The most absolute form of tyranny yet devised is communism. It is based on depriving the individual of property rights. Authoritarians understand that all rights rest on property rights; without them, you effectively have no rights at all. That’s why incremental communists — i.e., Democrats — are waging war on property rights at the national level and at the state level in single-party New York under leftist Governor Kathy Hochul:

Hochul announced late Tuesday that she’s summoning legislators for a rare special session to extend New York’s expiring eviction moratorium and allocate more financial relief for renters in a bid to stave off an avalanche of evictions at a time when the coronavirus is resurging in the state.

We see once again why Jane Fonda calls Covid “God’s gift to the Left.” A bug goes around and suddenly landlords have no right to determine who lives on their property; they must allow deadbeats to live there for free. This confirms that if you provide housing by renting out your property to supplement your income or as a means of making a living, it is not your property after all but the government’s property, and can be seized at any time on the thinnest of pretexts.

The “financial relief for renters” sweetens the deal for the deadbeats and parasites who comprise the Democrat Party’s voter base. If all goes according to plan, we will become a nation of deadbeats and parasites.

With apologies to those who really have been put out of work by Covid, this is not about Covid. It is about Marxism. There are a record number of job openings in this country.

The Supreme Court just confirmed that Covid does not grant Big Government the rightful authority to prevent property owners from charging rent. However,

Hochul called the top court ruling “heartless” and said New York taking matter into its own hands is crucial because “the pandemic is not over.”

Nor will it ever be over so long as leftists can exploit it.

No word from the heartless Hochul on the landlords whose lives have been destroyed by tyrannical eviction moratoriums. Landlords have always been a favorite scapegoat of Marxists.

Meanwhile, only a fraction of the $2.7 billion allocated to New York’s Emergency Rental Assistance Program has been allocated. This is not about helping renters. It is about destroying the concept of property. In utopia, you will own nothing and be happy, as the globalist liberal elitists who will own everything through the government like to tell us.

On a tip from Wiggins.

The Democrat Death Spiral doesn’t just destroy cities like formerly prosperous Detroit. It can take down whole states — like New York, which due to Democrat rule is effectively no longer part of the USA.

In America, political opposition is permitted. Not so in the People’s Republic of New York, where it is destroyed through lawfare:

New York Attorney General Letitia James threatened to seize former President Donald Trump’s New York properties if he can’t come up with the money to pay the $354 million civil fraud fine he was handed down last week by a New York judge.

The judgment is a farce that no reasonable person takes at face value. It signifies the collapse of rule of law into anarchotyranny, whereby hoodlums are allowed to rule the streets while authorities target political opponents over nonexistent crimes.

As businessman Kevin O’Leary observes, it is no longer advisable to do business in New York:

O’Leary, the star “Shark Tank” investor, slammed Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling against Trump in the civil fraud trial. Last Friday, Engoron ordered Trump to pay a penalty of $355 million plus interest — a total of approximately $450 million. The fraud case was brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat who campaigned on targeting Trump. …

According to O’Leary, the ruling demonstrates what he and many other businessmen believed was already true: New York is a “loser state” because of liberal policies, high taxes, and uncompetitive regulation.

“I would never invest in New York now,” he promised.

Assurances from the inept governor that you can still do business in New York so long as liberals don’t especially hate you will not win back investors.

New York’s anarchotyranny has reached the extreme that other states will not extradite criminals there, knowing that the pro-criminal kooks in charge cannot be trusted:

Maricopa County prosecutor Rachel Mitchell said in a press conference Wednesday that [a murder] suspect will instead remain in Arizona.

“Having observed the treatment of violent criminals in the New York area by the Manhattan DA there, Alvin Bragg,” Mitchell said, “I think it’s safer to keep him here and keep him in custody, so that he cannot be out doing this to individuals either in our state, county, or anywhere in the United States.”

The suspect, 26-year-old Saad Almansoori, stands accused of the murder of a 38-year-old woman in New York City earlier this month. He was arrested in Arizona days later, after stabbing a second person.

Bragg was installed in office to advance the liberal agenda by George Soros. Showcasing the astonishing hypocrisy that characterizes leftists, his spokesmoonbat accused Mitchell of “playing political games” by not turning over Almansoori.

For now, Americans can still enter New York without a passport. But I wouldn’t advise it.

On tips from Mr. Freemarket, KirklesWorth, Wiggins, seaoh, and Franco.

When Democrats pander to the pernicious unions that bankroll them by attacking school choice, it is at the expense of both children and taxpayers. Consider New York City:

The charters’ mostly minority student population bested its public school counterpart by up to 8% on both state math and reading tests in the 2021-21 school year, show statistics compiled by New York City Charter Center.

And the impressive results come courtesy of a relative shoestring budget, with city charters spending just $17,626 per student compared to the $35,941 spent on each public student, according to the center and Citizens Budget Commission.

The blacks Democrats exploit while pretending to champion benefit the most from charter schools:

Black charter-school students bested their public-school counterparts in [English Language Arts] by proficiency rates of 55% to 36% and in math by 46% to 21%.

Charter schools provide better education for less money. But rather than save taxpayers a buck and give kids a chance to succeed, most Democrats prefer to impose the mess they have made in Chicago:

In 30 Chicago public schools, not a single student can read at grade level. In total, just 20 percent of 3rd through 8th graders in the Windy City are proficient in reading and only 15 percent are proficient in math.

It isn’t because the Democrats who control everything there aren’t spending enough:

When all local, state and federal dollars are added up, Chicago’s per student outlay is now $29,207.

Nor is it because Chicago does not shovel enough taxpayer money at teachers:

[A] starting teacher makes $64,000 a year and can earn up to $122,000 per annum—not including pension and healthcare perks.

Teachers unions have so much sway in the Biden Regime, they dictate Covid policy to the CDC. But this isn’t only about unions. The more uninformed you have to be to vote Democrat, the more interest Democrats have in keeping the population clueless. That makes them want to prop up both the liberal media establishment and failed public schools.

On tips from Jack D.

If a career criminal’s fentanyl overdose can serve as a pretext to loot, why not the conspicuous absence of global warming in moonbat-misruled New York State?

Todd Starnes reports on Buffalo:

Gangs of thugs have been looting large and small businesses — leading Mayor Byron Brown to condemn the criminals.

“People who are out looting when people are losing their lives in this harsh winter storm is just absolutely reprehensible,” Brown said. “I don’t know how these people can even live with themselves, how they can look at themselves in the mirror. They are the lowest of the low.”

That’s not very nice. Liberals tell us that cold weather is actually caused by global warming, which oppresses favored identity groups. So chalk up the looting to social justice, like the George Floyd riots.

On tips from Wiggins and Ed McAninch.

For long-lasting results, instill moonbattery before the victim has developed the rational faculties to recognize it as depraved. If teachers can coax children into embracing truly sick LGBT ideology, it should be child’s play to get them eating bugs in accordance with the liberal agenda:

Note that getting kids to eat insects is so important that teachers will even allow them to temporarily remove their pointless not to mention sadistic Covid muzzles for this purpose.

Making us live off bugs like pet lizards will allow for the destruction of agriculture, which is already underway in the world’s #2 agricultural exporter. This will make the weather nicer, according to moonbat doctrine. More to the point, employees at urban cricket farms will be easier to unionize and more likely to embrace the leftist agenda than farmers.

Future lessons will coax kids to embrace eating maggot butter, weeds, synthetic pseudofood, plastic trash, grass, larvae, and possibly even lentils.

On a tip from seaoh.

Rule by Democrats isn’t cheap. Green New Deal lunacy will cost New Yorkers hundreds of $billions:

New Yorkers will have to pay “hundreds of billions of dollars” in higher utility bills due to the state’s “Green New Deal”-inspired plan, according to a top energy regulatory official — who accused lawmakers of hiding the true cost of the bill.

John Howard, former chairman and current member of the state Public Service Commission, claimed former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Democratic-run legislature never leveled with the public on the costs associated with the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act approved in 2019.

Why would they level with voters? Nothing having to do with the global warming hoax is on the level.

Since it was politically inconvenient to raise taxes enough to pay for this, it will be financed through utility rate increases. That will have the benefit of allowing Democrats to demonize the power company.

The law, which Cuomo signed in a ceremony with Al Gore at his side, requires New York to slash greenhouse emissions by 40% by 2030 and no less than 85% by 2050 by transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, such as hydropower, solar and wind. The state Climate Action Council, meanwhile, is charged with developing a plan to put the state on a path toward zero carbon emissions.

Zero carbon emissions would literally mean zero human activity.

For an idea of what it would mean for America as a whole to let Democrats consolidate power nationally the way they have in New York, refer to the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Left unchecked, their ambitions will utterly destroy the economy, leading to the death by starvation of a large percentage of the population. Already Biden et al. have turned what should have been a post-Covid boom into a lurch toward recession.

There is zero chance that Democrats’ extravagantly expensive climate posturing will have a perceptible effect on global temperature.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Upon taking power, Biden immediately set about crippling the energy industry, suppressing drilling and killing pipelines. According to leftist doctrine, fossil fuels make the weather too warm. We must instead use grossly inefficient means of generating power that cannot meet more than a tiny fraction of an advanced economy’s needs. Yet even with things green, Biden obstructs:

The U.S. Department of the Interior canceled two mineral leases for Antofagasta Plc’s proposed Twin Metals copper and nickel mine in Minnesota on Wednesday, effectively killing the project and handing a major win to environmentalists.

Copper and nickel are essential elements in the extravagantly subsidized electric vehicles they pay us with our own money to drive.

The step was in addition to a plan announced last fall by the White House to impose a 20-year ban on mining in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters region, where Antofagasta hopes to build an underground mine to supply copper for electric vehicles, which use twice as much of the red metal as those with internal combustion engines.

The Democrat plan is to force us to drive EVs by making normal vehicles illegal. But how can we drive electric moonbatmobiles if we are not allowed to mine copper?

Reuters reported last year that Biden aims to look abroad for metal supplies…

Like energy production, mining doesn’t offend the planet so long as some other country does it and reaps the profits.

Speaking of reaping profits from mining, the ChiComs have been raking in money from cobalt mining, thanks to the massive amounts of it needed for electric cars, and also thanks to Hunter Biden. The $31 million to purchase the Biden family was a sound investment.

On a tip from Occam’s Stubble.

The demented moonbat tyrant serving as Governor of New York boasts of inflicting senseless mask mandates on 2-year-olds, despite there being no perceptible benefit and considerable harm in forcing children to wear masks in the name of a disease that hardly affects them. That’s her in the middle of this picture:

Mask up and soak up your critical race theory indoctrination, kids. Sorry to say, your future has been canceled. Have fun trying to pay off the debt we’re running up.

On a tip from Jester.

College campuses are a corner of life where leftists enjoy near total hegemony. Imagine a college campus in New York City. In a place like that, anything whatsoever might be banned in the name of Covid hysteria — even drinking water out of your own bottle.

The Observer, Fordham’s student paper, reports on the school’s tightened Covid policies:

Fordham also updated its policies for eating and drinking in spaces on campus. Eating or drinking will be prohibited at athletic events until further notice. Food and drink are not allowed in classrooms and instructional spaces such as libraries or laboratories. Throughout the month of January, eating and drinking will also not be permitted at any events or meetings.

In New York, breathing has been restricted even for toddlers for fear that it might spread Covid. If we don’t need to breathe, why should we need to eat and drink?

As The College Fix notes of Fordham,

The student body is more than 99 percent vaccinated as of September, and “no unvaccinated individuals [are] allowed on campus except for individuals with official accommodations or those still completing their vaccination series.”

As we have learned, getting vaccinated is only the beginning. Fordham suffers a Covid infection rate of 0.3%, so draconian measures must be taken.

Thanks to the mildness of the predominant Omicron variant, dehydration may be a more serious health threat to Fordham students than Covid.

On tips from R F and Dragon’s Lair. Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.

Even prior to the mild Omicron variant, Covid has had no significant direct effect on children. Yet they have suffered inordinately from Covid tyranny and hysteria due to adults’ neurotic terror that they will transmit the disease. This goes beyond unhealthy (not to mention sadistic) mask mandates, pointlessly closing schools, imposing social isolation, and risking future health with unnecessary vaccines that have unknown long-term consequences. Sometimes it crosses the line into straightforward child abuse:

[Sarah] Beam reportedly pulled into a drive-thru COVID testing site in Harris County, Texas, when an officer heard a noise coming from her trunk.

When Beam opened the trunk, her 13-year-old child was found inside.

The mom explained that the had child tested positive for COVID-19 and therefore had to be quarantined, officials said.

One guess as to Beam’s line of work:

Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District confirmed that Beam had worked for the school district since 2011. Beam had most recently worked as a Cypress Falls High School teacher. She is now on administrative leave.

The kid seems to be okay, aside from having a psychopath for a mom.

Future generations will look back in horror at what the governmedia has reduced many of us to with its weaponized Covid hysteria.

On tips from Wiggins and Mr. Freemarket.

According to the dogma of the globalist ruling class, we must centralize authority over the economy and drastically reduce our standard of living because if we do not, carbon dioxide emissions from the burning of fossil fuels will exacerbate the constant fluctuation of the climate, threatening the existence of the human race and even all life on earth.

Not even the conspicuously slow Joe Biden actually believes this hysterical nonsense. We know our rulers are lying not only by the arrogant hypocrisy they display by flying private jets to climate summits, but by their attitude toward nuclear power.

The electric vehicles they spend so much of our money to impose do not run on woke thoughts. No informed person thinks we can create enough power with unreliable and inefficient wind turbines and solar panels to keep transportation moving, much less the rest of the economy. If fossil fuels really are as harmful as we are asked to believe, that leaves zero-emission nuclear power — which leftists are in the process of abolishing.

Via UPI:

Belgium officials reached an agreement Thursday to close all seven of the country’s nuclear reactors by 2025, but they will be open to new, smaller nuclear plants under the compromise.

Considering how progressive politics works, the smaller plants will keep getting smaller until they shrink away to nothing. Possibly, they will be stalled and never get built at all.

It isn’t just Belgium:

As part of the agreement, Belgium will invest 100 million euros in research into new, smaller modular nuclear power plants. France and the Netherlands have invested in similar research.

Good thing taxpayers have plenty of money.

France gets half its electricity from nuclear energy. Symbolic windmills will not make up the shortfall. More fossil fuels will be required from Russia, Europe’s main supplier. Russia has been exploiting its leverage to jack up gas prices. Putin continues to grin like the cat who ate the canary.

The nuclear power phaseout has been codified in Belgian law since 2003.

Why? Because moonbattery.

Similarly, the leftists running New York shut down Indian Point this year. It produced over 565 terawatt-hours of electricity (1 terawatt-hour = 1 trillion watts for 1 hour), and was supplying 25% of NYC’s power. Andrew Cuomo also put a stranglehold on pipelines, before being replaced by a maniac from even further to the left.

Unless progressives are motivated by sheer malice (which is a supportable hypothesis), they must figure we will be easier to rule over when we are shivering in the dark and cold, unemployed and unable to travel after the supply of energy has been deliberately reduced below the level required to sustain a modern economy.

On a tip from Bluto.

The good news about Omicron continues to accrue. As we have known from the beginning, it is extremely mild, often no worse than a cold. Its spread could relatively painlessly establish herd immunity through natural immunity, which is more effective than the vaccines, even if the liberal establishment doesn’t like to talk about it.

Now for the bad news: banking on public ignorance and proneness to panic, our rulers continue to exploit Omicron hysteria anyway. As Paul Joseph Watson observes, “It’s almost like they want to keep us frightened, segregated, and atomized forever.”

On a tip from KirklesWorth.

The good news about Omicron is bad news for the authoritarians who have hyped this mild version of Covid as a pretext to whip up hysteria and impose tyranny:

A nonserious, easily transmissible variant could mean Covid is almost over. Herd immunity will grow as the severity of the ChiCom virus peters out. Now let’s see if we can ever get back the freedoms that we have been conned into surrendering over the past 2 years.

On a tip from KirklesWorth.

Combining two recent Breitbart stories suggests that we are ruled by neurotics.

Story 1:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief White House medical adviser, said on Tuesday that the Omicron variant of the Chinese coronavirus, which has been identified in several states, “might even be less severe” than the Delta variant, which is already widespread.

This is a major admission from someone who was lifted to the pinnacle of power by Covid.

Despite the hysteria that caused the Governor of New York to declare a state of emergency, Omicron is so mild that even after it had been found in 38 countries, the WHO admitted that no deaths could be attributed to it. We have known from the beginning that Omicron is extremely mild.

Story 2:

Eighty-two percent of Democrats are willing to wear face coverings indoors at all times due to fears of contracting the omicron coronavirus variant, a Tuesday Axios-Ipsos poll revealed.

Less than half as many Republicans felt that way, at 38%.

The poll also shows 94 percent of Democrats support private mask-wearing mandates at local businesses. Only 43 percent of Republicans agree.

It is highly doubtful that masks are effective at preventing the spread of Covid.

There are two Americas, all right: an American America, and a scared, neurotic, authoritarian America. At present, the latter controls all the levers of power.