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Ruth King

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Anatomy of a Hunter Biden business deal involving Ukraine (It’s not Burisma!) Memos show dizzying array of firms, $275,000 cash payment, and flagged transaction following interaction with indicted oligarch’s team in 2015.By Seamus Bruner and John Solomon

By on April 7th, 2021

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/tuesanatomy-hunter-biden-foreign-business-deal-involving

In his new memoir, Hunter Biden declares there is a simple explanation for a life filled with addiction to drugs and alcohol. “I have the capacity and tenacity to use to excess, and a single-minded unwillingness to quit,” he writes. “That makes addiction easy, rather than hard.”

Unraveling his extensive deals with foreign characters — some with controversial histories — while his father was in government, however, is a more complex story.

And no other anecdote illustrates that better than Hunter Biden’s brief engagement with a fugitive Ukrainian oligarch’s team in 2015, one that began with discussions about lobbying his father’s administration to make an indictment go away and ended with a separate $3 million deal and a handsome $275,000 transfer into a firm that routinely paid the younger Biden.

Following the money is a dizzying exercise, with multiple business firms and bank accounts and a discussion about one deal that ends with payment for another business opportunity.

The tale begins in April 2015, when Hunter Biden got an email from his business partner — the now-convicted felon Devon Archer — about a plan to assist the oligarch Dmitri Firtash, a Ukrainian who was under U.S. indictment by the Obama-Biden administration, and at the time, a fugitive.

The goal was to see whether Firtash’s felony indictment could be erased or eased with the help of the Obama-Biden State Department, where Hunter Biden’s father held much sway and where the vice president’s longtime national security adviser, Tony Blinken, served as deputy secretary under John Kerry, according to emails and interviews published last week by Just the News.

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A bakery, a water plant and her LA home: Everywhere Kamala has flown in the 14 days since she was placed in charge of migration crisis (but not, obviously, the border)By Jack Newman

By on April 7th, 2021

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9444413/Kamala-Harris-not-visited-Mexico-border-taking-charge-migrant-crisis.html

The Vice President was tasked with addressing the crisis at the border amid a surge in migrant numbers
In two weeks she has only held one phone call with the Guatemalan President and offered no interviews
She did not visit the border despite traveling home to California for four days with no public commitments
More than 170,000 migrants were caught trying to cross the border in March, its highest level in two decades
Harris is yet to hold an interview or make a trip to see the ‘humanitarian crisis’ despite her new role

Kamala Harris has still to visit the US-Mexico border or even hold a press conference about her new duties in the two weeks since being tasked with addressing the migrant crisis.

The Vice President spent Easter weekend at her Brentwood home in Southern California where she baked a ‘beautiful’ roast pork with rice and peas, but did not find time in her schedule to visit the nearby border.

In the past two weeks she has also visited Connecticut for a talk with the Boys and Girls Club of New Haven, traveled to Oakland to meet with Gavin Newsom to show support amid his potential recall election, and made a trip to a bakery in Chicago.

Harris has also been busy moving into her new residence at the Naval Observatory just days after she complained about living out of suitcases while it was being renovated.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

If Democrats Will Cry ‘Racist’ No Matter What, Republicans Should Pass Much Stronger Laws Everyone knows why Democrats don’t want voters to show ID. It has nothing to do with racism, and everyone knows it. So why are we playing this stupid game?By Joy Pullmann

By on April 7th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/04/06/if-democrats-will-cry-racist-no-matter-what-republicans-should-pass-much-stronger-laws/

In March, Georgia Republicans amended their state’s election laws in a weak attempt to assuage voters disgusted with their enabling of the 2020 election circus. To punish their political opponents for requiring voter ID and creating an election season of a month long or more Democrats called up their character assassination squads.

Democrats have been throwing every bit of pressure they can at Georgia elected officials to get their way without winning power legitimately through elections. This has included pressure from Democrats’ current and last U.S. presidents, Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

Biden called on companies to push his political goals outside of the legitimate political system by boycotting Georgia. He is the first president to openly push private companies to boycott a U.S. state over fully legal political outcomes he dislikes.

Biden also explicitly voiced support for Major League Baseball economically punishing Americans represented by members of his political opposition by withdrawing MLB’s All-Star game from Atlanta. MLB quickly complied.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

COLLEGES: WHAT THE CLASS OF 2025 WILL LOOK LIKE

By on April 7th, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ivy-league-acceptance-rates-fall-to-record-lows-due-to-covid-19-11617767857?mod=searchresults_pos1&page=1
Ivy League Acceptance Rates Fall to Record Lows Due to Covid-19 Harvard accepts just 3.4% of applicants, while Columbia admitted 3.7%

A pandemic-fueled surge in applications translated into record low acceptance rates this year for the country’s elite colleges, including most of the Ivy League.

Harvard University admitted 1,968 candidates, or 3.4% of the 57,435 people who applied. The previous lowest acceptance rate was 4.6% two years ago. Applications surged 43% over last year.

Yale University accepted 4.6% of the 46,905 people who applied. The applicant pool grew by 33% over last year, when the school accepted 6.6% of applicants.

Columbia University in New York City was the second hardest school to get into among the Ivies. Of the 60,551 students who applied, just 3.7% were accepted—down from 6.3% last year.

The eight schools making up the Ivy League and several other highly selective colleges late Tuesday notified applicants whether or not they had secured a slot for the coming fall’s first-year class. Notices went out a week later than in previous years to give admission officers time to vet the deluge of applications.

Hundreds of additional colleges, including most elite schools, stopped requiring an ACT or SAT standardized-test score as part of the admissions process this year because it was difficult to safely sit for the exams during the pandemic. The test-optional policy boosted applications as the number of open seats declined when a disproportionate number of students deferred admission due to the pandemic.

“Ten percent of the class entering this fall were admitted a year ago, and decided to take a gap year,” said Christoph Guttentag, dean of undergraduate admissions at Duke University, where a 25% uptick in applications drove the acceptance rate to a record low 5.8% from 8.1% last year. “That left fewer places than usual.”

More than 100,000 students applied to New York University and the school accepted 12.8%—a record low. Among those accepted, 20% are the first in their family to go to college, 20% are low income, and 29% come from traditionally underrepresented groups, the school said.

At Dartmouth, where the acceptance rate dropped to 6.2% from 9.2% last year, 48% of accepted students identify as Black, indigenous or other people of color, the school said, while 17% are the first in their family to attend college.

“It is safe to say this is the most broadly diverse accepted class in the long history of Dartmouth,” said Lee Coffin, vice provost for enrollment and dean of admissions and financial aid.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Biden Is Determined to Create Jobs… in China by Gordon G. Chang

By on April 7th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17250/biden-jobs-plan-china

For three principal reasons, his [Biden’s] jobs plan will create full employment in China. First, Biden will create substantially more demand for Chinese materials to go into America’s planned physical infrastructure improvements. Second, the large corporate tax increases he proposes will drive even more businesses out of the U.S. — and across the Pacific. Third, Biden’s “green energy” ideas will eliminate one of the crucial advantages American manufacturers now have: cheap energy.

“Unless we invest in the capacity to make the steel, cement, and the other materials that go into our roads, bridges, and other infrastructure, we will always be at the mercy of China’s Communist Party” — Jonathan Bass, CEO of Whom Home and onshoring advocate, in an interview with Gatestone Institute, April 2021.

“Domestic security, domestic economic security, is essential to international security. If we damage our economy… with all these tax hikes, including the corporate tax hikes, companies will be leaving, not coming here. We will lose jobs, not gain jobs. Our whole economy will suffer.” — Larry Kudlow, former director of the National Economic Council, Fox Business, March 30, 2021.

So, do we really need the federal government to do anything? After all, industry is moving in a “green energy” direction on its own.

“We can’t have a policy that sets us behind and still win a competition with China.” — Robert Lighthizer, U.S. Trade Representative 2017-2021, Fox Business, March 30, 2021.

“It’s the largest American jobs investment since World War II,” President Joe Biden said on March 31 in Pittsburgh, as he announced his $2.3 trillion infrastructure program. “It will create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs.”

He is correct. Biden will, in his American Jobs Plan as it’s formally called, create millions of good-paying jobs. Many of those jobs, however, will not be in America,. For three principal reasons, his jobs plan will create full employment in China.

First, Biden will create substantially more demand for Chinese materials to go into America’s planned physical infrastructure improvements. Second, the large corporate tax increases he proposes will drive even more businesses out of the U.S. — and across the Pacific. Third, Biden’s “green energy” ideas will eliminate one of the crucial advantages American manufacturers now have: cheap energy.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Systemic Social Justice Activism on College Campuses The perversion of the very purpose of universities. Jay Bergman

By on April 7th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/systemic-social-justice-activism-college-campuses-jay-bergman/

Amidst considerable fanfare, Central Connecticut State University (CCSU) announced recently the creation of the John Lewis Institute for Social Justice.  In a formal statement marking the occasion, Zulma Toro, the president of CCSU, claimed that the university’s mission was “to prepare students to be thoughtful, responsible, and successful citizens.”

At first glance, this objective seems incontestable, and the advocacy of social justice an excellent means of achieving it.

But when one delves deeper into the purpose of the institute, and learns what exactly social justice means to those who established it, it becomes clear that the institute is a vehicle for turning students into political activists advancing left-wing causes: the next sentence in the president’s statement acknowledges that the institute was created to satisfy students’ desire “to become more informed and involved in social justice initiatives after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.” 

That in the absence of any juridical determination one would describe these two deaths as “killings” is consistent with the common misconception that white police are generically racist and kill black Americans in large numbers because of their skin color.  The truth is the exact opposite: according to Peter Kirsanow, a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights, in 2016 police shot to death 16 unarmed black victims and 22 unarmed white victims – while in the same year making 408,873 arrests for violent crime.

The same disparity between perception and reality applies to the larger indictment of America that the creators of the institute apparently share: that our country is “systemically” racist, and absent the intervention of social justice activists like those the institute seeks to generate, irredeemably so.  

This charge is false as a matter of evidence and contradictory as a matter of simple logic.  

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What Would a Real Capitol Hill Riot Look Like? Our politicians, the media, and the unelected bureaucrats cry wolf over “domestic terrorism” without understanding that, in a real confrontation, theirs is the losing hand. By Dan Gelernter

By on April 7th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/06/what-would-a-real-capitol-hill-riot-look-like/

The FBI views the January 6 Capitol Hill protest as “domestic terrorism,” to quote director Christopher Wray. The bureau will work nonstop to bring those responsible to a police-state version of justice.

This included arresting Christopher Kuehne, a Missouri man who appears on security footage doing dangerous stuff like staying inside the velvet ropes and picking up garbage left by other protestors. Kuehne is a retired Marine with two Iraq deployments and a purple heart. The FBI charged him with carrying a deadly weapon, though he had none. The media falsely reported he was a member of the Proud Boys, though he is not. It appears he is being held in solitary confinement 23 hours a day without bail. His wife was kept waiting in freezing weather for hours while an FBI forensics team ransacked their home looking for “evidence.” She was pregnant and has suffered a miscarriage. That story has been effectively deleted from the internet and you won’t find it easily with a search on Google. 

The FBI isn’t alone in claiming the January 6 Capitol protest was the worst thing to happen to America since 9/11. A substantial share of nominally Republican politicians has joined that chorus. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) went so far as to say that Donald Trump will have “a place in history” for the Capitol riot: “They could have blown the building up. They could have killed us all.” 

When Graham says this, he knows perfectly well that he is lying. Trump asked the hundreds of thousands of Americans who came to show their support to walk with him peacefully to the Capitol. He made “peaceful” explicit. Nonetheless, every corrupt politician and newscaster in America has been able to find the violent subtext buried somewhere in Trump’s speech. 

Real Incitement

Well, try this on for size: Suppose if, instead of saying “let’s walk to the Capitol peacefully,” Trump instead had said what everyone accuses him of saying. Suppose he’d said, “The election is being stolen from us and I’m not giving up power.” (Remember how the Left fantasized Trump would have to be removed from the Oval Office by force?) Suppose Trump continued: “I am calling on my supporters to defend my presidency with violence. Come to Washington. Bring your guns! Bring every weapon you can lay your hands on. Don’t let anyone stop you. No justice, no peace!” 

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Educational Freedom Is on the Move And, ironically, much of the incredible rising support for educational freedom can be attributed to School Choice Enemy No. 1: the teachers’ unions. By Larry Sand

By on April 7th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/06/educational-freedom-is-on-the-move/

I wrote early last month that COVID-related lockdowns were leading many states to implement or advance already existing school choice measures. Just a few weeks later, it is happening at breakneck speed.

Legislators and parents have become fed up, and are doing what they can to regain control of the educational lives of children. They have watched as private schools flourish, while many of the government-run variety—typically at the behest of the teachers’ unions—have been shuttered. Also, because of forced online learning, parents have been given a Zoom-view as to just what teachers are—and are not—teaching.

As the Wall Street Journal notes, 50 school choice bills have been introduced in 30 states this year. Kentucky voted in a tax-credit-funded education savings account, its very first school choice legislation. As Lindsey Burke, director of the Heritage Foundation Center for Education Policy, explains, “Students from families with incomes below 175 percent of the federal poverty line will have access to education savings accounts. The program is available to students living in counties with more than 90,000 residents, and will initially be capped at $25 million.”

In North Carolina, House Bill 32 is currently working its way through the legislative process. If passed, the “Equity in Opportunity Act” will increase funding for the existing voucher program and allow more students to apply for scholarships.

Perhaps the most interesting state to advance educational freedom is West Virginia, which on March 29 passed the most expansive school choice program in the country. Under the new law, all parents have unrestrained options. If parents choose a private school for their kids, they will receive 100 percent of their state education dollars—$4,600 annually—to help defray expenses. In addition to private school tuition, parents can use the funding to homeschool or for other education expenses.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Man Behind Alleged Gaetz Extortion Scheme Admits Wanting $25 Million By Matt Margolis

By on April 7th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/04/06/man-behind-alleged-gaetz-extortion-scheme-admits-wanting-25-million-n1437915

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has claimed that the sexual misconduct allegations made against him were part of an extortion scheme, and Bob Kent, one of the men allegedly involved in the scheme, all but confirmed in an interview on “The Michael Smerconish Program” on SiriusXM radio on Monday that he had asked Gaetz’s father for $25 million—but insists it was not extortion.

Kent says he needed the money to help find FBI agent Robert Levinson, who went missing in March 2007 and is presumed to be dead by his family, but Kent claims he’s seen video evidence that Levinson is alive in Iran.

“Matt Gaetz is in need of good publicity, and I’m in need of $25 million to rescue Robert Levinson,” Kent said on the show, and acknowledged that he asked Gaetz’s father for the money.

“At first he started laughing and he said, ‘You know we get these extortion attempts all the time,’ And I said whoa, stop. This is not an extortion attempt. I’m not trying to extort him, I’m not, you know, that’s not what we’re doing here.”

But according to a report from the Washington Examiner, Gaetz, “possesses text message screenshots, an email, and a typed document that purportedly support his claims that a federal investigation into his relationship with a 17-year-old is related to an extortion scheme against him.” According to screenshots provided to the Washington Examiner, Rep. Gaetz’s father, Don Gaetz, a former Florida state Senate president, received a text message from Kent on March 16 proposing “a plan that can make [Matt Gaetz’s] future legal and political problems go away.”

Gaetz has denied any wrongdoing.

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Milwaukee Black Panthers racially harass and force shutdown of Asian nail salon as media avert their eyes By Thomas Lifson

By on April 7th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/milwaukee_black_panthers_racially_harass_and_force_shutdown_of_asian_nail_salon_as_media_avert_their_eyes.html

“You do not disrespect black women from our community…. You do not disrespect Black Lives Matter…. You ever disrespect a black woman again, we’re going to shut you down.”

With these and other words, a group of 10 Milwaukee Black Panthers invaded an Asian-owned nail salon and threatened it.

Later, they returned, and police arrived.  Instead of protecting the Asian owner, a female officer spoke cordially with the Panthers, addressing their leader as “General” and left the store saying, “All right, I’m sure that he got your message, sir, thank you so much.  We really appreciate you coming down.  Thank you though.”

All of this is on video recordings, boastfully posted to Facebook by the leader of the Panthers, who styles himself “King Rick” and who refers to Black female customers as “queens.”  We know this only thanks to Jim Piwowarczyk of Wisconsin Right Now, who notes that the leader of the group is:

“Darryl King Rick Farmer II,” whose Facebook page proclaims him as, “LEADER AND BLACK GENERAL OF THE ORIGINAL BLACK PANTHERS NATIONWIDE AND OTHER COUNTRIES!”

Following these confrontations, the nail salon has been shut down, its retail space vacated, a business (and jobs) no longer in existence.

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