College Football Becomes a Political Football

Swiss politicians have allowed prostitutes to open up for business. Here the ubiquitous Dr. Fauci approves of Tinder dates getting down and dirty. But for some reason the thought of football players going hands–on is controversial.

Bruce Plante, Tulsa World

Initially it looked like hatred of capitalism. Colleges are desperate for TV broadcast money to prop up athletic departments. Only hookers aren’t in the game for the joy of making new friends either. Blocking football must be another entry in the Great Pandemic Panic.

Government K–12 schools are going to get every last dime of your property tax money regardless of whether students are “distance learning” or playing Halo. Universities though, are reluctant participants in the free market.

That’s why the NCAA Division I Council approved ‘voluntary’ workouts in football and basketball. The SEC will allow athletes on campus June 8^th. Big 12 schools begin on June 15 because SEC teams need an additional week of publicity to make that obscure league competitive this fall.

Lincoln Riley, head coach at my alma mater the University of Oklahoma, is waiting an additional two weeks. OU will open July 1^st just a few days after the Chinese Dragon Boat Festival concludes. Presumably the Flu Manchu will be recovering from the festivities, making the virus weaker and less contagious.

The combination of money and football has the Washington Post’s Social Justice Warriors in an uproar. Columnist Jerry Brewer’s undies are particularly bunched, “here are two simple sentences to kindle your critical thinking: In many states, it may be too dangerous to have students on campus this fall. Nevertheless, universities are willing to consider staging football practices and games.”

Let’s take a brief intermission to review the SCIENCE!

Sunlight kills the virus. Football practice takes place in the sun.

In a study of 318 outbreak clusters in China — home of the Kung Flu — only two of the outbreaks occurred outdoors. Football practice (see above).

The CDC calculates for a person between the ages of 15 and 24 (think football age) living in the US the chance of any type of death during a single year is 80 deaths per 100K population. According to Johns Hopkins the current death rate for the WuFlu is 30 deaths/100K and 80 percent of those are among the elderly.

The chance of a football player dying from the China Flu is about one–third the chance of dying from any random cause.

The only players who might face an elevated risk are those morbidly obese offensive and defensive linemen. Maybe it’s just me, but I think the game can get by with 270–pound offensive and defensive linemen as it did for decades before the recent era’s Great Bloating. The big tuskers can stay home and lose weight on a full scholarship.

Brewer can’t seem to grasp that if there are very few students on campus it will be safer for the players, since there will be fewer potential virus vectors wandering around.

SCIENCE doesn’t matter to Brewer: “I don’t know what is more diabolical: prematurely committing to college-as-usual and ignoring the health risks for the hidden purpose of preparing to play ball or drafting players to come back and be covid-19 football guinea pigs.”

That argument ignores the fact the players and their parents have a great deal of say in the matter. If they subscribe to his ‘we’re all gonna die!’ philosophy, the players will stay home.

Brewer acts like players are being ordered to participate in the Ebola Bowl, but the facts don’t support his dire fantasies. Iowa State intends to open its season September 5^th as planned, but only season ticket holders will be allowed in the stadium. That cuts capacity in half, reducing exposure for fans, just as their masks will reduce the volume of cheering.

When you write for the WoePost, everyone either is a victim or will soon be one. What Brewer obviously never considers is most of the players will WANT to come back. Brewer was not a college athlete and there is no evidence he competed in a serious athletic league after college. That leads me to believe he doesn’t understand players define themselves by what they play. Paternalistically banning football in the name of neurotic safety concerns, erases the core of their self–definition.

Football is an inherently dangerous sport and players are well aware of that. Football players are risk takers. If they weren’t they’d be playing ballerina ball or swimming. Letting a virus that mostly passes over young people kill their season is simply cruel.

Brewer’s solution is in keeping with the scolds who lack proportionality and ignore SCIENCE that doesn’t conform to their ideology: “No school. No ball. No excuses.”

That’s easy enough for Brewer to declare. The clock isn’t ticking on his career.

Don’t Confuse US Women’s Soccer with the Facts

The US women’s national soccer team just scored a spectacular ‘own goal’ in California US District court. Their lawsuit, contending they were underpaid in comparison with the men’s team, was rejected in a summary judgement.

Dave Granlund

And without so much as a single dramatic courthouse steps news conference starring the purple–haired Norma Rae: Megan Rapinoe.

A dejected spokesperson for the team tweeted, “We are shocked and disappointed with today’s decision, but we will not give up working for two bites at the same apple. We are confident that with the right judge and a gullible jury, women’s soccer will be able to have our cake and eat it, too!”

Whoops! My mistake! That’s what she should have said. The real statement was,” …shocked and disappointed –therapeutic buzzwords – equal pay – wah, wa, wa – gender.”

The lawsuit, which has the strong support of feminists, leftists and sportswriters has been a lie from the beginning. Last September I wrote about the initial filing and the immediate support it gained from the Washington Post and various Hollywood hairdos.

Fact is the women’s soccer team is paid under the provisions of a contract the women negotiated with US Soccer and then approved by a majority vote. It wasn’t a document the overseer brought down from the massa and made the field women sign.

Their contract differs significantly from that of the men due to tradeoffs the women demanded.

In negotiating terms of employment there’s a tradeoff between risk and reward. The salesman who agrees to be compensated solely by commission has a much higher potential income than the worker who wants a set and regular salary.

The contract the women negotiated rewards the collective at the expense of the individual. During negotiations, the women were offered a contract that more closely matched the incentives in the men’s agreement and they turned it down. They preferred a sure thing even if upside potential was limited.

National Review explains the women wanted, “guaranteed contracts, injury protection; health, dental, and vision insurance; child-care assistance; severance pay; guaranteed rest time. In short: more security and more benefits” along with more guaranteed slots on the team. That is a low risk agreement.

The only item the women didn’t demand was a Teamster’s lapel pin.

The men’s contract was a high risk “pay to play” arrangement where “all the economic risk was borne by the players in exchange for more upside if the players made the team and the team was successful.”

The women had second thoughts about the men’s agreement after their championship season and realized ‘damn! If we’d taken that offer, with our record, we’d really be rich!’

(This is why gamblers – regardless of sex – aren’t allowed to bet after the dealer has revealed his cards.)

Sally Jenkins, who covers the estrogen beat for the WoePost sports page, was incensed last year when the women filed suit and now that the salary portion of the lawsuit has been dismissed she’s incandescent.

To Jenkins the “summary judgment” that was issued by the judge didn’t mean the unequal pay claim was “completely without merit.” Sally said it meant “Male Entitlement!” Jenkins didn’t have time for the facts last year and certainly doesn’t now.

Did Gloria Steinem consult an economist before she set fire to her drawers?

Jenkins is obsessed with the idea of equal–pay–for–equal–work. What she can’t grasp is that this isn’t about reporters in the WoePost bullpen. Women’s soccer and men’s soccer are completely different games. The men’s fan base is larger. Men’s soccer brings in more money and the TV audience is much larger.

As hapless as the US men’s team is on the world stage, and it’s pretty pitiful, if the men played the US women they would streamroller the women. The women couldn’t even beat a team of 15–year–old boys during an exhibition match in 2015, and that was a year when the women won the World Cup.

This is why even the most talented player in the Lingerie Football League makes a fraction of the salary of a player on the NFL’s worst Miami Dolphins.

And to prove this suit has the intellectual content of an argument with your ex–wife, NR points out, “The lowest-paid member of the women’s team made more money than the highest-paid member of the men’s team.”

The women negotiated their contract. They opted for security over reward. And now they want the courts to impose terms on US Soccer the team rejected during negotiations because, like women, they changed their collective mind.

What’s particularly ironic is, even though the lawsuit failed, the contract the oppressed members of Team Estrogen formerly agreed to is still paying them during the WuFlu lockdown. While the men haven’t seen one thin dime.

Perfect Time for Trump to Fight the Other Alien Invasion

While it’s all–hands–on–deck fighting the invasion of an alien virus, it’s an ideal time to fight our continuing invasion of aliens, too.

Rick McKee Augusta Chronicle

The Wall Street Journal reports, “Hospitals in parts of New York City have become so full of critically ill patients that they have steered ambulances elsewhere.” And “hospitals in pandemic epicenters have passed a tipping point in the fight against the new coronavirus.”

John Milne, with Washington’s Providence St. Joseph Health, agreed. “The company’s Swedish Issaquah Campus hospital has run out of beds for incoming Covid-19 patients. ‘We’re on the threshold of being overwhelmed.’”

Lewis Kaplan, president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, told the Washington Post (WoePost), “We are now on crisis footing. What you take as first–come, first–served …medicine is not where we are. We are now facing some difficult choices in how we apply medical resources.”

If that’s not a crisis, what is? It’s a perfect occasion to reestablish US sovereignty and the power of immigration law.

President Trump should issue an executive order governing the distribution of China Flu relief that puts US citizens first. States that pledge to limit emergency room slots, ICU beds and ventilators to US citizens will go to the top of the list for aid.

Prioritizing citizens over lawbreakers will be called ‘cruel’ by moral exhibitionists. The same conspirators supporting illegal alien sanctuaries. That blatant obstruction of justice has allowed illegal aliens to repeatedly kill citizens on the streets. It’s time to draw a line before the mere presence of an illegal kills citizens in the ICU.

Betsy McCaughey found, “In NYC, 1 out of every 4 people with a confirmed case has been hospitalized and 44 percent of them have needed a ventilator.” Back in 2015 New York was 16,000 ventilators short in the event of an epidemic. New York is still thousands short today.

Rationing hospital beds and ventilators is currently a topic of serious discussion. Lugubrious Gov. Andrew Cuomo vented his wrath at the suggestion we exhume the economy and let younger people work, “My mother is not expendable. Your mother is not expendable. … No one should be talking about social Darwinism for the sake of the stock market.”

What I want to see is Sanctuary Cuomo telling his mom ventilator rationing means there’s no room in the ICU for her because a younger illegal was deemed more likely to survive the Kung Flu.

In Washington State, age and existing disease will be used to determine who gets a ventilator. Medical organizations paralyzed by political correctness are considering using a random lottery, only this time the Mega Millions prize is four weeks on a ventilator.

Second prize is a pillow and Fentanyl.

Another proposal gives patients a ventilator audition that reverses The Masked Singer. Patients get five days on a machine and if they don’t improve doctors take the mask away. All rationing plans involve the participation of an impartial death panel that adds up a patient’s score and — unless she’s Cuomo’s mom — decides between the ventilation and elimination.

The NY Times quotes Christopher McCabe, of the Institute of Health Economics in Canada. “There’s no perfect way to choose who gets lifesaving treatment. At times like these, society may be more forgiving of utilitarian decision making.”

Putting citizens first is both rational and utilitarian.

Federalism means states will determine rationing criteria. What Trump should demand is the first decision point be geography. If you aren’t a US citizen or Green Card holder, then it’s time to head home for healthcare.

Being the ER for Latin America is a luxury we can no longer afford.

This order would put political pressure on sanctuary states to explain to families why Pedro got the ventilator and PawPaw didn’t. Sanctuary state residents may have previously downplayed murders by illegals as a byproduct of wrong–place–wrong–time bad luck. Being told your family suffers from wrong–disease–wrong–time by a state functionary should end their passivity for all time.

States compliant with Real ID driver’s licenses can use that for verification. States without can use passports, birth certificates or some other method approved by the Trump administration.

Trump could soften the blow by offering to fly the illegal’s entire family home if they agree to never return. And to prove I’m not entirely heartless, the flight doesn’t have to be on Spirit Airlines. I hear United currently has plenty of excess capacity.

The point is during this crisis US citizens who play by the rules should have absolute priority over all the sad stories and claims of abuse by people who broke the law to enter our country. They gambled when they crossed the border and now it’s time to collect their bets.

Richmond Proves the Left Hates You and Your Gun

Virginia’s 2^nd Amendment rally was a huge disappointment for Big Nanny Mike Bloomberg, Gov. Ralph Northam and gun–grabbing busybodies across the nation. The event failed to produce the Reichstag Fire the left was secretly hoping would occur.

Rick McKee Augusta Chronicle

Over 22,000 armed 2^nd Amendment supporters gathered in the state capital with loaded firearms and there wasn’t even a single accidental discharge.

Talk about your misfire!

And the “armed militia groups planning to storm the Capitol” that ‘forced’ Northam to declare a state of emergency? The feds arrested six losers before they could stock up on jerky and one of those was a Canadian.

Had there been violence, it would have provided the perfect pretext for the left to accelerate the 2^nd Amendment rollback in Virginia. Simply owning a gun would be all the ‘red flag’ authorities would need.

Although entirely peaceful, the event was a failure. The very next day leftist legislators passed three 2^nd Amendment violations the rally crowd specifically opposed.

What the rally did accomplish was revealing how the left, it’s stenographers in the Opposition Media, its elected officials and its stooges in law enforcement view normal Americans who value a Constitutional right leftists don’t like.

That view alternates between utter contempt and hyperventilating fear.

The left initially tried to discourage turnout by characterizing the gathering as a Klan rally without the carbon footprint. Those who were willing to risk being photographed near the only confirmed racist in town — Gov. Northam famous for his blackface/Klan robes photo and nickname ‘Coonman’ in his college yearbook — received additional discouragement when warned they might be caught up in violence from armed militia groups were going to “storm the capitol.”

Law enforcement stooges angling for an appointment piled on, too. Attendees who wanted to convene on the capitol grounds were going to be penned up like illegals behind an Obama fence. Participants were told to come early because there would only be one entrance to the concentration pen and there would be a single bathroom inside for thousands. (The accepted rule of thumb for abortion ‘rights’ rallies and illegals’ amnesty gatherings is 1 bathroom per 100.)

Fortunately, 2^nd Amendment supporters aren’t a stupid as Gov. Coonman. Rather than be herded into Northam’s Gitmo for Guns, thousands more armed supporters stood outside the fences where current law allows the open carry of weapons. (Look for this to change in the near future.)

Storming militias, white supremacist groups, assorted bigots, law breakers, armed bullies and trigger–happy vigilantes all failed to put in an appearance. That didn’t stop the left from using its favorite adjectives anyway.

Northern VA Cong. Don Beyer tweeted, “[Richmond] drew large numbers of white nationalists, militias and racist conspiracy theorists…Neo–Nazis tried to use the rally to launch violent attacks.” All of which are lies.

WoePost columnist Petula Dvorak, the chubby chronicler of conventional wisdom, combined lies and contempt. “Y’all, it smelled like fear out here in Virginia…One group pushed through crowds in a conga line of camo and Carhartt…‘Racist, white supremacists coming through,’ one line leader bellowed, laughing, like everyone should know he really isn’t racist.”

The writer who really captured the left’s Zeitgeist was a creature named Will Bunch who writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He’s also the most dangerous because he would deny your constitutional rights because he’s afraid.

Here’s his description of a gathering of law–abiding Americans exercising a right guaranteed by the Constitution, “America — although we may be too frightened to even admit it — just witnessed arguably the most successful use of terrorism on U.S. soil in nearly a generation, even if this time was non- lethal…American citizens were deprived of [1^st Amendment] rights on Monday — on Martin Luther King Day, of all days — by an intimidating bullying, armed mob. Do not dare call this ‘peaceful.’”

Bunch was evidently too lazy to discover the Virginia Civil Defense League, which organized the rally, has been holding their event on that day for over a decade. Why? Because 2^nd Amendment supporters have jobs and need a day off to travel to Richmond to contact their legislators.

And Bunch is too fearful of an inanimate object and too drunk on his faux outrage to grasp that my exercise of a constitutional right does not threaten him.

His fear is our problem.

There’s no compromise with anti–gun extremists. They have an agenda and a long–term plan. Each ‘compromise’ is another step toward neutering the 2^nd Amendment.

The language Northam, Beyer, Dvorak, Bloomberg and Bunch use is not how one refers to someone whose views they respect. Their language is not how one refers to someone whose constitutional rights they respect.

Their language is how the authorities refer to people they intend to disarm and force into an outdoor enclosure with one bathroom per 6,000.

Virginia Is a Preview of What Gun–grabbers Would Do Nationally

A surprising development is occurring among staunch members of the left at the Washington Post and elsewhere. These woke scolds have come out strongly against sanctuary cities and counties. Before it was either silence or tacit approval for government sheltering a population that was “in the shadows,” which makes sense when you remember they’re running from the law.

Beeler – Columbus Dispatch

Sanctuary jurisdictions serve to protect a criminal class estimated to be 22 million strong at the expense of law–abiding citizens.

And what an expense it is.

These serial law breakers are responsible for the deaths of approximately 3,000 American citizens every year. Over the course of an average lifetime, the total cost to taxpayers for supporting people who have no right to be in our country is estimated by Center for Immigration Studies to be $746.3 billion.

And even those figures don’t include the cost to individual citizens of identity theft, property crime, lowered property values, assault, gang activity, crowded schools, packed emergency rooms and ‘Press One for English.’

The WoePost referred to sanctuary movement as “disturbing,” “reactionary,” “ugly,” and “dangerous.” Sanctuaries were even compared to “slavery” which makes perfect sense when you recall the idea behind sanctuaries is to protect cheap, controllable labor for unscrupulous employers.

WoePost columnist Petula Dvorak wrote “sanctuary cities” are populated by “extremists.” Virginia Delegate David Toscano compared sanctuaries to the Massive Resistance backlash that opposed public school integration.

Only I need to clarify. The WoePost wasn’t condemning sanctuaries that protect illegal aliens from richly deserved punishment. It was condemning the new 2^nd Amendment sanctuaries protecting the constitutional rights of law–abiding citizens from undeserved collective punishment.

That’s because the extra–legal selective law enforcement the left uses to protect people who have no right to be here is out of bounds for citizens to use to protect rights granted them at the founding of the nation.

And that’s not the only contrast. Illegal alien sanctuaries are imposed on an electorate from the top down to protect a pool of future leftist voters. The 2^nd Amendment sanctuary movement is a grassroots effort that petitioned elected officials to protect constitutional rights and the officials responded.

Even the WoePost admits the “movement has driven throngs of people to show up at boards of supervisor’s meetings. Their numbers are remarkable — 400, 800, even 2,000 in attendance.” As this is written over 110 Virginia counties, cities and towns have passed some form of 2^nd Amendment sanctuary resolution that says that jurisdiction will not enforce or impose unconstitutional gun ownership restrictions on its residents.

Gun Owners of America Senior Vice President Erich Pratt has one of the best explanations of the 2^nd Amendment sanctuary movement, “Sanctuary resolutions are important because they provide the best way for local officials to inform the newly elected General Assembly and the governor that if they rush forward to create new felony crimes to jail law-abiding Virginians — just for exercising their most fundamental and natural right of self-defense — then they cannot expect localities to enforce such unjust laws.”

Gun owners are right to be concerned. This isn’t the anodyne “common sense gun regulation” that is so innocent during the campaign. It’s always different after they win.

Richmond is now controlled by the angry left. Gov. Ralph ‘Coonman’ Northam has discussed requiring all owners of so–called ‘assault rifles’ to register their weapons with the state. And he requested an increase in the prison budget to cover the “increase in the operating cost of adult correctional facilities resulting from the enactment” of gun grabbing laws.

When gun confiscation speculation was running rampant in Richmond, US Rep. Don McEachin suggested the governor call out the National Guard to confiscate weapons.

Del. Dan Helmer introduced a bill that would ban indoor shooting ranges in buildings with more than 50 employees. Ranges that survived would be required to keep an Orwellian log of each shooter’s name, address and phone number.

Presumably so the state police could call ahead and have the owner pack his weapons for faster confiscation.

Del. Mark Levine’s bill would confiscate any magazine that held more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Those who didn’t turn their property over would be felons.

And that’s just the beginning.

There’s nothing “common sense” about these precursors to confiscation, which is the end game for the left. These despicable people subvert the law to protect their protected class of illegal aliens and future Democrats while using the law as a club to punish gun owners who vote Republican.

David French hit the nail on the head when he described the left’s gun fixation, “All too often gun-control proposals operate as a form of collective punishment on the law-abiding while serving as barely a speed bump in the path of the criminal.”

Sports Commentariat Demands More Inequality in College Sports

Sports was much more enjoyable when reporters covered sports. Now print and broadcast coverage is cluttered with breathless opinionating regarding race, ‘gender’, inequality and which high school will next host barnstorming Colin Kaepernick’s Aerial Circus.

Koterda Omaha World Herald

The latest social justice crusade for the sporties is what Sally Jenkins terms the NCAA’s “economically preying on athletes rather protecting them.”

This doesn’t mean the NCAA is forcing scholarship athletes to pay for housekeeping in away stadium locker rooms. It means the NCAA is using player’s images to promote college football without paying the athletes. The NCAA also stifles individual initiative by forbidding athletes from cashing in on their reputation while they are still playing in college.

Or as Jenkins with high umbrage terms it, “NCAA denies athletes their natural economic rights, and hijacks their names, images and likenesses for financial gain. Ohio State’s Chase Young is a star who may not sign his own autograph for money or endorse a Columbus car dealership.”

She then pulls out an apples–to–oranges comparison that supposedly wins the debate, “What member of a university marching band is told that they must not profit from the trumpet so long as they’re at the university?”

The answer right now is none, but when the Pride of Oklahoma starts recruiting trumpet players like the football team recruits the next Baker Mayfield, we’ll have to revisit the trumpet’s last call.

Fact is the football players Jenkins is putting up for auto dealer adoption are already being paid. In 2011 Dr. Patrick Rishe – at the time an Associate Professor of Economics at Webster University – ran the numbers on the value of a football scholarship.

At the University of Oklahoma, the out–of–state scholarship value was $124,556. And that’s not all, “intangible benefits associated with the scholarship [include] free gear, free publicity, free high-quality training and coaching, free access to trainers and fitness centers [and] lower unemployment rates for college graduates.”

Plus, the relief of avoiding the ball–and–chain of student loan debt.

Rishe concludes, “adding the short-term cost savings to the long-term earnings enhancement, the value of a college football scholarship at the Top 25 schools is potentially as high as $2.2 million for those student-athletes that complete their degrees.”

Those were 2011 numbers. The total value would be higher now.

The players, whose pain SJW sportswriters are feeling, represent maybe three percent of all the scholarship players on a team. Clemson QB Trevor Lawrence might cash in by endorsing hair salons but the vast majority of the team would remain anonymous and uncompensated.

And if you think the college football and basketball recruiting process is sleazy now, wait until boosters can bid for 5–star recruits! The players may as well list themselves on Ebay during their last semester of high school.

John Feinstein, another player pay supporter, does make an interesting point. Non–revenue or minor sport athletes, usually also–rans for collegiate attention, could benefit handsomely. “Why not pay a star swimmer, soccer player, tennis player or golfer to put on clinics for local kids? When Oklahoma State wins the NCAA golf championship, maybe local businesses around the state might want to use some of their players to promote products — or their golf courses.”

California just passed the “Fair Pay to Play Act” that will allow in–state athletes to go on the auction block. Other states are checking with head coaches who have winning records to discuss feasibility. While a miscellaneous congressman wants to strip the NCAA of its tax–exempt status if it doesn’t surrender.

Jenkins is convinced the NCAA is doomed because a political consultant told her so, “once the public suspects an organization’s motives don’t align with its mission, ‘we often see a rapid decline in the public seeing that organization as indispensable.’”

Maybe if Jenkins had been a paying client she would’ve been told the rest. Individuals often despise an organization overall, say Congress, but heartily approve of their individual congressman. The same is true of the NCAA and universities.

The situation may not be perfect, but players on a football team currently enjoy a rough equality. Some are more famous than others, but they all labor under the same economic system. And they are all getting more compensation than the rest of the student body.

Players are only undercompensated when compared to the NFL, which most of them will never join.

What Jenkins is advocating will replace this equivalence with a permanent caste system that geometrically enhances the inequality the left purports to abhor.

Think California, only in cleats.

Chase Young, Jenkins’ pet, will be making buckets of money, while the lineman next to him continues to labor in obscurity and now relative penury. It’s a recipe for jealousy, dissention and team disintegration.

Only Murderers Are Allowed to Be Amateurs

Even coverage of an attempted mass shooting successfully stopped by the NRA’s “Good guy with a gun” is not immune from the Opposition Media’s anti–gun agenda. One of the bedrock beliefs of the gun–grabber crowd is the average citizen has no need to own a gun, unless the weapon is strictly for hunting and safely stored somewhere in the Fortress of Solitude.

R McKee The Augusta Chronicle

All other uses of firearms should be restricted to government–approved experts, criminals and random crazy people. Law–abiding citizens need not apply.

That’s why early reports on the shooting at the West Freeway Church of Christ — located in White Settlement, TX — made a big deal about the hero, Jack Wilson, being a “former FBI agent.” It fit perfectly with the experts–only mindset of the OpMedia. Both the Daily Mail and the CBS outlet in Dallas, to name but two, highlighted that description in early coverage of the event.

Verifying that someone actually was a “former FBI” agent shouldn’t be that hard and certainly should be part of the story. One could begin by asking Jack, himself. And a call to the FBI would also be in order to completely verify. Lord knows the FBI should be eager to cooperate if it was true. An ex–agent stopping a shooting would provide some much–needed positive PR for the tarnished, Comeyfied institution.

Since Wilson was a candidate for county commissioner, those reporters could’ve checked for a bio on his website. But “former–FBI” like “Russia collusion” was just too good to check. The good folks at AR15.com did and discovered Wilson was a former reserve deputy with the Hood County Sheriff’s Dept. Not a former FBI agent.

That revelation presented a real quandary. If there is one class of law enforcement the OpMedia despises more than police, it’s reserve police. Reserve officers, which include deputies, are usually unpaid volunteers who are frequently only required to attend abbreviated law enforcement training.

Snobby reporters view reserves as little more than vigilantes with a badge and certainly not someone decent folks would feel comfortable around if they knew reserves were armed.

The experts–only narrative was saved when it was learned that Wilson was also a firearms instructor and formerly owned a gun range. That’s why the WoePost ran the headline: “Firearms instructor took out gunman at Texas church service.”

A follow–up editorial in the WoePost asserted, “The hero in Sunday’s shooting was not, as gun advocates would want us to believe, an ordinary churchgoer …but rather a firearms instructor and gun range owner who has been a reserve deputy with a local sheriff’s department. It’s not hard to imagine an even greater tragedy if there had been someone less skilled than Mr. Wilson…”

A hysterical editorial page writer at USA Today’s AZCentral.com echoed that sentiment, “In other words, he’s exactly the kind of man you want around with a firearm. But we know nothing about the at least six other parishioners who also appeared to draw their handguns at West Freeway Church …And that’s terrifying.”

Mike ‘Big Nanny’ Bloomberg — Democrat presidential candidate and moneybags behind Everytown for Gun Confiscation — even weighed in. When asked about the shooting he opined that, “It’s the job of law enforcement to have guns and decide when to shoot. We just do not want the average citizen carrying a gun in a crowded place.”

In other words, Bloomberg’s message for the 247 members in the congregation when the random crazy person opened up with a shotgun was leave it to the experts.

Keep Calm & Hope You Don’t Die.

Judging by the video of the shooting, Wilson has kept his firearms instructor license current. But in spite of what the credential–crazy media would have you believe he hasn’t been in law enforcement for over 33 years and his range closed in 2016. Wilson’s definitely better than the average bear, but he’s not John Wick.

And if Wilson had not been attending church that day, I’m guessing the congregation would have been happy if any of the other six armed parishioners had engaged the shooter. Particularly when the only other choice was to wait nine or more minutes for the experts to arrive.

It’s really not that complicated. People with concealed carry permits carry a gun because they’re too weak to tote a cop.

It’s been said time is money, but time is also life during an emergency. This idea that Americans can outsource their personal defense to the authorities is false. You are personally responsible for your family’s immediate safety. The gunfight inside West Freeway Church of Christ lasted only six seconds because the congregation had immediate responders who didn’t wait for first responders.

And that made all the difference.

Ghosts of the USDA

I’m wondering when the WoePost will stop haunting readers with stories of the US Dept. of Agriculture’s brutal forced migration from Washington to the primitive hellscape of Kansas City.

Rick McKee Augusta Chronicle

This week it’s low moans from former researcher Andrew Crane–Droesch who tries to convince us moving his department was a loss to research that rivaled the burning of the library in Alexandria.

Egypt, not Virginia.

If I’m reading Andrew correctly, humanity managing to feed itself over the centuries, without the help of scientists at the USDA, was just a lucky fluke. “Humanity’s dependence on the environment is made explicit through our food systems; without the right combination of weather, soil and labor, nobody eats.”

When bureaucrat uses the word “systems” it means the topic is too complicated for mere farmers or other laymen to understand. “…they need experts to make sure that food systems work efficiently and public funds are spent effectively.”

I’m going to interrupt here before Andrew tells us how many times to chew each bite of the “food system” before swallowing. Instead, let’s look at what USDA scientific “experts” and their research brought us in the past.

In a mere 40 years USDA “expert” researchers helped the USA waddle away with the prize for the fattest nation on earth. Then we ate the trophy. USDA research quacks and food fanatics are single–handedly responsible for the obesity crisis that has made type 2 diabetes the trademark affliction of the U.S. welfare state.

Their fraudulent “food pyramid” upended the food industry, bloated millions, cost billions and it was all based on “settled science” that was dangerously wrong.

Reduce saturated fat intake to 10 percent? Wrong. Cut back on salt until corned beef is only a memory? Wrong. Increase carbohydrate intake until you look like a stuffed shell? Wrong.

According to the Daily Mail: “A new review says evidence from [medical research] trials did not support the advice. It says it is ‘incomprehensible’ that such advice was introduced for …220 million Americans . . . ‘given the contrary results from a small number of unhealthy men.’”

Two generations now have no idea what a decent steak tastes like due to our current “food system.” A vile cabal of granola–heads and the USDA ruined beef. Instead of corn–fed beef that produced tender, marbled steaks — USDA anti–fat crusaders gulled beef producers into going back to “natural” grass–fed beef.

Now we can enjoy the same type of tough, stringy beef Augustus McRae and Captain Call ate in Lonesome Dove. The agency’s motto should be: The USDA – Making It Easy to Go Vegan!

Andrew also has the strange belief that taxpayers are penalized when duplication and empire–building are eliminated. “The team that studies patent law and innovation is gone. Experts on trade and international development, farm finance and taxes all left. The publishing staff all left, delaying dozens of reports on subjects from veterans’ diets to organic foods.”

Where to begin? Patent law and innovation belong in the lethargic hands of the USTPO. Trade and international development belong to Commerce and the State Dept. Publishing is handled by the Government Printing Office. The only entry in that laundry list of waste and duplication that really belongs to the USDA is “farm finance and taxes” and I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt there.

As for the reports on “veteran’s diets and organic foods [sic]”, if the research is of the same quality that produced the food pyramid, I guarantee vets are better off without it.

The truth is his USDA research department was a nerd’s playpen, “We loved ERS because it offered a rare degree of intellectual freedom, combined with the chance to make a real impact. We got to spend a great deal of our time pursuing research questions that we defined.”

And all at taxpayer expense!

Andrew and his merry band of Resistors were another group of self–aggrandizing Truth Tellers to Power! “The Agriculture Department wanted to restrict access to food stamps, for example. According to our models …food assistance programs were often a positive multiplier for local economies.” As if any agency report in the history of bureaucracies ever found that a program comprising a large part of the agency budget was ineffective and counter–productive.

An estimated 141 of the 180 bureaucrats ordered on the march refused to budge. That’s not a tragedy. That’s a good start.

The USDA is a self–licking ice-cream cone that essentially pays one group of dependents to grow food and pays another group to eat it, all at incredible taxpayer expense. If an order to move west produced an 80 percent attrition rate in the rest of the agency it wouldn’t occur a moment too soon.

Subsidized Diners Demand We Pay Mandatory Tips

Nate Beeler, The Columbus Dispatch

I may have discovered the real reason people living in blue states don’t contribute as much to charity as those living in red states. It’s not that they are hypocrites whose ‘compassion’ doesn’t extend to their own wallets.

It’s because all their discretionary giving is going to restaurant tips.

Getting woke is getting expensive. A recent headline in the WoePost issues an order with all the grace of the director of a Chinese organ–harvesting plant telling you to lie down and do your duty.

“Poor service? You still have to tip 20 percent, no matter what.”

Before we explore the astonishing ‘reasoning’ behind that edict from our social superiors, let’s digress into tipping history.

Up until the early ‘70s the standard tip for good service was 10 percent. Generations finished their career satisfied with 10 percent, content in the knowledge they were getting exactly the same percentage as God Almighty.

Then inflation hit the country. In 1973 inflation jumped to 8.7 percent and peaked at 13.3 percent in 1979. I remember groceries being so expensive I ate hamburger with my eggs because I couldn’t afford bacon.

Mathematically illiterate reporters decided inflation was harming wait staff. They decreed the 10 percent tip was no longer enough in inflationary times and it must be boosted to 15 percent.

Management was behind the idea because it was no skin off their nose and food service employees weren’t letting this bandwagon get away.

Unfortunately, like so many bright ideas brought to you by the media, the theory was both wrong and had no basis in fact.

Let’s say a restaurant check in 1972 totaled $10.00. By 1979 inflation boosted the check for the same dinner (maybe it included bacon) to $20.00. That’s an increase of 100 percent! By comparison, the tip in 1972, at the standard 10 percent, was $1.00. In 1979 the tip had increased to $2.00.

By Jove that’s an increase of 100 percent, too, a fact that escaped reporters and etiquette ‘experts’ because they can’t grasp that the size of the tip increases in lockstep with the size of the check.

Today we enjoy a stretch of historically low inflation rates, but that doesn’t matter to the Hospitality–Journalism Misinformation Complex. Now they’ve decided 20 percent is the minimum and they’ve tripled the responsibilities of the diner.

If this keeps up, it won’t be just Long John Silver that wants us to bus the tables.

This new edict comes from the food critic for the WoePost, an individual who not only eats on the company dime, he tips on the company dime, too. That benevolence by proxy insulates him from the cost of his bright idea and transfers the expense to readers.

That’s bad enough, but he can’t even grasp the theory behind tipping in the first place. From atop Mt. Olympus he explains, “I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding about tipping in America. Diners have been led to believe that tipping should be based on the quality of the service. But this is not the reason we tip. We tip because restaurateurs in America have shifted the burden of paying for some of their labor costs to diners. So when you don’t tip, it affects the wages of servers.”

Affecting “the wages of servers” is precisely what the tip is supposed to do! A gratuity is not a participation trophy for being part of my dining experience. It is an acknowledgement of the quality of the service.

My wife works part-time as a server so she has an excuse to get out of the house and away from me. She averages $30.00 an hour in tips alone. No “burden–shifting” restaurateur is going to pay her that kind of wage and stay in business. Even lobbyists couldn’t afford to eat out at those rates.

Subsidizing career choices doesn’t end the diner’s responsibility. Besides payroll, customers are also drafted into Human Resources. With tips being prix fixe the options for responding to poor service are limited to personally explaining job duties to your server or contacting the manager and asking for a new server.

Somehow publicly asking your waiter be fired is an improvement over simply reducing the tip.

Meanwhile your dinner is getting cold.

When I go out to eat it’s not because I always wanted to manage a one–table restaurant. The idea is to take time off from responsibilities, not assume new ones.

The article concludes with this stern admonition: “Like it or not, tipping isn’t about me — or you. It’s simply a responsibility placed on all diners in this country. And you need to factor that in as the full cost of dining out.”

To which the only conceivable reply is: Can I get a side of fries with my Social Justice?

On the Trail of Tears With Federal Bureaucrats

Breitbart News reports 80 percent of the female migrants to the USA’s heartland are sexually assaulted during the trip. Yet the heartless Trump administration remains relentless and will continue with its plan to force the USDA’s Economic Research Service to move to Missouri.

Rick McKee, Counterpoint

Wait. I’ve mistakenly conflated two stories. The sexual assault victims are willing illegals heading for our interior, while the USDA folks are unwilling migrants threatened with moving vans by the Orange Tyrant.

It’s an easy mistake to make. The WoePost’s coverage of the move has been so tear–jerky one could mistake Donald Trump for Democrat Andrew Jackson driving Cherokees from Georgia.

Here’s a recent headline: “The USDA relocation to Kansas City is ripping apart the lives of its employees.”

Wow, that sounds like the pre–dawn raid on Paul Manafort’s house!

Only there’s no drama. It’s 2200 words of hysterical pathos. The tale of travail begins with an alphabet crusader. He’s a 28–year USDA employee being asked to move for the first time. The story begins, “Randi Johnson raised the picture of her dead son’s football team.” Followed by a reference to “Her dead wife’s high school yearbooks.”

It looks like the standard media elite’s same–pronoun marriage mixed with a double personal tragedy.

Only it’s not. Events were condensed for drama. Johnson’s marriage was perfectly normal when his wife died of cancer 11 years ago. It only became retroactively irregular — scrambling the pronouns — when Mr. Johnson decided he was Mrs. Johnson three years ago. Two years after his son’s overdose death.

It’s confused and sad and none of it was caused by a moving van.

The same goes for the other examples. One is a normal family that bought a “forever home” just prior to the announcement of the move. Her job was a bit like working in a call center. “At the NIFA, she spent most of her time on the phone talking to researchers, farmers and small businesses with ideas for new farming techniques or products.”

She even met the odd farmer in his natural habitat, “Occasionally, she took road trips around the country to meet people face-to-face, one of her favorite parts of the job.”

However, the prospect of living among the “people” in Missouri was something else entirely.

The last victim is a 33–year–old who’s been there four years. No wife. No pets. He’s leaving a girlfriend he met on the web.

Let’s put this in perspective for people living in the coastal bubble. By the time I was a junior in high school the oilfield supply company my father worked for had moved us from Duncan, OK to Great Bend, KS; back to Duncan; then from Duncan to Oklahoma City; from OKC to Midland, TX and then from Midland to Dallas, TX.

The longest we stayed anywhere before Dallas was four years. Coastal snobs often dismiss inland unemployment by telling the jobless to move to where the jobs are. That’s exactly the situation here, but somehow, it’s a relocation tragedy.

The military is government and it moves people around in a regular fruit basket turnover without catching the eye of the Opposition Media. The difference is these USDA people have doctorates. They’re supposed to be immune to everyday cares and concerns once they go to work for the government.

Normal mom is unhappy she had only a year to prepare, the destination was uncertain because various municipalities were abasing themselves before Uncle Sam, hoping to land these highly–paid bureaucrats.

Compare that with Carl Icahn’s government move. The high taxes in New York supporting that bloated government are driving him to Florida. He announced his move with six months’ notice and as Bloomberg put it, “…employees who don’t [move] won’t have a job.”

The USDA move is expected to save $300 million over 15 years. It could save even more if the department resists the urge to replace all 366 employees who quit rather than be forced to bed down with hillbillies.

Even after wading through the WoePost’s angst–fest, the irony is all three employees had a happy ending. Mr. Johnson retired and moved to a beach town because “[he] always wanted to live near the ocean.” Plus, it’s closer to his grandchild.

Our homebuyer did indeed purchase a “forever home” because no one moved. She took a new job where she’ll be asking for government money instead of distributing government money.

And our single has taken a job at my alma mater, the University of Oklahoma, where he can enjoy a fine campus and a great football team.

For taxpayers, plans change. Life goes on. Only the government entitled attempt to make a federal case out of it.