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Ruth King

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joel Kotkin, M. Andrew Moshier In Southern L.A., These Cities Are Making a Comeback The key is governance and a strong local focus.

By on March 7th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/southern-los-angeles-cities-paramount-governance-local

Like many older industrial towns, Paramount, a mostly Latino city of 50,000 located 18 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, has been through hard times. In 1981, the Rand Corporation described it as “an urban disaster area.” In 2015, it was named among the worst cities in America, based on 22 measures of affordability, economics, education, health, and quality of life. In 2019, Business Insider ranked it near the bottom along with several other nearby cities. Founded as a largely agricultural community in 1948, the city eventually transformed itself into a manufacturing hub but was then devastated in the 1980s as aerospace and car companies exited.

Yet today, walking along Paramount Boulevard, one sees not broken-down storefronts but a thriving downtown, full of attractive restaurants and shops. The city has adopted a “broken windows” approach to policing. While crime rates remain above average for the state, they have been trending down. Homicides, down two-thirds from 1990s levels, are well below the L.A. city average and almost half of those in nearby South L.A. neighborhoods. Paramount has also gotten its city finances on a more solid footing than those of its peers. Whereas L.A. was flirting with huge deficits even before the wildfires, Paramount maintained budget surpluses over the past decade.

Perhaps even more remarkable, one sees no signs of the homelessness, graffiti, and urban disorder that’s so common throughout Southern California—a remarkable shift from conditions just a decade or two ago. “In places like Paramount people get things done because that’s where they live,” says former Paramount city manager Pat West. “In L.A., they have meetings.”

Much of Paramount’s relative success comes from paying attention to little things. The city has focused on parks, urban space, and landscaping, helping local neighborhoods improve their look by subsidizing flower beds and white picket fences to improve the curb appeal of homes.

Under its elected leadership, Paramount has seen job growth in the hospital, education, small industrial, and retail sectors. The city’s income levels are significantly higher, and unemployment lower, than the L.A. County average. Unlike the dysfunctional L.A. school system, Paramount’s independent school district has improved its graduation rate from 71 percent to over 90 percent in recent years, according to city manager John Moreno.

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EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Cut Federal Funding to Barnard by Alan M. Dershowitz

By on March 7th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21459/cut-federal-funding-to-barnard

[Barnard’s] radical “studies” departments are propaganda mills that teach students what to think rather than how to think. Consider, for example, the “Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies Department”. Its website calls for students to “smash the white supremacist hetero-patriarchy.”

In other words, this women’s studies department has little to do with scholarship, teaching or learning. It has everything to do with advocacy. That is true of many other specialized studies departments at Barnard.

Signs at these protests call for “war” and “intifada”. Nor is the war limited to Israel. It is directed against Americans as well. The protests involve masked students, faculty and non-students who occupy buildings, prevent Jewish students from attending classes and threaten to close down the college unless it divests from Israel and takes other bigoted actions.

The college administration, instead of disciplining students who break the rules and the law, negotiated with them. Cutting off funding from Barnard will not hurt students who want a real education, because Barnard students can enroll in courses at Columbia, which is affiliated with Barnard. It will put an end to the propaganda “courses”, and “studies” “programs” in which Barnard seems to specialize.

It is imperative that freedom of speech, protected by the First Amendment, not be compromised by the government. Barnard is a private institution not bound by that amendment. Moreover, those activities that would cause a shutdown of federal funding are not covered by freedom of speech. They consist largely of physical actions, such as trespassing, blocking access, harassment and other forms of intimidation. Pure protests consisting of speech should not be a basis for defunding.

President Donald Trump has pledged to cut federal funding to schools that do not protect Jewish students from anti-semitic harassment and violence. The best place to begin this process is Barnard College in New York City. Cutting funding to major research universities threatens cutbacks on grants for medical and other important scientific research. Barnard College, on the other hand, is not a university. It does not have a medical school. Its faculty does little or no research that would affect Americans on a day-to-day basis. Cutting off federal aid to Barnard would have few negative impacts on issues that legitimately concern Americans, especially if it focuses on discriminatory actions and does not interfere with protected free speech

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

We Can’t Afford Timidity in Revamping Medicaid Sally Pipes

By on March 7th, 2025

https://www.newsmax.com/sallypipes/medicaid-cuts-entitlement/2025/03/05/id/1201567/

Last week, the House of Representatives passed a budget resolution by the narrowest of margins. The most controversial component of the bill concerns Medicaid.

Democrats have castigated the resolution on the grounds that it would make steep cuts to the joint federal-state public healthcare entitlement. Even some Republicans have expressed unease about that possibility.

But the hand-wringing about Medicaid cuts is misplaced.

The program is bloated and rife with fraud and waste, and it has veered significantly from its original intent of caring for the poor and disabled. It’s long overdue for paring.

First, some background.

Back in 2010, Obamacare loosened the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, extending coverage to all Americans earning up 138% of the federal poverty level, or $44,367 for a family of four as of this year. In order to entice states to go along with this scheme, Obamacare stipulated that the federal government would cover 90% of the cost of covering this “expansion population” in perpetuity.

The rest of the Medicaid population — which is to say, even poorer people and disabled Americans — receive much less federal support. For these beneficiaries, the feds cover anywhere from half to a little over three-quarters of the cost, leaving the rest to the states.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

The Green Energy Delusion The current approach to energy and environmental policy isn’t just unsustainable—it has put us on a collision course with reality. Paul Brown

By on March 7th, 2025

https://quillette.com/2025/03/04/the-green-energy-delusion/

I. Physical Constraints

Energy is not just another commodity. It’s absolutely fundamental to our modern civilisation. Every thing we do—from feeding ourselves to staying warm to manufacturing medicines—requires energy input. And not all energy sources are created equal.

A barrel of oil contains about fifty times more energy than the most advanced viable battery of the same weight. This gap is never going to close significantly. It can’t. The energy a battery can supply is dependent on the flow of electrons between different materials, each of which can provide a certain number of electrons for any given weight. You can improve the battery’s charging time or durability or the number of times it can be charged before it starts to fail, but you can’t change the fundamental composition of the materials available any more than you can change lead into gold.

Batteries, then, are heavy and they’re going to remain that way. This is not a problem for many applications—including phones, laptops, and small household devices. In these cases, the lower energy density isn’t a major drawback since the devices are small and frequently rechargeable, and weight isn’t a limiting factor in their performance. But for things that need energy input to move—cars, trucks, planes—the extra weight creates a cascading series of problems. A heavier vehicle needs more energy to move, which means that it needs bigger batteries, which means adding yet more weight, which means that more energy is needed to move it. Thanks to this weight penalty, electric vehicles often require significantly more raw materials in their construction, and more energy in their day-to-day operation, than their advocates admit.

Aircraft face uniquely stringent weight considerations: every kilogramme of battery reduces payload capacity while, unlike fuel, batteries don’t become lighter during flight. So the reduced payload that would result from using batteries means fewer passengers or less cargo per flight, which in turn means we would need to schedule more flights to move the same number of people or amount of goods. In addition, aircraft combustion engines operate at relatively steady speeds—there’s not much acceleration or deceleration, no sitting in traffic, and no braking from which energy can be recouped. Since there is a direct relationship between weight and range or payload, aircraft are naturally incentivised to be as efficient as possible.

So battery-powered aircraft are unlikely to work well in the foreseeable future—but what about cars? It’s the policy in many developed countries to shift to electric vehicles—in the UK, they’re planning to ban new sales of internal combustion cars from 2035, and in Norway almost 90 percent of new car sales are electric due to carrot-and-stick policies. But from a full-system environmental perspective, this doesn’t make sense. Since not only are there weight penalties—batteries make cars heavier and heavier cars then require even bigger, heavier batteries to move—but there are issues of energy efficiency to take into account.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Will NIH Cuts Boost Public Health—or Destroy It?By David Andorsky and Vinay Prasad

By on March 6th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/trump-nih-cuts-debate?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Two cancer doctors debate whether Trump’s slashing of billions to the National Institutes for Health will boost public health or destroy it.

During his testimony before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing on Wednesday, Jay Bhattacharya, President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the National Institutes of Health, seemed to side with the president’s plan to cut billions of dollars from the nation’s scientific research budget, most of which is controlled by the NIH.

“I have a background as an economist as well as being a doctor,” Bhattacharya told the committee. This helps him “understand that every dollar wasted on a frivolous study is a dollar not spent. Every dollar wasted on administrative costs that are not needed is a dollar not spent on research. The team I’m going to put together is going to be hyper-focused to make sure that the portfolio of grants that the NIH funds is devoted to the chronic disease problems of this country.”

Some of Trump’s cuts have already been made, including the firing of over 1,000 “probationary” workers, and the blocking of this year’s grants through a bureaucratic loophole. The Trump administration also wants to stop paying indirect costs for building space, expensive equipment, and oversight of medical research, though so far that has been stopped by a judge’s temporary order.

What should we make of these cuts? Are they a sensible way to make medical research even more efficient? Or will they threaten the development of cures that could save millions of lives?

We asked two oncologists we trust to debate this important issue.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Iranian Regime is Hollowing Out The fall of the Sharia Curtain on the horizon? by Hugh Fitzgerald

By on March 6th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-iranian-regime-is-hollowing-out/

Trump claims he would “prefer” that an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities not happen. But it’s up to Iran. If it refuses to negotiate, as Ayatollah Khamenei now insists, then Israel will have no choice but to attack, and Trump will have no choice but to support and aid the Israelis, by providing both those 30,000-pound bunker buster bombs, as those Massive Ordnance Penetrators, or MOPs, are known, and the bombers big enough to deliver them.

Since Israel’s airstrikes on October 26, 2024 that destroyed Iran’s anti-missile systems, Iran has been threatening to wreak a terrible vengeance on the Jewish state. But nearly four months have passed, and Iran has not dared to launch a single missile, rocket, or drone at Israel. Its threats are empty; its boasts those of a miles gloriosus, a braggart warrior. The more it threatens to destroy its enemy, Israel, the more ridiculous Iran becomes in the eyes of the world. More on Iran’s hollow bravado — akin to the frog that puffs itself up to ward off predators — can be found here: “Iran Says Israel, US ‘Cannot Do a Damn Thing’ Against Tehran,” Algemeiner, February 17, 2025:

Iran has claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than building weapons. However, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), reported in December that Iran had greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, at its Fordow site dug into a mountain.

Rafael Grossi, the head of the IAEA, has been warning about Iran’s rush to enrich uranium up to a level just below weapons-grade, a development by the Iranians that only makes sense if they are determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. There is no civilian use for uranium enriched to that level.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Charles Lipson Donald Trump calls for a renewal of American patriotism His message echoed Ronald Reagan’s ‘Morning in America’

By on March 6th, 2025

https://thespectator.com/topic/donald-trump-calls-renewal-american-patriotism/

Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night was the most powerful, rousing and pointed of any presidential address in decades. “America is back… and we are just getting started,” it began, capturing the theme of the night. The address ended with a peroration that his administration would “take up the righteous cause of American liberty” and “fight, fight, fight for a country our citizens’ believe in and deserve.” Our country’s “Golden Age,” he said, ”has just begun.”

Dozens and dozens of applause lines were planted throughout the speech as Trump laid out his ambitious agenda and his accomplishments so far. It was not the dull laundry list of programs most presidents present to Congress.

There was an upbeat coherence to the address. It included plenty of specific proposals, but they were not the focus of the speech. The emphasis was on a renewal of American patriotism — a new “Golden Age” — illustrated by his achievements so far. The leitmotif was his recognition of citizens in the gallery who underscored those themes. They embodied both our country’s virtues and its tragedies, the result of policies gone horribly wrong. He pinned those tragedies on Joe Biden and the Democrats.

The result was a bravura performance for the president, a pep rally for congressional Republicans and a train wreck for the Democrats, who sat glumly in their seats, holding signs up attacking the president and booing his applause lines.

The Democrats’ self-inflicted humiliation began as soon as Trump started. Congressman Al Green, who introduced a bill to impeach President Trump shortly after he took office, rose with a cane in hand and started yelling at the president, refusing to be silent or sit (when asked by House Speaker Mike Johnson) and ultimately had to be removed from the chamber.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, MEDIA Comments turned off

The Times, They Aren’t Never A-Changin’

By on March 6th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/03/06/the-times-they-arent-never-a-changin/

Sunday, its largest circulation day of the week, the New York Times ran a lengthy, triple-bylined story intended to stir up fear and anger over the Trump White House’s climate policy. It was no example of civically minded journalism, just another propaganda piece to fuel the global warming tale.

Right from the top, the reporters tell readers that President Donald Trump “has severely damaged the government’s ability to fight climate change, upending American environmental policy with moves that could have lasting implications for the country, and the planet.”

“Could?” That’s what the entire global warming scare is built on, coulds and maybes and possiblies.

Yet the reporters screech that “Mr. Trump has gutted federal climate efforts, rolled back regulations aimed at limiting pollution and given a major boost to the fossil fuel industry.” Let’s not confuse carbon dioxide with pollution, which the alarmists continually do. Just because the federal government has classified CO2 as a “threat to human health and welfare,” that doesn’t mean that it is. As every school kid knows, it’s essential to life.

Naturally we can’t have any boosting of the fossil fuel industry, since it merely provides the cornerstone of modernity and there’s nothing in line, no, not even renewables, to replace it.

At this point, just two paragraphs in, it’s clear this story is no piece of journalism. It’s agitprop for green nonsense and the Democratic Party’s agenda to run the economy from Washington and blue-state capitals.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Betrayal: Lipstadt’s silence about the Biden administration’s failure on antisemitism Jonathan Tobin

By on March 6th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/betrayal-lipstadts-silence-about-campus-jew-hatred-under-the-biden-administration/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%20Emails&utm_medium=email&_

It turns out that what the country needed most was an antisemitism envoy to the United States and not to the rest of the world. And when the plague of Jew-hatred surged in the streets of American cities and on college campuses, what was also needed was for that envoy not to stand by in silence while the administration she served chose to be neutral about the issue for partisan reasons.

Sadly, that failure will constitute a major part of the legacy of Deborah Lipstadt.

Lipstadt is an eminent Jewish historian whose groundbreaking work on Holocaust denial earned her acclaim in her field. It also led to an important court case in Great Britain where Holocaust denier David Irving unsuccessfully sued her for libel, an ordeal that not only inspired her own book on the subject but also the 2015 movie “Denial” (she was portrayed by Jewish actress Rachel Weisz).

She deserves to be remembered for her scholarship and for writing some excellent books like her 1985 Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–1945 and the 1993 Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, as well as the 2005 History on Trial: My Day in Court With a Holocaust Denier.

Her recent acknowledgment of the failure of the Biden administration to adequately respond to the explosion of antisemitism under her watch, however, should not be overlooked.

Denouncing Columbia

It was just one sentence in an article she recently wrote in The Free Press that was devoted to explaining why she refused to consider an offer to teach at Columbia University. But in so doing, she buried what should have been the lead.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas prisoner deal to be paid in future dead, warns terror victims’ group head David Isaac

By on March 6th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/hamas-prisoner-deal-to-be-paid-in-future-dead-warns-terror-victims-group-head/

IDF Lt. Col. (res.) Meir Indor has waged an uphill battle against mass terrorist releases by Israel since 1986, when he founded the Almagor Terror Victims Association.

His latest effort was against the current deal, which saw some 1,900 terrorists, including hardened killers and 274 serving life sentences, released in exchange for 33 Israelis, some of whom were no longer alive.

Indor knows something about fighting terrorism. As an IDF soldier, he was a member of the first unit of mista’arvim, Israeli combat teams that disguise themselves as Arabs to operate undercover within Palestinian populations.

As a civilian, he became an activist in the wake of the Jibril Agreement, a prisoner exchange deal that took place on May 21, 1985. That deal marked the first mass prisoner release by Israel, in which 1,150 security prisoners were exchanged for three Israelis captured during the First Lebanon War.

Those terrorists would become the leaders of the First Intifada, which broke out less than three years later.

JNS spoke with Indor about the dangers of Israel’s approach to hostage agreements.

JNS: How many terrorists who have been released from Israeli jails return to terrorism?

Indor: We don’t have an organized tracking system. The Almagor Terror Victims Association is a voluntary body. Our dream is to establish a research division. But we occasionally receive different numbers from security agencies. There is a report that approximately 80% of released terrorists return to carry out more terror.

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