74 thoughts on “The Wisdom of Thomas Sowell”

  1. Morning All!
    our skies are mixed–some clouds, some little peeks of blue sky…it’s about 60* here. if the weather holds, I’m going to try to finish weeding the garden this morning (after the laundry is done) before it gets too hot.

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    1. Morning, Pat! Cloudy here for moment but it’s supposed to clear off – not too hot – high of only 80 – but 88% humidity. Highest temp predicted this week is 89 but I expect that will rise. Yuck! I’m going to call Jake to see if he will pull my trash bin out tonight – it’s been full for 2 weeks now.

      Love Thomas Sowell – very, very wise man!

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        1. Well, thankfully, I’m not and it’s inside my garage so nothing can get to it anyway.

          Like

    2. I’ve always respected this 95 year old sage, and Good morning, all. Sowell can’t be held accountable for how the government requires him to play by rules that defy his wisdom.

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  4. how it’s done…

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  5. Just The News: “Canada announced Sunday night it was suspending a tax on U.S. technology firms that had caused President Trump to suspend trade negotiations between the two nations, handing a major victory to the American president.

    The Canadian government said it was suspending enforcement of the tax that was due to be collected starting Monday, saying the action was taken “in anticipation of a mutually beneficial comprehensive trade arrangement with the United States.”

    Prime Minister Mark Carney informed the Trump administration of the decision, and the two sides plan to resume trade talks on or about July 21.

    Trump had called the tax on technology firms an “attack” on America, and suspended trade talks Friday in an effort to pressure Canada.”

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  6. Just The News: “The Supreme Court has never made a determination on the legal merits of the argument that noncitizens should not be counted in the United States census, but may soon be forced to do so. The fight to clarify the census and subsequently adjust congressional seats, Electoral College votes and federal funding, is coming down the pike, according to White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller. 

    Miller indicated last month that he’s eager to dive straight in and that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick will help lead the effort. 

    Trump has at his disposal a number of avenues to accomplish his goal, one of which includes Lutnick’s agency. Utilizing this route, the Commerce Department could propose adding a census question to distinguish citizens, legal permanent residents, and unauthorized immigrants, as suggested by a lawsuit filed by Republican-led states and the Department of Commerce in January 2025. The data could then be used to exclude noncitizens from apportionment, though not necessarily from the overall count. 

    Republican support for this approach is growing, with bills introduced by Rep. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., and Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., to mandate a citizenship question and thus exclude noncitizens from apportionment. A GOP-controlled Congress could facilitate approval of such questions, due by 2028. The Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling rejected the citizenship question due to procedural issues, and demanded a stronger justification for having the case reviewed by the Supreme Court before going to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

    Amending the Census Act is an option

    Furthermore, Trump could work with Congress to pass legislation amending the Census Act to exclude noncitizens from apportionment counts or mandate a citizenship question. Bills like those proposed by Edwards and Hagerty aim to achieve this, but such legislation would need to redefine “persons” in the 14th Amendment’s apportionment clause to exclude noncitizens, a significant departure from historical practice. It could also direct the Census Bureau to use citizen-only data for apportionment. With a Republican-controlled Congress, the winds are now more favorable. Passage is significantly more likely than in 2020, when a similar House bill passed on a party-line vote (206-202) but stalled in the Democratic-controlled Senate. 

    President Donald Trump, on his first day in office, rescinded a Biden-era executive order on January 20, 2025, which had reaffirmed counting all residents regardless of immigration status, signaling intent to revisit this policy. With a GOP-controlled Congress, there may be less political resistance to try again. Additionally, preparations for the 2030 census will begin during Trump’s second term, and federal law requires proposed census questions to be submitted to Congress two years prior, which gives a window to influence the process.

    Estimates of illegal alien populations vary due to inconsistent methods and tracking, but based on the most reliable and recent data from multiple sources including the Department of Homeland Security, the state with the highest number of illegal aliens is California, with 2.6 million. Texas took the number two spot with 2.06 million, and Florida comes in at third with 560,000. 

    New York (with 540,000)  and New Jersey (with 440,000) rounds off the top five. Despite the influx of illegal aliens to California, it lost a congressional seat due to the number of residents fleeing the state. The Orange County Register reported that California lost 817,669 residents in 2023 for a net outmigration of 341,866 citizens.

    If that trend continues, according to Thad Kousser, who is an expert in California and national politics and a professor of political science at UC San Diego, California will lose another four seats by 2030, even without census criteria changing. Texas would hypothetically gain three seats and Florida would gain three.

    Whether noncitizens count for census matters that affect representation

    In 2020, the Trump administration sought to exclude noncitizens from the U.S. Census count which is used to apportion congressional seats and Electoral College votes, a move that sparked significant controversy. In July of that year, President Donald Trump issued a memorandum directing the Census Bureau to use administrative records to identify and exclude undocumented immigrants from the apportionment count, arguing that including them dilutes the political power of citizens and constitutes voter suppression. 

    The administration argued that the Constitution’s mandate to count “persons” did not explicitly require counting noncitizens for apportionment. This effort faced immediate legal challenges from blue states and cities, many of which were sanctuary jurisdictions, and immigrant advocacy groups, who argued the policy violated the Constitution and would discourage immigrant participation in the census, potentially undercounting communities with large noncitizen populations.

    The Supreme Court ultimately blocked the Trump administration’s plan in December 2020, ruling that the memorandum was premature and lacked sufficient justification, though it did not address the merits of the Administrations’ argument.

    Critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union, hailed the decision as a victory for fair representation, while supporters of the policy, including then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, argued it was necessary to ensure electoral fairness. Without time for the issue to play out further, the Census Bureau claimed it was constrained by time and logistical challenges, and ultimately included all residents in the 2020 count.”

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    1. i believe the census should only reflect citizens. illegals SHOULD NOT BE HERE and they are transient. why should states that allow them get taxpayer representation and funding?

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  7. Just The News: “California, says the leader of the USDA and a North Carolina congressman, has the right to enforce its Proposition 12. The state line, however, is where that enforcement should end. In the battle of pork production, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins affirmed that position in a congressional hearing this month. This week, U.S. Rep. David Rouzer, R-N.C., reminded Tarheel State farmers of her allegiances.

    “North Carolina pork producers have a friend at USDA in Secretary Brooke Rollins,” Rouzer said, expressing gratitude for her push back against Prop 12. “Secretary Rollins is right, California has the right to do what California wants to do, but NC-07 farm families feed the nation, and they deserve fair, science-based regulations, not California mandates.”

    Proposition 12 is the colloquial term for the Farm Animal Confinement Initiative. Egg-laying hens, breeding pigs and veal calves have space requirements, and sale of products from the animals is prohibited if not meeting the standard.

    Rouzer comes from the 7th Congressional District, the southeastern portion of the state where trips on country roads often mean getting behind a hog truck hauling to the world’s largest pork production facility in the Bladen County crossroads community of Tar Heel. North Carolina’s $111.1 billion agriculture industry includes a No. 3 national ranking in pork production behind Iowa and Minnesota.

    California’s market includes about 40 million people and 15% of domestic pork consumption. Compliance with the Golden State’s law can require new construction or retrofits with enormous fiscal impact.

    In the Committee on Agriculture, Rollins told panelists, “No one is more of a believer in federalism, the 10th Amendment, and our Founders vision of the state’s rights to be able to be their own laboratories of innovation. When those ideas, those rules and laws begin to impact other states in such a negative way, that is not what our Founders intended.

    “The extreme impact of Prop 12, especially on our pork producers – I believe this is a bipartisan question. We may not all agree in this room, but I think most agree even on the Democrat side of the House, that it cannot stand. I stand in full support of your effort.”

    Rollins said her department may be able to inject something toward a solution. “California has a right to do what California wants to do,” she said. “The minute that crosses the border and begins to compromise, in such a significant way, our pork producers we need to act.”

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      1. EXCERPT: “Can California reach beyond its borders and replace other states’ policy choices with its own? In National Pork Producers Council v. Ross—popularly known as the bacon case—the US Supreme Court is considering just that question.

        The case involves California’s Proposition 12, which prohibits the sale of pork in California when that pork’s production doesn’t meet California’s regulatory requirements.

        As a constitutional matter, California has gone hog wild. A proper respect for both the authority of the other 49 states to manage their own business and the role of the federal government in regulating commerce between the states would require the Supreme Court to rule against California’s audacious extraterritorial overreach.

        Avoid Tension Between States
        In forming the US, the states ceded certain powers to the new federal government—notably the authority to regulate interstate commerce. However, these coequal states did not cede power to regulate their own citizens to other states.

        If one state could impose its laws on another state—as California is attempting to do with Proposition 12—the Founders understood chaos would ensue…..”

        https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/in-pork-case-california-tries-to-impose-its-laws-on-other-states

        Liked by 1 person

        1. THANK YOU!

          so CA doesn’t/won’t buy pork from those producers. unless they buy in great quantities, i’d say screw CA. they don’t get to determine rules for the states.

          CA is really f*cked up.

          Liked by 1 person

  8. nope, I have never heard of sologamy before.

    FTA

    By now, I assume most of you have heard about “sologamy,” the practice of marrying one’s self.

    Kind of the opposite of “polygamy,” but not really any more traditional or inspiring.

    This, from a 2023 piece that ran in Women’s Business Daily:

    In a 2019 Vogue interview, Emma Watson described herself as ‘self-partnered.’ She used the term to describe how she wasn’t pursuing a partnership but was instead focusing on ‘dating’ herself. The term ‘sologamy’ really isn’t much different. As opposed to monogamy, or even polyamory, someone prescribing to sologamy is first and foremost dedicated to loving themselves. This idea isn’t meant to promote selfishness and narcissism. Instead, it promotes self-love, focusing on improving and adoring yourself. 

    Alrighty then. Perhaps it is a tad narcissistic, but whatever, right?

    And more from womensbusinessdaily.com:

    Kshama Bindu married herself in India’s first sologamous wedding. She performed many traditional Hindu wedding rituals but only invited 10 close friends and family members. She isn’t the first person to have a sologamous wedding. In 1993, a dental hygienist named Linda Baker in LA declared she was tired of ‘waiting for the chain of events that lead up to feasting on [a] wedding cake.’ So she invited seventy-five friends to watch her marry herself, becoming ‘her own lovely wedded person.’

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/06/sologamy.html

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  10. “Law Enforcement Ignored Dire Threats Against Pennsylvania Trump Voters’ Families, Property, And Pets — It is outrageous that local, state, federal, and postal authorities apparently did absolutely nothing to investigate what happened.”

    The Federalist, By: Hans von Spakovsky, June 30, 2025

    Trump yard sign

    “We know where you live. … In the dead of a cold winters [sic] night, this year, or next and beyond, there is no knowing what may happen. Your property, your family may be impacted, your cat may get shot. And more. … Your vote for this guy [Trump] is seen as treading on my rights. You tread on me at your peril, motherf-cker. We look forward to visiting in the future.”

    That is language from the nasty, vile letter that Pennsylvania voters received through the U.S. mail in October 2024, just prior to the presidential election. What was their crime? They had Trump signs in their yards.

    And what did local law enforcement, the Pennsylvania state police, the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service do about this intimidation and threats of violence against voters in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and various Pennsylvania counties? Apparently, nothing at all.

    This attempt to scare Trump voters is the subject of a new lawsuit filed in federal court in Philadelphia by the Public Interest Legal Foundation against “John Doe 1” and “John Doe 2,” the term used by plaintiffs in litigation when they have been unable to identify the defendants. The unknown bullies are being sued under both Section 3 of the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act.

    The civil portion of the Ku Klux Klan Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1985 (3), provides for the recovery of damages against miscreants who “conspire to prevent by force, intimidation, or threat, any citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote, from giving his support or advocacy in a legal manner, toward or in favor of the election of any lawfully qualified person.”

    Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act, 52 U.S.C. §10307(b), makes it a federal crime to “intimidate, threaten, or coerce, or attempt to intimidate, threaten, or coerce any person for voting or attempting to vote.”

    During the time these acts were committed in 2024, the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice was headed by Kristen Clarke. The Civil Rights Division of DOJ is responsible for enforcing Section 11b. Clarke is probably the most biased, partisan ideologue to ever head that division. She had no interest whatsoever in protecting Trump voters. But then, apparently no one else at the local, state, or federal level did either.

    If you’re wondering why one would file a lawsuit against unknown defendants, here is the point. The Public Interest Legal Foundation obtained a federal judge’s approval to issue subpoenas to various law enforcement agencies notified by the Trump voters of what happened to them. These agencies had a duty to conduct investigations into what was a serious attempt to coerce voters and a dangerous threat to the election process in a state with a dismal record when it comes to the integrity of its elections — including violence directed at government officials, as Gov. Josh Shapiro can testify.

    Competent investigators would have checked the anonymous letters for fingerprints and DNA. They would have checked the postmarks to see if they could determine where the letters were mailed from and whether there were surveillance cameras at those locations.

    Since the threatened voters lived in multiple locations, the perpetrators apparently identified them through the Trump signs in their yards. Investigators should have checked for surveillance cameras, including front-door Ring cameras, in the victims’ neighborhoods to see if the same individuals or cars were seen in those different neighborhoods.

    But was any of this done? It doesn’t appear so. The Pennsylvania State Police responded to a subpoena by saying no investigation was opened. One of the victims filed a complaint with her local police department in Lower Merion but never received any follow-up calls or information from that department. The department admitted another voter had received the same letter and still did not act.

    Another local police department, this time in Tredyffrin Township, told a different victim that he couldn’t get any information because the department’s records were exempt from disclosure under state law. Since no one has been prosecuted in that town, one wonders what they are protecting from disclosure — their failure to do anything?

    The U.S. Postal Inspection Service said it “will not authorize the production of documents,” without saying whether it actually conducted an investigation. To add insult to injury, the Service said that if there are any records, it will not release them because they are “protected by the Privacy Act and related Postal regulations.”

    Of course, the only “privacy” being protected is the privacy of the criminals or the Postal Service’s failure to conduct an investigation. The complaint cites multiple local news reports about these threatening letters, so it was not exactly a secret that this was happening. Did the FBI and the Justice Department, whose job it is to enforce the law against voter intimidation, contact these voters and open investigations?

    The answer is a resounding no.

    It is outrageous that local, state, federal, and postal authorities apparently did absolutely nothing to investigate what happened in Pennsylvania a month before the election. They failed miserably in their duties to ensure the safety of the public, stop intimidation of voters, and protect the voting franchise.

    Imagine if it had been Democrat voters supporting Kamala Harris who received these types of threats. It would have been front-page news at The New York Times and The Washington Post. The politicized FBI and the Biden Justice Department would have immediately been in Pennsylvania investigating these threats.

    Instead, it took a nonprofit, private organization to get to the bottom of what happened. Truly outrageous.”

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  11. “Three Pennsylvania Officials Who Cheated In Election Get Prison Time — One Is Still In Office — The scheme highlights still unaddressed vulnerabilities in the voting process that leave elections ripe for fraud.”

    The Federalist, By: Beth Brelje, June 30, 2025

    “In Pennsylvania, where officials swear elections are safe and secure, three elected officials are headed to prison after admitting they cheated in the 2021 election. Their cases reveal common vulnerabilities in the voting process that have yet to be cured.

    The three men, who all at one time were elected Democrat members of the Millbourne Borough Council, tried to rig the mayoral election in favor of one of them. They failed by 30 votes, got caught, and in June each was sentenced to prison. Among the charges were conspiracy to commit voter fraud, giving false information in registering to vote, and fraudulent voter registration.

    MD Nurul Hasan, 48, was sentenced to 36 months (3 years) prison. MD Munsur Ali, 48, was sentenced to 21 months in prison, one year of supervised release, and must pay $2,500. MD Rafikul Islam, 52, received 12 months and one day in prison, according to a statement from the U.S. Department of Justice. The men all pleaded guilty on April 1. At that time, Hasan and Ali were sitting on the Millbourne Council Board. On May 13, Hasan resigned from the board, and the council appointed someone to fill out his term, ending Dec. 31, 2027.

    Astonishingly, Ali has not yet resigned, Millbourne Borough Manager William Stewart confirmed to The Federalist. A felony conviction makes Ali ineligible to hold public office, but his seat will only be vacated if he resigns and the council accepts his resignation; or he is impeached by the District Attorney or Attorney General; or a judge rules in the favor of a petitioner who challenges the individual’s eligibility to hold office. His term ends Dec. 31, 2025. “Ali can theoretically ‘ride-out’ his term in absentia unless one of the three previously mentioned actions is taken,” Stewart wrote in an email.

    Millbourne, population 1,300, is part of the Philadelphia metro area, a mere .1 square mile—about eight blocks long. As I previously reported, in the 2021 election, Ali won the Democrat primary in May and advanced to the November ballot. Islam lost in the primary, and Hasan narrowly lost his primary, 138-120.

    Hasan decided to run a write-in campaign for mayor in the general election. Islam and Ali agreed to help. Using identification information from people living out of town, the men swapped voter registration addresses to Millbourne, using Pennsylvania’s online portal for voter registration.

    They then electronically requested mail-in ballots, had them sent to mailboxes they could access, filled out the ballots, signed the outer envelope with the name of the bogus voter, and dropped them off at the Delaware County Board of Elections.  In some cases, they took the ID information from people they did not know. They also asked non-residents to register to vote in Millbourne and cast mail-in ballots for Hasan to be mayor.

    “Hasan and Ali persuaded many of their non-Millbourne friends and acquaintances to provide them with personal identification information so that defendants Hasan and Ali could register them to vote in Millbourne,” the DOJ statement said. “During many of these conversations, Hasan and Ali told their non-Millbourne friends and acquaintances that they would not get in trouble, as long as they did not vote in another election in November 2021.”

    The scheme highlights how easily electronic voter registration and ballot requests, drop off boxes, signatures, photo identification, and in-person voting each have a role in allowing or preventing election fraud. If they had been forced to vote in person and verify their address with a photo ID, this cheating would not have happened.

    “These defendants sabotaged the democratic will of their fellow citizens in deciding Millbourne’s next mayor,” said U.S. Attorney David Metcalf in a statement. “Public trust in the electoral process is critical, and my office is committed to ensuring that our elections remain free and fair. As this case shows, should we find instances of fraud, we won’t hesitate to prosecute those responsible.”

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  15. this just popped up…can’t find anything elsewhere yet…

    CountryDoc
    June 30, 2025 10:31 am

    Israel just bombed Tehran. Will be interesting to see how POTUS/US respond. Watch for IC/WEF/MIC response as well. Bibi better have a good reason. POTUS has been quite for 12 hours. Thats unusual for him — even on a Sunday.

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    1. Yes, it was wrong for the kid to knowingly sell him fentanyl but…..if he wanted or thought he needed a percocet, he should have gone to his Mom to get it for him. You can talk peer pressure all you want but I never once allowed myself to be convinced of anything like that because of peer pressure….it was a choice he made – a stupid choice – and he lost his life for it. It’s not like there hasn’t been a LOT of publicity about this!

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  17. Well, then….I had intended to try to maneuver the bin out of the garage but, considering the incredible humidity and the fact that it is overfilled….yeah, no, that wasn’t happening. Jake has his work cut out for him getting it outside…I did the best I could.

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      1. Yeah – just that short period, I was really huffing and puffing. I’ll be going early tomorrow to p/u my WM carside order, before the humidity hits.

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        2. hubby has been able to recover much of his regular breathing even doing physical things–except in the humidity. he has to walk a bit, stop and try to breathe, walk a bit, try to breathe. that is the most stressful time for him and he doesn’t even have to be doing strenuous.

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  18. Just The News: “The Department of Justice on Monday announced a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles over its sanctuary city policies that it says are illegal.

    “The challenged law and policies of the City of Los Angeles obstruct the Federal Government’s enforcement of federal immigration law and impede consultation and communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials that is necessary for federal officials to carry out federal immigration law and keep Americans safe,” the DOJ wrote.

    gov.uscourts.cacd_.976670.1.0.pdf

    The suit comes in the wake of riots in the city over Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that ultimately prompted the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard and the U.S. Marines.

    “The Supremacy Clause prohibits the City of Los Angeles and its officials from singling out the Federal Government for adverse treatment—as the challenged law and policies do—thereby discriminating against the Federal Government,” the DOJ argued. “Accordingly, the law and policies challenged here are invalid and should be enjoined.”

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  21. “Disapproval Squared”

    “Sniper returning to base….”

    “The Swirly Building. Be sure to take your dramamine.”

    Liked by 1 person

  22. sync

    June 30, 2025 2:29 pm

    Marjorie Taylor Greene to introduce bill that would EXCLUDE ILLEGALS from the U.S. Census.

    The bill will require “the U.S. Census Bureau to conduct a new census immediately upon enactment of the bill.”

    “Upon completion of the census, the bill will direct states to immediately begin a redistricting of all U.S. House seats process using only the population of United States citizens.”

    Like

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  24. Just The News: “Efforts by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to arrest illegal aliens have led to the detention of more than 250,000 people since President Donald Trump took office, averaging nearly 50,000 arrests per month.

    “Our arrest numbers as they stand, are about 250,000 and we want those numbers up, we want to turbo charge them,”  Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin told this reporter on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast.

    With the administration taking over in late January, those figures point to an arrest rate of roughly 50,000 per month, which would put the administration on course to arrest roughly 2.4 million people by the end of his term. But Trump has set an ambitious target of deporting all illegal aliens from the U.S., putting the total at 21 million. 

    Thus far, however, deportations have fallen below the necessary rate to reach that goal, though McLaughlin was optimistic that the “Big, Beautiful Bill” would give DHS the resources it needs to ramp up arrests.

    “That’s part of the reason why that big full bill is so important, because it increases our detention capacity to 100,000 beds. That’s double what we have now,” she said. “And why that’s so important is it’s such an operational key that once we arrest these people, they have somewhere to go and be processed before they’re eventually deported from the country itself.”

    “So getting more of that detention capacity is going to allow us to get those arrest numbers up,” she added.

    A critical portion of DHS strategy, however, has been to encourage self-deportation through the rebranding of the CBP One App to the “CBP Home” app through which illegal aliens may indicate their intent to voluntarily depart and secure federal assistance to do so.

    At the end of May, Border Czar Tom Homan indicated that only about 8,500 people had used the app to self-deport. On Monday, however, McLaughlin said the figure was “certainly in the tens of thousands.”

    The “Big, Beautiful Bill” is expected to double ICE’s detention capacity and increase the number of agents by 10,000.”

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  25. Chance finally came by for his final payment. I am so grateful that I didn’t have that tree to worry about on top of being sick!

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  28. I’ll be leaving around 7:15 my time tomorrow to beat the humidity so I won’t be on until later. Scheduled to pick up @ WM between 8-9 AM.

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