Watch Live: Atlas V Rocket To Launch Top Secret Space Force Satellites From Florida Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/04/2020 – 17:40
The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) partnered with the United Launch Alliance (ULA) to launch Space Force’s spy satellites into low Earth orbit (LEO) from Florida on Wednesday evening at 5:54 p.m. ET.
ULA’s Atlas V rocket is equipped with Northrop Grumman Graphite-Epoxy Motor 63 solid rocket boosters, allowing the rocket to carry the first three Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellites for Space Force from the Space Launch Complex 41 of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
The NRO, which is an agency of the Department of Defense tasked with developing and launching spy satellites, released a press kit, showing how the various stages of the Atlas V rocket will allow the payload to achieve LEO.
Wednesday’s launch was first scheduled for Nov. 3, but ULA delayed it one day to the urgent need to replace an upper payload environmental control system vent.
“ULA is proud to play a pivotal role in support of our mission partners and national security by keeping our country safe one launch at a time,” Gary Wentz, ULA vice president of Government and Commercial Programs, said in a statement.
Wentz continued: “We thank our mission partners for their continued trust and teamwork. The NROL-101 mission will be ULA’s 29th mission launched for the National Reconnaissance Office and the 17th NRO mission launched on an Atlas V.”
President Trump pushed hard over his first term to create and equip Space Force as a bet to stay ahead of threats from China and Russia. If all goes well, and LEO is achieved, the sixth branch of the military could soon have new spy satellites to play with.
Watch Launch Event
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When Donald Trump pulled off a stunning upset and won the presidency in 2016, few people were more shocked than the professional take-havers in the mainstream media. Pundits, journalists, and political strategists—who live in Washington, D.C., or New York City but seldom leave their Twitter bubbles—were totally blindsided by the fact that a crass reality TV star had managed to defeat Hillary Clinton, the embodiment of the Democratic establishment.
A healthy media might have learned from its mistakes, engaged in soul-searching, and tried to gain some insights into the working-class coalition that Trump had assembled. Clearly, this didn’t happen, because four years later—in the midst of a nail-bitingly close election—the predictions of the pundit class have proven to be no more accurate than they were in 2016. In fact, by some measures the experts performed even worse than last time: The pre-election polls, which suggested a landslide Biden victory, Democratic control of the Senate, and gains in the House, are so spectacularly wrong it calls the validity of the profession into doubt.
To take just one example, Sen. Susan Collins (R–Maine), for instance, did not lead her Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon, in a single poll of the Maine senate race. She was thought to be losing by 5, 6, or 7 points. (Quinnipiac had her down 12 points in September.) On Wednesday afternoon, Gideon conceded the race, which Collins won easily.
And while Biden currently looks likely to narrowly eke out a presidential victory, he is underperforming the polls in several states. In 2016, pollsters could reasonably claim that the numbers actually showed a very close and ever-tightening race in battleground states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania: Trump’s win, though surprising, wasn’t exactly outside the range of possible outcomes. This time, the public was primed for a blowout that never materialized.
Too early to be sure about the *exact* numbers here, but seems like state polls missed by 5 points, on avg, in 2016 by understating noncollege support for the GOP. Then a bunch of pollsters studied the issue and changed their methodologies for 2020 … and whiffed by 7 points. https://t.co/0enGxmRw0O
This means, of course, that the mainstream media narrative about the “shy,” reluctant, or otherwise undercounted Trump voter—namely, that he does not exist—was completely, utterly, bafflingly wrong: Once again, Trump is more popular than the media thought was possible.
Perhaps more importantly, the media continues to be wrong about why Trump is popular, and about which people like him. Unable to admit that a Democratic Party held hostage by liberal arts graduates who write their preferred pronouns on their name tags might be out of touch with the working class voters who traditionally vote blue, many cable news talking heads settled on any number of alternative explanations: from Russian interference to lingering, perhaps resurgent, racism throughout the U.S. (CNN’s Van Jones called it a “whitelash” in 2016.)
Trump, though appears to have improved—albeit modestly—his totals with minority voters, including and especially Latino voters. The narrative that Trump’s divisive rhetoric about foreigners and immigrants renders him completely toxic to minority voters just doesn’t match the reality. Indeed, the results thus far suggested that the racial gap—at least for Latinos—is shrinking, and class and educational attainment are becoming more salient considerations than race.
It’s unfortunate that many within the media—including and especially the prognosticators—continue to get things so wrong. Massive polling errors are bad for cultivating a well-informed citizenry, as David Graham argues in The Atlantic:
Without reliable sources of information about public opinion, the press, and by extension, the public, should perhaps employ a measure of humility about what we can and can’t know in politics. As wise as this may be—and even if people manage to act on it—that sort of epistemic humility risks falling prey to the same asymmetrical warfare that has characterized much of the Trump era. At the moment, the leader of the Republican Party is an authoritarian populist who claims to represent the “true” will of the people, despite losing the popular vote twice. The president is unlikely to exercise any such humility in claiming, without evidence, that public opinion is with him. He might be wrong, but without reliable polls, who’s to say otherwise?
Given the narrowness of Biden’s presumed victory, it seems unlikely that Trumpism has been dealt anything resembling a death blow. The GOP will have little reason to shun Trump; on the contrary, given the results in 2016, 2018, and now 2020, one could make the case that the Republican Party performs better with Trump’s name on the ballot than without it. Those in the mainstream media who continue to fail to understand Trump aren’t going to get off easy: They just plain have to get better at this, or they will continue to lose ground to their challengers in the alternative media.
Several people who fall into this latter category—which includes a bevy of populism-sympathetic podcasters and upstart policy advocates—were recently profiled in The Federalist. Publisher Ben Domenech and culture editor Emily Jashinsky call them the new contrarians, or “the New Contras for short, because the one thing they all have in common is refusing the wokeness that dominates legacy media, and has created a practically religious climate of insufferable identity politics.” They cite Glenn Greenwald and Katie Herzog as two such New Contras: Both were solid journalists of the left, gradually chased out of respectable leftwing journalism spaces for disagreeing with mainstream orthodoxy.
Institutions like The New York Times and The Atlantichave grown much more squeamish about inviting dissenters into their midst. Publications are now occasionally beholden to staffers who think it’s the job of journalists to run interference for the Democratic Party and hide stories from readers if they could conceivably help Trump. Many young rising stars in the world of investigative reporting think newsrooms have wrongly prioritized objectivity and should move toward a kind of “moral clarity” that is likely to make their institutions even more confused about why millions of people—roughly half the country—have aligned themselves with Donald Trump.
As independent thinkers exit the mainstream media, groupthink and blind spots among the legacy press are likely to get worse. The result would be a travesty, and not an outcome anyone should want or root for.
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In four years as president, Republican Donald Trump has overseen massive spending increases. His Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, has laid out a spending plan that would add $11 trillion in new spending and institute the largest tax hike since the end of World War II.
Is this any way to run a country? Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute who analyzes budget issues, walks Nick Gillespie through Trump’s rotten fiscal record and Biden’s insane wish list, explains how bipartisanship is just another word for more spending, and why even a divided government can’t stop the red ink from flowing anymore. There are ways to cut spending and stabilize growth-killing national debt, says Riedl, but it’s going to take a sea change in politics, rising interest rates, and a cold shoulder from the global economy to make them palatable.
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In four years as president, Republican Donald Trump has overseen massive spending increases. His Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, has laid out a spending plan that would add $11 trillion in new spending and institute the largest tax hike since the end of World War II.
Is this any way to run a country? Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute who analyzes budget issues, walks Nick Gillespie through Trump’s rotten fiscal record and Biden’s insane wish list, explains how bipartisanship is just another word for more spending, and why even a divided government can’t stop the red ink from flowing anymore. There are ways to cut spending and stabilize growth-killing national debt, says Riedl, but it’s going to take a sea change in politics, rising interest rates, and a cold shoulder from the global economy to make them palatable.
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Regardless of who holds the office, America’s Imperial Project and its Imperial Presidency are due for a grand reckoning.
While elections and party politics generate the emotions and headlines, the truly consequential change in American governance has been the ascendancy of the Imperial Presidency over the past 75 years, since the end of World War II.
As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, the Constitution grants the President extraordinary but temporary powers in wartime. With the power to declare war granted solely to Congress, this dangerous (in the Founders’ view) expansion of Executive power was tolerated because it was temporary and necessary in the fast-moving emergency of war.
Congress has declared war a total of five times, while U.S. armed forces have been deployed in conflicts 300 times. So in 295 conflicts out of 300, the president had sole discretion. Various stamps of Congressional approval of these wartime powers have been given over the decades, but these are more for show than actual limits on presidential powers.
The extraordinary powers granted to President Roosevelt in World War II did not expire at the end of the war. Rather, the powers of the presidency expanded along with the National Security agencies which rose to unprecedented power in the Cold War era of 1945 – 1991. The entire alphabet soup of the National Security State–CIA, NSA, DIA, etc.–serve the president, not Congress, which has been relegated the role of toothless oversight.
Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.’s 1973 book, The Imperial Presidency, introduced the term Imperial Presidency into the American lexicon.
While historians have documented the rise of Executive power at the expense of the legislative branch and pundits have wrung their hands over this concentration of vast, often secret power in the presidency, nobody within the status quo has addressed the core reason behind the rise of the Imperial Presidency: America’s Empire requires a CEO/Emperor as a simple operational reality.
You can’t run a global military / commercial / diplomatic empire with a slow-moving legislative body; you need a dynamic CEO (chief executive officer) with essentially unlimited powers to do whatever it takes to run the empire.
Empires need an emperor, and this is the history of post-WW2 America. As the victor, the U.S. emerged with a global reach and power that can only be described as imperial. While the USSR soon gained military parity with nuclear weapons and vast tank armies aimed at Western Europe, the commercial empire was solely American.
While some cheered America’s global empire and others shouldered it as a necessary Cold war burden, the status quo relished the immense expansion of centralized bureaucratic and executive powers.
An Imperial President requires the Imperial machinery of global hegemony, and so the National Security State replaced the elected government as the real power. For a peek behind the curtain of the Imperial Presidency’s powers, please read The Enemies Briefcase: Secret powers and the presidency. (via Cheryl A.)
The last time the U.S. Congress pushed back against the Imperial Presidency and Security Agencies was 45 years ago, in 1975. In response to the domestic over-reach of the ImperialPresidency (Watergate) and the security agencies (COINTELPRO, etc.), the Church Committee undertook the first comprehensive review of the presidency’s expansive secret powers and the secret powers wielded by the National Security State.
The domestic abuses of power by the FBI and CIA included the blatantly illegal COINTELPRO programs aimed at destroying the anti-war / civil rights movements in the 1960s and early 1970s.
We know from the Church Committee reports that the FBI and CIA broke numerous federal laws and violated every constitutional limit on their powers as a matter of daily policy. The abuses of power were not the work of rogue agents or even rogue agencies; the abuses were SOP (standard operating procedures) for the Imperial machinery of the presidency and the security agencies that served the essentially unlimited power of the Imperial presidency.
Luttwak describes the first stage of expansion thusly:
“With brutal simplicity, it might be said that with the first system the Romans of the republic conquered much to serve the interests of the few, those living in the city–and in fact still fewer, those best placed to control policy.”
The second stage spread the benefits of Empire much more broadly:
“During the first century A.D., Roman ideas evolved toward a much broader and altogether more benevolent conception of empire… men born in lands far from Rome could call themselves Roman and have their claim fully allowed, and the frontiers were efficiently defended to defend the growing prosperity of all, and not merely the privileged.”
The third stage is one of rising inequality:
“In the wake of the great crisis of the third century, the provision of security became an increasingly heavy charge on society, a charge unevenly distributed, which could enrich the wealthy and ruin the poor. The machinery of empire now became increasingly self-serving, with its tax collectors, administrators and soldiers of much greater use to one another than to society at large.“
That line describes the American state and central bank (the Federal Reserve) perfectly. As the Imperial Presidency’s powers have expanded to the top of the S-Curve, so too has self-serving greed supported by everyday abuses of power reached new heights.
Who’s benefited mightily from Imperial over-reach? As the chart below indicates, the top 1% of America’s power elite has benefited to a degree that’s unmatched around the world.
The military-industrial sector has prospered (see chart below) as have the agencies of the National Security State.
As for the bottom 99%: suck it up, debt-serfs and tax donkeys: yours is not to make a reply or reason why, yours is to do and die.
Regardless of who holds the office, America’s Imperial Project and its Imperial Presidency are due for a grand reckoning. Empires require an emperor, and perhaps America will finally tire of its self-serving Empire and its Imperial Presidency.
“It’s Time For A New Generation Of Leaders”: Moderate Democrats Weigh Ousting Pelosi Over Dismal Election Showing Tyler Durden
Wed, 11/04/2020 – 17:00
Even though Biden appears to be edging Trump out in the presidential race, assuming a volley of recounts and Supreme Court lawsuits do not materially change the outcome in battleground states, it is undisputable that the election did not go as Democrats had desired: between Trump’s pick up of 2 million votes in the popular vote, the loss of Hispanic votes in Florida and Texas, and the elephant in the room – the inability to retake the Senate, condemning a possible Biden administration to at least two years of Congressional gridlock eliminating the chance of a tax overhaul or a Green New Deal – there is no disputing that the Democrats failed to achieve most of their goals.
And now the blame game begins, with The Hill reporting that stung by their party’s disappointing showing at the polls Tuesday, “two moderate House Democrats say they and other centrists are privately discussing a plan that was unthinkable just 24 hours earlier: throwing their support behind a challenger to Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”
The two Democrats told The Hill on Wednesday that they were reaching out to their colleagues about backing one of Pelosi’s top lieutenants, House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), for Speaker.
“He’s the only one prepared and positioned” to be Speaker, one of the Democratic lawmakers told the Hill. “He bridges moderates and progressives better than anyone. And most importantly, he’s not Nancy Pelosi.”
According to the report, the grumbling “reflects a remarkable shift in internal Democratic thinking in the immediate wake of Tuesday’s elections” – the reason: while Pelosi and Democratic leaders had promised to build on their majority — some estimates were in the double digits — but the early returns revealed a different reality: Not only did Democrats fail to protect a number of their most vulnerable members, they had not picked off a single Republican incumbent heading into Wednesday afternoon. Instead, lawmakers were left “licking their wounds and questioning the messaging and strategy decisions heading into Tuesday’s polls.”
While Democrats will keep control of the House, and the results of many races remain unknown while votes are still counted, the party saw the defeat of at least seven of their front-line members — the sitting lawmakers in the toughest districts. And of the 38 “red-to-blue” districts they were eyeing as potential gains, Republicans have already won 21 and are leading in another 14.
Across the board, Democrats failed to meet the Election Day expectations raised by polls and independent analysts. The party took Senate seats from Republicans in Colorado and Arizona, but unless they win outstanding races in Maine and Georgia, they won’t have the majority in that chamber.
At least seven House Democratic incumbents were defeated, including Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson, who has represented his Minnesota district since 1991. Other Democratic losses came in Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma and South Carolina. More are still vulnerable, including some who had pressed Pelosi to compromise on a stimulus bill, such as Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger and New York’s Max Rose.
One cited reason cited for the unexpected drop in Democratic support, was Pelosi’s unwillingness to negotiation with the GOP over a new fiscal stimulus, and failing to follow the advice of former Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein who on Oct 14 urged the speaker to accept the Republican stimulus offer, then comfortably win in the House and Senate races, and pass her own stimulus.
Stimulus bill: Dems want $2.2trio and Reps offer $1.8trio, more than 80% the ask. Dems should take the lesser amount now, to save lives and jobs, and top up after the election, when Dems control more of the govt. If Dems don’t win the WH or the senate, they have bigger problems!!
An easy scapegoat for the Democratic failure, Pelosi has emerged an early target for moderates representing suburban districts worried that their leadership’s strategy hurt such members ahead of the elections. And one of the two lawmakers who spoke to The Hill said a number of Democrats representing suburban and exurban districts had been talking about the need for a change.
“It’s time for Democrats to elevate a new generation of leadership in both the House and the Senate,” the lawmaker said. “Americans are clearly afraid of ‘socialism,’ want safe streets and neighborhoods and to vote for people who they believe will help put more money in their pockets. While Democratic policies can adequately address those issues, our messaging mechanism clearly cannot.”
The plan is still in its early stages, with the pair of Democrats saying they were in the process of reaching out to all of the “suburban survivors” of Tuesday night’s elections and had already spoken to two dozen members from various factions of the caucus, including the Congressional Black Caucus, Progressive Caucus, New Democrat Coalition and bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
Any attempt to oust the House speaker would be news to Pelosi, who told reporters before the elections that she would run for Speaker again if the Democrats kept control of the House. Asked about a potential challenge to Pelosi, her chief spokesman, Drew Hammill, wrote in an email to The Hill: “Today is not about the race for Speaker. Today is about the race for the White House and ensuring that our Members and candidates in uncalled races have the support they need. That is our focus.”
To be sure, Pelosi, 80, is no stranger to leadership challenges. Although she led the Democrats’ House takeover in the 2018 midterm elections, she still faced tough resistance within her own ranks in retaking the gavel after eight years in the minority. Fifteen Democrats bucked Pelosi and voted against her on the House floor after Democrats won back the House two years ago. But she still secured 220 votes that year — two more than what she needed to win the Speaker’s gavel.
* * *
A potential uprising against Pelosi may be further kindled by the Democrats’ loss of leverage in ongoing stimulus negotiations: according to Bloomberg, Congressional Democrats face a loss of leverage in negotiations over a new U.S. stimulus package after a disappointing showing on Election Day that left Senator Mitch McConnell potentially with a renewed mandate as majority leader.
The results so far – with Democrats facing a trimmed majority in the House and virtually zero odds for re-taking the Senate – point to a smaller Covid-19 relief bill than the roughly $2 trillion that had been discussed by the Trump administration and Democratic leaders before the Nov. 3 election.
“Hopefully the partisan passions that prevented us from doing a rescue package have subsided,” McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who had advocated a much smaller package, said on Wednesday. “That’s job one when we get back.”
While stocks hit session highs after McConnell’s comments, they have drifted lower since amid speculation a potential rebellion within Democratic ranks could lead to far small fiscal aid.
While Democrats have said they will continue to push for a multi-trillion dollar stimulus bill in the post-election lame-duck session, no matter who wins the White House, and Pelosi said late last month she wants to complete a deal with President Donald Trump’s administration even if Joe Biden wins in order to give him a “clean slate” before Inauguration Day in January, that task has become far more difficult given the rough election night for Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer.
Of course, the biggest leverage is that the GOP appears set to retain the Senate. Indeed, Republicans in the Senate have been the main obstacle to enactment of a $2 trillion or greater package, and the GOP looks increasingly likely to hold onto its majority there. That is sure to embolden spending hawks who have pushed for a smaller stimulus package of $500 billion or less, without direct stimulus checks or large-scale aid to state and local governments.
The GOP also will face pressure from conservative activists – who were oddly silent for the past 4 years – not to deliver Biden a major legislative victory – especially one that would add to an already record budget deficit.
“My advice toward Senate Republicans is to take the approach to a Biden presidency that they did toward Clinton and Obama, which was don’t give them any votes for truly bad pieces of legislation,” said anti-tax activist Grover Norquist. “Why would you put your fingerprints on something that is just a massive bailout for corrupt mayors and incompetent governors?”
Adding to the Democrats’ senatorial wose, with a narrower majority in the new Congress, it may be difficult for Pelosi to find the consensus to pass a relief bill. Finally, if Pelosi continues to insist on a package greater than the $1.9 trillion offered by the White House, she will face pressure to compromise quickly from the remaining moderate Democrats who are vital to the party’s House majority. And if she refuses, the fledgling rebellion against Pelosi will become a full-blown revolt.
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California Sen. Scott Weiner (D–San Francisco), the country’s top YIMBY (“Yes in my backyard”) legislator handily won re-election against a democratic socialist challenger who ran against Weiner’s friendliness to new private housing development.
As of Wednesday morning, Weiner had managed to capture 59 percent of the vote in his reelection bid, according to the city’s Department of Elections. Opponent Jackie Fielder, an instructor at San Francisco State University and socialist activist, captured a little over 40 percent of the vote in the two-person race.
“Wow. Thank you for re-electing me with ~60% of the vote. I’m so honored to continue representing you in the Senate,” tweeted Weiner the night of the vote. “Nearly $1.5M was spent by or on behalf of my opponent & we prevailed.”
Wiener is hardly a libertarian. He has, however, been a fierce advocate for repealing the miles of red tape and regulation that have produced California’s housing shortage and the sky-high rents and housing prices that come with it.
He’s sponsored a number of bills that make it easier for people to build new housing, and harder for local governments to reject it. Wiener’s signature, but ultimately unsuccessful reform this year was S.B. 50, which would have legalized the development of fourplexs statewide, and allowed midrise apartments near job centers and transit stops.
That free market-friendly, if not radically Rothbardian, vision is in stark contrast to Fielder’s own much more left-wing housing platform. Her “California Homes For All” plan included proposals for a $100 billion fund to buy or build new, price-controlled housing units, and a repeal of state laws that limit rent control and allow landlords to evict tenants from a unit if they’re taking it off the rental market.
“Our state’s housing affordability crisis cannot be remedied by relying on real estate developers and the private market alone,” wrote Fielder on her campaign website. “The market-based approach spearheaded by our current State Senator will not solve the crisis and, in our own Senate District, it will only accelerate income inequality, displacement and high housing costs.”
Fielder has opposed S.B. 50 on the grounds that new market-rate housing will only spur gentrification and displacement, and she’s criticized another of Wiener’s bills, S.B. 35, for streamlining the permitting process too much in a state where approvals of new housing can take years.
To her credit, Fielder has endorsed repealing zoning restrictions in Cupertino, Beverly Hills, and other wealthy communities that are not in her backyard on the grounds that this would prevent wealthier renters from moving into poorer communities.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) were big boosters of Fielder’s campaign, endorsing her back in January, and actively promoting her candidacy on social media with tweets that labeled Wiener “anti-homeless” and a stooge of luxury real estate developers.
Wiener’s resounding win in an election that pitted two very different visions against each other is a vindication of the deregulatory YIMBY approach to housing affordability.
Coupled with the crushing defeat of the statewide initiative Prop. 21, which would have allowed local governments to expand rent control, it was a good night for free market housing policy.
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Michigan voters Tuesday night had a message for police: Get a warrant. Yes, for their phones, too.
Voters overwhelmingly approved Michigan Proposal 2. The referendum, put to the ballot by lawmakers, amends the state constitution to add “electronic data and electronic communications” to the state’s search and seizure laws.
With 88 percent of the vote counted, Michigan voters approved the protections. The measure passed with 88 percent of the vote, more than 3.8 million votes of support.
The relevant part of the state’s constitution will now read:
The person, houses, papers, possessions, and electronic data and electronic communications of every person shall be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures. No warrant to search any place or to seize any person or things or to access electronic data or electronic communications shall issue without describing them, nor without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation. The provisions of this section shall not be construed to bar from evidence in any criminal proceeding any narcotic drug, firearm, bomb, explosive or any other dangerous weapon, seized by a peace officer outside the curtilage of any dwelling house in this state.
Ballotpedia notes that the changes passed unanimously through both Michigan’s House and Senate in June before being sent to voters for approval.
It’s another nice little reminder that there were a lot of liberty-minded ballot initiatives that did very well last night that shouldn’t be ignored as so many people obsess over who will control the White House and Congress.
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Stalin – the hero of the left and the lying dog-faced pony soldiers – is correct.
“It’s not the people who vote that count, it’s the people who count the votes.”
Trump was winning this election last night. Suddenly, they decided to stop counting and stop reporting in all the Democrat governor controlled swing states.
Now the real “counting” has begun. Where is that landslide Biden victory, the douchebags in the left wing MSM were so sure about? Nate Silver and the rest of the left wing media pollsters have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt they are nothing more that a propaganda arm of the left.
The Republicans have picked up seats in the House and will retain control of the Senate. Soros, Bloomberg, Zuckerberg, Dorsey, and all the other left wing billionaires poured hundreds of billions into this election and failed miserably.
The counting is now being done in Democrat controlled states and enforced by Soros Attorney Generals.
What do you think the chances are of Trump getting a fair count in these states?
I hope he has his lawyers ready to fight. He can’t let them steal this election.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/34X0FLc Tyler Durden
California Sen. Scott Weiner (D–San Francisco), the country’s top YIMBY (“Yes in my backyard”) legislator handily won re-election against a democratic socialist challenger who ran against Weiner’s friendliness to new private housing development.
As of Wednesday morning, Weiner had managed to capture 59 percent of the vote in his reelection bid, according to the city’s Department of Elections. Opponent Jackie Fielder, an instructor at San Francisco State University and socialist activist, captured a little over 40 percent of the vote in the two-person race.
“Wow. Thank you for re-electing me with ~60% of the vote. I’m so honored to continue representing you in the Senate,” tweeted Weiner the night of the vote. “Nearly $1.5M was spent by or on behalf of my opponent & we prevailed.”
Wiener is hardly a libertarian. He has, however, been a fierce advocate for repealing the miles of red tape and regulation that have produced California’s housing shortage and the sky-high rents and housing prices that come with it.
He’s sponsored a number of bills that make it easier for people to build new housing, and harder for local governments to reject it. Wiener’s signature, but ultimately unsuccessful reform this year was S.B. 50, which would have legalized the development of fourplexs statewide, and allowed midrise apartments near job centers and transit stops.
That free market-friendly, if not radically Rothbardian, vision is in stark contrast to Fielder’s own much more left-wing housing platform. Her “California Homes For All” plan included proposals for a $100 billion fund to buy or build new, price-controlled housing units, and a repeal of state laws that limit rent control and allow landlords to evict tenants from a unit if they’re taking it off the rental market.
“Our state’s housing affordability crisis cannot be remedied by relying on real estate developers and the private market alone,” wrote Fielder on her campaign website. “The market-based approach spearheaded by our current State Senator will not solve the crisis and, in our own Senate District, it will only accelerate income inequality, displacement and high housing costs.”
Fielder has opposed S.B. 50 on the grounds that new market-rate housing will only spur gentrification and displacement, and she’s criticized another of Wiener’s bills, S.B. 35, for streamlining the permitting process too much in a state where approvals of new housing can take years.
To her credit, Fielder has endorsed repealing zoning restrictions in Cupertino, Beverly Hills, and other wealthy communities that are not in her backyard on the grounds that this would prevent wealthier renters from moving into poorer communities.
The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) were big boosters of Fielder’s campaign, endorsing her back in January, and actively promoting her candidacy on social media with tweets that labeled Wiener “anti-homeless” and a stooge of luxury real estate developers.
Wiener’s resounding win in an election that pitted two very different visions against each other is a vindication of the deregulatory YIMBY approach to housing affordability.
Coupled with the crushing defeat of the statewide initiative Prop. 21, which would have allowed local governments to expand rent control, it was a good night for free market housing policy.
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