RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/homenews/3951579-recession-already-here-for-many-americans-as-buying-power-credit-social-net-shrinks/

The stock market may be closely watching the chance of an official economic recession, but many Americans across the country are already feeling the squeeze as they contend with higher prices and borrowing costs than they saw a year ago.

While Evelyn Canela, 31, a senior program director at a nonprofit based in Harlem, said she thinks she has a “well-paying job,” which paid in the $100,000-range when she first started, she also said she’s been feeling the pressure to save, particularly as various industries have seen more layoffs in recent months. 

In a poll released by Morning Consult last month, almost half of respondents believed the nation was already in a recession.

The poll also found that about 41 percent of Americans surveyed had begun taking precautions and steps to beef up savings, but a closer look at the data revealed disparities by income. 

Adults in households with annual earnings above $100,000 were more likely than others to say they were beginning to prepare for an economic downturn or recession, with 52 percent saying they’d taken to stockpiling goods or food, cut back on spending or other steps.

By contrast, the poll found that those in households that earned under $50,000 annually were more likely to say they had not yet begun to make preparations “but wish they could.”

The poll comes as recent months have seen more Americans are feeling poorer and pessimistic about the nation’s economic forecast at a time that rising price stickers are putting a squeeze on pockets across the spectrum.

At the same time, data shows credit card debt is also on the rise; a March study from Wallethub found “credit card debt increased by $85.8 billion during Q4 2022 – the highest quarterly increase ever recorded.”

Job losses are cutting into spending power, even for six-figure earners

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/04/in_charleston_ron_desantis_gave_a_pitchperfect_conservative_speech.html

I’ve just returned from hearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speak. I went in open-minded and came out impressed. DeSantis is a very good speaker, but it was the content of his speech, which is about core conservativism, that had the audience clapping and cheering. DeSantis made the case that his very successful, focused, disciplined conservative leadership is what all voters want.

In 2018, when he was first elected, out of 8 million votes cast, DeSantis won by only 32,000 votes. Still, he took his win as a mandate to implement the policies and principles he’d promised. When he ran for reelection four years later, he got reelected by over 1.5 million votes. Voters, he believes, responded to leadership and competence.

Leading from the front means abandoning polls. “Why would I want to be led by polls? A leader is not captive to poll results. A leader sets out a vision, executes the vision, and delivers results for people.”

Leadership also requires team cohesion, which DeSantis instituted on his first day. His job was to make the decisions, and his team had to be on board. The result is no drama and, he explained, “just daily execution of the mission. And that’s the reason why we’ve been able to get so much stuff done.”

DeSantis governed proactively, rather than fearing he’d offend someone. You can’t make things happen if “your whole kind of ambition is to not upset anybody,” which can cause paralysis.

Ultimately, said DeSantis, “Leadership…is about doing what’s right when you have intense opposition and a lot of unfair criticism, but you’re still willing to chart the proper course. You’ve got to have the fortitude to stand alone, if necessary, if that’s what the circumstances called upon.” DeSantis practices what he preaches, as seen with his stand against COVID madness and tyranny. He maintained individual liberty in Florida against pressure for lockdowns, masks, and forced vaccinations. For him, keeping the economy going and people working was a top priority.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19588/rising-us-national-debt

Sad but true, history is now all but a forgotten subject in our schools. But economic history? With luck, you may find the topic in some esoteric book written by a professor and hidden on some dusty library shelf. Yet it is there, within those pages, that you will find the history of nations who harnessed the power of a balanced budget and assumed global dominance. Of equal importance will be the parallel lesson of those that failed to appreciate that the most sophisticated military in the world can win a war only to come home to a nation that will eventually fall because of a mismanaged economy.

Without an appreciation of that history a nation’s leaders can easily pursue a disastrous course of pork spending that can destroy the promise of the future. Which is why Americans should be deeply concerned about this Administration and its reign of spending and resultant increased debt, that will be burdening us, and future citizens, far into the future. That kind of debt is a silent nation-killer.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/04/19/the-useful-veneer-of-the-aging-democrat/

Joe Biden is now 80 years-old. He will be 82 when he campaigns for the 2024 presidency—and a clearly debilitated 86 should he be elected and fill out his second term. He has been in government for over a half-century. 

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and current representative from California is 83. 

Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the second-ranking Democratic House member behind Pelosi, was House majority leader until early this year. He is 83, and has been an elected official for nearly 60 years. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is 72, with 48 years in elected government. 

Democratic luminary and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) is 89, and ailing—after 53 years as an elected official. 

James Clyburn (D-S.C.) is House minority whip and 82. 

These are the official faces of the Democratic Party. 

They came into power and maturity three decades ago during the Clinton years of 1993-1999.   

Decades ago, they sometimes supported strong national defense, secure borders, gas and oil development, fully funding the police, and a few restrictions on partial-birth abortions. 

Not now. 

Their role has changed from that of liberals of the Clinton era to serving as the thin power-holding veneer that masks the new real Democratic Party. 

The party has been changed beyond recognition by Senators Bernie Sanders  (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the so-called Squad, the Congressional Black Caucus, newly elected senators like the Georgia duo of Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock—and Antifa and Black Lives Matter. 

Yet Biden and company are still familiar American faces. 

Their final role is to acculturate the electorate to the new Democratic Party. 

Its radicals are breathing down their necks to get out of the way. Yet for a while longer they still need such an ossified veneer of respectability to ease the transition to what is now essentially a socialist-European green party. 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/irs-supervisor-claims-hunter-biden-investigation-is-being-mishandled-requests-whistleblower-protection/

An IRS criminal supervisory special agent is seeking whistleblower protection to share with lawmakers information that allegedly shows an investigation into potential tax crimes by Hunter Biden is being mishandled.

In a letter to Congress on Tuesday, attorney Mark Lytle claimed his client has information that would “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee,” as well as information about a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case.” 

The letter, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, claims the would-be whistleblower has evidence showing “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.” 

Lytle told lawmakers his client has made legally protected disclosures internally at the IRS and said his goal is to “ensure that my client can properly share his lawfully protected disclosures with congressional committees.”

“Thus, I respectfully request that your committees work with me to facilitate sharing this information with congress legally and with the fully informed advice of counsel,” he added in the letter, which was addressed to Republican and Democratic leaders on the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, the Senate Finance Committee, and the House Ways and Means Committee.

“Despite serious risks of retaliation, my client is offering to provide you with information necessary to exercise your constitutional oversight function and wishes to make the disclosures in a nonpartisan manner to the leadership of the relevant committees on both sides of the political aisle,” the letter said.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/04/19/john-fettermans-first-subcommittee-hearing-a-train-wreck-in-slow-motion-n1688675

Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.) has finally returned to Capitol Hill, having spent most of his tenure as a U.S. senator at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center being treated for clinical depression. Fetterman was discharged on March 31. While it’s good that he’s progressed with mental health issues, we haven’t forgotten about the lingering cognitive impairments that became a major issue of the campaign, as it was clear to anyone that this man wasn’t fit to serve in the U.S. Senate.

His May 2022 stroke left him incapacitated for weeks, and he was lucky to survive. Despite this, he chose to continue campaigning, which could have potentially led to permanent brain damage, according to those close to him. Despite his prolonged period away from the Senate, it doesn’t appear that he’s experienced any improvement in his recovery from his stroke, and that was abundantly clear from watching him chair the Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.

Even the Washington Post couldn’t deny the obvious. “Though his voice stumbled at times while reading from prepared notes, Fetterman appeared in good spirits as he gaveled in a hearing focused on the benefits of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP,” the paper reported. “Republicans have proposed increasing the number of people who must meet work requirements to qualify for SNAP.”

Video from the hearing is difficult to watch. We all know much of these hearings are scripted, but Fetterman sounds like he’s reading from his prepared remarks for the first time and doesn’t seem to understand what he’s saying. I’d feel bad for him if it wasn’t his fault he was in this position in the first place.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-eyes-of-totalitarianism/

The iconic broadcaster, author, and legal scholar Mark Levin recently observed: “As a nation we’ve now turned the corner. We’ve turned the corner into a hard tyranny…. I just want the audience to know that we are staring into the face of tyranny, that the Democrat Party is a totalitarian party.”

And indeed, it is. To recognize this, we need only to listen when Democrats tell us – repeatedly – of their burning desire to “transform” the U.S. into a radicalized cesspool by such means as:

ending the filibuster rule so they can forcibly ram their radical legislation through the Senate;
governing via presidential executive orders rather than navigating the normal legislative process;
promoting immigration and border policies designed to import massive blocs of foreigners who will eventually become reliable Democrat voters for generations to come;
turning the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico into new U.S. states, thereby allowing Democrats to permanently pack the Senate with four additional members of their party;
expanding the Supreme Court and packing it with newly appointed leftist ideologues;
openly defying that same Supreme Court whenever its rulings conflict with Democrat Party preferences;
forcibly censoring the free expression of any ideas that conflict with Democrat values; and
pursuing the impeachment and imprisonment of their political foes on the flimsiest pretexts imaginable.

Below is an abundant collection of remarkable quotes by which immensely powerful Democrats in recent times have openly and proudly promoted the objectives enumerated above, like the domineering totalitarian thugs that they are.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tennessee-justin-jones-justin-pearson-bullhorn-biden-white-house-chuck-schumer-gun-control-b9a4d4f5?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Democrats are free to argue that the Tennessee House went too far this month when it expelled Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson for disrupting the chamber’s business. Yet it’s astounding to see prominent Democrats now justifying and outright endorsing the pair’s tactic of derailing legislative proceedings with a bullhorn to demand gun control.

Next week President Biden will roll out the White House red carpet for Messrs. Jones and Pearson, along with Rep. Gloria Johnson, who participated in the disruption to a lesser extent, and who was narrowly spared expulsion.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed at a Wednesday briefing that the three state lawmakers were punished “for peacefully protesting in support of stronger gun-safety laws.” She added that Mr. Biden phoned them and “thanked them for their leadership,” as well as for defending “democratic values.”

The response from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is even more unbelievable. Last week Mr. Schumer and four other Democratic Senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, asking him to investigate whether the Tennessee House violated the U.S. Constitution or federal law. These Democrats also go far beyond protesting the expulsions. They argue that the ruckus caused by Messrs. Jones and Pearson was following in the tradition of the civil-rights movement.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/04/20/sorry-bernie-minimum-wage-hike-would-still-hurt-poor-workers-most/

Vermont’s self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders is a nonstop cheerleader for a minimum-wage hike. Recently, in Britain’s Guardian newspaper, he once again called for a huge increase in the minimum wage. Sounds generous, until you realize it would in fact hurt most the working poor, those who supposedly would reap the greatest benefits of a boosted minimum wage.

“Whether they are greeting us at Walmart, serving us hamburgers at McDonald’s, providing childcare for our kids or waiting on our table at a diner in rural America, there are too many Americans trying to survive and raise families on $9, $10 or $12 an hour,” Sanders wrote. “It cannot be done. This injustice must end. Low-income workers need a pay raise and the American people want them to get that raise.”

The idea that there are “too many” people “trying to survive and raise families on $9, $10 or $12 an hour” isn’t exactly true, at least not for the vast majority of workers.

Among the 76.1 million hourly wage workers, the average earner took home $33.18 an hour in March, or roughly $1,141.39 a week. That’s $59,352 a year. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own data (for 2021, the latest full year for data) show that just 1.4% of all hourly workers made at or below the current minimum wage.

There’s a reason for this. Businesses pay people what they’re worth to them. If they can’t afford to pay you the going rate, they don’t hire you and you can try elsewhere. But, as the data show, businesses for the most part pay their workers well.

OK, but, as Sanders would have it, why not just have the government force businesses to pay the higher minimum wage for those at the bottom? Such as $17 an hour, his current proposal?

With ever-greater advances in labor-saving technology, machinery and, most notably, artificial intelligence, America will soon see large numbers of formerly employed people become unemployed.

https://www.newsweek.com/nashville-controversy-reveals-liberals-anti-democracy-double-standard-opinion-1795087

In the last two years, the defense of democracy has been central to the Democratic Party’s attempt to portray itself as the last line of defense against Republicans’ alleged authoritarianism. But as recent events in Nashville showed, Democrats’ alleged fealty to democracy and abhorrence for agitators and mobs seeking to disrupt the legislative branch of government is more a matter of situational ethics than actual principle. As the career of a new Democratic idol, Tennessee State Rep. Justin Jones, demonstrates, they’re only against anti-democratic rioters when they’re seeking to silence Republicans.

Jones became a national celebrity when, along with two other Democrats—Reps. Justin Pearson and Gloria Johnson—he disrupted a March 30 session of the Tennessee legislature to demand that it consider anti-gun rights laws that he supported. Acting in conjunction with a mob of demonstrators that had flooded the state capitol in Nashville, the trio, armed with bullhorns, seized the podium and shut down the assembly, ranting about Republicans being complicit in mass shootings. The demonstrators were kept outside the chamber but harassed both legislators and cops who were present. Eventually, order was restored and days later the legislature voted to expel Jones and Pearson. Johnson escaped the same fate by only a narrow margin.

At that point, the national media and leading Democrats like former president Barack Obama treated the state legislators’ expulsion as the only salient part of the story, ignoring the events of March 30. In that way, they turned Jones into a martyr and used the episode as more proof of the GOP’s supposed authoritarianism.

The hypocrisy and dishonesty of this narrative is staggering.