August 12, 2026

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Google cofounder Sergey Brin has now spent $100 million to fight California’s proposed billionaire tax—he could owe $13 billion if he loses.

According to a filing from Friday, Brin donated an additional $20 million to Building a Better California, a PAC and political advocacy organization opposing the state’s billionaire tax and supporting other pro-business policies and housing and infrastructure affordability. He has now given a total of $102 million to the group.

Proposition 40, which will be on the ballot in November, would impose a one-time, 5% tax on California’s 200 billionaires, with 90% of the revenue from the proposed measure going toward the state’s health care program and 10% going toward education, food assistance, and administration. Brin, with a net worth of nearly $270 billion, could owe more than $13 billion as a result of the tax.

Previously: Gavin Newsom urges a national ‘billionaires’ tax’ while fighting one in California.

Democrats want a national billionaire tax (that will mysteriously end up applying to far lesser beings) on the national level in the hopes that there will be nowhere to hide from it.

Posted at 3:50 pm by Stephen Green

GO AWAY: New surveillance tech links your phone to your license plate.

Imagine that you share a ride to work with the same colleague most mornings. As it passes by a license plate reader, the camera records the car, which can be linked through vehicle records to its registered owner. Beside it, another sensor detects signals broadcast by devices traveling nearby, such as your phone and your colleague’s smartwatch.

After enough trips, software may treat some of those devices as a recurring electronic signature associated with the vehicle. Weeks later, one of the same device signals appears alongside a different car connected to an investigation. The signal itself may not contain its owner’s name, but its previous association with a known vehicle gives investigators another clue they can use to work out who was carrying the device.

SignalTrace, a system marketed by the security company Leonardo, is designed to work alongside automatic license plate readers. The company says it can recognize groups of consumer devices that regularly move together, then associate them with license plate records and time-stamped locations. The pattern can then be searched even when a police investigator does not know the plate number.

Wanted: A car-sized Faraday cage.

Posted at 2:48 pm by Stephen Green

WOKE 2.0 HAS SUCCESSFULLY DEFUNDED THE FASHION POLICE: Alert: The Brocialists Are Dandymaxxing.

 

 

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Tax refunds gone for ‘foreseeable future’ under Prop NN.

A measure referred to Colorado’s November ballot by the legislature would allow the state to keep and spend over $850 million in just the first two budget cycles after passage, revenue that otherwise would be refunded back to taxpayers.

Majority Democrats passed Senate Bill 26-135 during the last legislative session, which placed Proposition NN on the ballot. The measure would allow the state to retain excess tax dollars collected over the current Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) revenue cap to spend on public education and cover homestead property tax exemption reimbursements.

According to a new report by the Common Sense Institute, Prop NN would increase state spending by $329.9 million in fiscal year (FY) 2027 and $521 million in FY 2028, totaling $850.9 million over the two years.

Those are funds that would otherwise be sent back to taxpayers under TABOR, the constitutional amendment that limits growth of a portion of the state budget to a formula of population growth plus inflation. TABOR also requires voter approval for tax increases, among other things.

If NN passes, Dems will pass along our tax refunds to their cronies in public education.

It’s For the Children™, of course, but as always, little or none of the additional monies will reach any classrooms.

Posted at 1:46 pm by Stephen Green

DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Jason Arday is far from an aberration in higher learning:

 

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll

KURT SCHLICHTER: Ignore the Poll Dancers.

If you look at the pollsters for this November, and if you believe them, things look fairly dire for the GOP and, therefore, America. But if you dig a little deeper, you see a lot of the big-picture polls show that blue areas are really, really, really running up the score for the Democrats, while red areas are much closer but are still red. And some of the results are just flat-out insane. The idea that James Talarico has the lead in Texas doesn’t work for me. I’m going to be in Texas soon in the run-up to the election, and it’s entirely possible that I’ve completely misjudged things, but it’s not likely. There are a lot of libs in Texas because there are a lot of Texans. Still, the idea that a majority of Texans are going to vote for the blasphemous sexually ambiguous creeper who wants to ban guns and hates meat and who looks like he shouldn’t be allowed within 1,000 feet of a kindergarten just doesn’t work.

Don’t get cocky. And as Kurt concludes, “Just don’t let the pollsters get you down. You can’t control what they tell you, but you can control one vital thing — your own actions and your own vote. Write checks to favored candidates. Go out and knock on doors for favored candidates. Vote for patriotic candidates who don’t want to eradicate America or ban Thanksgiving. And keep hanging up on those irritating pollsters.”

Posted at 1:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

DISPATCHES FROM THE OCCUPIED ZONES: Mamdani and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week (and It’s Only Wednesday).

It started so innocently, as these things do, with New York City’s young socialist mayor demanding nonsensical NYPD coverage for his activist wife’s ego-trip to Syria and Lebanon later this month. By the time the week was over, Zohran Mamdani’s rent control scheme was a shambles, his signature pied-à-terre tax was on judicial hold, and Florida was mocking him as its “Economic Developer of the Year” on a Times Square digital billboard.

Oh, wait — it’s only Wednesday.

Much more at the link.

Posted at 1:15 pm by Stephen Green

MAYBE A FEW YEARS HARD LABOR: No Repentance = No Grace For Woke Bullshit. “There was no ‘Woke 1.0,’ just a continuous racialist, anti-Western Civilization, anti-rational, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, anti-Republican movement whose roots stretch back into the Comintern, Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, carried forward into the Port Huron Statement, the Weather Underground, the campus radicals of the 1960s and their long march through academia and other western institutions, special campus victimhood identity politics carve-out departments for blacks, Hispanics, radical feminists and ‘Queer Theory,’ into the political correctness of the 1980s that blossomed into the poisonous flowers of social justice, radical transsexism, Palestinian- and Islamo-felia and anti-Israel animus that has turned into full-blown antisemitism, and a radical fringe in the Democrat Party that metastasized to its core under Obama and President Autopen. AOC’s Democratic Socialists of America and their fellow-travelers were all on-board with their lunacy every step of the way.”

Posted at 12:44 pm by Stephen Green

21st CENTURY HEADLINES: UK Venues Ban Meta Smart Glasses En Masse.

“Meta glasses seem to breach this code, and common sense, by enabling surreptitious surveillance, so our instinct is to say turn off the cameras. This is akin to our efforts to stop audible playing of videos in our pubs, which also invades people’s space.”

Wetherspoons says it has CCTV cameras inside its pubs for security reasons, but that data is strictly controlled by legislation.

Upmarket London restaurateur Jeremy King tells The Guardian that he is banning Meta glasses from his restaurants, which include Arlington, The Park, and Simpsons in the Strand.

“I would never knowingly allow any invasion of guest privacy other than with the eyes we were born with,” King says.

I guess Geordi La Forge isn’t drinking there when he’s on shore leave. But otherwise, it’s a rare moment of common sense in the UK.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll

YES:

“There’s always a choice!” the wise man once said. “This one is a choice between ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ — which is a difference much more poignant than that between ‘good’ and ‘better.'”

Posted at 12:28 pm by Stephen Green

IF IT’S NOT CLOSE, THEY CAN’T CHEAT: Voter Data Was Missing From 5 Milwaukee USB Sticks — Then WI’s Election Night Got Even Weirder. “The obvious question here is: How did five out of nine of the USB sticks leave the election facility without the correct results and files? Here’s a second question: maybe we should just use paper ballots? Digital technology doesn’t seem to be doing our election system any favors. And the other big question folks are scrambling to answer is how did pollsters get this race so spectacularly wrong?”

Related:

“The goal of the pact is obvious: candidates who are DSA in all but name, who receive unified Democratic support after the primaries, and who still have a shot at winning a general election. So don’t be fooled: the DSA is driving the car, choosing the direction. The normie Dems are just negotiating over the speed.”

UPDATE:

Posted at 12:22 pm by Ed Driscoll

BLAMING THE JEWS FOR THE THING THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC SAYS IT’S TRYING TO DO IS QUITE THE FLEX:

Uygur’s audience eats it up, regardless.

Posted at 11:57 am by Stephen Green

DON’T MISS THIS:

Posted at 11:56 am by Charlie Martin

NIFTY: U.S. Army Plans To Adapt Its 50mm Chain Gun For Counter UAS.

The service on Aug. 10 released a solicitation to integrate the gun into a system that can track and shoot down Group 1-3 uncrewed aircraft systems. The solicitation, from the Project Manager Maneuver Ammunition Systems, is to support a potential development program and demonstration efforts, although no requirements have been set yet. Responses are due by Aug. 24.

The Army selected the Picatinny Arsenal-designed XM913 chain gun for its Next Generation Combat Vehicle.

Along with the solicitation and to coincide with the annual Space and Missile Defense Symposium here, companies are showcasing their proposals to use new ammunition for counter UAS. Northrop Grumman, for example, released a breakdown of its plans to use the Bushmaster family of chain guns and proximity ammunition for the role.

They’ll end up needing 10 times more ammo than they’ll plan for.

Posted at 11:42 am by Stephen Green

YES:

Posted at 11:26 am by Stephen Green