GO TO BOSTON WITH ME! It's all happening on Labor Day weekend and you can sign up by calling 800-383-3131 or visit the website here for more!
WE MUST STOP SAFE INJECTION SITES FROM BECOMING A THING IN COLORADO The law that prevents communities like Denver from opening so-called Safe Injection Sites needs to be kept intact, and there is a move at the Capitol right now to undo it. So-called "harm reduction experts" say it's a valuable tool for stopping overdoses but they ignore that Vancouver, with it's safe injection sites (SIS), has seen a spike in overdoses just like other big cities with open air drug markets. In Harlem, the Greater Harlem Coalition has a Twitter feed FULL of the negatives of SIS which include the fact that now addicts travel to Harlem to buy and use their drugs and that the local drug dealer literally sits IN FRONT of the SIS to sell dope. It's full of stories about how this site has normalized images of black and brown people staggering around high as a kite for their children, and this story which shows NYC is lying about the effects on the neighborhood. The only way I would support this bill is if it had a provision that the SIS has to be in the neighborhood of a member of the Colorado Legislature. Then I would support it. Then it would never pass. From an article from The City:
Neighbors say that OnPoint’s program has increased the crime rate in the area, and increased the police presence as well. Narcotics arrests for East Harlem’s 25th Precinct are up 229% for the week as of Dec. 4, 2022 (23 arrests, compared to seven in 2021) and are up 107% over just the last 28 days.
“The clinics and injection sites have had the unintentional side effect of bringing dealers around, which is why Lexington has plunged so badly,” said Jason Clinkscales, an editor, media analyst and researcher who’s lived in Harlem since 1997. “Lexington won’t change until the Second Avenue subway makes its way up here, but we may all be in the dirt by the time that happens.”
If this passes, these will inevitably be put in neighborhoods full of black and brown people. Watch and see. They don't care about poor people when it comes to destroying what's left of their neighborhoods by trying to make drug use easier. This is a terrible idea.
KAMALA HARRIS IS COMING TO TOWN But she's talking about climate change. Does anyone care about that right now? Why doesn't our Border Czar want to talk about the thousands of illegal immigrants who have flooded into Denver and the nation? Just curious.
LIBERAL COLORADO COLLEGE ISN'T ANTI-RACIST ENOUGH This made me laugh, I'm not gonna lie. Colorado College has the reputation of being extremely progressive. Like if you send your kid there you are pretty much guaranteed to get back a Social Justice Warrior sort of thing so this story is especially rich. Another Artistic Director has resigned from overseeing the Colorado Springs Fine Art Center at Colorado College and in her resignation she cited the following:
“From the beginning of my time at the Fine Arts Center, it was clear that the relationship between it and Colorado College was tenuous, at best, and over time, those tensions only increased,” Yousefzadeh told The Denver Gazette. “I gradually discovered the ways in which the leadership and I were not in alignment in how we define our anti-racist values, and how we believe those values should manifest in process, policies and of course, programming."
Of course she wouldn't have brought this up is SHE were the one who wasn't sufficiently anti-racist so we are left to assume it is Colorado College that isn't anti-racist enough. Heh. This must make them very sad. Heh.
JON CALDARA IS ACTUALLY TRYING TO SAVE YOU MONEY Unlike the politicians who ran on saving you money and are now spending every day at the Legislature making Colorado more expensive. He's filed another ballot petition to lower the state income tax and I will be a hard yes on this one. Read more here.
ELI LILLY CAPS INSULIN PRICES for some insulin at just $35 a month, but that isn't all insulin. This is a great first step and shows that the glare of the media spotlight is sometimes the best market force. I imagine Lilly decided to take the financial hit so they can get a slew of good press for doing this, and I'm sure it will create downward pressure on any other company that produces insulin as well.
LET ME TELL YOU HOW THE JUST CAUSE EVICTION LAW WILL RAISE RENTS Democrats have decided that they should be the one's to tell private property owners what they can and can't do with a rental property and it's going to make housing WAY more expensive. I am a landlord and let me tell you what I will do if this bill passes and is signed into law. The bill, which you can read here, requires me allow a tenant to stay in my property for however long they want to, regardless of what I want to do with it. It also would force me to PAY for their relocation if I decide I want them out. So I would be on the hook for two, maybe three months of their future rent. So as a landlord, I am going to tack a few hundred bucks onto every months rent so I can have a contingency account if I ever need to do that. If I don't, I just have growing pot of money from higher rent. To expect landlords not to react in the form of higher rent just displays the ignorance of people pushing this bill.
A NEW SURGERY TO MANAGE PAIN AND END OPIOID ADDICTIONS This is super cool and hopefully something others with chronic pain can use to ditch the drugs. It involves an implant on the spine that helps reset the neurotransmitters that cause the pain. This is just super cool.
PRINCETON IS ACCIDENTALLY MAKING STUDENTS CONSERVATIVE AT least the free thinking students anyway. This column lays out the myriad of ways I would not want Q to attend an Ivy League school, although she is such a competent contrarian she may end up running the place. From the New York Times article:
Sometimes young conservative agitators are dismissed, cynically, as attention seekers or opportunists. But in my experience, the negative consequences of conservative activism on campus, both personal and professional, far outweigh any benefit that they might incur. And, tellingly, most conservatives report censoring themselves during their college years.
Some might think that this pervasive progressivism would encourage conservative students to change their views. But in fact it has the opposite effect. Graduates of schools like Loyola University Chicago, George Washington University and Mount Holyoke have described how the rampant leftism on their campuses pushed them to the right. A 2017 article in The Washington Examiner quotes a Furman University graduate saying that “the aggressive leftist culture on campus made me a more radical conservative because I only had two options: abandon my beliefs and conform, or fight back.” She chose to fight back.
THE 1619 PROJECT CHOOSES TO IGNORE PROGRESS Even as the author of this bit of revisionist history that the New York Times has commodified in defiance of the truth becomes a tv show on Hulu. This author is not impressed:
In the Hulu docuseries, the 1619 Project’s founder Nikole Hannah-Jones states that the project’s goal is to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” But what is most important is what goes unsaid: that the video, like the book, is a work of strict and meticulous historical redaction. I taught in China several years ago, and reading or watching The 1619 Project is a lot like reading or watching the news in China: every line, every phrase, has been run through a filter, in this case to scrub out all traces of black-white unity, cooperation, and common goals from America’s history, all in order to leave the audience with a deeply warped caricature of America as having only known racial disunity and conflict. The facts of history defy this narrative; thus, the only way The 1619 Project manages to spin it is by abusing history.
It seems to me that the actual history lessons in the 1619 Project, and there are actual history lessons mixed in with the racist vitriol, should surely be taught in our history classes in school, but we can't ignore the progress that we've made, even as we may have more to go.
THIS AS DPS IS USING A RACIST CURRICULUM And this letter to the Superintendent lays out the ways that the Black Lives Matter at School Action Week curriculum continues with the work started by Nicole-Jones above. From the letter:
The Black Lives Matter at School website features several different resources, including the “Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action Starter Kit.” The “Introduction to the BLM in School Week of Action” states, in part, that:
“[T]here is a school-to-prison-pipeline system that is more invested in locking up youth than unlocking their minds.”
“That system uses harsh discipline policies that push Black students out of schools at disproportionate rates”;
The system “denies students the right to learn about their own cultures and whitewashes the curriculum to exclude many of the struggles and contributions of Black people and other people of color”; and
The system “is pushing out Black teachers from the schools in cities from around the country.”
Before any curriculum about race is taught, the question "does this help black and brown and white students move beyond race" should be asked. This clearly does not.
THERE IS SOME NEW STUFF TO WATCH THIS MARCH And this story has a wrap up of what's out this month. I'm a yes on John Wick and a maybe on Ted Lasso, though I am loathe to pay for another streaming service.
THE SOUTH VS THE MIDWEST This made me laugh because it is entirely accurate.
WHY THE JONES ACT IS STUPID AND SHOULD BE REPEALED It's a protectionary measures to protect American shipping even when it makes no sense. John Stossel explains how this screws so many people.
MY MASSIVE COLLECTION OF DVDS AND CDS MEANS I'M AN OLD SOUL At least according to a recent Jeopardy contestant who said she was an old soul who collects "obsolete" items like DVDs and CDs. I'm just going to have a pudding cup and toddle off to bed now.