RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thespectator.com/topic/brandon-johnson-mayor-chicago-ruin/

Adam Smith once wisely remarked that “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” There is much less room for ruin in a city, as Portland, San Francisco and Seattle have proved in recent years, and Detroit, Memphis and Gary, did even earlier. Now, Chicago has decided to join that dismal parade.

The Windy City was already marching toward the abyss under its outgoing mayor, Lori Lightfoot. She was elected four years ago with over three-quarters of the vote. This year, she got so few votes in the first primary (about one sixth) that she was eliminated from the runoff. That second election, held on Tuesday, pitted Brandon Johnson, an African-American organizer for the powerful Chicago Teachers Union, against Paul Vallas, a Greek American who had led several major school systems around the country. Vallas’s résumé was far more impressive than his achievements in those jobs. His bumbling campaign against Johnson revealed those shortcomings once again.

These ethnic markers — a black candidate versus a white one — are important in American urban politics, where political organizations are often formed around neighborhoods, ethnicities and race. One striking feature of the late Chicago election was the complete absence of the Irish Americans. For a century, they had led the city’s political machine, handing out subordinate positions and lucrative patronage jobs to allies in various ethnic and racial communities. Those days are long gone, destroyed by the city’s changing demographics and federal court rulings that killed the old patronage machine.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/04/u-s-manufacturing-hits-new-low-under-biden/

On Monday, a report revealed that, on Joe Biden’s watch, American manufacturing has reached its lowest point since the start of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index, known as PMI, hit its lowest point since May 2020, scoring just 46.3. If the extraordinary conditions of the pandemic are not taken into account, then it is the lowest level since 2009.

The PMI serves to identify economic trends in the manufacturing sector, as well as the service sector, based on business conditions at major companies. If the PMI ever scores below 50, it indicates an economy on the decline.

The timing of the report coincides with Joe Biden announcing his “Investing in America” tour, where he will visit multiple factories across the country to tout his administration’s alleged efforts to help the manufacturing sector, as well as forcing his ideas of “green energy” on factories and businesses.

Despite claiming that “green energy” pushes will boost the economy and manufacturing alike, critics have pointed out that the billions often invested in such causes often go directly to far-left organizations, pro-Democrat billionaire donors, and Chinese manufacturers that provide the materials in the first place, while the projects themselves often fail or drastically underperform expectations.

Despite campaigning in 2020 on a platform vowing to do the opposite of everything President Donald Trump did, Biden has flip-flopped on manufacturing rhetoric since taking office. He has since borrowed phrases that President Trump frequently used as part of his America First agenda, including “Buy American” and “Made in America.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/dojs_arrest_policies.html

When Merrick Garland was questioned about why excessive force was used in the arrest of Mark Houck, an anti-abortion activist who had offered to turn himself in, the Attorney General evaded responsibility for the policy by saying,

“The determinations of how to make arrests under arrest warrants are made based by the tactical operators in the district. They made the decision on the ground as to what was safest and easiest.”

Garland did not comment on the enormous expense of sending a SWAT team to arrest a father of seven.  Also not mentioned was the fact that this early morning raid tactic, first developed by the Soviet KGB, is frequently used to arrest non-violent targets.

Early morning or pre-dawn raids are designed for maximum humiliation and intimidation. Dozens of federal agents with automatic weapons, armored vehicles, and sometimes a helicopter and amphibious watercraft are used intimidate the target, as was the case with Roger Stone. In the raid on Thomas Caldwell’s home, Caldwell’s 61-year-old wife was covered in red dots from the weapons aimed at her. She begged to put on her socks before they forced her outside in the cold. Caldwell himself, clad only in his underwear, was dragged through the grass. James O’Keefe claims he was partially clothed in front of his neighbors when he was dragged out of his apartment.

The federal government has a constitutional right to arrest people for certain offenses. When it goes to enormous expense to arrest cooperating subjects, there is another motive to their actions. Intimidation and humiliation are not proper components of an arrest. There is also the factor that SWAT raids can go terribly wrong. Innocent people have been killed in their homes. The federal government has a history of heavy-handed attacks. It paid Randy Weaver $3.1 Million for the murder of this wife and son. There was also the Waco siege resulting in 75 deaths, including 25 children.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/04/americas_broken_windows.html

In criminology, the “broken windows” theory posits that visible signs of crime and civil disorder encourage only more serious crimes and antisocial behaviors.  A community that is perceived to permit vandalism, fare evasion, public intoxication, and petty theft will soon find that it must defend against rising rates of robbery, rape, and murder.  Tackling smaller forms of criminal mischief nips violent crimes in the bud.  Although Wyatt Earp and other Wild West lawmen put the theory into practice long before social scientists James Wilson and George Kelling wrote about it in the 1980s, Mayor Rudy Giuliani and police commissioner William Bratton popularized its use when they successfully implemented “broken windows” policies that saved New York City from a decades-long crime spiral.

Communist Mayor Bill de Blasio later framed “broken windows” policing as inherently racist, retreated from many sensible initiatives, and punished cops for proactively fighting crime.  The residents of NYC have subsequently paid the price with their deteriorating safety.

Such has been the much larger pattern throughout American society.  Cultural Marxists and other communist coalitions attack good and sound policies as racist, sexist, transphobic, or guilty of some other ugly -ic or -ist smear; those traditional standards of behavior are repudiated; and then Americans suffer the consequences of living in a society without norms, manners, or common decency.  Throwing bricks through America’s windows while blaming others for their crimes, leftists have spent the last century engaging in purposeful destruction so as to bring about America’s demise.  Throw a brick here; throw a brick there; eventually, Americans wake up in a nation where government tyrants nonchalantly lock up their political opponents, censorship is widespread, and young adults can no longer determine whether they are boys or girls.