RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/fund-coronavirus-research-not-a-climate-change-musical

I’ve been a science nerd almost all my life. In graduate school, I was the co-discoverer of a bacterial enzyme essential to DNA replication and of a key enzyme in the influenza virus. I have written more than a thousand articles concerned with science and science policy. I’m convinced that America’s prosperity is based on post-WWII preeminence in science and technology, much of it financed by federal funding.

You might think, then, that I’d be thrilled to learn that the science committee of the U.S. House of Representatives wants to more than double the budget of the National Science Foundation over the next five years. That’s a hike of $8.5 billion to $18.3 billion. The Senate is working on a companion bill. Unfortunately, at least as currently conceived by the Senate, this legislation will maintain NSF’s “unity of structure” and protect NSF’s existing programs. There’s the rub.

Research is the lifeblood of technological innovation, which, in turn, drives economic growth and keeps America prosperous. Government-funded scientific research runs the gamut from studies of basic physical and biological processes to the development of applications to meet immediate needs. Basic science, which elucidates the fundamental processes in fields such as aging, cancer biology, immunology, and virology, is also worthy of federal research funding. However, the definition of what constitutes “science” has gradually expanded to include sociology, economics, and “alternative medicine.” Much of the spending on these disciplines by the nation’s two major funders of non-military research, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, shortchange taxpayers. Considering their collective budgets amount to more than $50 billion, this is no small concern.

The NSF, whose mission is to ensure U.S. leadership in areas of science and technology that are essential to economic growth and national security, frequently funds politically correct but low-value research projects. This trend is likely to accelerate during the Biden administration.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/09/bidens-stalin-esque-5-year-plans/

In 1928, during his first year of what became known as the Stalin era, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin issued his first five-year plan, a centralized economic blueprint that focused on industrialization and collectivism. In 2021, during his first year as president of the United States, Joe Biden introduced a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan that both the White House and its cheerleaders have called “transformative.”

History tells us Stalin’s plans were transformative, too.

Before we go any further, we state here for the record that Biden is not Stalin. Not even close.

Yet we see policy parallels that should make Americans – at least those who still relish freedom from big government – mighty uncomfortable.

Biden is not unique in pitching an infrastructure plan. Donald Trump had an infrastructure plan. Most politicians, from president to members of the smallest city council in the country, like infrastructure projects. But Biden’s objectives are different. There’s more social engineering than civil engineering in his proposal.

Actually, there’s much more.

Of the $2.3 trillion Biden proposes to spend, only $921 billion would be dedicated to what most agree is infrastructure. As we noted earlier this week, the remainder “would go to pet Democrat projects, payoffs to unions and left-wing groups, squirrelly climate change projects, money for misgoverned and impecunious Blue States, and other waste.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biden-plan-for-economic-sclerosis-11617907075?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

President Biden has proposed a back-to-the-future tax plan. When President Trump took office, the U.S. had the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world and had experienced a decade of slow growth, low investment and stagnant employment and real wages. The Obama economy was especially toxic for low-earning and less-educated groups. The assault on business was so widespread that capital’s contribution to economic growth was lower during the Obama expansion than it had been during any other period of growth since World War II.

The academic literature on corporate taxation pointed to the problem. High corporate taxes, a regulatory assault and social programs that discourage work and advancement led many U.S. multinational companies to locate their activity and profits overseas. This reduced or eliminated their tax in the U.S. while also reducing their demand for American labor. Wages dropped and tax revenue dropped, a double hit.

The idea of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was to make America an attractive location for capital formation again, and to drive wages up by increasing productivity. Mr. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers estimated that wages for a typical family would grow about $4,000 over the first three to five years. Though the Obama administration proposed a corporate tax cut in 2015 for the same reasons, opponents of the bill ridiculed the Trump team’s numbers.

The economic data vindicated Mr. Trump. Actual gross domestic product by the end of 2019 was about $300 billion higher than the Congressional Budget Office had projected in July 2017. Business investment was about $100 billion higher and 2.8 million more workers were employed. U.S. firms repatriated $1.4 trillion in cash that was previously stuck overseas. And in the first two years after the tax cuts were passed, real median household income increased $4,900. Employment surged, especially among the long-term unemployed, the poor and minorities. Wealth for the bottom 50% of households advanced three times as fast as for the top 1%.

http://politicalmavens.com/

Jews comprise 13% of the population of New York and have been here since the 17th century. There are approximately 1.5 million Jews in New York City, the largest population of anywhere outside of Israel. To get some idea of what Jews have contributed to our city, look at the names carved on walls at colleges, hospitals, libraries and Lincoln Center – these represent just the charitable contributions Jews have made without mentioning their othercontributions to our lives – the most recent of which is development of the Pfizer vaccine by the son of a Holocaust survivor.
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So it is with surprise bordering on disbelief that neither the NYTimes nor the Wall Street Journal called attention to the April 8th commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Instead, the Journal had a front page article about Muslims giving up coffee for Ramadan, including a picture of Palestinians at a festive Gaza Market on p. 18. The NYTimes chose to cover Biden’s cancellation of Trump’s boycott of U.S. funds for Palestinian “refugees” while they supported and rewarded terrorists. Instead, we will now afford them $235 million dollars of assistance. It’s interesting that both papers chose to deal with Muslims whose population in New York is roughly half that of Jews.

438,500 Americans lost their lives in World War 2. When our G.I.’s liberated the Ohrdruf concentration camp, General Eisenhower insisted that members of Congress and journalists be summoned to see and report on the atrocities that were performed there. Eisenhower’s statement was: “We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, we know what he is fighting against.”
Anti-semitism in America is on the rise and is part and parcel of Black Lives Matter. Local t.v. news has headlined the vicious attacks on Asian people but few channels covered the attack on a Chasidic family pushing a baby carriage in Brooklyn a few days ago. They were assaulted by a man who slashed the father, mother and year old baby on their faces. It would seem that we are in very desperate need of remembering what happened to six million Jews and nearly half a million Americans who lost their lives during the Holocaust. How shameful that the editors of New York’s most important newspapers chose to forget them.