RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18924/schumer-manchin-backroom-deal

Washington is a city that thrives on secrets. That is a good thing over at the CIA but it is a very bad thing when Congressional politics are practiced in the dark, far from public scrutiny and for purposes that could unravel our nation’s democracy.

No surprise then that published reports reveal seething lawmaker anger over the closed door deal cut between Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer and Senator Joseph Manchin that will allow the White House to acquire and dispense some $700 billion dollars as it sees fit through the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022.”

“We don’t know what [the substance of their deal]… is. They haven’t released the text, they don’t give us the detailed explanation,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) was quoted in the Washington insider publication, The Hill.

The Senator continued, “So, I don’t know how you could ask people to vote for something they don’t know what it is.”

What we do know is that the Biden Administration will be offered the opportunity to channel money – huge amounts of money – to selected programs, agencies, and election districts throughout the nation at a time when Congressional campaigning is reaching its peak.

Some would wonder if Facebook multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg could spend close to a half billion dollars to boost Democratic candidates during the Trump-Biden race just imagine what $700 billion in taxpayer monies could accomplish in the hands of the White House.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Webster’s defines common sense as “sound and prudent judgement, based on a simple perception of the situation or facts.” Lucretia Peabody Hale’s The Peterkin Papers provides fictions best (and most amusing) examples of common sense – with the “Lady from Philadelphia” offering obvious solutions to what seem insurmountable obstacles to the Peterkin family.

A year ago, I wrote an essay regretting the loss of common sense in the political realm: “Common Sense – Where has it Gone?” (September 29, 2021). It was a lament, without answer.

Now, three disparate events remind me that common sense remains AWOL: First, I have been re-reading a 1999 collection of essays by Thomas Sowell, Barbarians Inside the Gates. The book speaks to the loss of common sense in political, social, and cultural realms. Second, Queen Elizabeth’s death was a reminder of the importance of personal traits like common sense, stability, tradition, and personal virtue, which Western culture has replaced with silliness, variability, ignorance, and social virtues. And third, a eulogy for Common Sense was recently sent me. I had seen it before, but it is worth re-reading.

Sowell’s book, published in 1999, was prophetic, as conditions he then wrote about remain with us – racism, declines in education standards, hyperbole over man-caused climate change, the advocacy for socialism and the criticism of capitalism in the West, and political extremism. Sowell is a realist who relies on facts and who cares little for sentiment. His observations reflect his intolerance for the idiocy of most politicians. In an essay titled “From Marxism to the Market,” he wrote: “The rhetoric of socialism may be inspiring, but the actual record is dismal.” In another, “The Multiculturalism Cult,” he wrote of how real people around the world do not “celebrate diversity;” they “pick and choose which of their own cultural features they want to keep and which they want to dump…” In a third, “Life is Culturally Biased,” he noted: “As limited human beings, we must make our choices among the alternatives actually available.” A fourth essay, “Anti-Elitism in Education:” “…you cannot let everyone go to Stuyvesant (where Sowell went in the late 1940s) without its ceasing to be the kind of school that makes them want to go there.” That the problems he wrote of so long ago have only worsened is a sad commentary on our social, cultural, and political life.

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/the-governments-war-on-transparency

Originally published in The Wall Street Journal Weekend edition, Section A, Page A9, September 17, 2022 as a paid editorial.

Dear Mr. and Ms. Taxpayer Voter,

Federal spending is out of control and they don’t want you to know about it. The fiscal irresponsibility of your elected officials and bureaucrats has taken the federal debt to levels not seen since World War II. With no end in sight.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) redacted 350,000 federal executive agency employee names from our FOIA request (2021)—roughly $30 billion in compensation. In the last year of the Obama administration, only 2,367 names were redacted. OPM stated, “For those instances where data element are not released, they are being withheld under FOIA Exemption 6… the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

The Federal Reserve has 23,000 employees. They gave us the salaries of only 367 executives. They stated, “Releasing the names and specific salary information for all employees would not shed any further light on the Board’s performance of its statutory duties.” They told us that a database of their expenditures, a checkbook, does not exist. “Staff searched Board records and made suitable inquiries with knowledgeable staff but did not locate the information you seek.” This from our country’s central bank! 23,000 employees! No database of expenditures!

The Vice President refused to give us any information. They claimed, “The Office of Vice President is not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.” One would think the Vice President would want you, taxpaying voters, to know how she spent your tax dollars. Not so. Why?

The U.S. Postal Service refused to produce line-by-line checkbook expenditures. They stated that doing so would expose their “trade secrets.” It is hard to imagine Federal Express or UPS benefitting from the USPS’s money-losing “trade secrets.” USPS also refuses to produce bonuses paid.”