RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/13/the-justice-departments-troubling-discovery-delays/

It’s been almost seven months since the FBI conducted a pre-dawn raid at the Virginia farm of Thomas and Sharon Caldwell. Dozens of armed agents broke down their front door, ransacked their home, and arrested Tom Caldwell on January 19. A week later, a grand jury indicted Caldwell and two other alleged Oath Keepers for various crimes related to their participation in the Capitol protest on January 6.

Despite the fact Caldwell never entered the building, carried no weapon, and assaulted no one, the Justice Department sought to keep the 66-year-old former Navy lieutenant with service-related disabilities in jail awaiting trial. Caldwell, a decorated military veteran, has no criminal record.

Nonetheless, on February 12, Judge Amit Mehta ordered Caldwell to remain behind bars: “What Mr. Caldwell is accused of is conspiring with others to plot an insurrection against the government of the United States, particularly the Congress of the United States, while it was attempting to certify the Electoral College vote,” Mehta said during Caldwell’s detention hearing. 

“So the concern with Mr. Caldwell is less what he specifically did on January 6th, like others,” Mehta continued. “It doesn’t look like he actually entered the Capitol building, didn’t assault any police officers. But what he did prior to January the 6th is clearly engage in planning and preparation for conduct that others were engaged in and that others participated in, in the incursion that took place at the Capitol and the violence that followed.” 

Caldwell interrupted the hearing to plead for mercy. “I beg your indulgence, sir. But my life hangs in the balance.”

Caldwell spent 50 days in jail before Mehta reversed himself on March 12 and released Caldwell to very limited home detention.

It now appears Mehta is having additional second thoughts about the Justice Department’s handling of the Capitol breach probe. In dozens of pre-trial detention motions filed by Joe Biden’s Justice Department, the evidence against January 6 defendants rests solely in the hands of the government. Detention hearings act instead almost as ex-parte criminal trials where federal judges in Washington, D.C. declare guilt or innocence based largely on what federal prosecutors present in court, occasionally sending defendants to jail for months before a trial can begin.

Caldwell was one of more than 100 Americans ensnared in what the top prosecutor managing the first stage of the January 6 investigation called a “shock and awe” campaign to intimidate Americans out of coming to the nation’s capital to protest Joe Biden’s inauguration. But that short-term political goal doesn’t seem to be working as a long-term legal strategy for the Justice Department.

Mehta, who has denied bond to three other Oath Keepers now incarcerated in the D.C. jail for months awaiting trials that won’t begin until 2022, expressed his displeasure with the government this week during a status hearing for Caldwell and 16 other defendants in the Oath Keepers conspiracy case.

Mehta said it was “troubling” to learn that the full trove of discovery material won’t be accessible to defendants until early 2022. That means defendants like Caldwell will have to wait at least a year before all the evidence related to their case will be available to defense attorneys.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/the_four_horsemen_of_the_biden_apocalypse.html

In the waning days of the Trump administration, the country was showing signs of economic improvement, people were feeling more confident about battling COVID, and the border was relatively secure as the wall was finally being constructed.

What a difference seven months can make.  It has been a horrific 207 days since President Joe Biden and his radical administration were unleashed on the country.

In effect, a political apocalypse is approaching.  In the New Testament Book of Revelation, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are revealed to be “Conquest, War, Famine, and Death.”  In the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel, the four horsemen are referred to as “sword, famine, wild beasts, and plague.”

In the era of Joe Biden, the four horsemen of our political apocalypse are the border invasion, the economic catastrophe, the assault on our families, and the use of the COVID plague to eliminate our constitutional rights.

1. Invasion.  Biden inherited a secure border and immediately decided to destroy the progress of President Donald Trump and create an unmitigated disaster for Americans.  The border wall was foolishly stopped, the policy of “catch and release” was reinstituted, the “Remain in Mexico” policy was ended, and illegal aliens were given an invitation to enter the United States.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/fear-and-self-loathing-at-american-express-11628884963?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

This has been the year of woke and weak corporate CEOs trying to signal virtue by endorsing leftist politics and attacking Republicans. But now we have a bizarre case of a business attacking itself. The Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo writes this week in the New York Post about a lecture hosted by American Express. He reports that at the Amex corporate event a guest speaker argued that the system of capitalism was founded on racism and that “racist logics and forms of domination” have shaped Western society from the Industrial Revolution to the present. Mr. Rufo quotes the insufferable lecturer telling Amex employees, “You are complicit in giving privileges in one community against the other, under the pretext that we live in a meritocratic system where the market judges everyone the same.”

Well, it’s true that the company’s advertisements have touted the privileges enjoyed by consumers who use its ubiquitous green cards. But the history of American Express is the story of a company that has thrived by offering its many services to a broader and broader clientele. The firm’s website says it has more than 100 million cards in use—accepted by millions of merchants. Sure, it has generally served a higher-income segment than Visa and Mastercard, but there are options for all kinds of consumers.

Mr. Rufo describes how American Express employees had to define themselves:

In a foundational session, the outside consulting firm Paradigm trained AmEx employees to deconstruct their own intersectional identities, mapping their “race, sexual orientation, body type, religion, disability status, age, gender identity [and] citizenship” onto an official company worksheet.

https://www.nysun.com/national/beyond-bretton-woods-it-was-as-close-to-economic/91617/

The formula to ensure prosperity is simple: Add a low-rate, broad-based flat tax to spending restraint, free trade, and sound money, and there you have it.

The Great Depression was born out of xenophobic protectionism, embodied in the 1930 passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, plus 1932’s massive increases in tax rates on our country’s most productive members. The economy collapsed as never before.

Gold being then, as it still is, the first refuge of the cautious, became a safe haven. There were runs on banks as depositors demanded gold in exchange for deposits or currency. The value of gold as measured in goods and services soared, meaning that there was a tremendous fall in the price level. Money back then was gold.

President Roosevelt was swept into office in March of 1933. Instead of reversing Hoover’s tariff and tax increases, Roosevelt made gold the scapegoat. In his first month in office, he legislated the so-called Bank Holiday Act, which prohibited banks from buying or selling foreign currencies or specie — especially gold; eliminated all gold clauses in contracts, public or private; and finally made holding gold by Americans illegal.

Gold ceased to be currency in the United States. This was the first step in ridding the monetary system of gold.

In late 1933, to make matters worse, Roosevelt followed his gold confiscation by devaluing the dollar against foreign currencies by some 60% and raising the official price of gold to $35 an ounce from $20.67. This was an enormous wealth tax on former gold holders. The depression settled in, lasting until 1945.

The anomaly was that while gold was removed from the U.S. economy, it still remained the official settlement medium internationally.