RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17895/treasury-secretary-janet-yellen

Can U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sing? And if she can carry a tune, does she know the words to “Brother can you spare a dime?”

At the height of the Great Depression that song, written by Yip Harburg, became a grim national anthem as unemployment soared, the economy cratered and the American dream was crushed for middle class citizens and those aspiring to be so. The lyrics reflected the desperation of panhandlers living in Central Park who had lost everything, including hope. It may well turn out to be the song sung during the next three years as we fall into the dangerous financial abyss of a self-described “progressive” agenda that would place a staggering multi-trillion dollar debt on the nation.

Yellen’s pursuit of new revenue to fund Biden’s mega deficit literally knows no boundaries. Before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Development Committee, Yellen was forced to defend the Administration’s unconscionable proposal that would require banks to disclose every financial transaction over $600 to the Internal Revenue Service.

An outraged U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis asked, “Do you distrust the American people so much that you need to know when they bought a couch? Or a cow?”

Yellen’s various proposals are a chilling overreach that reveals the corrosive intrusion of a sneering anti-capitalist agenda. Yellen’s next steps could easily be the creation of a Profit Posse that would track down any transaction by anyone that could conceivably be taxed, confiscated or penalized. The ghosts of commissars interred in the former Soviet Union would smile in approval.

The Treasury Secretary’s words reveal much about the Administration’s growth-killing ideology — which has abandoned much of Europe to economic stagnation — and its pursuit of a multi-trillion social welfare budget, when she says, “We’ve grown used to America as the world’s pre-eminent economic power…. We aren’t destined to stay that way, but with these investments, I believe we will.”

Yellen clearly echoes the counter-factual insistence that massive deficits are America’s future, while ignoring the historic destruction wrought on other nations whose sovereignty disintegrated under massive debt. She conveniently disregards the billions of dollars in “pork” and institutional corruption that Biden’s multi-trillion dollar “Build Back Better” program would hide as it installs one “temporary,” set-to-balloon government program after another. A more honest name would be “Bust, Bury and Bye.”

If Yellen had the political courage of Senators Joseph Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, she would publicly confront the Biden Administration and refuse to be a co-conspirator in destroying our nation’s future. Instead, Yellen would denounce the pork barrel spending in Biden’s proposal, and stand fast against raising the debt limit while seeking business incentives such as low-interest government loans to advance business expansion in America. She would also increase charitable donations to 501(c)3 not-for-profit organizations to enable donors to have a bonus 150% tax credit.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/10/28/the-freak-out-over-tuckers-january-6-documentary-begins/

Tucker Carlson on Wednesday night played a brief trailer for his three-part documentary looking at the events of January 6. “Patriot Purge” will premiere on Fox Nation, the network’s streaming service, on November 1.

Clips hint that the film compares the prosecution of Capitol protesters and anyone associated with the events of January 6 to the initial war on terror, a wholly legitimate comparison that my reporting confirms. For example, as I explained in April, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines issued a report earlier this year warning “domestic violent extremists” pose a heightened threat to the nation. Not one for subtlety, Haines included a sketch of the U.S. Capitol in the document; House Republicans at the time blasted Haines for working outside her legal authority—the intelligence community is supposed to hunt foreign terrorists, not MAGA-supporting meemaws—to target American citizens.

Unfortunately, most Americans are unaware that the Biden regime, with a big assist from the news media, is indeed conducting a domestic war on terror aimed at the political Right. 

Democrats do not want the public to hear the details of Ashli Babbitt’s shooting death at the hands of Capitol Police, or the likely role of the FBI in what happened that day, or how armed federal agents have raided Trump supporters’ homes at dawn, in front of their terrified children and horrified neighbors, and dragged out in handcuffs to face various trespassing misdemeanors.

Democrats do not want the public to know about an inhumane jail in the nation’s capital used exclusively to punish Trump supporters, who have been denied any chance at bail by ruthless government prosecutors and hostile Beltway judges. Abusive conduct by Capitol and D.C. Metro Police officers, which included attacking the crowd with flashbangs, rubber bullets, and copious amounts of mace and other chemicals, must be kept under wraps. So, too, must at least 14,000 hours of surveillance footage captured by security cameras on January 6.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/hating-jews-becoming-leftist-purity-test-daniel-greenfield/

When Sunrise Movement DC issued its ultimatum that either the Jews had to be kicked out or it would boycott a D.C. statehood rally, it was a familiar purity test. And, like most purity tests, was about testing a willingness to hate people and endorse a new extremist position on demand.

Purity tests that have no constructive purpose except to undermine and oust a leadership that is insufficiently radical have become commonplace in the Reign of Terror era of American politics.

When Democrats adopt socialism, endorse the elimination of the police, tear down the statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, champion critical race theory, and insist that there’s no such thing as men and women, it’s as the result of an escalating series of purity tests.

Hating Jews is just the latest progressive purity test.

Sunrise DC declared that it would not participate in events with what it falsely claimed were Zionist groups, but were actually, mostly fellow leftists who hate Israel as much as they do.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-jerry-rigged-budget-framework-joe-biden-white-house-reconciliation-bill-democrats-11635457542?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Nothing like an artificial political deadline to concentrate the warring liberal minds. Before departing Thursday for next week’s climate gabfest, President Biden declared he has sealed an agreement with Democrats in Congress on a “framework” for a spending bill that he declares will make a “fundamental change in America.”

He’s right about that last bit, but the blueprint the White House released is more frame than work. The jerry-rigged plan is an enormous expansion of government with quarter-baked entitlement programs that will retard work and $1.85 trillion in tax increases that will distort and limit investment. The $1.75 trillion cost that Democrats have assigned their bill is an illusion. They use phony accounting to finance a few years of new spending with 10 years of tax increases.

For example, the plan extends the $3,600 child tax credit for one year at a cost of $110 billion. But Democrats will inevitably extend the credit next year. If Republicans oppose this or try to scale the credit back, they will be attacked for raising taxes on middle-class families. The true 10-year cost is about $1.1 trillion.

The agreement drops the House’s proposed Medicare vision and dental expansion. But it preserves a new hearing benefit, which the White House claims will cost a mere $34 billion and start in 2024. The annual cost of the hearing benefit once fully phased-in is some $16 billion. Congress will invariably make it permanent. True cost: $160 billion.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/10/the_end_of_science.html

Rebecca West writes, in The New Meaning of Treason, that a lot of our scientists during World War 2 were communists.  There are several reasons this is important, but the first is that they immediately leaked our research on atomic bombs to Stalin.

They honestly believed in a “global scientific community” — that science knows no political boundaries, and that the world would be better if scientists shared all their information with each other.  Somehow this would usher in an age of peace and plenty, and scientific know-how would mean food for the poor and an end to oppression.

So they gave the bomb to the Soviets.  To the people who used technology to keep millions in chains and torture them and starve them to death.

These days, American scientists are doing the same thing, helping abusive husbands track their wives in Saudi Arabia and helping the Chinese develop social surveillance systems and biological weapons.  The scientists tell you how to do something and fail to understand or care why we shouldn’t do it.  Or maybe it’s the money.

If this proves anything, it’s that people who are taught to analyze physics can be really bad at reading people.  They can theorize about matter and totally miss the substance of a movement.  People say we need a more “scientific” outlook on the world, and they’re right.  We need to teach our kids to be skeptical, and systematic, and logical.  What we don’t need for this world to be a better place is for more kids to become professional chemists.  We need more chemists to pick up The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

You would expect a person with a “scientific” mindset to look for information, and to share it — even a pie-in-the-sky communist.  But the new fan of “science” doesn’t trust the public with information, and so far as he can, when information doesn’t fit his goals, he buries it.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/29/bidenomics-build-back-better-blunder/

Swedish socialist economist Assar Lindbeck is semi-famous for saying that “in many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city – except for bombing.” It’s becoming clearer that one of the most efficient ways to destroy the U.S. economy, outside of bombing the country, is to put Joe Biden in the White House.

Economic growth in the third quarter was a meager 2%, the Commerce Department reported Thursday, the most feeble increase of the pandemic recovery. Some economists had forecast a gain closer to 3%, leaving many disappointed. As the Asia Times accurately summed it up, the U.S. “economy ground to a halt.”

The economy grew 33.8% in the third quarter last year, after two straight quarters of GDP losses due to ill-advised lockdown policies. It grew 4.5% in the fourth quarter, and 6.3% in the first quarter of 2021, when Trump economic policies were still in effect. A healthy 6.7% increase followed in the second quarter, but now that Biden’s economic policies have had a few months to stew, the economy looks to have a case of sclerosis.

Blame Biden’s inflation and the supply-chain crisis that has exploded on his sleepy watch. But don’t discount how much the White House and congressional Democrats’ tax-and-spending plans have negatively impacted growth.

One of the more common beliefs among Americans is that a stock market crash caused by greedy investors brought on the Great Depression. But a close look at the history shows that the markets watched, and reacted to, Washington’s actions in the months leading up to Black Tuesday – Oct. 29, 1929.

https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/us-gdp-data-show-stagflation/

Net of inventory accumulation, real GDP for the third quarter was slightly negative, US government data released Thursday morning show. Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 2%, below the forecasters’ consensus of 2.6%, the Commerce Department reported. But a jump in inventories added 2.07 percentage points annualized to GDP. That’s more than the reported growth.

That’s a very odd number, considering that the inventory-to-sales ratio of US business stands at the lowest level on record, due to supply-chain constraints that prevent businesses from restocking. It’s likely that the inventory number was exaggerated. If that’s true, the US economy shrank during the third quarter.

The GDP measure of inflation rose at a 5.7% annual rate during the third quarter, following a 6.2% rate of increase during the second quarter. After inflation, final sales to domestic purchasers rose at an annual rate of just 1%. That’s a textbook portrait of stagflation.

Disposable personal income fell at a 0.7% annual rate, as prices outstripped income growth. By the Labor Department’s measure of prices and average wages, real earnings of US workers have fallen by about 2% over the past year despite nominal pay raises averaging about 4%.

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

My parents had a book of cartoons titled, Who’s in Charge Here? Written in 1943, it is a compilation of cartoons by George Price (1901-1995) who had started drawing for The New Yorker in 1929 and continued doing so into his 80s. While Herblock’s cartoon was aimed at President Carter, the message could be directed at today’s White House. As last Saturday’s lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal put it: “…all Presidents stumble in speech. But Mr. Biden’s frequent public confusion about the major issues of the day is a reason for the growing public concern.” If Mr. Biden is mentally unfit, who is in charge?

Mr. Biden’s incoherence and mental lapses should concern us. Roger Kimball, the American art critic and conservative social commentator recently posed a rhetorical question: “Is it more worrisome that Joe Biden might not be in charge, or that he actually is in charge?” The White House website states that the power of the Executive Branch is vested in the President of the United States. Including members of the armed forces, the Branch employs more than four million Americans, more than any private company, and a number that exceeds the population of the United States when George Washington became our first President. (In total, according to the Brookings Institute, the federal government employs nine million.) The White House website reads: “The President is both head of state and head of government of the United States of America, and Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces.” It is arguably the most powerful position in the world. The American people deserve to know who is in charge. 

It does not appear to be Joe Biden whose political reputation extends back over fifty years. During last year’s campaign, he ran as the moderate alternative to Senator’s Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. He promised, like his predecessor Warren Harding 100 years earlier, a return to “normalcy.” However, his support of Critical Race Theory and gender-neutral pronouns, and his recent proposals for a “Green New Deal,” universal basic income, a wealth tax and a five trillion-dollar budget satisfy the most radical Progressives in Congress. They remind us of Barack Obama’s pledge in late October 2008 in Columbia, Missouri, shortly before his election: “…we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” While Mr. Obama later walked back those comments, they preordained Mr. Biden’s intent to “transform” our culture, schools and economy.