RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/01/31/kennedy-center-received-270-million-from-congress-and-paid-their-president-5-million-since-2016/?sh=3d1baad236d6

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. disclosed that it has received $269.4 million in federal funding since 2016 – including $42 million in grants and last year’s $25 million coronavirus earmark that was mostly used for payroll.

Even during the 2020 pandemic, the Center grew their net assets by $3.3 million to $505 million. Since 2016, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found a $114.4 million increase in net assets – from $390.6 million.

During this five-year period, their president, Deborah Rutter, received pay and benefits amounting to $5.1 million. Peak earning years were 2018 and 2019 when she was paid $1.3 million annually. During the 2020 pandemic year, she cut her pay to $507,375, which is still more than the U.S. President makes at $400,000.

We reached out for comment and Chairman David M. Rubenstein provided this response:

“Deborah Rutter is at the top of her field and her salary is competitive with peers at the country’s largest performing arts organizations. In her more than six years at the Kennedy Center’s helm, Deborah’s vision, leadership, and artistic and financial results have exceeded the board’s expectations. Even before the pandemic forced a complete shutdown, she voluntarily offered to take no salary until further notice. Her outstanding leadership and dedication to the Center, both before and during the pandemic crisis, have proven that she is the right person at the right time.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/31/democratic-criminal-class-insurrection-against-maga-america/

Peace through strength increasingly is the province of the state, and not the sovereign individual. We live under the law of rule, not the rule of law.

When Uncle Sam threatens some blighted and benighted region of the world—ostensibly on behalf of the American People and for the region’s own good—our representatives call it peace through strength. 

It is then that ordinary Americans are encouraged to pipe up in praise of the state’s invariably Orwellian peace-through-strength strategies. 

Peace through strength on our front porches, while being menaced by lowbrow looters and assorted louts? For that you can be incarcerated in the land where the criminal roams free.   

And when practiced by pale faces, our Second Amendment rights, exercised on the perimeter of our properties, as we stand vigil against the vilest of human beings—that’s tantamount to white supremacy and privilege.

Witness the fate of some courageous homeowners (the McCloskeys of St. Louis, Missouri) exercising age-old rights—also American constitutional rights—when they ventured out onto their verandas with firearms, intending to stand their ground and deter mobs from overrunning hearth and home.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/31/why-are-progressives-so-illiberal/

Progressives adopted identity politics and rejected class considerations because solidarity with elite minorities excuses them from concern for, or experience with, the middle classes of all races.

One common theme in the abject madness and tragedies of the past 12 months is that progressive ideology now permeates almost all of our major institutions—even as the majority of Americans resist the leftist agenda. Its reach resembles the manner in which the pre-Renaissance church had absorbed the economic, cultural, social, artistic, and political life of Europe, or perhaps how Islamic doctrine was the foundation for all public and private life under the Ottoman Sultanate—or even how all Russian institutions of the 1930s exuded tenets of Soviet Marxism.

Pan-progressivism

To be a Silicon Valley executive, a prominent Wall Street player, the head of a prestigious publishing house, a university president, a network or PBS anchor, a major Hollywood actress, a retired general or admiral on a corporate board, or a NBA superstar requires either progressive fides or careful suppression of all political affinities.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 98 percent of Big Tech political donations went to Democrats in 2020. Censorship and deplatforming on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies is decidedly one-way. When Mark Zuckerberg and others in Silicon Valley donate $500 million to help officials “get out the vote” in particular precincts, it is not to help candidates of both parties.

Google calibrates the order of its search results with a progressive, not a conservative, bent. Grandees from the Clinton or Obama Administration find sinecures in Silicon Valley, not Republicans or conservatives.

The $4-5 trillion market-capitalized Big Tech cartels, run by self-described progressives, aimed to extinguish conservative brands like Parler. Ironically, they now apply ideological force multipliers to the very strategies and tactics of 19th-century robber-baron trusts and monopolies. Poor Jack Dorsey has never been able to explain why Twitter deplatforms and cancels conservatives for the same supposed uncouthness that leftists routinely employ.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-promising-vaccine-this-one-from-johnson-johnson-11612131877?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Some good news this week: Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine looks likely to become the third U.S. Covid-19 vaccine to enter the market. The company released data this week showing the vaccine is about 70% effective against the virus, and its version requires only one shot. The Food and Drug Administration will need to review the evidence thoroughly, but the preliminary data is promising. The company is collecting more information to determine whether a booster shot could provide even better protection.

Crushing Covid will require making the most of the different vaccine candidates, which come with their own pros and cons, and tweaking them to stay ahead of viral mutations. The vaccines all follow a similar basic approach, putting into arms the spike protein found on the surface of the coronavirus. But Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine takes a slightly different approach to delivery than vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna. (I am on the board of Pfizer.) The biotech company Novavax is pursuing a vaccine candidate with its own special delivery system. All four might be available by the summer, which would mean an ample supply.

Americans will wonder which one works best? It will be tempting to compare data across trials. But that isn’t apples to apples; the vaccines and the data aren’t all the same. And new variants of Covid may demand vaccines that offer slightly different layers of protection and target slightly different parts of the virus.

The regulatory process must encourage this kind of portfolio diversification, while allowing tweaks to keep ahead of the virus’s twists and turns. The FDA is working on guidance to address new variants, which will include a pathway for updating vaccines.