RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-budget-kathy-hochul-progressives-legislature-charter-schools-gas-stoves-181e2a19?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The Democratic left is running New York state these days, and Kathy Hochul appears to be largely Governor in name only. That’s the message from the $229 billion state budget that passed this week after months of haggling behind closed doors. The biggest losers are parents hoping for a good charter school for their children.

Ms. Hochul went into the talks with priorities she knew would be a hard lift in a Legislature controlled by progressives. They included modest bail reform, which passed, and her signature plan to expand housing by allowing the state to override local zoning laws, which was rejected.

Alas, she also succeeded in getting the first statewide ban on natural gas in most new construction beginning in 2025, which was also a progressive priority. When the Consumer Product Safety Commission first raised the idea of banning gas stoves, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer dismissed it as myth pushed by “shameless and desperate MAGA Republicans.” Care to revise and extend your remarks, Senator?

The Governor says the new ban doesn’t ban existing gas stoves. But it is the first step in making gas appliances more costly and difficult to replace. Consider this an echo of another infamous political promise: if you like your gas stove, you can keep it. This is part of the progressive method of denying that they favor an unpopular policy when it is first publicized, but then implementing it on the sly and gradually so current voters don’t get too upset.

Ms. Hochul’s most embarrassing loss was on charter schools. As a candidate she had called for raising the state cap on charters of 460 schools. She compromised with herself on that by proposing in her budget to keep the cap but eliminate the regional caps.

https://cnav.news/2023/05/05/editorial/guest/transgender-follies-madness-left/

Growing up in the 1950s, I remember distinctly that all of my high school classmates were obsessed with figuring out who they really were, males or females. Every conversation, the special clubs we formed to talk about this issue, the heated arguments we had with our parents who didn’t “get” that the children they thought were boys or girls were not at all what those dinosaurs imagined sex and gender to be, and the total lack of understanding we got from the powers-that-be, including teachers, counselors, coaches, doctors. It was truly a horrible time to be a girl or boy.

Tomboys

All that my girlfriends talked about, starting about the age of 11 or 12, was having their budding (or in some cases, formidable) breasts cut off, and the hormones coursing through their systems somehow, magically, eliminated altogether. The same with the boys. “How can we cover up our Adam Apples,” they lamented. “How can we hide our penises and put barrettes in our hair and be the girls we were really meant to be?”

After high school, I married and became a young mother at 18. And my son told me that when he was in high school in the 1970s, the same thing took place, although more intensely. “All we talked about,” he told me, was “who was a real boy and who was a real girl, and how the tomboys could become real boys and the guys who liked cooking could become real girls.”

“But at least things had progressed,” he said, “and there were teachers and guidance counselors willing to encourage the girls who were tomboys and the boys who liked cooking to stick to the genders “they were born to be and not to allow parents to interfere.”

Reality check

Please re-read every word of the above four paragraphs and know that NOT ONE WORD of them is true! In the 1950s—and for centuries before and decades after—girls knew they were girls; boys knew they were boys and that was that.