RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.openthebooks.com/

A new report that takes a deep dive into the Export-Import Bank’s transactions found that in addition to heavily subsidizing large corporations, the government agency benefited some small businesses while pushing others out of the market. It also rewarded a former employee who pleaded guilty for bribery with a six-figure salary and bonuses.

Open the Books, an online database of local, state and federal spending founded by Adam Andrzejewski, examined data from the Export-Import Bank available from 2007 and 2014. It found that the bank backed more than $172 billion in loans, loan guarantees and insurance contracts provided to close to 7,000 exporters. Taxpayers, according to the report, are on the hook for $140 billion in financing.

Ex-Im provides taxpayer-backed loans and loan guarantees to foreign countries and companies for the purchase of United States exports. The bank’s charter expires at the end of June, and Ex-Im’s reauthorization has created a sharp divide between congressional Republicans.

This week Hillary Clinton, when confronted by an adoring supporter for an autograph while in a receiving line in New Hampshire, haughtily instructed the woman to “go to the end of the line.” This trait of royalty hasn’t been adding to Hillary’s favorability ratings, particularly when the current trend-lines have been bad for her.

According to this week’s CNN/ORC poll results [2], despite her overwhelming dominance amongst the Democratic primary voters, of whom 60% say they will vote for her, Hillary’s negative ratings have soared to their highest level in 15 years.

What is Islam? The obvious dictionary definition answer is that it’s a religion, but legally speaking it actually enjoys all of the advantages of race, religion and culture with none of the disadvantages.

Islam is a religion when mandating that employers accommodate the hijab, but when it comes time to bring it into the schools, places that are legally hostile to religion, American students are taught about Islam, visit mosques and even wear burkas and recite Islamic prayers to learn about another culture. Criticism of Islam is denounced as racist even though the one thing that Islam clearly isn’t is a race.

Islamist organizations have figured out how lock in every advantage of race, religion and culture, while expeditiously shifting from one to the other to avoid any of the disadvantages.

Two new polls released this morning show that Hillary Clinton is losing the trust of the American people, other than Democrats, who remain committed to her. Both the polls by CNN/Opinion Research Corporation and ABC News/Washington Post show the presumptive Democrat nominee under water on trustworthiness and favorability ratings.

CNN summarizes:

More people have an unfavorable view of Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton now than at any time since 2001, according to a new CNN/ORC poll on the 2016 race.

While Clinton remains strikingly dominant in the Democratic field, the poll shows that her numbers have dropped significantly across several key indicators since she launched her campaign in April.

A growing number of people say she is not honest and trustworthy (57%, up from 49% in March), less than half feel she cares about people like them (47%, down from 53% last July) and more now feel she does not inspire confidence (50%, up from 42% last March).

In head-to-head match-ups against top Republicans, her margin is tighter than it has been at any point in CNN/ORC’s polling on the contest.

Some very strong, very welcome statements on Second Amendment rights from actor Vince Vaughn.

Vaughn, currently starring in HBO’s True Detective, outlined his passionate belief in gun rights in the British edition of GQ magazine.

“We have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government,” Vaughn told British GQ. “It’s not about duck hunting; it’s about the ability of the individual. It’s the same reason we have freedom of speech. It’s well known that the greatest defense against an intruder is the sound of a gun hammer being pulled back.”

Vaughn went on to call for armed defense of children in schools, arguing elites have security for their kids and criminals ignore “gun-free zone” laws.

A federal judge last week excoriated the State Department for sitting on Hillary Clinton’s emails, ordering it to release batches every 30 days. The State Department deserved the rebuke, but then it is merely following the rules laid down by the least transparent Administration in history.

The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday began a two-day hearing into the extraordinary ways the Obama Administration keeps undermining the Freedom of Information Act. Enacted in 1966, FOIA allows anyone to request information about any matter from a federal agency. The agency has 20 business days to respond (10 more in unusual circumstances), and the bar is set deliberately high for what government may withhold or redact.

Shootings are up in New York this year over last, as they are in many big American cities. So are murders. But not to fret, says Mayor Bill de Blasio.

“I think it’s clear that what we have primarily here is a gang and crew problem,” the mayor said last week. “You know, for those of us who were here in the bad old days—when we had 2,000 murders or more a year—a lot of everyday citizens were getting caught in those crossfires.” He added it’s “equally troubling when, you know, individual gang members shoot other gang members, but it’s a different reality.”

Translation: If young, largely minority men are killing each other over gang turf, then the violent crime revival is no big deal. It won’t hit the trendier corners of Brooklyn.

So whatever happened to Mr. de Blasio’s campaign that “black lives matter”?

Mr. Corr is a former U.S. ambassador to Peru, Bolivia and El Salvador (1985-88). Mr. Abrams is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and was a deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush and assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs in the Reagan administration (1985-89).
A 77-year-old Salvadoran general is deported in chains now that Americans have forgotten his good service.

It may be dangerous to be an enemy of the United States, but in recent decades it often has been almost as risky to be a friend. There was Ngo Dinh Diem, the first president of South Vietnam, overthrown and assassinated by his army in 1963 after losing American support. Or the thousands of Iraqis and Afghans who assisted American troops a decade ago but are still waiting for the visas for safe haven in the U.S. The uncomfortable truth is that America has too often treated former allies as expendable.

The drama that played out this year around Carlos Eugenio Vides Casanova is a reminder of what can happen when time passes and Americans forget. Gen. Vides was El Salvador’s minister of defense in the government of José Napoleón Duarte in the 1980s. Duarte was an American favorite, with plenty of backing from the Reagan administration and Democrats who understood his commitment to democracy and human rights. That included his desire to resist attacks from the communist guerrillas of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), who were supported by Cuba and Nicaragua’s Sandinistas.

Human-rights abuses were rampant when Duarte became president in 1984: Political killings by the military or death squads linked to it exceeded 800 per month in 1981, according to a RAND Corp. paper from a decade later. In an infamous attack in 1980 four American churchwomen were raped and murdered by national guard soldiers when Gen. Vides was the guard commander. But two separate investigations—by the U.S. in 1983 and an official Salvadoran “truth commission” established when the civil war ended in 1992—concluded that Mr. Vides played no role in those killings (though the latter report suggests he helped try to cover them up).

Together Duarte and Gen. Vides dramatically reduced death squad killings, which dropped to 23 a month in 1987, according to an Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis report the following year. U.S. diplomats in El Salvador during that period can attest that Duarte’s key partner in reducing abuses and taming the military was Gen. Vides. Right-wing oligarchs in El Salvador repeatedly approached the army with plans for a coup against Duarte, but Gen. Vides and other loyal senior officers blocked them.

The feeling remains that these child-rape crimes are still passed over or covered up. An independent official inquiry found failures at every level of the institutions of state. Crimes of this nature are still being kicked under the carpet — for reasons of “political correctness” — with no concern for harm done to the children. The issue is a true tinderbox.

Last week, the local council in Rotherham moved to ban anti-child grooming marches. But by even thinking of banning these marches, the members of the Rotherham council are making ones of the greatest mistakes imaginable. People will assume there is something even worse going on.

A town whose authorities allowed child-rape to go on for a decade, but which now bans marches objecting to child-rape, is setting up a whole new narrative of victimhood from which no good can possibly come. Howls of rage — especially such howls — must be protected speech, especially when they have a basis in fact.

There are some decisions so stupid that a person who lacked restraint might howl. One such case arose last week in the Britain.

When America invaded Iraq in 2003, then-President George W. Bush said our goals were to create an Iraq that had never existed before — a democratic Iraq that would be capable of defending and sustaining itself and would be an ally in our long war against terrorism.

None of those goals was achieved. But Bush remained convinced our pledge to nation building shouldn’t end and that we had to commit American troops to combat — and continue to sacrifice lives — indefinitely.

In July 2007, Bush warned against premature withdrawal from Iraq. He said that to leave before our military leaders confirmed that we were ready would be dangerous for Iraq, for the region and for the United States, and could mean that American troops would have to return to Iraq to fight again.