RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/467224-capitalism-on-trial-profit-is-a-good-thing-except-to-the-political-left

These are dangerous times for American capitalism. 

Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) Accountable Capitalism Act would oblige large corporations to obtain a federal charter requiring directors to consider the interests of all stakeholders — not only shareholders and customers, but also groups representing society as a whole, such as their employees, local communities and civil society, including non-representative, anti-business NGOs.

The chief justice of the supreme court of Delaware – where more than two-thirds of Fortune 500 corporations have their legal home – has written a book arguing that corporations should be run for the benefit of their workers. The Financial Times has launched a “new agenda” campaign that intones: “Capitalism. Time for a reset. Business must make a profit but should serve a purpose too.”

None of this would have come as a surprise to Joseph Schumpeter, one of the 20th century’s great economists. No one understood better the dynamic, propulsive nature of capitalism. But, unlike most economists, Schumpeter also had a deep, subtle appreciation of capitalism’s cultural effects — that, while a system of free enterprise creates successful and prosperous societies, it also plants seeds that can lead to its own demise. “Unlike  any other type of society,” Schumpeter wrote “capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.” 

And, as Schumpeter saw it, the publicly traded corporation, lacking the visceral allegiance of private property, was capitalism’s weak point: “Defenseless fortresses invite aggression especially if there is rich booty in them.” It’s a prophecy that we’re seeing come to pass. 

https://spectator.us/democrats-impeachment-doomed-desperate/

They hope that talk of impeachment will buzz about Trump’s head like a cloud of horse flies

Oh no! The walls are closing in again on Trump! We’ve reached a ‘tipping point.’ This time, finally, at last, we have the fatal ‘bombshell’ that will destroy him. The testimony of Bill Taylor, Deep State apparatchik and acting Ambassador to Ukraine, has given ‘devastating‘, ‘explosive’ testimony to Adam Schiff. They’ve certainly got Trump this time. An establishment lifer with deep ties to Burisma, the corrupt energy company that was so generous to Hunter Biden, has said that Trump insisted on a quid in the form of probing cokehead Hunter and his dad, Joe, in exchange for the quo of $400 million in military aid.

Or was pelf the quid and the investigation of the Joe and Hunter show the quo? Our experts are working on untangling that.

How do we know about this devastating quid pro quo-ness? Schiff’s press outlets, from CNN to The Hill, have said so. No, you cannot examine the testimony, silly. It took place behind closed doors. For the most part, the lynching — er, the hearing — even excluded Republican lawmakers. Moreover, the bits that GOP congressmen were allowed to witness are covered (or covered up) in a shroud of ‘non-disclosure’. Still, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy did mention that in a mere ‘‘90 seconds’ Rep. John Ratcliffe ‘destroy[ed] Taylor’s whole argument.’ Quoth McCarthy: ‘Adam Schiff won’t let us talk about what happened.’ But the bottom line is: ‘There is no quid pro quo…the one thing that you find out in this process is all this information is just like that whistleblower…everything is second-, third-, and fourth-hand information.’

Of course, we all know now that ‘second-, third-, and fourth-hand information’ is just the underhanded sort of hand-me-down ‘evidence’ that the Dems like to parade before a weary public in order to justify their demand for Trump’s head. Remember Christopher Steele? Just like the Queen in Alice in Wonderland, it’s ‘Sentence first — verdict afterwards.’

It’s pathetic, isn’t it? The first time around, the anti-Trump fraternity at least had the solemn imprimatur of Special Counsel Robert Mueller with the weight of officialdom and all the echoes of Watergate that that process brought with it.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/10/24/the_three_main_questions_about_ukraine_and_impeachment___141565.html

Democrats are ecstatic over the latest closed-door testimony by U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bill Taylor. They say it damns the president.

We’ll have to take their word for it — or not. For us poor folks not on the guest list of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, it’s impossible to know what’s happening behind closed doors. The testimony has not been released, even though no classified materials are involved. It’s not even clear why Schiff’s panel, rather than the House Judiciary Committee, is leading the investigation. Like so much about this process, it is unprecedented, with ad hoc rules made up along the way. All we know about the testimony is what trickles out in fragments, leaked by each side to advance its case. This kind of secrecy is shameful in a democracy. So is the refusal to let the accused call his own witnesses or even send his attorney to the proceedings.

Given this “fog of secret impeachment,” it helps to step back and ask what the debate is really about. I see three main questions so far. All are related to President Trump’s phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the delay in providing U.S. aid to Kiev.

(1) Did President Trump demand a quid pro quo? That is, did he require Ukraine to do something specific before the U.S. would release aid money? Or did he simply request it?

(2) Did Ukraine’s leaders believe that aid would be withheld unless they complied with Trump’s dictum? Apparently not, at least until several weeks after the phone call. “How can there be a genuine quid pro quo,” Trump supporters ask, “if the people allegedly being coerced don’t know about it?”

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/467079-quid-pro-quo-in-ukraine-no-not-yet

Quid pro no.

The current impeachment debate is being framed in terms of whether or not there was a “quid pro quo”— as if that is the bar that will determine whether or not President Trump did something egregious.

There are big flaws with this framing, as well as with the use of the term. 

Diplomatic quid pro quo — requiring certain actions, behavior or “conditions” in return for U.S. aid — is common, according to current and former diplomats I spoke with, and foreign policy guidance. “Under the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, the President may determine the terms and conditions under which most forms of assistance are provided.”

The notion that there’s something inherently wrong with this sort of foreign-aid diplomacy is raising concern among some career diplomats. A former Obama administration State Department official told me that, by controversializing this common practice, “the Democrats are basically hamstringing any future president.” He adds: “That’s why this is a constitutional moment.”

It is true that few Americans would think it’s appropriate for a U.S. president to use his foreign aid diplomacy to set conditions to receive “dirt” on a political opponent. But the available information is proving to be a far cry from the original “whistleblower” allegations that Trump “solicit[ed] interference from a foreign country” in the 2020 presidential election, in quid pro quo fashion. 

Foreign aid is widely considered a tool to allow the U.S. “access and influence in the domestic and foreign affairs of other states,” particularly “national security policy.” It also “helps governments achieve mutual cooperation on a wide range of issues.”

https://spectator.org/the-case-for-indicting-john-brennan/

Former CIA director John Brennan calls the Justice Department’s widening probe into Spygate’s origins “bizarre.” It has no “legal basis,” he bleats.

What’s bizarre is that the expanding inquiry didn’t happen earlier. Brennan’s responsibility for criminal leaks during the Obama administration’s investigation of Trump has been obvious for at least two years. Even Trump hater Peter Strzok, the FBI liaison to John Brennan, couldn’t believe the leaks coming out of his shop. Referring to Brennan’s agents as “sisters,” Strzok said to his mistress Lisa Page, “our sisters have begun leaking like mad. Scorned and worried and political, they’re kicking in to overdrive.”

The “leaking like mad” began in the thick of the 2016 campaign, as the feverishly partisan John Brennan sought to sabotage Donald Trump before Election Day. Has John Durham, the U.S. attorney assigned to the probe of the Obama administration’s spying on Trump, talked to Harry Reid about Brennan’s leaking? He should. Recall Brennan’s blatant disclosure of classified information about the investigation to the former Nevada senator in the late summer/early fall of 2016. Reid has told reporters that Brennan used him as the conduit for that leak against Trump during the campaign: “Why do you think he called me?”