RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/09/23/scammers-stole-an-insane-amount-of-pandemic-funding-n2613497

According to a new Department of Labor Inspector General report, scammers were able to steal nearly $46 billion in pandemic cash through state unemployment insurance [UI] programs. 

“Inspector General Larry D. Turner, U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), announced that the Office of Inspector General’s (DOL-OIG) investigations have resulted in more than 1,000 individuals being charged with crimes involving Unemployment Insurance (UI) fraud since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.1 The DOL-OIG also issued an Alert Memorandum identifying $45.6 billion in potentially fraudulent UI benefits paid to individuals with Social Security numbers: (1) filed in multiple states, (2) of deceased persons, (3) filed with suspicious email accounts, and (4) of federal prisoners,” the Office of the Inspector General released this week.

The office also found pandemic relief programs were vulnerable for abuse given how much money the federal government was quickly pushing out the door without proper accountability and tracking programs or mechanisms in place. 

“Following the start of the pandemic in the United States in early 2020, unemployment compensation claims rose exponentially to historically unprecedented levels. Prior to the pandemic, numbers of UI claims were historically low. On March 14, 2020, the Department reported 282,000 initial claims. Within 2 to 3 weeks, initial claims rose to 10 times pre-pandemic levels, far higher than state systems were designed to handle. Within 5 months, through August 15, 2020, the Department reported 57.4 million initial claims, the largest increase since the Department began tracking UI data in 1967. The CARES Act provided significant funding to the federal-state UI program, which resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars in additional payments,” the office explains.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/23/woke-youths-state-sanctioned-rebellion/

Though I know the cliché has lost its cache, I am, in fact, old enough to remember when youthful rebellion was organic, autonomous, and anti-establishment. Such is no longer the case amongst today’s woke youth, who have been indoctrinated to serve as tools of the leftist establishment.

Woke youth’s “rebellion” is not organic. This is not to say that woke youth’s rebellious streak isn’t innate. But their youthful “outrage” is conditioned; and their rebellious acts are channeled at progressivism’s opponents by the Left’s civil religion and its high priests—namely, the deep state, the Democratic Party power-brokers, woke corporations, and the dinosaur media and social media.

Encapsulated by the DIE cult (“diversity, inclusion, and equity”), the Left’s civil religion has been inculcated into woke youth from birth—in some cases, by their leftist parents, and/or by leftist institutions, such as public K-12 schools and those of “higher learning.” Ultimately, their “rebellious” streak continues to be honed by public and private institutions and, of course, corporate and social media. It is this external, controlling impact of these leftist entities that prevents woke youth from committing organic acts of rebellion. And it is by design. 

Because it is inculcated by the leftist establishment to serve its civil religion, woke youth’s “rebellion” is not organic and, ergo, it is incapable of being autonomous. The leftist establishment provides the targets, the rules of engagement, the propaganda and justifications, and the rewards for rebellious woke youth. Thus, woke youth have about as much autonomy over their rebellious acts as an “at will” employee. 

It is stunning how woke youth refuse to understand an elementary fact that is, however, not lost upon the objects of their rebellion—namely, that the Left are now the American establishment. In many ways, this has long been the case and it is the more so the harder the Left continues to deny it. Bluntly, they must. To concede they are the current establishment will destroy the Left’s most cherished, core myth: that they speak—and rebel—for the downtrodden and dispossessed. If one recognizes the Left is speaking, not for the poor, but to do the bidding of Bill Gates, Big Tech, the deep state, et al.—how outré! One knows this is the case, however, because their acts of rebellion garner not rebukes, but praise in the pages of the Washington Post and social media posts across cyberspace. Where is the “noble” rebellion in that? 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/is_biden_deliberately_destroying_americas_military_defenses.html

It’s not just the newest Air Force Academy initiative that explicitly bars straight men. It’s everything!

The Supreme Court has made clear that discriminating against people based on sex or sexual orientation is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. That has not stopped the Air Force Academy from initiating a new program explicitly closed to “cisgender men.” Horrible as that is, it pales compared to some of the other things Biden has been doing that will destroy America’s military readiness.

The Air Force Academy notified its cadets (i.e., students) that it is offering a new fellowship program—the Brooke Owens Fellowship—for “gender minorities” only, with straight men explicitly excluded:

If you are a cisgender woman, a transgender woman, non-binary, agender, bigender, two-spirit, demi gender, genderfluid, genderqueer, or another form of gender minority, this program is for you. If you are a cisgender man, this program isn’t for you… but we encourage you to check out our spin- off programs, the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship and the Matthew Isakowitz Fellowship Program!

The Brooke Owens fellowship was established to encourage more women to enter the aerospace field. That kind of discrimination has long been accepted, although it shouldn’t be. The feeling was that it was still a necessary form of affirmative action for women. The program’s having morphed from women to myriad imaginary genders, though, blows apart any pretense that this is a women-only program. It’s now discriminating against both women and men.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-seeks-marijuana-dealers-with-experience-convictions-regulation-licenses-dispensaries-commerce-cannabis-weed-11663949176?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

New York state seeks people “with experience” to help establish what could become the biggest legal marijuana market in the country. The explanation sounds like a punch line: New York will offer licenses and subsidies to people with marijuana convictions on their records.

New York legalized the possession and use of marijuana for adults last year and created a licensing system to govern eventual sales in brick-and-mortar stores. New Yorkers will even be able to get joints delivered.

The application window for these licenses closes Sept. 26. The state anticipates the first legal dispensaries will open before the end of the year. The size of the legal marijuana market in New York could ultimately be more than $7 billion annually.

Politicians are eager to tax and regulate all this commerce, and the legal marijuana market could be the source of massive new revenue for New York. Many states have already piled excessive taxes on legal weed sales. New York plans an array of taxes, including a complex tax based on the potency of the pot. There will also be rules preventing cannabis businesses from writing off standard expenses. That is in addition to a 9% state sales tax and any local sales taxes that get tacked on.

But what legislators ignore is that all these taxes have the perverse effect of increasing black-market demand. After Prohibition ended, people didn’t continue to buy bathtub gin when legal and safer alcohol was available. But states also didn’t massively increase the price of newly legal alcohol to make bathtub gin more attractive. In New York there is already a $2 billion marijuana black market.