Wednesday, November 25, 2020




Boris is NOT a small government conservative

First Trump ditched free trade as a conservative value and now Boris is ditching small government. So what is going on?

For a start, Trump was well within the conservative tradition in using tariffs for his ends. But what about Boris?

He seems to be in a European mould, where stability is the main objective. European conservatives prioritize keeping in control of the country in order to thwart destructive leftist policies -- revolution in particular. Europe does have a sad past of revolutionary episodes.

So Boris seems to believe that anything is legitimate that entrenches strong government

Britain does have a semi-insane Left so having a free hand to deal with them could be helpful. The Labour party was led into the last election by Jeremy Corbyn, a Communist and terrorist sympathizer!


Dominic Cummings, the all-powerful adviser who masterminded Brexit and had Boris Johnson in his thrall, has been ousted by a triumvirate made up of Allegra Stratton, the prime minister’s press secretary, Munira Mirza, his policy chief (who used to be a revolutionary communist—but that’s another story) and his girlfriend, Carrie Symonds. Those who disapproved of Mr Cummings not just for his appalling manners but also for his radicalism, of whom there are many both inside and outside the Conservative Party, are hoping that Mr Johnson will revert to being the pragmatic One Nation centrist he was as mayor of London.

That is certainly the impression that the prime minister gave this week when he launched a ten-point plan to turn Britain green. But Mr Cummings’s great project will roll on without him.

The plan, which has the support of the Tory party and was outlined in the 2019 manifesto, is to weaken the judicial, political and administrative limits that have been placed on the power of the executive. Brexit is only the beginning. By the time of the next election, ministers will have control over more policies, enjoy more discretion and face fewer restraints than they have for decades.

Meg Russell, director of the Constitution Unit at University College London, warns of “democratic backsliding”. Charlie Falconer, the shadow attorney-general, sees Britain falling “under a majoritarian dictatorship”. Some see parallels in America or even Hungary, yet this is a distinctly British story: a conservative counter-revo-lution against checks and balances to executive power built up over half a century.

In a televised lecture in 1976, Lord Hailsham, a former Lord Chancellor, called for the overthrow of Britain’s ruling dictatorship. There was no junta of mustachioed generals and secret policemen; James Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, was a gentle fellow. Rather, Hailsham argued, Britain was an “elective dictatorship”. Parliamentary sovereignty, the underpinning principle of Britain’s uncodified constitution, granted the legislature the power to make and undo any law it wished, he explained. A government which commanded a majority in the House of Commons enjoyed a power absolute in theory and constrained in practice only by political realities and mps’ consciences. “Only a revolution, bloody or peacefully contrived, can put an end to the situation,” he said.

Hailsham proposed a written constitution, inspired by those in Australia and Canada, which would curb the power of Parliament. He wanted a federal system of devolved parliaments for Britain’s nations and regions, a bill of rights and an elected House of Lords. The new arrangement would be overseen by the courts. The queen would stay, of course.

Yet the regime he criticised was already being dismantled. From the 1960s, judges and legal academics responded to the everbossier post-war state by developing the doctrine of judicial review. In a series of cases, they marked out the scope for judges to overturn the decisions of ministers who had overstepped the powers Parliament gave them, failed to follow a fair process or behaved irrationally.

In 1973, Britain joined the European Economic Community. In the following decades, control of many areas of policy once dealt with in London went to Brussels. In exercising their remaining powers, ministers were constrained by European laws on state aid, procurement and the environment. Margaret Thatcher was enthusiastic, for the process limited the scope for them to mess with the economy. Brussels required the courts to strike down domestic laws and decisions that contradicted European law.

Tony Blair, who took office in 1997, thought Britain over-centralised and remote from citizens. The revolution he led looked a lot like the one Hailsham envisaged. He set up new devolved governments in London, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. (An assembly later planned for north-east England was rejected in a referendum after a campaign on which Mr Cummings worked. Its slogan was “More doctors, not politicians”.) A Supreme Court was created, independent of the legislature. A Human Rights Act, with which laws and ministers’ decisions had to conform, was passed. There was more oversight and less secrecy. Thatcher had set up the National Audit Office to scrutinise government spending; Mr Blair’s Freedom of Information Act created new rights of access to official papers.

David Cameron, a small-state moderniser, abolished the prime minister’s power to trigger elections. He strengthened Whitehall’s hand, recognising the civilservice code, which asserts officials’ political impartiality, in law. He bolstered the regime of ministerial directions, under which senior civil servants can publicly caution ministers if they believe a project is undeliverable or wasteful.

Vernon Bogdanor, a constitutional historian, concluded in 2009 that Mr Blair’s reforms were a classically liberal project in limited government, “seeking to secure liberty by cutting power into pieces.” Before proposing a law, ministers had to check that it was compatible with European and human-rights legislation, as well as the devolution settlement. Ministers could expect their decisions to be scrutinised by judges, auditors and the public. The elective dictatorship had been toppled.

The Conservatives miss the ancien rĂ©gime. They blame judicial review for gumming up decision-making, and humanrights law for hobbling immigration policy. The crude carve-up of policy areas between London, Edinburgh and Cardiff has, they think, left the British government too feeble to tackle crises like covid-19. Devolution was meant to save the Union but, they maintain, has only boosted separatists. On November 16th, in a moment of candour, Mr Johnson expressed this view, telling a gathering of mps he thought Scottish devolution a “disaster” and Mr Blair’s “biggest mistake”.

What Hailsham saw as a dictatorship, the Tories see as a bond between voters and the government. Institutions and watchdogs created during Mr Blair’s tenure masquerade as independent, argues an official, but instead form a parallel political class. According to this view, Blairism weakened rather than strengthened democracy: voters are disillusioned not because Westminster is too mighty but because those they chose to run the country are constrained by people who have not been elected.

The restoration

For many Tories the prorogation debacle of 2019 confirmed that things had gone badly wrong. It was the culmination of a battle around Brexit which, said the Conservative Party manifesto in the subsequent election, “opened up a destabilising and potentially extremely damaging rift between politicians and people”.

Mr Johnson had promised, “do or die”, to deliver Brexit on October 31st, but without a working majority, and unable to call an election, he was blocked by Parliament. He prorogued Parliament, but the Supreme Court, which heard interventions from the Scottish and Welsh governments, blocked his move. The judges described their decision as a defence of Parliament, in keeping with the courts’ role in settling constitutional questions for more than 400 years. Brexiteers saw it differently, and are determined to prevent the executive from losing control again.

In most countries, changing the constitution is hard. In Britain, it is easy. The new checks and balances were passed by Parliament, and what Parliament has created, it can take away. The reforms of the past 40 years will not be overthrown, but there will be a course-correction to assert the primacy of the politicians over judges and officials. Danny Kruger, a Tory mp, calls it “a restoration of politics to its proper place at the apex of our common life.”

Brexit, which comes into full effect on January 1st, ends the supremacy of European law in Britain. As Mr Cummings’s campaign slogan of “take back control” promised, both the workload and the el-bow-room of ministers will expand. They will take charge of the sanctions imposed on Russian kleptocrats, the allocation of airport landing-slots and the chemical composition of toilet unblocker. David Frost, Mr Johnson’s negotiator, sees Brexit as a zero-sum game in recovering lost sovereignty. Ending Europe’s control over state subsidies and emissions is “the point of the whole project.”

Parliament has passed a stack of laws to patch the hole left by Brussels in running Britain. But whereas in Brussels powers are distributed among the eu’s institutions, in Britain they are concentrated in ministers’ hands. mps will have less freedom to block future trade deals than their counterparts in the European Parliament or America’s Congress; ministers will have wide powers to rewrite regulations on agriculture and medicines. A new environmental regulator has been set up, but campaigners think it weedier than the European Commission.

While ministers get mightier, the courts are being weakened. They will no longer be able to strike down decisions and acts incompatible with eu law. A review led by Edward Faulks, a critic of the prorogation ruling, will ask whether judicial review is being abused “to conduct politics by another means”. It will look at placing some of the prime minister’s prerogative powers, such as deploying troops or appointing ministers, beyond the reach of judges, and at “streamlining” the burden placed on government by disclosure rules.

Robert Buckland, the Lord Chancellor, is considering changing the Supreme Court’s name to downgrade its status. A further review of how the courts apply the Human Rights Act will be launched this month. Mr Johnson wants to reclaim the power to trigger elections by repealing Mr Cameron’s Fixed-term Parliaments Act.

Critics argue that this will result in worse, not better, government. If disclosure is limited, the scope for bringing unlawful behaviour to light will be too. Judi-cial-review cases are usually about everyday matters in which officials have administered lousily, rather than grand constitutional questions. Judges enter political terrain rarely, reluctantly and only with good reason—which, many would argue, they had in the case of the prorogation of Parliament.

More here:

Why Obamacare Needs to Die: One Man’s Healthcare Nightmare

Mason Bishop’s Obamacare nightmare began nearly eight years ago when the 52-year old launched a consulting business. With enactment of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, Bishop’s family has embarked on an annual quest of finding affordable health insurance, which has become nearly impossible.

In October 2012, he enrolled his family in a group insurance plan under his company’s name, which was allowed in Virginia for small businesses with two or more employees as he and his wife were both employees. His 2012 monthly premiums were $1,043, which went up to $1,342 by 2014. However, his premium’s were his only healthcare costs as his group policy had no co-pays or deductibles.

It was in fall of 2013 when Bishop went to renew his policy for 2014 when he was given some stark news by his health insurance rep. “It’s a good thing your renewal is December 1,” the rep said. “Because if it was January 1, you would not be able to have this insurance for another year.” That is when Bishop found out a little advertised part of the Obamacare law—group policies were banned for companies with family-only employees. Insurers could no longer enroll businesses in group plans unless at least one non-family member was employed by the business.

“So, boom. I lost my health insurance,” Bishop said. “President Obama promised ‘if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.’ That was a lie.”

Ever since then, Bishop has scrambled each year to find affordable insurance for his family. On the front end, he puts in hours of research, and then once he finds a plan, there are hassles on the back end with billing each time he changes plans. “It just never ends,” he said.

The ACA was supposed to help people such as Bishop and his family. What went wrong?

Instead of expanding insurance options for individual buyers, Obamacare narrowed them for most people. Bishop said prior to Obamacare, he could choose from between six or seven plans. But because many insurers opted out of Obamacare due to expensive mandates, Bishop now can only choose from two providers. And costs are decidedly unaffordable. In 2017, he would have paid $1,742 in monthly premiums under Obamacare with a $5,000 deductible.

“What ACA did was create a health insurance market of only policies with high deductibles and high premiums,” Bishop said. “You are paying high premiums for garbage insurance. And if you can’t afford it, you pay a penalty!”

If Bishop, who makes well over six-figures-a-year, cannot afford Obamacare options, which run a minimum of $2,000 per month or more, how can anyone afford it? With the help of federal subsidies. Under Obamacare, people who earn up to 400 percent of the poverty level (about $48,500 for an individual and $100,400 for a family of four in 2019) are eligible for premium subsidies. Eighty-seven percent of the 10.6 million people with Obamacare plans in 2018 received a subsidy. While Bishop said his income may appear high to some, in the high-cost suburbs of Washington, D.C. premiums of $2,000 or more for $5,000 per person deductibles makes health insurance unaffordable.

“I was perfectly happy with my health insurance before Obamacare,” he said. “What’s happened since then is outrageous.” And he said he’s not alone in his insurance woes. “I hate the ACA. Every time I post on social media about it, I get at least ten comments back from people dealing with similar problems.”

According to a study from the Heritage Foundation, nationally, Obamacare more than doubled premiums for individual plans, halved individual insurer offerings, and increased enrollment in government programs. Obamacare increased premiums in 49 of 50 states. Some states experienced premium increases of less than 50 percent, while others saw insurance premiums triple.Heritage also notes that 86.3 percent of the newly covered during Obamacare’s first four years came by way of expanded access to Medicaid.

This latest case to reach the U.S. Supreme court, brought by Republican officials in 18 states, contends that the ACA’s mandate for all Americans to obtain insurance became unconstitutional after Congress reduced the penalty for not having such insurance to zero. By eliminating the mandate, they say, the entire law collapses. The law has operated without the mandate for years. Last year, 8.5 million people were covered by ACA-funded insurance plans.

Bishop said he would love for the court to get rid of Obamacare, but doesn’t think they will, because of concerns about insurance for individuals with preexisting conditions. “But Congress can institutionalize coverage for preexisting conditions tomorrow. They can pass a law protecting health insurance for those individuals. We don’t need Obamacare to do that.” He also adds that President Trump deserves credit for eliminating the individual mandate. “At least now, there are ‘short-term’ insurance options that I can shop for and I don’t have to pay a tax to the government because they don’t fit the Obamacare definition of good insurance.”

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning said Obamacare has been a disaster for Americans, doing more harm than good. He said surprise medical billing, in which patients get billed from an out-of-network provider in a situation they cannot reasonably control, such as being treated by an out-of-network anesthesiologist at an in-network hospital, is on the rise because of Obamacare.

“I’d like to see the court kill the law once and for all. We can do better.”

The rise of Newsmax

As described by the NYT:

Flanked by aides in the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Trump dialed up a friend in the news media with a message: Keep up the good work.

“He said that it’s just incredible, the ratings you’re getting, and everyone’s talking about it,” recalled Christopher Ruddy, the owner of Newsmax, a niche conservative cable network that has yet to declare a winner in the 2020 presidential election.

Based in Boca Raton, Fla., the network features lo-fi production values and off-brand personalities like Sean Spicer and Diamond and Silk. Even finding it can be a chore: It appears on Channel 1115 in some major markets. But since Election Day, Newsmax has become a growing power in a conservative media sphere that has been scrambled by President- elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory and Mr. Trump’s refusal to concede.

Hundreds of thousands of new viewers have tuned into Newsmax programs that embrace the president’s debunked claims of voter fraud and insist that Mr. Trump can keep the White House. Until recently, the network’s top shows attracted a paltry 58,000 viewers. On Thursday night, the network drew its biggest audience ever, notching 1.1 million viewers at 7 p.m.

The out-of-nowhere rise has come as Fox News — the No. 1 network in TV news and long the destination of choice for many Trump partisans — has experienced a rare decline in dominance. Ratings for the Rupert Murdochowned network have dropped since election night, when its early projection that Mr. Biden had won Arizona infuriated Mr. Trump and his allies.

“The great @FoxNews daytime ratings CRASH will only get worse!” the president tweeted on Friday.

“CRASH” is overstating things: Fox News remains the mostwatched cable news network in prime time, averaging about 3.5 million viewers the week after the election. But the shift underscores a volatility among conservative audiences as Mr. Trump denies the reality of his defeat.

While Fox News is home to Trump cheerleaders like Sean Hannity, it also runs a decision desk and a daytime news operation that have declared Mr. Biden the president-elect. That is something many Trump fans do not want to hear, and Newsmax, which frequently reminds viewers it has not projected a winner, is rushing to provide an alternative.

“This whole idea of a presidentelect, it is a media fabrication,” Greg Kelly, the 7 p.m. Newsmax host, told viewers last week. “This is not done. This thing could turn.” On Thursday, Mr. Kelly recorded his best numbers yet, pulling 1.1 million viewers for his hour.

Mr. Kelly, a former Fox News correspondent and a son of the former New York City police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said in an interview that his belief in Mr. Trump’s chances is genuine. “I really believe he’s going to prevail,” he said. “It’s a sense I have. Can I articulate perfectly why I thought he was going to win? No.

But I’ll say the media has been wrong about him so many times.” In fact, Mr. Biden won a decisive victory. Newsmax’s founder, Mr. Ruddy, contends that he is merely staying open-minded. “My view is that it’s an uphill battle for the president to change the vote, but he should be given the right to have a recount,” he said in an interview. Newsmax is an unusual tribune for baseless accusations of voter fraud.

Mr. Ruddy is a longtime confidant of Mr. Trump and a member of his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach. But he calls himself a “Reagan conservative,” belongs to no political party and is a friend of Bill Clinton — despite having built his career in part as a New York Post reporter who cast doubt on the investigation into the death of a Clinton aide, Vincent Foster. Mr. Ruddy later contributed large sums to the Clinton Foundation and has a photograph of himself with the former president on his wall.

The 12th of 14 children, Mr. Ruddy grew up on Long Island and attended the London School of Economics before founding Newsmax in 1998 as a conservative website. The TV network followed in 2014, originally positioned as a centrist alternative to Fox News.

These days, Newsmax is a cozy clubhouse for Trump allies who speak emphatically about a purported second term and have taken shots at Fox News. Mr. Kelly expressed his contempt on his Thursday episode after playing a clip of a Fox News White House correspondent, Kristin Fisher, calling claims by the Trump legal team “light on facts.” “The nerve they have, the arrogance,” Mr. Kelly said.

Newsmax says it is available in more than 70 million households, but on many cable systems it is listed alongside obscure channels like Newsy, Cheddar and United Nations TV. (Newsmax is still more prominent than One America News, another network that Mr. Trump has promoted.) Mr. Kelly recently thanked viewers for their “deliberate effort” in finding the network.

Its Manhattan studio is barebones — Mr. Ruddy called his cable operation “fledgling” and suggested it did not yet turn a profit — and its visuals are more public access than prime time, lacking the splashy graphics of better-financed rivals. Some of its guests have been shunned by other networks, like Mark Halperin, a political journalist accused of sexual misconduct. (Mr. Kelly was the subject of a sexual assault claim in 2012; prosecutors declined to file charges.)

Shows that embrace debunked fraud claims lure viewers.

Then, there are the technical snafus. Wednesday’s episode of “Greg Kelly Reports” opened with a blank screen. After 12 seconds, the host appeared, midsentence in a monologue.

None of this has stopped Mr. Kelly from now drawing an audience about four times larger than CNBC’s Shepard Smith, a former Fox News anchor whose heavily promoted new program airs against it at 7 p.m.

Fox News, which benefited enormously from Mr. Trump’s rise, easily beats Newsmax in overall viewership. But since the network called the race for Mr. Biden, Trump supporters have chanted “Fox News sucks!” at demonstrations in Arizona and Washington, and its ratings have fallen well below pre-election levels.

Much of the drop has come during daytime hours, when its news anchors acknowledge Mr. Biden’s victory. But several Fox News opinion shows have seen a drop, too: Earlier this month, for the first time in 19 years, “Fox & Friends” drew a smaller weekly audience than MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

The loss of viewers has set off alarm bells inside Fox News, said several people with ties to the network who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid straining relationships. A new slogan promoting its pro-Trump opinion hosts — “Standing Up for What’s Right” — is now in heavy rotation. “There’s a ton of discontent with Fox News in conservative circles,” said Nicole Hemmer, a Columbia University scholar who studies right-wing media.

The tensions have spilled into Fox News programming. On “The Five,” Geraldo Rivera attacked a pro-Trump colleague, Jesse Watters, for endorsing baseless claims about a stolen election. In prime time, Tucker Carlson cast doubt on the claims of Sidney Powell, a Trump lawyer, saying she had failed to produce evidence of election fraud. But in the next hour, Mr. Hannity invited another Trump lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to share his baseless claims with viewers.

Fox News declined to comment. But the network remains a ratings goliath: This summer, its primetime audience was not merely the largest on cable, but the largest across all of television. And many in the TV industry expect the network to thrive once Mr. Biden takes office, capitalizing on the same conservative “resistance” viewership that fueled its success during the Obama years.

Even if Newsmax is more willing to indulge the outlandish prospect that Mr. Trump can serve a second term, Mr. Ruddy said that Newsmax would not become, in his words, “Trumpmax.”

“I don’t see him becoming a partner in the company,” he said, adding that he doubted that Mr. Trump “would want to tether himself to one news organization.” A Trump-hosted talk show, he added, would be “terrific,” but he has not made a formal approach.

“He’s confident he has a good shot at winning, and I think he’s focused on that,” Mr. Ruddy said. “I wouldn’t want him to lose his focus.”

5 ‘Terrifying’ Policies to Brace for Under Biden

Donald Trump has been a unique president for a lot of reasons, but one in particular: he keeps his promises.

Anyone who’s seen former Vice President Joe Biden’s priorities has to be praying he doesn’t become president. They make Hillary Clinton, who ran on the most extreme platform of any candidate in history, look like a Sunday School teacher.

And unfortunately, Biden’s agenda isn’t a collection of radical policies we think he’ll push. These are things he’s said he’ll do. And as CNS News’ Terry Jeffrey points out, it’s a terrifying list.

Most conservatives don’t want to think about a Biden presidency—let alone what it would mean for our country. But as the clock ticks on and the election drags out, we can’t ignore what might be around the corner if the former vice president takes the reins.

Based on what we’ve outlined to people over the past several months, it will be an all-hands-on-deck moment for every God-fearing, freedom-loving American in the country.

Now, Jeffrey must have been limited on space, because he only highlights “5 evil things” Biden plans to do as president. If you’ve read the Biden-Sanders manifesto or perused Biden’s campaign website, you know there are many, many more.

For now, though, Christians, pro-lifers, and anyone who cares about freedom needs to brace themselves for these significant moments—and be prepared to fight back.

The very first, Jeffrey explained on “Washington Watch” on Wednesday, is to codify Roe v. Wade—making it impossible for states to limit or ban abortion for any reason. “Joe Biden wants a federal law that makes abortion nationwide a quote-unquote ‘right.’ Which I say is evil.”

And, to add to that evil, he wants to force every American to pay for it.

That’s No. 2: Biden wants to end the Hyde Amendment. In other words, every federal spending bill could be used in some way to fund abortion. The pro-life Hyde Amendment, which has stood in the way of that radical free-for-all for more than 40 years, would be gone, Jeffrey said.

Beyond that, he wants to create a ‘public option’ under Obamacare, which he describes as a Medicare-like health insurance plan that would cover abortions. So, in two different ways … he would make everybody who pays taxes in America fund abortions.

And then he would go beyond that to force businesses, private family-owned businesses to provide health insurance that covers abortion-inducing drugs.

No. 3: Biden would reinstate the Obamacare mandate, demanding that every business and nonprofit cover abortion-causing pills and contraception in their health plans.

As Jeffrey points out, “Unfortunately, the Supreme Court never really settled that issue, [so] this is a place where Joe Biden right away could do some serious damage.”

No. 4: Biden says that on Day One, “he’s going to force public schools and colleges to treat biological males as if they’re females. He literally says they’re going to have to let transgenders pick their own gender identity … So literally, Joe Biden will order public schools to say that anatomical males can play on the girls sports teams, use the girls’ shower rooms, and use the girls’ restrooms. Completely outrageous, absolutely evil.”

Last but certainly not least, the Obama vice president says he would order insurance companies to cover gender-reassignment surgeries—not only for adults, but young, impressionable children. Similar to [the] Hobby Lobby case, he’d make family-owned businesses provide that “treatment,” which is actually mutilation.

“These issues, particularly those last two,” Jeffrey said, “did not get nearly the kind of exposure and discussion they deserved before the election. I think there are many Americans who have no idea that Joe Biden is going to order public schools to let boys play on their girls sports teams and let boys use the girls’ locker rooms.

“To me, that’s such a huge [overreach]. And it’s not just evil. It shows a distortion of [Biden’s] mind and heart. And I don’t think there’s any way he could defend it … .”

Some of these things, of course, he can’t do without Congress’ help. And that’s where you and I come in—encouraging our senators and congressmen to stand firm.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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24 November, 2020

New Jersey police chief won't enforce governor's 'draconian' coronavirus order limiting holiday gatherings to 10 people because it's 'detrimental to our relationship with our community'

A New Jersey police chief has said he will not enforce some of Gov Phil Murphy's 'draconian' COVID-19 orders ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Last week, Murphy imposed a 10-person limit on indoor gatherings just before the holidays. The order went into effect on November 17.

'Keep Thanksgiving plans as small as possible. The smaller the gathering is the less likely it is that someone is infected and putting loved ones at risk,' the order from the governor's office reads.

In an interview with Fox & Friends Weekend, Howell Police Chief Andrew Kudrick, Jr explained why he wouldn't be enforcing parts of Murphy's restrictions.

'Our community is hurting,' Kudrick said. 'I live here. I grew up here. I shop here. I go out to dinner here. And I talk one-on-one with our business owners… and I see how much they're hurting.'

'So as a police chief, in charge of 100-plus police officers, I felt it was just incumbent upon me just to let them know, and let my community know, that we're not going to enforce some of these executive orders which I feel are basically draconian,' he told Fox & Friends Weekend.

Kudrick also released a statement regarding his department's position on the new restrictions.

According to the statement, Howell police officers will not go door-to-door to enforce the governor's restrictions.

'We the police will not be used to carry out orders I feel are detrimental to our relationship with our community,' Kudrick said. 'Or, will put officers in a no-win predicament such as being called for a social distancing or mask complaint.'

Kudrick said that 'the only time we will consider a response would be for an egregious violation such as a packed house party'.

New Jersey, which has a positivity rate of about 7.9 per cent, has reported 4,679 new positive COVID-19 cases, bringing the state's total to 302,039.

The state recorded 34 new deaths, bringing the total to 14,934.

'The numbers speak for themselves. Please take this seriously. Wear a mask. Social distance. Avoid large gatherings,' Murphy said in a tweet on Saturday.

A New Jersey police chief has said he will not enforce some of Gov Phil Murphy's 'draconian' COVID-19 orders ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Last week, Murphy imposed a 10-person limit on indoor gatherings just before the holidays. The order went into effect on November 17.

'Keep Thanksgiving plans as small as possible. The smaller the gathering is the less likely it is that someone is infected and putting loved ones at risk,' the order from the governor's office reads.

Newsom Wanted Snitches to Turn in Thanksgiving 'Scofflaws' But Several California Sheriffs Say They Will Not Comply

Snitches need not bother to inform on their neighbors who choose to flout California Governor Gavin Newsom’s COVID-19 lockdown orders this Thanksgiving because many of the sheriffs won’t enforce it.

The governor announced a month-long, pre-Thanksgiving lockdown this week, following his COVID rule-busting dinner party at The French Laundry restaurant on November 6th.

Newsom said case numbers are rising, though death counts are not.

“The virus is spreading at a pace we haven’t seen since the start of this pandemic and the next several days and weeks will be critical to stop the surge. We are sounding the alarm. It is crucial that we act to decrease transmission and slow hospitalizations before the death count surges. We’ve done it before and we must do it again.”

But despite the alarm bells, which we’ve all heard before, sheriffs, in ever-growing numbers, apparently believe that enforcing Thanksgiving dinner and COVID curfews doesn’t make much sense when they’re freeing prisoners because of COVID.

The Sacramento police and sheriff departments said they won’t enforce Newsom’s new orders — even in the seat of the state capital.

Newsom issued a ban on “non-essential businesses” and personal gatherings in the 41 of California’s 58 counties in the so-called “purple tier” – the worst category in the state’s new color-coded coronavirus alert system. Newsom also imposed a one-month-long 10 p.m. – 5 a.m. curfew that is scheduled to end on December 21st.

Orange, Riverside, and Los Angeles County Sheriffs have all announced they will not be the Thanksgiving police. Orange County Sheriff Dan Barnes put it this way:

Let me be clear – this is a matter of personal responsibility and not law enforcement. Orange County Sheriff’s deputies will not be dispatched to, or respond to, calls for service to enforce compliance with face coverings, social gatherings or stay-at-home orders only. Deputies will respond to calls for potential criminal behavior and for protection of life or property.

In the Central Valley where four county sheriffs will not be playing Thanksgiving police, Fresno County Sheriff Margaret Mims said she had no desire to make “criminals out of normally law-abiding citizens.”

We have got our hands full with crime real crime issues and this is not a law enforcement issue.

She’s joined by Merced, Kings, and Tulare County sheriffs.

In Northern California, ABC 10 reports that 13 counties there won’t be enforcing the Thanksgiving dinner rules or the month-long curfew, including Sacramento County, home of the state capital where all of these rules are coming from. Sacramento police won’t be enforcing them, either.

In addition to the Sacramento law enforcement, eleven other county sheriffs and police departments will be focusing on actual criminal behavior during Newsom’s post-French-Laundry meal diktats.

San Diego is the skunk at the garden party, threatening to send out two-man enforcement teams to crack down on Thanksgiving revelers and curfew breakers.

The state’s huge homeless population is exempt from the rules. And, of course, as Instapundit points out, what are lockdowns anyway? Someone needs to make, deliver, and serve the people who stay at home or go to The French Laundry in violation of his own rules.

UK: Labour will never win power until it stops hating the working class!

Ex-union official PAUL EMBERY accuses the party of despising its natural supporters for their traditional values and opposition to mass immigration

I warned them until I was blue in the face. At Labour Party gatherings, in trade union meetings, in the media, I tried to convince my colleagues on the Left that we were close to meltdown. The schism between us and millions of working-class voters was widening and, unless we took drastic action, Labour would be destroyed at the polls.

Yet every time I sounded the alarm, I was accused of being some kind of ‘reactionary’ with a nostalgic view of the working class. Fellow activists told me my Labour Party was dead and gone. It was now a modern, mass-membership party. Jeremy Corbyn, the glorious leader, was playing to packed houses everywhere.

And then came December 12, 2019 – Labour’s worst election result since 1935. Lifelong Labour supporters in the party’s working-class heartlands voted in their thousands for a Conservative Party led by an Old Etonian.

Today, Labour has become a middle-class party with a militantly cosmopolitan world view.

Disavowing its roots, it is a movement almost exclusively for the managerial and professional classes, graduates, social activists and urban liberals. And many inside the party have started to look upon old-fashioned values with contempt.

There is no place on the modern Left for the small ‘c’ conservatism of the traditional working class, with its love of community and nation and its desire for social solidarity and belonging. Instead, this shiny, progressive, bourgeois Labour elevates things such as personal autonomy, open borders and identity politics over all that ‘faith, family and flag’ nonsense.

There had always been a compromise between the worlds of Hartlepool and Hampstead, but today it is almost all Hampstead and no Hartlepool. For some time, Labour has been travelling the road to the imagined sunlit uplands of cosmopolitan liberalism and global market forces. Now it’s in a quagmire, flirting with irrelevance.

I had no interest in seeing the British Left collapse. On the contrary, I wanted it to succeed. I still do.

I joined a trade union at 16, when I landed a Saturday job stacking shelves in a supermarket. I signed up as a member of the Labour Party at 19 and became an activist in the Fire Brigades Union when I began my career as a professional firefighter at 22, going on to serve on the union’s national executive as a full-time official.

My dad was a shop steward for the old Transport and General Workers’ Union at his works depot and my mum was a secretary for the GMB. I knew from an early age which side I was on. I learned about the history of the labour movement and its proud role in advancing the interests of ordinary working people. And I wanted to be part of it.

But the historical thread linking the movement to the working class was already starting to fray.

I witnessed the fallout between Labour and the working class at the closest quarters in the early years of this century. In my home borough of Barking and Dagenham in East London, where I was born and brought up – a proud, stable, blue-collar community centred on a sprawling 1930s council estate – the impact of globalisation and a liberal immigration policy was profound.

Today Labour is almost all Hampstead … and no Hartlepool
Dagenham’s world-famous Ford motor plant had become a shell of its former self as production was shipped abroad and the area was undergoing change at breakneck speed.

Between 2001 and 2011, the area’s foreign-born population grew by 205 per cent – by far the highest increase of any London borough. I have no criticism of them as individuals but their arrival in such large numbers not only placed considerable pressure on local services but compromised the continuity and the cultural familiarity that are the rocks on which stable, working-class communities are built.

As the borough’s social cohesion began to fall apart, residents pleaded for respite. Locals were disorientated and bewildered.

But whenever they called for better control over immigration, they were patronised with lectures about how their new environment would bring cultural enrichment and improved Gross Domestic Product.

Worse, they were often dismissed as ‘bigots’ and ‘nativists’ by a political class – including Labour politicians and activists – who knew nothing about their lives and couldn’t be bothered to learn.

This attitude drove thousands to vote for the British National Party (BNP) at the council elections in 2006, propelling that party to its best-ever performance in local government. A Labour heartland had turned to the far Right, and I watched it happen.

It was a vote driven by alienation. The people of Barking and Dagenham were not anti-immigration but they were most certainly opposed to the type of mass and uncontrolled immigration that had transformed their neighbourhoods – and their lives – so quickly.

When, eventually, the BNP also failed them, many decided to simply up sticks and leave.

In the years 2001-11 there was a mass exodus from Barking and Dagenham, with 40,000 residents departing for pastures new. Many of my friends and neighbours were among them.

A working-class community once at ease with itself had, in a few short years, become a toxic political battleground.

In 2014, Barking played host to BBC1’s political discussion programme Question Time.

A woman in the audience, Pam Dumbleton, asked: ‘Isn’t it time the Government listened to the people about the impact immigration is having in changing our communities? The Government need to come and walk through our town and just see how we now live.’

Another audience member, a middle-aged local man, agreed: ‘Listen to the indigenous people here, the people that have been here all their lives,’ he pleaded. He went on to criticise what he felt was the disproportionate Government assistance afforded to newcomers, at which point he was noisily rebuked.

Desperate still to make his case, the audience member explained he was homeless and saw it as unfair that, as a local man, he was being neglected by the Government in favour of others. He had applied unsuccessfully for a hundred jobs, he said.

But panellist and Times columnist David Aaronovitch – a loyal foot soldier of the liberal elite army, if ever there was one – upbraided him for ‘blaming the wrong people’.

‘Why is a street not yours because some of the faces in it are black?’ Aaronovitch said, illustrating that he had completely missed the point. No one mentioned black faces.

Seconds later, the man in the audience gave up. He put on his coat and walked off the set – an example in microcosm of how the people of places such as Barking and Dagenham are patronised by the liberal and cultural elites.

I knew what I was seeing was a portent of things to come. And I said so openly – not a terribly popular thing to do when you are an active member of the Labour movement and hold a senior position in a trade union.

When I dared to criticise leaders of the Labour movement for their attempts to overturn the referendum result at a Friday night pro-Brexit rally – in my own time – I was sacked from my position with the union.

I realised that unless my colleagues across the movement started acknowledging the legitimate anxieties of working-class folk and stopped treating them as though they were some kind of embarrassing elderly relative – in some cases actively despising them and dismissing them as small-minded racists – then divorce was on the cards. And so it proved.

At the 1997 General Election, 59 per cent of Labour votes came from the C2DEs (the working class) and 41 per cent from the ABC1s (middle class). In 2010, for the first time, Labour won more votes from the ABC1s than it did the C2DEs.

Labour had abandoned the working class and now the working class was returning the favour. The 2019 Election marked the nadir in the relationship, with the Tories securing the votes of 48 per cent of C2DEs compared with Labour’s 33 per cent.

When I speak to voters in Barking and Dagenham and other working-class communities, they want the conversation to be about their own anxieties and concerns.

They prioritise things such as family, law and order, immigration and national security – the type of issues that, when they are raised on the doorstep, cause Labour activists to look down at the ground and shuffle their shoes in embarrassment.

These activists are usually much happier obsessing over LGBT rights, Palestine, climate change and gender identity – issues that, while not unimportant, are not uppermost in the minds of hard-pressed working-class voters suffering the stresses of everyday life.

And while it is true that Labour under Corbyn began to talk more of the need to tackle wealth and income inequality – a welcome step – what the Corbynistas failed to appreciate is that promises of economic security are not enough. Traditional voters want cultural security, too.

Labour must change itself before it can even think about winning power. And, in particular, its members must stop hating large sections of the nation’s working class.

Voters in the Labour heartlands don’t demand miracles. But they do want a chance to secure dignified work and decent wages. For their children to get a foot on the housing ladder. For the streets to be safe.

They may well have socially conservative views and probably object to being viewed as museum pieces in their own country. And when they speak through the ballot box, as they did with Brexit, they expect their wishes to be implemented. They want to live in a nation characterised by stable families and communities, and of which all citizens feel proud to be a part. It isn’t complicated.

Once upon a time, these communities were perfectly comfortable about voting Labour. And, in turn, the party was proud to have their support.

For Labour was a patriotic, communitarian party that understood the importance of tradition and place in our society – a party that, in the words of Harold Wilson, ‘owed more to Methodism than to Marx’.

But then it went and made a catastrophic error and forgot the politics of belonging. It paid the price in millions of lost votes.

There is, for Labour, no route back to power that does not pass through its lost working-class heartlands. I hope, as someone rooted in the movement for more than a quarter of a century, that it is not too late. But I fear it might be.

And if it proves to be so, then the damage would have been entirely self-inflicted.

Australia: The next Uluru? Fears iconic mountain could be shut to climbers after local Aboriginal tribes said it was a sacred place

Why all this catering to Aboriginal superstition? Why is Aboriginal religion privileged?

Australia does not have an explicit separation of church and state but there is no doubt that such a separation is widely agreed as proper. There should be no favoritism shown to any particular religion.

Many churches have aims that they would like government support for. So why are Aboriginal aims given such respect? It is quite simply racist and wrong


An iconic mountain could be the next Australian landmark banned to hikers for good after it was named as an Aboriginal sacred place.

Mt Warning, on the Tweed Valley coast in northern New South Wales, was closed to tourists in March this year as a precaution against crowds spreading Covid-19.

The popular scenic destination, traditionally known as Wollumbin, was scheduled to allow to sightseers back in May 2021, however, the re-opening will now be reviewed, according to The Courier Mail.

Since the last tourists ascended Uluru in 2019, debate has arisen around whether climbers should be allowed on other natural landmarks such as Wollumbin and the nearby Mt Beerwah on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

The National Parks and Wildlife Service said the delay to re-opening Wollumbin was to assess safety issues around landslides and the chain section of the hike, but also said they would be holding discussions with Indigenous groups.

'NPWS will now consider the future of the summit track, in consultation with key community and tourism stakeholders, including local Aboriginal Elders and knowledge holders,' a spokesperson said.

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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