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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Regressive State of America Federal income data offer a tragic lesson in bad policy: Connecticut.

By on April 26th, 2018

The 50 American states have long competed for people and business, and the 2017 tax reform raises the stakes by limiting the state and local tax deduction on federal returns. The results of bad policy will be harder to disguise.

A case in point is Connecticut’s continuing economic decline, and now we have even more statistical evidence as a warning to other states. The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis recently rolled out its annual report on personal income growth in the 50 states, and for 2017 the Nutmeg State came in a miserable 44th.

The progressive paragon’s performance is even worse when you look at the details. The nearby chart shows that the state’s personal income grew at the slowest pace among all New England states, and not by a little. Governor Dannel Malloy’s eight-year experiment in public-union governance saw income grow by a meager 1.5% for the year, well below Vermont (2.1%). The state even trailed Maine (2.7%) and Rhode Island (2.4%), which are usually the New England laggards.

The only states to do worse than Connecticut were Alaska (0.4%), which is heavily dependent on oil and gas production, and Kansas (1%), Nebraska (1.4%), Iowa (0.3%) and North (-0.3%) and South Dakota (1.4%), all farm states that struggled with low commodity prices. National income growth was 3.1%.

The data are even more depressing if you strip out dividends and government transfer payments and consider only wages and salaries. Connecticut had essentially no growth (0.1%), which was worse than every state save Alaska (-1.6%). The figure for the U.S. was 3.3%. Total nonfarm earnings in Connecticut were also the second worst in the country after Alaska.

Lest you think this was a one-year anomaly, we looked at the personal income figures for every year since 2011. That’s the year Mr. Malloy took office, and the state rebounded well from the recession with 4.9% income growth, the best in New England.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Comey’s Loyalty Isn’t to the Truth Vital facts are missing from his accounts of two episodes from the Bush presidency. Karl Rove

By on April 26th, 2018

For 10 days, former FBI Director James Comey has been on a high-profile media tour to promote “A Higher Loyalty.” With more than 600,000 copies sold in the first week, the book leaves competing “resistance” favorites “What Happened” and “Fire and Fury” in the dust. But behind the aw-shucks, I-was-the-only-honest-man-in-the-room persona, Mr. Comey’s book demonstrates his real higher loyalty is to self-aggrandizement.

Consider two episodes from George W. Bush’s presidency. Mr. Comey writes that in 2003 he was drawn into the Valerie Plame investigation when administration officials leaked the identity of “a covert CIA employee,” allegedly as retaliation for a critical op-ed written by Ms. Plame’s husband. Mr. Comey, then deputy attorney general, appointed special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, and writes that he stands by the decision to charge Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, with false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice. Mr. Libby was convicted in 2007.

But vital facts are missing from Mr. Comey’s account. The most important is that no one revealed a covert CIA agent’s name. Though Mr. Comey refers to Ms. Plame seven times as a “covert agent,” she was not. That’s why Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who revealed Ms. Plame’s name to columnist Robert Novak, was never indicted.

Mr. Comey also fails to note that the star witness against Mr. Libby, former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, recanted her testimony in 2015. She said Mr. Fitzgerald misled her and withheld exculpatory evidence that would have kept her from “unwittingly giving false testimony.” In a rebuke to Messrs. Fitzgerald and Comey, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals cleared Mr. Libby to practice law again in 2016, well before President Trump pardoned him earlier this month.

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

North Korean summit calls for a hard line from Trump By Lawrence J. Haas

By on April 26th, 2018

With more freedom to maneuver on foreign than domestic affairs, and with their eyes focused squarely on their legacies, all modern U.S. presidents have sought to craft the elusive deal that will solve a protracted global conflict. So, with dismal prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace, we shouldn’t be surprised that President Trump is now pursuing a deal to end North Korea’s nuclear program.

The coming summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un presents the riskiest of situations for the United States, however, for it pits the least knowledgeable modern-day president on foreign affairs against a shrewd young dictator who’s maintaining the family dynasty in the same iron-fisted way as his father and grandfather.

That raises the stakes immeasurably for the United States, which seeks a full rollback of North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief and a warming of relations between the two nations – and it has huge implications for U.S. relations with China and such American allies as South Korea and Japan.

Worse, Trump will square off against a leader whose predecessors cut multiple deals of a similar, though less ambitious, nature with Washington – a North Korean freeze or partial rollback of its nuclear program in exchange for U.S. aid – only to see Pyongyang renege and later resume its nuclear advancement.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Republican Lesko Wins Arizona Eighth District Special Election By Bob Christie & Anita Snow

By on April 26th, 2018

GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) — It took a big money push from the Republican Party, tweets by the president and the support of the state’s current and former governors, but the GOP held onto an Arizona U.S. House seat they would have never considered endangered in any other year.

Tuesday’s narrow victory by Republican Debbie Lesko over a Democratic political newcomer sends a big message to Republicans nationwide: Even the reddest of districts in a red state can be in play this year. Early returns show Lesko winning by about 5 percentage points in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District where Donald Trump won by 21 percentage points.

“Debbie will do a Great Job!” the president tweeted Wednesday.

The former state senator defeated Hiral Tipirneni, a former emergency room physician who had hoped to replicate surprising Democratic wins in Pennsylvania, Alabama and other states in a year where opposition to President Trump’s policies have boosted the party’s chances in Republican strongholds.

Republican political consultant Chuck Coughlin called Tuesday’s special election margin “not good” for national Republicans looking at their chances in November.

“They should clean house in this election,” said Coughlin, longtime adviser to former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. “There’s a drag on the midterms for Republican candidates that’s being created by the national narrative. And it would be very hard to buck that trend if you’re in swing districts, much less close districts, if you can’t change that narrative between now and November.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hospitals Pulling the Plug Against Families’ Wishes By Betsy McCaughey

By on April 26th, 2018

Who decides whether your sick child lives or dies? You or the hospital? On Monday, the parents of 23-month-old Alfie Evans, who has extensive brain damage, were told their son’s life would be terminated by hospital staff. That night, the hospital turned off his ventilator. The hospital decreed “once all external signs of life have ceased,” doctors would confirm “that death has occurred.” Many hours have passed, and Alfie clings tenuously to life.

To avert this crisis, Alfie’s parents tried appealing to British courts, but judges ruled on April 20 that “the hospital must be free to do what has been determined to be in Alfie’s best interests.” Determined by whom? Not his parents, who wanted to maintain life support. “He isn’t suffering, he isn’t in pain, he isn’t diagnosed,” his father explains. “It’s a straight up execution.”

Alfie isn’t the first child sentenced to die by a British hospital. Last year it happened to 11-month-old Charlie Gard, and more recently to a toddler named Isaiah Haastrup. Can it happen in the U.S.? You bet. It depends on what state you live in.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Has Europe Even Tried to Fight Anti-Semitism? by Yves Mamou

By on April 25th, 2018

Each time an anti-Semitic attack in Europe receives media attention, politicians rush to condemn it. But verbal condemnations alone change nothing. Anti-Semitism just gets bigger.

The European Union has adopted anti-Israel policies out of fear of upsetting Muslims, but this fear of upsetting Muslims has been fueling Muslim anti-Semitism.

When European governments refuse to accept Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and when they urge “restraint” instead of affirming that Israel has the right to defend itself, they are indulging in appeasement. On one side, they condemn anti-Semitism but on other, they are just whipping it up.

On April 18, 2018, two young men, both wearing Jewish skullcaps, were insulted by a group of Muslims and whipped with a belt in a clearly anti-Semitic attack in Prenzlauer Berg, one Berlin’s most fashionable neighborhoods. The violent assault, partly filmed by one of the victims, sparked national indignation in Germany. One of the attackers can be heard on the video clearly shouting “Yahudi” (Arabic for “Jew”).

“It is intolerable for young men to be attacked here just because they are wearing a kippah,” said Heiko Maas, the German Foreign Minister. “Jews must never again feel threatened here. It is our responsibility to protect Jewish life.”

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sweden’s Increasingly Lawless Immigration Policy? by Nima Gholam Ali Pour

By on April 25th, 2018

Sweden’s National Board of Forensic Medicine reported that in 83% of the cases where it had stated an opinion about the age of the asylum applicant, the applicant had not been a minor. Many asylum seekers had lied about their age simply because there is greater probability of getting a residence permit — and more benefits — if you are a minor. It is also easier for minors to bring their relatives to Sweden through family immigration.

Afghan demonstrators were saying that Afghans who returned home would die. This second report showed that the problem for Afghans returning home was not security. The problem was the economy.

When members of the government presented their final version of the bill, the demand that unaccompanied youths should confirm their identity or present evidence that made their age probable, had been entirely removed.

In 2015, when approximately 35,369 “unaccompanied minors” came to Sweden, 66% of them were from Afghanistan. This was a staggering number. (In 2016 and 2017, only 3,533 unaccompanied minors came to Sweden.) In 2015, the high proportion of Afghans among the unaccompanied minors made the migrant group “unaccompanied minors” virtually synonymous with Afghani youth. During the last ten years, approximately 33,000 unaccompanied minors arrived in Sweden from Afghanistan.

In mid-August 2017, some young Afghan migrants, many of whose asylum applications had been rejected, started a series of demonstrations in central parts of Stockholm. The young migrants were demanding that the Swedish Migration Agency stop deporting them back to Afghanistan. Behind the demonstrations was a network calling itself “Young in Sweden”. It did not take long before the Swedish media hailed the spokesperson of these demonstrations, Fatemeh Khavari, as a heroine. Six weeks after the demonstrations began, Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest newspaper, wrote:

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Macron in Washington:By:Srdja Trifkovic

By on April 25th, 2018

French President Emanuel Macron’s three-day visit to Washington started on an awkward notewhen he kissed an obviously uncomfortable President Donald Trump. The scene was a symbolic reminder that the two leaders do not enjoy an “intense, close relationship” invented by the media. In reality Macron is, both ideologically and temperamentally, the polar opposite of Trump. The latter was admittedly impressed by the welcome he received for the Bastille Day celebration in Paris last year, and Macron has the distinction of being the first foreign leader to come for a state visit to Trump’s Washington, but there is less than meets the eye to their alleged “chemistry.”

To start with the basics, Trump and Macron are not “two alpha males,” and I have this sneaky suspicion that the leftist-liberal media machine is keen to award the French president Trump’s indubitable “alpha” status in order to neutralize suspicions about Macron’s sexual orientation. In reality, while Trump is a heterosexual who evidently likes pretty women younger than himself, Macron is most likely a bisexual who was fond of older women as a teenager—his wife is 24 years his senior—but now prefers handsome younger men, like the former Radio France president Mathieu Gallet.

Trump is an eccentric in many ways, to be sure, but for all his faults he is genuine and honest, a true albeit diminishing American type. Macron is the poster-boy of Europe’s postmodern transnational elite, a former international banker and fanatical Euro-integralist. He is also an Islamophile (“No religion is a problem in France today . . . What poses a problem is not Islam, but certain behaviors that are said to be religious and then imposed on persons who practice that religion”) and an open-borders enthusiast (by allowing over a million migrants in, “[Chancellor] Merkel and German society as a whole exemplified our common European values. They saved our collective dignity”). In February 2017 he lampooned Trump’s promise to protect America’s southern border by pledging never to build a wall of any kind.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Humanitarian Hoax of the Federal Reserve System: Killing America With Kindness – hoax 25 by Linda Goudsmit

By on April 25th, 2018

The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.

Most Americans do not realize that the Federal Reserve is NOT constitutionally part of the United States Government and is not even a bank! The Federal Reserve is a system. International banker Marilyn Barnewall explains that the Federal Reserve System is a privately held corporation owned by bankers and it is most definitely not part of the federal government.

The Federal Reserve Act that created the Federal Reserve System (Fed) was passed in Congress on December 22, 1913 and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson the next day. Barnewall describes the dramatic effects of its passage.

“The Act transferred the right to print currency from the United States Congress to an independent and privately-owned entity calling itself a bank but which is not a bank and changing the Constitution which cannot be changed without Amending it. The Fed is somewhat federal in form, but is very privately owned and operated. President Wilson lived to regret signing The Federal Reserve Act and on his deathbed is quoted as saying:

‘I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men.'”

So, who are these men and why was President Wilson so remorseful about signing the Federal Reserve Act? And why is the Federal Reserve System so disingenuously named that the average citizen assumes it is a banking institution and part of the federal government?

Sometimes it is necessary to look back to understand the present and anticipate the future.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Working Families Party Has an Anti-Semitism Problem From Marx to Jewish weather control. Daniel Greenfield

By on April 25th, 2018

When D.C. Councilmember Trayon White came under fire for blaming Jews for controlling the weather, dumping a Holocaust Museum tour and donating to an anti-Semitic Nation of Islam event, the loudest voice in his defense came once again from the Working Families Party. The WFP is a spinoff of ACORN.

Rafael Shimunov, the WFP’s Creative Director, claimed that each exhibit of the Holocaust Museum was a “new trap” as the “under educated Black man was followed by rich white people waiting for him to say something offensive.” Shimunov, a member of the anti-Israel hate group If Not Now, had previously also defended Keith Ellison and Linda Sarsour over their own anti-Semitic comments and history.

White isn’t an “under educated Black man” victimized by the Holocaust Museum’s exhibit “trap.” He has an MA in Public Administration and a BA in Business Administration. He’s a bigot. Not a victim.

But why would a senior figure in the WFP waste his time defending Trayon White’s anti-Semitism?

Before Trayon White made headlines for his bizarre claims of Jewish weather control, he had been backed by lefty activist groups that are political allies of the WFP. White had been endorsed by D.C. for Democracy along with other anti-incumbent insurgents. He also received the backing of Jews United for Justice. There aren’t a whole lot of Jews in Trayon’s district, but, despite its name, JUFJ isn’t really a Jewish group. Like the WFP, it’s a Soros organization. And it kept trying to cover for Trayon.

But this sort of thing keeps happening to the Working Families Party.

Laurie Cumbo, a WFP endorsed New York City Council candidate, explained black anti-Semitic violence by claiming that Jews with “bags of money” were trying to force black people out.

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