Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A U.S. senator is questioning a top agency’s public statements over safety signals for the COVID-19 vaccines.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), claimed in 2022 that safety monitoring revealed no “unexpected safety signals” for the vaccines.

But the results to which she was referring showed hundreds of safety signals, or adverse events potentially linked to the shots.

The Epoch Times obtained the results through a Freedom of Information Act after the CDC refused to release them.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is now wondering why the CDC expected so many signals after vaccination.

In a Jan. 10 letter citing The Epoch Times article on the results, Johnson demanded the CDC explain how it determined what is and is not an “unexpected safety signal.”

“The American people have a right to know the extent to which your agency was aware of and tracked COVID-19 vaccine adverse events. Your lack of transparency is unacceptable. Without immediately providing complete and reliable information about COVID-19 vaccine adverse events, you are obstructing Congressional oversight and leaving the public in the dark,” added Johnson, who was stonewalled when he requested the monitoring results.

The CDC did not respond to a request for comment.

False Statements

The CDC has made multiple false statements on the outcomes found from a type of analysis called Proportional Reporting Ratio (PRR). The analysis involves comparing the number of adverse events reported to a system co-managed by the CDC after COVID-19 vaccination to the number of adverse events reported after vaccination with other vaccines.

The CDC initially said that performing PRRs was outside of its purview, contradicting a government document that stated the agency “will perform” the technique. Dr. John Su, a top CDC official, then claimed it started performing the analysis in February 2021 and continued to do so as of July 18, 2022.

Both statements turned out to be wrong. After being pressed by Johnson, the CDC later said that it did not start the PRRs until March 25, 2022, and stopped performing them on July 31, 2022.

Walensky, a Biden appointee, admitted the CDC provided false information in a September 2022 letter to the senator.

The CDC “recently addressed a previous statement made to The Epoch Times to clarify PRR were not run between February 26, 2021, to September 30, 2021,” she said.

Johnson noted that the missive did not explain why the CDC offered the false information. Martha Sharan, a CDC spokesperson who herself made a false claim, told The Epoch Times in an email that no CDC workers intentionally provided false information.

Results

The results of the PRRs, obtained by The Epoch Times and released to the public for the first time in January, shows CDC analysts found hundreds of adverse events met the threshold for a safety signal.

That included severe conditions such as blood clotting and even death.

PRRs analyze reports lodged with the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, which health officials describe as “the nation’s early warning system” for vaccine issues.

Read more here…

2022 was a terrible year for billionaires, many of which lost nearly $2 trillion combined. Despite stock, crypto, and bond market turmoil, as well as soaring interest rates, elevated inflation, and increased risk of economic uncertainty, the ultra-wealthy were increasingly purchasing luxury vehicles.

Rolls-Royce Motor Cars published a press release stating it recorded its “highest-ever annual sales” in 2022, delivering 6,021 motor cars, up 8% versus 2021. 

“This is the first time in the company’s 118-year history that its sales have exceeded 6,000 in a single 12-month period,” the British luxury carmaker said. 

Rolls-Royce’s sales were led by the US, China, and European markets. The automaker said orders stretched well into this year and noted the high demand for its vehicles, many of which fetch $500k, which led to an expansion of the company’s Goodwood plant in the UK. 

“2022 has been a momentous year for Rolls-Royce Motor Cars,” CEO Torsten Müller-Ötvös wrote in a statement. 

“Our order book stretches far into 2023 for all models,” Müller-Ötvös continued. “We haven’t seen any slowdown in orders.”

Müller-Ötvös added the brand’s bespoke, customized approach to “ever more imaginative and technically demanding – a challenge we enthusiastically embrace.” 

And it’s not just Rolls-Royce. Bentley and Lamborghini had record sales last year. 

Lamborghini delivered 9,233 vehicles in 2022, a 10% increase from the year before. Bentley delivered 15,174 vehicles, a 4% increase over 2021, which was a record year. 

The growth of luxury vehicle sales reflects high net wealth folks are doing just fine despite a vast amount of wealth vaporization due to central banks tightening monetary policy. As for everyone else, many folks can barely afford their $1,000 car payment, as an auto bust seems almost inevitable. 

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The second essential step is to recognize how the spectacles of “news” and entertainment distract our attention from this erosion of basic rights.

Hierarchical power structures like city-states arose as problem-solving solutions, not just for the elites who benefited from the concentration of wealth and power but for the citizenry. This dynamic underpins the analysis presented in my recent book Global Crisis, National Renewal: when nation-states and global hierarchies no longer solve the key problems of their populaces, they dissolve and are replaced by some new arrangement.

It’s easy to see how hierarchies benefit the leaders / elites at the top, but there’s always a trade-off to the populace ceding power/control to elites: we will cede control over our lives in exchange for benefits we cannot gain by ourselves, starting with security from invasion and starvation, i.e. the existential threats posed by Nature and other human organizations.

Over time, as energy surpluses and knowledge increased, city-states aggregated into nation-states and empires. These larger organizations were able to solve problems on a larger scale than city-states.

When these entities could no longer solve existential problems (surpluses diminished, elites failed to provide successful leadership, etc.), they eroded and then collapsed, and were replaced with some other more successful organizational arrangement.

Over time, the citizenry of some regions began expanding the benefits nation-states and their elites were expected to provide in exchange for power: the state was expected to secure the rights to individuals’ property and various civil liberties relating to the free exchange of ideas and knowledge, freedom of worship, and having a say in national decisions.

Globally, these basic human rights are being eroded by state-elite over-reach and consolidation of power beyond what the citizenry agreed upon. For example, the citizenry ceded power to the state to protect individuals’ privacy from the surveillance and information-gathering of both the state and private interests.

As Richard Bonugli and I discuss in our podcast on Eroding Civil Liberties and Property Rights, these privacy statutes are still on the books but they are routinely disregarded by both state agencies and private-sector interests with little functional enforcement by state agencies tasked with protecting the citizens’ rights to privacy.

Big Tech routinely harvests private data for profit with little oversight, state agencies collect private data beyond their mandated scope and mobile phones gather private information which others manage to collect or access.

Property rights are also being eroded. Civil forfeiture enables local and national governments to expropriate individuals’ private property without due process, in effect declaring them guilty and effecting punishment (taking their money/property) and then forcing them to prove their innocence via a lengthy, costly, Kafkaesque process.

War by other means now includes sanctions and expropriation of individuals’ assets, not just the assets of other states or state entities (central banks, state-owned corporations, etc.)

What is driving this global erosion of the most basic civil liberties and property rights? As I describe in my book Resistance, Revolution, Liberation, all states share the same ontology, which is to respond to any threats or challenges by increasing their reach and control.

In other words, all states share the same teleological Prime Directive: always expand the state’s control and power. No state has the institutional memory or means to reduce the state’s reach, control or power.

The only limit on state expansion is the citizenry’s resistance to the loss of civil liberties, property rights and having a say in decisions which affect the entire citizenry. If the citizenry do nothing to protect their rights as individuals and communities, the state will nibble away at these until they exist only in name, not in the real world.

The first essential step is to recognize the erosion as real and consequential. Richard and I do our best to further this in our podcast Charles Hugh Smith on Eroding Civil Liberties and Property Rights (31:35 min).

The second essential step is to recognize how the spectacles of “news” and entertainment distract our attention from this erosion of basic rights. Before we know it, we’re in prisons without bars and grateful to get a questionnaire about how we like the torture (i.e. the “entertainment”).

*  *  *

My new book is now available at a 10% discount ($8.95 ebook, $18 print): Self-Reliance in the 21st Century.  Read the first chapter for free (PDF)

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Authored by Ryan Morgan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A group of 43 national security experts published an open letter on Jan. 11 criticizing news organizations and scientific publications that dismissed the possibility that the COVID-19 pandemic might have been the result of a lab leak.

The letter is addressed “To the editors, authors, and contributors to major scientific, medical, and journalistic publications worldwide.” The addressees include The Lancet, Nature Medicine, The New York Times, and TIME magazine.

The letter was coordinated by the Vandenberg Coalition, and included signatures from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas), former U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, Former U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor Matthew Pottinger, and analysts from the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and other security and foreign policy analysts.

“Leading scientific journals censored dissenting voices; many science writers at major news outlets promoted narratives or asserted conclusions unsubstantiated by evidence; reporters failed to make even cursory attempts at surfacing potential conflicts of interest of their sources,” the letter states.

“This served to hamper national and international policy discussions about how to mitigate against future pandemics of any origin—natural, accidental, or deliberate.”

The letter faults editors and reporters at news organizations and scientific publications for stifling debate on the origins of the virus.

The letter references a Fox News article about a May 2021 tweet by a New York Times reporter who said, “Someday we will stop talking about the lab leak theory and maybe even admit its racist roots. But alas, that day is not yet here.”

The New York Times reporter deleted the tweet the same day she wrote it.

“Our security and prosperity depend on rigorous scientific debate, research, and scholarship, as well as an intrepid and independent news media,” the letter continues.

“The responsibility of scientists and journalists alike is to ask hard questions and seek truth. By prematurely dismissing or stigmatizing certain questions—from the very outset of the pandemic—many prominent scientists and journalists failed in their duty.”

The letter went on to list “notable failures” by the various news and scientific publications. A February 2020 statement by The Lancet “asserted without evidence that questioning the supposed natural origin of COVID-19 constituted ‘misinformation’ and a ‘conspiracy theory,” the letter states.

Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, was listed as a co-author the February 2020 statement by The Lancet. EcoHealth Alliance worked directly with China’s Wuhan laboratories to research coronaviruses. The Lancet subsequently acknowledged questions if Daszak had a “competing interest” when he co-authored the 2020 statement.

The letter authors also noted that a report by Nature Medicine, which “became one of the most-cited academic journal articles in history” had “effectively stigmatized anyone who questioned whether the outbreak may have originated in a laboratory.”

Read more here…

Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is mulling a move to ban Chinese entities from purchasing property in the state due to the economic and security risks posed by  China’s communist regime.

“If you look at the Chinese Communist Party, they’ve been very active throughout the Western Hemisphere in gobbling up land and investing in different things,” DeSantis said during a press conference on Jan. 10.

“And, you know, when they have interests that are opposed to ours, and you’ve seen how they’ve wielded their authority… it is not in the best interests of Florida to have the Chinese Communist Party owning farmland, owning land close to military bases.”

The remarks follow warnings from security experts and lawmakers that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, is seeking to purchase strategic parcels of land throughout the United States from which it can conduct espionage or otherwise sabotage U.S. national security interests.

In recent years, Chinese land buys in Texas and North Dakota, which were both situated near U.S. military bases, have raised alarm among both locals and policymakers in state and federal governments.

DeSantis said that the CCP had “taken a much more Marxist-Leninist turn” under current Party leader Xi Jinping and suggested that communist China was now a “hostile nation.”

“We do not need to have CCP influence in Florida’s economy,” DeSantis said.

China Spending Billions on US Land Every Year

Chinese investors purchased more than $6 billion in U.S. real estate between March 2021 and March 2022, according to the National Association of Realtors, making it the largest foreign buyer in terms of dollars spent.

Florida has been at the center of that purchasing craze, with 24 percent of all foreign property purchases in the nation happening there. The next state with the highest amount of foreign purchases was California, which accounted for 11 percent.

DeSantis described the CCP’s influence in American society as “very insidious” and, to that end, said that he was not only concerned with the CCP seeking out farmland, but also wanted to terminate its access to residential properties.

“Why would you want them buying residential developments and things like that?” DeSantis said. “I don’t want them owning subdivisions and things like that.”

Though outrage over the issue has been widespread in recent months, there have been relatively few concrete actions taken to curb the flow of U.S. land to CCP-aligned organizations.

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) introduced legislation in November that would “prohibit the purchase of public or private agricultural land in the United States by foreign nationals associated with the Government of the People’s Republic of China.”

Likewise, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) introduced legislation to improve national security by “preventing foreign adversaries from taking any ownership or control of the United States agriculture industry.”

Read more here…

As we noted during Joe Biden’s recent lighting speed tour of southern border, El Paso was an epicenter of the illegal immigration crisis up until just two weeks ago, when suddenly and magically there was a mass exodus or removal of thousands of migrants from the streets of the city. 

El Paso went from over 2500 migrants crossing the border per day to essentially zero after a quiet cleanup effort, increased border patrol and national guard as well as the building of a makeshift border wall using cargo containers and barbed wire.  

When confronted with the fact that this purging of migrants from El Paso was rather opportune for Joe Biden, allowing him to tour the border and facilities without having to deal with the presence of hordes of illegal immigrants, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre clumsily insinuated that the lack of migrants in the city at the time was purely “coincidental.”

Simultaneously, Pierre asserts that there was a cleanup and that this is a good thing. Of course, the removal of migrants from El Paso was not undertaken until the past two weeks because of optics.  It was done to ensure that no images of Joe Biden surrounded by illegal immigrants laying in garbage strewn streets see the light of day.  In other words, the cleanup was enacted to hide the extent of the migrant crisis, not fix it.

Not only that, but it proves that the White House does have the means to stop the invasion at the border using the same measures they used in El Paso, they just don’t want to.

The Biden Administration has ignored the increasingly dire state of affairs on the border ever since he took office.  His amnesty policies and attempts to shut down Title 42 have led to larger caravans of illegals each month.  With the recent tactics to obscure the situation in El Paso it would appear that Biden has no intention if changing his open border plans anytime soon.   

Authored by Hardscrabble Farmer via The Burning Platform blog,

The first question that came to mind as the closing credits rolled on the Netflix documentary Madoff The Monster of Wall Street was why?

Why would they make a movie like this that connects as many dots?

The film lays out so many of the obvious truths of how America and the economic systems we have come to depend upon are nothing more than a colossal fiction, a fraud operating at every level and throughout every aspect of our Government, and the institutions we have come to think of as our culture.

And then it hit me.

The purpose of this revelation is to serve as cover for the even larger Ponzi scheme that is SBF about to unravel, and eventually, if I suspect correctly, the death blow that will be discovered when BlackRock is finally shown to be the exact same kind of Ponzi scheme as all the others. When the final downturn in our economic collapse goes into full Krakatoa and wipes out every last vestige of economic stability in the Western World.

The central underlying explanation for what transpired is based upon the rickety tripod of incompetence, misplaced altruism, and bad luck. Had it not been for the crisis of 2008, Madoff’s scheme would have continued to be as successful as it was up to 2007. Had it not been Madoff’s central concern to please people, he never would have made the kinds of promises he did. Had it not been for a couple of low level SEC examiners who weren’t properly trained, it would have been caught sooner. None of these explanations pass the sniff test of course.

From the beginning the SEC with their bloated multi-billion dollar annual budget do little if any work on anything other than drawing paychecks and providing cover for large scale institutional level white collar criminals to operate without fear of accountability. Without the greed of the people helping to run the operation anyone with two eyeballs and a heart beat would have been able to discern what was going on inside the offices of Madoff’s criminal empire in a week or less.

Had it not been for the gullibility and rank stupidity of the American people the common denominator between all of these parties, save for a few, low-level associates, would be readily discernible. The producers do not want anyone to notice these obvious signs of just how the global banking and economic systems really operate because if they were made clear there’d be a revolution tomorrow.

Our entire system is a Ponzi scheme. Everyone is in on it. The government is a Potemkin village, populated by a criminal syndicate that is raping the American people and stealing every last thing of value right before our eyes, with impunity. On occasion when it becomes so obvious that nothing can conceal the crimes, they’ll toss one of their associates overboard to placate the roiling masses before quickly moving their shop to another 17th floor.

This documentary is an absolute must see for anyone with even the slightest interest in how things are going to, in the not too distant future, play out in the last days of the dying Empire that was once America. The only requirement is to watch it unfold without listening to the rhetorical assurances of the ones trying to pull this polished wool over your eyes, but as you would a true con man with his hand on your wallet. In the final analysis the greatest con of all is in how this story is told by Netflix rather than the shoddily constructed grift that was Madoff Investments.

*  *  *

From Jim Quinn: It is my sincere desire to provide readers of The Burning Platform with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can’t do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. 

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson,

The Left has gone mad over former President Donald J. Trump — past, present, and future.

The current Democratic Party and NeverTrump “conservatives” assumed that Trump was and remains so obviously toxic that they do not have to define exactly what his evil entails.

Accordingly, they believe that any means necessary are justified to stop him.

And furthermore, these zealots, when out of power, insist such extraordinary measures should not be emulated and institutionalized by their opponents, much less ever boomeranged back upon their creators.

In this context, the Republicans retaking control of the House of Representatives once again raises the question of whether they should reply in kind.

Given the current investigation following the Mar-a-Lago raid, should there also be a mirror-image special prosecutor to examine President Joe Biden’s lost stash of classified documents in his insecure office following his vice presidency?

Can House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., ever be considered too inflammatory, given that his predecessor, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., tore up the president’s State of the Union address on national television?

How many Democratic House members should be denied committee assignments to remind the Congress that Pelosi’s rejection of Republican nominees was a terrible precedent?

How many congressional subpoenas with threats of criminal prosecution and performance-art arrests should be issued to Democratic politicos to stop the criminalization of political differences?

In our current age, will all former president’s private homes, closets, and drawers now be subject to FBI raids to ensure that “classified” documents were not wrongly stored there?

Are Biden’s current homes also a logical target, given his sloppy handling of classified foreign policy papers — eerily reminiscent of an abandoned laptop belonging to son Hunter Biden and daughter Ashley Biden’s lost diary?

Was it ever a good idea to impeach a first-term president the moment he lost his party’s majority in the House — but without any hope of a conviction in the Senate? Would such a similar impeachment send a warning to Biden to honor his oath of office and start enforcing U.S. immigration law?

Does a phone call now an impeachment make, on the grounds that Trump mixed domestic politics with foreign policy?

But was Trump’s Ukrainian call that much different from former President Barack Obama’s 2012 quid pro quo in Seoul, South Korea, where he asked the Russian president to convey a deal to Vladmir Putin: Stay calm and give Obama space during his reelection bid while Obama in turn would be flexible on missile defense.

Putin did just that and put off invading Ukraine until Obama was reelected. And Obama made sure there was no joint missile defense projects in Eastern Europe. Was that deal in America’s interest, or Obama’s own and thus similarly impeachable?

Or consider Biden mixing foreign policy and politics on the eve of the midterm elections. For example, he kept draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to dangerously low levels while begging hostile foreign dictators to pump more oil.

Thereby Biden sought to win votes from angry commuters buffeted by high fuel prices. And he also appeased the Left by not ordering more drilling for gas and oil. Was that gambit in the nation’s — or Biden’s — best interest?

What is wrong with the House investigating whether the FBI infiltrated and contracted social media companies to warp news coverage and suppress free expression of American citizens?

The Left certainly thought it was necessary in 1975 for the Church Committee to investigate the CIA. That committee found the agency was contracting new organizations to front for its covert operations, while partnering with telecommunications corporations to monitor the data of citizens on CIA watch lists. Sound familiar to today’s FBI?

Was it a good idea for the Democratic House to release Trump’s tax returns?

If the Republican House were to do the same with the Biden consortium’s tax records, would the result be far more incriminating?

There was much talk once in Congress of evoking the 25th Amendment to remove a supposedly mentally impaired Trump. A Yale psychiatrist was even paraded before Congress to attest the president was dangerously unbalanced. Calls for aptitude testing resulted in Trump acing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment.

Should the House now follow the Democrats’ precedent? Should medical professionals review all of Biden’s incoherent utterances, his fantasy biographic tales, and his often physical fragility and determine whether he is non compos mentis? Is that a precedent we wish to follow?

When a defeated first-term president leaves office and vows to return in four years, is it wise to impeach and try him as a private citizen?

Did not the House impeach Trump in part because he warned the Ukrainians that Biden, a possible opponent in 2020, was likely corrupt?

Do the endless Democratic efforts to go after Trump, a possible Biden opponent in 2024, constitute far more than a Trump single phone call to the president of Ukraine?

Somehow supposedly worldly and sophisticated partisans in their self-righteousness ignored ancient laws of what goes around comes around, of Karma, of Nemesis, of payback’s a bit—h, and all that stuff.

The PC bust cycle will extend well into 2023 and might not see a turnaround until 2024. The pandemic-era demand has mostly evaporated as consumers and companies delay purchases. 

The hangover for the PC market has been well underway for the last two quarters. A note from Gartner Inc. shows worldwide shipments of PCs fell 29% in the fourth quarter from a year ago. Another report from International Data Corp. confirmed the pandemic-era computer boom is over for now. 

Mikako Kitagawa, the director analyst at Gartner, said the first cracks of the PC bust cycle materialized in the third quarter of last year when corporate buyers began to pull back on purchases. 

“Enterprise buyers are extending PC life cycles and delaying purchases, meaning the business market will likely not return to growth until 2024,” Kitagawa said, who was quoted by WSJ. 

Gartner’s report showed that PC makers shipped 65.3 to 67.3 million PCs in the fourth quarter. For the full year, shipments totaled about 286.2 million units, a 16% increase versus the year before. 

IDC said Dell Technologies recorded the most significant decline in PC shipments for the year. Other PC brands that recorded shipment declines were Lenovo, HP, Apple, and Asus. 

Despite all the gloom, Lenovo, a Chinese tech company, had the largest market share of all PC sales in the quarter at around 23%. 

Entirely separate but worth noting is the computer-equipment maker Logitech that saw shares crash as much as 19% today, the most since April 2011. The company slashed guidance due to a slowdown in the PC space. 

Recall that we have outlined how graphics cards, memory chips, and monitor prices have plunged in the last two quarters. 

Authored by Eric Peters via EricPetersAutos.com,

Everything is racist – even roads.

It is why roads must be dug up and converted to foot/bicycle paths, which are more “equitable”-  since you do not need to own a car to be able to use those.

Of course, without a car, you can only walk – or pedal – so far. You are kept in your place, as it were. But that’s not racist – because it keeps everyone in their place. Well, everyone except the you-know-who’s. Who come in all colors but are all the same in that they want everyone else  . . . kept in their place.

Irony of ironies, they intend to use our taken-for-granted but slipping-away freedom of movement – by car – as the vehicle to put us back in our place, as they see it.

By framing the car – and roads – as “racist.”

The car, which freed everyone who owns one from being stuck where they are. Expanded their options – for work, employment, education and recreation. That made it – per James Brown – easy to get anywhere.

For anyone.

But not so, according to the Roads Are Racist narrative, which argues that the Interstate Highway System in particular was not meant to make it “easy to get anywhere” – but rather to make it easy for whites to get away from blacks. And – in the process – leave blacks “behind” in the bypassed ghettoes of the inner cities. This is like blaming the “unvaccinated” – that is, the un-drugged – for the serial sickness of the “vaccinated” (the people who took the drugs that neither prevent the getting nor the spreading of sickness).

The downtown areas of big cities such as Detroit, Chicago and Baltimore have become blighted wastelands, it’s true. Full of boarded-up homes interspersed with liquor stores here and there – and derelicts everywhere. But this did not happen because the roads were built. It happened because the cities became shitholes. Many were burnt down by peaceful protestors back in the late ’60s – and were never rebuilt. People who wanted to live as far away as possible from the shit – literally, as in dumps on the sidewalk – and peaceful protests, too – left.

Which they could, because there were roads for them to leave on.

No one was kept from leaving.

But it is evidence of “racism” that those who chose to stay did just that. As opposed to evidence of lack of initiative. Just saying that latter being extremely “racist” – because it isn’t racist to imply that black people lack initiative. Are not capable of apprehending that the neighborhood is turning to shit and leaving it.

Which of course many did. Barack Obama, for instance.

Never mind that. Black folks are too indolent to use the roads to escape to a better place, far away from the shit, the peaceful protestors and the high cost of living in cities controlled by Leftists who make it shitty and expensive to live in cities. Whose policies cause the population that remains to bifurcate into two classes – the very rich and the very poor.

Who come in all colors.

The tent cities one sees in cities such as LA and San Francisco are in fact very diverse. Except in one way. It is that everyone living in those tents is poor.

Leftists see this and offer their analysis – and solution. Things must be made more equitable – by keeping everyone in his place. By making everyone equally poor.

Themselves excepted, of course.

Get rid of the roads. Get rid of cars, too. Make it harder for anyone to get anywhere, excepting the very affluent – who will as always be able to get anywhere they like. Viz, the Davos Crowd, private-jetting to their private conferences where the “racism” of freedom of movement is bruited about.

Roads “increase access to resources like jobs, healthcare and education,” says one of these – a Young Leader-in-the-making by the name of Raaj Kumar.

All of which is true and also the point. Why build – why travel upon – roads that don’t take you somewhere better than where you happen to be right now? But then he says “racist road planning and the proliferation of cars in white households, mega-highways  . . . directly contributed to the city’s serious segregation problem.”

Italics added.

He refers to Atlanta, a city notorious for its traffic. Which he synonymizes with “segregation.”

This being akin to defining a drug that does not prevent the getting or spreading of sickness as a “vaccine.”

No person – of any color – is being thwarted by law from going anywhere they please. Which they are able to do, courtesy of all those roads – which everyone is free to use. The fact that some choose not to use them is just that, a choice. The Leftist says it is a false choice, because some lack the means to make use of roads. But this isn’t a color barrier – the defining attribute of segregation. As in, no – you cannot go there. You must remain here.

That is segregation.

Anyone can buy a car. Assuming it’s not an electric car. (Is this pushing of electric cars on people who cannot afford them also “racist”?)

And roads? They opened up America – all of it – to everyone.

Digging them up and replacing them with foot and bike paths will close off most of America to almost everyone. This is the “15 minute city” vision of the Davos-set, who deploy useful idiots such as Raaj Kumar to foment resentment by crying “racism” at literally everything.

Including the thing that has benefitted everyone.

That being the roads – which have made it easy for all of us to be anywhere we like.

*  *  *

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