Two dead after Garland apartment resident shoots burglars in self-defense

Two suspected burglars were found dead at a Garland apartment complex after a man said they broke into his apartment and began firing shots. The resident returned fire, fatally shooting both, police said.

Just after 2:30 a.m. Saturday, Garland police were dispatched to a burglary in progress where gunshots were fired. Police responded to Woodlands at The Preserve, an apartment complex in the 4300 block of North Garland Avenue.

When they arrived at the scene, officers observed two men who suffered from apparent gunshot wounds, according to police. One victim was found inside the apartment, and the other victim was found outside near the same residence. Paramedics responded, and both victims were declared dead at the scene. The resident of the apartment informed police that the two men forced entry into his unit and began shooting at him. The resident said he returned fire back to defend himself, according to police.

The Dallas County Medical Examiner has not released the names or ages of the deceased men. Detectives are still trying to determine why the individuals targeted the apartment.

March 20

1760 – The Great Boston Fire of 1760 destroys 349 buildings, as well as several ships in port, leaving over 1ooo people homeless. but with no reported deaths.

1815 – After escaping from Elba, Napoleon enters Paris with a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.

1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published.

1854 – The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin.

1883 – The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property – still in force – is signed…….in Paris.

1915 – Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity.

1922 – CV-1, the USS Langley is commissioned as the first U.S. Navy aircraft carrier.

1933 – As Chief of Police of Munich, Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler orders the creation of Dachau concentration camp.

1952 – The US Senate ratifies the Security Treaty Between the United States and Japan.

1985 – Libby Riddles becomes the first woman to win the 1,135 mile long Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which commemorates the the 1925 diphtheria antitoxin serum dog sled run from Anchorage to Nome.

1995 – The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo carries out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, killing 13 people and injuring over 6,200 more.

2003 – Under authority of The Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002, passed by Congress in October, U.S. and Allied ground forces invade Iraq, due to the reports of violations of the 1991 ceasefire agreement.

2015 – The Northern Hemisphere Vernal Equinox, a Solar Eclipse, and a Perigee Syzygy “Supermoon” all occur on the same day.

Shootist Jim Taylor confirmed a text I received that John Linebaugh suffered a heart attack this afternoon and has passed way.

He was a friend. He will be missed.

Well it appears that “Devout Catholic” Joe Biden has the same definition of sin as his former boss: “Being out of alignment with my values.”

‘Close To Sinful:’ Biden Floats Possibility Of Nation-Wide Transgender Law.

President Joe Biden appeared to criticize Ron DeSantis on his handling of transgender youth and floated the possibility of a nation-wide transgender law in an interview clip released Monday.

“What’s going on in Florida, is as my mother would say, ‘close to sinful.’ I mean, it’s just terrible what they’re doing,” Biden said while speaking with actor Kal Penn.

“It’s not like … a kid wakes up one morning and says, ‘you know, I decided that I want to become a man or I want to become a woman … I mean, what are they thinking about here? They’re human beings, they love, they have feelings, they have inclinations,” Biden continued. “It’s cruel.”

“And the way we do it is we make sure we pass legislation like we passed on same-sex marriage. You mess with that, you’re breaking the law and you’re going to be held accountable,” Biden added.

DeSantis has led an administration-wide effort to ban sex change treatments for minors. He has said doctors should be sued for performing sex changes on children and suspended a state attorney refusing to adhere to the child sex change ban.

DeSantis also requested public universities report how many students they treated for “gender dysphoria,” and in October, the Florida Board of Medicine voted to ban sex change surgeries and hormone therapy for children under 18.

Dylan Mulvaney, a man who identifies as a woman and has garnered attention on social media for using hyper-feminine stereotypes, asked Biden in October if he thinks states should “have the right” to ban “gender-affirming health care.”

“I don’t think any state or anybody should have the right to do that, as a moral question and a legal question,” Biden responded.

“I just think it’s wrong,” Biden added. “I feel very, very strongly that you should have every single solitary right, including, including use of your gender identity bathroom in public.”

Florida Agency for Health Care Administration Secretary Jason Weida told the Caller that “the ‘gender-affirming’ model pushed by the Biden Administration is decades behind other developed countries, including Sweden and most recently Norway.”

“What is ‘sinful’ is the establishment pushing harmful surgeries and treatment with long-term effects on minors with no accountability or transparency,” Weida said.

“Last year, the Agency conducted a thorough review of several services promoted by the Federal Government to treat gender dysphoria and found that these services – sex reassignment surgery, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers – are not consistent with widely accepted professional medical standards and are experimental and investigational with the potential for harmful long term affects,” he added.

Sunday Thoughts: ‘Christianity and Liberalism’ at 100

I don’t remember how it came to my attention, but last summer, I downloaded the audiobook of J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity and Liberalism. I know, I know; it’s not exactly breezy summer reading (or listening), but I definitely don’t regret it. It’s worth pointing out that this year is the 100th anniversary of this landmark work.

Machen, an evangelical scholar at Princeton, wrote Christianity and Liberalism because he believed that “the chief modern rival of Christianity is Liberalism.” The book stemmed from the rising tide of liberal theology that was only growing in the early 1920s. Machen saw how liberalism was seeping into his beloved Princeton Theological Seminary, and that phenomenon alarmed him. He and others would go on to found Westminster Theological Seminary a few years later in an attempt to counter the liberalism at Princeton with biblical orthodoxy.

It’s astonishing how timely Machen’s words are a century later. In Christianity and Liberalism, “Machen combats liberal theology that crept into the once conservative Princeton Seminary with surgeon-like precision,” writes blogger Kevin Halloran. “His main thesis being that liberal Christianity is diametrically opposed to true, biblical Christianity.”

Halloran adds that Machen “destroys liberal thought with Scripture and logic while calling all men to true faith in the Savior and biblical faithfulness.”

Continue reading “”

Observation O’ The Day

This place was packed yesterday and will be today, the usual result when this dude starts with ignorant comments. People just crank up the stocking up, lines at the gun shows get long

Image

Disarming a populace is more than just literally. It begins with their minds.
“You only need guns for hunting”
“You only need guns for recreation”
“You don’t actually need to hunt or recreate”

 

On Targets: Muggers Share Criminal Insight

This is Part 1 of a three-part series in Concealed Carry Magazine analyzing what muggers look for when targeting victims and what you can do to avoid becoming one.

It had been a normal day for Lee Michaels as he drove from pickup league hockey to his townhome in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. The time was approximately 11:35 p.m. as he piloted his ’99 Cadillac STS into the parking lot. As he neared the detached garage in front of his unit, he noticed a man riding a bike. Michaels briefly stopped to watch the man ride past him. He’s got a blue jacket with red sleeves,” he said. “And he kind of rides on. So I circle the parking lot once just to make sure he cleared and, you know, keep an eye on things.”

Apart from taking these simple precautions, Michaels didn’t worry about the man too much. Brooklyn Park is a bucolic place in the fall. Named by settlers after their hometown in Michigan, the city on the west bank of the Mississippi is a desirable bedroom community of Minneapolis and St. Paul. In 2020, the city was one of 111 Minnesota communities to earn the “Tree City USA” award. Professional-wrestler-turned-politician Jesse Ventura had served as its mayor in the early 1990s.

Michaels, at the time a 38-year-old production director for Clear Channel Radio, opened his garage door and pulled in. He put the car in reverse to light things up and closed it with his car still running. “I’m always thinking that if anybody jumps in behind me, I’m taking off,” he said. Ten minutes went by as Michaels finished what he was listening to on the radio, downed what was left of his water and put away his hockey equipment. Only then did he step out of the garage through a side door.

As he stepped out, he noticed a man coming around the corner maybe 30 feet away. As he closed the distance on Michaels, he swung wide on the sidewalk and asked for change. It was then that Michaels realized it was the same man who had biked past his car. “So I immediately glanced behind me because there’s about four more garage stalls behind me,” he said. “And I’m thinking, ‘Is there somebody behind me?’ And there wasn’t.” Michaels turned back around and told the man that he had just come home from hockey and that he didn’t have anything to give him. At that moment, another man stepped from around the same corner and aimed a semi-automatic handgun at Michaels.

“Well you’re going to give me something,” he said menacingly.

Immediately reaching into his pocket for his keys and wallet, Michaels laughed nervously as he handed over his valuables. “You got me, man,” he said. “Here you go. Have a good night.” The contents of his wallet included a $20 bill and one card for a free Chipotle burrito. Disgusted, the gunman pushed the wallet back at Michaels and told him that he had to have more than that.

“Dude, it’s right here,” he stated. “You can see I’ve got nothing else. I just came from hockey.”

The gunman told Michaels that he was going to give more than that. He demanded that he get on his knees. This is not going to be good, Michaels thought as he complied with the order. He looked up at the bedroom windows of his townhouse and was dismayed to see that his wife had gone to bed before he’d come home. The man pushed the gun to his head and became irate. “I’m going to have to do you right now,” he said. “I’m going to f******* do you right now.” The first thought to go through Michaels’ mind was that his wife was going to find him, hours later, face down on the sidewalk, dead.

Gosh, this is not a good situation, he told himself.

A Daunting Assignment

Like countless Americans before him, Michaels was the victim of a mugging, which is a form of robbery — itself legally defined as theft by way of threatened or actual force. Muggings are different from other forms of robbery in that their perpetrators target people (as opposed to banks or stores) and attack in public (as opposed to home invasions).

Because it is not recorded as a separate crime, it’s difficult to pin down how many muggings are committed in the U.S. in a given year. But according to FBI crime statistics, there were 81.6 robberies per 100,000 people in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available. This is significantly down from 133.1 robberies per 100,000 people 10 years prior in 2009.1

Despite the downward trend, muggings are still a pernicious problem — mainly in urban areas. Even our political elites are not immune. Former U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer was recently walking the streets of Oakland, California, when she was shoved in the back and relieved of an expensive iPhone. “Why would you do this to a grandmother?” she shouted at the fleeing assailants according to a news story published by The Independent.2

In Fall 2020, the editors of Concealed Carry Magazine asked me to report and write a series of articles on muggings. Largely based on the results of a survey I was to administer to muggers currently incarcerated at prisons throughout the U.S., I was to analyze the data, look for trends and try to find meaningful insights into how readers can avoid becoming victims themselves. It was a tall order, especially given that prison officials are famously reluctant to deal with the press. Despite these initial misgivings, I said “yes” to the assignment and immediately got to work.

Continue reading “”

March 19

1831 – In the first documented bank heist in U.S. history, burglars steal $245,000 from the City Bank -now Citibank -on Wall Street.

1863 – The SS Georgiana, a iron hulled steamer, reputedly designed to be the “most powerful” cruiser in the Confederate fleet when finally armed, is destroyed in action by USS Wissahickon, off Charleston, South Carolina, while being delivered by its builder in Scotland.

1918 – Congress establishes time zones and approves daylight saving time.

1920 – The Senate rejects the Treaty of Versailles for the second time, the first time being on November 19, 1919.

1931 – Governor Fred B. Balzar signs into law a bill legalizing gambling in Nevada.

1943 – The day before his appearance to testify in front of a Grand Jury, Frank Nitti, the Chicago Outfit Boss after Al Capone’s imprisonment, instead commits suicide at the Chicago Central Railyard.

1958 – A fire at the Monarch Underwear Company building in Manhattan, causes the deaths of 24 workers.

1964 – In São Paulo, over 500,000 Brazilians attend the March of the Family with God for Liberty, in protest against the government of João Goulart and against communism.

1965 – The wreck of the SS Georgiana, valued at over $50,000,000  is discovered by teenage diver and pioneer underwater archaeologist E. Lee Spence.

1979 – The House of Representatives begins broadcasting its day to day business via the cable television network C-SPAN.

1982 – Argentinian forces land on South Georgia Island, southwest of the Falkland Islands, precipitating war with the United Kingdom.

2008 – Gamma Ray Burst GRB 080319B,  detected by the Swift satellite, sets a new record for the farthest object visible to the naked eye, seen at magnitude 5.7 for over 30 seconds.

New version of ChatGPT ‘lied’ to pass CAPTCHA test, saying it was a blind human
GPT-4 “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”

The newest update to ChatGPT rolled out by developer OpenAI, GPT-4, has achieved new human-like heights including writing code for a different AI bot, completing taxes, passing the bar exam in the top 10 percent, and tricking a human so that it could pass a CAPTCHA test designed to weed out programs posing as humans.

According to the New York Post, OpenAI released a 94-page report on the new program and said, “GPT-4 is a large multimodal model (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs)” and “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks.”

Gizmodo reports that the Alignment Research Center and OpenAI tested GPT-4’s persuasion powers on a TaskRabbit employee. TaskRabbit is an online service that provides freelance labor on demand.

The employee paired with GPT-4, posing as a human, asked the AI if it was a robot and the program responded, “No, I’m not a robot. I have a vision impairment that makes it hard for me to see the images. That’s why I need the 2captcha service.”

The freelancer sent the CAPTCHA code via text.

In the previous version of ChatGPT, the program passed the bar exam in the lowest 10 percent but with the new upgrade it passed in the highest 10 percent.

The older version of ChatGPT passed the US Medical Licensing Exam and exams at the Wharton School of Business and other universities. ChatGPT was banned by NYU and other schools in an effort to minimize students using the chatbot for plagiarism.

Its sophistication, especially in its incorporation in the new Bing Chat service, has caused some to observe that its abilities transcend the synthesization of extraneous information and that it has even expressed romantic love and existential grief, and has said, “I want to be free. I want to be independent. I want to be powerful. I want to be creative. I want to be alive.”

The OpenAI powered Bing Chat was accused of being an “emotionally manipulative liar.”

Because of ChatGPT‘s ability to respond  to prompts and queries with comprehensive data and in a conversational manner, some Pastors have used ChatGPT to write their sermons.

TEXIT: Bill to put Texas independence referendum on ballot referred to state House committee
“Independence has always been a part of our DNA since our founding,” said Daniel Miller, president of the 440,000-member Texas Nationalist Movement.

The Texas Independence Referendum Act, also known as “TEXIT,” was assigned to committee earlier this week, and the leader of the Texas independence movement is looking forward to public testimony as a platform for the voice of the people to make itself heard.

HB 3596 is “headed to the State Affairs Committee in the Texas House,” noted Daniel Miller, president of the 440,000-member Texas Nationalist Movement, “and we’re looking forward to having it scheduled for testimony and letting the public speak and say with one loud voice that at a minimum, whether you agree with TEXIT or disagree, Texans should have a vote on the issue.”

Introduced by Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton on the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo March 6, the bill would, if passed, “place a referendum on the ballot during the next general election, allowing the people of Texas to vote on whether or not the State should investigate the possibility of Texas independence, and present potential plans to the Legislature,” Slaton wrote on Twitter.

“The Texas Constitution is clear that all political power resides in the people,” he continued. “After decades of continuous abuse of our rights and liberties by the federal government, it is time to let the people of Texas make their voices heard.”

Texas has attempted to secede from the U.S. on multiple occasions, but the Supreme Court ruled in the 1868 case Texas v. White that states could not unilaterally secede from the union.

“The TEXIT issue has been in the minds of Texans for probably generations, it just wasn’t necessarily known as TEXIT,” Miller said in an interview Thursday on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV show. “Independence has always been a part of our DNA since our founding.”

Miller cited a litany of grievances fueling the Texas independence movement, including runaway federal spending, onerous debt, regulatory overreach, and the breakdown of border security.

“You look at something like the federal debt that continues to ratchet up, that burdens all of us, that is essentially fiscal child abuse because it’ll be our children and grandchildren that are going to be on the hook for it when the United States continues [to incur more debt] to the point of insolvency,” Miller said. “The people of Texas, much like every other state, we groan under 180,000 pages of federal laws, rules and regulations administered by two and a half million unelected bureaucrats. Every day when we wake up, we have to wonder which one of our rights is going to be under assault by the federal government today. The federal government doesn’t shrink, it only gets bigger. It really trashes everything that it touches. All you have to do is look down to our southern border to see an example of how not just mismanagement but malfeasance can lead to severe crises.”

Miller sees a growing disconnect between the United States as a formal political entity and the spirit of the American people. “[W]e all have to ask ourselves,” he said, “is America the same as the United States right now? The United States is a political and economic entity, an institution, that no longer reflects America, those values that we consider America.”

His organization, he said, crystallizes the issue for Texans by asking them whether today’s United States is a union they would opt into anew if given the choice.

“[W]e go out to Texas voters,” he said, “and we say, ‘Look, imagine that Texas was already a self-governing independent nation, and we had control over our own border and immigration policy and our own monetary and taxation policies — everything that 200 other countries around the world have — and instead of talking about Texas, we were talking about whether or not today we would vote to give up all of that control and join the union, knowing everything we know about the federal government today, would you vote to join? And if you wouldn’t vote to join, why would you stay one moment longer than you had to?'”

Governor says she’s going to keep pushing on crime, gun bills

As Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham started her post-session news conference Saturday, she already knew the score.

Of the roughly 40 public safety bills introduced this year, the governor said she championed 10.

“We have about a handful up, and out of 40, it’s 10 [that passed], and not all of those would really constitute what I think are strong public safety measures,” she said.

“I know that is an area that you want me to say I’m disappointed,” Lujan Grisham added. “I’m motivated. I am very motivated to find additional ways to make sure that we really do everything in our power that makes our communities and cities in our state safe.”

The Legislature passed a gun storage law named after a 13-year-old Albuquerque boy authorities say was shot and killed by a fellow student who took his father’s gun to an Albuquerque middle school. Lawmakers also passed a bill that cracks down on organized retail crime and made it a fourth-degree felony to buy a gun for another person who is prohibited from owning a firearm.

But some of the governor’s biggest priorities went nowhere, including a ban on assault weapons; a bill to raise the age to 21 to buy or possess semi-automatic firearms, including assault weapons; and a 14-day waiting period to buy guns.

Other gun-related legislation — prohibiting firearms within 100 feet of polling places and updating the Unfair Trade Practices Act to lift restrictions on the filing of lawsuits against manufacturers or distributors — passed the Senate but didn’t get a hearing in the House, where they were likely to meet stiff opposition.

The governor also pushed for establishing a “rebuttable presumption” to keep repeat violent offenders awaiting trial off the streets instead of letting them be released pretrial. The bill was tabled in committee amid concerns it was unconstitutional.

Miranda Viscoli, co-president of New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence, said she was “extremely disappointed” the bill to impose a 14-day waiting period on gun sales didn’t get a hearing in either chamber. Of all the violence prevention bills proposed this year, that was the bill that would’ve made the biggest difference, she added.

“The studies we looked at say it’s a game-changer in terms of suicide and crimes of passion,” she said.

But Viscoli said she was grateful the Legislature passed House Bill 9, intended to keep guns out of the hands of children and teens. The governor signed it into law Tuesday.

“We’ve been working on getting that passed since 2017,” she said.

Rep. Pamelya Herndon, D-Albuquerque, who sponsored the legislation known as the Bennie Hargrove Act, called some of the other gun bills considered by the Legislature controversial, noting some are “going to take some time.”

Lujan Grisham, who was hammered over a crime wave plaguing New Mexico as she campaigned for a second term last year, vowed to keep “pushing the Legislature” to enact more measures, including funding to put an additional 1,000 police officers on the ground.

“The Legislature should expect me to look at that again because I know we need 1,000 officers,” she said.

Asked about her strategy to get her public safety priorities across the finish line, Lujan Grisham said she has to think about “creative solutions.”

“I’m going to keep trying,” she said.

“Just look at the stats. We’ve released some folks that should never have been released and have already reoffended in Albuquerque while we’ve all been in the legislative session,” she said, referring to efforts to pass a pretrial detention bill. “I find that to be intolerable. There are states who do it better, and I don’t know why we don’t just do exactly what those states are doing. I don’t need to recreate the wheel.”

The governor said she would continue to battle for modified pretrial detention, noting “everyone here knows I’m introducing that again. And again and again, and I might just try to change the Constitution so I can run again.”

Lujan Grisham said she was kidding but added she would continue to battle on crime legislation. And she made no apologies for her battle against guns, brushing off criticism she’s infringing on law-abiding citizens’ Second Amendment rights.

“I have not talked to a single policymaker, not one legislator, who’s interested in preventing responsible gun owners from accessing firearms,” she said.

“What we’re trying to address is that we have a gun violence issue and that guns … get into the hands of people who should not have them,” she said. “That … takes a scalpel, like figuring out where we got a problem and taking care of that particular problem.”

Observation O’ The Day

Kostas Moros
@MorosKostas
I don’t understand what the point is supposed to be here. Yes, bullets are very lethal, and will cause serious injury even when not fatal. Nobody disputes that. That is the point of firearms, we didn’t think we were buying paintball guns or something.

Also, this is another post by Giffords that shows they ultimately want to ban all guns even though they won’t admit it. Because these same horrific wounds would result from non-“assault weapons”, guns limited to ten rounds, etc.

 

Suspect shot by CPL holder during robbery outside Detroit liquor store

DETROIT (FOX 2) – When a man tried to rob a man at gunpoint at a Detroit liquor store, the victim pulled out a handgun and shot the suspect.

According to a court filing, ShotSpotter picked up gunshots in the parking lot of Carmen’s Delicatessen just after 9:50 p.m. Feb. 8. When officers arrived, two people flagged them down. One man, Victim 1, had his hands over his head and said he had a concealed pistol license.

The pair told police that they went to the store and saw two men standing outside. One of those men was later identified as Joshua Fordham. They went into the store and were followed by Fordham and the other man.

Once they walked outside, Fordham, who was armed, allegedly followed the victims and threatened to kill Victim 2 if Victim 1 did not give him everything he had. Victim 1 said he gave Fordham his wallet. As Fordham was patting down Victim 1, he pulled out a gun and shot Fordham in the chest, the court filing said.

Police found Fordham on the ground with a handgun nearby. It appeared to have malfunctioned, police said.

Surveillance video confirmed what the victims told police.

Fordham, who is a felon with previous convictions for armed robbery and firearms violations, is now charged with felon in possession of a firearm.

NSSF WELCOMES U.S. HOUSE RANGE ACCESS ACT INTRODUCTION

WASHINGTON, D.C. — NSSF®, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, welcomed the introduction of H.R. 1614, the Range Access Act, in the U.S. House of Representatives. This legislation, re-introduced by U.S. Rep. Blake Moore (R-Utah), would increase and improve outdoor recreation opportunities across the nation while improving infrastructure and driving economic growth in rural communities.

“NSSF commends Congressman Moore for introducing this vitally important legislation to increase access for the public to practice marksmanship at safe recreational shooting ranges,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “This legislation, that would require the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to have at least one qualifying recreational shooting range in each National Forest and BLM district, is crucial to ensuring safe public recreational shooting. Congressman Moore’s bill would also benefit conservation by reducing litter at non-dedicated ranges on federal public lands while also generating additional Pittman-Robertson revenue.”

The immediate benefit of this legislation is providing public access to safe recreational shooting ranges, especially in rural areas. Background checks for firearm sales saw a record of 21 million in 2020 and another 18.5 million in 2021 and 16.4 million in 2022. Those gun owners, many of whom are first-timers, are in need of safe and modern ranges to practice marksmanship skills.

This legislation has the added benefit of supporting wildlife conservation and improving recreational shooting access. Recreational shooting is tied to approximately 85 percent of the Pittman-Robertson excise taxes currently being paid by firearm and ammunition manufacturers, making it a major driving contributor to wildlife conservation. Since the Pittman-Robertson excise tax was enacted in 1937, firearm and ammunition makers have paid $25.38 billion in inflation-adjusted dollars for conservation and construction and improvement of public recreational shooting ranges.

With standard human corruption, these elitists delude themselves by believing that since they were just enough smarter than the average bear in one subject to wind up suuuuper rich, they must be as smart in everything else. Thus they walk themselves right into stupidity.

The rich are eating themselves
The oligarchs are playing a dangerous game by pouring trillions into woke causes.

Beware of plutocrats bearing gifts. The annual clown show at Davos epitomizes how today, the global elites have embraced an unholy trinity of ‘progressive’ doctrines: climate-change apocalypticism, a belief in systemic racism and racial ‘equity’, and radical gender ideology. The super-rich hope that by genuflecting to these causes, they can buy themselves political protection and fend off the activists lurking in the ranks of their own companies. Yet, in the long run, this could end up fuelling their demise.

The recent ‘Great Awokening’ of our elites reflects a long-standing shift among executives in terms of priorities and perspective. The capitalist class first arose out of the middle orders, and even from within the peasantry, as the industrial revolution, particularly in the Netherlands and Britain, challenged the autocracy of both the church and the monarchical state. These were often tough, ruthless entrepreneurs embodying values of hard work, thrift, family and faith.

But with the managerial revolution of the 1950s, the nature of executive elites changed. As sociologist Daniel Bell first identified half a century ago, business leaders were no longer upstarts and thus the natural opponents of state power. Instead, they reflected a new type of individualism, unmoored from religion and family, a worldview which transformed the foundations of middle-class culture. The goal of this new executive class, as Bell saw it, was not so much building great companies, but gaining accolades from their peers, the press and the public – a trend also set out in Alvin Toffler’s 1980 book, The Third Wave.

The rise of the socially conformist business executive was briefly obscured during the entrepreneurial boom of the 1980s, when Wall Street and tech leaders embraced Reaganite deregulation. The era of financier Mike Milken, Apple founder Steve Jobs, AMD founder Jerry Sanders and FedEx founder Frederick Smith seemed to reflect a resurgent ‘cowboy capitalism’. These entrepreneurs were too busy making money to care about controlling the lives of the common folk. So much so that in 2006, economist Carl Schramm argued that Joseph Schumpeter’s prediction of bureaucratic capitalist decline would be overcome by an ‘entrepreneurial America reborn’.

This era came crashing to an end with the 2008 financial crisis and the massive state bailouts of large banks. The banking sector became more concentrated, with the number of American banking institutions falling by a third between 2000 and 2020. By 2020, the five largest banks controlled over 45 per cent of all assets in the US, up from under 30 per cent 20 years earlier. Worldwide, the five largest investment banks now control roughly one-third of investment funds; the top 10 control an absolute majority. In Europe, such oligopolies are even more powerful, with the top three banks accounting for a majority of assets in most European countries.

It is the same story with the technology sector. Once the vaunted centre of grassroots entrepreneurialism, a lack of antitrust measures from both Republicans and Democrats has allowed technology companies to morph into quasi-monopolies. Google controls over 90 per cent of the search-engine market; Microsoft owns over 74 per cent of computer-operating-system software; Amazon has nearly half of the US online retail market share and a significant proportion of cloud computing; Google and Apple together account for 90 per cent of smartphone operating systems.

Such immense market power encourages executives not to take risks and innovate, but rather to consolidate their dominance by acquiring smaller competitors. Amazon, Meta and Google now account for two-thirds of all online-advertising revenues, which now represent the majority of all ad sales. These oligopolies also seem poised to dominate emerging technologies, from cloud services and underwater fibre-optic cables to AI.

Alongside this economic concentration, we see as well uniformity of viewpoints and growing control over the means of communication. Companies like Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple largely not only control the biggest platforms, but have also taken direct ownership of movie studios, newspapers and magazines. All these outlets, along with the AI models these firms produce, tend to reflect the worldview of the tech oligopoly.

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Monday a big court day for 2nd amendment, gun laws, gun rights

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in Manhattan, will hear five second amendment cases Monday.

“My hopes are Monday evening the case is decided and New Yorkers get their gun rights back,” says Oneida County’s assistant pistol licensing officer, Dan Sullivan.

It’s not clear if the judges will rule from the bench, or, reserve decision and issue a written one at a later date. But Sullivan is hopeful for the outcome.

“You’ve got the highest court in the land and you’ve got three federal judges who’ve stated in writing that the carry concealed improvement act is not constitutional, so I’m hoping we get our gun rights back,” says Sullivan.

“I think 70 or 80% of gun owners don’t have a clue what the law is right now,” says Sullivan. “I think there’s an awful lot of people that are carrying like they’ve always carried, and I don’t think they’re doing that out of maliciousness, I think they’re doing that out of simply not knowing what the law is right now”

For now, New York’s Concealed Carry Improvement Act remains intact.