#HIMTOO? Report: California Dems in Disarray As Former Staffer Accuses Swalwell of Twice Sexually Assaulting Her.

Flashbacks:

 

REVIEW: I Drove The Lamborghini Revuelto. It’s Part Rocket, Part Sculpture, All Insanity. Here’s My Review. “The Revuelto replaces the Aventador, a car that for over a decade served as Lamborghini’s flagship and the poster on a million bedroom walls. I’ve driven the Aventador, and I loved it for what it was: loud, dramatic, unapologetic. But that car had rough edges. The single-clutch automated manual gearbox could rattle your fillings. The ride was punishing. It was a theatrical experience, but not always a pleasant one. The Revuelto takes everything the Aventador promised and actually delivers it.”

FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY [VIP]: Sir, This Is a Wendy’s. “It’s time for your much-needed break from the serious news, and this week, we’ll learn how to get charged with pretty much everything, the worst excuse for speeding, and how they (almost) get home from the liquor store in Kentucky these days.”

IS ERIC ADAMS NOW AN ALBANIAN?

Eric Adams has a well-documented penchant for travel, having made trips to places like Senegal, Cuba, and Turkey during his time as Brooklyn borough president, with his connection to the latter nation later evolving into a federal corruption case that was eventually dropped but marred his time in City Hall. But several outlets have reported that Adams has recently deepened his ties with one nation in particular: Albania.

The Albanian Daily News reports that the former mayor has officially been granted Albanian citizenship and issued an Albanian passport. According to the outlet, Adams’s new citizenship was approved by special decree by Albanian president Bajram Begaj. Euronews Albania echoed the same report with no additional details into how Adams’s alleged new citizenship came to be.

If Albania now has a former New York City mayor on its payroll, we need to dispatch Stanley Motts and Connie Brean immediately to get to the bottom of what this dangerous nation is planning next:

COLONIALISM, STRAIGHT UP:

WELL, YEAH — BUT THAT WAS BEFORE ANYBODY CALLED THEIR BLUFF:

I’M STILL CURIOUS: I’m not usually accused on believing in conspiracy theories.  I’m more likely to be the one chastising my friends for believing them.  And yet … for years, I’ve wondered why suddenly the disability rights groups were knocking themselves out to fight special minimum wage laws applicable to severely disabled persons.  Who was bankrolling all this?  My guess at the time was the SEIU.  I’d still like to know … but I suppose there’s a good chance I never will.

Under very limited circumstances, Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standard Act permits individuals with severe disabilities (think Down Syndrome) to accept employment from certain specially licensed and regulated businesses that are allowed to pay less than the minimum wage.  The program is strictly optional.  If an individual with Down Syndrome can find an employer willing to pay bigger bucks, then more power to him.

The program is very popular with the parents and family members of severely disabled individuals.  When the Commission on Civil Rights did a report on this issue in 2020, we received about 9,700 comments from the parents and other family members.  That was a record number for us.  Almost all of them argued strongly in favor of Section 14(c).  The Commission nevertheless sided with the disability rights folks and called for the program’s elimination.

I dissented, figuring the parents and other family members knew more about what was good for their loved ones than the disability rights folks.  The family members certainly knew that without 14(c) there would be no jobs at all for most Down Syndrome sufferers.  Not too many Down Syndrome sufferers get jobs as engineers at Google, Apple, or Tesla.  The disability rights advocates who testified before the Commission brought along a young man with Down Syndrome who testified that he wanted a more challenging job and would prefer a job where he could carry a briefcase to the office like his father.  We were evidently supposed to nod and pretend that this man’s hope was a realistic option for Down Syndrome sufferers generally.

Nevertheless, the disability rights advocates were pulling out all stops to get rid of the law.  They were lobbying state legislatures around the country to override it with a state provision that requires minimum wage.  And they were succeeding in getting the programs phased out.

As part of the report, we interviewed the Commissioner at the Vermont Department of Disabilities, Aging, and Independent Living, where 14(c) workshops were being done away with.  She admitted that the jobs had disappeared.  Instead, the state (with taxpayer money) was providing “minders” to keep these now-jobless individuals entertained.

I got the feeling that creating state-funded jobs for the “minders”—who might then join a union like the SEIU—was the central feature not a bug in this plan.  Chris Rufo and Kenneth Scrupp have been writing about this kind of cycle:  At the union’s behest, left-wing politicians fund programs that employ large numbers of low-skilled employees, who in turn join the union, which in turn donates big bucks to the left-wing politicians.   Government gets bigger and bigger.  Maybe the controversy over the Section 14(c) is another example of this.

IT’S TIME FOR VICTORIA TAFT’S West Coast, Messed Coast™: Hey, Where’d All That Money Go? “Here’s the truth. The insiders in Sacramento, Salem, and Olympia have been using social service non-profits, NGOs, and questionable charitable groups as passthroughs for their friends and pet constituencies for years. Billions have been gifted to insiders and friends. And now — at long last — actual taxpayers have gotten wise to the grift. You can thank independent journalists for highlighting these absurd expenses in a much simpler and understandable way than thick books or endless PDFs filled with intentionally confusing stats, opaquely written conclusions, and puffed-up executive summaries that don’t reflect the data can ever do.”

KEIR STARMER’S REGIME WOULD BE A CLOWN SHOW IF IT WEREN’T FOR ALL THE RAPES AND STABBINGS:

UPDATE (From Ed): Metaphor alert: