RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/cruelty-really-is-the-point-inflation/

Earlier this week, Politico ran a piece called “Inflation’s biting. Roe’s fraying. Dems are still trying to connect with voters.” The crux of the article is that while congressional Democrats have plans to counter rising inflation, they are having a hard time selling their command of the situation to voters.

It’s no wonder. The star of the piece is Representative Katie Porter. Porter, a member of her party’s progressive wing, is portrayed as more aware of the impacts of inflation than her colleagues. The story describes an instance in which Porter had to put a package of bacon back on the shelf because, to her surprise, it was up to $9.99 per pound. (The reporter helpfully informs us that as a member of Congress, Porter earns $174,000 per year, more than double the annual pay of the average American household. What hope do the rest of us have?) Other Democrats are described as less sensitive to these realities, a perception that has been borne out by the party’s internal polling.

This detachment from voters comes straight from the top. Who could forget, for example, outgoing White House press secretary (and incoming MSNBC pundit) Jen Psaki’s widely mocked suggestion that those ticked off by the way things are going should drink a margarita or attend a kickboxing class to vent their frustrations? Let them drink Cuervo! Or the knee-slapper of a boast by the administration last Fourth of July that Americans would enjoy cookout savings of 16 cents over the prior year?

But at least the Porters and Psakis of the world are trying to connect with skeptical voters. Progressive influencers? Not so much. Political activist Amy Siskind, for example, recently expressed frustration with voter perceptions of the Biden administration’s handling of the economy. “Inflation down for the first time in 8 months, and should trend down here ahead of the election. Now what will Fox News cover? Roll out the Southern border stories,” she tweeted.

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/nih-covid19-pharmaceutical-companies-royalty-payments/2022/05/15/id/1069975/

The National Institutes of Health last year gave out $30 billion worth of government grants to nearly 56,000 contractors.

According to a report from Open The Books’ Adam Andrzejewski, despite a large portion of taxpayer money going out to fund research, an investigation revealed that a large influx of cash had come back to the NIH and individual NIH scientists in the form of royalty payments from third parties. “(T)hink pharmaceutical companies” the report said.

Andrzejewski’s investigation revealed that from 2010 to 2020, third parties paid an estimated $350 million back to the agency and its scientists. The third parties were credited as co-inventors. And because the payments enrich the agency or its scientists, the donations could be construed as a potential conflict of interest requiring disclosure.

The report details that the disclosure of payments from September 2009 to September 2014 showed that nearly 1,700 NIH scientists received more than 22,100 royalty payments totaling nearly $134 million. The revelation came from a federal lawsuit between Open The Books and the NIH, indicating that the agency has held onto 3,000 pages of line-by-line royalties since 2009. But so far, only 1,200 pages have been produced. The other 1,800 pages would detail the agency’s royalties from 2015 to 2020.

Most of the NIH documents are heavily redacted and point only to the number of payments scientists received, as well as the aggregate dollar amount per NIH agency.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/16/business/gas-prices-inflation/index.html

Prices at the pump continue to shatter records ahead of Memorial Day weekend.

The national average for regular gas hit a fresh record of $4.48 a gallon Monday, according to AAA. That marks an increase of 15 cents in the past week and 40 cents in a month.
Gas prices are now up by 27% from the day before Russia invaded Ukraine.

First on CNN: Record-high gas prices slash US spending by $9 billion a month

“Everything is pointing toward even higher prices. We are well on our way toward $5,” Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates, told CNN Monday.

Citing a surge in gasoline futures, Lipow is raising his gasoline forecast from $4.50 to $4.75 a gallon, suggesting drivers on Memorial Day weekend may be greeted by record-high prices.
Lipow said $5 is “possible,” though he conceded the outlook could change considerably if there is a surprise development in the war in Ukraine or with Covid.
According to AAA, the average is already above $5 a gallon in four states: California, Washington, Nevada and Hawaii. Oregon is just a penny away.
Gas spike is making inflation worse

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18530/department-of-commerce-cronyism

The Commerce Department is the fourth most lobbied federal office, behind only the Treasury Department, Health & Human Services, and the White House itself. It is more lobbied than the bigger budgeted Department of Defense and Department of Transportation, despite managing a far smaller budget. This is no accident, because Commerce makes what can be life-and-death decisions for particular industries and businesses.

Yet the mission of this “hodgepodge” of administrative agencies, bureaus, and offices could not be more important. The Commerce Department’s broad purpose is “to create the conditions for economic growth and opportunity.”

Through its Bureau of Industry and Security, Commerce regulates what are known as “dual use” technologies, which have potential military applications for foreign powers, another sore spot in the US-China relationship.

Let’s start with the current Secretary of Commerce, Gina Raimondo.

Artificial intelligence is the focus of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security because it often has direct military applications, making it sensitive for US national security…. In February of this year, [Andrew Moffit, Raimondo’s husband] exercised his PathAI stock options and purchased at least $50,000 worth of its stock. He left his full-time job with the company and became instead its “strategic adviser,” thus deepening his financial ties to the firm while creating an appearance of greater distance between his role with the company and his wife’s duties as Commerce secretary.

In addition, Raimondo’s department has loosened restrictions on Huawei, the Chinese telecom giant that Trump administration regulators had sanctioned, because of the company’s ties to the Chinese government and particularly its military….. Huawei has been identified as a security threat by the governments of Japan, Taiwan, France, Great Britain, the US, Australia, and Germany, among others.

Then there was Wilbur Ross, Secretary of Commerce under President Trump. Ross was a successful businessman with huge commercial ties to China. He had shipping companies that had major Chinese investment… Wilbur Ross kept investments in companies directly affected by tariff policy, even as the Commerce Department handed out tariff exemptions and negotiated new trade agreements.

Before Ross, President Obama’s Commerce Secretary was Penny Pritzker…. In 2015, the Clean Energy Trust, a Chicago-based not-for-profit supporting clean energy start-ups through business development, received $10 million of funding through a grant program administered by the Department of Commerce. It was the only Chicago-area group to receive such funding. Its board of directors was co-chaired at the time by Penny Pritzker’s cousin, Nick Pritzker.

GAI’s report discusses a number of other issues, personalities, and programs that are of questionable merit but generate high interest from Washington insiders who see their potential. The cronyism of past and present secretaries is but one part of the story the report tells. It is worth your attention.

The US Department of Commerce seldom grabs headlines or congressional scrutiny. It does not become “weaponized” against political opponents of the incumbent party. After the 2016 election, an article on Vox about incoming power-players of the Trump administration dismissed the department as a “hodgepodge of agencies,” and a “Cabinet backwater.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/05/15/heres-what-the-buffalo-shooters-alleged-manifesto-actually-says-n1597997

On Saturday afternoon, an 18-year-old from Upstate New York traveled to Buffalo and live-streamed himself shooting several people, ten of whom he killed, at a Tops Friendly Market in a predominantly black neighborhood. The suspect was captured by law enforcement and has been arraigned on 10 first-degree murder charges.

With their usual swiftness, leftists on Twitter quickly launched a seemingly coordinated effort to blame Fox News and Tucker Carlson for allegedly radicalizing the suspect.

As word of the shooting quickly spread on social media, so did reports that the shooter had posted a 180-page manifesto online, explaining his racist and anti-Semitic motives and detailing how he planned to carry out the attack. PJ Media obtained a copy of the manifesto, and while we cannot independently verify its authenticity, it is widely believed to be genuine, and some left-wing operatives are intent on claiming that the manifesto proves the shooter was radicalized by Fox News and right-wing politics. I’ll show you want the manifesto actually says (though I will not link to it).

First, despite the coordinated effort to blame Fox News, the manifesto attacks a number of news networks, including Fox, for hiring Jews.

A search of the entire manifesto also yields no mentions of Tucker Carlson and specifically mentions “the internet” as where he got his beliefs.

Others have tried to link the shooter in a more general way to right-wing politics. For example, the so-called conservative S.E. Cupp of CNN tried to blame “right-wing extremism” for the shooting.

But here’s what the manifesto says about the shooter’s politics:

https://amgreatness.com/2022/05/15/the-cycles-of-revolutions-in-our-midst/

We are witnessing a number of radical military, social, and political revolutions that are changing the United States—and the world—in fundamental ways that we still have not appreciated. 

The taboo about never mentioning the first-strike use of nuclear weapons in a major conventional war is now apparently over. Vladimir Putin routinely threatens their use. Communist China hints at its growing nuclear capability and is hell-bent on rushing into production a huge new nuclear missile force. The world is defining nuclear incineration down.

The more China and North Korea talk about nukes, the more necessary it is that uneasy democracies such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will make adjustments. And the more the United States bows out of its prior role of extending its nuclear umbrella over Western democracies, the more likely these societies will consider going nuclear themselves. Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons—and its patrons Russia and China seem to be ensuring that it will—then the long feared but heretofore never reified nuclear Middle East arms race will finally break out, as the petro-rich Arab world tries to deter Iran’s unhinged theocrats.

There is also a revolutionary vacuum occurring abroad. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are trying to figure out whether there is still any old-style American deterrence, or whether the woke progressives now in power in Washington dislike the customs and traditions of the United States even more than they do.

Lots of disasters have contributed to the current perilous state of affairs, including the precipitous American retreat from and humiliation in Afghanistan. Add in voluntary cutbacks in oil and gas production by the West, and the subsequent embarrassment of a superpower beseeching thuggish regimes to send us their energy. 

The politicized transformation of the U.S. military from a meritocratic force focused on wartime lethality into an  extension of the social welfare state driven by diversity, equity and inclusion has encouraged our enemies to take risks they otherwise might not have taken. 

Other contributors to the American power vacuum are the enormous federal debt, hyperinflation, and likely stagflation and recession this winter—along with the worldwide mania following COVID and the disastrous blanket lockdowns. All of the above has suggested to the world that a cognitively challenged 79-year-old Joe Biden is both an illustration and cause of American decline, rather than a temporary embarrassing aberration.