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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION

50 STATES AND DC, CONGRESS AND THE PRESIDENT

The headline says it all: ‘Over 1,000 victims, 126 dead, just 2 convictions: 6 years of mass shootings in Chicago’ By Thomas Lifson

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/the_headline_says_it_all_over_1000_victims_126_dead_just_2_convictions_6_years_of_mass_shootings_in_chicago.html

Parts of Chicago no longer are governed by the rule of law. In place of ordered civilization, criminal gangs operate with impunity, the residents living in a state of terror, afraid to tell police anything that would aid in capturing the criminals. The true exercise of power is in the hands of those who would be called warlords in other contexts, but (at least for now), the term is too harsh for most ears.

The Chicago Sun-Times has produced a stunning story capturing the extent of lawlessness today, with both granular detail and an overview. After describing one mass shooting:

About two hours after the shots rang out, an alarming dispatch pierced through police radio: Another mass shooting had just rocked the Marquette Park neighborhood, roughly six miles away.

Three alleged gang members had sprayed bullets at a crowd hanging out in the 6200 block of South Artesian Avenue, enjoying the summer night. Twelve people were hit, among them Nyoka Bowie, 37, who suffered a fatal gunshot wound to her chest. Like Grimes and many other victims of mass shootings — defined by the Sun-Times and some researchers as incidents in which four or more people are wounded — she apparently was not the intended target.

In both cases, there was a large number of witnesses and surviving victims, yet no arrests have been made. That is all too common in Chicago, where police say they do not prioritize the cases despite the especially harsh toll such shootings have on a community.

Only one person has been charged in any of the at least 39 mass shootings so far this year, according to a Sun-Times analysis of city data and court records.

When Will the COVID Revolt Come? At some point, there will be a revolt. The longer the arbitrary insanity persists, the more violent the reaction will be. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/31/when-will-the-covid-revolt-come/

The most cheerful headline I have seen in weeks was on Glenn Reynolds’ New York Post column: “No, Karen, we’re not masking again.” I hope he is right. I do wonder, though. I have no doubt that the second part of his headline—“A winning GOP message for 2022 [and] beyond”—is correct. At least it’s correct if it is expressed as a conditional: It would be a winning strategy were it adopted. As Reynolds notes, “There is a great deal of pent-up frustration and resentment over the inconvenience, the loss of freedom and the general climate of hectoring that the government’s pandemic response has created.” Indeed. And he’s right, too, that 

It’s irritating to be lectured by officials who claim to be smarter than you. It’s infuriating to be lectured by government officials who claim to be smarter than you—but clearly aren’t.

The on-again/off-again claims on masks and vaccination are just part of it. Tired of masks? Get vaccinated, they told us. Now they’re saying wear a mask, even if you’ve been vaccinated and even if you’re associating with others who’ve been vaccinated.

And there’s talk of more lockdowns, which a growing body of scientific evidence suggests were perfectly useless and downright harmful.

As Molly Bloom exclaimed in a different context, Yes, Yes, Yes!

But to return to the question of hope, I am reminded that hope was said by some cynics to have been the last evil in Pandora’s pithos. It seems like only yesterday—in fact, it was just this past May—that both the president and the vice-president of the United States insisted that (as Joe himself put it) “Folks, if you’re fully vaccinated—you no longer need to wear a mask.” 

Of course, that was more than a year after “15 days to slow the spread,” Anthony Fauci’s steady stream of contradictory, though authoritatively delivered, advice, not to mention the recent advent of (cue the scary music) The Delta Variant.  

It was the New York Post, again, that cut to the chase on the latest (unless we’re on to the epsilon variant already) with its cover of July 30. “Insanity!” read its oversized headline and below was a large grid with a tiny bit of the upper right square marked. Of the 161 million people who have been vaccinated, only 5,601 have been hospitalized with the new version of the virus. Of those, only 1,141 have died. That’s .0007 percent. (And how old, one wonders, were those who succumbed and from what comorbidities did they suffer?)

Now it turns out that the latest CDC advice was based largely on an outbreak at Provincetown after the informal party time of “Bear Week” in early July. Andrew Sullivan treated the news with some portion of the skepticism it deserves. In fact, as another commentator pointed out, what the Provincetown outbreak really shows is that “even under perfect conditions for a superspreader event, the vaccine works spectacularly well.”

But even to talk about studies and statistics and “expert” advice is to assume that we are talking primarily about an issue of public health. We aren’t. Consider this list from Jim Treacher: 

The Infrastructure ‘Pay-Fors’ That Aren’t The bipartisan deal is full of phantom revenue gimmicks.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-infrastructure-deal-pay-fors-republicans-joe-manchin-11627940099?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and his Senate Republican friends are stressing that their infrastructure deal is “fully paid for.” Read their lips: No new deficit spending. Read their bill: It relies to a great degree on savings and revenue already baked into the fisc or that are unlikely to happen.

Deficit financing is better than increasing taxes, and Republicans at least jettisoned the taxes (until Democrats raise them in their budget reconciliation bill). They also deep-sixed President Biden’s plan to give the IRS $40 billion to harass small businesses, which Democrats claimed would raise hundreds of billions of dollars in new revenue. Their IRS stimulus was dubious, but so are most of the bill’s remaining offsets.

Start with using 10 years of savings from various programs to offset five years of spending. This includes extending by a decade a guarantee fee that government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge on mortgages they back.

Congress imposed the 10-basis point fee in 2011 to cover the cost of the government backstop on Fan and Fred. Extending the fee through 2032 is expected to raise $21 billion, but the taxpayer costs will be far greater if the housing giants start to lose money again after the Biden Administration takes steps to ease underwriting standards.

Then there’s magical Medicare accounting. The bill would extend Medicare provider payment cuts by a year through 2031, just inside the 10-year budget window. Senators are counting that as saving $9 billion, but Congress is almost certain to override this provision once hospitals squawk, as they surely will.

Biden Attacks Alarmist COVID News Stories — Even As He Stokes Them

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/03/biden-attacks-alarmist-covid-news-stories-even-as-he-stokes-them/

CNN might be a horribly biased and woefully unreliable news organization these days, but its reporters do know how to convey the White House propaganda well. Case in point is the story posted on CNN’s website over the weekend about how the Biden administration is desperately trying to get the news media to stop playing up the risk of the Delta variant.

“The White House is frustrated with what it views as alarmist, and in some instances flat-out misleading, news coverage about the Delta variant,”  reported Oliver Darcy over the weekend. “That’s according to two senior Biden administration officials I spoke with Friday, both of whom requested anonymity to candidly offer their opinion on coverage of the CDC data released that suggests vaccinated Americans who become infected with the Delta coronavirus variant can infect others as easily as those who are unvaccinated.”

Darcy goes on to provide a multitude of examples of how the White House berated various news agencies for their coverage of the CDC report that prompted its mask-wearing mandate for vaccinated people.

After the New York Times tweeted that “The Delta variant is as contagious as chickenpox and may be spread by vaccinated people as easily as the unvaccinated, an internal C.D.C. report said,” a White House staffer responded:

CNN’s Brian Stelter also parrotted the White House talking points on his weekend show.

“It is time for a reset. A reset in how COVID-19 is covered by the media,” Stelter said. 

BLACK FRAGILITY AS BLACK STRENGTH? TRY THESE BOOKS INSTEAD. The next entry in the KenDiAngelonian universe is out. But why not branch out? John McWhorter

https://johnmcwhorter.substack.com/p/black-fragility-as-black-strength?token=

Fish don’t know they’re wet. And either do a lot of us when it comes to how we think about race.

Here are three pieces of advice for living.

1. What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.

2. Always trust your feelings.

3. Life is a battle between good and bad people.

Do you see these three tenets as wisdom, or as something a person should be taught out of? I need not even ask.

But why, then, does enlightened America embrace the idea that where black people are concerned, living by these three tenets is cognitively healthy?

* * *

The tenets are the heart of Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt’s brilliant The Coddling of the American Mind from a few years back. They analyze these as counsel given to students, today, in general. However, this extends to black America as a whole.

Of course, the usual suspects will have a hard time recognizing themselves in these tenets when spelled out. However, they are the fish who don’t know they’re wet. They’ve never known anything but those tenets, and thus see them as a normal way of being. They don’t know that these tenets are “a thing.”

Incompetence + Arrogance = Woke Politically correct ideology is masking and contributing to the widespread failure of our institutions. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/01/incompetence-arrogance-woke/

We know the nature of mass hysterias in history, and how they can overwhelm and paralyze what seem to be stable societies.  

We know the roots and origins of the cult of wokeness.  

And we know, too, how such insanity—from the Salem witch trials to Jacobinism to McCarthyism—can spread, despite alienating most of the population, through fear and the threat of personal ruin or worse. These are the dark sides of the tulip, hula-hoop, and pet-rock fads, the mass obsessions so suited to past affluent Western societies.  

But does wokeism serve another purpose as well? Specifically, does it either hide preexisting incompetence or fuel it?  

In the last 18 months, we have seen most of our major institutions go woke and spend considerable amounts of time, capital, and labor on what might be called “commissarism.” Yet in their zeal to rectify society in general and sermonize, virtue signal, pontificate, and perform to the public, many institutions are increasingly failing at what they were established to do. 

Of course, public servants have long suffered the “Bloomberg effect”—focusing on misdemeanors to virtue signal competence as penance for failing to solve the existential crises. If you cannot clear New York City of snow in a timely manner, then lecture the trapped on everything from global warming to the dangers of super-sized soft drinks. Yet wokeism is a bit different since it now pervades our societies as a pandemic of its own. 

Take Delta Airline CEO Ed Bastian. He earns $17 million in annual compensation, and lectures the state of Georgia and the nation at large on our supposedly racist voting laws. The issue at hand is mostly a requirement to show a valid ID to vote—in the manner one must present identification to enter the boarding area of Bastian’s planes. Surely if one should vote without an ID, why not then be allowed to board a Delta flight?

I also suggest the public try to call Delta’s consumer helplines to fix the airline’s post-quarantine screw-ups with credits, refunds, rebooking, and recalibrating charges. Just try it—but expect several hours of wait time on the phone. We know now Delta is woke, but what we don’t know is whether one’s past purchase of a ticket will ensure a spot on a Delta flight, or whether prior money or mileage credited will ever be returned or applied to future travel.  

A cynical observer might suggest that if Ed Bastian cannot ensure adequate consumer service, it won’t matter since he weighs in on voting laws. (Or is it worse than that? Because he pontificates on voting laws and other assorted woke issues, he thinks he can simply worry less about his own consumer services?) 

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker is woke, too. He has denounced a new Texas voting law likewise requiring tougher ID usage—although he later  admitted that he had never read the new statute before virtue signaling its illiberality.  

The Biggest ‘Super-Spreader’ Event: Biden’s Weak Border Illegals on the southern border and COVID go hand in hand. Jed Babbin

https://spectator.org/biden-the-super-spreader-border-and-covid/

If you aren’t confused and maybe a bit angered by all the COVID-related gobbledygook coming out of the Biden administration lately, you haven’t been paying attention.

The CDC has issued “guidance” that says even vaccinated people should start wearing masks indoors again, based on the fact that out of 161 million vaccinated Americans, just over six thousand have been hospitalized as a result of COVID. If you do the simple calculation, that means only 0.0038 percent of those vaccinated were hospitalized with COVID, odds lower than your chance of being hit by lightning.

The CDC also recommended that masks be worn by everyone — students and teachers alike — in K-12 schools. Good luck keeping masks on 6 or 7-year-old boys.

Meanwhile, Biden has ordered all federal civilian employees and contractors to either be vaccinated or to wear masks and get tested for the virus a couple of times a week. He would have ordered all military personnel to get vaccinated, but the law apparently prevents that because the vaccines are only approved for emergency use. Nevertheless, Biden ordered the Pentagon to determine “how and when” the COVID vaccine would be added to the list of required vaccines for members of the armed forces.

On Friday, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told Fox News that the surge in “Delta variant” cases in the southern U.S. wasn’t because of the enormous influx of illegal aliens. Walensky said:

“So as people come in, we are keeping migrants, as well as those communities, as safe as possible with the technical assistance and infection prevention guidelines from the CDC. . . . I would say that the percentages in the southern part of this country are really quite high. I don’t necessarily think we can attribute all of that to what’s going on at the southern border.”

Get Ready for the ‘No-Buy’ List First Big Tech censored speech. Now they want to shut deplorables out of the financial system. David Sacks

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/get-ready-for-the-no-buy-list?token=

By any standard, David Sacks is a super successful entrepreneur and venture capitalist. He’s invested in companies including Airbnb, Bird, Eventbrite, Facebook, Houzz, Lyft, Palantir, Postmates, Reddit, Slack, SpaceX, Twitter, and Uber. Now he’s a general partner at Craft Ventures.

But that’s not the reason to listen to him. It’s because he’s deeply insightful and consistently ahead of the curve on issues including free speech and Big Tech, how to amend Section 230, San Francisco’s meltdown, and more. You might remember his name from this column I wrote a few months back. 

I don’t typically recommend Twitter to anyone I like. But if you’re already there, I strongly suggest following David.

—BW

When I helped create PayPal in 1999, it was in furtherance of a revolutionary idea. No longer would ordinary people be dependent on large financial institutions to start a business. 

Our democratized payment system caught fire and grew exponentially with millions of users who appreciated its ease and simplicity. Traditional banks were too slow and bureaucratic to adapt. Instead, the revolution we spawned two decades ago inspired new startups like Ally, Chime, Square, and Stripe, which have further expanded participation in the financial system. 

But now PayPal is turning its back on its original mission. It is now leading the charge to restrict participation by those it deems unworthy.

First, in January, PayPal blocked a Christian crowdfunding site that raised money to bring demonstrators to Washington on January 6. Then, in February, PayPal announced that it was working with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to ban users from the platform. This week the company announced it is partnering with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to investigate and shut down accounts that the ADL considers too extreme. 

Why is this a problem? Isn’t it perfectly reasonable to make sure bad actors don’t fund hate through these platforms?

I’m a Jewish American who has special appreciation for the ADL’s historical role as a watchdog against antisemitism. Whether it came from the Aryan Nation or the Nation of Islam, the ADL did admirable work in combatting it. But the ADL has changed. Like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the organization has broadened its portfolio from antisemitism (or racism in the SPLC’s case) to cover what it considers to be “hate” or “extremism” in general. 

The new ADL opposed the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh because of his “hostility to reproductive freedom.” It partnered with such beacons of philosemitism as Al Sharpton (you read that right) to boycott Facebook for allowing “hate speech on their platform.” It opposed Trump’s executive order banning Critical Race Theory in federal government training. And it called for Fox News to fire Tucker Carlson for his comments on immigration.

Whether one agrees with any of these positions is beside the point. The point is that the ADL, like the SPLC, now weighs in on issues far beyond its original purview. 

Just as there is no set definition of “hate speech” that everyone agrees upon, the definition of a “hate group” is nebulous and ripe for overuse by those with an agenda. So it should come as no surprise that the ever-increasing list of suspects has grown from unquestionable hate groups, like neo-nazis and the KKK, to organizations who espouse socially conservative views, like the Family Research Council, religious liberty advocates, and even groups concerned with election integrity.

“Inflation” by Sydney Williams

Selected Writings of Ludwig von Mises, Chapter 9

Are we or are we not, in the early stages of an inflation surge? The question is important because the answer has consequences that affect us all – from the daily cost of bread and energy to investment and retirement accounts.

 

The President and the Federal Reserve claim inflation is not a problem. On July 19, Mr. Biden spoke at the White House: “Our experts believe and the data shows that most of the price increases we’ve seen are – were – expected and expected to be temporary.” In February, in testimony to Congress, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said that the growth in money supply, specifically M2, “doesn’t really have important implications.” Upticks in inflation are “anomalous and transitory.” Nevertheless, one wonders. In a July 21 Wall Street Journal op-ed, John Greenwood, chief economist of Invesco and Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins, wrote: “Since March 2020, M2 has been growing at an average annualized rate of 23.9% – the fastest rate since World War II.” The Fed’s target rate for inflation is two percent; however, for April, the CPI was 4.2%; for May, 5% and for June, 5.4%. The PCE (Personal Consumption Expenditures) price index – the index the Fed uses as their primary source for inflation – rose 6.4% in the second quarter versus 3.8% in the first quarter. If inflation is nothing to worry about, try telling that to families living on a median wage or to retirees on fixed incomes. Energy prices were up over 40% between December 31 and June 30, while food commodity prices were up close to 20 percent.

Since the start of the recession in February 2020 (which lasted only two months according to the National Bureau of Economic Research!), the Federal Reserve has retained a policy of near-zero interest rates and $120 billion in monthly bond purchases. When the Fed purchases Treasury’s they add to the money supply. Federal debt now amounts to 119% of GDP. The last time federal debt exceeded GDP was in 1946, in the aftermath of World War II, when it stood at 106% of GDP. The federal deficit for fiscal 2021 is expected to be $3 trillion, much of which will be financed by the Federal Reserve. As the Wall Street Journal noted in their lead editorial on July 29: “You don’t have to be a cynic to wonder if the Fed privately now wants more inflation to ease that rising debt burden.” Paying back borrowed dollars with cheaper ones is a policy decision. Five percent inflation means that $100.00 invested in a Thirty-Year Treasury would be worth $23.00 at maturity, while the interest payments (currently 1.93%) would amount to less than $60.00 (before reinvestment) of a depreciating currency – attractive to the borrower but not for the investor. In 1919 John Maynard Keynes, in an essay entitled “The Economic Consequences of the Peace,” wrote: “By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.” Inflation is a tax that falls most heavily on retirees and the low income.

Fifty years ago (August 15, 1971), President Nixon ended the Bretton Woods Agreement, which called for the U.S. to redeem dollars presented by foreign governments at 1/35th of an ounce of gold. Ending the agreement made it easier for the U.S. Government to finance social programs, without raising the necessary taxes, but making inflation more likely. The Dollar, thus, became a fiat currency, meaning it was backed by the credit worthiness of the issuing government, not a physical commodity, like gold or silver. Fiat currencies lose value during times of economic and political uncertainty. Their numbers can be increased, ad hoc, at the will of the government

In a 1963 talk in India, Milton Friedman observed: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in that it can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.” His hypothesis is expressed in the equation MV = Py, where M is the supply of money, V is its velocity (the rate at which money is exchanged), P is the price level (using either PCE or CPI) and y is real gross domestic product (GDP). Thus, when V and y are constant, an increase in M means an increase in P. On the other hand, increased GDP growth may warrant an increase in the money supply, as well as its velocity. If price stability is the desired outcome, the Fed must carefully monitor the relationship between the supply of money, its velocity and GDP.

But are they, and will they? Over the past several years, the Fed has become politicized and less independent. Today, a former Fed Chairperson, Janet Yellen, serves as U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. Since the end of the last recession in 2009, the Fed, pressured by the Obama and Trump White Houses, kept interest rates at historically low levels. In the past two years, since the onset of the pandemic, the growth in money supply has been high, driven by increased government spending, much of which has been funded by the Federal Reserve’s bond purchases. However, velocity of M2 fell by 21% during 2020, reflecting declines in consumer and business spending caused by COVID. So, inflation was not a concern in 2020. However, with the economy picking up speed, the velocity of money has accelerated, and the money supply continues to expand, creating inflationary pressures. Will that trend continue?

The Federal Government’s proposed spending plans, especially the $3.5 trillion budget plan, will require the issuance of new bonds, along with new taxes that act as a retardant on GDP growth. While GDP is now above pre-pandemic levels, economic growth in second quarter was below expectations, perhaps a warning sign. Higher debt loads have a natural tendency to increase interest rates, something Washington does not want, so there will be pressure for the Fed to continue bond purchases. Using Friedman’s formula, can GDP growth equal the increase in money supply and velocity, without an increase in price (inflation)? The truth is we don’t know, or, at least, I don’t. But I worry.

Debt to GDP is at record levels for a peace time economy. Budget deficits are the highest since World War II. The fiscal 2021 federal budget outlays will represent about 29% of GDP, five percentage points higher than a year ago. Will higher government spending boost GDP growth, or will it impede the private economy? Near the conclusion of his lecture quoted in the rubric, Ludwig von Mises said, “One of the privileges of a rich man is that he can afford to be foolish much longer than a poor one.” The Federal Reserve has a challenge. It must navigate between the Charybdis of inflation and the Scylla of excessive federal spending and debt. Can they do that without debauching the currency? Let us hope so. In his 1919 speech quoted above, Keynes began: “Lenin is said to have declared the best way to destroy the capitalist system is to debauch the currency.” Is that what we are doing?

I am not predicting a return to the 1970s inflation or something worse. But I worry. As a country, we are that rich man to whom von Mises referred. Let us pray we will not be more foolish than we have been.

No One Can Disagree with Socialism The idea that religion must be expelled from all public places is a lie and a fraud—a Marxist trojan horse: The goal isn’t to expel all religion. The goal is to expel all competing religions. By Dan Gelernter

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/27/no-one-can-disagree-with-socialism/

“Black Widow” star David Harbour says he doesn’t know “that there’s anyone who could disagree with socialist ideology.” So does this mean he’ll be returning the part of his multimillion-dollar salary that is beyond his “needs”? Of course not. There is no logic in ideology. He is a believer. That is enough. 

The French revolutionaries believed in reason so deeply that if you disagreed with them they’d cut off your head. 

The French Revolution began, as do all modern Communist revolutions, with the abolition of Christianity. Not the abolition of religion, or even state religion, but Christianity. The French fully intended to have a state religion, complete with “Temples of Reason” (Notre Dame was turned into one). The crucifix was replaced with a symbolic “torch of truth.” 

Fascism, which Winston Churchill called the “shadow, or ugly child of Communism,” was identical in this respect: Nazi Germany was to replace its cathedrals with Hitler Kirche, in which Mein Kampf took the place place of the Bible and the crucifix was again removed, this time in favor of a sword. 

Marxism is not and has never been an atheist philosophy. When a Marxist tells you he’s an atheist, he’s lying. Marxism is the most aggressively dogmatic religion in the world. Its struggle for ascendancy is a holy war in which Islam is the only serious competitor and all other religions seem resigned to a defensive posture (i.e., losing). 

To fight the Left effectively, we need to stop thinking of Marxism as a philosophical alternative to capitalism and instead think of it as a religious alternative to Christianity. 

Marxism is not anti-Christianity because belief in God is a crutch or an opiate of the masses. It simply recognizes that you cannot believe in two gods at once. Marxism and Christianity are rival religions, and it’s no more possible to believe in both than it is to believe simultaneously in Judaism and Islam. 

In the Marxist religious structure, the supreme leader—Stalin, Mao, Castro, Xi—is God. Leftist intellectuals are priests. Government bureaucrats are Levites, making sure the ceremony runs smoothly and the sanctuary is guarded. There is a caste (“class”) system in which some are holy by virtue of their birth and others are damned for the same reason. Ordinary citizens in this religion have no role except to believe and to do as they are told: “Believe the science!”