RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272867/what-taxing-rich-did-elizabeth-warren-and-daniel-greenfield

Tax time is usually an unhappy time for taxpayers, but a joyous time for government employees and the welfare class that gets more in “refunds” than it ever pays in taxes.

But this year, tax time is a depressing time for the taxmasters in the big blue states.

Blue states use high taxes to finance their frivolous spending. But this year, the money just isn’t there even as House and Senate lefties from big blue states tout new plans to soak the rich.

Senator Elizabeth Warren made headlines by building her 2020 campaign around a “wealth tax”.

Warren called it, “the ‘Ultra-Millionaire Tax” and claimed that it only “applies to that tippy top 0.1% – those with a net worth of over $50 million”. That’s convenient because the millionaire class warrior’s own estimated net worth tops out at around $10 million. When millionaires like Elizabeth Warren talk about taxing wealth, they mean the wealth of the millionaires who are wealthier than they are.

But over in Warren’s Taxachusetts, soaking the rich isn’t keeping the blue state model afloat.

Massachusetts experienced a January tax revenue shortfall of $195 million. That’s down 6% from 2018. And January is the cold, snowy month that is meant to account for 10% of the revenues for the year.

December was none too cheerful either.

https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/430737-life-saving-gene-therapies-are-here-we-need-to-get-them-to-patients

For decades, scientists around the world have dreamed of medical interventions to repair or replace defective genes in a targeted way. Today, that vision is becoming reality for an ever-growing number of debilitating and deadly diseases thanks to breakthroughs in gene therapy technology. But if millions of Americans are to benefit from these advances, our health care system needs to adapt.

Up to 4,000 diseases (including certain types of cancer, cystic fibrosis, and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s) are rooted in genetic mutations that prevent cells from working properly. About 25-30 million Americans live with a rare medical condition, the majority of which are thought to be related to a genetic defect. By fixing the underlying causes of genetic disorders, gene therapies have the potential to deliver cures for these patients.

Progress has been swift. In 2017, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the first three gene therapies for use in the U.S., and dozens more are completing the review process. Last month, FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb predicted that by 2025, “the FDA will be approving 10 to 20 cell and gene therapy products a year based on an assessment of the current pipeline and the clinical success rates of these products.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pompeo-denies-isis-bride-request-to-return-to-u-s/

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Wednesday that an Alabama woman who fled to Syria to join ISIS in 2014 is not a U.S. citizen and, as a result, is not entitled to return to the U.S. with her 18-month-old son, as she had hoped to do.

“Ms. Hoda Muthana is not a U.S. citizen and will not be admitted into the United States,” Pompeo said in a statement. “She does not have any legal basis, no valid U.S. passport, no right to a passport, nor any visa to travel to the United States. We continue to strongly advise all U.S. citizens not to travel to Syria.”

Muthana, 24, was taken to a refugee camp in northeast Syria by Kurdish forces after escaping ISIS territory.

An attorney representing Muthana’s parents claims she is a U.S. citizen despite the fact that her father was serving as a Yemeni diplomat when she was born in New Jersey, which, according to the State Department, means she is not entitled to birthright citizenship.

Muthana’s son was fathered by one of the three ISIS fighters she was married to during her time in the caliphate. In a 2015 tweet, she urged Americans to carry out domestic terror attacks.

https://nypost.com/2019/02/19/reihan-salam-poised-to-bring-manhattan-institute-to-

Our favorite think tank, the Manhattan Institute, just got a new president: the brilliant, heterodox writer Reihan Salam.

Born and bred in Brooklyn and a graduate of the city’s public schools, he’s an excellent choice to lead the nation’s top institution for right-of-center urban policy.

And, as a writer who for more than a decade has been leading the push to refocus the Republican Party on the needs of less-affluent Americans, he’s also a perfect pick for the challenges of the Trump era.

Executive editor at National Review and a contributing editor at The Atlantic and National Affairs, he’s eager to engage not just conservatives but the whole range of US society — exactly the proper attitude for a righty in this town.

An advocate for families and the working class, the son of Bangladeshi immigrants, he’s guaranteed to bring an independent cast of mind to tired debates, while maintaining MI’s support for free markets and intellectual excellence.

Salam, 39, will succeed Larry Mone, who led the Manhattan Institute through 24 years of enormous growth, solidifying its role as a national leader in public policy and positioning it as the premier home of “quality-of-life conservativism.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/crazy_andy_mccabe_thinks_its_possible_trump_could_be_a_russian_spy.html

Just how far off the deep end has anti-Trump hysteria taken former and current FBI and Justice Department officials? The former acting director of the FBI, Andrew McCabe, who opened a federal investigation on the president of the United States to discover if he fired former FBI Director James Comey at the request of Vladimir Putin, still says “it’s possible” Donald Trump is a Russian spy.

The Hill:

“I think it’s possible. I think that’s why we started our investigation, and I’m really anxious to see where [special counsel Robert] Mueller concludes that,” McCabe said when asked by CNN’s Anderson Cooper if Trump could be a Russian asset.

The comment comes after McCabe admitted he opened an investigation into whether Trump was acting at Moscow’s behest after the president fired former FBI Director James Comey, adding that none of the top eight congressional leaders objected when he briefed them in 2017.

He also revealed last week that senior officials discussed the possibility of removing Trump under the 25th Amendment and that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosensteinoffered numerous times to secretly record his conversations with the president.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/20/based-discrimination-law-iowa-jury-awards-trans-woman-120000-access-mens-facilities-prison/

A jury in Iowa has concluded that the state discriminated against a former Iowa Department of Corrections nurse because the employer wouldn’t let her use the bathrooms with male employees. The jury also said the Iowa Department of Corrections denied Jesse Vreogh health care coverage for “medically necessary surgery”—i.e. a double mastectomy to look more like a man.

The jury awarded Vreogh $120,000 for the “emotional distress” of both instances based on Iowa’s sexual orientation and gender identity law, which was introduced in 2007 and signed by Democrat Gov. Chet Culver. Lawmakers of both major parties vote for such bills in statehouses and cities around the country. Indiana’s Republican governor, for example, is pushing anti-speech legislation on related topics and grounds.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa said Wednesday that the ruling is a “historic win for transgender rights in Iowa.”

https://quillette.com/2019/02/18/the-internet

Camila worked for Ristretto Roasters, my husband Din’s coffee roasting company in Portland, Oregon, for five years. She received regular promotions and by 2016 was earning a mid-five figure salary. In October of last year, Camila resigned. The end.

Or, the end until last month, when she sent an email to more than two dozen former and current Ristretto Roasters employees, alerting them to the YouTube series, #MeNeither Show, that fellow journalist Leah McSweeney and I launched in December 2018. In three half-hour episodes, we had discussed, among other topics, celebrities who have exploited the #MeToo movement, and the difference between sexual predators and those swept-up in the excesses of the current moment. The show’s “about” page reads, “#MeNeither is an almost-weekly conversation about the cultural issues of the day, and an attempt to create a space where people can find ways to think out loud through uncomfortable topics.”

In her email to Ristretto employees, Camila described our show as “vile, dangerous, and extremely misguided” and announced her intention to “take this information to [local newspapers] Willamette Week and The [Portland] Mercury.” She went on to explain that, “it could be really powerful to have a formal letter singed [sic] off by as many RR employees as possible so that the community at large knows that the people who actually keep RR running do not stand for this.”

The letter Camila circulated to the local press read in part:

We believe it is a business owner’s responsibility to create a safe and supportive working environment for their employees. Invalidating assault survivors throws into question the safety of Ristretto Roasters as a workplace and has the potential to create a demoralizing and hostile environment for employees and customers alike. This cannot be tolerated.

The career-destroying potential of the internet mob immediately snapped into action. Articles appeared in at least four newspapers and on innumerable websites. People on social media hurried to declare that they would never again spend a penny at Ristretto and were rewarded with approval from like-minded peers. A college-age girl walked into one of the cafes screaming, variously, that the baristas were in danger, and that working for Ristretto somehow posed a threat to the community. Employees who had previously been secure in their jobs became jittery and quit. One of Din’s managers suggested that he sell the company and that I offer a public apology before it was too late.

This was within 48 hours of the first news reports appearing.

http://thefederalist.com/2019/02/19/15-recent-hate-crime-hoaxes-might-make-suspect-theres-trend/

……”

Cut to 2019, and an era in which the American left daily imbibes a different kind of fantasy porn to titillate the insatiable thirst for outrage. Enter Jussie Smollett, an actor who knows his audience. He is not the first actor to turn to a type of porn to revive his career. So he scripts two characters to help him act out a scene of outrage porn for the liberal media in which he pretends to be victimized by two Donald Trump supporters.

The script checks all the right victim boxes for a good outrage fantasy. Watch this montage of outrage as the mainstream media hilariously buy into it. Over and over, they ironically ask, “Who could believe that something like this could happen in 2019?” Who could believe it? So addicted are they to the narcotic of outrage, that the mere fantasy of the attack is all they need to believe it true.

You might remember a few other hoaxes over recent years. Smollett’s hoax reminds one of the failing talk show host, Morton Downey Jr. In the late 1980s, he attempted to revive public attention by falsely claiming to have been attacked by neo-Nazis.

Maybe you remember the Duke University lacrosse team being falsely accused of attacking an African-American exotic dancer. Or, more recently, you might remember a gay man falsely accusing Whole Foods of decorating his cake with the slur, “fag.”

We should also remember a recent video of a child being separated from his mother at the border that turned out to be a hoax. The Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation battle likewise had its share of hoaxes.

Such hoaxes are becoming common, even epidemic. There are hundreds of them, and several worthy authors (here, here, here, and here, for example) have done yeomen’s work compiling these lists from which I now draw. Here is a small sample of confirmed hoaxes in just the last few years.

https://www.city-journal.org/jussie-smollett-bigotry

The Jussie Smollett case, in which a young black, gay actor has apparently concocted a tale of being attacked by two white men wearing MAGA hats and shouting anti-gay slurs, is just the latest example of how desperately media elites want to confirm their favored narrative about America: that the country is endemically and lethally racist, sexist, and homophobic, and that the election of Donald Trump both proves and reinforces such bigotry.

The truth: as instances of actual racism get harder and harder to find, the search to find such bigotry becomes increasingly frenzied and unmoored from reality.

Smollett made a not-irrational wager that a patently preposterous narrative about an anti-black, anti-gay hate crime at 2 a.m. in subzero Chicago would be embraced by virtually the entirety of the mainstream media, leading Democratic politicians, Hollywood, and academia, with no one in these cohorts bothering to fact-check his narrative or entertain even armchair skepticism toward it. He also presumed, again with good reason, that to claim victim status would catapult him to the highest echelons of public admiration and accomplishment. And he was right. Kamala Harris and Cory Booker called it a “modern-day lynching.” Joe Biden warned that “we must no longer give this hate safe harbor,” his implication being that we need to stop winking at such racist attacks. If Beale Street Could Talk’s Barry Jenkins lamented, “This what all that hateful mongering has wrought. Are you PROUD???” Good Morning America interviewed Smollett without asking a single critical question about his story.

The examples are as numerous as the retractions will be minimal.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/02/19/the_bleeding_wounds_of_our_constitutional_order_139505.html

America’s constitutional order faces mounting threats and too few principled defenders. The threats come from vitriolic partisanship, compounded by declining trust in government and the steady erosion of vital institutions, from churches and media to law enforcement. The warning signs are painfully clear.

The U.S. Constitution grants Congress, not the president, with the power of the purse – just as it is lawmakers on Capitol Hill who are tasked with ratifying or rejecting treaties, and offering “advice and consent” on federal judges and high-level administration appointees. President Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency (“which I don’t have to do”) as a pretext to fund his border wall is an affront to our constitutional doctrine of separation of powers.

It is only the latest example. The issue here is not whether the wall is a good idea. It is whether a president can bypass constitutional norms to build it—with the acquiescence of his political party. The same dynamic was at work when President Obama unilaterally decided to change the status of immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children. For years, he said he had no constitutional authority to do that. Then, he did it anyway. Obama also used constitutionally evasive tactics to pass the most important U.S. foreign policy pact in decades: the nuclear deal with Iran. In every substantive sense, this was a treaty. It should have been treated like one. Obama refused to acknowledge that because he knew the Senate would never ratify it (since that required a super-majority, and since he never bothered to consult senators as he negotiated the terms). So, he simply called it an agreement, not a treaty, and supine elected officials in the nation’s top legislative body let it pass. They have behaved that way for decades, passing off hard decisions to the White House or telling mid-level bureaucrats to make the rules themselves.