RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/04/vaccination-weaponization/

 It was always going to be Herculean to inoculate, with an untried vaccine, a multi-ethnic nation of 330 million, across a vast continent—in an era when the media routinely warps the daily news. 

Some minorities understandably harbored distrust of prior government vaccination programs. 

Nearly 40 million foreign residents in America are from countries where corrupt governments had long ago lost the trust of the population. 

The anti-vaccination movement was distrustful of what the government said was safe—given the rush to produce previously untried mRNA inoculation methodologies. 

Rural and inner-city poor were sometimes not so easily reached, much less persuaded. 

Yet politics played the most obstructive role early on. Candidate Joe Biden talked grandly of reviving the World War II war production board. He deliberately omitted that it was Donald Trump who emulated FDR’s mobilization of private enterprise under government auspices. 

Trump offered legal protections for companies to accelerate their research and development—in hopes that competition, profits, and public oversight would result in COVID-19 vaccinations just 10 months after the pandemic hit. 

And it worked. Mostly safe and effective vaccinations were rolled out shortly after the election. Some 17 million were inoculated by the time of Joe Biden’s January 20 inauguration. 

Yet Dr. Anthony Fauci, in the days when he still posed as a bipartisan professional, had dismissed the idea of any viable vaccination in the election year 2020. Joe Biden publicly doubted that Trump’s vaccination efforts would either work or be safe. 

In a nationally televised debate, vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris shamefully said she would never be vaxxed with any shot associated with President Trump. All that proved disastrous messaging for an already skeptical nation. 

Pfizer had promised a breakthrough vaccination announcement in late October on the eve of the election. Then it mysteriously went silent—only to suddenly announce its successful  vaccination, just a few days after the November 3 voting. 

Joe Biden continued the politicization of the vaccination program by bizarrely and falsely declaring on CNN that there had been no vaccinations given until he entered office. Yet Biden himself was first vaccinated on December 21 on live television. 

Soon Biden grandly promised that all those who were vaccinated would be safe from infection from the SARS‑CoV‑2 virus. And thus they could resume normal lives without masks, quarantines, or social distancing. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/opposition_to_vaccination_passports_comes_from_an_unexpected_quarter.html

The Democrats, for much of the 20th century, represented the American working class. However, they built their latest political empire by targeting myriad special interest groups: Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, LGBTQs, Muslims, Jews, the handicapped, etc., in addition to the reliable college-educated, White voters. Despite Democrats’ paeans to diversity, though, the coalition’s disparate members often dislike each other. That schism is showing as Blacks and Hispanics realize that the vaccine passports that White Democrats are urging damage their communities. Boston’s mayor, though, is pushing back.

It’s unquestionable that both Blacks and Hispanics have been resistant to the vaccine:

“No, Black people, there is no white supremacist scheme behind the COVID vaccine”
“CDC: Blacks and Hispanics still least likely to be vaccinated”
“US Black and Latino communities often have low vaccination rates – but blaming vaccine hesitancy misses the mark”
“Young Latino and Black people have the lowest rate of COVID-19 vaccination in L.A. County, new data show”

Given their consistent unwillingness to subject themselves to the vaccine, it will have a profound effect on Blacks and Hispanics that Democrat politicians and political bodies (mostly White), on the one hand, and corporations (mostly White-managed), on the other hand, are working together to demand vaccine passports to function in the modern world.

In New York, Bill de Blasio is requiring a vaccine passport for New Yorkers who want to eat inside restaurants (as opposed to on the street with the crazy homeless), attend performances, or go to the gym. Timothy Carney has rightly pointed out that this will create an illegal disparate impact:

Here’s where it gets hairy: There are great racial disparities in vaccination rates in New York City, which means there will be a hugely disparate impact from de Blasio’s rules.

More than 47% of white New Yorkers are vaccinated, according to Bloomberg’s tracker, compared to 33% of black New Yorkers and just under 45% of Hispanics in the city.

That means that black New Yorkers will be barred from public accommodations at a far higher rate than will white New Yorkers. This is kind of an awkward policy.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/zero-covid-coronavirus-pandemic-lockdowns-china-australia-new-zealand-11628101945?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Dr. Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Mr. Boudreaux is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

Much of the pathology underlying Covid policy arises from the fantasy that it is possible to eradicate the virus. Capitalizing on pandemic panic, governments and compliant media have used the lure of zero-Covid to induce obedience to harsh and arbitrary lockdown policies and associated violations of civil liberties.

Among all countries, New Zealand, Australia and especially China have most zealously embraced zero-Covid. China’s initial lockdown in Wuhan was the most tyrannical. It infamously locked people into their homes, forced patients to take untested medications, and imposed 40-day quarantines at gunpoint.

On March 24, 2020, New Zealand imposed one of the most onerous lockdowns in the free world, with sharp restrictions on international travel, business closures, a prohibition on going outside, and official encouragement of citizens to snitch on neighbors. In May 2020, having hit zero-Covid, New Zealand lifted lockdown restrictions, except quarantines for international travelers and warrantless house searches to enforce lockdown.

Australia also took the zero-Covid route. While the initial steps focused on banning international travel, the lockdowns there also involved closed schools, occasional separation of mothers from premature newborns, brutal suppression of protests, and arrests for wandering more than 3 miles from home.

New Zealand’s and Australia’s temporary achievement of zero-Covid and China’s claimed success were greeted with fanfare by the media and scientific journals. China’s authoritarian response seemed so successful—despite the country’s record of lying about the virus—that panicked democratic governments around the world copied it. The three countries lifted their lockdowns and celebrated.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/progressives-callous-indifference-loss-small-bruce-thornton/

Last year’s politicized and panicked lockdowns of the economy will be exacting costs for years. From deaths of despair like suicides and drug overdoses, to lost years of learning in schools and psychological fallout from children being isolated––we will be dealing with such consequences of policies that have nothing to do with science, and everything to do with political expediency. One other calamity is the fate of small businesses, met with callous indifference on the part of our cognitive elites who worked from home and never missed a paycheck.

Last year about 200,000 small businesses, with millions more still at risk, were another casualty of our feckless federal bureaucrats and state government tyrants. In addition to the lockdowns, these businesses also fell prey to months of nationwide riots, arson, looting, and vandalism that was tolerated and often abetted by state and federal authorities. Years of hard work were lost and dreams destroyed.

And now the hyped Delta variant hysteria is generating calls for more lockdowns and other impediments to small business success. This blow comes on top of the damage to the work force inflicted by giving the unemployed––who could have been hired by small enterprises trying to restore their businesses––perverse incentives to stay home, leaving many businesses chronically understaffed. Meanwhile, the people morally preening and shouting about “social justice” and “empathy” just callously pass on by.

One of this country’s most important avenues for fulfilling the American Dream has been blocked, and the virtues of self-reliance, self-control, frugality, hard work, and independence––the bedrock virtues that make us worthy of political freedom and that define the American character­­––are disappearing.

I learned the important role of small businesses from my own family. My grandfather came from Italy in 1906, an “illiterate peasant” according to the officials at Ellis Island. He made his way to the San Joaquin Valley to work in the fields. With hard work and persistence he managed to own his own country store and gas station, a feat impossible in the still-feudal conditions of rural Southern Italy. His four children were all successful, as were his grandchildren and now his great-grandchildren. One even managed to become a professor, something else unthinkable for an illiterate peasant’s grandchild in Southern Italy.

I also know what it’s like to own a small business from my father. He was a Dust-Bowl migrant from West Texas who dropped out of school and rode the rails to California. He trained as a barber, but his dream was to raise cattle. He did both, owning his own barber shops and raising cattle on 180 acres––not enough to support his family by running cattle, but enough to satisfy his boyhood dream and earn some extra money. By the time I was 11 or 12, my brother and I provided the labor, and my mom kept the books for both enterprises.

ttps://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2021/07-08/cultural-marxism-is-real-despite-what-the-left-says/

Alex Antic, a Liberal Party senator for South Australia, recently gave a speech to parliament in which he detailed his reasons for entering public life, declaring: “I was tired of watching the political class, including some polyester conservatives, allow the tide of cultural Marxism to wash over us.” To most people these would seem unexceptional sentiments, but online these simple words created a stir. Within the hour a former ABC journalist, a current Guardian journalist and a professor at ACU took to Twitter to proclaim that in using the term “Cultural Marxism” Senator Antic was spreading an anti-Jewish “right-wing conspiracy theory”—a bizarre accusation considering that Antic had immediately followed these comments by praising Judeo-Christian values.

These knee-jerk responses reveal an interesting truth: we really aren’t supposed to talk about Cultural Marxism. And I do mean really. The wider Left and especially those residing in newsrooms or the halls of academia really, really don’t want you to talk about it. They’ve gone so far as to edit the Wikipedia page for the term so that it is now titled “Cultural Marxism conspiracy theory” and the first line declares that even mentioning the term is “far-right” and “anti-Semitic”. Search for the term on the Guardian Australia website and you will see the spittle-flecked denunciation the term evokes from amongst our betters.

Yet as far as one can tell, none of the facts around the theory itself seem to be in much doubt. In fact you can find almost the exact same theory referencing mostly the same thinkers under the Wikipedia entry for “Western Marxism”. It seems that this is one of those (ever more common) things that it’s acceptable for the Left to talk about but suddenly becomes unacceptable when the rest of us notice it.

So where did the term “Cultural Marxism” come from? Moreover, what is it? And why don’t they want you talking about it?

Back around the turn of the twenty-first century, an American, William S. Lind, began giving a series of speeches to respectable conservative audiences on the topic of what he called “The Origins of Political Correctness”. Lind had spent a large proportion of his life in Washington analysing defence policy for the United States Senate Committee on the Armed Services. Despite never joining the military himself Lind had served as a mentor for generations of young American officers and was one of the original proponents of the massively influential “fourth-generation war” theory.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/biden-gets-more-aggressive-with-the-confiscation-of-capital/

The progressive war on wealth spreads to trusts.

The Biden administration is waging and all-out war on wealth. We already know about the plans to:

Raise the top individual income tax rate to 39.6 percent 43.4 percent if the 3.8 percent tax on net investment income is included,
Raise the top corporate tax rate to 28 percent,
Tax capital gains and dividend income as if they were ordinary income (above a certain percentage) and,
Eliminate the stepped-up basis accorded to assets transferred to heirs upon the death of the owner, something that will (effectively) bring many more people into the death tax, and subject others to a double death tax.

What hasn’t been discussed is a provision that’s buried in the 114-page document released by the U.S. Treasury in May. The document, General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal year 2022 Revenue Proposals (the so-called Green Book), broadly explains President Biden’s plan to confiscate vast amounts of wealth from citizens.

I’m referring to the use of trusts as vehicles to preserve family wealth over generations.

That portion of the plan was not discussed at all by Biden during his campaign, nor was it mentioned when he released his plans to “tax the rich” in April. If this element of the plan becomes law, there will be a great deal of consternation among people who have used an estate-planning strategy regularly for many generations — and not just by the richest 1 percent.

A Primer on Trusts

A trust is an entity created by a contract between the grantor (the person setting up the trust) and the trustee (the person who controls the income and assets of the trust). The trustee controls the trust’s assets for the benefit of beneficiaries, the people who ultimately receive the income and assets from the trust.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/08/04/when_confidence_in_our_institutions_collapses_146188.html

Sometimes, stories that appear unrelated share common foundations and have cumulative effects, far more serious than any one does individually. Highlighting these common features tells us something profound about our society and its troubles. That’s the case with four stories over the past few days.

The first two involve police. One concerns a New York City gang member who attacked multiple officers and shot one of them. The suspect had more than 25 prior arrests for guns, drug offenses, and other crimes. He was known to be part of a gang affiliated with the “Bloods.” Yet Jerome Roman was roaming the streets, gun in hand, out on bail. It is a story repeated dozens of times each week across the country. The second story involves the inability of Portland, Ore., to recruit police to fight the city’s stunning murder epidemic. For some reason, Portland just can’t find people willing to join the special unit designed to stop the killings.

The next two stories involve a subject that seems far removed from violent crime: COVID masks. One is a news report with photographs of Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser celebrating maskless at an indoor party just hours after she had imposed a comprehensive mask mandate on her city, prohibiting exactly her kind of behavior. This was just the latest in a spate of “rules are for thee, not me” actions by Democratic mayors and governors. One of them, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is facing a recall effort. The rest continue along their merry way.

Finally, the ubiquitous Dr. Anthony Fauci, our nation’s top official for infectious diseases, told ABC News this past weekend that wearing masks should not be an individual choice. That statement goes beyond saying masks are desirable, based on public health data. It portends a new round of mandates. President Biden also indicated new, stricter rules are coming.

Is there any connection among these stories about police, murder, hypocrisy, and public health advice? Yes, and it is a connection that illuminates our country’s deepest problems.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/08/04/new-report-nearly-300-billion-in-foreign-aid-spent-by-us-government/?sh=6d9463214374

Many Americans would rather spend their hard-earned money elsewhere, according to polling.

The American taxpayer has been generous to foreign countries. Between the years 2013 and 2018, nearly $300 billion in U.S. taxpayer money flowed as “aid” to countries outside the United States.

Each year, the U.S. spent about $47 billion. Half the aid went to Africa and the Middle East in FY2018, the latest year available for these statistics. Interestingly, despite President Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda, aid to foreign countries remained virtually unchanged in the first two years of his administration.

This week, our organization at OpenTheBooks.com published an oversight report, U.S. Foreign Aid – How And Where The U.S. Spent $282.6 Billion, Plus Updated COVID-19 Aid & Payments To The UN And Other Agencies. Sinclair Broadcast launched the report on their National Desk and 190 local affiliates with ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX.

Our auditors found that U.S. foreign aid dwarfs the federal funds spent by 48 out of 50 state governments annually. Only the state governments of California and New York spent more federal funds than what the U.S. sent abroad each year to foreign countries.

https://dianebederman.com/covid-its-like-smallpox-alan-dershowitz-says-you-must-take-the-vaccine-or-else/

I am not anti vaccines, nor do I believe for a moment that the mRNA gene therapy vaccine for Covid 19 constitutes a “crime against humanity.” However, listening to both sides and demanding a thorough and scientific statistical analysis deserves attention…..rsk

Remember when we were told 18 months ago that we needed a lockdown to flatten the curve for fear the medical establishment would be overwhelmed? And remember we were just told we must take the  vaccine or the medical establishment would be overwhelmed? This is the science? No one should be lockdown or coerced, if not forced, to take an experimental vaccine because of a failing health care system.

Seems We the People are not entitled to know everything there is about the Covid vaccine and side effects. If those promoting mandatory vaccination are so sure of themselves, why is there so much censorship of those with differing opinions?   Science by definition calls for the asking of questions. How do we know who is right or wrong if we cannot read all views? Have we in the West become that stupid that we need our government to tell us right from wrong via social media censorship?

The editor-in-chief, Julian Reichelt, of Germany’s top newspaper Bild has apologized for the news outlet’s fear-driven coverage of COVID, specifically to children who were told “that they were going to murder their grandma.”

“When a state steals the rights of a child, it must prove that by doing so it protects him against concrete and imminent danger. This proof has never been provided. It has been replaced by propaganda presenting the child as a vector of the pandemic.”

Julian Reichelt noted how moderate voices who attempted to offer calmer perspectives on the pandemic “were never invited to the expert table” and urged viewers “don’t believe this lie,” when encountering alarmist proclamations from the government.

Thankfully, a large team of more than 1,000 lawyers and more than 10,000 medical experts, led by Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, has initiated legal proceedings against the CDC, WHO and the Davos Group for crimes against humanity regarding the mRNA gene therapy vaccine for Covid 19.