Charity for me, but not for thee

Our money is much too valuable to waste on lazy students

Non-profit spends its loot on salaries and parties, but that’s it.

ALBANY — A nonprofit run by minority state lawmakers, which for at least two years failed to dole out scholarships to African-American and Hispanic youth, capped off its lavish “Caucus Weekend” Sunday with no mention of student grants.

The New York State Association of Black and Puerto Rican Legislators typically spends most of its contributions — more than $500,000 in fiscal year 2016-2017 — on three days of workshops, cocktails and its annual Scholarship Dinner Gala, federal filings show.

In the past two years, no money was given to students, according to tax records obtained by The Post.

The nonprofit’s board members — who include former Mayor David Dinkins, former state Comptroller Carl McCall and Brooklyn Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, its chair — have refused to comment on why the group has failed to provide funds to needy students.

The group’s longtime treasurer, Westchester Assemblyman Gary Pretlow, told dozens of conference delegates at a Sunday church service featuring Democratic Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie that 90 percent of the nonprofit’s donations go to put on the annual event.

Pretlow then exhorted delegates “to reach deep into your pockets” to contribute as white-gloved ushers went up and down the aisles of the Wilborn Temple First Church of God with wicker baskets as a choir sang “Get on Your Knees and Pray.”

There was no mention of scholarships.

….. Founded in 1985 “to empower African-American and Latino youth . . . by providing opportunity to higher education,” the nonprofit has given out only a small percentage of its donations to students in the past.

To "take", or to "confiscate" acknowledges that one is seizing another's property. To "give" something implies that the gift is yours to begin with

Representative Josh Elliott, (. Hamden): “All your monies are belong to us”.

“Progressives” to Lamont: “You simply can’t give money to rich people”

“We’re going to act as a block that says you can’t simply be giving money to rich people,” Rep. Josh Elliott, D-Hamden, a member of the caucus, said during a mid-day press conference at the Capitol.

Mr. Elliot and his Progressive Caucus must assume that all income, all assets of citizens belong to the state, and anything those citizens is allowed to keep is a gift from “the people”. As I recall, that’s the position of a hard communist.

As an aside, Greenwich already pays the highest income tax in the state: $20,282 per person. I suppose the sky’s the limit, for Elliot and his cohorts. For now, he’s proposing raising the top rate to 9%, from 7%, but that’s for now; surely they’ll be back soon, looking to further shrink their gift.

Not as good as their headline, "Headless corpse found in topless bar" — what could be? but a good effort nonetheless

Anthony Weiner is back in town

Facebook once again bans an accurate story

One of dozens, if not hundreds of such incidents, all of which somehow target conservatives.

Good luck with that

Rapper who turned on his fellow drug conspirators to go into witness protection program.

PEEK-A-BOO, WE SEE YOU!

Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine appears on the verge of receiving a prison sentence that is significantly less than the minimum term he would have received after pleading guilty to a litany of crimes, though he may need witness protection.

The singer signed a plea deal with federal prosecutors in Manhattan whereby he admitted to various crimes, including racketeering, conspiracy, weapons possession, drug trafficking, and others.

If it weren't for fake hate crimes, there'd be almost no hate crimes at all

Jussie Smollett’s story has collapsed. just as everyone on this blog, and everyone with any sense, predicted back when first reported. To their credit, and reading between the lines, the Chicago cops knew this purported attack was a crock from the moment it was reported, but kept reporting that he was being treated as a victim until their investigation proved otherwise. It’s ironic that the actor concocted this as a way to boost his career and instead, has destroyed it (I hope).

Scary but true: the Green New Deal is coming

See yoo

Or so says Robert Spencer, and it’s dispiriting to think he’s probably right.

Democratic socialist wunderkind Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has been receiving torrents of ridicule for the “Green New Deal” program she unveiled with great fanfare and media adulation on Thursday, and it’s well deserved. But conservatives may come to find that laughter catching in their throats: as stupid as it is, and as disastrous as it would obviously be if it were implemented, many powerful figures on the Left aren’t laughing. And it’s not in the least impossible that they'll bring that disaster upon the nation by trying to implement it.

…. Cortez really [has no] any significant civic, historical, or economic knowledge. But none of it matters. She is a darling of the Leftist media and a rising star in the Democrat Party. Netflix paid ten million dollars for a documentary about her. Al Jazeera has already anointed her the next president of the United States.

Is she better equipped to be a bartender (which she was not long ago) than a member of the House of Representatives? Of course. But that won’t stop her rise. The Left ridiculed Donald Trump and called him stupid all through 2016, and he was elected president. What Ocasio-Cortez has on her side is the fact that powerful people on the Left take her seriously.

For all its talk (in the FAQs provided by Ocasio-Cortez’s office) of becoming able within the next few years “to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes” and providing “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to
work,” the most arresting passage in the entire Green New Deal plan is this: Nearly every major Democratic presidential contender says they back the Green New deal including: Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Jeff Merkley, Julian Castro, Kirsten Gillibrand, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, and Jay Inslee.

Those Democrat leaders aren’t laughing Ocasio-Cortez out of the room for announcing a plan that includes the intention to “upgrade or replace every building in US for state-of-the-art energy efficiency.” They’re nodding their heads and signing on. They don’t think it will make them look just as dimwitted as Ocasio-Cortez to endorse a plan that calls for constructing “high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary." Those railway bridges connecting California with Hawaii, Australia, and Japan are going to be, like, awesome.

They’re happy to lend their names to a plan that calls for “a full transition off fossil fuels and zero greenhouse gases,” in other words, destruction of the existing automobile industry, as well as the aeronautics industry. And the prospect of a massive carnage of “farting cows” doesn’t seem to trouble them.

The Green New Deal as Ocasio-Cortez has presented it will never be implemented in full, because the United States would go bankrupt and a new civil war would break out before all of its recommendations could be put into place. But that won’t stop Democrats from moving in the direction of a unitary socialist state in which all means of production are in the hands of the government – for the good of the climate and the people, of course.

Global warming High Priestesses' private jet almost crashes on junket to Mexico

Jenifer Aniston and Courtney Cox wanted to Mexico to attend a birthday party but were forced to return after Aniston’s private jet plane suffered mishap

Jennifer Aniston and her Friends co-star Courteney Cox were jet-setting to Mexico for a birthday trip but were forced  to make a terrifying emergency landing on Friday.

The two actresses were in Aniston’s private jet bound for Cabo San Lucas around 11am when the plane lost a wheel during take-off at LAX airport, according to the FAA.

The plane made it all the way down to Mexican airspace but turned around back to Ontario, California after crew members deemed it wasn't safe to land. 

Aniston, who just turned 50 on February 11, was with 54-year-old Cox, actress Amanda Anka, screenwriter Molly Kimmel, and eight others on board the Gulfstream Aerospace IV plane. 

One might think that, because both actresses speak out so loudly and often on the dangers of global warming and the urgent need too end it now (just Google either of their names with “climate change), that this near miss might have given them occasion to pause and wonder what affect their personal behavior might be having on their climate. If so, you would be wrong:

[The Airport crew] speedily removed the luggage from the faulty private plane and transferred it onto another bigger private jet.  

Funny for lawyers, but a cautionary tale for all who dare set pen to paper, or fingers to keyboards

And the horse you rode in on

From Glenn Reynold’s Instapundit:

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

PROOFREAD, PEOPLE! PROOFREAD!  Oops! ‘Meh’ parenthetical ended up in published federal decision.

A federal judge’s case dismissal is getting some attention because of an apparent note-to-self that didn’t get removed from the published order.

The writer was apparently dissatisfied with a statement summarizing the requirements for a false advertising claim. The parenthetical on page 11 reads: “(Meh I need a better rule statement than this.)”.

U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel of San Diego signed the Feb. 5 order, but one of Curiel’s law clerks likely wrote the “meh” phrase, according to the Recorder.

Reynold’s own comment:

I had to warn a student last semester about including snarky statements in drafts, with the expectation of editing them out later. Sooner or later, I warned her, you’ll miss one. Back when I was practicing law, there was a partner who somehow let a footnote reading “CITE USUAL CRAP HERE” get into a brief.

UPDATE: The infamous “Bedbug Letter”, as confirmed by (the sometimes reliable) Snopes:

The tale of the “bedbug letter,” in which a complaining business customer receives a seemingly personalized and polite written apology in response to his correspondence — marred by the inadvertent inclusion of crude instructions from a manager to send the recipient “the standard SOB letter” — has been a part of contemporary lore since at least the 1920s.

Did a real event spark off this legend? Possibly. Folklore Jan Harold Brunvand reported on a 1992 letter from the corresponding secretary of the George Mortimer Pullman Encomium Society in which it was claimed the bed bugging took place on 4 March 1889 to a Mr. Phineas P. Jenkins, a salesman of pig-iron products. After spending a night in the company of far too many bedbugs (which in my book would number “one”), Jenkins penned a note of complaint to George M. Pullman, President of the Pullman Palace Car Company. In return, Jenkins supposedly received a wonderfully detailed and heartfelt apology from Pullman. Its effect was undermined, however, by the enclosure of his original letter, across which Pullman had handwritten “Sarah — Send this S! O! B! the ‘bedbug letter.'”

Credit: Snopes

First, we let Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez present her Eighth Grade social studies project to the nation, now we have 8-year-olds advising legislators . Why not?

Of course she might grow out of it. What then?

Eight-year-old lectures Hartford legislature committee members, informing them that “30 of my 33 classmates oppose bear hunting”.

Well: if 30 third graders agree on an issue, who are we to disagree? Bless their hearts, but “out of the mouths of babes” sentiment notwithstanding, I’d prefer that those who claim to be capable of governing spend their tax-funded time discussing current issues with fellow adults. I realize that would leave Occasional Cortex out in the hallway, but is that a bad thing?