RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/connecticut-highway-toll-proposal

Supported by 2018’s Blue Wave, Connecticut Democrats retained the governorship and large majorities in the state legislature. The national trend seems like the only explanation for their electoral success, considering the state’s dismal economic performance and chronic fiscal crisis during the prior eight years of unitary Democratic governance. After signing two of the largest tax hikes in state history, Dannel Malloy left office as the second-most unpopular governor in the nation. Even with the second-highest tax burden of any state, Connecticut has the second-highest unfunded pension liability in the U.S. The state economy remains smaller than before the financial crisis.

Democratic candidates for state office ran against President Trump and away from their own records. New governor Ned Lamont, though hardly a fresh face, campaigned with the slogan “the change starts now.” Democrats won state senate upsets in traditional Republican strongholds like Greenwich and Wilton, with candidates promising to be “a different kind of Democrat” or a “fiscal moderate.” The incumbent party won an ironic mandate for change.

https://thefederalist.com/2019/04/25/5-times-mueller-probe-broke-prosecutorial-rules-ensure-justice/

CNN recently published an article arguing that Special Counsel Robert Mueller should not have issued a report suggesting the president may have committed obstruction of justice without actually reaching this conclusion. CNN is obviously disappointed because inside the leftist echo chamber the obstruction case seems undisputable.

For example, the Mueller report suggests that the president committed some kind of sin for wanting to fire former FBI director James Comey for being a party to the plot to blackmail or frame the president. Some believe presidents should fire FBI chiefs who participate in hoaxes against their boss.

Mueller did no favor to CNN’s client Democrats, who now face three terrible choices: (1) Impeach President Trump using their majority in the House, which will lead to a self-destructive trial in the Senate; (2) Drop it and move on in defiance of a rabid get-Trump base; or (3) use their majority in the House to drag the country through a Mueller 2.0 investigation, which runs the risk of distracting from Democratic messaging in the upcoming 2020 election.

Like Aesop’s scorpion on the frog’s back, the partisans on Mueller’s team just couldn’t help themselves. The Mueller report poisons public opinion without bringing charges. It should have been written on a postcard, because the outcome of a criminal proceeding is binary: Guilty or not guilty. There’s no middle ground under constitutional principles. President Trump is not guilty until the Senate convicts him otherwise.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/mueller-investigation-pious-hypocrisy/

Mueller’s team went down every blind alley relating to its investigation — except where Obama-era officials were likely culpable for relevant unethical or illegal behavior.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s two-year, $30 million, 448-page report did not find collusion between Donald Trump and Russia.

Despite compiling private allegations of loud and obnoxious Trump behavior, Mueller also concluded that there was not any actionable case of obstruction of justice by the president. It would have been hard in any case to find that Trump obstructed Mueller’s investigation of an alleged crime.

One, there was never a crime of collusion. Mueller early on in his endeavors must have realized that truth, but he pressed ahead anyway. It is almost impossible to prove obstruction of nothing.

Two, Trump cooperated with the investigation. He waived executive privilege. He turned over more than 1 million pages of administrative documents. He allowed then–White House counsel Don McGahn to submit to over 30 hours of questioning by Mueller’s lawyers.

Three, anyone targeted by a massive investigation who knows he is innocent of an alleged crime is bound to become frustrated over a seemingly never-ending inquisition.

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/

When Bill de Blasio took office as the new Mayor of New York City back in 2014, many on the right looked at his policy prescriptions and predicted the rapid reversal of the City’s economic revival, potentially followed by rapid economic collapse. But not me! As I had originally written in this post of April 16, 2013, the consequence of bad — even disastrous — economic policy is not immediate economic collapse, but rather what I called “gradual relative decline.” That post looked particularly at Venezuela, then 15 years into the rule of Hugo Chavez, and far into the process of adopting over-the-top socialist policies that a Comsymp NYC Mayor could only dream about — everything from nationalization of most of the economy, to doubling the size of the state sector, to government deficit of 15% of GDP, and so forth. And yet, in its official (fraudulent) statistics, Venezuela was still showing economic growth, just not as fast as the growth in countries that allowed private enterprise to flourish.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/04/24/justices_seem_ready_to_ok_asking_citizenship_on_census_140145.html

Despite evidence that millions of Hispanics and immigrants could go uncounted, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed ready Tuesday to uphold the Trump administration’s plan to inquire about U.S. citizenship on the 2020 census in a case that could affect American elections for the next decade.

There appeared to be a clear divide between the court’s liberal and conservative justices in arguments in a case that could affect how many seats states have in the House of Representatives and their share of federal dollars over the next 10 years. States with a large number of immigrants tend to vote Democratic.

Three lower courts have so far blocked the plan to ask every U.S. resident about citizenship in the census, finding that the question would discourage many immigrants from being counted. Two of the three judges also ruled that asking if people are citizens would violate the provision of the Constitution that calls for a count of the population, regardless of citizenship status, every 10 years. The last time the question was included on the census form sent to every American household was 1950.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/24/unemployment-claims-lowest-since-1969-despite-workforce-twice-the-size-as-trump-economy-roars-ahead/

The U.S. Labor Department reports that for the third week in a row, unemployment claims have hit low levels not seen since September of 1969 and that the less volatile four-week moving average has reached lows last achieved in November of 1969. What makes this milestone stunning is that the unemployment claims number is not adjusted for how many people are in the labor force, and today there are almost twice the number of people in the workforce as in 1969.

That’s right. We have twice the workforce size and the same number of people claiming unemployment, a sure-fire sign that the economy is robust. Based upon our nation’s economic history, the economy would be in good shape even if 50 percent more people were filing unemployment claims each week.

Yet, on the retail side of the equation, the transition from brick and mortar retail shops to cyber-shopping is having an impact. Sears is gone. Toys ‘R’ Us is gone. Payless is gone.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/24/cbo-report-1-4-million-lost-health-insurance-since-2016-and-obamacare-is-to-blame/

The number of uninsured climbed by 1.4 million from 2016 to 2018, according to a report out last week from the Congressional Budget Office. Naturally, this led those on the left to blame the Trump administration for its Obamacare “sabotage.”

But the data in that report — which was released on the same day the Mueller report came out and largely ignored — tells an entirely different story.

All of the increase in the uninsured over the past two years — all of it — is the result of the massive rate increases Obamacare’s mandates and regulations caused. According to the Health and Human Services Dept., premiums in the individual insurance market doubled from 2013 to 2017. They shot up again in 2018.

For those eligible for Obamacare subsidies, the rate increases were meaningless. The amount they had to pay didn’t change much, and in many cases went down.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/former-fbi-official-admits-hillary-clinton-emails-were-found-in-obama-white-house/

A former top FBI official has admitted under oath that a repository of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email records was obtained by the Obama White House and housed in the Executive Office of the President.

Conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch recently coaxed the admission out of the former assistant director of the FBI Counterintelligence Division, Bill Priestap, as part of a court-ordered discovery regarding Clinton’s unauthorized email server.U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled earlier this year that discovery could commence examining Clinton’s use of the server and ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides to be deposed or answer written questions under oath.

The court said that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”Judicial Watch asked Priestap to identify representatives of Clinton, her former staff, and government agencies from which “email repositories were obtained” by the FBI.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/thank-you-don-mcgahn-11556057923

President Trump should be savoring the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation with no charges of collusion or obstruction of justice, but as ever he can’t stand prosperity. His post-report scrap with former White House counsel Don McGahn shows how this President is so often his own worst enemy.

As part of his obstruction “analysis,” Mr. Mueller recounts that in June 2017 Mr. Trump asked Mr. McGahn to ask Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to say Mr. Mueller had conflicts of interest and couldn’t remain as special counsel. Mr. McGahn took notes but no action, sought advice from White House colleagues, and planned to resign until the President dropped the subject.

Mr. Trump tweeted in response to the report to “watch out for people that take so-called ‘notes,’ when the notes never existed until needed,” and his spokesmen have cast doubt on Mr. McGahn’s account. Mr. McGahn says the account is accurate, though the dispute has given Democrats an opening to rehash the episode and they’ve subpoenaed Mr. McGahn to appear before the House Judiciary Committee.

We believe Mr. McGahn, but the needless dispute highlights several realities of the Trump Presidency. One point is that this episode is not evidence of obstruction of justice, despite claims by the Democratic-media chorus. Mr. Trump would have had every constitutional right to fire Mr. Mueller, an inferior officer at the Justice Department. Mr. Trump let Mr. McGahn and others talk to Mr. Mueller and turn over notes, which is the reason Mr. Mueller knows about all this.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/23/will-the-supreme

Court watchers seem to think that the Supreme Court will end up overturning a lower court ruling and allow the Trump administration to add a citizenship question on the 2020 Census.

The New York Times, for example, led its coverage of the arguments on Tuesday by saying: “The Supreme Court’s conservative majority seemed ready on Tuesday to allow the Trump administration to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 census, which critics say would undermine its accuracy by discouraging both legal and unauthorized immigrants from filling out the forms.”

Let’s leave aside the newest euphemism for illegal immigrants. (Immigrants who are here illegally are “unauthorized”? Does that mean bank robbers can say they’re just making an “unauthorized withdrawal”?)

The practical case against adding a citizenship question falls apart once you start looking at it.

Here are the main arguments:

Asking about citizenship has no place in the census.