RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/dei-cash-cow

There is an old saw that, in America, every great cause begins as a movement and eventually degenerates into a racket. This is certainly true of the past decade’s most fashionable cause: “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” What might have begun as a social movement has now become a business—and not just in the United States. According to McKinsey & Company, spending on “DEI-related efforts” across the globe totaled $7.5 billion in 2020. If trends continue, that figure will exceed $15 billion by 2026.

And, in another American tradition, government contractors have turned a profit on this fad. While it’s hard to determine the precise amount of money that Washington spends on DEI, a search for contracts, grants, and other outlays that reference “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and similar terms suggests that DEI principles were attached to more than $1 billion in federal contracts last year.

This represents a rapid change. In 2019, according to our search, the federal government awarded only $27 million in contracts with language related to “diversity and inclusion.” But after the death of George Floyd in 2020, the federal government and private contractors went all-in on DEI, seeking to implement the Biden administration’s “whole-of-government” equity agenda.

https://tomklingenstein.com/the-uk-is-a-window-to-our-dystopian-future/

Take a walk down my street. There aren’t enough warehouse venues and gang-related killings to warrant the label of “edgy,” and there are far too many two-parents-kids-and-a-dog residences for the “up and coming” label to make any sense. It’s suburban London — those “invincible suburbs” — and predictably predictable.

But look closer. How could there be four solicitors’ offices on a single road? Clearly, they aren’t wanting for customers. Queues of men (only men) spill out onto the pavement. You can see them at all times of day, smoking and shuffling and checking their cracked phone screens incessantly. The buildings they loiter outside all seem to have the same branding. The services advertised are certainly the same: “Immigration law, visa services, overstayers, failed asylum.” You’ll notice that “Rashid & Rashid Solicitors,” the office with the distinctively garish green lettering, has been shuttered. A note on the door tells you it has been closed on orders of the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Googling it takes you to a news article, suggesting it was part of a “visa scam.” A brick has been thrown through the glass window. 

Travel further. Visit Oxford, the seat of English advanced education — and site of a notoriously prolific child grooming ring. Go north to Bradford, which has its own university. Like so many others, it has fallen on hard times. School graduates feel that the fees just aren’t worth it anymore, turned off by a depressed job market and post-Covid learning “modernizations” that somehow manage to make a bachelor’s degree an even bigger waste of time. The one year master’s course is still popular, though. It’s relatively cheap, but the university has still set up two recruitment offices in South Asia. It brings students, some of whom don’t seem to ever turn up to class. But they pay. If the university closes, the town will lose a quarter of its jobs. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/11/the-trump-bragg-merchan-chess-game/

Is the president-elect being played?

It is rare to witness such a disconnect between pro-Trump media commentators and the Trump defense team as we’re seeing in today’s news: Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg agrees that Trump’s sentencing must be postponed while other proceedings — in particular, Trump’s posttrial motion to vacate the jury’s guilty verdicts — continue. There is outrage in the commentariat, yet Trump and his lawyers are spinning this development as a great victory.

There is a chess game going on here. Bottom line: I believe Bragg is trying to manipulate Trump into asking that the prosecution be suspended for four years.

Despite the Democrats’ campaign rhetoric, Trump is not a convicted felon now, a jury’s guilty verdict notwithstanding. Only the court’s formal entry of a judgment of conviction after sentencing makes a defendant a convicted felon. Bragg knows Trump does not want to be sentenced and have the judgment of conviction entered on the court’s record (and thus on Trump’s personal record). I wager that the DA is calculating that if the president-elect is given the choice of either a four-year suspension of the case or a sentencing so that Trump can eventually appeal the conviction, Trump will choose the former.

If it is Trump himself who asks for that outcome, all the people complaining about the unfairness and harm to the public interest of having a criminal case hanging over a sitting president’s head for four years will have to mute their outrage. And I think Trump is going to ask for that outcome — which is why his lawyers are already equating postponement with victory.

Let’s try to break it into the three relevant stages: (1) Trump’s posttrial motion to dismiss the guilty verdicts based on the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling (which is now on the table); (2) sentencing and entry of the judgment of conviction (which would happen if Judge Juan Merchan denies the posttrial motion); and (3) appeal, which most close observers experienced in criminal law issues believe Trump has a good chance of winning.