In New York City, close to one million bus riders, about one out of every two passengers, board buses without paying. The loss of revenue for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has reached a critical stage, and yet the city has yet to do anything about it, because it doesn’t know what to do. It may be too late.

New York’s fare evasion problem is by far the worst in the U.S. and among the worst of any major city in the world. The Wuhan virus freakout, as it did to so many other aspects of our economy, culture and society, made the situation worse, in part because the city had the brilliant idea that it would help get through the lockdown to make bus rides free. People don’t easily go back to paying for what they have been told they can have for nothing.

This, ladies and germs, is cultural rot and ethics collapse. In 2022, the transit authority lost $315 million because of bus fare evasion and $285 million as a result of subway turnstile jumpers, according to a 2023 report commissioned by the M.T.A. Taxpayers foot the bill for the freeloaders, naturally.

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From the London Times (Pointer: Ann Althouse):

“Carlsbad, a surfing hot spot near San Diego, has decided to prohibit people from lighting up inside apartments, condos and other shared buildings where multiple families live. From January residents will not be able to smoke or vape cannabis and nicotine products indoors or on balconies, porches and decks. The law does not apply to single-family homes or hotels and motels…At least 84 of California’s 483 municipalities — including Beverly Hills, Cupertino and Pasadena — have enacted similar bans in multi-family private residences, according to the American Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation…Many residents in Carlsbad said the smoking ban would improve public health while making housing more pleasant despite concerns over how it will be enforced. Due to limited resources police will not enforce the law, but landlords and other tenants will be able to take legal action against anyone smoking indoors.”

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Meta Platforms CEO and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told Congress this week that the Biden administration “repeatedly pressured” his company in 2021 to censor content related to the Wuhan virus, including posts by mere mortal Americans.

In response to questions from the House Judiciary Committee, Zuckerberg confirmed that the Biden administration tried to censor his social media company and therefore probably the others as well.

“There’s a lot of talk right now, about how the U.S. government interacts with companies like Meta, and I want to be clear about our position,” Zuckerberg said in a letter to the committee. “Our platforms are for everyone — we’re about promoting speech and helping people connect in a safe and secure way.” 

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Oh yeah, she’s secretly brilliant…

And the morons applaud.

Looking for that wood-chipper….

Philip Bump, arguably the worst of the Washington Post’s unethical reporters (but it’s a large and closely bunched field), went into full-Trump hate mode when the ex-President said, during the Democratic National Convention, “Why would somebody who’s Jewish be voting for these people? If Jewish people vote for her [Harris] and I use this expression, they ought to go out, because Kamala is a person that is very anti-Israel, and very anti-Jewish. But she solves that problem by saying her husband’s Jewish, okay? But that doesn’t…her actions are the worst that we’ve ever had.” In April, Trump made a similar statement about Jews voting for Joe Biden. “Any Jewish person that votes for Biden does not love Israel and frankly, should be spoken to,” Trump said. Ethics Alarms covered that “horrible” statement here. The ethics Alarms verdict: rhetorically sloppy and undiplomatic (as usual), but essentially correct.

So was the most recent statement. That this is true was nicely illustrated by none other than Professor Turley, who noted, as the Washington Post and most of the mainstream media did not, that while pro-Palestinian/Hamas/terrorism protesters were given a permit to demonstrate outside the convention hall, pro-Israel, anti-Hamas groups were not. The Democratic Party’s fingerprints are all over this: Chicago’s mayor is a Democrat just like it was in 1968, when Democratic Boss Mayor Daley denied anti-war demonstrators permits, and they protested anyway.

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…that in an election year characterized by the Democratic Party deliberately misrepresenting reality on multiple fronts to keep Americans in the dark just long enough to hold on to the power it craves and has so flagrantly abused, we just learned that the U.S. added about 818,000 fewer jobs in the 12 months ending in March than we had been told.

From the New York Times yesterday:

[M]onthly payroll figures overstated job growth…That suggests employers added about 174,000 jobs per month during that period, down from the previously reported pace of about 242,000 jobs — a downward revision of about 28 percent. The revisions, which are preliminary, are part of an annual process in which monthly estimates, based on surveys, are reconciled with more accurate but less timely records from state unemployment offices. The new figures, once they’re made final, will be incorporated into official government employment statistics early next year.

The updated numbers are the latest sign of vulnerability in the job market, which until recently had appeared rock solid despite months of high interest rates and economists’ warnings of an impending recession…This year’s revision was unusually large. Over the previous decade, the annual updates had added or subtracted an average of about 173,000 jobs…

The updated numbers are the latest sign of vulnerability in the job market, which until recently had appeared rock solid despite months of high interest rates and economists’ warnings of an impending recession. More recent data, which wasn’t affected by the revisions, suggests job growth slowed further in the spring and summer, and the unemployment rate, though still relatively low at 4.3 percent, has been gradually rising…

Oh. Being good little Axis members, the Times dutifully throws in excuses, rationalizations and other devices of modern advocacy journalism propaganda to persuade readers that this news isn’t worth getting upset about and to stop them from suspecting that they are being treated like dupes. For instance…

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