RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-biden-lied-about-gun-manufacturer-immunity-he-wasnt-close-to-the-truth/?utm_

I know this will be hard to believe, but Joe Biden lied in last night’s speech to the nation. Here is one especially egregious example:

We should repeal the liability shield that often protects gun manufacturers from being sued for the death and destruction caused by their weapons. They’re the only industry in this country that has that kind of immunity. Imagine. Imagine if the tobacco industry had been immune from being sued, where we’d be today. The gun industry’s special protections are outrageous. It must end.

Biden has made this claim before, as did Hillary Clinton. Politifact rated it false in 2015. As Biden knows perfectly well, or should know unless his mind is completely shot, there are multiple industries that enjoy federal statutory immunity from lawsuits over the use of their products.

Biden refers to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed by President George W. Bush in 2005. (Biden opposed it at the time.) Under the ordinary principles of tort law, product-liability lawsuits are for defective products that malfunction; the manufacturer of a legal product cannot be held responsible for the product working as designed, unless it has somehow failed to warn users of a risk of use. This is why Biden’s analogy to cigarettes is flawed: The theory of many product-liability lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers was either that cigarettes were marketed with false assurances of their safety or that the manufacturers concealed dangers of the product. That is obviously not true of guns: Everybody knows that guns are lethal weapons if used as designed.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/florida-ron-desantis-governor-covid-data-manipulation-rebekah-jones-ig-report-11654292011?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

A frequent phenomenon of our times is the flurry over an alleged scandal that on examination turns out to be false. The latest case is the claim that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis manipulated Covid data.

Mr. DeSantis became public-health enemy number one by defying the left’s lockdown consensus early in the pandemic. When former state health department employee Rebekah Jones claimed she was fired for refusing to fudge state Covid data to support the state’s reopening in spring 2020, national and local media outlets reported her allegations as fact.

“Florida Dismisses A Scientist For Her Refusal To Manipulate State’s Coronavirus Data,” NPR reported. After the Florida Department of Law Enforcement executed a search warrant of her home, Ms. Jones claimed Mr. DeSantis had “sent the gestapo” to silence her. “FDLE raid dramatizes Florida’s COVID-19 coverup” the South Florida Sun Sentinel editorialized.

But according to the Governor’s office, Ms. Jones was fired for repeated “insubordination” and making “unilateral decisions to modify the Department’s COVID-19 dashboard without input or approval from the epidemiological team or her supervisors.”

https://cei.org/blog/george-washington-george-jarkesy-and-the-administrative-states-lack-of-fundamental-justice/

The recent ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Jarkesy v. SEC is a victory for limited constitutional government on many levels. As Mario Loyola, professor at Florida International University and senior fellow here at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes in The Wall Street Journal, the court “has taken what could be a historic step toward restoring the Constitution’s checks and balances.”

The case involved the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) seeking penalties for alleged fraud against hedge fund manager George Jarkesy. Utilizing a provision of the Dodd-Frank “financial reform” of 2010, the SEC chose to pursue Jarkesy in an internal proceeding before an administrative law judge (ALJ) rather than a normal federal court that is part of the judicial branch created by the Constitution’s Article III. As Loyola points out, in Jarkesy’s and other cases, the SEC “acts as rulemaker, prosecutor, and judge for America’s securities laws.”

On multiple grounds, the Fifth Circuit majority found the SEC’s denying Jarkesy the venue of a federal court in which to defend himself to be in violation of the Constitution. The court ruled that, because fraud has been a common-law offense to which jury trial right attaches, and the SEC in-house proceeding lacked a jury of his peers, Jarkesy was denied his Seventh Amendment guarantee of trial by jury.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/sussmanns-cozy-relationship-with-the-fbi-revealed

Michael Sussmann’s cozy relationship with the FBI was revealed during his two-week trial and in a new letter by congressional Republicans, shedding new light on the Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer’s close ties to the bureau as he pushed since-debunked Trump-Russia claims.

Sussmann, a former Perkins Coie lawyer who represented the Democratic National Committee when it was hacked in 2016, was acquitted by a jury this week after being charged with lying to the FBI about whom he was representing when, in September 2016, he pushed false allegations of a secret back channel between the Trump Organization and Russia’s Alfa-Bank.

Reps. Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray this week with details they had learned about the relationship between Perkins, Sussmann, and the bureau.

“We have learned that since March 2012, the FBI approved and facilitated a Secure Work Environment at Perkins Coie’s Washington, D.C., office, which continues to be operational. In a letter dated May 25, 2022, the law firm confirmed and acknowledged the arrangement,” Jordan and Gaetz told Wray.

“We have been informed that former Perkins Coie partner Michael Sussmann had access to this Secure Work Environment, and during the course of his recent trial, it was disclosed he had special badge access to FBI headquarters.”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/06/02/another-justice-department-fail-the-flynn-unmasking/

Barack Obama’s crusade to destroy Lt. General Michael Flynn began months before Election Day in 2016. Flynn resigned as Obama’s Defense Intelligence Agency director in 2014 amid clashes with his boss at the time, James Clapper, over the administration’s approach to the war on terror. In early 2016, Flynn, who had become an outspoken critic of Obama’s foreign policy, joined the Trump presidential campaign; a few months later, Obama’s FBI opened a counterintelligence probe into Flynn and three other campaign associates.

After Trump won, Team Obama accelerated its targeting of Flynn. Obama warned Trump during an Oval Office meeting shortly after Election Day not to hire Flynn, advice Trump promptly rejected. So, Obama set out to make Trump pay for his defiance.

The alleged details of discussions between Flynn, slated to serve as Trump’s national security advisor, and the Russian ambassador about U.S. sanctions against the Kremlin for “interfering” in the presidential election were leaked to the Washington Post a week before Trump’s inauguration.

Columnist David Ignatius first planted the idea that Flynn might have broken federal law by talking about sanctions in numerous phone calls. 

“According to a senior U.S. government official, Flynn phoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak several times on Dec. 29, the day the Obama administration announced the expulsion of 35 Russian officials as well as other measures in retaliation for the hacking,” Ignatius wrote on January 12, 2017.  “What did Flynn say, and did it undercut the U.S. sanctions? The Logan Act (though never enforced) bars U.S. citizens from correspondence intending to influence a foreign government about ‘disputes’ with the United States. Was its spirit violated?”

https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/01/yes-biden-deserves-the-blame-for-inflation/

From top to bottom, the Biden administration botched the inflation problem.

“So, while it’s true that inflation is a complex, multifaceted problem that isn’t entirely any person’s or administration’s or event’s fault, it is fair to say that the Biden administration, from top to bottom, was as wrong as an administration could be on the issue. They ignored it. They weren’t prepared. They exacerbated it. At the very least, Biden deserves a lot more credit for inflation than he does economic growth. If you’re going to take credit for the latter, you deserve blame for the former.”

Joe Biden has written an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal detailing his plan to fight inflation.

Well, perhaps the word “detailing” is too generous. The preponderance of the column features Biden taking credit for economic growth that can be attributed to the reopening of an economy that was shuttered by the governing class during Covid. Biden, of course, not only championed those closings, but was critical of Republican governors who opened their states before he deemed it appropriate.

But with midterms approaching, there’s been a concerted effort underway to exonerate the president, and thus Democrats, of any culpability for rising prices. Biden sycophant “Morning Joe,” for example, contends that anyone who blames the president for more than a “passing impact” on inflation is a “lying hack or an ignorant rube.” One wonders if that group includes former Obama adviser Steve Rattner, who argues that inflation has been driven by government putting “too much money in people’s pockets?” Or Obama’s one-time Director of the National Economic Council Larry Summers, who had been warning for more than a year that cash infusions would exacerbate inflation? Or Jeff Bezos, who correctly pointed out that the “administration tried hard to inject even more stimulus into an already over-heated, inflationary economy?”

Even if we were to concede that there is no good way to quantify exactly how much recent spending helped propel inflation — which is outpacing other Western nations — it’s clear that the Biden administration completely mismanaged what should have been a slam-dunk recovery.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/06/03/how-the-biden-administration-fumbled-the-inflation-football-and-lost-the-game/
Wasn’t it not even a year ago we were told that inflation would, in fact, be a “good” thing? That it was “transitory”? Not a serious threat. Now we’re finding that the media, Wall Street economists, Fed officials, but most of all, the Biden administration, were all wrong. Does anyone pay a price for gross incompetence anymore?

Last year, headlines were filled with inflation cheerleaders. We searched the term “inflation is good” and got back 508 million hits.

What’s troubling about this expert consensus is that inflation, now at a 40-year-high, isn’t good for anyone.

It skews business and personal decisions, wrecks family budgets, makes millions of low-income families even poorer, destroys personal thrift and wealth, undermines faith in the economy, distorts financial markets, and discourages investment and innovation.

And, eventually, it destroys real economic growth, undermining the very underpinnings of our prosperity and standard of living. We’re on the way to that now.

Which brings us to our main point: The failure of our “experts,” “elites” and elected officials to attack the root causes of inflation, namely runaway government spending and the Fed’s relentless money printing, based on bogus Modern Monetary Theory, that makes the spending possible.

No one in the Biden administration wants to step forward and accept responsibility for the inflation mess. That’s why it looked almost brave as one person finally stepped forward this week to admit there was a miscalculation.

“I think I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this week, after he asked about her calling inflation a “small risk” just last year.

Good start. But in the next breath, she fobbed off blame on a host of other factors:

“As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy that have boosted energy and food prices and supply bottlenecks that have affected our economy badly that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand, but we recognize that now,” she said.

Excuse us, but the causes of our inflation problem were evident even back in 2021.

The administration was repeatedly warned, as we noted, by some of its own party (hello, Larry Summers) about the inflationary impact of $1.9 trillion in added COVID spending, along with the still-alive proposal to spend another $5 trillion on the foolish pork-barrel “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan.

And Yellen knew about the record surge in the money supply in 2021, a clear indication that our economy was headed for soaring inflation. The Fed helped the government print $14.5 trillion in new money from April 2020 to June of 2021, the biggest money supply surge in the nation’s history. It didn’t boost output that much. Inflation was inevitable.

As Fed chief from 2014 to 2018, Yellen must know that latter point. Too bad she comes from the Keynesian school of economics, which denies such self-evident economic truths.

She, as do so many others, seems to have forgotten or ignored the clear lessons of the 1970s, when soaring spending (a 269% real increase in government spending during the decade), and out-of-control money printing to pay our monthly oil bill from the Mideast, set off scary levels of inflation that peaked at close to 15% in 1980.

We’re in a similar place now. Only, our president doesn’t seem to get it.

This week, he basically admitted he didn’t fully understand the baby formula shortage, which has sent prices for formula spiraling as much as 300% in some markets. “I don’t think anyone anticipated the impact of the shutdown of one facility – the Abbott (Laboratories Inc.) facility,” President Joe Biden told reporters Wednesday.

Except, it was his administration that shut the plant in February due to safety concerns, leading to a formula shortage. And Biden was fully apprised of it in a meeting with manufacturers three months ago.

“We knew from the very beginning this would be a very serious event,” said Robert Cleveland, senior vice president for North American operations of the Reckitt Co., as reported by RealClearPolitics.

And contrary to the idea that inflation’s “good,” news in recent days shows just how wrong that is:

Baby-formula inflation is hitting low-income families hardest.
This week, the USDA warned Americans that eggs, a nutritional staple in many households, may soon cost $1 each.
Meanwhile, a new study by The Center Square says that a quarter of all Americans intend to put off their retirement because of inflation.

“Nearly 60% of those surveyed said that inflation has adversely affected their personal finances, of which about one in four said that they have felt a major impact,” according to the Center Square. “As a result of inflation, 36% of Americans have reduced their savings and 21% have reduced their retirement savings. A quarter of Americans will need to delay their retirement.”

Biden has privately raged at aides about inflation, but only to blame others for the catastrophe caused by his own policies. It’s a disaster that could cost his party control of Congress and him the presidential election in 2024, if he runs again.

As our friend Stephen Moore noted, “In this administration, it’s always someone else’s fault. Inflation is now the No. 1 concern of voters, so the White House first blamed COVID. Then Donald Trump’s tax cuts. Then Vladimir Putin. Then meatpackers and the poultry industry, Big Oil and pharmaceutical companies.”

A report from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School said that inflation cost the average family $3,200 last year. Newer estimates say inflation could cost families as much as $5,200 this year, according to Bloomberg. That’s quite a cut in a family’s standard of living, especially since wages aren’t keeping up with inflation.

All this was foreseeable by our media and our elected leaders. Those who told us inflation would be a “good thing” were wrong as hell. So were those who told us it would be transitory. Don’t worry, none will be fired.

Worst of all, the White House has once again shown why it is now one of the least popular administrations in modern history: It is incapable of acting in the public interest, and responds only to one side of the political spectrum. But political arrogance has a cost, and we’ll likely see that result in this year’s midterm elections.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18583/strength-of-democracy

In the movie Juarez, a 1939 film that dramatized the life of Benito Juarez, Mexico’s “George Washington,” a screen writer drafted words for the freedom fighter that send a message to every democracy today, “If a Monarch misrules; the people change… If a Presidente misrules; the people change the Presidente…” The film debuted on the eve of World War II when 20th Century “monarchy,” — fascism — had installed itself as one of the most destructive and murderous forces the world had ever endured.

In our current era, when a president’s ad-lib remarks have the means to alter world events, when inflation is forcing Americans to choose between paying the rent and putting food on the table, when our allies wonder whether this administration has the courage and stamina to confront an ever more powerful China, one could easily question the future of our nation.

But as the script from Juarez reminds us, the inherent strength of a democracy over a monarchy is that its citizens have the means to peacefully change their leaders if they suffer through failed leadership. One suspects our enemies abroad may be hoping that we will not exercise that right — from the belief that we are distracted by the continuing aftershocks of COVID or seeking to cope with slashed earning power at the gas pump and the supermarket.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-durham-vs-the-beltway-swamp-dossier-clinton-fbi-trial-expose-politics-11654207276?mod=opinion_featst_pos1

The Michael Sussmann trial is over, but the stench lingers. Special counsel John Durham did more than expose Hillary Clinton’s dirty political tricks. He exposed the incestuous elite Washington world that enabled those tricks to succeed. America, meet again the Beltway swamp.

Mr. Sussman was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI, but not before the Durham team revealed the Clinton campaign’s work in 2016 to use both the FBI and the media to smear Donald Trump. The campaign relied on outside techies for false accusations of Trump links to Russia’s Alfa Bank, which Mr. Sussmann fed to the FBI. Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele separately funneled their infamous dossier to the Bureau. Then the Clinton team shopped the dirt to the media, using the fact of FBI investigations as proof it deserved coverage.

Still, it’s a long way from unfounded smears to full-fledged FBI investigations. The entire Clinton operation depended on getting the FBI to bite. The Durham trial was a glimpse at the chummy web of brokers who used their access and influence to make that happen.

One trial revelation was that Rodney Joffe —the tech executive who used privileged access to nonproprietary data to create the Alfa claims—was a confidential human source for the FBI in 2016. Yet Mr. Joffe, according to testimony, didn’t take his accusations to his regular handler. He instead gave them to . . . Mr. Sussmann, a lawyer in private practice whose clients included Mrs. Clinton.