Ex-Illinois

[Ex-Illinois @EndILshutdown]

My first attempt at making sense of the stay-at-home orders by digging into the numbers: https://t.co/LvIA72fCxq #coronavirus #endtheshutdown

[JD Vance @JDVance]

Henry Nowak died the same way a civilization dies: abandoned, handcuffed by authorities who neither trusted nor cared for him, and accused of hate crimes he did not commit. His murder is as tragic as it is enraging. He should still be alive today, and he would be if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it.

Henry was far from the first to so needlessly lose his life, and I fear he won’t be the last. Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger. One of the most important things the Trump administration has proven to the world is that stopping the flow of mass migration and defending national sovereignty is a matter of political will and leadership. Anything else is an excuse.

It is because we love the West that we want to preserve it. We love our civilization. We love our country. We love our children. And nobody—nobody—should ever die the way that Henry Nowak died. May God comfort those who loved him, and may God rest his soul.

[Jen @IlliniJen]

Illinois ranks dead last in jobs growth among big states under Pritzker.

Even as he touts economic momentum and new investments, only 9,400 private sector jobs have been added since 2019 for 0.75% total growth. Neighbors grew 2.5%.
Government added 36,600 jobs with your tax dollars, while professional services lost over 50,000 positions.

This is what @JBPritzker calls “success.”

[Paul Vallas @PaulVallas]

Another Pritzker budget, another plethora of tax increases.

Pritzker’s eight new tax increases will take another $800 million from Illinois workers. This brings JB’s total tax and fee increases to 65, amounting to $8.5 billion annually, leaving Illinois residents paying the highest taxes and fees in the country.

Effective state and local tax rates totaled nearly 17% for a median Illinois household last year, compared to the national average of just 11.02%. Unbelievably, that is even higher than No. 2-ranked New York at 14.95%. Meanwhile, Illinois property taxes have increased by $11 billion, or 33%.

Illinois’ economy has performed so poorly that nearly all revenue growth used to fund the state’s ever-expanding government has come from tax increases rather than economic growth. In fact, since Pritzker took office, almost all employment growth has been in government jobs.

Illinois residents—particularly middle- and upper-income earners—are voting with their feet. Since Pritzker took office, Illinois has continued to lose residents, while the state’s population decline has been offset by a surge in migrant arrivals, which some estimates place at more than 500,000 people. Surveys also show that roughly half of remaining residents say they would leave Illinois if they had the means to do so.

[Cernovich @Cernovich]

You will be called racist for standing up for the West, or watch your boy bleed out on camera. Up to you.

[Gunther Eagleman™ @GuntherEagleman]

🇺🇸 Just in case you forgot why you have a three-day weekend…

This is it.

Not the barbecues. Not the beach trips. Not the sales.

This is the reason.

The folded flag. The final salute. The ultimate sacrifice so the rest of us could be free.

This Memorial Day, we honor the fallen.

We remember their names. And we never take this freedom for granted.

[Ex-Illinois @EndILshutdown]

@LtGovStratton @GovPritzker Also, this seems like a blatantly political comment that should be coming from your campaign account. Not a government account.

[Ex-Illinois @EndILshutdown]

@LtGovStratton @GovPritzker Why do so many in your state need govt support? And why must you rely on the federal govt? What have you and your partner been doing for the past 8 years? You can't even take care of your own state. So why would anyone want you to continue representing them in DC?

[Ex-Illinois @EndILshutdown]

@GovPritzker @ILHumanServices You've been in office for how long - eight years? - and you still have a "need to understand" one of the most fundamental problems in your state? C'mon, give it up and go back to the business world where you were so successful. Oohh, wait...

[Jesús Fernández-Villaverde @JesusFerna7026]

Smartphones are not the explanation for the recent decline in fertility. Instead, they are an accelerator of deeper forces already at work.

Let’s start with the facts. Fertility is falling almost everywhere: in rich, middle-income, and poor countries; in secular and religious countries; and in countries with high and low levels of gender equality.

The decline accelerated around 2014. So, no country-specific explanation will work unless you are willing to believe that 200 distinct country-specific explanations arrived at roughly the same time.

Smartphones look like the obvious candidate: the first iPhone was released in 2007, and global adoption has been astonishingly fast.

Economists understand the first major decline in fertility in advanced economies, from 6 or 7 children per woman throughout most of human history to about 1.8, that occurred between the early 1800s and roughly 1970, well before smartphones. The main drivers were a sharp fall in child mortality (effective fertility was rarely above 3 and often close to 2) and the shift from a low-skill, rural agrarian economy to a high-skill, urban industrial one. We have quantitative models that fit these facts well.

Country-specific factors mattered too, of course. Proximity to low-fertility neighbors accelerated Hungary’s decline, while fragmented landowning structures accelerated France’s. But these were second-order mechanisms.

This is also why most economists long considered Paul Ehrlich’s doom scenarios implausible. We forecast that fertility in middle- and low-income economies would follow the same path as in the rich, probably faster, because reductions in child mortality reached India or Africa at lower income levels (medical technology is nearly universal, and most gains come from handwashing and cheap antibiotics, not Mayo Clinic-level care). Much of what we see in Africa or parts of Latin America today is still that old story.

But in the 1980s, a new pattern appeared. Japan and Italy fell below 1.8, the level we had thought was the new floor. By 1990, Japan was at 1.54 and Italy at 1.36.

This second fertility decline began in Japan and Italy earlier than elsewhere, driven by country-specific factors, but the underlying dynamics were widespread: secularization, an education arms race, expensive housing, the dissolution of old social networks, and the shift to a service economy in which women’s bargaining power within the household is higher. The U.S. lagged because secularization came later, suburban housing remained relatively cheap, and African American fertility was still high. U.S. demographic patterns are exceptional and skew how academics (most of whom are in the U.S.) and the New York Times see the world.

My best guess is that, without smartphones, Italy’s 2025 fertility rate would be about 1.24 rather than 1.14. I doubt anyone will document an effect larger than 0.1-0.2. Italy was at 1.19 in 1995, not far from today’s 1.14. The TFR is cyclical due to tempo effects, so I do not read too much into the rise between 1995 and 2007 or the decline from 1.27 in 2019 to 1.14 today. The direct effect of smartphones is not zero, but it is not, by itself, that large.

Where social media, in general, and smartphones, in particular, matter is in the diffusion of social norms. What would have taken 25 years now happens in 10. Social media are not the cause of fertility decline; modernity is. But they are a very fast accelerator.

That is why social media are a major part of the story behind Guatemala (yes, Guatemala) going from 3.8 children per woman in 2005 to 1.9 in 2025. Without them, Guatemala would also have reached 1.9, just 20 years later.

Modernity, in its current form, is incompatible with replacement-level fertility. By modernity, I do not mean capitalism: fertility fell earlier and faster in socialist economies than in market economies. Socialist Hungary fell below replacement in 1960, and socialist Czechoslovakia in 1966 (both experienced small, short-lived baby booms in the mid-1970s). By modernity, I mean a society organized around rational, large-scale systems and formalized knowledge.

Countries will not converge to the same fertility rate. East Asia is likely stuck near 1, possibly below, given its unbalanced gender norms and toxic education systems. Latin America faces the same gender problem plus weak growth prospects, so I expect something around 1.2. Northern Europe has more egalitarian family structures and might hold near 1.5. The very religious societies are probably the only ones that will sustain 1.8.

All of this could change with AI or changes in population composition. We will see. But on the current evidence, deep sub-replacement fertility is the “new new normal.” Unless we reorganize our societies, better learn to handle it as best we can.

[Jen @IlliniJen]

Every parent in America should be furious right now.

District 300, based in Algonquin, Illinois, secretly transitioned a high school boy for years without telling his mother, even as he was hospitalized for suicidal ideation. They ignored her objections and pushed the full gender plan anyway.

Now she is suing the district and Illinois’ entire gender guidance system in Chicago federal court as the DOJ investigates 36 Illinois school districts for the exact same parental exclusion.

When did public schools decide they could secretly replace moms and dads?

[Jonathan Turley @JonathanTurley]

The Hill is out with my column on Kamala Harris's "bad idea" list from packing the Court to creating new states once Democrats retake power. https://t.co/IQH6Vunbmk Contrary to her podcast claim, there are bad ideas, just as there are bad people who want to win at any cost.

[HJB News @HJB_News__]

Buckingham Palace has attempted to ban this video.
His Majesty King Charles III is trying to lecture the British to abandon Western values and Christianity in favor of 'the wisdom of Islam'. If he likes it so much, let him abdicate and go live in Iran.

[Blue Lives Matter @bluelivesmtr]

HOLY COW: Bombshell data from the IRS has left NY Governor Kathy Hochul speechless.

Between 2020-2024, 892 companies escaped from New York - along with $47 BILLION in income with them.

Here's where they went:

• Florida: 341 companies
• Texas: 187
• North Carolina: 129

But guess what - it's no longer just billionaires.

We're talking about middle-class professionals, small business owners, and families desperate to flee the taxes, regulations and unsafe state.

Remember when Hochul made fun of them?

“Just get on a bus.” Well.... they did.

REPOST and get the data out there!

#thinblueline #lawenforcement

[John Kass @John_Kass]

We always think we'll spend time with our loved ones... until we can't. My Mothers Day column for johnkassnews.
https://t.co/sHpolIzRB4

[Ex-Illinois @EndILshutdown]

@GovPritzker As I keep reminding you, these types of posts should be coming from your political account, not your governor's account. $4.55 is a lower price than I saw anywhere in Ilinois this past week. Everyone in Illinois is not supportive of your political ambitions.

[God JB Pricker @GodPricker]

Illinois: 1st state w/yearly school mental health screenings for kids..

105 ILCS 5/2-3.203 takes effect in 2027.

Unless you opt your children out, the state will be labeling and medicating your child.

It’s not like most of these drugs create dependency for life.

It’s not like there are rights that get taken away for those deemed mentally unfit either!

Thank your Supreme Ruler JB Pritzker!

[David Burke 🇺🇸 @ConservativeTht]

Dear Democrats whining about Democracy: please explain to America how, out of 21 Congressional seats representing the 6 New England states, there are ZERO Republican Representatives, even though 40% of the electorate are registered Republicans, 48% in New Hampshire alone?

[Robby Starbuck @robbystarbuck]

After my report, I spoke with @WilliamLamberth and Governor Lee’s Administration. They’ve spoken with UTK leadership who are now working quickly to correct this situation.

In Tennessee, we don’t call women "birthing people" like @TheDemocrats do. This’ll be fixed!

[Lee Zeldin @epaleezeldin]

I told Senator Sheldon WhiteClub today that I won’t be listening to or caring about any of his lessons on morality knowing that he joined an all-white Rhode Island Country Club.

I’m also done with the likes of AOC, Al Gore, John Kerry, and the rest of the lying cabal that make stupid climate predictions, plunder tens of billions of tax dollars, enrich their well-connected allies, and are committed to strangulating out of existence entire sectors of our economy.

Climate alarmist AOC wants to be taken seriously while also insisting the world is imminently about to end due to climate change (Just under 5 years remain on her nutty Jan 2019 prediction that only 12 years of life are left on Earth).

Al Gore is now speaking publicly about his concern with global freezing after decades of grift talking about global warming. “Within the decade there will be no more snows of Kilimanjaro,” said Gore in 2006 (There’s still snow on Kilimanjaro year-round). Gore also predicted in 2009 ice-free Arctic summers within 5-7 years.

John Kerry warned in 2009 that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013.

These people are dishonest, power-hungry hacks.

The GREEN NEW SCAM is DEAD!!!

[John Rich🇺🇸 @johnrich]

I won't be buying any new vehicle with this 4th Amendment Commie AI feature. Republicans voted for this too...Uniparty at its worst. I look forward to a SCOTUS ruling on this anti-American tech soon. This is why Congress has a favorability rating lower than used toilet paper.