RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-contracting-is-the-next-dei-target-race-affirmative-action-supreme-court-ca60eaf4?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Critics of diversity, equity and inclusion policies scored an important victory with last year’s Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, and a symbolic one with Claudine Gay’s resignation as Harvard’s president. But while some universities and businesses have pivoted from DEI to get in line with the high court’s ruling, Washington’s diversity-industrial complex marches on. It’s time for the federal government to play by the same antidiscrimination rules private companies have to follow.

Federal affirmative-action programs originated in the Nixon administration. In 1969 Labor Secretary George Shultz launched the Philadelphia Plan, which required companies bidding for federal construction projects in that city to commit to minority hiring goals. Within a year of announcing the plan, the administration extended it to cover all federal agencies. Fifty-five years later, those rules are still in place.

Federal regulations require prime contractors or subcontractors “with 50 or more employees and a contract of $50,000 or more” to submit “a written affirmative action program” for each of their locations. The rules dictate that a contractor’s workforce should “reflect the gender, racial and ethnic profile of the labor pools from which the contractor recruits and selects.” Employing less than 80% of the local share of “any race, sex, or ethnic group” is categorized as an “adverse impact.” Failure to comply with these federal diversity mandates could mean the cancellation of existing contracts, and violators could be barred from doing future business with the federal government. It’s safest to hire by the numbers.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20304/directing-america-future

The historic freefall now taking place in the House of Representatives is a needless, self-inflicted political wound that only serves to distract our representatives and the nation at large from the extremely real crises facing America.

Rather than focus on the open borders that are transforming our nation’s cities into migrant camps, we are engaged in recriminations and intraparty personal feuds. Rather than tackle a crippling debt now more than $34 trillion, we witnessed a political drama selecting a new Speaker of the House. Rather than advance American energy independence, we heard claims that abandoning Ukraine — America’s forward base in Europe to protect us from battling on US soil — would somehow improve US national security. Instead of confronting anyone trying to steal the results of the next presidential election, we are engaged in recriminations and arguments about people forcing other people to have babies they do not want (for those women who do want babies, no one is stopping them). When did the government decide that a woman’s private parts, let alone a lifelong responsibility for another person, were part of its mandate?

Some topics are not the business of the republic. Squabbling will not protect the integrity of the ballot box. Chaos will not rescue a democracy that is under assault by foreign governments hostile to America’s role as the leader of the free world.

This is a calamity, a distraction from the genuine and challenges that will determine America’s standing in the world for the century.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/15/is-this-the-beginning-of-the-end-of-the-2-trillion-administrative-state/

Last week, a federal appeals court overturned a Biden administration rule governing dishwashers. This week, the Supreme Court will hear a case involving the regulation of commercial fishing.

Both are seemingly minor regulatory scuffles that normally would attract little public attention.

But they could mark the beginning of the end of the bloated, unaccountable, extra-constitutional “administrative state” – which today imposes $2 trillion in costs on businesses and consumers and every day eats away at our freedom.

The dishwasher story began during the previous administration when President Donald Trump pushed regulators to allow consumers to buy dishwashers that, well, wash dishes.

As we noted in this space at the time, federal efficiency mandates had become so strict that it took more than three hours for a dishwasher to do (poorly) what older models did in an hour. Under Trump, the Energy Department allowed for a new class of appliance that could do the job in an hour.

The left freaked. It called Trump’s decision “senseless” and “appalling” and claimed it “hurts consumers.”

On President Joe Biden’s first day in office, he signed an executive order calling on regulators to undo that Trump rule.

They did. And it’s the Biden rule that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/14/is-trump-is-hitler-the-best-bidens-got/

With the US presidential election approaching later this year, Joe Biden faces serious headwinds in his attempt to secure a second term.

Most Americans disapprove of his performance, with 54 per cent deeming the 81-year-old too old for the job. Even among Democrats, there is a palpable lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy – 40 per cent don’t even want him to run. Perhaps most damning of all, the current polling shows him consistently trailing Donald Trump, a man accused of 91 felonies.

Biden’s response to Trump’s current lead is now becoming clear. He has decided to frame the 2024 election as a choice between democracy and tyranny. Biden’s rhetoric during this week’s two campaign-launch speeches was end-of-days stuff. ‘Whether democracy is still America’s sacred cause is the most urgent question of our time’, he said in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, ‘and it’s what the 2024 election is all about’. He claimed that Trump is ‘willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power’ and establish a ‘dictatorship’.

Biden is likely to double down on this message in the weeks ahead. His campaign aides told CNN that Biden will be ‘ratcheting up the intensity’ against Trump in the coming months. The only question apparently is when to go ‘full Hitler’ and directly compare Trump to the Nazi leader. Judging by Biden’s Valley Forge speech, he’s pretty much at ‘full Hitler’ already – he accused Trump of ‘echoing the same exact language used in Nazi Germany’.

Biden has been justifying the Nazi analogies by pointing to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results, and his involvement in the ‘January 6’ Capitol riot in 2021. At one of his campaign launch speeches, Biden told a largely black audience in the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina that January 6 was ‘one of the darkest days in American history’, before adding: ‘We saw something on January 6 we’d never seen before, even during the Civil War. Insurrectionists waving Confederate flags inside the halls of Congress built by enslaved Americans.’ In Valley Forge, he called the Capitol riot a day when ‘we nearly lost America – lost it all’.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/pro-palestinian-protesters-clash-with-riot-police-as-they-breach-white-house-gate/

A pro-Palestinian protest in Washington, D.C., got unruly on Saturday night as activists nearly breached an exterior White House gate and clashed with riot police.

Protesters rushed against the reinforced gate, an extra security measure installed in front of the primary White House gate, causing it to shake while some tried to scale the structure. Police and presumably some secret service agents waited on the other side to deter the demonstrators.

“Break it down!!,” one protester bellowed amid the cacophony.

“You support the murdering of children!,” another protester screamed.

Some protesters flew large Palestinian flags and wore keffiyahs.

Objects, such as bottles, are seen being thrown over the fence in footage of the incident. Some staff members and members of the press were evacuated from parts of the White House as the chaos unfolded Saturday night, Fox News reported.

“During the demonstration near the White House complex Jan. 13, a portion of the anti-scale fencing that was erected for the event sustained temporary damage,” the U.S. Secret Service told Fox News in a statement. “The issues were promptly repaired on site by U.S. Secret Service support teams.”

“As a precaution, some members of the media and staff in proximity to Pennsylvania Avenue were temporarily relocated while the issue was being addressed,” the statement added. “The Secret Service made no arrests associated with the march and there was no property damage to the White House or adjacent buildings.”

Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela A. Smith, who oversees Washington, D.C., police, rebuked protest activity that devolved into lawlessness in a statement to Fox News.

“The right to peacefully protest is one of the cornerstones of our democracy, and the Metropolitan Police Department has long supported those who visit our city to demonstrate safely,” she told the outlet. “However, violence, destructive behavior, and criminal activities are not tolerated.”

Protesters in front of the White House Saturday Night also chanted, “Yemen, Yemen make us proud / Turn another ship around,” after the U.S. deployed strikes on a radar site controlled by Houthi militants.

The strike consisted of warship-and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles and fighter jets, U.S. officials said. The U.S. action came in response to a series of drone and missile attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea, which the Houthis boasted had resulted in multiple casualties in addition to trade disruption, the Associated Press reported. The U.S. Navy on Friday cautioned American vessels to avoid areas around Yemen in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden for a period following the initial airstrikes.

“These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea — including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history,” President Biden said in statement. “I will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”

https://mailchi.mp/0ab0ee1d67c6/35b-from-us-taxpayers-funded-world-health-organization-59895?e=0c8ccf8e98

Biden administration supercharging controversial “sue and settle” practice to expand environmental rules-and-regs.  

The first full week of the year is in the books, and we’re already off to an action packed start!

Congressional leaders are once again acting on key information uncovered by our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.
 
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has opened an investigation into the EPA’s controversial “sue and settle” tactic that involves outside groups – frequently environmentalists – suing the agency to expand its work. 
 
The EPA is settling these lawsuits behind closed doors and reimbursing millions of legal fees to the environmentalists. 
 
The Biden practice was first highlighted last July in our EPA Oversight Report, and we shared our findings with the Washington Examiner, all cited by the committee in its initial letter to the EPA.

Critics say “sue and settle” creates an end-run around Congress, state governments, and private businesses affected by the new, often costly, rules. 

Worse, there’s concern that ideological bureaucrats are happy for outside organizations to sue for a regulation they already favor creating, effectively inviting the litigation and then paying the plaintiff’s legal fees.

Those fees have cost us, the taxpayers, over $16 MILLION since 2013!

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/01/if_it_wasnt_for_merit_.html

”Politics is the art of achieving prestige and power without merit.”—P.J. O’Rourke

And we’ve all seen how that has worked out.

For all of us. Around the world.

If it weren’t for merit, we wouldn’t have the music of Beethoven and Bach, or, for that matter, Fleetwood Mac and the Rolling Stones.

If it weren’t for merit, participating in or watching sports would be an exercise in…watching people exercise. An exercise in futility.

If it weren’t for merit, and the relentless pursuit of excellence, we would not have any of the great works of art……or any of the life-changing inventions of the 20th century. Electricity, the light bulb, indoor plumbing and flush toilets. Radio, television, the internet, smartphones.

Were it not for merit, we may still be having our teeth pulled while chomping on a towel after imbibing several ounces of whiskey. Were it not for merit, our bridges and skyscrapers wouldn’t stand, our trains would derail, our planes fall from the sky.

If not for merit, there would be no light… and no hope.

The emphasis on DEI and equity over competence, merit, and excellence is an existential danger to society.

That is not hyperbole.

In summation, the respect for merit is vital to the human condition. Worshipping sloth — or even mediocrity — and valuing equity above all would be the death knell of civilization.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/01/we_are_in_an_abusive_relationship_with_our_government.html

California is now covering the costs of genital-mutilating surgeries for illegal aliens.  Leftism’s slippery slope invariably leads to depraved absurdity.  Consider how Governor (receding) Hairdo and the Pyrite State’s other communist saboteurs have greased the shifting ground under Californians’ feet:

(1) There is no illegal immigration crisis.

(2) There may be a crisis, but California taxpayers won’t be paying for it.

(3) Taxpayers may have to foot the bill for the illegal immigration crisis, but California will do nothing to incentivize illegal immigration.

(4) After further review, these aliens aren’t “illegal,” but rather “undocumented.”

(5) Health care is a human right.

(6) California must provide “undocumented” aliens healthcare.

(7) Mutilating the genitals to make them look like the opposite sex is health care.

(8) California taxpayers must pay for “undocumented” aliens’ genital surgery.

(9) Californians who object to paying for undocumented aliens’ genital surgery may be guilty of “hate” crimes and will be prosecuted.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Why punish the people who illegally enter the United States when you can punish the people who do not want to subsidize immigration crimes while canceling their votes with the votes of those here illegally?  Why should “health care” stop with free genital mutilation for the whole planet?  Why not label spacious split-level homes with at least one electric vehicle in each garage “health care” as well?  Why shouldn’t California taxpayers be on the hook for each new illegal alien’s  “green energy” lifestyle?  The absurdity will never end.

As Sundance frequently reminds readers over at The Conservative Treehouse, “We are in an abusive relationship with our government.”  And in California, where the Marxist globalists rule with absolute power, the government never gets tired of slapping American citizens around and telling them it’s for their own good.

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/01/12/bidenomics-is-working-deficits-are-off-to-a-roaring-start/

“We the Democrats are the ones that are fiscally responsible. Let’s get that straight now.” — Joe Biden, October 2022

Just three months into the new fiscal year and the federal deficit already tops $500 billion. How’s that for being “fiscally responsible”?

The latest report from the Treasury Department shows that the federal deficit for October, November, and December of last year (which mark the first quarter of the government’s 2024 fiscal year), had already hit $509.9 billion.

That’s a 21% increase over the prior year. And if this pace holds true, we’re looking at $2 trillion deficits this year. (Biden’s own Treasury Department currently projects it to hit $1.9 trillion.)

The current surge is entirely driven by out-of-control spending. Revenues are so far coming in slightly above last year’s, but spending in the first quarter ballooned by $170 billion.

Spending on entitlement programs is up a relatively modest 4%. Defense spending is up 11%. Discretionary spending, however, is 23% higher so far this year than last – thanks in large part to Biden’s spending sprees.

https://victorhanson.com/biden-saves-democracy-by-destroying-it/

When faced with the possible return of President Donald Trump, the current agenda of the Democratic Party is summed up simply as “We had to destroy democracy to save it.”

The effort shares a common theme: any means necessary are justified to prevent the people from choosing their own president, given the fear that a majority might vote to elect Donald Trump.

Sometimes the anti-democratic paranoia has been outsourced to state and local officials and prosecutors to erase Trump from the primary and likely general election ballots as well.

One unelected official in Maine, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, is a Democrat, an official never elected by the people, and a non-lawyer rendering a legal edict. Yet she has judged Trump guilty of “insurrection.”

And presto, she erased his name from the state’s ballot.

Yet Trump was never charged, much less convicted, of “insurrection.”

The statute Bellows cites is a post-Civil War clause of the 14th Amendment. It was passed over a century and a half ago. It was never intended to be used in an election year by an opposition party to disbar a rival presidential candidate.

In the earlier case of Colorado, the all-Democrat Supreme Court, in a 4-3 vote, took Trump off the ballot.

In sum, just five officials in two states have taken away the rights of some 7 million Americans to vote for the president of their choice.