RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/01/trump-isnt-a-special-case-hes-a-test-case/

Liberals might be scratching their heads over why potential Donald Trump rivals are rushing to denounce his indictment. The reason is simple. Conservative Republicans know that if this assault is allowed to stand, they will be next.

The left, as well as the rabble of never-Trump Republicans, like to tell everybody that the unprecedented measures taken against Trump – culminating with this week’s indictment – are justified because he poses a unique threat to our precious democracy.

Just to review, we’re talking about measures like Democrats impeaching him twice on the flimsiest of grounds. Like federal law enforcement engaging in a coordinated campaign to smear him as a Russian stooge. Like journalists dropping any shred of objectivity and professionalism to attack Trump, up to and including peddling obvious falsehoods.

Measures like Big Tech companies signing on as paid censors of the federal government to stamp out “misinformation.” Like national security “experts” selling lies about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Like raiding Trump’s home.

But the lie at the center of all this is that Trump is a special case that justifies such previously unimaginable antics.

He’s not.

Trump is a test case.

https://spectator.org/i-pledge-allegiance-to-the-banana-republic/

Show me the man,” Lavrentiy Beria boasted, “and I’ll show you the crime.”

It took nearly a century. But this mindset eventually migrated from Moscow to Manhattan.

The grand jury convened by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, CNN reports, voted to indict former President Donald Trump on more than 30 charges related to business fraud.

Bragg pledged to not prosecute laws against trespassing, prostitution, skipping a subway fare, and resisting arrest. The unstated flipside of selectively ignoring laws involved wielding criminal charges against individuals in violation of laws not passed by any legislature but instead imagined by woke district attorneys.

The former president’s votaries scoff at the idea of this case succeeding. Manhattan voted for Joe Biden over Trump 85 percent to 15 percent. The former president does not face a jury of his peers. He faces a jury of seething partisans. This feels par for the course.

The Obama administration unleashed the surveillance state to spy on Trump’s presidential campaign in a maneuver unprecedented in any place where the rule of law prevails.

Courts opted to reflexively view cases against Trump as those extreme instances in which the violation of attorney-client privilege represents no violation at all.

The same Justice Department that hushed for months any talk of Joe Biden holding onto a cache of classified documents turned the raid on Mar-a-Lago for the same offense into a made-for-TV spectacle.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ron-desantis-tort-reform-law-donald-trump-trial-bar-attorneys-d4e840?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Donald Trump is grabbing anything to attack Ron DeSantis, and he’s even joining forces with the plaintiff bar in a bizarre alliance. Fortunately for Floridians, their Governor won this exchange.

Mr. DeSantis last Friday signed legislation that will reduce legal costs for businesses, insurers and their customers. Litigation abuse is a tax that every citizen pays into the tort system, costing each Florida household more than $5,000 in 2020, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform.

Enter Mr. DeSantis, who this year proposed a package of tort reforms to curb abuses. Several changes target plaintiff attorneys’ common practice of inflating damages by presenting to juries the charges for medical costs billed by healthcare providers rather than what health insurers would pay out, which is typically much less.

Collusive agreements between physicians and lawyers to inflate charges will no longer be protected by attorney-client privilege. Lawyers could previously ensure that juries saw only the inflated amounts billed by their hand-picked doctors, and juries often based awards on those trumped-up bills.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-manchin-inflation-reduction-act-green-subsidies-president-biden-5b168948?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

We interrupt the latest Donald Trump melodrama for a word from Biden Administration regulators. While the world isn’t watching, and certainly the press corps isn’t, regulators on Friday announced they are essentially rewriting last year’s Inflation Reduction Act so more electric vehicles will qualify for subsidies.

In return for his vote, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin insisted on numerous conditions for the IRA’s $7,500 EV tax credit. He wanted to encourage more U.S. manufacturing and ensure subsidies don’t go to the affluent. The law imposed an income limit to qualify for subsidies of $150,000 for individual EV buyers, as well as a price cap for vans, SUVs and pickups ($80,000), and sedans ($55,000).

To qualify for $3,750 of the credit, an increasing share of a vehicle’s battery minerals such as lithium and nickel also had be extracted or processed in the U.S. or in a country with which the U.S. has a free-trade agreement. The other half of the credit was supposed to be available only for vehicles in which a majority of its battery components are made in North America, starting at 50% this year and up to 100% by 2029.

Few cars currently on the market were expected to qualify for even half of the credit. Most minerals are mined and processed in countries with which we don’t have trade agreements, such as China, Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Key battery components—namely, active anode and cathode materials—are mostly produced in China, Japan and South Korea.