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October 2020

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Breaking Judicial Norms: A History A Democratic Senate pattern, from Bork to the filibuster rule.

By on October 21st, 2020

In any conversation that you might have in the next few days with folks who don’t know the history of Dems and the Supreme Court, you might be informed by this Editorial as to the truth. Not the Chuck Schumer/ Nancy Pelosi false propaganda and twisted narratives,  but the actual facts.These judicial appointments are perhaps President Trump’s (and Leader McConnell’s) greatest achievements.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/breaking-judicial-norms-a-history-11600639835

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is widely reported to have told his Democratic colleagues on Saturday that “nothing is off the table for next year” if Republicans confirm a Supreme Court nominee in this Congress. He means this as a threat that Democrats will break the filibuster and pack the Court with more Justices in 2021 if they take control of the Senate in

So what else is new? Democrats have a long history of breaking procedural norms on judges. While packing the Court would be their most radical decision to date, it would fit their escalating pattern. Let’s review the modern historical lowlights to see which party has really been the political norm-breaker:

• The Bork assault. When Ronald Reagan selected Robert Bork in 1987, the judge was among the most qualified ever nominated. No less than Joe Biden had previously said he might have to vote to confirm him. Then Ted Kennedy issued his demagogic assault from the Senate floor, complete with lies about women “forced into back-alley abortions” and blacks who would have to “sit at segregated lunch counters.” Democrats and the press then unleashed an unprecedented political assault.

Previous nominees who had failed in the Senate were suspected of corruption (Abe Fortas) or thought unqualified (Harrold Carswell). Bork was defeated because of distortions about his jurisprudence. This began the modern era of hyper-politicized judicial nominations, though for the Supreme Court it has largely been a one-way partisan street.

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Biden v. the Courts on Title IX Appellate rulings have shredded colleges for denying due-process protections—the same protections that the Democratic nominee promises to revoke. KC Johnson

By on October 21st, 2020

There are so many reasons why the Dem positions on due process and a host of other issues are completely unacceptable to Americans who value checks and balances and the dispersion of power (rather than rule by the elite social engineers). And why, in practical impact, there really are no “moderate Dems” currently operating as brakes on the woke mob. This piece will help keep these issues in mind these next two crucial weeks…..

https://www.city-journal.org/biden-v-courts-title-ix

“Any number of federal constitutional and statutory provisions reflect the proposition that, in this country, we determine guilt or innocence individually—rather than collectively, based on one’s identification with some demographic group,” wrote U.S. Appeals Court Judge Raymond Kethledge in a late June opinion. “That principle has not always been perfectly realized in our Nation’s history, but as judges it is one that we take an oath to enforce.”

Kethledge’s words revived a lawsuit filed by an Oberlin College student who claimed that his school had unfairly found him guilty of sexual misconduct. Over a 100-day period this summer, four appeals courts, including the Sixth Circuit in the Oberlin case, issued rulings expressing concerns that universities, however well-intentioned, had discriminated against an accused student on account of his sex, in violation of Title IX. The decisions, applying to 23 states, represent the latest fallout from the 2011 and 2014 federal guidance pressuring colleges to respond aggressively to what the Obama administration considered a national epidemic of campus sexual assault. The recommended procedures, however, too often denied accused students a meaningful chance to defend themselves. Obama administration officials threatened to withdraw federal funding from schools that resisted these directives, “strongly” discouraging cross-examination and urging colleges to handle Title IX cases without a hearing and through a “trauma-informed” approach that presented virtually any behavior as consistent with the accused student’s guilt.

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EDUCATION, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

UK Minister: Teaching White Privilege And Critical Race Theory In Schools Is Illegal By Jordan Davidson

By on October 21st, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/21/uk-minister-teaching-white-privilege-and-critical-race-theory-in-schools-is-illegal/

In a passionate speech before members of Parliament on Tuesday, the United Kingdom’s Minister for Equalities said schools who teach “white privilege” and critical race theory are breaking the law.

“We do not want to see teachers teaching their white pupils about white privilege and inherited racial guilt,” Kemi Badenoch said. “And let me be clear, any school which teaches these elements of critical race theory as fact or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police, without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views is breaking the law.”

Badenock denounced teaching the ideology of Black Lives Matter and critical race theory as uncontested facts. “We don’t do this with communism, we don’t do this with socialism, and we don’t do it with capitalism,” she said.

Badenoch’s words come as pressure in the UK mounts for universities to “decolonize” their curriculum.

“The campaign to give a fuller version of British history that reflects injustices and lauds the contributions of black British people has also won widespread support from the Black Lives Matter protesters,” the Guardian reports.

Badenoch, a member of the conservative party, made it very clear that promoting CRT and BLM curriculum is not only illegal, but harmful to the nature of academic forum.

“I want to be absolutely clear this government stands unequivocally against critical race theory,” she said. “Some schools have decided to openly support the anti-capitalist Black Lives Matter group, often fully aware that they have a statutory duty to be politically impartial.”

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Top U.S. Universities Caught Underreporting Funding From China, Other ‘Foreign Adversaries’ By Jordan Davidson

By on October 21st, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/21/top-u-s-universities-caught-underreporting-funding-from-china-other-foreign-adversaries/

A new report released by the Department of Education shows multiple U.S. universities accepted funding from China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and other “foreign adversaries,” but did not report all they received.

The findings, reported by the Associated Press, are part of an ongoing investigation by the department spurred by the Trump Administration to crack down on foreign theft of intellectual property, research, and technology in higher education. “Potential enforcement against specific institutions” will come from the Department of Justice.

While the U.S. requires universities to “disclose gifts and contracts of $250,000 or more from foreign sources,” the report suggests that 12 schools of “the nation’s largest and richest universities have aggressively pursued and accepted foreign money,” including Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Georgetown.

Together, the universities reportedly failed to “disclose a combined $6.5 billion in foreign funding that was previously unreported.”

According to the report, many of the universities maintained financial relationships with previously identified national security threats such as Chinese tech company Huawei and another which “had ties directly to the Chinese Communist Party.”

The department also denounced “rapidly expanding their foreign operations and relationships,” by some institutions including the Ivy League university Yale, which admitted failed “to submit foreign funding reports for the years 2014 to 2017.”

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Trump’s Greatest Accomplishments Are What He Hasn’t Done By Mollie Hemingway

By on October 21st, 2020

https://thefederalist.com/2020/10/21/trumps-greatest-accomplishments-are-what-he-hasnt-done/

Under immense pressure by the media and other Democratic operatives, at a time when nearly all global leaders were using the pandemic as an excuse to seize greater control, Trump did not.

When President Donald Trump returned from Walter Reed Hospital, where he was being treated for COVID-19, he landed on the White House lawn in Marine One, walked up to the White House, scaled the steps, and waved from the balcony. It was a beautiful scene for tens of millions of Americans who had spent days in prayer for their president.

The media reaction was beyond hysterical. Some said that Walter Reed had destroyed its reputation by taking in a sick patient and returning him healthier. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin sought to defund the hospital because it had done its job. Angered by his triumphant and quick return to the White House, they said the scene was reminiscent of dictators. NBC News’ presidential historian Michael Beschloss tweeted:

While the tweet was amplified by Beschloss’ fellow Resistance members, Americans with better knowledge of presidential history than the presidential historian for NBC News responded with pictures of every other president pictured at the balcony, be it President Barack Obama (many, many times — once with Communist Dictator Xi Jinping, no less), President George W. Bush, President George H.W. Bush, President Ronald Reagan, President Jimmy Carter, President Richard Nixon, … on back to President Dwight D. Eisenhower and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

$19 Billion in U.S. Taxpayer Money Lost to ‘Waste, Fraud, and Abuse’ in Afghanistan, Watchdog Finds By Zachary Evans

By on October 21st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/19-billion-in-u-s-taxpayer-money-lost-to-waste-fraud-and-abuse-in-afghanistan-watchdog-finds/

$19 billion in U.S. taxpayer money was wasted or lost in government-funded projects in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2019, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

Since 2009, SIGAR has reported on U.S. government funds that have been wasted in the course of rebuilding war-torn Afghanistan. Government and military officials have repeatedly told SIGAR that the U.S. military strategy in the country, and the effort to turn Afghanistan into a “modern” nation, was failing, according to the Washington Post‘s “Afghanistan Papers” report in 2019.

Congress has appropriated $134 billion since 2002 towards reconstruction and nation-building efforts, of which SIGAR has reviewed $63 billion, the agency stated in its new report. Of the amount reviewed, $19 billion—approximately 30 percent—has gone to waste.

SIGAR has identified $3.4 billion lost to “waste, fraud, and abuse” from January 2018 through December 2019 alone. Almost half of that sum spent on anti-narcotics operations, while various U.S.-supported reconstruction efforts were also found to lacking.

“For example, during our review of the Afghan Children Read program, which is…designed to support education service delivery by delivering books to schools, we discovered that principals and teachers at a quarter of the inspected schools found the books provided to the schools were not in usable condition,” the report stated. “In another example, during our review of the Department of State’s Good Performer’s Initiative projects in Kunduz province, we found that a sports stadium, which was built for community use, was not being used.”

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The Questions Joe Biden Should Answer about Hunter’s Emails By David Harsanyi

By on October 21st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/the-questions-joe-biden-should-answer-about-hunters-emails/

First, Joe Biden’s Praetorian Guard argued that the New York Post’s Hunter Biden scoop was “Russian disinformation.” The DOJ, FBI, and DNI each publicly disagreed. No one in the Biden camp has denied the veracity of a single email thus far. Yet, as of this writing, the Post’s Twitter account is still frozen, and most major news outlets won’t report the story.

The next deflection was to play on your emotions: “How dare you mock a father struggling with the addiction of his son?!’” This isn’t about Hunter’s addictions, predilections, or life choices, but about his favor-trading, and whether a presidential candidate benefited from them during his tenure as vice president of the United States. We shouldn’t mock those with addiction, but a person isn’t inoculated from scrutiny merely because he’s an addict, either.

Today, a Wisconsin reporter finally asked Biden what he thought about Senator Ron Johnson accusing his family of profiting from Hunter’s shady arrangements.

It should be said that reporters have adopted a pusillanimous positioning in which they refuse to ask Biden straightforward questions, but rather frame queries as baseless accusations from “the Right.” This, of course, allows the candidate to skip answering the question all together and simply attack.

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The Capital Note: What to Expect from China’s 19th Party Congress By Daniel Tenreiro

By on October 21st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/the-capital-note-what-to-expect-from-chinas-19th-party-congress/

Welcome to the Capital Note, a newsletter about business, finance and economics. On the menu today: China’s 19th Party Congress, vaccine diplomacy, insider trading from home, and a look at the Microsoft antitrust case.

What to Expect from China’s 19th Party Congress Entering the fifth plenum of the 19th Party Congress next week, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has much to celebrate: Beijing appears to have emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic with less scarring than its international competitors. The International Monetary Fund reports that China will be the only major economy to grow this year, thanks in large part to a surge in exports of personal-protective equipment and other manufactured goods.

Yet Beijing’s short-run successes have deepened structural economic imbalances that will likely handicap its long-run economic goals. For years, the Chinese leadership has attempted to transition from an export-driven manufacturing economy to a domestic-demand-driven service economy. After its last Party Congress, the CCP released a five-year plan emphasizing domestic consumption and entrepreneurship as the pillars of sustainable economic growth.

Those reform efforts have seen limited success: Household consumption remains below 40 percent, far lower than the 60 percent average in the developed world. Meanwhile, the Chinese economy remains overleveraged, with an overall debt-to-GDP ratio as high as those in advanced economies. The recent surge in exports, while a boon to GDP growth, also reveals an economy that has failed to gain sustainable footing.

Chinese president Xi Jinping is now advocating “dual circulation,” described as “a new development pattern that takes domestic circulation as the main body with domestic and international circulation reinforcing each other.” In a July speech, Xi said that trade tensions and slow global growth meant that China would need to modernize “the domestic industrial and supply chains, vigorously promote technological innovation, accelerate research on key core technologies, and create new advantages for future development.”

It sounds a lot like what Chinese policymakers have been saying for the past decade. In 2007, Premier Wen Jiabao acknowledged structural weaknesses in the then-booming Chinese economy, describing it as “unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.” After the 2008 financial crisis, CCP rhetoric focused on harnessing its burgeoning middle class to ween itself off exports.

12 years later, the Chinese economy is yet more unbalanced, unstable, uncoordinated, and unsustainable. The forthcoming five-year plan will call for reforms to boost consumption and entrepreneurship, but if recent history is any indication, it won’t usher in meaningful structural changes.

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How Trump Should Approach the Final Debate By Victor Davis Hanson

By on October 21st, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-trump-should-approach-the-final-debate/

The so-called mainstream polls of the swing states show the race narrowing. If the trend continues at the current rate, President Trump could poll even in two weeks—in addition to the “other” polls that show him near there already.

So Trump’s mission at the final debate on Thursday is to continue to accelerate his momentum, not to take risks to melt down Joe Biden with verbal fireworks.

Every 10 days, the campaign starts anew. Trump’s rallies are back. He miraculously beat COVID-19 in near record time. Judge Amy Coney Barret proved stellar. If most voters poll they are better off than four years ago, and they think Trump will win, it’s increasingly difficult to believe the disconnect that they are intent on voting against someone who will win and would likely continue to make things better for them.

No one has quite figured out how to calibrate the data on early voting, the Republican surge in swing state registrations, and the effect of the nation’s biggest campuses, mostly in the swing states, being either closed down or at least not fully open on Election Day.

Biden is inert. He’s running a virtual campaign in fear of the virus, of questions about Hunter Biden, and of his suspected intention to pack the court or stop fracking—of most anything.

Trump took risks along with 100 million Americans who feed, fuel and make things for Americans: you can no more run a campaign from the basement than you could a presidency—or country.

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“Great Society,” by Amity Schlaes Reviewed by Sydney Williams

By on October 21st, 2020

https://swtotd.blogspot.com/

The book reviewed, Great Society by Amity Schlaes, is a timely history of what happens when hopes and expectations exceed capabilities. It is especially timely now when Socialism and the “Green New Deal” are being pushed on the American people by a progressive left that has become distanced from the average American.

By the time John Kennedy became President, The Depression was a distant memory and World War II had been over for over fifteen years. Americans were prospering. Theys felt good about themselves. They were admired by friends and feared by enemies. But, as happens once prosperity becomes common, people don’t seem to care or understand the role capitalism plays in eliminating poverty and making lives comfortable and happy. They don’t understand that nothing moves in straight lines – GDP growth, stock market performance, human emotions, or views of liberty. In the 1960s, the compounded rate for the Dow Jones Industrial Averages (DJIA) was 4.9% – all in the first half of the decade – and in the ensuing decade, the DJIA lost eight percent. What happened in the ‘60s, and its effect on subsequent decades, is the subject of this well-researched history of the period from the summer of 1960 to the summer of 1972. 

On January 20, 1961, a 43-year-old John F. Kennedy became the youngest U.S. President since Theodore Roosevelt. In his inaugural he focused on the Country’s strength and the meaning of freedom: “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty.” Americans were confident. In May of that same year, Kennedy announced a goal of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. Yet the Cold War persisted, poverty had not been vanquished and civil rights were not equally shared. Convinced of a need to stop the spread of Communism got us entangled in Vietnam. Concern for those living in penury led to the War on Poverty. Disquiet about equality and fairness were behind the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A decade that began on a high note, exemplified in Kennedy’s inaugural, ended with Nixon taking the nation off the gold standard on August 15, 1971. The years between witnessed a growth in national debt, a declining Dollar, student riots, and the assassination of a President, a civil rights leader and a U.S. Senator and Presidential candidate.

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