-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Suspected arsonist Cody Balmer targeted Pa. Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home over what pol ‘wants to do to Palestinian people’: report – New York Post
When you don’t crack down on Hamas protests, you get mentally ill kooks acting on their hateful messages.
Hamas aligned student trouble-makers are peddling a false tale of “genocide.”
Israel’s response to the mass murder of thousands, and the taking of hundreds of hostages, has been far more measured than any other country would have made.
If Hamas had done the same thing in Egypt or any other middle eastern nation, they would have turned Gaza into an ocean of blood.
A self-enriching Star Chamber of the left, comprised of judges, politicians and academics + unions has ruled Illinois for too long. Many here lament the fiscal destruction and out-migration.
When the system is broke one can’t fight back within the system. Consider how many eggs have been broken in making our current omlet. There is little alternative to breaking more eggs in the creation of something more palatable to reverse the fiscal and social trends.
Nobody wants collateral damage for its own sake. But when the ship is sinking we gotta bail.
I hear you on that, and you seem have the majority view at least among commenters here. But I do have a different take on that pragmatic issue, too. I think the politics of this work against that in the long run. To crush the far left, the goal I share, requires maintaining credibility and avoiding hypocrisy, in my judgement. And this is a matter for much of the world, not just the U.S. Think about what those who are getting their visas cancelled in the new Star Chamber will say when they go back to their home countries. (And… Read more »
The ones who are peaceful, reject terror, Hamas, etc but got booted – you are describing a hypothetical. In reality this is most likely a null set.
Our different perceptions about that are probably another reason why I have a different view. I know some who have protested and they are not that way, though I wrote earlier about the large number of them that I thought were were pro-Hamas, would-be terrorists at one demonstration I saw. Among the prominent, harsh critics of Israeli conduct in the war, on the left and right, are Tucker Carlson, Rand Paul, Glen Greenwald, Bernie Sanders and John Mearsheimer. If they were student visa holders, their comments apparently might be grounds for deportation. I say “apparently” because the government hasn’t even… Read more »
And here’s a new, good column by Roger Pielke. He is with the conservative AEI but is more of a free-thinking independent. Right on point: “Ironically, the urge to censor expression is one topic that finds strong agreement among the MAGA right and the progressive left.” https://substack.com/home/post/p-161307745
I don’t believe anyone who criticized Israel’s conduct is a terrorist who embraces Hamas.
I just don’t believe those who are legitimately here only as peaceful students have to fear having their student visas pulled.
Could it happen? Maybe, but as I’ve said, I think there are plenty of legitimate targets for visa revocation.
I don’t have much concern over the possibility that we will be seen as hypocrites in the students’ home countries, and then the jihadis won’t like us. I think that ship has pretty much sailed.
It’s difficult to predict the long-run consequences. PPF tries … as he assures us that all public pensions will be paid in full. Most climate scientists with a platform predict the worst outcomes. I tend toward pessimism myself — assume the worst to avoid disappointment. Foreboding about the trajectories of Illinois or the Social Security system or K-12 education in urban areas is certainly a valid approach to advocacy and planning. Certainly we have reason to question, retrospectively, the destruction of Dresden and Hiroshima. Perhaps there is a lingering hope that CTU will work toward better K-12 education at lower… Read more »
The governor’s mansion in PA, occupied by a Jewish governor, was damaged in a fire last night that officials are calling arson. Last night was the first night of Passover.
I know, I know- there is no evidence tying this to our esteemed guests. Purely a coincidence, right?
Many, including Mark G, seem to say that court should decide the critical issues. This would often have the effect of freezing the status quo and magnifying the cost to individuals and taxpayers. Furthermore, politics have infused the system adding to inconsistency + delay. Add to this the fact that lawyers are bound to ADVOCATE. Advocacy does not permit untruth, but it seems to encourage partial truth. It’s up to the jury (or sometimes the judge) to decide “the whole truth.” This decision is often a roll of the dice. Under the partial truth advocacy issue: Consider tobacco advertising in… Read more »
Not to nitpick here, but my point actually was that courts will decide the critical issues, whether we like it or not. And I would say that less will end up in courts if the administration simply applies some common sense fairness to its decisions about who gets their visa revoked, and tell us what they are doing and why. That’s all I am asking for. What we have now is a Star Chamber.
I disagree to this extent: really controversial Supreme Court decisions will follow the path of Roe v Wade and Dobbs, with federal and state legislatures continuing to look for ways to evade the core issue — in Roe the issue being whether unborn babies (however known) will be protected from mothers’ (however they are known) and physicians’ efforts to end babies’ lives. Somewhat analogous issues arise in 2nd Amendment cases and, these days, in cases about the rights of immigrant people to remain in the U.S. with the full rights of people born here. Each immigrant is, of course, a… Read more »
According to the Alton Telegraph SIU-E has 8 out of some 13,000 students that this applies to – hardly what I would call a “wave” and actually not even much of a ripple.
Sorry Mahmoud Khalil, Aliens Do Not Have the Same First Amendment Rights as American Citizens — First Amendment Center, March 13, 2025
Send them all to the CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador. They know how to handle these low lifes.
Whacko.
Khalil and his “most peaceful Hamas sympathizers” aren’t just an embarrassment and a nuisance for Columbia. They have turned NYC into a 24/7 “no go zone” for decent people. Blocking streets. Harassing Jews on the MTA. Taking over buildings. Assaulting anyone who appears to support Israel.
The sooner these creeps are kicked out and banned from the US the better.
Fortunately, our courts don’t think we should assume all protesters with visas are doing that bad stuff or are Khalils, as you do. They are requiring some common sense fair process for determining who should get the boot.
Don’t need a constitutionally immaculate due process to decode this tableau of filthy Hamas animals howling for Jewish blood:
.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cVhKcl9ltE
You should be aware that a significant number of protesters have been Jews themselves.
If you are referring to Jewish Voice for Peace, they are the worst kind of fraud:
Not So Jewish, Not For Peace. How Jewish Voice for Peace falsifies Judaism and glorifies terrorism. A deep dive, Commentary, April 2019
Interesting. Commentary usually gets the facts right.
Who’s going to fill all those empty seats in the U of I system? That’s all the machine cares about….maybe not at U of I Urbana, but they got a mountain of empty seats. Same story nationally.
Applicant: We don’t like sharing space with Jews, and we will make sure everyone knows it. Admission Officer: That’s OK, just make sure you call them Zionists, not Jews. Applicant: We plan to make sure our message gets attention by taking over buildings, common areas, streets, even expressways. Admission Officer: That’s OK, we will just call it exercising your right to free speech. If anyone objects, we will go into hysterics over the 1st Amendment. Applicant: When can we start our effort to bring the light of Islam to the infidels in America? Admission Officer: Can you pay your full… Read more »
=but college administrators are sharing few details, including how many students have been impacted.=
Until we know the number and the reasoning we know nothing.
Right. It’s a Star Chamber.
I *don’t* want to see atrocity – mongers welcomed into this country… the shifty pukes can find another place to infest…
State your basis for claiming that they are all “atrocity mongers.” Some are. Maybe many. Maybe most. But not all.
GM, I am surprised you are taking this view. You are a member of a group that’s often unfairly treated thanks to broad slurs about all members of the group you are in. I’d have expected you would see the fairness in judging individuals individually.
As a homosexual, I realize that terrrorist Hamas supporters and the anti – Israel/Zionist claque in general would dearly *love* to see me not only “silenced” – but also *dead*…
“Speaking of Islam”, that hateful religion’s hatred of homosexuals is one of their guiding principles… I’d also include their hatred of women as one of their principles – just ask Ayaan Hirsi Ali…
Will it be long before we are told that 1st Amendment freedom of religion means we must allow Islamists to kill homosexuals and practice honor killing as their religion demands?
You are clearly missing the point Mark is making GM. I’ve known people that claim ALL homosexuals are pedophiles and predators. In fact, people have made that claim on this site in the comment section based on the bad acts of some who are a member of your group. Are some gay people predators and pedophiles? Yes. Are ALL? Of course not. It seems like Mark is drawing a parallel to the problem of hating on an entire group because of the actions of a portion of the group. Just as he is not willing to make blanket assumptions about… Read more »
For the sake of future discussion, can we stipulate that any thinking person understands there is nothing that applies 100% to any group under discussion? That we all understand there are exceptions to any generality?
That would save us all some time.
And can we also agree that we can recognize that there are commonalities among certain people that allow us to draw conclusions about the group as a whole, even if not every individual is in perfect conformance?
Or if I say “kids like to play”, will you feel compelled to point out that some kids prefer to read?
But Trump won’t stipulate to that in his visa revocation policy. That’s exactly the problem. There’s not even a process allowed for somebody to distinguish himself from those who are dangerous.
Mark, the courts have ruled that what Trump says goes, and thank the Lord for that. The president decides who is an enemy of the state. That’s how it works now, and I for one am thankful that we have a president bold enough to recognize immigrants for what they are – and to do something about it.
BAMN characterizes most of the Woke Left. I have known quite a few and if you are pro life or oppose union objectives they’d rather have you go than stay. This is because the Left is militant and uncompromising — they may not know what a Bolshevik is but somehow or other they have adopted the view that he to takes gets. My experience goes back to the mid-50’s when solidarity was forever and anyone who challenged that was knocked off his tricycle. Hypocrisy seems to have no meaning for them. Woke is a new tropism and your Leftist “friends”… Read more »
Conservatives are at war. The worst of your enemies come from or ultimately end up in academia. The universities for decades have been indoctrinating students – using almost exclusively taxpayer dollars (through grants/federal student loans) to push the craziest nonsense, everything from gender theory, to intersectionality, DEI and worse. Keep in mind, these institutions have been at open war with conservatives for decades. They’ve punished conservatives for free speech. Heck, several years back, a survey showed that 57% of liberal U.S. and Canadian academics felt uneasy sitting next to a Trump supporter at lunch. THEY don’t even want to share… Read more »
All true, but doesn’t it bother you that people we invited here who have done nothing but criticize the government can be, as Joe Rogan recently said, “horrific” that non-criminals could be “lassoed up and deported”? They get that without any evidence presented, no hearing, no warrant, no prior notice, no nothing. Fix the problems you’ve described but, jeez, don’t replace the left’s despotism with the right’s.
Hopefully the TdA and MS13 folks relocate to your neighborhood.
Learn how to read. I never said to protect them from deportation.
I have no problem with this at all. I disagree that it’s despotism. It’s several hundred visa holders out of 2,300,000 student visa. It’s a rounding error. They are here as guests, occupying a seat that would have otherwise gone to a native-born American, and they not be degenerate antisemites.
Some way to treat guests. Assume they are all antisemites? Criticizing Israeli conduct in Gaza is not per se antisemitism. A significant part of protesters have been Jews. And we are setting the precedent for the next guy in office to do the same in a manner you sure might not like.
If they are citizens they deserve every legal protection. If not, they should be treated kindly and immediately deported. To construct a notion that non citrines have the same rights as citizens is absurd but a tenant of the Left. If they are going to be jailed, then yes, they deserve total due process. But not if deported or not let back in.
Illinois must seek out international students to maintain enrollment. Brighter, more talented local students are finding schools from the southern part of the country more generous with tuition scholarship money.
And they do so because there are too few slots open for residents, because nearly a third of the school is international students. Does the chicken or the egg come first?
Finally some good news if you don’t love America get their ass out!
Completely unacceptable. This includes students here legally who are being punished merely for their words, however peaceful, who have not supported Hamas or other terrorist groups. It’s utterly unfair. A line must be drawn between those who have broken the law, supported terrorist groups or committed similar wrongdoing (who should be deported) and those who are merely saying things the government does not like.
A student visa isn’t a carte blanche pass to America. UIUC, a taxpayer supported college, has denied qualified state citizens admittance so to sell seats to Chinese people.
Come on, Jack. Nobody said it’s carte blanche. And if you want fewer foreign students, then reduce their numbers to favor citizens by fixing the problem at the admissions level or by reducing the number of student visas.
Obama and Biden were giving away student visa like candy in a parade. Canada over past several years engaged in the same scam, letting in millions of unvetted immigrants to supposedly study but in reality they were working, and the legit ones were clogging up university admissions. Justin Trudeau even admitted that a lot of it was fraud especially from India. Which brings me to the point, many of these student visa holders shouldn’t be here in the first place. Many of them don’t go back home. And just because Trump’s admin is taking the visa away from supposedly criticizing… Read more »
I think that it’s simply a numbers thing. There are tens of thousands of foreign students aiding Hamas and participating in antisemitic violence so some of the innocent are cast out with the rest of the mob. Same with deportations: When Biden/Obama allow 30 million criminal illegal aliens to enter the country then some true asylum eligible are swept out alongside the criminals. Democrats made this mess. Republicans are forced to clean it up and the Pravda media clings and howls about the exceptions yet kept their pieholes shut when the tyranny was underway.
Agree. Of 15,000 foreign college students, it’s a good bet that most are Asian (because they can afford it) and most have posted opinions the current administration does not agree with (because they are college students).
A few dozen have had visas revoked. I don’t see how we draw the conclusion that they are simply being targeted for their speech.
It’s many hundreds of students. Rubio said last week it was 300 and he was signing more every day. One case we know something about (the government has hidden all info about most others) is the woman at Tufts who was here from Turkey on a Fullbright Scholarship pursuing a PhD. The only thing she did is sign a letter saying she was sympathetic to Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza, criticizing Israeli conduct of the war and supporting the Israeli boycott. There’s no evidence whatsoever that she supports Hamas or violence, or even that she’s antisemitic.
300 over the whole country. There are 55,000 foreign students in IL alone according to the article. The numbers simply don’t add up to the conclusion of a witch hunt over speech. Could it be? Maybe, but the information we have now doesn’t make that the obvious conclusion. It’s also possible that there is more about these particular students that we don’t yet know.
If it is intended as a sweep of wrong speakers out of the country, it’s been a poor job of it so far. But of course, that’s possible too.
If it’s not a sweep of wrong speakers, they at least should make public the reasons for yanking the visas. Right now, it’s a star chamber, all in secret. I talk to a number of faculty on different campuses regularly. They all say there is a new atmosphere of fear and intimidation felt by the left. That’s what’s been directed at conservatives on campus for years, of course, so I get the schadenfreude and feel that, too. But I’d rather see balance restored. No authoritarianism from either side.
“They all say there is a new atmosphere of fear and intimidation felt by the left.” Good. This is music to my ears. And now we need more fear and intimidation. Because there will never be balance. Your enemies will never afford you balance and while you are in control they will do everything they can to wrestle that control away from conservatives for the sole purpose of discriminating against them. We are at war. Not a war we asked for, but a war that academia declared on us. 57% of them wouldn’t even sit next to a Trump supporter… Read more »
“When I am weak, I ask you for my rights because that is according to your principles.
When I am strong, I take away your rights because that is according to my principles.”
That is the dilemma. This is not just schadenfreude.
That is exactly the problem with politics today. Our enemies don’t have any shared values or norms. All they seek is power.
Maybe the problem really is your mindset that people who have a different opinion are your enemies. A good political approach instead is to SUGGEST another way of solving a given problem softly stated instead of hammering such a person with hatred and divisive language. Approach that person with kindness and be pleased enough if you are allowed to state your case without such outbursts. Minds generally are hard to change for young and old alike, and those who do so do it SLOWLY. Just give “food for thought” possibilities in a way that’s acceptably presented with courtesy. Now, may… Read more »
On the contrary. Charles Krauthammer said it best: “To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.”
When it comes to the art/politics of the argument of moment it takes an ability to be persuasive. Some do that by bribery and/or threats. But, the better way to do it with some permanence is to gently guide the other person to consider happily changing his orientation to accept the basic argument you want to promote. Name calling and divisive language make the talker feel better but won’t get that goal accomplished and tends to cement the listener’s existing otherwise actually. What the talker thinks is not so persuasive as how he puts his argument forward to make it… Read more »
I agree, it is difficult to get people to change their minds. Also agree that ideas are better than insults.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we have the time to proceed slowly as you recommend. That only favors the status quo, which is unsustainable.
And may I recommend discontinuing the use of comparisons to fascism and Hitler? Also, stop burning Teslas.
Hey, I’ve only burned a half-dozen Teslas this week, and I thought I was below my limit. Also, if Herr Hitler we’re alive he might be viewing the Trump era with enough admiration to take a few notes for his improvement.
James, I downvoted your comment… Here’s why, I’m quoting you: “A good political approach instead is to SUGGEST another way of solving a given problem softly stated instead of hammering such a person with hatred and divisive language…” A nice squishy “sentiment”, but for the last TEN years we conservatives have been called “deplorables… bitter clingers… fascists… nazis… stupid… etcetera” by the dems and LIEberals… At times I’ve felt like a Jew in nazi Germany who was repeatedly told, “Oh, those are just words… the nazis really don’t mean what they say… Germany is a cradle of Western civilization… you… Read more »
It’s a bit odd and more than a little funny that if you interchange the words conservative and liberal I would be in agreement. See how that works? We’re both thinking essentially the same things about those with whom we disagree. It’s a better never to use such descriptions since the other side will never see themselves in such drastically negative ways. So, what’s the purpose here—simply to feel superior and do so with a huge grin or to persuade?. Teenagers do the former all the time. The “bigger man” is the one who will do otherwise and pick persuasion… Read more »
The problem with libtards is that they are brainwashed… as Lindy Li, the former democratic party fundraiser says, “These people are in a cult…”. Also, they are *absolutely* humorless, being the good little strident communists that they are – they *thrive* on rancor and hate. I’m not spending one iota of energy “engaging” with this lot; I live in Evanston and I know how these people “operate”, LOL…
Now, if only you’d have used the term dead-head Republicans or something similar I could wholeheartedly agree. Oh, well, maybe next time, huh?
You could suggest that Republicans are brainwashed, but they are not. You’ve been brainwashed to believe that Republicans are brainwashed. In fact, Republicans are the wildest bunch of people out there, it’s like herding cats to get them to agree on anything.
debtor wrote:
” We are battling communists who have declared open war on you…”
And as you’ve often said, “They want you DEAD”… that is the communist MO…
These are the people who invented safe spaces and microaggressions. I have a low level of confidence in their assessment of the danger they are in.
Mark Glennon wrote:
“They all say there is a new atmosphere of fear and intimidation felt by the left…”
And I could not be HAPPIER about this… these leftists pukes need to be “coralled”, they’ve been using their positions of power and privilege to destroy this country for FAR too long…
Really, GM? Even a kid who doesn’t like Hamas or terrorists but criticizes Israeli conduct in Gaza, peacefully and lawfully? He is at high risk of getting plucked off the street and sent home, midway through his degree. And we don’t even know the reasons why the government is pulling the visas because they won’t tell us. It could include those who, for example, criticize Trump for negotiating with Russia because they are pro-Ukraine. They certainly are not all Communists at war with you, that you mentioned.
Or maybe since they are *guests* in this country, they might simply keep their mouths shut? If I were on a student visa in another country, that’s sure what I’d do…
They’re all gay race communists. Each finger on the clenched fist of solidarity represents a different prong of communism. One finger is the BLM communism, another is eco-nazi communism, the LGBTQP+ communism, the Eat the Rich communism, the fourth wave feminist commie. The solution to the problem each finger represents is communism. The end result is always communism. There’s much cross-over between the people who believe these things; the LGBTQP+ commie is never like “whoa, I can do the climate change communism, but that BLM communism is a bit too far for me”. The ideology is mostly just window dressing;… Read more »
“They’re all gay race communists,” you say. My tentative thought is you’re out of here, but I will think about it, discuss with staff and decide soon. For sure, you are a nut job who wants to replace left wing tyranny with right wing tyranny. That’s not grounds for getting banned here, but slurs like that are.
I’m not some nut. I’m calling it what Tucker Carlson and others have called it. The Wall Street Journal reported that Tucker used that term. “Gay race communism isn’t an appealing export to anyone, and that’s what we are exporting,” he says, referring to what he sees as the social agenda of America’s cultural and media establishment and, to some extent, the US Government. “The purpose of the empire cannot be make other people’s children transgender.” – Tucker Carlson in the WSJ, July 18, 2024. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/inside-the-strange-new-world-of-tucker-carlson/ar-BB1qcljd You can call me a nut and ban me, I don’t really care. This… Read more »
JD Vance follows an anonymous guy named “Bronze Aged Pervert” who, as far back as 2016 pushed a book called the Bronze Age Mindset. If you think I’m a nut, wow, you have no idea the stuff in that book, it’s as far right as you can get. The stuff in that book will make you go crazy. Yet, his book made massive inroads into the Trump admin. Like I said, JD Vance follows this guy. It’s these types of people and their thinking has massive, huge influence on trump’s administration, and it’s furthest right administration we’ve had in decades.… Read more »
A high point in Trump’s administration, in my view, was JD Vance’s historic, beautiful speech in Munich on free speech. He believes in free speech, you want to squelch it, just has the left has traditionally done. And you should know the the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled, unanimously in Garcia case, against the Star Chamber process you are defending. In response, Trump has apparently stopped snatching people off the street as in Ozturk’s case at Tufts. You are at odds even with the conservatives on the Supreme Court and the Trump Administration.
Here is an example of what I find offensive. CUAD, the organization for which Mahmoud Khalil is the spokesperson, has a Substack. Here is their post from Nov 2024, extolling the hero Yahya Sinwar. The architect of 10/7.
https://open.substack.com/pub/cuapartheiddivest/p/cuad-remains-committed-to-our-demands?r=oyco8&utm_medium=ios
Don’t put all student protesters in Khalil’s category. Khalil should be deported because there’s solid evidence that he’s a terror threat. He did active work for CUAD which is basically Hamas, lied on his Visa application and probably committed trespass and vandalism though not charged for that.
OK, I agree that not all foreign students support this. But certainly many do. For anyone looking for students to deport, it’s a target-rich environment. So I find it hard to believe that one of the first chosen is a young woman who is obviously sympathetic. Supposedly she did nothing more than sign a relatively innocuous op-ed. That just doesn’t make sense, when it wouldn’t be hard to find others like Khalil. I believe there is more to this story. As for the idea that they are all our guests and should be treated that way, I think those who… Read more »
Here is a definition on the term. There is lots of info on that that I never heard of before.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gay_race_communism
https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/when-communism-was-queer
I guess it doesn’t matter because he said he decided to leave.
Student visas are issued to enable pursuit of an education, not to import activists.
Any visa holders who engage in demonstrations should be shown the door. No second chances.
Period.
Feel free to demonstrate to your heart’s content, in YOUR country. You’re a GUEST here; if you want to remain, study, get your education and express your activism when you return to your country of origin.
You can make the case for setting that rule going forward, but not retroactively. Demonstrations by visa holders have long been allowed.
Why didn’t she simply concentrate on her studies and keep her mouth shut about matters political…???
*No* one here will miss her utter uselessness… but she will be free to spout her hateful nonsense back home in Turkey… so, it’s a “win – win” for her *and* the United States…
These people always end up agitating for the most divisive and controversial issues. They never come here to agitate against Red Light Cameras, or Pension Reform, or welfare reform. It’s always some insane left wing communist cause, it’s about time the administration put its foot down. Academia needs to be under the heel of the conservative’s boot because they’re the worst and most dangerous group in america today, and worse, they survive almost entirely on government money. They’re all parasites and leeches.
My sense about many of you who have no problem with what the government is doing here are forgetting the consequences of the legal precedent it would set if courts approve it. It would mean, for example, that a president on the left could block foreign conservatives from visiting here, such as Mark Steyn, Jordan Peterson or Nigel Farage. And they could just snatch those people off the street if they were already here on a visa, with no explanation whatsoever given an in complete secrecy. And here’s An Australian comedian on the left saying she won’t visit here because… Read more »
And yet you were silent on those merely attending an inauguration that were snatched up and imprisoned by association. Story sound familiar??
Huh?
He’s suggesting you did not seem concerned when J6 patriots were hunted down like feral animals by the federal government, and SWAT teams followed them for weeks before raiding their homes in the middle of the night with flash bangs, even though most of them offered to voluntarily turn themselves in.
We don’t write about purely federal issues. This story directly pertained to IL. In comments on J6, I’ve said I have no sympathy for the violent J6 protesters who vandalized or fought with cops. They should not have been pardoned. I’ve also criticized how the others were badly mistreated by the feds.
For sure, I’m just telling you what he meant. Nobody had any business macing or battering police officers at J6 and they deserve punishment. But the grandma that toured the capital building also went to jail too and her home swatted and her life destroyed.
Trump had to do a blanket pardon, it was the only way. As the saying goes, I’d rather have 100 guilty men walk free than 1 innocent man be wrongfully punished. In this case, it’s at most several dozen rowdy protestors who were pardoned – keep in mind the punishment is the process – while a thousand others were wrongfully prosecuted. The rowdy protesters were punished. The pardon only removes the stain of the conviction, but it doesn’t undo the time they spent in prison.
Bullshit. You can see the faces of those who were punching cops in many videos.
AFTER they were gassed and shot at with rubber bullets.
The videos selectively leave that part out.
Not true. Look at the early stage when cops were lined up trying to stop entry and some protesters were punching them trying to get through. And what about the vandalism? I do entirely agree that many other protesters, who did little or nothing wrong, were treated disgracefully in the prosecutions.
Not sure Mark was “silent” about that, but that event simply illustrates that any administration is capable of ignoring basic rights.
Yes, I agree, that abducting foreign student visa holders off the street sets a bad precedent because Democrats might use it against conservatives in the future. It’s a bit like the filibuster in the senate – two years ago Democrats called it a racist relic of slavery when it prevents them from ripping up the constitution, but today the filibuster is a miracle of Democracy that stops 95% of the Orange Man’s agenda. But I’m also a realist. And we need to use every tool at our disposal right now to destroy academia. I cannot stress enough that we are… Read more »
I think that we are aware of the legal precedent consequences but have lived through: Massive government lawfare since the obama administration..An FBI targeting catholics and school board opponents. An IRS targeting groups that sound to be vaguely republican. A government forcing people to get a specific untested vaccination. Government irrationally shutting down unfavored businesses yet not touching favored business. Government forcibly mandating pointless masks. An entire justice system, federal, state and local targeting a president and other members of the unfavored political party. Government allowing 30 million criminal illegal immigrants to enter the country, doing nothing to stop them… Read more »
In my opinion, the better strategy to end it is not by adopting some of the evil tactics of the other side. The public will see through that, brand it as hypocrisy, and tune out both sides.
It’s not so much hypocrisy as realpolitik. Academia is a sewer of left wing radical behavior and it’s time the administration put its foot down. Again, Trump’s visa revocations is the *moderate* course of action to take. YOu may not see it as moderate, but it is. Pinochet was rounding up thousands of leftwing college students and pushing them out of helicopters. Pol Pot killed nearly every professor in Cambodia and the ones that did survive were sent to work on rice farms in the rural areas. (pol pot was a commie but he hated academia) Trumps revocation of several… Read more »
State your evidence for claiming that they are “known leftwing agitators.” You have none, which is why the US Supreme Court unanimously (all conservatives included) ruled against your presumptions of guilt — in the recent Garcia ruling.
We don’t know anything about what these students are accused of having done. It seems plausible that a total of 13 students (at SIU/E and Northern), plus some unknown additional number, might have seriously disrupted their schools or communities, but we have no information. We also don’t know whether they’re being snatched up and sent away, or have due process. (There is some additional information here.)
Why does IL have so many international students? Simple, because IL universities charge higher tuition fees and the international students can afford to pay. IL loves foreign students for their money. Meanwhile, in state IL students can’t afford IL schools and go to out of state schools, especially in the south, where out of state tuition and grants are cheaper than staying in IL for school. Typical IL.
Public Illinois Universities are supported with public funds , no foreign students should taking a seat meant for tax paying residents.
IL is giving away our birthright – the opportunity to attend a flagship state university – to foreign spies, for nothing.
Like all things in Illinois this mob of foreign students isn’t about education or exceptional tuition payments funding or subsidizing in-state students tuition. It’s all about employing Leftists Democrats and public sector union vermin at Illinois Universities. Period. The bloat of “administrators” need to be paid for and the foreign tuition scam is one source of that income.