RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://outreach.senate.gov/iqextranet/view_newsletter.aspx?id=111545&c=JErnst

Thousands of calls to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) from veterans seeking mental health services are going unanswered.

Desperate travelers are waiting hours on the phone or in line hoping to speak with someone at the State Department about passport delays that are causing vacation cancelations.

Seniors calling the Social Security Administration are increasingly being greeted with busy messages, waiting longer to speak to a representative, or having their calls go unanswered altogether as the agency shifts towards remote work.

Frustrated Americans are being put on hold while too many federal employees are phoning it in.

A manager of a VA medical center responsible for overseeing the scheduling of veterans’ care appointments actually called into a meeting from a bubble bath—and even posted a selfie on social media with the caption, “my office for the next hour.” Another VA staffer lamented, “It’s almost as if this employee is making a mockery of all the veterans. I can sit here in my tub and relax, and you just have to wait.”

And that is exactly what is happening.

The VA is still providing misleading wait times to hide the problem, but the heartbreaking stories of veterans continuing to go without urgent, medically necessary care—sometimes for months—tell the real story.

Taxpayers are also picking up the cost of maintaining mostly empty buildings in Washington. Seventy-five percent or more of the office space at the headquarters of most federal agencies is not being used, according to a review conducted by the Government Accountability Office.

The vacant offices beg the question: Where are all the federal employees?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/crime/boosters-fencers-cleaners-cartel-criminals-retail-theft

A nationwide retail theft epidemic cost the United States close to $100 billion in 2021. Stores are being forced to raise prices or shut up shop, insurers are refusing to help, and smaller mom and pop stores are being left behind. In this series, Mayhem on Main Street, the Washington Examiner will investigate the causes behind the scourge of shoplifting, the role of the cartels, the cost to stores big and small, and the complicity of lax prosecutors. Part 2 investigates the role of the cartels. To read Part 1, click here.

Mexican cartels are behind the spike in organized retail crime and are deeply entrenched in every level of the process, according to the federal government’s chief investigative agency.

Retailers nationwide sustained nearly $100 billion worth of losses in 2021, the highest year on record, according to the National Retail Federation report published in September 2022. The growing number of cartel-run theft rings around the country drove that figure up from $70 billion in 2019.

“Organized retail crime is leading to more brazen and more violent attacks in retail stores throughout the country. Many of the criminal rings orchestrating these thefts are also involved in other serious criminal activity such as human trafficking, narcotics trafficking, weapon trafficking, and more,” said Steve Francis, acting executive associate director for Homeland Security Investigations, in a statement. HSI is part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association described the acceleration of organized retail crime in recent years as having “exploded.”

In fact, 80% of retailers polled nationwide reported an increase in merchandise stolen in 2022, according to the National Retail Federation.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/the_national_archives_refuses_to_release_5400_emails_biden_sent_using_fake_names.html

The National Archives and Records Administration, also known as “NARA,” has become ideologically corrupt. It no longer operates as a non-partisan repository of our nation’s documents. It is, instead, a Democrat-run institution that rides roughshod over American values, has dedicated itself to destroying Trump, and, most recently, has provided cover for Joe Biden. How else can one explain the fact that it’s spent more than a year trying to prevent the release of thousands of emails that Biden wrote using fake names?

In June 2021, the National Archives turned on itself for being insufficiently woke, with a task force announcing that the institution was structurally racist, right down to its rotunda, which focuses on American history.

In September 2021, the National Archives declared that the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence merited a “Harmful Language Alert.”

In November 2021, when the House select committee investigating January 6 asked NARA to produce documents from Trump’s presidency, Trump filed a motion to block that initiative. NARA, violating its founding obligation to be non-partisan, filed a brief opposing Trump.

In August 2022, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago at the behest of the National Archives, which claimed that Trump refused to return to them his presidential records. The records, at the time, were in a secure area under guard by the Secret Service.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/08/20/the-death-of-the-great-american-city/

The King of Wall Street has spoken, but the peasants are not listening. Ever since the end of the lockdowns, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, like many of his elite counterparts in cities from New York to Seattle, has been calling for the workers to return to their cubicles and daily commutes. The business elites have been cheered on by big-city corporate media, like The Economist. Even the White House, despite its green posturing, is pushing to get most Americans back on the road, often for long, mind-numbing, energy-consuming commutes.

Yet American workers – particularly more seasoned employees – are refusing to kowtow. The shift to companies offering some remote work seems to be on the increase. As Stanford researcher Nicholas Bloom notes, the number of job postings for remote-friendly roles is hitting record levels.

In fact, according to the Flex Index, the share of people in the office full time dropped from 49 per cent in the first quarter of 2023 to 42 per cent in the second quarter. A Gallup survey found that only two in 10 workers in jobs that can be done remotely are working full-time in the office.

This is not merely an American phenomenon. In London, office attendance is still down 35 per cent on pre-pandemic levels. Canary Wharf in east London is being hit particularly hard, as employers like HSBC and Barclays downsize their operations.

All this suggests a dramatic comedown for many of our most elite business districts. North America’s largest central business districts are all in distress. Overall, office buildings in the 10 leading metro areas remain roughly 50 per cent occupied. And when workers do turn up at the office, it is usually midweek. On Mondays and Fridays office visits fall by around half.

In some ways, this reverses the patterns of the industrial age, as portrayed in Friedrich Engels’ The Condition of the Working Class in England or in Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives. As factory labour swelled, and artisanal industries declined, workers left their more bucolic towns to live in cities, as Engels put it, amid ‘the most distressing scenes of misery and poverty’.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/28/sleepy-joe-mails-it-in/

I rarely watch TV, but I check-in occasionally to understand the nonstop propaganda stream influencing normie America. During my visit, I happened to catch Joe Biden’s speech about the Maui wildfires.

It was shockingly bad. His delivery was lethargic and disinterested. His mumbling and inconsistent dropping of syllables reminded me of a kid struggling with third-grade phonics. He read off his notes, kept his head down, and did not emphasize anything appropriately.

Heroically giving up a day of vacation, he gave the impression of someone who was forced to pretend to care. This dreadful scene highlighted his earlier, insulting offer of $700 to displaced families, a pittance compared to their needs, and a mere fraction of the billions we have sent to Ukraine.

As usual, Biden made these events about him. This is a narcissist’s way of mimicking empathy. “Oh something bad happened to you, well something equally bad—worse actually—happened to me!” He thought a minor house fire, in which he almost lost his beloved Corvette, equaled the pain of people who just lost their homes and kids.

Obviously, I don’t think Biden or any president is responsible for natural disasters. These things happen.  Nor do I think, generally, the federal government should be the “go to” agency for handling the response to such events.  States and cities are supposed to take up the laboring oar on natural disasters. But you still expect the federal government to juice locals’ efforts, throw some funding around, and maybe say a few words that show solidarity.

Unfortunately, state government in Democrat-dominated Hawaii appears completely incompetent. The guy in charge of water decided to delay its release when it was requested for firefighting, possibly because of his earlier-stated concerns about equity. He resigned from office in ignominy (and probably fear).

There are also unexplained stories of police stopping people from fleeing or sending them back into danger. Some people suggest as many as 1,000 have died. This is not merely a tragedy, but a series of failures that deserve a thorough investigation.

The media frequently praises Biden for his world-famous empathy. He’s the lovable Uncle Joe, who can relate to the common man because of his humble beginnings and early-life tragedies.

This is all made-up propaganda. It is true, he had some difficult situations early in life, including the loss of his wife and daughter in a car accident. But, for years, he has milked these stories for clout, even as he repeatedly lost his cool with regular voters, frequently insulting them when they did not kiss the ring.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/28/if-democrats-criminalize-opposition-and-cripple-the-court-democracy-is-dead/

Only if a critical mass of Americans ‘know what time it is’ will there be any hope of combating this onslaught.

Democrats are seeking to land a one-two punch to cement their control of America today and for generations to come: Criminalize the political opposition and cripple the last authority to which the opposition might appeal in defense of its rights.

This is one way to understand two running lines of attack that may appear independent but are inextricably intertwined.

Criminalizing the Opposition

The first consists of the unprecedented, Soviet show trial-style “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” “cases” conjured up against Donald Trump and two dozen others in his orbit, chiefly including his lawyers. The zealous prosecutors have many motives for torturing laws to hang them around the neck of the former president and GOP front-runner in the middle of a campaign — a frivolous and vengeful prosecutorial effort pursued arguably in violation of laws, norms, and core principles of justice.

While turning the First and Sixth Amendments into dead letters, these cases also effectively criminalize the seeking of office of anyone who might hold unauthorized views, the Republican contesting of elections or questioning of election integrity, and such Republicans’ legal defense.

“You can go to jail if you disagree with us, and particularly if you threaten our power and privilege,” our betters are saying through their chilling lawfare jihad. The point is that if Americans cannot be trusted to choose leaders within a narrow set of regime-approved bounds, the regime will have to force them upon us by hook or by crook. Locking up the opposition has always been a potential endgame for the ruling class in its war on wrongthink.

Jan. 6, 2021, was the beginning of that endgame. It served as a pretext to accelerate the war, as predicted at the time. It was also used to justify treating rioters with the “wrong” views not as everyday Americans-turned-petty criminals in a political protest that got out of hand, but as domestic terrorists.

https://victorhanson.com/who-destroyed-san-francisco-and-why-part-one/

It should have been impossible to wreck San Francisco.

It is the world’s most naturally beautiful city, with perhaps the most ideal bay, harbor, and ports of any coastal metropolis.

San Francisco is America’s premier window on the East. It serves as the natural conduit of commercial and cultural exchanges with the rising wealth of Asia and its dynamic economies in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. During World War II, the Bay Area was the shipping point of supply to the Pacific Theater. The same role was true of the Korean and Vietnam wars, and could be again if China were to invade Taiwan.

The weather is mild year long. Mountains and shoreline are side-by-side. It is the gateway to the wine country of Napa, Mendocino, and Sonoma counties.

A mere decade ago, San Francisco downtown commercial property was among the most coveted and high-priced in the nation.

Prior generations had left behind once state-of-the-art clean and efficient mass transit. They built five majestic bridges across the 1,600 square mile sprawling bay and estuaries that connected the city and its environs to millions of suburbanites.

The city has access to the state’s main freeways that head out eastward, northward, and southward. Our ancestors long ago solved San Francisco’s water problems by importing vast amounts of potable water in aqueducts from the distant Hetch Hetchy and California Water Project mountain reservoirs.

Silicon Valley had slowly crept into San Francisco, suppling it with some of its trillions of dollars in market capitalization. Not long ago, some of the nation’s major corporations were based in the city itself, including Craigslist, the Gap, Levi Strauss, Lyft, PG&E, Charles Schwab, Salesforce, Twitter, Uber, and Wells Fargo.

Two great universities—UC Berkeley and Stanford—bookended the city. Both from their top-ranked graduate and professional schools turned out yearly scores of Bay-Area topflight engineers, computer scientists, doctors, lawyers, and business leaders.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/08/26/court-rules-biological-man-allowed-in-sorority/

A federal district court ruled Friday that a national sorority organization did not violate its own bylaws by allowing a biological man to live in a sorority house and dismissed the complaint from sorority sisters, according to court documents.

Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) sorority sisters sued the national organization in March for admitting a biological male into the University of Wyoming chapter, alleging that the national organization violated its bylaws and that 6 foot 2 biological male Artemis Langford, who identifies as trans, watched women in the house get undressed. Judge Alan B. Johnson of the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming, appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, ruled that the national organization can interpret its own definitions as it wants to and didn’t breach its housing contracts by allowing a biological man to board with women, according to court documents. 

The sorority sisters argued that KKG must enact new bylaws to define what a woman is and allow that into the sorority house, but the court disagreed. “Defining ‘woman’ is Kappa Kappa Gamma’s bedrock right as a private, voluntary organization – and one this Court may not invade,” the decision reads.

https://victorhanson.com/save-the-rule-of-law-by-destroying-it/

Some truths are so staggering in their ramifications that Americans simply shrug and tune them out as if strangers in a strange land.

Is their current bewilderment because modernist America is unrecognizable —a nonexistent border, downtown homeless juxtaposed to hipster professional elites, DEI racial essentialism, cities reverting to precivilizational wastelands, millions exiting blue states to red, an FBI and DOJ gone rogue, the normalization of violent theft and assault, biologically born men sandbagging women’s sports and their locker room privacy?

We are reaching the point where the once unbelievable has become the banal, as a single generation has done its best to undo the work of a prior 12 generations. Consider the following:

Three leftwing prosecutors are criminalizing politics with more than 90 simultaneous indictments of Donald Trump, the ex-president and currently the leading Republican primary candidate. While New York prosecutor Letitia James is hounding Trump with a $250 million state lawsuit against the Trump organization and family, on the pretense of supposedly Trump overvaluing his real estate and filing inaccurate financial statements.

Is there any Mafia don, mass murderer, or terrorist who has faced so many indictments or suits in so many jurisdictions at almost the same time?

The prosecutors’ immediate lawfare agendas seem transparent enough. They wish to bankrupt candidate Trump with endless legal costs, and humiliate him with his mugshot blasted over the Internet, and put endless Lilliputian legal ropes over a shackled candidate Gulliver, and inflate the ego and agendas of local prosecutors, and purportedly earn Trump empathy enough to win the nomination only to be hemorrhaged with still more indictments, gag orders, and court appearances to bleed him out in the general election.

Americans ask themselves questions whose answers are never given. Why are all these Trump prosecutors leftwing or with Democratic connections?

Would any of the 90 something indictments for “crimes” of years past have been lodged against a citizen Trump who had retired from politics?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19923/a-tale-of-two-parties

Among his opening words of Charles Dickens’ classic novel, A Tale of Two Cities, he captures the enormous decisions, challenges, and choices that face people, institutions, and nations:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Those choices can lead either to chaos or triumph.

While much has been said about the recent Republican presidential debate, our nation’s most important focus would probably be better spent on the policies of the representatives currently running the United States of America. Many of these politicians and officials have created a tale of two profoundly different parties — in their policies, values and their vision for the country. What once was a party that might leave a voter disagreeing with certain issues, at least one could respect its core principles.

No more.

What once was the party of FDR, Truman, and Kennedy appears to be in the throes of being torn apart by those whose agenda seeks to make government — not the voters — ever more rich, more centralized, and more intrusive in our daily lives. They have increased the national debt, which now tops out at more than $32 trillion — more than the 2022 GDP of only $25 trillion. With interest on the debt of more than $1 trillion annually, it is capable of crushing America as no foreign nation ever could.