~Melissa~ retweeted
Getting super local for a minute here. Kootenai County residents have a confusing question on the ballot about a bus đ system that already exists, and which they are already "responsible" for by way of our County Commissioners.
The advisory vote is basically asking, are you cool with the way things are?
My answer is yes because I never even knew this very minimal bus system existed, and I've learned that it's funded by federal grants so I almost don't pay for it. (I know, I know... but it's not like it's a big new tax.)
There is also no big issue with them that I'm aware of, and no alternative, so even if I was not cool with the existence of the buses now would not be the time to try to fix something that ain't broke.
The way this question was written elicits a "no" from every limited government, freedom loving individual. That was my first inclination, and everyone I talk to about this says the same thing.
I thought they were going to create a fleet of Seattle-style public transportation and send this town into the dumpster. But that's not what's happening right now.
With this being an advisory vote, your answers will likely be used in future discussion surrounding our bus system as evidence of the will of the people. But how can this information be properly interpreted if the question was confusing to begin with?
This link will take you to the exact timestamp in the County Commissioner meeting where adding this to the ballot was discussed. It's about 5 minutes long.
youtube.com/live/eXTYZctunIkâŠ
What do you think?
~Melissa~ retweeted
Large corporations buying homes does not reduce housing supply. A house doesnât vanish because ownership changes. It still exists and still houses people.
Rentals are not âoff the market.â Theyâre on the rental market. Demand for housing is demand for use, not for a specific ownership title.
If converting homes to rentals caused shortages, then cities with more renters would have cheaper housing. The opposite is true. Prices explode where building is restricted.
Why do corporations buy homes in the first place? Because zoning laws, permit delays, height limits, rent controls, and environmental reviews make new construction slow, risky, and expensive. Artificial scarcity pushes capital toward existing units.
Airbnbs didnât create the shortage either. They move units between long term and short term use. They donât erase housing. Cities with the worst rent spikes are the same cities that made building illegal or impractical for decades.
You donât fix high prices by banning buyers. You fix them by allowing supply to expand. When housing is easy to build, no investor can corner the market because competition crushes margins.
Regulation didnât stop the problem. It created it.
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~Melissa~ retweeted
Every housing provider (landlord) is outnumbered 100 to 1 by tenants. They are permanently a minority voting bloc at the ballot box. If you let them, tenants will vote to have their landlords killed if it means lower rent. Itâs up to responsible politicians to understand how housing works, and roll back the onerous burdens on housing providers that ultimately make life harder for tenants, too. I know itâs tempting to give infinity concessions and handouts to the majority voting bloc, but tenants arenât automatically right just because they donât own property and youâve deemed them oppressed. The housing market has been so bafflingly distorted by communist rules.
~Melissa~ retweeted
So happy that these two were recognized for winning their 3 year battle to protect property rights in Idaho! Congrats again!
We were so honored to accept the 2026 Elevation Award at the Mountain States Policy Center Gala celebrating our 3 year effort to protect property rights in Idaho!
Thank you again to the legislators that listened and were courageous enough to stand up for our fundamental rights. đ„°đșđžâ€ïž
@MtnStatesPolicy @freedomcaucusID @IdahoGOP @Mikeemoyle @kelly_a_anthon @redmanforidaho @LakeyTodd @intheknowidaho @Citizens_Idaho @jgebbia @Airbnb @JesseBWatters @RentResponsibly
Washington has a pattern. A new program promises to help, falls short, and then asks for more of your tax dollars to fix the shortfall. Liberty breaks that cycle by trusting you to make your own choices and keep the rewards. I make that case every day in the Senate, and I will never stop fighting for liberty.
~Melissa~ retweeted
Other peoplesâ stuff is not your stuff. Yes, even if you think they have too much and you want it.
~Melissa~ retweeted
Over 99% of what politicians do today is none of their business.
Their legitimate role is to protect individual rights, not manage our lives, redistribute our earnings, dictate our choices, or decide what outcomes society should produce.
Government was supposed to protect us from coercion, not become its primary instrument.
~Melissa~ retweeted
Excessive spending is a problem. Impose strict state and local spending limits. Use resulting surpluses to reduce property tax rates. The state can buy down school district property taxes until zero. Cities, counties, and special districts can do this for their own property taxes. It all starts with spending less. Eliminating property taxes is necessary and doable, but there must be the political will to do it.
In 2019, local governments took in $32 billion in property tax revenue.
In 2026, that number is now $62 billion.
Had the 2019 revenue merely be adjusted for population growth and inflation through this year, it would amount to roughly $49 billion â $13 billion less than current revenue collections.
Why not return some of that extra $13 billion to taxpayers?
~Melissa~ retweeted
The moral case for capitalism is that your life belongs to you. Your work, your savings and your plans donât become somebody elseâs property because they have a moving speech about how theyâd use them.
~Melissa~ retweeted
When we say socialism eventually runs out of other people's money, that applies consistently even by socialists' own standards.
They routinely complain that generations of taxation and redistribution have failed to satisfy their demands, yet their solution is invariably more of both.
And when an ideology focuses on redistributing wealth rather than producing it, running out of wealth to redistribute becomes increasingly inevitable.
An ideology that pursues equality by tearing down those at the top rather than raising those at the bottom faces another problem: once you've brought down the top, there's a new top to target.
The ceiling keeps getting lower while the demands from below keep growing, and the incentive to produce what everyone demands keeps shrinking.
It's a race to the bottom, with equality in poverty as its logical destination.
You cannot redistribute wealth that nobody produces.
~Melissa~ retweeted
My dear American friends, in my last post I gave you a snapshot of where France stands today. Now let me show you how we got here. I want you to see the whole movie before you buy the ticket.
After the war, France was a machine. We called it the Trente Glorieuses, thirty glorious years. We built Concorde, the most beautiful aircraft ever made. We built a fleet of nuclear reactors in about fifteen years and gave ourselves some of the cleanest, cheapest electricity in the world. We built Ariane and put Europe in space. We built the TGV, the fastest train on earth. We invented the Minitel, an online network in millions of homes before most of you had heard of the internet. We were not a museum. We were builders.
Then came 1981. François Mitterrand. Think of him as our Bernie Sanders, except he actually won. At his side, in the office next to his at the ĂlysĂ©e, sat a 37-year-old prodigy named Jacques Attali, his special adviser for the next ten years. The brightest minds of the left, convinced they could run an economy from a ministry.
Here's what they did. They governed with Communist ministers. In 1982 they nationalized dozens of banks and the biggest industrial groups in the country: Paribas, Suez, Saint-Gobain, Thomson, Pechiney, RhĂŽne-Poulenc. They lowered the retirement age to 60. They cut the work week to 39 hours and added a fifth week of paid vacation. They created a wealth tax. They hired massively into the public sector.
Reality hit in less than two years. Capital fled, inflation ran wild, and the franc was devalued three times. In March 1983 Mitterrand had to slam on the brakes and impose austerity just to stay in the European monetary system.
But here's the trick: the brakes never reversed anything. They just slowed the ratchet. The so-called right came back with Jacques Chirac, and nothing was undone. Under Chirac's presidency, France passed the 35-hour work week. Left or right, every government added one more program, one more rule, one more tax, and nobody ever took one away.
At the same time, the political class did something even more destructive than bad economics. It turned the youth into a political instrument. Instead of teaching young people, including millions of children of immigrants, to love the country they lived in, it taught them a story of guilt and grievance: France as the oppressor, France as the thing to resent. You cannot integrate people into a country you've taught them to despise. We are living with the consequences of that narrative today, in our schools, our suburbs, our streets.
Then forty years of slow decline, all the way to Macron. And the story has a perfect ending. In 2007, Jacques Attali chaired a commission on how to unleash French growth. Its deputy rapporteur was a young civil servant named Emmanuel Macron. The commission proposed more than 300 reforms to free the economy. Almost none were ever implemented. Even the men who built the system knew it wasn't working, and even they couldn't undo it.
No balanced budget since 1974. Public spending around 57% of GDP. Debt above 3,300 billion euros. Growth stuck under 1%.
Now the number that should keep you up at night. In 1995, GDP per person in France was about $27,000. In America, about $29,000. We were neck and neck. Today France is around $49,000. America is around $90,000. You are now nearly twice as rich per person as we are.
What changed? Not our talent. Not our engineers. Not our schools of mathematics. The only thing that changed is that we went all in on socialism. The 35 hours, the endless regulation, the taxes that chase out anyone who builds, the belief that the state should do everything and the individual should ask permission for everything.
There's a line people love to attribute to Einstein: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We tried. For forty years, we tried. Every government promised that one more program, one more tax, one more regulation would finally fix things. You just saw where it got us.
So if you choose the Democratic Party, which is literally turning socialist in front of your eyes, you will deserve what comes next.
Let me tell you exactly what will happen if you go down that road. Nobody will vote for decline. Every single measure will sound generous, compassionate, reasonable. Your builders will slowly leave or stop building. Your state will grow every year and never shrink. Your debt will compound. And in thirty years, your kids will look at a chart like the one I just described and wonder when it all went wrong.
You still have something we lost. You have Elon Musk sending rockets to orbit and landing them on their tail. You have Palmer Luckey building the defense industry of the future. You have Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, and thousands of founders nobody has heard of yet, building in garages right now.
Trust your entrepreneurs. Don't trust your politicians.
I come from your future. Don't make it yours.
Iâm French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you.
I come from your future.
In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, itâs the dream.
Hereâs what it looks like from the inside. France hasnât passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees canât afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.
The promise was protection. The result is stagnation.
The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.
I love America because itâs the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has.
Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program youâre voting for making America more like America, or more like France?
Trust me. You donât want to be France.
~Melissa~ retweeted
My suspicion is that most socialists wouldn't be nearly so eager to declare housing a right if they were personally responsible for financing, building, and maintaining homes for someone else's benefit.
Notice how conveniently their priorities become universal rights the moment someone else is expected to pay for them.
The question they consistently avoid is simple: How does your desire for something give you a rightful claim to someone else's property, money, or labor?
Declaring something a right doesn't magically produce it. It merely disguises the obligation you're imposing on someone else.
~Melissa~ retweeted
Iâm French. I want to talk to Americans who are about to vote Democrat. Not to insult you. To warn you.
I come from your future.
In France we did everything your progressive politicians promise. Free healthcare, free college, generous welfare, strong unions, heavy regulation, high taxes on the rich, a state that takes care of everything. Public spending close to 57% of GDP, one of the highest on the planet. On paper, itâs the dream.
Hereâs what it looks like from the inside. France hasnât passed a balanced budget since 1974. Our debt is above 3,300 billion euros. Interest on that debt is becoming one of the biggest items in the national budget. Our hospitals are collapsing despite record funding. Our schools rank lower every year. Young people with degrees canât afford an apartment in the city they were born in. Our best engineers leave for London, Zurich and San Francisco. And the rich you wanted to tax? They left too, and took the jobs with them.
The promise was protection. The result is stagnation.
The worst part is that nobody in France voted for decline. Every single step sounded generous, compassionate, reasonable. One more program. One more regulation. One more tax to fund it. Each step alone makes sense. Fifty years of them, and you wake up in a country that can no longer build a nuclear plant on time or keep its streets safe.
I love America because itâs the one place on earth where people still believe they can build something from nothing. I came to Silicon Valley as a self-taught kid and it changed my life. That spirit is the most precious thing your country has.
Before you vote, ask yourself one question: is the program youâre voting for making America more like America, or more like France?
Trust me. You donât want to be France.
Je n'ai jamais été aussi optimiste. Pas malgré le chaos actuel, mais grùce à lui.
Je vais vous expliquer pourquoi l'empire du mensonge construit par la gauche depuis cinquante ans va s'effondrer, et pourquoi ce n'est pas une opinion mais une question de physique.
Tout commence avec un mouvement né sur X il y a quelques années : l'effective accelerationism, ou e/acc.
Au dĂ©part, c'est une idĂ©e presque thermodynamique. L'univers a une tendance de fond : la matiĂšre s'organise pour capter et dissiper l'Ă©nergie de plus en plus efficacement. Une cellule fait ça. Une forĂȘt fait ça. Une civilisation fait ça. Le marchĂ©, la technologie et le capital sont les formes les plus avancĂ©es de ce processus. Ce sont des machines Ă transformer l'Ă©nergie en intelligence, en abondance, en complexitĂ©.
La thÚse e/acc est simple : il ne faut pas freiner cette dynamique, il faut l'embrasser. Plus d'énergie, plus de calcul, plus d'innovation, plus de croissance. Monter sur l'échelle de Kardashev au lieu de s'excuser d'exister. En face, il y a les « décels » : ceux qui veulent ralentir, réguler, taxer, interdire, culpabiliser. Ceux qui voient le progrÚs comme une menace à contenir plutÎt qu'une force à libérer.
Mais il y a une dimension de l'accélération dont presque personne ne parle. L'accélération n'est pas seulement un moteur. C'est un filtre.
Pensez Ă n'importe quel organisme. Un corps humain en bonne santĂ© peut courir. Il accĂ©lĂšre, son cĆur pompe plus fort, ses muscles consomment plus d'oxygĂšne, et tout fonctionne parce que le systĂšme est bien conçu. Maintenant, prenez un corps malade. Des artĂšres bouchĂ©es, un cĆur fragile, des organes qui ne communiquent plus entre eux. Faites-le courir. Il ne va pas plus vite vers la santĂ©. Il va plus vite vers l'infarctus.
L'accélération ne corrige pas les défauts d'un systÚme. Elle les amplifie. Un systÚme sain qui accélÚre devient plus fort. Un systÚme dysfonctionnel qui accélÚre meurt plus vite.
Et c'est exactement ce qui est en train d'arriver au projet que je vais appeler par son nom : le projet globalo-socialiste. Celui porté par les démocrates américains, par la technostructure de Bruxelles, par les entités supranationales qui n'ont de comptes à rendre à personne, par un réseau d'ONG financées par l'argent public pour dicter la morale aux peuples qui les financent.
Regardez ce que ce projet a produit.
Des Ătats obĂšses qui prĂ©lĂšvent plus de la moitiĂ© de la richesse produite et qui dĂ©livrent des services publics de plus en plus dĂ©gradĂ©s. Des Ă©coles qui n'apprennent plus Ă lire mais qui apprennent Ă culpabiliser. Des hĂŽpitaux Ă bout de souffle malgrĂ© des budgets records. Une immigration massive sans aucune exigence d'assimilation, prĂ©sentĂ©e comme une chance par ceux qui n'en subissent jamais les consĂ©quences. Une dĂ©sindustrialisation organisĂ©e au nom d'une Ă©cologie punitive qui dĂ©localise la pollution en Chine et l'emploi avec. Des normes, des normes, et encore des normes, jusqu'Ă ce qu'il devienne plus simple de crĂ©er une entreprise Ă Austin qu'Ă Lyon. Une justice qui excuse le coupable et soupçonne la victime. Une censure qui avance masquĂ©e sous le nom de « lutte contre la dĂ©sinformation ». Et une jeunesse Ă qui l'on a expliquĂ© que son pays, son histoire et sa civilisation Ă©taient des crimes Ă expier.
Ce n'est pas un ensemble de bugs. C'est la conception elle-mĂȘme.
Maintenant, changeons d'image. Voyez ce systĂšme comme un moteur.
Un bon moteur, c'est de la précision. Des piÚces qui s'emboßtent, un minimum de frottements, une énergie qui se transforme en mouvement. Le marché libre, la propriété, la responsabilité individuelle, la monnaie saine : c'est ça, un moteur bien conçu. L'information circule par les prix, chaque erreur est sanctionnée, chaque bonne idée est récompensée.
Le moteur socialiste, lui, est mal conçu dĂšs le dĂ©part. Il ne tourne pas sur la crĂ©ation de valeur mais sur sa redistribution. Il ne rĂ©compense pas la performance, il la taxe. Il ne laisse pas les erreurs mourir, il les subventionne. RĂ©sultat : ça frotte partout. Ăa chauffe. Ăa grince. Chaque piĂšce use la piĂšce d'Ă cĂŽtĂ©.
Et que font ceux qui pilotent ce moteur ? Au lieu de le reconcevoir, ils changent les piĂšces. En permanence. Une piĂšce cĂšde, on en remet une neuve. Encore une. Encore une.
Ces piĂšces de rechange, vous les connaissez. Elles s'appellent la dette publique et la planche Ă billets.
La France a dĂ©passĂ© les 3 300 milliards d'euros de dette et n'a pas votĂ© un budget Ă l'Ă©quilibre depuis le milieu des annĂ©es 70. Les Ătats-Unis ont franchi les 37 000 milliards de dollars. Les banques centrales ont maintenu des taux Ă zĂ©ro pendant des annĂ©es, imprimĂ© des montants que plus personne ne sait se reprĂ©senter, et quand l'inflation est arrivĂ©e, elles ont fait semblant d'ĂȘtre surprises. Milton Friedman l'avait pourtant dit il y a cinquante ans : l'inflation est toujours et partout un phĂ©nomĂšne monĂ©taire.
Chaque crise, on rachĂšte du temps avec de l'argent qui n'existe pas. Chaque problĂšme structurel, on l'arrose de liquiditĂ©s pour masquer le bruit du moteur. Mais les frottements sont toujours lĂ . Ils s'accumulent. Et la facture des piĂšces de rechange finit par coĂ»ter plus cher que le moteur lui-mĂȘme : la charge de la dette devient l'un des premiers postes de dĂ©pense de l'Ătat français.
Pendant des décennies, ce moteur mal conçu a pu tourner à 3 000 tours par minute. Lentement. Bruyamment. Mais il tournait. Le monde allait assez doucement pour que le bricolage permanent suffise à masquer l'absurdité de la conception.
Et puis l'IA est arrivée.
L'intelligence artificielle, c'est l'accĂ©lĂ©ration la plus brutale de l'histoire humaine. Ce qui prenait des annĂ©es prend des mois. Ce qui prenait des mois prend des jours. Des entreprises de dix personnes font ce que faisaient des entreprises de mille. Le capital, les talents et les idĂ©es se dĂ©placent Ă la vitesse de la lumiĂšre vers les endroits oĂč ils sont bien traitĂ©s.
L'IA vient de faire passer le moteur de 3 000 Ă 20 000 tours par minute.
Posez-vous la question qu'un ingénieur se poserait. Que se passe-t-il quand on fait monter à 20 000 tours un moteur mal conçu, rafistolé de partout, qui frotte à chaque rotation ?
Il explose.
Pas parce que quelqu'un l'a saboté. Parce que la physique ne négocie pas.
Et c'est exactement ce que nous voyons en ce moment, sous nos yeux.
L'insĂ©curitĂ© qui gagne des villes entiĂšres qui Ă©taient paisibles il y a vingt ans. Le conflit de Gaza importĂ© dans nos rues et instrumentalisĂ© par une gauche qui a troquĂ© l'ouvrier contre le clientĂ©lisme communautaire. La misĂšre qui revient dans un pays qui a pourtant un des taux de dĂ©pense publique les plus Ă©levĂ©s au monde. Des classes moyennes qui travaillent et n'arrivent plus Ă se loger. Une France fracturĂ©e, oĂč l'on parle dĂ©sormais Ă voix haute de risque de guerre civile.
Ce ne sont pas des accidents. Ce ne sont pas des « crises » successives sans lien entre elles. Ce sont les piÚces du moteur qui commencent à voler.
C'est la consĂ©quence logique de cinquante ans de socialisme international : un systĂšme qui a dĂ©truit la responsabilitĂ©, la frontiĂšre, la monnaie, l'Ă©cole et la fiertĂ©, et qui dĂ©couvre qu'Ă haute vitesse, tout ce qui a Ă©tĂ© dĂ©truit ne peut plus ĂȘtre compensĂ© par une ligne de dette supplĂ©mentaire.
Et c'est là que je deviens profondément optimiste.
Parce qu'une fois qu'on a compris ça, on comprend aussi que leur projet a une date de fin. Pas une date politique. Une date physique. Un systÚme qui consomme plus qu'il ne produit, qui punit ceux qui créent et récompense ceux qui détruisent, qui finance son présent en hypothéquant l'avenir de ses enfants, ne peut pas durer indéfiniment. Il n'est pas soutenable par construction. L'IA ne fait qu'avancer l'échéance.
Le mensonge a besoin de lenteur pour survivre. Il a besoin que les conséquences arrivent assez tard pour qu'on puisse accuser quelqu'un d'autre. Dans un monde à 20 000 tours, les conséquences arrivent immédiatement. Le mensonge n'a plus le temps de se cacher.
Alors, que faire quand le moteur explose ? On en construit un nouveau. Et cette fois, on le conçoit correctement.
Ăcoutez Elon Musk. Un homme qui a reconstruit l'industrie spatiale, la voiture Ă©lectrique et l'infrastructure satellite en partant d'un principe simple : revenir aux premiers principes. Ne pas demander « comment on a toujours fait », mais « qu'est-ce qui est physiquement vrai ». C'est exactement ce dont nos Ătats ont besoin : arrĂȘter de rafistoler et repartir de la base.
Ăcoutez Javier Milei. Un homme dont tout le monde se moquait, arrivĂ© Ă la tĂȘte d'un pays ravagĂ© par un siĂšcle de pĂ©ronisme, et qui a pris la tronçonneuse au sens propre. MinistĂšres supprimĂ©s, dĂ©penses coupĂ©es, inflation Ă©crasĂ©e, excĂ©dent budgĂ©taire retrouvĂ©. Il a prouvĂ© une chose que la gauche jurait impossible : on peut dĂ©monter le moteur socialiste et le peuple peut le soutenir.
Ăcoutez Milton Friedman. Relisez-le. Tout Ă©tait dĂ©jĂ lĂ . La monnaie, la libertĂ© de choisir, la responsabilitĂ©, les effets pervers de l'intervention publique. Il disait que si l'on confiait le Sahara au gouvernement fĂ©dĂ©ral, il y aurait pĂ©nurie de sable en cinq ans. On a ri. On a confiĂ© le sable. On a eu la pĂ©nurie.
Revenez à une hiérarchie et au respect du beau. Une civilisation ne tient pas que sur des chiffres. Elle tient sur l'idée qu'il existe des choses supérieures à d'autres. Que l'excellence vaut mieux que la médiocrité. Que le mérite compte. Qu'une cathédrale est plus belle qu'un parking. Que transmettre est un devoir et pas une oppression. Le relativisme a été l'arme culturelle de ce projet. Le retour du beau, du vrai et de l'exigence en sera l'antidote.
Et enfin, faites le Nuremberg du communisme. Le nazisme a été jugé, documenté, enseigné, et il est devenu moralement indéfendable. Le communisme, avec ses dizaines de millions de morts, ses goulags, ses famines organisées et ses peuples réduits en esclavage, n'a jamais eu ce procÚs. On peut encore porter un t-shirt du Che dans une université sans que personne ne cille. Tant que ce procÚs historique et moral n'aura pas eu lieu, l'idéologie continuera de muter et de revenir sous de nouveaux noms. Il faut nommer les crimes, les enseigner, honorer les victimes, et rendre cette idéologie aussi infréquentable que celle qu'elle prétendait combattre.
Le monde qui vient sera plus rapide, plus exigeant et plus impitoyable avec les systÚmes mal conçus. C'est une terrible nouvelle pour ceux qui ont vécu du mensonge.
Et c'est la meilleure nouvelle de notre génération pour tous ceux qui veulent construire.
Le moteur va exploser. Ă nous de dessiner le suivant.
~Melissa~ retweeted
âThe condition upon which
God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance...â
- John Philpot Curran
~Melissa~ retweeted
Socialism, the shortened definition: âMake someone else do it.â
And if they refuse, make the government force them.
































