RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/irs-supervisor-claims-hunter-biden-investigation-is-being-mishandled-requests-whistleblower-protection/

An IRS criminal supervisory special agent is seeking whistleblower protection to share with lawmakers information that allegedly shows an investigation into potential tax crimes by Hunter Biden is being mishandled.

In a letter to Congress on Tuesday, attorney Mark Lytle claimed his client has information that would “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee,” as well as information about a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case.” 

The letter, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, claims the would-be whistleblower has evidence showing “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.” 

Lytle told lawmakers his client has made legally protected disclosures internally at the IRS and said his goal is to “ensure that my client can properly share his lawfully protected disclosures with congressional committees.”

“Thus, I respectfully request that your committees work with me to facilitate sharing this information with congress legally and with the fully informed advice of counsel,” he added in the letter, which was addressed to Republican and Democratic leaders on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, the Senate Finance Committee, and the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Despite serious risks of retaliation, my client is offering to provide you with information necessary to exercise your constitutional oversight function and wishes to make the disclosures in a nonpartisan manner to the leadership of the relevant committees on both sides of the political aisle,” the letter said.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/04/19/john-fettermans-first-subcommittee-hearing-a-train-wreck-in-slow-motion-n1688675

Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has finally returned to Capitol Hill, having spent most of his tenure as a U.S. senator at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center being treated for clinical depression. Fetterman was discharged on March 31. While it’s good that he’s progressed with mental health issues, we haven’t forgotten about the lingering cognitive impairments that became a major issue of the campaign, as it was clear to anyone that this man wasn’t fit to serve in the U.S. Senate.

His May 2022 stroke left him incapacitated for weeks, and he was lucky to survive. Despite this, he chose to continue campaigning, which could have potentially led to permanent brain damage, according to those close to him. Despite his prolonged period away from the Senate, it doesn’t appear that he’s experienced any improvement in his recovery from his stroke, and that was abundantly clear from watching him chair the Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

Even the Washington Post couldn’t deny the obvious. “Though his voice stumbled at times while reading from prepared notes, Fetterman appeared in good spirits as he gaveled in a hearing focused on the benefits of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP,” the paper reported. “Republicans have proposed increasing the number of people who must meet work requirements to qualify for SNAP.”

Video from the hearing is difficult to watch. We all know much of these hearings are scripted, but Fetterman sounds like he’s reading from his prepared remarks for the first time and doesn’t seem to understand what he’s saying. I’d feel bad for him if it wasn’t his fault he was in this position in the first place.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-eyes-of-totalitarianism/

The iconic broadcaster, author, and legal scholar Mark Levin recently observed: “As a nation we’ve now turned the corner. We’ve turned the corner into a hard tyranny…. I just want the audience to know that we are staring into the face of tyranny, that the Democrat Party is a totalitarian party.”

And indeed, it is. To recognize this, we need only to listen when Democrats tell us – repeatedly – of their burning desire to “transform” the U.S. into a radicalized cesspool by such means as:

ending the filibuster rule so they can forcibly ram their radical legislation through the Senate;
governing via presidential executive orders rather than navigating the normal legislative process;
promoting immigration and border policies designed to import massive blocs of foreigners who will eventually become reliable Democrat voters for generations to come;
turning the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico into new U.S. states, thereby allowing Democrats to permanently pack the Senate with four additional members of their party;
expanding the Supreme Court and packing it with newly appointed leftist ideologues;
openly defying that same Supreme Court whenever its rulings conflict with Democrat Party preferences;
forcibly censoring the free expression of any ideas that conflict with Democrat values; and
pursuing the impeachment and imprisonment of their political foes on the flimsiest pretexts imaginable.

Below is an abundant collection of remarkable quotes by which immensely powerful Democrats in recent times have openly and proudly promoted the objectives enumerated above, like the domineering totalitarian thugs that they are.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tennessee-justin-jones-justin-pearson-bullhorn-biden-white-house-chuck-schumer-gun-control-b9a4d4f5?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Democrats are free to argue that the Tennessee House went too far this month when it expelled Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson for disrupting the chamber’s business. Yet it’s astounding to see prominent Democrats now justifying and outright endorsing the pair’s tactic of derailing legislative proceedings with a bullhorn to demand gun control.

Next week President Biden will roll out the White House red carpet for Messrs. Jones and Pearson, along with Rep. Gloria Johnson, who participated in the disruption to a lesser extent, and who was narrowly spared expulsion.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed at a Wednesday briefing that the three state lawmakers were punished “for peacefully protesting in support of stronger gun-safety laws.” She added that Mr. Biden phoned them and “thanked them for their leadership,” as well as for defending “democratic values.”

The response from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is even more unbelievable. Last week Mr. Schumer and four other Democratic Senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to investigate whether the Tennessee House violated the U.S. Constitution or federal law. These Democrats also go far beyond protesting the expulsions. They argue that the ruckus caused by Messrs. Jones and Pearson was following in the tradition of the civil-rights movement.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/20/sorry-bernie-minimum-wage-hike-would-still-hurt-poor-workers-most/

Vermont’s self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders is a nonstop cheerleader for a minimum-wage hike. Recently, in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, he once again called for a huge increase in the minimum wage. Sounds generous, until you realize it would in fact hurt most the working poor, those who supposedly would reap the greatest benefits of a boosted minimum wage.

“Whether they are greeting us at Walmart, serving us hamburgers at McDonald’s, providing childcare for our kids or waiting on our table at a diner in rural America, there are too many Americans trying to survive and raise families on $9, $10 or $12 an hour,” Sanders wrote. “It cannot be done. This injustice must end. Low-income workers need a pay raise and the American people want them to get that raise.”

The idea that there are “too many” people “trying to survive and raise families on $9, $10 or $12 an hour” isn’t exactly true, at least not for the vast majority of workers.

Among the 76.1 million hourly wage workers, the average earner took home $33.18 an hour in March, or roughly $1,141.39 a week. That’s $59,352 a year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own data (for 2021, the latest full year for data) show that just 1.4% of all hourly workers made at or below the current minimum wage.

There’s a reason for this. Businesses pay people what they’re worth to them. If they can’t afford to pay you the going rate, they don’t hire you and you can try elsewhere. But, as the data show, businesses for the most part pay their workers well.

OK, but, as Sanders would have it, why not just have the government force businesses to pay the higher minimum wage for those at the bottom? Such as $17 an hour, his current proposal?

With ever-greater advances in labor-saving technology, machinery and, most notably, artificial intelligence, America will soon see large numbers of formerly employed people become unemployed.

https://www.newsweek.com/nashville-controversy-reveals-liberals-anti-democracy-double-standard-opinion-1795087

In the last two years, the defense of democracy has been central to the Democratic Party’s attempt to portray itself as the last line of defense against Republicans’ alleged authoritarianism. But as recent events in Nashville showed, Democrats’ alleged fealty to democracy and abhorrence for agitators and mobs seeking to disrupt the legislative branch of government is more a matter of situational ethics than actual principle. As the career of a new Democratic idol, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones, demonstrates, they’re only against anti-democratic rioters when they’re seeking to silence Republicans.

Jones became a national celebrity when, along with two other Democrats—Reps. Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson—he disrupted a March 30 session of the Tennessee legislature to demand that it consider anti-gun rights laws that he supported. Acting in conjunction with a mob of demonstrators that had flooded the state capitol in Nashville, the trio, armed with bullhorns, seized the podium and shut down the assembly, ranting about Republicans being complicit in mass shootings. The demonstrators were kept outside the chamber but harassed both legislators and cops who were present. Eventually, order was restored and days later the legislature voted to expel Jones and Pearson. Johnson escaped the same fate by only a narrow margin.

At that point, the national media and leading Democrats like former president Barack Obama treated the state legislators’ expulsion as the only salient part of the story, ignoring the events of March 30. In that way, they turned Jones into a martyr and used the episode as more proof of the GOP’s supposed authoritarianism.

The hypocrisy and dishonesty of this narrative is staggering.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/04/19/ramaswamy_diversity_is_meaningless_unless_something_else_binds_us_together.html

Ramaswamy: Diversity Is Meaningless Unless Something Greater Binds Us Together

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/04/18/fetterman-returns-to-the-senatedressed-like-a-slob-n1688175

After undergoing inpatient treatment for clinical depression at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for several weeks, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), has finally returned to the Senate. He began his treatment in February and was discharged by the end of March. Since being sworn in as a U.S. Senator in January, he’s spent more time indisposed than serving. His absence has contributed to some significant headaches for Senate Democrats, as his and other senators’ absences have made the Democrats’ already slim majority in the upper chamber even smaller.

“I want everyone to know that depression is treatable, and treatment works,” Fetterman said in a statement after his release from Walter Reed last month. “This isn’t about politics — right now there are people who are suffering with depression in red counties and blue counties. If you need help, please get help.”

Now that he’s back, we’re not only supposed to celebrate his bravery but we’re also supposed to forget all about the fact that he lied during the campaign about his physical and mental well-being, and his fitness to serve in the U.S. Senate.

“It’s great to be back,” he told reporters upon his arrival at the Capitol Monday afternoon. It should surprise no one that he did not answer any questions.

It should also surprise no one that Fetterman’s triumphant return to the U.S. Senate apparently wasn’t enough of a reason for him to dress the part of a U.S. Senator. Rather than donning a suit and tie, Fetterman showed up to the Capitol wearing his signature hoodie and shorts, because apparently, dressing like a slob is his thing.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/19/the-fda-needs-bold-reforms-instead-of-kicking-the-can-down-the-road/

When Dr. Robert Califf was selected by President Joe Biden for a second stint as Food and Drug Administration commissioner, we called it a safe but uninspired choice. Unfortunately, we have been proven right.

Califf is a distinguished academic cardiologist who specializes in clinical trial design, but the day-to-day regulatory decision-making happens at organizational levels below the commissioner, and he seems unwilling to engage with them. He has also made it clear that he’s not interested in criticism from the public, even though the FDA is required by law to consider public comments as part of the rulemaking process.

Dr. Califf did give some reason for hope last summer when he commissioned a review of the agency’s food and tobacco regulatory programs. We suspected that the report, prepared by the Reagan-Udall Foundation, would be a whitewash. But we are pleased to say we were partly wrong.

On the food front, the report echoed criticism from members of Congress, industry and public interest groups that there isn’t a single chain of command among various human food oversight offices, including the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and the Office of Food Policy and Response.

Now, a diverse group of stakeholders is unhappy with the reorganization plan the FDA announced in January and fleshed out further in late February, because it doesn’t fully integrate the all-important food inspection work into the new Human Foods program. 

At a House Oversight Subcommittee hearing in March, Frank Yiannas, who resigned earlier this year as the FDA’s deputy commissioner for food policy, testified that the agency’s ability to protect food safety is hindered by staff turnover, a siloed culture, and a lack of decision-making power. Roberta Wagner, the Consumer Brands Association’s vice president of regulatory and technical affairs, noted that an external study of the FDA has found the agency’s food regulation suffers from “constant turmoil” and “little motivation.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/19/signs-of-the-great-divorce-2-6-million-fled-counties-that-voted-for-biden-since-2020/

Is the country separating itself into two distinct camps? One increasingly leftist and the other trying desperately to cling to traditional American values? Census data seem to show that it very well could be underway.

Last week, we commented on recent population data showing that people have been fleeing urban areas, noting that these are mostly Democratically controlled, and we’ve pointed out that people have also been moving from red states to blue.

But we wanted to go deeper and get more precise numbers. So, we matched Census net migration data from mid-2020 through mid-2022 for all the nation’s 3,000-plus counties (or their equivalents) and compared that with how these counties voted in 2020. Our working assumption is that the results of the incredibly divisive 2020 election would be a good barometer of the devoutly held political views in those counties. 

What we found was striking: There has been a vast migration out of counties that voted for Joe Biden into those counties that voted to reelect Donald Trump.

Census data show a net internal migration of almost 2.6 million (2,584,459 to be exact) from blue counties to red since Biden was elected. (These figures don’t count immigrants or births or deaths, just those Americans moving from one location to another.)

More than 61% of the counties that voted for Biden in 2020 lost population, while 65% of Trump-supporting counties gained population.