RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/02/math_the_latest_battleground_in_the_war_against_truth.html

In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, set in the superstate of Oceania, the government propagates the absurd equation 2 + 2 = 5. Through steady indoctrination, and under the ever-watchful Thought Police, the citizens accept it as an unquestionable truth. The equation symbolizes the extinction of free thought in repressive totalitarian societies: facts, truths and objective reality are subordinated to political will and twisted to serve the authoritarian goals of the Party and its leader, Big Brother.

Something similar is happening in many American schools. An eerie Orwellian shadow is being cast over math instruction. The focus is insidiously shifting from arithmetic, geometry, and algebra to critical race theory, ethnic studies, and intersectionality. Ridiculous as it may sound, an objective field of knowledge is being thrust into the realm of social experimentation. Students are being taught not how to think but what to think. Instead of developing critical thinking skills, today’s math classes stipulate that students hold particular views about the world and instruct them on how they must extinguish what is posited as “wrongthink.”

Across America, math teaching practices that were considered essential are suddenly being condemned as racist, requiring students to display the steps in solving a problem is now deemed white supremacist; teachers’ corrections, and even the concept of a correct answer, are considered suspect or undesirable; polite interaction, raising hands before commenting or asking questions, and maintaining order in the classroom are viewed as reinforcing paternalism and condemned as “power hoarding.”

This idiocy has swept, among others, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the fruit of the worst practices of monopolistic capitalism but now quick to align itself with left-liberal, pseudo-egalitarian causes. The foundation is providing more than $140 million to ‘A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction,’ an organization of 25 educational institutions that contend that math is synonymous with white supremacy and upholds “capitalist, imperialistic and racist” views. Pathway offers a five-part toolkit and videoconferences to make educators “reflect on their own biases” and commit to advance math “equity” by understanding that students of color use math differently than do white students.

https://www.city-journal.org/lockdowns-impact-on-mental-and-physical-health

At the start of the pandemic last year, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti chose “safer at home” as the motto for his lockdown policies. If the past year has shown us anything, it’s how misguided that notion is. Lockdowns have created not just economic devastation for America’s small businesses, restaurants, museums, and zoos. They have also taken a significant toll on the mental and physical health of everyone from small children to the elderly (while doing little to contain the virus itself). To get a sense of this, compare two states that took opposite approaches: New York and Florida.

Despite the hysteria about how bad things were in Florida and the Biden administration’s recent threat to restrict travel to the state, statistics suggest that you’re better off in the Sunshine State. Currently, Florida has 224 people per 1 million in hospitals for Covid-19; New York State has 338 per million, or 50 percent more. In New York, blacks are 2.3 times more likely than whites to die of Covid; in Florida, blacks are equally as likely as whites to die. Governor Andrew Cuomo’s disastrous policies have resulted in much higher mortality rates in New York’s nursing homes than in Florida’s.

The lockdowns themselves have also been deeply destructive. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Florida saw a 4.6 percent drop in employment from December 2019 to December 2020. New York’s drop was more than twice that, at 10.4 percent. To judge by recent news coverage of businesses fleeing New York for Florida, it’s possible that a number of those jobs simply went from one state to the other.

The pandemic’s toll on physical and mental health has also been severe, no doubt related to these economic losses but also caused by the severe isolation people experience under lockdown. At the beginning of the pandemic, Florida entered a brief lockdown phase in the same way that New York did. As a result, both states saw a severe decline in the number of cases reported to state child-abuse hotlines.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/democrats-turn-thumbscrews-make-us-suffer-don-feder/

Everything the Democrat Party does should be seen not from an economic or a political perspective, but one of sin and suffering — the suffering it imposes on us to expiate our imagery sins.

It came to me in a flash of insight when I heard of a now-disgraced bureaucrat (“an undersecretary of climate change” in Massachusetts) who told a gathering of his colleagues that to fight melting ice caps and rising sea levels  they would have to “break the will” of ordinary Americans, by “turning the screws” — raising energy costs so high that they would have to “stop emitting.” Admirable candor from a functionary of the state with the soul of a Medieval torturer.

But it goes beyond the need to make us obey. Progressives believe Americans must be made to atone for our sins (environmental, racial, economic and national) with higher taxes and energy costs, a lower standard of living, crime, open borders, racial humiliation and national dissolution.

It’s not a power-grab as much as an attempt to force a sort of secular Calvinism on the nation.

Global Warming – Our sins here include the internal combustion engine and reliance on fossil fuel, leading to CO2 emissions said to cause depletion of the earth’s ozone layer.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/25/dems-covid-bill-takes-waste-fraud-and-abuse-to-a-whole-new-level/

President Joe Biden recently defended his $1.9 trillion COVID bill by asking critics of the plan: “What would they have me cut? What would they have me leave out?” The easier question would be, what’s worth keeping?

The bill is riddled with spending unrelated to the COVID crisis, gifts to big unions, bailouts to states that don’t need them, and bad economic policies. It is, in short, a monument to Democratic-style political corruption bought with money borrowed from our children and grandchildren.

We have already exposed the many lies being used to justify this spending monstrosity. The details now available in the House bill add insult to injury.

While Democrats claim the need is urgent, almost $700 billion of of the funds won’t get spent until sometime over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

This is particularly true when it comes to money for education and labor – which includes dollars for schools, colleges, child care, and the $15 minimum wage. Less than 10% of the $293 billion thrown at these programs will go out this year, according to the CBO. More than a third won’t get spent until after the next presidential election!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/supersizing-obamacare-subsidies-11614210175?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

EXCERPT:

Provisions of the $1.9 trillion bill moving through the House make Affordable Care Act subsidies more generous and available even to the affluent. Buying an ObamaCare policy makes sense if a subsidy shields you from fearsome premiums and out-of-pocket costs; more than 85% of enrollees receive such a subsidy. But those who earn too much to qualify for government subsidies have been fleeing the exchanges. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Servicessaid last fall that unsubsidized enrollment dropped 45% between 2016 and 2019.

Instead of making the underlying product better or less expensive, Democrats now want to pass more of the cost onto taxpayers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pelosis-capitol-riot-commission-11614210098?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Nancy Pelosi wants a “9/11-type” commission to investigate the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, and there’s a case for doing it—if the goal is truly to find out why America’s seat of government was so poorly protected and how much of the violence was planned. Is that what Mrs. Pelosi is after?

There’s reason to doubt it, since she pushed to make the commission a partisan body. Her initial plan was to have seven members appointed by Democrats and four by Republicans. This is impossible to justify, especially in a country so closely divided. Democrats have 51% of House seats and Republicans have 49%, and the Senate is 50-50. Why, then, would Democrats get to appoint 64% of a Jan. 6 commission?

The only way an inquiry can defang disinformation and conspiracy theories, like the idea that the Capitol rioters were antifa agitators in disguise, is if the country thinks the effort is factual and fair. An even partisan split is crucial for credibility. Otherwise a sizable share of Americans will suspect it’s a political weapon designed to find President Trump guilty of incitement to insurrection, more or less, after a failed impeachment trial.

Mrs. Pelosi should want an inquiry that delivers a unanimous outcome, not one that breaks down on party lines. Heed the veterans of the 9/11 commission, which she invokes. Its Democratic vice chairman, former Rep. Lee Hamilton, told Politico that Mrs. Pelosi’s proposal “does not sound to me like a good start; it sounds like a partisan beginning.” Its GOP chairman, former New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, said that without equal representation, “the report won’t have as much confidence from the American people.”

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/feb/23/biden-a-dark-money-puppet/

Liberal dark money groups spent a record-breaking $145 million to get Joe Biden elected, and now they are cashing in. These groups are pushing President Biden to nominate dark money appointees and pass their extreme left-wing policies.

From top to bottom, Mr. Biden’s staff is filled with people affiliated with dark money. His chief of staff, Ron Klain, was a board member of the dark money group CAP Action Fund before joining the Biden administration.

Similarly, Gina McCarthy, the White House National Climate Adviser, led the Natural Resources Defense Council, a climate action dark money group that has received millions from the Sixteen Thirty Fund and the New Venture Fund.

Those two funds come underneath the massive dark money umbrella of little-known Arabella Advisors, which moves half-a-billion dollars per year to left-wing organizations involved in policy and political campaigns.

Another example is Jennifer Granholm, President Biden’s nominee for secretary of Energy. Ms. Granholm chaired a dark money think tank whose sister organization spent $60 million to help elect Mr. Biden.

Mr. Biden is already delivering for his dark money donors on a policy level. He canceled the permit for the Keystone pipeline, eliminating thousands of good-paying union jobs, and he is breaking all the promises of moderation he made in 2020.

Democrats love to chide Republicans about their dark money ties, but Mr. Biden is truly the first dark money president.