s candidacy. Those who do not favor another Trump run will have more candidates to choose from, which would almost certainly take much-needed support from the only man who could potentially challenge the former president: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The governor has not yet announced his intention to seek the White House, but it is pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point as he is sending all the right signals. Many believe that DeSantis has what it takes to defeat Trump in a head-to-head race. But the issue with that theory is that having more people entering the fray means that this will not be a head-to-head race.

What Team DeSantis will have to reckon with is the reality that there are probably enough Republican voters who don’t like Trump or the governor to make trouble for his candidacy. Those who prefer neither might be willing to throw their support behind Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, or Larry Elder, even if they know none of these individuals have much of a chance of winning.

All of this works in President Trump’s favor.

However, there is an important caveat. The only possible element that could derail Trump’s chances of winning would be a major event or revelation that finally pushes the base to abandon their support.

For example, if the former president ends up being convicted of a crime and possibly jailed, this could be the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. Of course, this current indictment will likely go nowhere. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump is about as flimsy as it gets.

But there are still other pending legal issues that could pose a problem for the former president. The Fulton County, Georgia issue could actually be a more effective lawfare attack against Trump. It seems to me that the only chance Democrats might have of making sure Trump does not secure the nomination – if that is actually what they want – would be if Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis manages to get an indictment and conviction. It seems like a long shot, but it is not outside of the realm of possibility.I

Americans Stock up on Guns: 60 Million Firearms Sold in 2 Years During COVID-19 Pandemic

Jeff Charles reporting for RedState 

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about unprecedented changes in every aspect of American life, including a significant surge in gun ownership. According to a report from The Trace, a nonprofit news outlet that tracks gun violence, one-fifth of U.S. households purchased guns during the pandemic, resulting in more than 15 million Americans keeping firearms in their homes for the first time.

Americans purchased nearly 60 million guns between 2020 and 2022, with yearly sales running at about twice the level of 15 or 20 years ago. A NORC survey also revealed that between March 2020 and March 2022, 18 percent of households purchased firearms.

One of the notable changes in the type of guns being purchased is the shift from rifles to handguns, particularly semiautomatic handguns, which are kept in bedside tables, glove compartments, or carried on one’s person. This change in gun ownership reflects a growing trend towards self-defense and personal protection, especially during a time of uncertainty and fear brought about by the pandemic.

Many Americans, particularly first-time gun owners, bought guns to protect themselves and their families against the perceived threat of home invasion or other forms of violence during a time when they felt vulnerable.

This shift towards personal protection is evident in the fact that the buyers during the pandemic were more likely to be women, people of color, and renters, according to the NORC survey. The heightened crime rates that developed during the civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd might have also been a contributing factor.

The Hill’s report on The Trace’s data seemed to suggest that the increase in gun ownership has contributed to the uptick in gun deaths that occurred over the same time period.

“It’s a totally different type of gun ownership now,” said John Roman, a senior fellow in the Economics, Justice and Society Group at NORC, a nonpartisan research group at the University of Chicago. “It’s not a rifle stored away somewhere that you take out twice a year to go hunting. It’s a handgun, probably a semiautomatic handgun, that you keep in your bedside table or in your glove compartment, or that you maybe carry around with you.”

However, the article provided no evidence that the increase in legal gun purchases has contributed to the rise in gun violence. The fact that the vast majority of gun homicides are committed by individuals who illegally obtain their firearms seems to cast doubt on this contention.

This is news that would likely cause a screaming meltdown in the anti-gunner lobby, which is desperately trying to persuade Americans not to arm themselves. But for those who understand that the government cannot save you when you are in danger, this is a welcome development.

The increase in gun ownership during the pandemic highlights the exercise of Second Amendment rights by millions of Americans. The increase in gun sales reflects the exercise of this constitutional right by individuals who have chosen to purchase firearms for various reasons, including self-defense, recreational shooting, and collecting. This increase in gun ownership serves as a reminder of the importance of individual freedoms and the right to make choices about personal safety and security.

Moreover, the increase in gun ownership during the pandemic has also led to a diversification of gun owners. As mentioned earlier, first-time gun buyers during the pandemic were more likely to be women, people of color, and renters.

This diversification of gun ownership challenges the stereotype that gun ownership is limited to white men in the South who previously drank Bud Light. Indeed, I’m a black man who would never debase myself by consuming that swill, and I became a first-time gun owner during this time period. This data reflects a broader societal change in attitudes towards gun ownership.

Additionally, the increase in gun ownership during the pandemic has also led to a greater awareness of mental health and the need for proper training and education on firearm safety. Many first-time gun buyers recognized the importance of receiving training and education on safe handling, storage, and use of firearms. This increased awareness of firearm safety and the recognition of the connection between mental health and gun ownership can lead to more responsible gun ownership practices and help prevent tragic incidents involving firearms.

But one part of this development that I think is possibly the most important is that it reflects a much-needed change in mindset. It shows that more people are realizing that they cannot rely on the state for their protection. This means they are taking responsibility for their own lives. If they have changed their thinking on the role of the state in this area, perhaps this will lead more Americans to re-evaluate their trust in the government in other areas.

Former Freedom Caucus Member Creates PAC, Focuses on 'Stopping MAGA,' Ousting Gaetz, MTG, Others

Mike Miller reporting for RedState 

So here’s the deal: I’m going to report this story, straight up. In other words, just the 5 Ws — who, what, where, when, and why — and then move on, with zero punditry left behind. Hence, y’all can debate among yourselves in the comment section, but please don’t break the furniture. Deal? Cool, let’s begin.

A former Freedom Caucus member is helping lead a new PAC — political action committee — the goal of which is “stopping MAGA” by ousting some of the House and Senate’s most pro-Trump members.

Lincoln Project 2.0?

As reported by the New York Times, the group Mission Democracy PAC intends to challenge MAGA lawmakers in their often deep-red home districts by running ads and messaging campaigns that accuse the lawmakers of anti-democratic and other extreme positions. The start-up PAC has just $500,000 in the bank, but hopes to raise $18 million for the 2024 general election cycle.

The PAC leaders are former Representative Denver Riggleman (R-Va.), who once belonged to the Freedom Caucus but has since left the Republican Party and spoken out against conspiracy theories on the House floor; Olivia Troye, an former official in Donald Trump’s administration who has since been critical of the former president; and Marcus Flowers, an Army veteran and Democrat who lost to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) by 32 points in the 2022 midterms.

In addition to targeting Greene in 2024, the PAC says it will focus on ousting GOP Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and Paul Gosar of Arizona — and, I would assume, any other Republicans who fit the MAGA mold as the 2024 campaign season begins in earnest.

Mr. Flowers told the NYT:

If we don’t do something now, if we don’t get these extreme MAGA members out of Congress, we stand to lose our very democracy. It’s time to hold those members accountable, take them to task, [and] attack them in their districts.

The PAC’s first ad — a minute-long spot that blisters GOP moves to restrict abortion in the aftermath of the Roe overturn — goes bottom-line, including dropping an F-bomb or two along the way.

Warning: coarse language in video.

Our government is held hostage by a band of politicians so extreme that only the word fascist describes them.

The ad names several of the aforementioned MAGA members.

Troye said the group focuses on defeating “the worst of the worst,” and expects to add more officials to target in the future, while Riggleman brims with confidence about the PAC’s ability to raise money. Riggleman says:

We’re all pretty prolific with our lists, we know a lot of people to call and we all have pretty good reputations for sticking to facts, not fantasy. We’ve all had incredibly insane real jobs in the real world. And I just think it’s given us a unique way not only to do the mission but also fund-raise and get the monies that we need to continue.

That might very well be the case, but here’s the political conundrum, particularly when fighting against a bloc composed of rabid supporters of another guy — a guy the Mission Democracy PAC fears will destroy democracy in America:

Throughout history, when confronted by — or planning to confront — populist leaders, things often reach the point when the question must be asked: Who’s more “dangerous,” the populist leader or the loyalists who fervently support him?

I’m not prepared to answer the above question, in part because I said at the top I would write the story in the 5 W style of journalism, devoid of political punditry, and that partly is because there’s a lot of water to flow under the bridge before things get really dicey in the Republican race for the 2024 presidential nomination.

That said, I’ll add only this:

As we’ve seen in the past, sometimes the more we attack political figures, the more it fires up their respective bases and the harder they become to beat.