RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/free-citizens-do-not-kneel-bruce-thornton/

In the last couple of weeks we have witnessed people, most of them white, kneeling before black protestors and activists as a supposed gesture of repentance for their crimes of “white privilege” and tolerating “systemic racism.” The kneeling penitents include not just ordinary people, but police officers, National Guardsmen, and, in a shocking self-debasement of the world’s greatest democratic republic, a gaggle of House Representatives adorned with “culturally appropriated” African kente cloth scarves.

White progressive racial masochism is nothing new; Tom Wolfe skewered it brilliantly nearly a half century ago in essays like “Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers.” But the current manifestation is more significant and dangerous. It has taken place amidst violent widespread rioting and looting and assaults, and so these acts of kneeling are a form of tribute exacted by the sheer power of destruction wrought by the rioters and their “peaceful” abettors. As such, they undermine the very foundation of citizen self-rule and political freedom: Government by laws, offices, and free deliberation rather than by the whims and failings of one man; and by accountability to the sovereign people and their laws, instead of submission to violent coercion.

Kneeling specifically appears in Greek literature as an emblem of political slavery that follows an absence of rule by law and accountability. In the Histories, Herodotus’s narrative of the Persian wars continually contrasts the free, self-ruling Greek with the slavish, unfree Persians. One cultural practice in particular epitomized for the Greeks the political enslavement of the Persians who were ruled by the quasi-divine Great King Xerxes bestowed with absolute power over the lives and property of his subjects. Hence the law that anytime someone came into the presence of the King, he had to kneel before him, then bend over and kiss the ground as an act of submission. The Greek word for this was proskunesis, an act of “obeisance” suitable only for acknowledging the gods.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/06/11/police_and_race_hard_problems_and_hard_truths_143422.html

In the midst of head-spinning talk about defunding police or abolishing them entirely, it’s important to step back and take a sober look at the debate. The racial dimension of policing is vexing because the racial dimension of American life is vexing. It is the deepest scar in our history. We treated it indecisively in forming our new nation and finally confronted it, at gruesome cost, in a great Civil War. We confronted it again a century later, after the failure of Reconstruction and decades of Jim Crow laws, during the Civil Rights Movement.

Despite those efforts and significant progress over the past half century, we never eliminated racism completely. We are facing it again today. The laws of the mid-1960s ensured de jure equality. Since then, the struggle has been to create a more equal society in practice. It’s difficult to even agree on the meaning of that term, much less achieve it. For some, equality refers to outcomes; for others, opportunities. Whatever the meaning, it must mean equal treatment by police. There’s no disagreement about that fundamental point.

For those who experienced the racial upheavals of the 1960s, it should be obvious that racism is far less prevalent in all aspects of American life today. That includes policing. It may not seem that way, though, because our time horizons are too short. Most Americans alive today didn’t live through that era, so they haven’t witnessed the gradual but unmistakable improvement. 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2020/06/11/should-non-profit-us-food-bank-executives-earn-up-to-11-million-per-year/#3d83ace1d5ba

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, a record 44 million Americans lost their jobs and filed for unemployment. Many turned to their local non-profit, charitable food banks for hunger relief.

Based in Chicago, Feeding America is the largest food bank in the country with revenues of $2.9 billion (2019). Primarily a pass-through organization, it makes grants and donations to local food banks across the country.

Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com reviewed Feeding America’s payroll disclosures and found Diana Aviv, CEO, made $1.1 million (2019). This amount included $347,209 from a previous employer and rolled into a new 457B plan which was distributed to her when she left the organization that year.

In the previous year, Feeding America paid Aviv compensation of $860,909.

In 2019, other executives at the organization also made a lot of money: President Matthew Knott ($561,842, up $89,224), Treasurer Paul Henrys ($412,105, up $15,162), and Chief Marketing & Communications Officer Catherine Davis ($344,166, up $17,161). Chief Supply Chain Officer William Thomas made nearly $600,000 between 2018 and 2019 before leaving the organization.            

https://amgreatness.com/2020/06/10/familiar-names-that-may-appear-in-durham-indictments/

Barr talks the talk. But is he really willing to weather the media firestorm that will rise up to defend the politicized criminal system that has become the status quo?

Recently, Attorney General William Barr met with Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier in a surprisingly candid and wide-ranging interview during which he confirmed many of my observations about the FBI and Justice Department’s attempt to interfere with the 2016 election and the peaceful transfer of power from the Obama to the Trump Administrations.

Although Barr gamely blamed the slow-moving “wheels of justice” for the seeming lack of accountability for the many conspirators, we should not forget that the wheels of “injustice” moved rather quickly as the get-Trump forces leveraged the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act process and dubious criminal investigations to trump up charges against Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and a Russian catering company that the Department of Justice attempted to prosecute for daring to criticize HIllary Clinton on the internet.

Barr suggested we will learn of criminal indictments before the assigned prosecutor, U.S. Attorney John Durham, issues a report on the Justice Department misconduct. The prosecutions will not reach former president Barack Obama or his vice president. But some of the names will be familiar. Barr declined to name names. For anyone following the Russian collusion hoax over the past three years, the list of possible defendants and people likely to be fired isn’t difficult to guess.

https://issuesinsights.com/2020/06/11/the-who-follies-redux/

The World Health Organization this week showed once again why the motto on its official seal should be, Aperto Ore, Pede Inserta, or in English: Open Mouth, Insert Foot.

On Monday, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of the WHO’s emerging disease and zoonosis unit, said that transmission of COVID-19 from asymptomatic, infected patients to other persons was “very rare.” There was immediate and widespread pushback. For example, on Tuesday the Harvard Global Health Institute issued a statement, which said in part that “all of the best evidence suggests that people without symptoms can and do readily spread SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19.”

Van Kerkove’s statement was a particularly embarrassing failure of scientific communication, one of WHO’s primary responsibilities, because governments and public health officials worldwide have instituted lockdowns and issued guidance to socially distance and wear face masks in an effort, in part, to stop asymptomatic spread.

The day after Van Kerkhove’s misstatement, WHO convened a news conference to walk back her comments, stressing that much remains unknown. But the comment from Monday had already gone viral (pardon the expression) and been seized upon by those who believe that people do not need to wear masks or observe social distancing precautions.

Calling the controversy “a misunderstanding,” Van Kerkhove clumsily tried to perform damage control. “I wasn’t stating a policy of WHO or anything like that,” she said. “We do know that some people who are asymptomatic, or some people who do not have symptoms, can transmit the virus on.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2020/06/defund-cops-fund-crime-murders-250-la-daniel-greenfield/

Pro-crime policies work. They always do.

Engage in pro-crime policymaking and you will get more crime. But some lives just don’t matter.

The Los Angeles Police Department announced Tuesday that homicides in the city increased 250% over the previous week, and the number of people who were shot increased by 56% during the same period.

The increased numbers were recorded during the week of May 31-June 6, but officials also reported continued violence this week.

The violence is, predictably, gang related.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/06/california-seeks-empower-illiberal-identity-bruce-thornton/

The link between affirmative action and the current mayhem destroying our cities.

Under the cover of plague and riots, the California Legislature is proposing a November ballot measure that would undo Proposition 209, which in 1996 banned the use of race and sex in university admissions, hiring, and state agency contracts. If the measure passes, the state will return to the days of rank discrimination and mismatching minority applicants with universities, setting them up for failure.

Like the current riots, the restoration of affirmative action will empower illiberal identity politics and the victim-narratives they reflect.

Proponents of undoing 209, of course, trot out melodramas of devastated black and Latino applicants and their shattered dreams. In truth, ending affirmative action did not stop protected applicants from going to college. It stopped the flagship campuses Cal Berkeley and UCLA from skimming minority candidates who were not prepared for the greater rigor of those two universities. Now they attended less prestigious campuses like Riverside or Merced, for which they are better qualified based on their academic record and test scores––exactly what happens with Caucasians, who now comprise, by the way, only one-fifth of U.C. students. And despite the predictions of Armaggedon for minority students, their performance has improved since Prop 209, because they no longer are “mismatched” to universities, as Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr. document in their 2012 book Mismatch. Minority graduation rates, grade-point averages, and majors in science or engineering all have increased after 209.

https://www.city-journal.org/repudiate-the-anti-police-narrative

The following is testimony delivered to the House Committee on the Judiciary on June 10.

“It is understandable and appropriate, when viewing the horrific arrest and death of George Floyd, to ask whether we are seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to policing and the brutal indifference to human life. The history of law enforcement in the U.S. was interwoven with slavery and segregation. The memory of policing’s complicity with racial oppression cannot be easily erased.

But I urge this committee to reject the proposition that law enforcement today is systemically biased. The evidence does not support that charge. Police officials and officers across the country have expressed their disgust at the chillingly callous behavior seen in the Floyd video. It is a violation of everything that the profession currently stands for. Embracing the systemic bias allegation will only lead to more lives lost to criminal violence; many of them, sadly, will be black. To move from the stomach-churning specificity of Mr. Floyd’s case to broader numbers is jarring. Nevertheless, if the charge against policing is systemic racism, we need to look at the system as a whole.

Policing today is driven by crime data and community demands for help.