RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/11/californias-next-crime-wave-fuel-theft/

Editor’s note: This has been excerpted with permission from the Pacific Research Institute. To read the entire report, click here.

Here are a few examples:

On Sept. 27, an Inland Empire resident drove away from her job at an area hospital when her pickup truck puttered to a stop. An investigation showed her tank had been drilled and emptied.
A Valero Station in Fremont lost tens of thousands of gallons of diesel to thieves using a device to bypass pump security and transfer fuel into a specially configured pickup truck on July 10.
On July 2, the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office charged two men with an alleged fuel theft scheme involving $90,000.00 in diesel fuel thefts.
On March 1, East Bay law enforcement reported a “rash of destructive gas thefts by drilling gas tanks.”
Most recently, on Nov. 21, thieves in Otay Mesa near San Diego pumped 3,000 gallons of stolen fuel from a Circle K station. This was a loss of $16,000 for the station.

Gasoline prices in California are one area where the rules of supply and demand don’t apply to price. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, since 2005 per capita use of gasoline has dropped by 2 billion gallons per year – a net drop of 15% over nearly 20 years. They attribute this decline to improved fuel economy and the increasing use of electric vehicles. For advocates of the idea that commercial and personal vehicle use is one of the primary contributors to climate change, this is welcome news. It certainly has improved local air quality in California’s most smog prone regions.

Yet, for California’s tax collectors, this is very bad news indeed as projected 202-/2025 fuel tax revenues are just north of $7 billion and should, according to basic economic laws, drop along with consumption. The California Air Resources Board recently adopted an updated Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which is estimated to increase gas prices by 47 cents per gallon or more.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/12/the_beginning_of_the_end_of_dei_in_the_private_sector_and_our_universities.html

Ferraris are priced between $250,000 and $600,000, but it’s not enough to have the money to buy these pricey Italian sports cars.  The company’s Diversity and Inclusion Charter demands that buyers and their families pass “social status” background checks to “ensure they fit the mold of the brand and its desired image.” 

Talk about cultivating “inclusivity!”

In a similar charade of ‘woke’ virtue signaling, luxury car maker Jaguar unleashed a futuristic ad in a pinkish palette featuring men posing as women. There are no cars in it, so it’s no surprise that it landed like a lead balloon and joined the pantheon of duds like the Bud Light ad featuring trans activist Dylan Mulvaney in a bubble bath.

The Bud Light ad sparked a consumer backlash on social media, including calls for boycotting the beer brand.

In Go Woke, Go Broke: The Inside Story of the Radicalization of Corporate America, Charles Gasparino called the Bud Light fiasco the “desecration of a great American brand.”  The book—which opens with an account of an incredibly farcical discussion at Goldman Sachs over whether ordering Chick-fil-A sandwiches is sufficiently woke—exposes many such woke/DEI debacles and the brand destruction they wreaked.

Fortunately, the efforts of people like Gasparino (a seasoned business reporter who knows what makes companies succeed or fail) and anti-DEI campaigner Robby Starbuck are paying off. Moreover, the resounding victory of President-elect Donald Trump—who made a campaign pledge to dismantle “divisive,” “un-American” DEI programs—has catalyzed a corporate retreat from leftist “wokeness.”

After Starbuck told Walmart he was investigating their DEI practices, the retail chain – America’s largest private sector employer, with over 4,600 units in the U.S. – announced plans to end its DEI initiatives.  It has agreed to drop the term ‘DEI’ and instead focus on “Belonging for All.”  Not only that, it will stop financing events aimed at influencing children sexually; scrap the Corporate Equality Index, a benchmark created by the Human Rights Coalition (HRC) to monitor LGBTQ+ policies; remove gender-neutral terms such as Latinx from documents; end a program incentivizing suppliers who hire LGBTQ+, racial minorities, and women; discontinue racial equity training; and stop funding the Center for Racial Equity.  Walmart will no longer sell products such as chest binders marketed, among others, to “transitioning” children.

https://www.thefp.com/p/assads-fall-humiliates-washington-biden-obama-trump-iran-syria?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

According to President Joe Biden, the end of Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny in Syria was made possible by his administration’s foreign policy. Speaking from the White House on Sunday in a televised address, he said, “For years the main backers of Assad have been Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia, but over the last week their support collapsed, all three of them, because all three of them are far weaker today than they were when I took office.”

Try not to laugh.

Biden attributes the woes that have befallen this alleged “Axis of Resistance” to “the blows Ukraine [and] Israel have delivered upon their own self-defense with unflagging support of the United States.”

This isn’t just a deceptive telling of recent history. Biden has it backward. While it’s true that Iran, Hezbollah, and Russia are weaker today than they were when Biden was inaugurated as president, it’s not because Biden had the foresight to unleash the Jewish state against America’s enemies in the Middle East. It’s because Israel defied Biden’s efforts to restrain it. Syria has toppled its tyrant in spite of the Biden administration, not because of it.

When Israel took the very steps that have weakened Iran and its proxies, it was greeted by threats and disapproval from Washington. On September 24, at the UN General Assembly, Biden pleaded for Israel to accept a diplomatic solution. “Since October 7, we have also been determined to prevent a wider war that engulfs the entire region,” he said. This was three days before Israeli air strikes killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-yorks-government-is-the-real-villain-in-the-daniel-penny-trial

Now that Daniel Penny has been acquitted of the absurd homicide charges against him, perhaps New York City and State officials can be put on trial. They are responsible not only for the death of Jordan Neely, the drug-addicted schizophrenic whom Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg accused Penny of recklessly killing, but for the assaults on and killings of hundreds of New Yorkers by mentally ill vagrants whom politicians allow to roam the streets. Yet according to Bragg and his office, it was Penny who needed to be imprisoned, for the safety of city residents, for having protected his fellow citizens from a potential murderer.

For now, the heroic male virtues of chivalry, self-reliance, and initiative have been vindicated, in the face of government’s effort to snuff those values out. How much longer those traits will survive under elite pressure remains to be seen. New York officials should take the Penny acquittal as a wakeup call, however. Their authority may be slipping away, a development adumbrated by last month’s national election results.

The Daniel Penny homicide trial was a travesty of justice. On May 1, 2023, a psychotic, wildly gesticulating vagrant burst into a New York subway car as it travelled beneath Manhattan’s SoHo district. The new arrival, Jordan Neely, started screaming that he wanted to return to jail and was ready to die. Some eyewitnesses recalled that the 30-year-old Neely threatened to kill the straphangers.

The passengers were terrified, and rightly so. New York’s seriously mentally ill residents are time bombs who regularly explode. They push subway riders in front of moving trains; above ground, they club, shoot, and stab their victims. Three weeks after the May 1, 2023, subway incident, another street denizen slammed a woman’s head into a subway car, paralyzing her for life. This November 18, a 51-year-old vagrant with the inevitable long rap sheet and seeming immunity from extended incarceration went on a stabbing rampage throughout Manhattan, slashing to death a 36-year-old construction worker, a 67-year-old man fishing in the East River, and a 36-year-old woman sitting on a park bench. As recently as December 1, a screaming female pushed a 43-year-old man onto the subway tracks in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She has not been apprehended, but it is a virtual certainty that she, too, has had numerous run-ins with outreach workers and the police that resulted in no long-term confinement.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/10/bidens-pardon-a-smokescreen-for-corruption/

Joe Biden has carefully cultivated his image as an empathetic man of the people. In reality, his career has been marked by a relentless pursuit of wealth for himself and his family. His son Hunter Biden was central to these schemes, operating as the family “bag man” for various influence-peddling operations overseas.

As such, Joe Biden’s decision to pardon Hunter is not an act of mercy or justice or even paternal loyalty but a cynical maneuver to shield both Hunter and Joe Biden from responsibility.

Its brazenness has moved even Joe Biden’s most ardent defenders to condemnation.

Double Standards and the “Rule of Law”

After all the pious talk invoking the “rule of law” during the years-long prosecutions of Donald Trump, Hunter’s pardon shows that there has always been a parallel set of rules, through which the powerful and politically favored can escape scrutiny. This case is also a reminder of how the rule of law can be perverted not only by being too harsh but also by being too solicitous.

The media have feigned shock at his pardon, but they should have known better. Even before he was facing charges, Hunter’s job as a highly paid board member of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, was absurd on its face. He had no relevant skills or qualifications justifying a $50,000 monthly salary—except, of course, his last name.

Similarly, the revelation that Hunter involved his father in business meetings with individuals from Kazakhstan and other foreign nations gained little traction among the media or official Washington. The media even dismissed the infamous “10% for the big guy” email found on Hunter’s laptop, which strongly implies a quid pro quo arrangement between Hunter and his dad.