RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/18/progressives-carpet-bombing-of-america/

Russia has changed its war strategy in Ukraine from direct confrontation to simply reducing cities to rubble, often killing civilians. Avoiding indiscriminate death, destruction, and misery no longer matters to the Russians so long as it facilitates their conquest. Sadly, progressives here have adopted a similar approach to imposing their policies and ideologies.

A civil society must be willing to confront disagreement head-on, issue by issue, even though it can be challenging. The goal should be to reconcile different perspectives constructively without unnecessary collateral damage. But progressives seem willing to die on every hill, with their desired ends seeming to justify any means and any pain along the way.

Overreach is everywhere. Progressive climate policy may be the most egregious. Even without knowing the extent of climate change or humans’ impact, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) has become a widely accepted goal. But progressives are like children who want what they want now. They demand immediate, indiscriminate controls on fossil fuels, or even their abolition. They oversell renewables and conceal their true costs and environmental impact. Promoting electric vehicles, they harbor delusions of unlimited natural resources and magically appearing infrastructure. They pay no heed to the limitations of the power grid. They ignore other countries’ non-cooperation, and on and on. The American public pays a steep price for all this, now and for the foreseeable future.

Congress provides munitions in the form of trillion-dollar programs too large to allow for proper monitoring. Pet causes are slipped in – as if a small percentage of trillions of dollars is inconsequential – by hiding them in the fog of war. The resulting inflation lays waste to many businesses and lives.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/18/inflation-has-now-eaten-up-all-of-bidens-covid-rescue-checks/

When he signed the “American Rescue Plan” into law in March 2021, President Joe Biden bragged about how it would put “$1,400 checks into the pockets of millions of Americans; help to keep folks in their homes; help to put food on the table.” A family of four was in line to get $5,600, he said.

What he didn’t tell the public was that the rampant inflation his “rescue” plan would unleash would cost Americans more than the $1,400 Biden was handing out. Much more.

Biden’s $2 trillion “rescue” came after the Trump administration had already rushed through two massive COVID relief bills and at a time when the economy was already roaring back from the COVID lockdowns. Which is why many economists, including liberal economists like Larry Summers, warned that Biden’s “rescue” would spark runaway inflation. 

And, despite repeated promises from the White House that such a thing would never happen, the Consumer Price Index shot up 8.3% in the first half of this year. (Going back to 1986, the average inflation rate for the first half of the year is 2.6%.) June’s reading had year-over-year inflation at 9.1%.

Under Biden, prices have been climbing much faster than wages, which means that Americans started losing ground almost the moment Biden signed his “rescue” plan into law. 

https://www.nysun.com/article/in-tilting-windmills-biden-gets-it-wrong

Remember Mr. Biden shouting — literally — about food lines under President Trump? Here’s his outcry: “My God, this is the United States of America. The idea that people would have to wait in line an hour or an hour-and-a-half to get a box of food in their trunk — it’s just unbelievable.”

Guess what?

ABC News reports those food lines are back, “as working Americans overwhelmed by inflation increasingly seek handouts to feed their families.”

The broadcaster recounts that a main food distribution center in Phoenix delivered food packages to more than 4,000 families in June, a 78 percent increase over the prior year. Reports from other states indicate the surge is nation-wide.

Sadly, about 10 percent of the people seeking assistance are first-timers. Also, many have jobs. Even so, with real wages down 3.8 percent over the past year and food prices up 12 percent, millions of Americans are struggling.

The country-wide food bank network Feeding America reports being caught off guard by the rise in demand; the economy was doing so well, the management says, Feeding America did not expect so many people to need their help. They didn’t expect inflation to hit families so hard.

Neither, apparently, did Mr. Biden, who otherwise might have been a little more judicious in blasting the emergency that occurred under Mr. Trump. And, whose policy priorities in this time of need are all wrong.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/07/january-6-committees-bid-to-prove-trump-criminally-liable-for-violence-falls-short/?utm_

If anything, the panel has bolstered Trump’s defense rather than undermining it.

The January 6 committee seemed to hit the point of diminishing returns this week. The Democrat-controlled panel is straining to establish that its target, former president Donald Trump, is not just morally and politically but criminally culpable for the deadly Capitol riot, but it can’t make the case. Its evidence of criminal intent is too weak, and its tactic of conflating Trump’s state of mind with the unhinged words of extremists who reacted to his rhetoric is sleight-of-hand.

Plus, Trump has an intent defense: He was trying to ratchet up political pressure on Congress, not provoke a forcible uprising. And the committee is not only ignoring that defense but bolstering it (however inadvertently).

To be clear, I am speaking here narrowly about crimes involving the intent to use force, a necessary element of such offenses as seditious conspiracy, with which the Justice Department has charged several rioters. Trump’s liability for other potential crimes arising out of the events that culminated in the Capitol riot remains an open question. The committee is correct that Trump orchestrated a raucous rally on the National Mall on January 6, 2021. But the evidence that he intended the rally to turn lethally violent, as the committee implies, is slim.

To draw the committee’s conclusion, one must pretend, as the panel mulishly does, that Trump never said, during his speech at the rally that preceded the riot, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.” (Memo to the Committee: In real criminal proceedings, which, unlike scripted political presentations, have cross-examination and the right to present a defense, your case gets laughed out of court when you get caught burying the exculpatory evidence. Competent prosecutors confront the exculpatory evidence head-on. Rather than signaling fear of it, they try to persuade the fact-finder that it’s trumped by other, more compelling evidence. Being persuasive involves playing it straight to maintain your credibility.)