RUTHFULLY YOURS

The 50 American states have long competed for people and business, and the 2017 tax reform raises the stakes by limiting the state and local tax deduction on federal returns. The results of bad policy will be harder to disguise.

A case in point is Connecticut’s continuing economic decline, and now we have even more statistical evidence as a warning to other states. The federal Bureau of Economic Analysis recently rolled out its annual report on personal income growth in the 50 states, and for 2017 the Nutmeg State came in a miserable 44th.

The progressive paragon’s performance is even worse when you look at the details. The nearby chart shows that the state’s personal income grew at the slowest pace among all New England states, and not by a little. Governor Dannel Malloy’s eight-year experiment in public-union governance saw income grow by a meager 1.5% for the year, well below Vermont (2.1%). The state even trailed Maine (2.7%) and Rhode Island (2.4%), which are usually the New England laggards.

The only states to do worse than Connecticut were Alaska (0.4%), which is heavily dependent on oil and gas production, and Kansas (1%), Nebraska (1.4%), Iowa (0.3%) and North (-0.3%) and South Dakota (1.4%), all farm states that struggled with low commodity prices. National income growth was 3.1%.

The data are even more depressing if you strip out dividends and government transfer payments and consider only wages and salaries. Connecticut had essentially no growth (0.1%), which was worse than every state save Alaska (-1.6%). The figure for the U.S. was 3.3%. Total nonfarm earnings in Connecticut were also the second worst in the country after Alaska.

Lest you think this was a one-year anomaly, we looked at the personal income figures for every year since 2011. That’s the year Mr. Malloy took office, and the state rebounded well from the recession with 4.9% income growth, the best in New England.

Who decides whether your sick child lives or dies? You or the hospital? On Monday, the parents of 23-month-old Alfie Evans, who has extensive brain damage, were told their son’s life would be terminated by hospital staff. That night, the hospital turned off his ventilator. The hospital decreed “once all external signs of life have ceased,” doctors would confirm “that death has occurred.” Many hours have passed, and Alfie clings tenuously to life.

To avert this crisis, Alfie’s parents tried appealing to British courts, but judges ruled on April 20 that “the hospital must be free to do what has been determined to be in Alfie’s best interests.” Determined by whom? Not his parents, who wanted to maintain life support. “He isn’t suffering, he isn’t in pain, he isn’t diagnosed,” his father explains. “It’s a straight up execution.”

Alfie isn’t the first child sentenced to die by a British hospital. Last year it happened to 11-month-old Charlie Gard, and more recently to a toddler named Isaiah Haastrup. Can it happen in the U.S.? You bet. It depends on what state you live in.

James Comey is the deep state’s pathological equivalent of Sally Field. But focusing on his bitchy, vengeful, and sanctimonious personal psychodramas is a distraction from what really matters—the profound internal threats to liberty and equal justice under the law, enabled by Comey and other rogue actors.

Unraveling the Deep State Narrative: First of a Three-Part Series

The former FBI director deserved to be fired, is irrelevant moving forward, and will only marginalize himself further the more he talks and the more information comes out about how he tried to undermine a duly elected president.

While Comey’s interviews and book continue to get distracting press coverage, they are not the biggest news of recent days.

No, the big news is the cumulative significance of seemingly disparate but related events, including: the raid on attorney Michael Cohen’s office, home, and hotel and other Robert Mueller probe actions; the GOP establishment’s ongoing alignment with other statists; the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe; the apparent growing alignment between Inspector General Michael Horowitz (appointed by Obama) and Attorney General Jeff Sessions; the pardoning of Scooter Libby, an innocent man railroaded by a Comey-appointed special counsel; the release of the Comey memos that showed President Trump wanted all collusion charges investigated and did not obstruct justice; and the electronic communication used to open a FBI counterintelligence probe that showed no official intelligence information existed to justify starting the Trump-Russia collusion review.

These events were significant because of their connection to the Left’s escalating contempt for their fellow Americans and the increasing tendency to turn political disagreement into political war, or what Kim Strassel calls “the intimidation game,” in which the Left seeks to “[m]ake political opponents pay a high price for expressing their opinions” through harassment from government agencies, followed by investigations and prosecution, and then blackmail.

Although favored in recent polls Nunes’s efforts to undermine Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigations has encouraged Democrats.

“Nunes’s hometown newspaper, the Fresno Bee, dubbed him “Trump’s stooge.” One associate called him “an overeager goofball” and creepy Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) compared him to Inspector Clouseau.”

If you wish to contribute to his campaign coffers here is the site: https://www.devinnunes.com/

And just for the record The Arab American Association gave him a minus 2 for his support for Israel. rsk

Devin Nunes, the eight-term Republican congressman from California, is taking on the world’s most powerful law enforcement and intelligence apparatus to uncover exactly what happened before and after the 2016 presidential election. Although Nunes is undoubtedly earning some formidable enemies, he seems undaunted—perhaps even emboldened—by the anti-Trump mob on the Left and the Right trying to discredit his investigation and destroy his reputation.

Nunes, 44, goes about his business in a way that only a politician who doesn’t owe his career to billionaire benefactors or a privileged pedigree can: He is fearless, well-informed, and slightly snarky. The descendant of Portuguese immigrants, Nunes has a background in agriculture (a profession that has been mocked by some of our well-fed betters) and got his start in local politics. Since he was first elected to represent his San Joaquin Valley district in 2002, he’s never won less than 60 percent of the vote. (Jim Geraghty has a solid profile of the congressman.)

As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Nunes has been relentless in exposing how top officials in the Obama Administration corrupted our most trusted federal agencies in order to spy on Trump’s presidential campaign, hoping then to undermine his nascent presidency after he won. What is unfolding now will be the biggest political scandal in U.S. history and Nunes is a central figure in exposing it.

The hard-fought release of his memo in February—which was opposed by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and FBI Director Christopher Wray but sanctioned by President Trump—gave the American public its first glimpse into how Obama’s DOJ secured a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to wiretap Trump campaign volunteer Carter Page just days before the election.

Nunes revealed that James Comey’s FBI did not inform the court that the Christopher Steele dossier, the primary evidence cited on the application for the warrant, had been produced and funded by Trump’s rival campaign. Further, the FBI didn’t disclose that Steele had been terminated by the FBI for lying to federal officials prior to Election Day although the agency continued to use his work to reauthorize three more FISA warrants on Page. (The Senate Judiciary Committee referred Steele to the Justice Department back in January for a criminal investigation of charges that he misled FBI investigators.)

Lately, we have been seeing lots of stories about how voters who supported President Trump are moving away from supporting Republicans because of Trump’s policies and that they are going to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections. Isn’t it amazing that as Trump’s approval ratings gradually go up, we get these stories of Republicans running away?

A huge majority of the journalists writing these stories don’t like Republicans or Republican policies, and the purpose of the stories is to push Republicans to change their votes instead of inform.

The latest theme is that Republicans are going to lose big, and one of the major storylines being repeated over and over again is that Midwestern farmers will vote against Republicans because of Trump’s trade policies.

Are farmers going to go back to Democrats and have their top income tax rate on their farm income raised to 39.6% from 29.6%? Are they going to embrace the party of endless regulations? Would they really give up the tax cuts and the reduced regulations because of temporary tariffs meant to finally pressure China? My guess is most farmers recognize the long-term benefit of Trump’s policies and will vote accordingly.

I believe that worldwide demand for soybeans and corn will be the same, and somehow the product will be shipped to other countries and then shipped to China without the tariffs. Have Democrats traditionally been free traders? Here is what the press is reporting:

From his dairy farm in southeastern Nebraska, lifelong Republican Ben Steffen believed Donald Trump meant what he said on the campaign trail about ripping up U.S. trade agreements.

So Steffen, who produces milk, beef, soybeans, corn and wheat, wasn’t shocked when Trump pulled America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership pact, began renegotiating NAFTA or announced his intent to impose aluminum and steel tariffs on China that have drawn the threat of retaliatory sanctions on American products.

In Washington a picture is emerging of an eerie and lack-of-candor railroading of Donald Trump conducted by the likes of James Comey and Andrew McCabe. The abuse of power by government officials who refuse to acknowledge the authority of the duly-elected chief executive is not limited to the FBI. And such abuse has inspired one of the President’s harshest critics to raise an alarm.

Warnings about an out-of-control “deep state” of bureaucrats who resist constitutional political authority have become standard fare in conservative media; this week brings a compelling new addition to the genre from a media outlet on the other end of the ideological spectrum.

Writing in the left-leaning British publication The Guardian, Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith affirms that the improper exercise of executive authority by government officials pursuing their own agendas is not merely a figment of red-state imagination. According to Mr. Goldsmith:

America doesn’t have coups or tanks in the street. But a deep state of sorts exists here and it includes national security bureaucrats who use secretly collected information to shape or curb the actions of elected officials…

Since Trump was elected, unusually sensitive leaks of intelligence information designed to discredit him and his senior leadership have poured forth from current and former intelligence officials in the deep state.

It’s worth pausing here to note that while Mr. Goldsmith is not nearly as far to the left as most Guardian editors, he has been among the establishment Republicans most hostile to the President. CONTINUE AT SITE

The facts about America’s prison system are startling. The U.S. has 4% of the world’s population, but roughly 25% of the world’s prisoners. Federal and state prisons hold some 1.5 million inmates, and 6.2 million people are in local jails, on parole or on probation. Of the 650,000 people who leave prison every year, two-thirds will commit a new crime within three years.

By reforming federal prisons, Congress has the opportunity to help give former inmates a second chance to become successful, contributing members of society. This is an issue that could unite Americans across the ideological spectrum. Sensible and just prison-reform legislation would direct government resources toward reducing crime, enhancing public safety and increasing opportunity.

Prisoners face significant barriers to re-entering society in a meaningful way, and they have too few tools to help them succeed upon release. After years or even decades in prison, inmates often are disconnected from their families, have no place to live, lack relevant job skills, and need counseling for addiction or mental-health problems. Many don’t have even a photo identification, much less the skills necessary to succeed in a job interview. To help solve this problem, lawmakers can promote comprehensive and proven rehabilitation strategies. They include expanding access to prison work programs so that inmates can develop job skills. CONTINUE AT SITE

Operations when death is all but assured are called suicide missions, and it’s beginning to look as if Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson was sent on a political version. The nominee to run Veterans Affairs has been under siege from the agency’s bureaucracy, anonymous press leaks, and on Tuesday even friendly fire from the President who nominated him.

The Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on Tuesday postponed Dr. Jackson’s Wednesday confirmation hearing amid allegations of misconduct during his nearly five-year tenure as physician to the President. The charges have been mostly vague and anonymous, such as running a hostile work environment, which could mean anything or nothing.

Late Tuesday afternoon news leaked about a 2012 Inspector General report that found “unprofessional behaviors” from Dr. Jackson and another physician in a power struggle. But if this is accurate, why did President Obama promote him? Senator Jon Tester (D., Mont.) in a press interview said some of Dr. Jackson’s colleagues alleged he had been “repeatedly drunk” while on duty, among other claims.

The public has little way to evaluate the merits, and Dr. Jackson deserves at minimum to know who is shooting at him. Committee Chairman Johnny Isakson and Ranking Member Mr. Tester wrote to the White House requesting more information, including communications with Defense Department IGs. There may be more to learn from the documents the White House produces.

The reality is that Dr. Jackson wasn’t vetted or adequately prepared for the VA post, and by all accounts wasn’t seeking it when President Trump chose him. Dr. Jackson also doesn’t appear to have a background in Washington’s treacherous politics of veterans.

Just as the first casualty of war is truth, so, too, the first casualty of hyper-partisan politics is civil liberties.

Many traditional civil libertarians have allowed their strong anti-Trump sentiments to erase their long-standing commitment to neutral civil liberties. They are now so desperate to get Trump that they are prepared to compromise the most basic due process rights. They forget the lesson of history that such compromises made against one’s enemy are often used as precedents against one’s friends. As Robert Bolt put it in the play and movie A Man for all Seasons:

Roper: So now you would give the Devil benefit of Law!

Thomas Moore: Yes, what would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that?

Thomas Moore: And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

But today’s fair weather civil libertarians are unwilling to give President Trump – who they regard as the devil — the “benefit of law” and civil liberties.

Consider the issue of criticizing Robert Mueller, the Special counsel. Any criticism or even skepticism regarding Mueller’s history is seen as motivated by a desire to help Trump. Mueller was an Assistant US attorney in Boston, the head of its criminal division, the head of the criminal division in Main Justice and the Director of the FBI during the most scandalous miscarriage of justice in the modern history of the FBI. Four innocent people were framed by the FBI in order to protect mass murdering gangsters who were working as FBI informers while they were killing innocent people. An FBI agent, who is now in prison, was tipping off Whitey Bulger as to who might testify against him so that these individuals could be killed. He also tipped off Bulger allowing him to escape and remain on the lam for 16 years.

What responsibility, if any, did Robert Mueller, who was in key positions of authority and capable of preventing these horrible miscarriages, have in this sordid incident? A former member of the parole board – a liberal Democrat who also served as mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts – swears that he saw a letter from Robert Mueller urging the denial of release for at least one of these wrongfully convicted defendants. When he went back to retrieve the letter, it was not in the file. This should surprise no one since Judge Mark Wolf (himself a former prosecutor), who conducted extensive hearings about this entire mess, made the following findings:

“The files relating to the Wheeler murder, and the FBI’s handling of them, exemplify recurring irregularities with regard to the preparation, maintenance, and production in this case of documents damaging to Flemmi and Bulger. First, there appears to be a pattern of false statements placed in Flemmi’s informant file to divert attention from his possible crimes and/or FBI misconduct….

Second, contrary to the FBI’s usual policy and practice, all but one of the reports containing Halloran’s allegations against Bulger and Flemmi were not indexed and placed in an investigative file referencing their names. Thus, those documents were not discoverable by a standard search of the FBI’s indices. Similar irregularities in indexing and, therefore, access occurred with regard to information that the FBI received concerning an extortion by Bulger of Hobart Willis and from Joseph Murray concerning the murder of Brian Halloran, among other things.