April 23, 2025

THE ACLU THINKS OF ITSELF AS A PART OF THE JUDICIARY, NOT AS AN OUTSIDER: The ACLU’S Ex Parte Voicemail To Seek An Ex Parte Injunction. “The mere fact that the plaintiffs perceive an emergency does not excuse the plaintiffs from following the usual rules. Then again, the Supreme Court ignored a host of procedural rules in this case, so maybe the ACLU thought the call was cool.”

Plus: “Gelernt was on notice not to leave voicemails, as the court said all requests had to be made in writing:” Makes you wonder if he was having unreported ex parte conversations or messaging with other judges who have been less forthcoming.

Posted at 8:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

BLUE CITY BLUES: LA mayor: $800M deficit, layoffs coming, seeking bailout.

“Cities like ours are going through challenging economic times across the nation,” said Bass. “Turmoil and uncertainty from Washington and a slowing economy are causing lower revenue projections.”

With 61,455 employees, 1,647 layoffs equate to a workforce reduction of 2.7%. With just over $8.3 billion paid out in payroll last year, the city pays its employees an average of $135,355 per year, or more than double the median citywide salary of $57,247 per year.

This means the announced layoffs would only cover about a quarter of the at least $800 million deficit.

During her State of the City address Monday, Bass said she is traveling to Sacramento to seek a state bailout, but if the state is either unwilling or unable to fund such a bailout amid falling sales and corporate tax revenue and employment, more layoffs could be necessary.

“The city attorney and I will be in Sacramento this week to meet with legislative leaders and advocate for resources while also working to manage the increasing liabilities,” said Bass.

City Controller Kenneth Mejia has been warning the city is “going broke” since the middle of last year — the city’s budget was in crisis even before the January fires.

Related: LA mayor brags about ‘fastest recovery’ in CA history, home permits down by two-thirds. “Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass bragged about the city’s post-fire recovery being the ‘fastest’ in state history, but data from Hilgard Analytics shows home permitting is down by two-thirds since 2022, when the city passed a major transfer tax on all real estate over $5 million.”

And: Los Angeles approves just 4 permits to rebuild in Pacific Palisades after nearly 7,000 homes burned in wildfires.

But the city’s revenue problems are somehow Trump’s fault, according to Bass.

Posted at 7:34 am by Stephen Green

DO NOT MISS DON SURBER THIS MORNING: Why? Because he takes apart the federal judiciary’s illegal immigrant deportation insanity more effectively and completely than I’ve read anywhere else.

Posted at 7:34 am by Mark Tapscott

SPECTRE OPENS UP NEW PROBE INTO ERNST STAVRO BLOFELD: World Economic Forum Opens New Probe Into Founder Klaus Schwab.

World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab is under investigation by the organization he created after a new whistleblower letter alleged financial and ethical misconduct by the longtime leader and his wife.

The anonymous letter was sent last week to the Forum’s board and raised concerns about the Forum’s governance and workplace culture, including allegations that the Schwab family mixed their personal affairs with the Forum’s resources without proper oversight, according to the letter and people familiar with the matter.

It included allegations that Klaus Schwab asked junior employees to withdraw thousands of dollars from ATMs on his behalf and used Forum funds to pay for private, in-room massages at hotels. It also alleged that his wife Hilde, a former Forum employee, scheduled “token” Forum-funded meetings in order to justify luxury holiday travel at the organization’s expense.

Related: With Blofeld staring into the piranha pits, new Bond supervillain appointed to lead Spectre:

Nestle, eh? If that business’s name rings a bell in the context of woke corporatism, it’s what launched Jonah Goldberg to write Liberal Fascism in 2008, which focused several chapters on a century’s worth of corporatism, the intertwining of government and corporations, much beloved by the namesake publisher of Bloomberg (and in an even more radical form by Bernie Sanders), which the post-Weimar government of Germany dubbed the Gleichschaltung. As Jonah told Kathryn Jean Lopez in 2009, at the apogee of the left’s Hopenchange Obamamania:

You know, when I first started pondering the book, I thought it might be all about economics. About ten years ago I went on a junket to Switzerland and attended a talk with the CEO of Nestlé. Listening to him, it became very clear to me that he had little to no interest in free markets or capitalism properly understood. He saw his corporation as a “partner” with governments, NGOs, the U.N., and other massive multinationals. The profit motive was good for efficiency and rewarding talent, but beyond that, he wanted order and predictability and as much planning as he could get. I think that mindset informs the entire class of transnational progressives, the shock troops of what H. G. Wells hoped would lead to his liberal-fascist “world brain.”

If you look at how most liberals think about economics, they want big corporations and big government working in tandem with labor, universities (think industrial policy), and progressive organizations to come up with “inclusive” policies set at the national or international level. That’s not necessarily socialism — it’s corporatism. When you listen to how Obama is making economic policy with “everyone at the table,” he’s describing corporatism, the economic philosophy of fascism. Government is the senior partner, but all of the other institutions are on board — so long as they agree with the government’s agenda. The people left out of this coordinated effort — the Nazis called it the Gleichschaltung — are the small businessmen, the entrepreneurs, the ideological, social, or economic mavericks who don’t want to play along. When you listen to Obama demonize Chrysler’s bondholders simply because they want their contracts enforced and the rule of law sustained, you get a sense of what I’m talking about.

I don’t think Obama wants a brutal tyranny any more than Hillary Clinton does (which is to say I don’t think he wants anything of the sort). But I do think they honestly believe that progress is best served if everyone falls in line with a national agenda, a unifying purpose, a “village” mentality expanded to include all of society. That sentiment drips from almost every liberal exhortation about everything from global warming to national service. But to point it out earns you the label of crank. As I said a minute ago about that “We’re All Fascists Now” chapter, I think people fail to understand that tyrannies — including soft, Huxleyan tyrannies — aren’t born from criminal conspiracies by evil men; they’re born by progressive groupthink.

I’m sure with a former Nestle CEO running the World Economic Forum, the chocolate ration should be doubleplusgood! Or the insect ration, at the very least.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

JOEL KOTKIN: Is The Economist Smoking Crack?

I thought crack-smoking had lost its appeal, but perhaps it is still a regular pastime among journalists determined to take down Trump’s America. The Economist, for example, has suggested that “the land of the free” has moved across the Atlantic, from America to Europe. The continent, the magazine claims, is now the best place to enjoy the “pursuit of happiness”, while embracing “moral norms” on following climate edicts, fostering free trade and preventing oligarchal overreach.

Really? They certainly can’t be thinking of the “pursuit of happiness” in terms of economic opportunity. Even The Economist cannot hide the fact that Europe is an economic laggard compared not just to America, but to China and increasingly India, now estimated to be the world’s fifth largest economy. Over the 15 years to 2023, the eurozone economy grew by about 6 per cent, measured in dollars, compared with 82 per cent for the US, according to International Monetary Fund data.

To put it another way, the most powerful economy on the European continent is barely larger than my adopted home state of California. Two decades ago, one could legitimately see Europe, with its own regime of protectionist policies, as a third force in the world economy. Today this is no longer the case. . . .

Even as they disdain Trump, Europe’s leaders might consider embracing some of his policies. For example, there appears to be no way to follow “net zero” strictures – now largely gone in America – without facing “energy suicide”. High energy prices, combined with electrical vehicle mandates, surely all but guarantee that Europe will lose its grip on the car market to Chinese producers. Germany’s entire industrial structure seems likely to decline: it could lose upwards of 400,000 of its estimated 800,000 auto jobs by 2030.

China, not a tariff-imposing America, is eating away at Europe’s fading industrial economy. Europe’s “net zero” policies play right into the hands of a country that seeks to export its batteries and EVs, but is still massively reliant on coal, making it by far the world’s largest emitter of CO2. China also has an interest in speeding Britain’s already rapid deindustrialisation, as the recent scandal at the Scunthorpe steelworks showed so vividly.

Europe might also seek to pick up on Trump’s tight control over the US border. European leaders seem disdainful towards their own citizens, even though they are already voting for anti-migrant, nationalist and culturally conservative candidates, such as Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. At the same time, the role of unvetted migrants in undermining order on the streets of the continent’s cities simply undermines one of Europe’s great assets, its uniquely beautiful and formerly safe urban centres. Remarkably, some Europeans think that, as a way to get back at America, Europe should seek to pivot to China.

To be fair, most of the people saying that are being bribed by China.

Posted at 7:08 am by Glenn Reynolds

THE CORRELATION OF FORCES IS NOT FAVORABLE: Victor Davis Hanson: Do Elite Universities Really Wish to Fight the Federal Government? “Harvard and most elite schools like it want it both ways. They do as they please on their own turf and yet still demand that the taxpayers send them multibillion-dollar checks in addition to their multibillion-dollar private incomes. Aside from the issues of autonomy and free expression, there are lots of campus practices that higher education would prefer were not widely known to the public. But soon they will be, and thus will become sources of public anger.”

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds

NORMALLY I DO A PROMO POST FOR (MOSTLY) INDY AUTHORS ON SUNDAY. THIS WEEK SLIPPED TO MONDAY, AND I’M ONLY LINKING NOW:   Book Promo And Vignettes By Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike.

No. I’m not dying (probably.) just caught the cold from heck that’s been going around and am having a heck of a time getting over it. It just did a u-turn and hit me again. Anyway, interesting crop of books, and there’s a vignette challenge too.

Posted at 7:00 am by Sarah Hoyt