RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=69486
When Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Revenue Act of 1913, it probably sounded like a good idea.

Most people would pay less in taxes and the prices of everyday goods would drop, he promised. And the rich would — finally! — start paying their fair share.

In those days, tax collection was a highly diffuse business with various states and localities collecting taxes at various rates. The federal government mostly skidded by on exorbitant and uneven tariffs, and on booze and tobacco taxes.

This was always tough and disorganized business for the federal government. Those hardships became especially acute for the federal government when it wanted to launch wars thousands of miles away on other continents.

And, anyway, who could question the motives of Woodrow Wilson?

He was a celebrated professor with a sterling Ivy League background who ran for president on the promise to govern sensibly and never go to war. He maintained a grand worldview and would later be awarded the Nobel Peace prize in the category of “world organizing” on his gallant promises to establish lasting peace to end World War I, which would become mankind’s last war.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=69483
Like you, April 15th is “IRS day” or the day that you rush to the post office to get that tax return in the mail. More recently, it’s the day that we file online. Or, maybe the day that we renew our call for a “flat tax”.

In baseball terms, April 15th is the day that Jackie Robinson broke what they used to call “the color line” in the major leagues. He opened the game at first base and made history.

For Cubans, and especially those of my parents’ generation, April 15th is the day that Fidel Castro visited the US in 1959, a few months after taking power.

Castro’s visit was rather controversial because he faced skepticism from many in the US. He was asked about the promised elections that were delayed and delayed. He also heard over and over about communists in the background:

“The trip got off to an inauspicious start when it became clear that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had no intention of meeting with Castro. Instead, Eisenhower went to the golf course to avoid any chance meeting with Castro.

Castro gave a talk to the Council on Foreign Affairs, a New York-based group of private citizens and former government officials interested in U.S. international relations.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=69480
NYPD drops surveillance of mosques
See also: Al Qaeda holds big rally in Yemen

Candidate Bill de Blasio was “deeply troubled” by NYPD surveillance of mosques, and now his police commissioner is dropping the program. Matt Apuzzo and Joseph Goldstein report ion the New York Times:

The New York Police Department has abandoned a secretive program that dispatched plainclothes detectives into Muslim neighborhoods to eavesdrop on conversations and built detailed files on where people ate, prayed and shopped, the department said.

The decision by the nation’s largest police force to shutter the controversial surveillance program represents the first sign that William J. Bratton, the department’s new commissioner, is backing away from some of the post-9/11 intelligence-gathering practices of his predecessor. The Police Department’s tactics, which are the subject of two federal lawsuits, drew criticism from civil rights groups and a senior official with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who said they harmed national security by sowing mistrust for law enforcement in Muslim communities.

The fact that thousands of New Yorkers were killed in the name of Allah by devout Muslims inspired by what they heard at mosques and that millions of Muslims worldwide believe that they can gain access to paradise and 72 virgins by slaughtering infidels means nothing to Mayor de Blasio, apparently. I can only hope that more New Yorkers do not die as a result of his political correctness.

To many Muslims, the squad, known as the Demographics Unit, was a sign that the police viewed their every action with suspicion. The police mappedcommunities inside and outside the city, logging where customers in traditional Islamic clothes ate meals and documenting their lunch-counter conversations.

Well, when devout members of your community proclaim that your religion requires them to slaughter New Yorkers, Americans, Jews, infidels, and even Muslims who don’t meet their standards of religious practice and devotion, then surveillance is reasonable, it seems to me.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=69474
The latest active shooter attack at Fort Hood, Texas on April 2, 2014 left three dead and 16 wounded. As is almost always the case, the killer, confronted with armed resistance, choose suicide, ending the rampage. The Army has released a timeline [1] that indicates that the attack lasted something over eight minutes, but the timeline fails to note how much time passed between the first shot and the first 911 call, which means the actual time was likely about ten minutes.

This will become significant shortly. The gun that anti-freedom forces love to demonize, the AR-15 with its standard 30 round magazine, was not involved. Instead, the killer used only a commonly available .45 caliber semiautomatic handgun.

As all mass attacks do, this one has reanimated the gun control debate, but this time, anti-freedom advocates have a unique handicap. It may seem counterintuitive and surprising to many, but continental United States military installations are a gun-free anti-gunner’s dream. They are even more strictly regulated than many schools. Soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines are nowhere as thoroughly disarmed as they are on American military bases.

The only people allowed to bear arms on military bases are usually military police officers, and then, only during the hours they are actually on duty. They draw their weapons and ammunition from an armory just before their duty hours begin and turn them in when done. There are a few exceptions, among them Criminal Investigation Division investigators who may sometimes wear civilian clothing and are authorized to carry concealed weapons even when technically off duty. Pilots, under certain circumstances, are also allowed to carry weapons as part of their issued equipment. And officers on duty in missile silos and in other duties where nuclear weapon security are involved are also armed. However, most members of our military, from the lowliest private to a general commanding a base, are disarmed.

Consider the irony. A seasoned combat veteran abroad in Iraq or Afghanistan may usually carry their weapon wherever they go, at all hours. When they return to the United States, they may obtain a concealed carry permit in the state where they are stationed and carry a handgun most places in that state, but the moment they step on base, they lose not only their Second Amendment rights, but the ability to protect their very lives. They are less well protected on base in the United States than they were in an active war zone. In most states, Joe Average Civilian is better protected than our warriors. At least Joe has a choice.

Military regulations allow gun ownership for those living on base, but their weapons must normally be stored in a military armory and may be removed only to take the gun off base for hunting, shooting, etc. and returned when they return to the base. With few exceptions, such as civilian police officers, no one may bring a privately owned firearm on base.

Washington is aroused to the level of talk. President Obama sprang into action: [2]

Speaking at a fundraiser shortly after the killings became public knowledge, President Obama told donors he was ‘heartbroken’ and promised to get answers as to the cause.” No doubt he’ll seek those answers with all of the determination and transparency used to get answers in the Fast and Furious Benghazi and IRS cases.

Homeland security chairman Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, told Megyn Kelly he thinks soldiers should be able to carrying arms on base. ‘The problem here, and with Fort Hood, the prior Nidal Hasan case, is that they couldn’t defend themselves because they were not allowed to carry weapons’ McCaul said, adding he thinks lawmakers need to revisit the current restrictions. In Hawaii, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was asked about the safety and security of military posts and bases. ‘When we have these kinds of tragedies on our bases, something’s not working,’ Hagel said.

http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2014/04/15/biden-bombing-worth-it/?print=1
“You have survived, and you have soared. It was worth it, just to hear each of you speak.”
And to think how close we came in 2008 to having a vice president whose phrasing and sentence choices during speeches we’d have to parse and explain and justify.

Either America’s oldest living graduate of the Vic Arpeggio Hipster Speech Academy is saying that what the survivors went through during the terrorist attack last year was worth it — losing loved ones and/or being injured themselves — as some sort of catharsis, or that it was worth it for Joe himself to benefit from hearing their statements. Either way doesn’t speak well of the man.

On the other hand, this speech, and Joe’s willingness to at least be in the same room with victims of Islamofascist terrorism puts him one up on his boss.

Exit tweet, via Twitchy:

@RickLeventhal Confusing AND insulting. Textbook Biden.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=69466
Federal immigration policy has allowed about 30 million legal immigrants to settle permanently in the United States since 1980. This has affected all areas of American life, not the least being electoral politics.

Progressives openly debate the immigration issue in political terms. Labor-union official Eliseo Medina, for instance, has promoted amnesty and increased immigration as a means to “expand and solidify the progressive coalition for the future” in order to “create a governing coalition for the long term, not just for an election cycle.”

Is Medina right?

A new report published by my organization, the Center for Immigration Studies, suggests he is. The study, by University of Maryland political scientist James Gimpel, shows how mass legal immigration is remaking the electorate in favor of Democrats. Gimpel examines the results of every presidential election from 1980 to 2012 and finds that, in the nation’s 100 largest counties, each one percentage-point increase in the immigrant share of the population on average reduced the Republican share of the vote by nearly 0.6 percentage points. When all the nation’s counties are included, the decline was a somewhat less, but it was still about 0.45 percentage points.

This is an enormous impact when one considers that the immigrant share of the U.S. population more than doubled from 1980 (6.2 percent) to 2012 (13 percent). Gimpel’s results imply that immigration may have reduced the Republican’s share of the presidential vote nationally by 3 or 4 percentage points. Remember, Obama won in 2012 with 51 percent of the popular vote to Romney’s 47 percent.

Think of it this way: Obama won in 2012 by 5 million votes. But legal immigration will add 15 million new potential citizens over the next two decades — and that’s just from today’s level of 1 million–plus total immigrants per year, without even counting the amnesty and immigration increases in the Schumer-Rubio bill passed by the Senate. (The 15 million figure takes into account residency requirements, age, and return migration.) As a recent Eagle Forum report concluded, “If immigration is not reduced, it will be virtually impossible for Republicans to remain nationally competitive as a conservative party.” The title of the Eagle Forum report sums up the problem: “How Mass (Legal) Immigration Dooms a Conservative Republican Party”.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=69463
Last week, the president’s lap dog blew his dog whistle.

In case you didn’t know, in politics a “dog whistle” is coded language that has a superficial meaning for everybody, but also a special resonance for certain constituencies. Using dog whistles lets politicians deny they meant to say anything nasty, bigoted, or controversial.

Speaking to the National Action Network the day after a testy but racially irrelevant exchange with Republican members of a House panel, Attorney General Eric Holder said, “The last five years have been defined . . . by lasting reforms even in the face of unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly, and divisive adversity.” He continued: “If you don’t believe that, you look at the way — forget about me, forget about me. You look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee. . . . What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?”

Now, bear in mind the audience. The National Action Network is Al Sharpton’s plaything, often providing the shock troops Sharpton needs for rent-a-mob protests, shakedown operations, and MSNBC photo ops. Holder didn’t say criticism of him and Obama is racially motivated, but the notion the audience (or the media) would take it any other way doesn’t pass the laugh test.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=69460
In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French historian, came to America to study our nation. Europeans and others were fascinated with the success of the fledgling nation, then barely 50 years old and already competing on the world stage.

Such a thing had never before occurred, and Tocqueville was determined to discover the secret. He was duly impressed by our governmental structure, including the separation of powers, but he was in awe of the public-education system, which rendered its recipients completely literate by the completion of second grade. This depth of education was generally found only among the aristocracy in Europe.

Let’s put aside the diversionary arguments about lack of educational access for all, which was a huge mistake, and concentrate on the tremendous advantage afforded our predecessors by education. Early settlers not only mastered reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also shared practical skills, all of which enabled them to traverse and tame a rugged and frequently hostile terrain from sea to shining sea.

As isolated communities sprang up throughout the nation, they were able to thrive through innovation, industry, and compassion. The “can do” attitude involved hard labor, but it also included a sense of responsibility for those who through injury or other hardships could no longer care for themselves. The spirit of caring, although diminished, remains an important part of who we are today.

Tocqueville was impressed by the fiery sermons that emphasized the word of God and not the social mores of the day. He concluded his American analysis by saying, “America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” America was different because we openly acknowledged the role of God in our lives.

Some will say, “Carson is a religious fanatic because he believes in God and the Bible.” Interestingly, the very same people are quick to invoke the name of God and recommend prayer at times of national and personal tragedy. Hypocrisy is their frequent companion.

Some will say America can never make claims of “goodness” owing to her history of slavery. Although it was by far the worst atrocity in our history, we paid a horrendous price in lives lost or destroyed in a Civil War that all but incapacitated a young nation. The guilt, shame, and humility that resulted from this dark American episode will teach us and stigmatize us well into the future. Learning from mistakes is a sign of wisdom and goodness.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=69456
Deserts always feel like my natural habitat, and I am very fond of them. That being said, I have, for my sins, spent a fair amount of time in Clark County, Nev., and it is not the loveliest stretch of desert in these United States, or even in the top twelve. Protecting the pristine beauty of the sun-baked and dust-caked outskirts of Las Vegas and its charismatic fauna from grazing cattle — which the Bureau of Land Management seems to regard as an Old Testament plague — seems to me to be something less than a critical national priority. At the same time, the federal government’s fundamental responsibility, which is defending the physical security of the country, is handled with remarkable nonchalance: Millions upon millions upon millions of people have crossed our borders illegally and continue to reside within them. Cliven Bundy’s cattle are treated as trespassers, and federal agents have been dispatched to rectify that trespass; at the same time, millions of illegal aliens present within our borders are treated as an inevitability that must be accommodated. In practice, our national borders are a joke, but the borders of that arid haven upon which ambles the merry Mojave desert tortoise are sacrosanct.

Strangely, many of the same people who insist that Mr. Bundy must be made an example of for the sake of the rule of law protest at the same time that it is not only impossible but positively undesirable for the federal government to deploy federal resources to rectify the federal crime of jumping the federal border.

Apparently, there are trespassers and there are trespassers. The citizens of this country, like those of any country, have an interest in the question of who is permitted to immigrate here and on what terms. Those interests and the ability to act in their furtherance are generally considered to be a substantial part of what we mean by “sovereignty.” Sovereignty has, historically, been regarded as a serious business. But if we judge the federal government by its actions rather than by the words of its functionaries, the defense of national sovereignty is many, many places down the federal to-do list from looking after tortoise welfare.

http://www.ruthfullyyours.com/?p=69453
This column probably isn’t the first to notice a recent intensification of liberal and Democratic rhetoric about race. Last month Paul Ryan was the object of a Two Minutes Hate for some comments on the culture of poverty “in our inner cities,” which, as The Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial, were no different in substance from things President Obama had recently said.

This Sunday, as Politico notes, Rep. Steve Israel of New York, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told CNN’s Candy Crowley that “to a significant extent, the Republican base does have elements that are animated by racism.” He did allow that “not all” House Republicans are racist, though he didn’t specify how many or which ones he thinks are.
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Obama and Sharpton last week Associated Press

Last Wednesday Eric Holder, in a speech to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, complained that he had faced “unprecedented, unwarranted, ugly and divisive adversity,” ABC News reports. “Look at the way the attorney general of the United States was treated yesterday by a House committee. What attorney general has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment? What president has ever had to deal with that kind of treatment?”

Although Holder didn’t specifically accuse his adversaries of racial motives, others, including Crowley, assumed that was what he meant. Politico reports that in her interview with Israel, “Crowley said that Holder believes ‘the treatment he has received in the House . . . would not have happened if he were not African-American.”

The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, appearing on Sharpton’s MSNBC show, went so far as to suggest that Republicans had been soft on Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius because she’s white, as the Daily Caller reports incredulously.

For this rise in the racial temperature we blame not global warming but political cooling. As November approaches, Democrats face not only an unfavorable election map but an increasingly chilly electorate. From last month’s NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza pulled presidential approval numbers for four key Democratic constituencies. Obama was below 50% among three of those groups: single women (48%, to 45% disapproval), Hispanics (49% to 46%), and voters under 30 (45% to 48%). Only among blacks was approval still strong, 78% to 12% disapproval.