RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/15/everything-youve-heard-about-the-debt-limit-is-wrong/

Contrary to widespread claims that the U.S. government will default on its debt if Congress doesn’t raise the debt limit, federal law and the Constitution require the Treasury to pay the debt, and it has ample tax revenues to do this.

Nor would Social Security benefits be affected by a debt limit stalemate unless President Joe Biden illegally diverts Social Security revenues to other programs.

The debt limit is a valuable tool for transparency, accountability, and for giving voters an ongoing say in how their money is spent.

The Debt Situation

The U.S. national debt has grown by $8.2 trillion since 2020 and is now $31.5 trillion. This is an average debt of $239,763 for every home in the nation.

Those figures don’t account for the government’s fiscal liabilities and unfunded obligations. When these are included — as the government requires in the financial statements of publicly traded corporations — the total federal shortfall is $135 trillion. This is an average burden of more than $1 million per household.

In addition, Biden has proposed a budget framework that will allow the national debt to grow over the next decade by $19.8 trillion, according to his own administration’s projections.

Such levels of red ink have perilous consequences for nearly everyone, like higher inflation, wage stagnation, investment losses, and lower standards of living.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/from_emthe_american_gulag_chroniclesem.html

The idea that Americans known as the January 6th protestors are now languishing in prison because they exercised their  rights to protest is shocking and beyond belief.

In the mid-1970s I and others worldwide were active in a letter writing campaign to Soviet Jewish refuseniks. Anatoly Sharansky is probably the most well-known of these dissidents.  While most of the letters were heavily censored, some did get through and it gave hope to those prisoners of conscience that the world was hearing them despite the malevolence of the communists.

One of my treasured documents is a letter from the wife of Hillel Butman, who was falsely accused of being a spy. She wrote to me that she “wished [me] much power for I knew what to do with it.”  It was a truly incredible and profound statement that I have never forgotten.

It reminds one of the unfortunate truth as stated by John A. Stormer in his Death of a Nation (1968) wherein he wrote,

Our founding fathers were men who — from their study of history… learned that down through history whenever man got power he used it to oppress other humans beings.

Thus, the idea that Americans known as the January 6th protestors are now languishing in prison because they exercised their G-d-given rights to protest is shocking and beyond belief.  It hearkens back to those refuseniks who were denied any justice and mercy.

The American Gulag Chronicles: Letters from Prison (2022) authored by Tim Rivers contains the letters and artwork by the latest victims of despotic rule under Joe Biden and his allies.  The editor-in-chief of this work is Marie Goodwyn, the mother of J6 defendant and video journalist Daniel Goodwyn.  Moreover, an international volunteer team of professional typesetters and proofreaders were instrumental in getting the book done.

To reinvent downtown retail, drastic changes may be required.

Some of those policymakers, including both Republican and Democratic leaders, have pointed to crime as a chief reason for the closures, following videos of brazen shoplifting incidents.

“We’re losing chain stores that are closing down. People who are being employed in those stores are losing their jobs” because of crime, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat, said in February.

But the impact of shoplifting may have been overstated in some cases.

Walgreens said it saw a spike in losses, known as shrink, during the pandemic and cited organized retail crime in its decision to close five San Francisco stores in 2021. But it recently backtracked.

“Maybe we cried too much last year” about shrink numbers, a Walgreens executive said in January.

What Walmart’s pullback from Chicago says about Corporate America’s limits

And instead of a strong correlation with crime rates, the closures aren’t also a recent phenomenon.

San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, New York City, Seattle, Miami and Chicago lost retail stores from the beginning of 2017 to the end of 2021, according to research from the JPMorgan Chase Institute, a think tank.

What’s more, experts agree, the closures aren’t just about crime. Several trends have converged to put these stores at risk.

Perhaps most key is the glut of stores in America.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/11/if-reparations-are-due-the-great-society-crowd-should-pony-up/
Nationwide, it is estimated that more than five out of every six black children lived with both parents in 1950, a figure that had been fairly stable since Reconstruction. Then everything changed.

In no sane part of this great country are reparations really due, but no one has ever accused California of undue sanity. Last week, as Kurtis Lee of the New York Times reported with a straight face, a California panel approved recommendations “that could mean hundreds of billions of dollars in payments to Black residents to address past injustices.”

By “injustices,” Lee means things like slavery, Ku Klux Klan violence, and Jim Crow. As unjust as they were, these Democratic institutions did not cause the wealth disparities between blacks and whites that reparations boosters like to cite. No, the real damage was done much later by still another Democratic invention, the so-called “Great Society.” 

Growing up in Newark, New Jersey, I had a ringside seat on the change the Great Society wrought. In my forthcoming book, Untenable: The True Story of White Ethnic Flight from America’s Cities, I describe what I and others saw. 

Among the more instructive stories I tell is that of the late black radical Amiri Baraka, the father of current Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. In 1951, Baraka graduated from my integrated neighborhood high school, Barringer. He was one of four blacks in a homeroom of 29 students. 

“His carefree and jovial manner has lighted many of our classrooms,” wrote the editors of Baraka in his senior yearbook. At Barringer, Baraka ran track and cross country and belonged to the science club and the Latin Honor Society. Upon graduation, he was offered a four-year scholarship to Seton Hall University and lesser scholarships to Holy Cross and Rutgers University-Newark.

In mid-century urban America, Baraka’s success was not unusual. In his 1987 memoir, The Autobiography of Leroi Jones, Baraka unwittingly made the case against reparations. Despite slavery and Jim Crow, his friends from the neighborhood were doing just fine—“auto plants, utilities, electronic tube factories, mechanics, white-collar paper shuffling, teachers, small businessmen, security guards, commercial artists.” 

His classmates at the historically black Howard University were doing even better. “At least five of us became generals,” he wrote, “and many more at lower levels. An admiral or two. [Ronald] Reagan’s top Negro. [Spiro] Agnew’s top Negro. Negroes at all levels of state bureaucracy and madness.” 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/all-this-failure-is-deliberate/

I recently had a reader ask, “Why is Joe Biden still President?”  While I’m sure there was some facetiousness in his query, it’s actually worth pondering.  The simple answer is, he was elected (ahem) for a four-year term and still has about a year and a half left.  So, he is President because our Constitution allows him to be, and he hasn’t died yet.  But let’s examine the question a little deeper.

Everything Biden has done has been a disaster.  The economy is teetering.  The border is non-existent.  The banking system and the dollar are crumbling.  Our enemies are taking advantage of the weakness they perceive in the White House.  Crime is out of control in most of our once-great cities.  Traditional morality and decency are in the toilet.  Our children are being butchered and groomed for the hedonistic pleasure of a cadre of sexual deviants.  Women athletes are losing hard-earned rights because of the “transgender” movement, something that almost no one had heard of five years ago.  Government spending is without restraint and, as a result, inflation has soared, and America’s middle class is being squeezed into near oblivion.  The education system continues to produce semi-literates who will do—what?—in the future.  No patriot wants to join the military anymore.  The list of Joe Biden’s cataclysms is endless, but my space in this column isn’t, so I mention only a few of the most egregious catastrophes this man and his ideology have foisted upon the nation.  Why is he still President indeed?

Biden is President, but he is far from in control.  The Marxist, Leftist global movement, whatever groups are ultimately behind it, are using Biden and the Democratic Party as pawns in the supreme game of human domination.  Biden does everything he is told to do.  He is nothing but a puppet, a “useful idiot” as I explained recently—totally unable to think for himself.  The Far Left, the Marxist Left, manipulates him and his ideological band.  Biden doesn’t realize it, but some Democrats do.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-case-of-jordan-neely-stay-seated-and-do-nothing/

Imagine, for a moment, a different scenario in the Jordan Neely case.

Let’s say that Neely, a homeless individual and part-time Michael Jackson impersonator with a record of 40-plus arrests, had not been apprehended and put into a choke-hold by 24-year-old Marine vet Daniel Penny on the Manhattan-bound F-train on May 1, 2023.

Let’s also imagine that Neely’s mental breakdown rant on that same subway train went from threatening violence – “I’ll hurt anyone on this train” – to actual violence in which he attacked several passengers.

Imagine Neely turning on passengers by pushing, shoving, punching and kicking – as Daniel Penny observed the mayhem from the sidelines.

Imagine the press coverage after this fact.

“Passengers watch as homeless man terrorizes train and injures many. Who was there to defend the 80-year-old woman who died of a heart attack as Neely threw kicks and punches?”

The article would give an overview of the able-bodied passengers on the train who could have done something but didn’t.

“On board was a 24-year-old Marine vet who sat and observed as 80-year-old Mrs. O’Rielly fell to the floor and died” – one can envision news stations proclaiming.

The Jordan Neely incident could have easily gone this way.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/why-we-need-behavioral-vigilantes/

Jordan Neely’s death on May 1, 2023 by a Marine veteran who placed him in a chokehold after the 30-year-old, homeless African-American appeared on a New York subway train allegedly hurling garbage and verbal abuse at passengers is one extreme end of a social malady plaguing our society today: individuals who treat the public sphere as an extension of their private sphere (or lack thereof), and who subject others to their obtrusive behaviors.

Neely had been arrested over 40 times previously for various crimes ranging from lewd behavior to assaulting senior citizens. As one commentator noted: This guy has been arrested dozens of times and he is back on the subway causing people to be scared for their safety; either get some law enforcement on the subway or give citizens authority to protect themselves without recourse.

Other recent incidents include two women blasting music from their phones on a plane in flight (pictured above). The women gave the middle finger to annoyed fellow passengers. As the article points out, one of the alarming trends in travel is the rise of people using personal speakers in public and carrying on loud phone conversations without using headphones.

Another recent article describes a woman voted off a Frontier Jet for lobbing a barrage of vulgar expletives in an argument she started with a couple seated rows in front of her.

People who use their phones as personal speakers are polluting every pocket of the public sphere; their boisterous behavior indicates they believe they are entitled to treat shared public space as their own private space—indeed, as an extension of their disheveled bedrooms.

Why is it that so many people have no understanding of their responsibility not to dominate the public sphere, monopolize it, or even make themselves highly conspicuous and obtrusive in it?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/da-bragg-to-charge-marine-hero-who-defended-passengers-against-subway-monster/

DA Alvin Bragg came into office with a ‘day day memo’ promising not to prosecute the worst criminals.

His office will halt prosecution of several non-violent crimes including fare-beating, trespassing, resisting arrest and interfering with cops, unless they are part of a larger, felony case.

Prosecutors were also instructed to downgrade felonies to misdemeanors in certain cases. For instance, suspects initially charged with armed robbery of a store would get hit with petit larceny instead, a misdemeanor, provided no victims were seriously injured and there was no “genuine risk of physical harm,” the memo states.

When Jordan Neely assaulted a 67-year-old woman, breaking her nose and causing injuries to her head, the system colluded to set the deranged monster loose.

In November 2021, Mr. Neely’s aggression seemed to peak, when he punched a 67-year-old woman in the street on the Lower East Side, the police said. The woman suffered severe facial injuries, including a broken nose, according to court documents. He was charged with assault and, awaiting the resolution of his case, spent 15 months in jail, the police said, though his family said the stint was shorter.

He pleaded guilty on Feb. 9 of this year, in a carefully planned strategy between the city and his lawyers to allow him to get treatment and stay out of prison.

Jordan Neely had threatened to kill his grandfather, so his own grandparents wouldn’t let him in the house.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/05/12/biden-and-his-party-are-trying-to-kill-humanitys-last-best-hope/

The president hates America. No? Then why is he, and his Democratic Party, systematically taking down this nation? Leaders who love their country don’t try to leave it on the ash heap of history.

Konstantin Kisin, a Russian-British satirist, recently said on Bill Maher’s show that “people in other parts of the world are not teaching their young children to hate their own country.” Maher, a man of the left, agreed. “This country,” he said, “is better off than a lot of people who are native to it” are willing to admit.

It cannot be argued that there is not an element, loud and strident, in this country that actively agitates against it and doesn’t miss a chance to weaken it. Its ever-outraged members are always found on the political left, and if they’re not Democrats, they caucus with them because they’re more closely aligned with that party’s agenda.

This faction denies America’s superior goodness relative to every other nation that exists or has existed. It rails against our market economy, which has produced far more prosperity than any system that’s ever been tried. Educators teach Marxism not as history but as guideline, twist past events to vilify this nation’s cornerstones, pervert objective math and science into subjective fields of study, undermine our national identity by pushing global citizenship, and tear away at the fabric of society through critical race theory instruction. The left mourns America’s founding, is at war with free speech, is perpetually in conflict with the Judeo-Christian heritage that has molded a nation like no other in history, and misses no chance to further divide an already polarized people. The moral code of the West has been shattered.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/10/speaker-kevin-mccarthy-forbids-rashia-tlaib-from-hosting-anti-israel-event-at-the-capitol/

On Tuesday, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) sabotaged efforts by Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) to host an anti-Israel event at the U.S. Capitol, featuring anti-Semitic rhetoric by pro-Palestine groups.

According to the New York Post, Tlaib originally planned to host at least nine anti-Israel groups for an event titled “Nakba 75 and the Palestinian People,” which would be held at the Capitol Visitor Center. But McCarthy announced in a tweet that he was shutting down the event, simply saying “this event in the US Capitol is canceled.”

“Instead,” McCarthy continued, “I will host a bipartisan discussion to honor the 75th anniversary of the US-Israel relationship.”

“Nakba,” the word featured prominently in the title of Tlaib’s canceled event, is the Arabic word for “catastrophe,” which aligns with the planned speeches by Tlaib’s groups that would have described the founding of the state of Israel as a “catastrophe.”

“May 15th marks 75 years since the beginning of the Nakba, which means ‘catastrophe,’” the description for the now-cancelled event read. “Seventy-five years ago, Zionist militias and the new Israeli military violently expelled approximately three-quarters of all Palestinians from their homes and homeland in what became the state of Israel.”

At least one group that was supposed to attend, Jewish Voice for Peace, is documented as having openly praised terrorists, with the Anti-Defamation League describing it as a “radical anti-Israel activist group that advocates for a complete economic, cultural and academic boycott of the state of Israel,” and a group that “celebrates figures who have been convicted of engaging in terrorism.”

“It’s wrong for members of Congress to traffic in anti-Semitic tropes about Israel,” said McCarthy in a later statement to the press. “As long as I’m Speaker, we are going to support Israel’s right to self-determination and self-defense, unequivocally and in a bipartisan fashion.”

Israel first declared its independence on May 14th, 1948, and was ultimately admitted to the United Nations nearly one year later, on May 11th, 1949.