RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nine-n-y-public-health-officials-quit-amid-feud-with-cuomo-over-vaccine-rollout/

At least nine senior state health officials have quit the New York State Health Department since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, in part due to clashes with Governor Andrew Cuomo over his approach to battling the virus.

The senior officials who have resigned or retired from the state health department in recent months include the deputy commissioner for public health, Dr. Isaac Weisfuse, who left in late summer.

Following Weisfuse’s departure, the director of the bureau of communicable disease control and the medical director for epidemiology also left. Last month, a state epidemiologist also announced her departure.

Much of the tension between health officials and Cuomo stemmed from the governor’s refusal to rely on longstanding vaccine distribution plans. Cuomo dismissed vaccine distribution plans developed and tested at the local level over many years and implemented his own plan that involved tapping large hospital systems as distribution hubs, the New York Times reported Monday.

“The governor’s approach in the beginning seemed to go against the grain in terms of what the philosophy was about how to do this,” Weisfuse remarked to the Times. “It did seem to negate 15 to 20 years of work.”

The governor requested that federal officials to work only with New York state rather than with local officials in New York City, a decision that hamstrung the city’s efforts to set up its own vaccination sites, according to one city official.

Before the vaccine rollout dispute, officials related that the state health department was not heavily involved in decisions regarding permitting public gatherings and ordering businesses to shutter based on the spread of the virus in their areas.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/bidens-climate-change-orders-take-a-sledgehammer-to-western-state-economies-barrasso/ar-BB1dhErP

EXCERPT:

Biden’s unhelpful executive orders

We worked together to pass a historic, bipartisan environmental innovation law. It supports the development of groundbreaking technologies like carbon capture and carbon use, while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions from school buses, trucks, refrigerators and air conditioners. We succeeded in making sure these measures would not raise costs or cost Americans their jobs. 

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called the law “one of the biggest victories to fight global warming in a very long time.” I agree. Free market innovation — not costly regulation — is the best way to address a changing climate.

We were successful in these efforts because we found common ground. Now, as the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, I’m ready to work with President Biden to solve our energy challenges.

So far, the Biden administration’s actions are nowhere near his unifying words on Inauguration Day. On Day One, the president signed executive orders to stop the Keystone XL pipeline and rejoin the Paris climate accord. The next week he halted new oil, gas and coal leases on federal lands.

These orders will take a sledgehammer to the economies of Western states without putting a dent in climate change.

A federal leasing ban would kill an estimated 62,000 jobs in New Mexico, nearly 120,000 in Texas and more than 33,000 in my home state of Wyoming next year alone, according to the American Petroleum Institute. It will also eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue that these states depend on for public schools, roads, water projects and other essential services.

In response to the Keystone cancellation, TC Energy has announced 1,000 layoffs, and the potential union jobs lost could be 10 times higher.

Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s nominee to be Energy secretary, even admitted at her confirmation hearing that some energy jobs “might be sacrificed.” Handing out pink slips will not unite red states and blue states.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/01/31/kennedy-center-received-270-million-from-congress-and-paid-their-president-5-million-since-2016/?sh=3d1baad236d6

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. disclosed that it has received $269.4 million in federal funding since 2016 – including $42 million in grants and last year’s $25 million coronavirus earmark that was mostly used for payroll.

Even during the 2020 pandemic, the Center grew their net assets by $3.3 million to $505 million. Since 2016, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found a $114.4 million increase in net assets – from $390.6 million.

During this five-year period, their president, Deborah Rutter, received pay and benefits amounting to $5.1 million. Peak earning years were 2018 and 2019 when she was paid $1.3 million annually. During the 2020 pandemic year, she cut her pay to $507,375, which is still more than the U.S. President makes at $400,000.

We reached out for comment and Chairman David M. Rubenstein provided this response:

“Deborah Rutter is at the top of her field and her salary is competitive with peers at the country’s largest performing arts organizations. In her more than six years at the Kennedy Center’s helm, Deborah’s vision, leadership, and artistic and financial results have exceeded the board’s expectations. Even before the pandemic forced a complete shutdown, she voluntarily offered to take no salary until further notice. Her outstanding leadership and dedication to the Center, both before and during the pandemic crisis, have proven that she is the right person at the right time.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/31/democratic-criminal-class-insurrection-against-maga-america/

Peace through strength increasingly is the province of the state, and not the sovereign individual. We live under the law of rule, not the rule of law.

When Uncle Sam threatens some blighted and benighted region of the world—ostensibly on behalf of the American People and for the region’s own good—our representatives call it peace through strength. 

It is then that ordinary Americans are encouraged to pipe up in praise of the state’s invariably Orwellian peace-through-strength strategies. 

Peace through strength on our front porches, while being menaced by lowbrow looters and assorted louts? For that you can be incarcerated in the land where the criminal roams free.   

And when practiced by pale faces, our Second Amendment rights, exercised on the perimeter of our properties, as we stand vigil against the vilest of human beings—that’s tantamount to white supremacy and privilege.

Witness the fate of some courageous homeowners (the McCloskeys of St. Louis, Missouri) exercising age-old rights—also American constitutional rights—when they ventured out onto their verandas with firearms, intending to stand their ground and deter mobs from overrunning hearth and home.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/31/why-are-progressives-so-illiberal/

Progressives adopted identity politics and rejected class considerations because solidarity with elite minorities excuses them from concern for, or experience with, the middle classes of all races.

One common theme in the abject madness and tragedies of the past 12 months is that progressive ideology now permeates almost all of our major institutions—even as the majority of Americans resist the leftist agenda. Its reach resembles the manner in which the pre-Renaissance church had absorbed the economic, cultural, social, artistic, and political life of Europe, or perhaps how Islamic doctrine was the foundation for all public and private life under the Ottoman Sultanate—or even how all Russian institutions of the 1930s exuded tenets of Soviet Marxism.

Pan-progressivism

To be a Silicon Valley executive, a prominent Wall Street player, the head of a prestigious publishing house, a university president, a network or PBS anchor, a major Hollywood actress, a retired general or admiral on a corporate board, or a NBA superstar requires either progressive fides or careful suppression of all political affinities.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 98 percent of Big Tech political donations went to Democrats in 2020. Censorship and deplatforming on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media companies is decidedly one-way. When Mark Zuckerberg and others in Silicon Valley donate $500 million to help officials “get out the vote” in particular precincts, it is not to help candidates of both parties.

Google calibrates the order of its search results with a progressive, not a conservative, bent. Grandees from the Clinton or Obama Administration find sinecures in Silicon Valley, not Republicans or conservatives.

The $4-5 trillion market-capitalized Big Tech cartels, run by self-described progressives, aimed to extinguish conservative brands like Parler. Ironically, they now apply ideological force multipliers to the very strategies and tactics of 19th-century robber-baron trusts and monopolies. Poor Jack Dorsey has never been able to explain why Twitter deplatforms and cancels conservatives for the same supposed uncouthness that leftists routinely employ.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-promising-vaccine-this-one-from-johnson-johnson-11612131877?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Some good news this week: Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine looks likely to become the third U.S. Covid-19 vaccine to enter the market. The company released data this week showing the vaccine is about 70% effective against the virus, and its version requires only one shot. The Food and Drug Administration will need to review the evidence thoroughly, but the preliminary data is promising. The company is collecting more information to determine whether a booster shot could provide even better protection.

Crushing Covid will require making the most of the different vaccine candidates, which come with their own pros and cons, and tweaking them to stay ahead of viral mutations. The vaccines all follow a similar basic approach, putting into arms the spike protein found on the surface of the coronavirus. But Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine takes a slightly different approach to delivery than vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna. (I am on the board of Pfizer.) The biotech company Novavax is pursuing a vaccine candidate with its own special delivery system. All four might be available by the summer, which would mean an ample supply.

Americans will wonder which one works best? It will be tempting to compare data across trials. But that isn’t apples to apples; the vaccines and the data aren’t all the same. And new variants of Covid may demand vaccines that offer slightly different layers of protection and target slightly different parts of the virus.

The regulatory process must encourage this kind of portfolio diversification, while allowing tweaks to keep ahead of the virus’s twists and turns. The FDA is working on guidance to address new variants, which will include a pathway for updating vaccines.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/tsunami-hate-david-horowitz/

“America will not be healed until the Democrat Party returns to its senses, repudiates its current racist attitudes, and stops demonizing its opponents as what Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called “enemies of the state.”

Everybody agrees that our country is in crisis –  and agrees that it is the worst crisis since the Civil War. But at the same time, we tell ourselves a comforting tale about the source of the crisis that perpetuates the problem instead of providing a path to ending it. We say our politics are “divisive” and talk about “unity and healing” as though that would miraculously be achieved if everybody stopped … what? Disagreeing? All politics is divisive. That’s the healthy basis of our constitutional order: the freedom to disagree. To suppress disagreement, to outlaw it – as many Democrats and their Big Tech and media allies are demanding these days – is to end democracy as we know it.

The problem is not that we disagree. We are not suffering as a nation from healthy disagreement. We are suffering from a Tsunami of Hate emanating from the Democrat Party that seeks to demonize, criminalize and extinguish dissent from the 75 million supporters of Donald Trump. It is now official Washington dogma that to question an election result – something the congressional Democrats have done in the face of every Republican presidential victory since 2000 – is now “insurrection” and “domestic terrorism,” or the incitement thereto, and needs to be prosecuted and suppressed.

https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2021/01/28/dismiss_all_the_populist_gamestop_hype_short_sellers_are_heroes_658260.html

Back around 2007, investor John Paulson began to feel skeptical about the viability of mortgage securities. Though demand for them was much greater than supply, Paulson sensed that lending standards had plummeted so far that loan delinquencies were set to surge. The “third rate” hedge fund manager (that’s what those who covered him at top investment banks felt) proceeded to very inexpensively purchase insurance on mortgages. He was able to because the consensus in the marketplace was that he was very wrong.

As readers know, Paulson was subsequently vindicated in 2008. Funny about the billions he made on his bet was that all-too-many looked askance at his remarkable gains. Paulson was said to be profiting from the pain experienced by borrowers and lenders. In truth, Paulson was a hero.

His major investment gains sent a crucial signal that lenders should shrink their exposure to home loans. Realistically billions were diverted from a form of lending that, at the time, was no longer viable. Translated, Paulson’s billions helped avert what would have been a much bigger economic crash if the faulty lending had continued.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/01/bare-knuckle-brawl-over-gamestop-pits-americas-elites-vs-deplorables/

Only someone living under a rock hasn’t heard about the GameStop stock market shorting scandal. While the mechanics of the stock market battle are interesting, they’re nothing new. What’s new is this: The battle this time is being waged by Deplorable America vs. Elite America. And Elite America isn’t at all happy about it.

It’s well known that the stock market isn’t controlled by small investors, but by massive financial institutions. Recent data show that mutual funds, pension funds, hedge funds, Wall Street investment banks, public pensions and the like control more than 80% of all shares traded. They are always the elephant in the room.

The little guys with trading portfolios of less than $100,000 or so, often operating online at lightning speed on no-commission trading sites – such as Robinhood – have a small piece of all the trading. They win only by exploiting cracks in a system dominated by big firms.

Which makes it all the more amazing that they were able to take out a major hedge fund with a short position in GameStop, a troubled chain of computer gaming stores that still has a big following on Reddit.

First, in case you don’t know what “shorting” a stock is, it’s basically borrowing a number of shares of a given stock to sell at the current price. The borrower sells the shares, then promises to pay back the lender the same number of shares at a later date.