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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

David Malpass, Trump’s Pick to Lead World Bank, Is Approved By Tiffany Hsu

By on April 6th, 2019

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/05/business/david-malpass-world-bank.html?action

David Malpass, President Trump’s pick to be president of the World Bank and a longtime critic of the influence wielded by the bank and other multilateral institutions, was unanimously approved by its executive board on Friday.

Mr. Trump nominated Mr. Malpass, the Treasury under secretary for international affairs, in February. He will begin his five-year term on Tuesday, the executive directors said in a statement. He succeeds Jim Yong Kim, who stepped down abruptly in January to join an investment firm.

In a note to World Bank employees on Friday, Mr. Malpass, 63, said the organization was capable of “measurable successes” like raising median incomes, improving debt transparency and increasing private-sector development. He urged the bank’s staff to “work tirelessly” toward “a stronger, more stable global economy for all.”

The mission of the bank, which was created in 1944 and is collectively owned by nearly 200 countries, includes reducing global poverty, providing financial aid to needy countries and fighting the effects of climate change. Last year, it provided $20.5 billion for projects involving renewable energy, agriculture and emissions management.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Anti-Semitism in the NYT By Marilyn Penn

By on April 6th, 2019

http://politicalmavens.com/

Purporting to outline the current disease of hatred on both left and right “extremes,” the Times caption reads, “Surge of Anti-Semitism in Europe and U.S. as Economies Cool,” thereby solidifying one of the most heinous anti-semitic tropes – conflating Jews with money. As for the Democrat party, anti-semitism has jumped from its extremes to mainstream candidates for office and members of congress who consider it merely an example of freedom of speech.

The Times ignores completely the enormous influence of anti-semitism on campus and in leftist institutions and organizations. There is no mention of Muslim influence,, either monetary or political, in movements such as BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) or Israel Apartheid Week, an annual occurrence on campuses across America since 2005. Nor is anything said about intersectionality, a concept emphasizing the commonality between oppressed brown and black groups and their mandatory identification with the plight of Palestinians. Interestingly, these groups are only concerned with Palestinians who are “controlled” by Israel – no mention is made of their abysmal treatment by other Arab countries who keep them in deplorable refugee camps, refusing to offer citizenship to their Muslim brothers. The fact that more than a million Palestinians are citizens of Israel is never divulged, nor is the fact that their standard of living and educational and professional opportunities surpass what they can expect in Arab countries.

Although the Times pretends that much of this anti-semitism is a result of Israel’s right-wing leadership, the animosity expressed by Muslim nations and immigrants throughout Europe is directed at “Jews” wherever they may live. The Koranic sources of this hatred are not mentioned in this lengthy article which also fails to mention the resurgence of respect for Louis Farrakhan by Democrat members of congress and organizers of the Women’s Marches on Washington. The Times leaves us with the assessment of a sociologist at the University of London who equates the British right and left by saying that both consider Israel to be a “belligerent country that defends itself against Muslims.” A more accurate description would be that Israel is a strong country which is constantly forced to defend itself against Muslim belligerents and terrorists who refuse to accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Climate’s Uncertainty Principle by Garth Paltridge

By on April 5th, 2019

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2019/04/climates

“The bottom line of politically correct thought on the matter—the thought that we must collectively do something drastic now to prevent climate change in the future—is so full of holes that it brings the overall sanity of mankind into question. For what it is worth, one possible theory is that mankind (or at least that fraction of it that has become both over-educated and more delicate as a result of a massive increase of its wealth in recent times) has managed to remove the beliefs of existing religions from its consideration—and now it misses them. As a replacement, it has manufactured a set of beliefs about climate change that can be used to guide and ultimately to control human behaviour. The beliefs are similar to those of the established religions in that they are more or less unprovable in any strict scientific sense.”

Whether we should do anything now to limit our impact on future climate boils down to an assessment of a relevant cost-benefit ratio. That is, we need to put a dollar number to the cost of doing something now, a dollar number to the benefit thus obtained by the future generations, and a number to a thing called “discount for the future”—this last being the rate at which our concern for the welfare of future generations falls away as we look further and further ahead. Only the first of these numbers can be estimated with any degree of reliability. Suffice it to say, if the climate-change establishment were to have its way with its proposed conversion of the global usage of energy to a usage based solely on renewable energy, the costs of the conversion would be horrifically large. It is extraordinary that such costs can even be contemplated when the numbers for both the future benefit and the discount for the future are little more than abstract guesses.

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EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Melissa Langsam Braunstein :Harvard Students Vote To Send Student Money To Anti-Semitic Group Israel Apartheid Week has a history of not promoting open, honest, or nuanced conversation. It’s about slandering democratic Israel by comparing it to apartheid South Africa.

By on April 5th, 2019

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/05/harvard-students-vote-send-student-money-anti-semitic-group/

If everyone admitted to a college is invited to campus, but Jewish students are made to feel less welcome, is the campus still everyone’s home? I never wondered about this as an undergraduate. But I absolutely did this week, after reading that Harvard’s Undergraduate Council (UC) funded Israeli Apartheid Week on campus.

When I arrived in Cambridge in the fall of 1996, Harvard felt like the Upper West Side’s northern outpost. That is, it was very culturally Jewish — Seinfeldian, if you like. Obviously, most students weren’t Jewish, but there was a decent-sized Jewish minority, and we were well integrated into campus life. It was an incredibly comfortable place for someone like me who was actively involved with the campus Hillel and kept kosher. But I’m not so sure I’d feel identically if I were a student there now.

This year doesn’t mark Harvard’s first IAW, but it appears to be the first one that’s received funding from the student government. And that seems like a notable change.

The UC, which is supposed to represent all Harvard undergraduates, recently voted 21-13-4 to grant $2,050 — serious money for student groups, and more than the UC’s typical grant — to fund the Palestine Solidarity Committee’s Israeli apartheid Week.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Chevron Keeps Winning, Its Leftist Foes Keep Losing By Jack Fowler

By on April 5th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/chevron-keeps-winning-its-leftist-foes-keep-losing/

There is always a latest chapter in the Legal Fraud of the Century, which is the story of a determined leftist environmentalist cabal’s attempt to shake down of Chevron for many billions over bogus claims – adjudicated in a bribed and perjury-ridden Ecuador courtroom — that the energy company (via Texaco, which it purchased in 2001) had devastated rainforests and forced cancer upon the locals when drilling for oil in the South American country in previous decades.

American courts have ruled that the shakedown – masterminded by Steven Donziger – was a criminal RICO operation. The subsequent wreckage of his cabal (an excellent description of such is Kevin Williamson’s 2014 NR piece on how its nefarious role in the case crushed Patton Boggs) is vast, but like Monty Python’s Black Knight, the disbarred attorney continues to hop the globe seeking a court or international tribunals that will order Chevron or a local subsidiary to fork over the penalty determined by the corrupt Ecuador court.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Beto O’Rourke: Trump’s Rhetoric Echoes the Third Reich By Mairead McArdle

By on April 5th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/beto-orourke-trumps-rhetoric-echoes-the-third-reich/

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke compared President Trump’s rhetoric to that of Nazi Germany Thursday, citing in particular Trump’s controversial comments about illegal immigrants.

At a campaign stop in Sioux City, Iowa, the former representative from the border town of El Paso, Texas was harshly critical of “the rhetoric of a president who not only describes immigrants as rapists and criminals, but as animals and an infestation.”

“Now, I might expect someone to describe another human being as an infestation in the Third Reich,” O’Rourke remarked to a crowd of students at Morningside College. “I would not expect it in the United States of America.”

Later Thursday, O’Rourke doubled down on his comments, telling reporters, “I compared the rhetoric that the president has employed to rhetoric that you might have heard during the Third Reich.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Court Ruling Implies That Barr Must Redact Grand-Jury Info from Mueller Report By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on April 5th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/mueller-report-attorney-general-grand-jury-information/

Democrats will complain, but the attorney general can’t be faulted for following the law.

In disclosing the Mueller report, Attorney General William P. Barr will have to redact grand-jury information. That is the upshot of the ruling today by a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

I flagged this case, now called McKeever v. Barr (formerly McKeever v. Sessions), last week. It did not arise out of the Mueller investigation, but it obviously has significant ramifications for the Mueller report — in particular, how much of it we will get to see.

At issue was this question: Does a federal court have the authority to order disclosure of grand-jury materials if the judge decides that the interests of justice warrant doing so; or is the judge limited to the exceptions to grand-jury secrecy that are spelled out in Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure? The D.C. Circuit’s McKeever ruling holds that the text of Rule 6(e) controls. Consequently, judges have no authority to authorize disclosure outside the rule.

This is significant for the Mueller report because Rule 6(e) does not contain an exception to secrecy that would permit disclosure to Congress.

The case involves a writer, Stuart McKeever, who was researching a book on the disappearance of Columbia University professor Jesús de Galíndez Suárez in 1956. It was suspected that Galíndez, a very public critic of Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo, was kidnapped and flown to the D.R., where he was murdered. In the course of a federal investigation, suspicion fell on John Joseph Frank, a former FBI agent and CIA lawyer, who later worked for Trujillo. Frank was eventually prosecuted for failing to register as a foreign agent but never charged with any involvement in Galíndez’s murder.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The stunning truth about Ivy League scholarships…

By on April 5th, 2019

https://www.openthebooks.com

The 25 colleges and universities with the largest endowments in the nation hold a quarter-trillion in existing assets. So, why do these schools reap billions from the Department of Education each year?

Collectively, the eight schools of the Ivy League have a $119 billion endowment fund.

Let’s put this into perspective: With this amount, the Ivy League could provide full-ride scholarships to its entire undergraduate student body for the next 51 years without any new gifts.

With continued gifts at the present rate, this could go on forever.

The Ivy League schools can’t argue they need taxpayer assistance… And yet, the Ivies reaped $26 billion in federal funding over a six-year period.

We published a full editorial at the Washington Times, co-authored with economist Stephen Moore, on this fiscal phenomenon. Read the editorial here.

Remember, this is just one example of the wasteful spending we uncovered in our investigation into the U.S. Department of Education.

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IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Selective Compassion

By on April 5th, 2019

From the “End of Day” Report Newsletter: Sent by Janet Levy

As we are experiencing a massive surge in illegal immigration at our southern border, I want to revisit a critical element that is often overlooked in this debate.  The media and many on the left speak of illegal immigration as a humanitarian issue or they couch it in terms of compassion. 

But where is the left’s compassion for taxpayers and for the innocent American victims of criminal illegal aliens? Whenever President Trump talks about illegal immigration, he frequently says that open borders means more crime. 

Predictably, left-wing pundits accuse the president of being “xenophobic,” even though he often praises legal immigration. But the president is absolutely correct. 

Not every illegal immigrant coming across the border is looking for work and a better life. According to government statistics, illegal aliens make up 21% of the federal prison population. 
The 730,000 criminal aliens in state and federal prisons were responsible for 7.5 million offenses. 

They committed: 1 million drug crimes500,000 assaults133,800 sex offenses33,300 homicide-related offenses24,200 kidnappings and1,500 terrorism-related crimes.It cost taxpayers $2.5 billion a year to incarcerate them.  Texas bears the brunt of this burden.  In the past eight years, it has incarcerated nearly 200,000criminal aliens.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Arguments In Favor Of Brexit Are More Persuasive Than Ever by Francis Menton

By on April 5th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-4-4-the-arguments-in-favor-of-brexit-are-more-persuasive-than-ever

Back at the time of the UK’s referendum on “Brexit” in June 2016, I wrote two posts on the subject: one on the June 23 date of the vote, and the other four days later. The first advocated in favor of the “leave” position, and the second gave some reasons to believe that the just-endorsed departure would be a good thing.

One of the things I predicted was that the actual departure would not happen quickly or easily. The reason was that the forces of “stay” controlled high positions in the government and other leading institutions, had much to lose personally, and would not give up easily:

[D]o not expect the totalitarians and vested interests to give up easily. I anticipate a protracted campaign of obstruction and delay, as the grafters desperately fight and claw to hang onto every last grant and perk.

Boy was I right about that one! Here we are, going on three years later, and the Brexit has still not occurred.

Meanwhile the Brexit “process” has turned into a Perils of Pauline soap opera, barely escaping one supposed disaster after another seemingly every few days.

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