RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/the-white-house-prepared-for-a-pandemic-11597792593

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo launched the Democrats’ broadside against the Trump administration’s Covid-19 response. “Our current federal government is dysfunctional and incompetent,” he told virtual conventioneers Monday in a recorded speech. “It couldn’t fight off the virus. In fact, it didn’t even see it coming.”

The report was produced by the Council of Economic Advisers at the behest of the National Security Council’s biodefense team. It detailed the large health and economic losses that could happen from flu pandemic in the U.S. The report discussed how the lack of private market incentives had led to underinvestment in developing and using innovative technologies that can quickly produce vaccines for a new virus.

Influenza vaccines have primarily been manufactured in chicken eggs for the past 70 years. The process is too slow to produce a new vaccine for a novel, unexpected virus and impairs the vaccines’ efficacy against the flu. Public-private partnerships created under a 2006 statute led to the development of newer, faster manufacturing techniques. But these vaccines are more expensive and haven’t been widely adopted.

The main issue is that vaccine developers aren’t rewarded for innovation. Their research-and-development and investment costs for improved vaccines are recovered only through sales that occur in the unlikely event that a pandemic occurs—there have only been four flu pandemics the past 100 years—even though vaccine innovation provides benefits from risk-reduction before any pandemic. Vaccines have insurance value today that provides protection against possible future damage, regardless of whether a pandemic occurs. That means the social return from innovative vaccines is greater than their private return to developers.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/more-than-200-charged-with-federal-crimes-under-operation-legend-doj_3466551.html

More than 200 people have been charged with federal crimes among the nearly 1,500 people arrested as part of an initiative aimed to stem violent crime in major inner cities, the Justice Department (DOJ) stated on Aug. 19.

The figures represent the latest numbers of law enforcement actions taken since the start of Operation Legend in early July, which has since been expanded to numerous cities around the country, Attorney General William Barr said.

As part of the operation, about 217 people were charged with federal crimes and nearly 400 firearms have been seized by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), Barr said. The nearly 1,500 people arrested were mostly arrested for violent state crimes, which include more than 90 homicides.

Numbers from Indianapolis, which was added to the program just last week, aren’t included, the DOJ stated.

Over the past few weeks, the DOJ announced several moves to show its commitment to cracking down on violent crime across the country. That led to Operation Legend, a law enforcement program in which federal resources are surged to inner U.S. cities to assist local and state law enforcement officials to tackle violent crime and restore public safety.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/ex-fbi-lawyer-kevin-clinesmith-pleads-guilty-in-durham-investigation

The former FBI lawyer charged in U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation of the investigators pleaded guilty Wednesday to a false statements charge for fraudulently altering a CIA email to obtain surveillance against a former Trump campaign associate.

Clinesmith, who worked on the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server as well as on the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane inquiry and special counsel Robert Mueller’s team during the Trump-Russia inquiry, admitted that he falsified a document during the bureau’s efforts to renew Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authority to wiretap Carter Page, who had been a foreign policy adviser to now-President Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Judge James Boasberg, the presiding judge in the criminal case against Clinesmith (and also the presiding judge for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court), accepted the plea during the hearing conducted by phone before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Clinesmith, 38, claimed in early 2017 that Page was “not a source” for the CIA when the CIA had actually told the bureau on multiple occasions that Page was indeed an operational contact for them. Durham submitted a five-page filing to the federal court on Friday, noting Clinesmith was being charged under 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(3) for “False Statements.”

Anthony Scarpelli, an assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia and a Durham team member, appeared for the Justice Department. Clinesmith’s lawyer, Justin Shur, was representing him on the call.

The judge asked Clinesmith if he agreed everything outlined in Durham’s criminal information court filed Friday against Clinesmith was true, and he replied, “Yes, your honor.”

https://www.wbez.org/stories/winning-has-come-through-revolts-a-black-lives-matter-activist-on-why-she-supports-looting/398d0f3f-73d0-4f2e-ae32-04cceba0d322

The Sunday afternoon shooting by police of Latrell Allen, 20, in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood led to a standoff in that community between residents and officers. By evening the tension had eased, but overnight and into the early morning hours Monday, looters hit Chicago’s wealthiest shopping district on North Michigan Avenue.

Looting earlier this summer grew out of large protest marches downtown. This most recent looting was different, and it’s exact genesis remains unclear. Mayor Lori Lightfoot said,“This is not legitimate First Amendment-protected speech. … This was straight-up felony, criminal conduct,” but some activists disagree. WBEZ talked with Black Lives Matter organizer Ariel Atkins on why she supports people looting and looting as protest.

What’s your take on the police shooting in Englewood and the subsequent looting downtown?

Ariel Atkins: A lot of people are really attacking our pages. They’re like, ‘Oh, you support the looters.’ And yeah, we do, 100%. That’s reparations. And like however people choose to protest, especially if it was definitely in line with what happened with the shooting, which would be powerful to see people reacting … without organizers just being like, ‘We’re angry and this is what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna take the power back.’

I feel like these stores, these Macy’s, these Guccis, the PNC Banks, they’re not here for us. The city puts way more money and investment into spending time and protecting their spaces and making sure that they exist. And yet our people are constantly being pushed out of the city. … Unemployment is incredibly high, like we are in an incredible situation, and the fact that anybody gives a s*** about these businesses over what is happening in this city right now and the pain that people are in and the suffering that is taking place, I don’t care. I will support the looters ‘till the end of the day. If that’s what they need to do in order to eat, then that’s what you’ve got to do to eat.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/18/against-black-lives-matter/

Although they operate under the banner of social justice, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and its allies are a pernicious force. The false narratives, the toleration of lawlessness, and the punishment of dissenters have left our society in disarray. Americans of all races and political stripes should reject these tactics.

The problems with BLM start with its false claim that white police and civilians are systematically killing black people. Allied media have promoted cases that seem to fit this narrative, such as the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, but the outrage is selective. In a country as large as the United States, reporters can find individual incidents to support just about any narrative they want.

The statistics on race and crime tell a very different story than the one advanced by the anecdotes favored by the media. First, black Americans are far more likely than non-blacks to commit violent crime. Blacks accounted for 37 percent of all arrests for violent crime in 2018, including 53 percent of murder arrests, despite constituting only 13 percent of the population. It is this fundamental disparity in base rates of crime that generates so many encounters between blacks and police in the first place. Once we adjust for base rates, police are less likely to fatally shoot black suspects compared to white suspects—a fact that is entirely at odds with the BLM narrative.

Even the evidence that police may be rougher with (but not more likely to kill) black suspects needs to be viewed in the context of base rates. While we should welcome any reforms that will make law enforcement more fair and effective, police cannot be blamed for noticing that some groups tend to be more dangerous than others. Black men are 6 percent of the population but have perpetrated 42 percent of cop killings over the past decade. That fact is surely relevant when police are required to make threat assessments with limited information.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/trump-russia-investigation-will-kevin-clinesmith-plead-guilty/

He has a lot to lose.

It is called the allocution. It is the most important part of a guilty plea in federal court. It comes — if it comes — when the judge personally addresses the accused, who has been placed under oath, and asks him to explain in his own words how and why he is guilty of the crime charged.

Is Kevin Clinesmith willing to allocute? Is he willing to admit without reservation that he deceived his FBI colleagues and a federal court? The lack of clear answers to those questions is almost certainly the sticking point — the reason why, to this moment, there is only a false-statement charge against the former Bureau lawyer, not a false-statement guilty plea.

When it comes time to allocute, the court must ensure that the accused acknowledges committing the acts alleged and, just as significantly, doing so with the level of criminal intent prescribed in the relevant penal statute — the mens rea of the crime. If the accused does not admit guilt, and evince that he is doing so voluntarily and in full awareness of the possible consequences, then the judge should not accept the guilty plea.

After all, such a plea involves a waiver of constitutional and statutory rights — to due process, to putting the prosecution to its burden of proving all elements of the charge beyond a reasonable doubt at trial, to appeal. The plea further subjects the accused to potential imprisonment and significant fines; and the allocution itself could subject the accused to further prosecution for perjury if he lies while under oath.

https://acdemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Screen-Shot-2020-08-18-at-2.05.21-PM.png

Black Lives Matter, Israel & Intersectionality 

Since the founding of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in 2013, the delegitimization (DLG) network against Israel and its activists have embarked on a propaganda campaign that draws parallels between police violence in the US against African Americans and violence against Palestinians by the Israel Police and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). This fictitious parallel is part of a strategic attempt by the delegitimization network to entrench itself and the BDS movement as a focal point of the progressive movement.Intersectionality posits that no form of discrimination is distinct from another. This includes discrimination that emanates from capitalism, white supremacy, government, prison and justice systems, the police force, colonialism, gender hetero-normativity, and other institutionalized norms.

After the killing of George Floyd, DLG activists immediately began drawing comparisons with what they describe as systematic and deadly Israeli brutality against Palestinians. The comparisons were given further impetus in the wake of the May 30th killing of Iyad Halak, an autistic Palestinian from East Jerusalem, by Israeli police in Jerusalem’s Old City. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/16/health/coronavirus-immunity-antibodies.html?surface=home-discovery-vi-prg&fellback=

Disease-fighting antibodies and special immune cells appear to persist months after coronavirus infections have resolved, new research shows.

“This is exactly what you would hope for,” said Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington and an author on another of the new studies, which is currently under review at the journal Nature. “All the pieces are there to have a totally protective immune response.”

Protection against reinfection cannot be fully confirmed until there is proof that most people who encounter the virus a second time are actually able to keep it at bay, Dr. Pepper said. But the findings could help quell recent concerns over the virus’s ability to dupe the immune system into amnesia, leaving people vulnerable to repeat bouts of disease.

Researchers have yet to find unambiguous evidence that coronavirus reinfections are occurring, especially within the few months that the virus has been rippling through the human population. The prospect of immune memory “helps to explain that,” Dr. Pepper said.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-posthumously-pardons-susan-b-anthony/

President Trump said Tuesday that he will grant a posthumous pardon to Susan B. Anthony, one of the major figures of the women’s suffrage movement.

The president’s announcement came on the 100th anniversary of the ratification in 1920 of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote.

“I will be signing a full and complete pardon of Susan B. Anthony. She was never pardoned,” Trump said at the White House Tuesday morning.

The women’s rights activist was arrested in 1872 for voting as a woman in Rochester, New York and was later convicted. Several years later, in 1878, the amendment giving women the right to vote was presented to Congress thanks to Anthony’s efforts.

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She was also active against slavery and collected anti-slavery petitions while still a teenager.

Anthony died in 1906.