RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/08/clarence-thomas-shows-the-path-forward-on-big-tech/

A realignment, as many have observed, is now unfolding in American politics. The Republican Party and its conservatism is now the home for the “Somewheres,” to borrow the term from David Goodhart’s 2017 book, The Road to Somewhere, which refers to the more traditionalist, hardscrabble patriots of the American heartland. The Democratic Party and its increasingly hard-left progressivism, by contrast, is the home for the “Anywheres”—those highly educated, mobile, “woke” elites comprising the bicoastal ruling class.

The Big Tech issue is the tip of the spear of the realignment. As has been made painfully obvious the last few years, with last October’s collusive Big Tech assault on the New York Post for its election-season reporting on Hunter Biden’s overseas travails serving as an eye-opening pinnacle, Big Tech is now the ruling class’s catspaw. These modern-day robber barons are willing and able to lend their censorious assistance to the ruling class’s ruthless entrenchment of its ideological and political hegemony. Big Tech, in short, is the leading private-sector appendage with which the Anywheres cow into submission and subjugate the Somewheres.

This emergent reality has caused no shortage of heart palpitations among some of the more “liberal” elements of the American conservative firmament. Conservatives, many were taught, stand for unadulterated laissez-faire and a staunch commitment to deregulating corporate America. What to do, then, when those unshackled big corporations turn around and come after us?

The answer, for many, has been to carefully reassess what exactly it is we stand for as conservatives—especially as it pertains to unaccountable, concentrated corporate titans who control the 21st-century equivalents of the old public square. To wit, there is nothing particularly “conservative” about a zealous, dogmatic refusal to countenance state actions that might better channel the content curation and moderation decisions of a behemoth such as Amazon—which has at least an 80 percent market share in digital books—toward the common good of the American polity. Ditto Google, which has a nearly 90 percent market share in online search.

But the historical bromance between the GOP and chamber of commerce-style corporatism has been an obstinate hindrance to reform. Big Tech-skeptical, pro-realignment conservatives have all too often had their legal and policy arguments on such issues as antitrust enforcement and Section 230 reform thrown back in their faces by doctrinaire, limited-government enthusiasts who insist that True Conservatism is synonymous with hands-off private-sector fundamentalism. “Build your own Google!” the corporatists and libertarians have scowled.

On Monday, the most important conservative lawyer in the nation, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, came out swinging on the side of the reformers.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/08/january-6-is-the-new-russiagate-lie/

The Russiagate scandal, for lack of a better term, revealed to the general public the seamless compact between the Democratic Party, major news organizations, and powerful government agencies. 

Partisan operatives—be they ruthless DNC lawyers, paid spin masters, or former British spies—easily accessed the country’s influential decision makers to seed storylines targeting their political foes. Narratives were shaped with all the right terms, then dutifully recited by congressional leaders and media mouthpieces. Those on the other side taking incoming fire barely had a chance to see what was coming, let alone to respond with equal force.

Later, when the facts finally came out and the bad actors both behind the scenes and in front of the cameras were revealed as shameless frauds, no one was held accountable. And a sizable chunk of Americans continues to believe all the falsehoods because disowning them would vindicate people they unreasonably despise.

Which is why the overwhelming majority of Democrats still think Donald Trump was in cahoots with the Kremlin to steal the 2016 election.

The manufactured deception about the events of January 6 quickly is approaching Russiagate levels. The formula is familiar: Find a catchy phrase—in this case it’s “insurrection” instead of “collusion”—then fertilize the information ecosystem with the term and watch it grow like a weed.

Get political leaders including former presidents and top lawmakers of both parties to use the description, giving it immediate legitimacy. Issue dire warnings about the “threat to democracy” and “rule of law.” Identify the villain—Donald Trump, of course—and make solemn pledges to hunt down every perpetrator until justice is done.

Sympathy-inducing optics are helpful but not always necessary.

Critical cogs in this sort of performative outrage are government authorities who use their offices to convince the public the whole thing is on the square. This is precisely what happened with the now discredited trope that five people died as a result of the chaos on January 6. A brief report issued Wednesday by the office of the D.C. medical examiner confirmed only one person, Ashli Babbitt, was killed that day.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/fund-coronavirus-research-not-a-climate-change-musical

I’ve been a science nerd almost all my life. In graduate school, I was the co-discoverer of a bacterial enzyme essential to DNA replication and of a key enzyme in the influenza virus. I have written more than a thousand articles concerned with science and science policy. I’m convinced that America’s prosperity is based on post-WWII preeminence in science and technology, much of it financed by federal funding.

You might think, then, that I’d be thrilled to learn that the science committee of the U.S. House of Representatives wants to more than double the budget of the National Science Foundation over the next five years. That’s a hike of $8.5 billion to $18.3 billion. The Senate is working on a companion bill. Unfortunately, at least as currently conceived by the Senate, this legislation will maintain NSF’s “unity of structure” and protect NSF’s existing programs. There’s the rub.

Research is the lifeblood of technological innovation, which, in turn, drives economic growth and keeps America prosperous. Government-funded scientific research runs the gamut from studies of basic physical and biological processes to the development of applications to meet immediate needs. Basic science, which elucidates the fundamental processes in fields such as aging, cancer biology, immunology, and virology, is also worthy of federal research funding. However, the definition of what constitutes “science” has gradually expanded to include sociology, economics, and “alternative medicine.” Much of the spending on these disciplines by the nation’s two major funders of non-military research, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, shortchange taxpayers. Considering their collective budgets amount to more than $50 billion, this is no small concern.

The NSF, whose mission is to ensure U.S. leadership in areas of science and technology that are essential to economic growth and national security, frequently funds politically correct but low-value research projects. This trend is likely to accelerate during the Biden administration.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/09/bidens-stalin-esque-5-year-plans/

In 1928, during his first year of what became known as the Stalin era, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin issued his first five-year plan, a centralized economic blueprint that focused on industrialization and collectivism. In 2021, during his first year as president of the United States, Joe Biden introduced a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan that both the White House and its cheerleaders have called “transformative.”

History tells us Stalin’s plans were transformative, too.

Before we go any further, we state here for the record that Biden is not Stalin. Not even close.

Yet we see policy parallels that should make Americans – at least those who still relish freedom from big government – mighty uncomfortable.

Biden is not unique in pitching an infrastructure plan. Donald Trump had an infrastructure plan. Most politicians, from president to members of the smallest city council in the country, like infrastructure projects. But Biden’s objectives are different. There’s more social engineering than civil engineering in his proposal.

Actually, there’s much more.

Of the $2.3 trillion Biden proposes to spend, only $921 billion would be dedicated to what most agree is infrastructure. As we noted earlier this week, the remainder “would go to pet Democrat projects, payoffs to unions and left-wing groups, squirrelly climate change projects, money for misgoverned and impecunious Blue States, and other waste.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-biden-plan-for-economic-sclerosis-11617907075?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

President Biden has proposed a back-to-the-future tax plan. When President Trump took office, the U.S. had the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world and had experienced a decade of slow growth, low investment and stagnant employment and real wages. The Obama economy was especially toxic for low-earning and less-educated groups. The assault on business was so widespread that capital’s contribution to economic growth was lower during the Obama expansion than it had been during any other period of growth since World War II.

The academic literature on corporate taxation pointed to the problem. High corporate taxes, a regulatory assault and social programs that discourage work and advancement led many U.S. multinational companies to locate their activity and profits overseas. This reduced or eliminated their tax in the U.S. while also reducing their demand for American labor. Wages dropped and tax revenue dropped, a double hit.

The idea of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was to make America an attractive location for capital formation again, and to drive wages up by increasing productivity. Mr. Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers estimated that wages for a typical family would grow about $4,000 over the first three to five years. Though the Obama administration proposed a corporate tax cut in 2015 for the same reasons, opponents of the bill ridiculed the Trump team’s numbers.

The economic data vindicated Mr. Trump. Actual gross domestic product by the end of 2019 was about $300 billion higher than the Congressional Budget Office had projected in July 2017. Business investment was about $100 billion higher and 2.8 million more workers were employed. U.S. firms repatriated $1.4 trillion in cash that was previously stuck overseas. And in the first two years after the tax cuts were passed, real median household income increased $4,900. Employment surged, especially among the long-term unemployed, the poor and minorities. Wealth for the bottom 50% of households advanced three times as fast as for the top 1%.

http://politicalmavens.com/

Jews comprise 13% of the population of New York and have been here since the 17th century. There are approximately 1.5 million Jews in New York City, the largest population of anywhere outside of Israel. To get some idea of what Jews have contributed to our city, look at the names carved on walls at colleges, hospitals, libraries and Lincoln Center – these represent just the charitable contributions Jews have made without mentioning their othercontributions to our lives – the most recent of which is development of the Pfizer vaccine by the son of a Holocaust survivor.
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So it is with surprise bordering on disbelief that neither the NYTimes nor the Wall Street Journal called attention to the April 8th commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day. Instead, the Journal had a front page article about Muslims giving up coffee for Ramadan, including a picture of Palestinians at a festive Gaza Market on p. 18. The NYTimes chose to cover Biden’s cancellation of Trump’s boycott of U.S. funds for Palestinian “refugees” while they supported and rewarded terrorists. Instead, we will now afford them $235 million dollars of assistance. It’s interesting that both papers chose to deal with Muslims whose population in New York is roughly half that of Jews.

438,500 Americans lost their lives in World War 2. When our G.I.’s liberated the Ohrdruf concentration camp, General Eisenhower insisted that members of Congress and journalists be summoned to see and report on the atrocities that were performed there. Eisenhower’s statement was: “We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now, at least, we know what he is fighting against.”
Anti-semitism in America is on the rise and is part and parcel of Black Lives Matter. Local t.v. news has headlined the vicious attacks on Asian people but few channels covered the attack on a Chasidic family pushing a baby carriage in Brooklyn a few days ago. They were assaulted by a man who slashed the father, mother and year old baby on their faces. It would seem that we are in very desperate need of remembering what happened to six million Jews and nearly half a million Americans who lost their lives during the Holocaust. How shameful that the editors of New York’s most important newspapers chose to forget them.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/04/08/americas-elites-want-a-racial-apocalypse/

Jamil Ford still recalls the disorders of late May. ‘It was like Baghdad’, he recalls, even as jurors listen to the arguments during the trial of Derek Chauvin, the police officer accused of killing George Floyd. ‘I constantly think about it. The past history does not go away’, the African-American architect recalls, noting with trepidation possible National Guard deployments. ‘The mental part is still there.’

I know how he feels. In 1992 we went through this same process in Los Angeles when the police were exonerated in the beating of Rodney King. This unleashed a three-day explosion of often violent protests, resulting in $1 billion in damages and over 50 fatalities. In the end, the disorder led to some necessary shifts in police procedures but ultimately left the area relatively poorer and considerably less black than before.

Will things be different this time around? No politician in American history owes more to African-American leadership and voters than Joe Biden. His flailing campaign was rescued from the respirator by South Carolina’s heavily black Democratic electorate. African Americans sustained his path through states such as Texas. Since taking office, Biden’s commitment to battling the ‘sting of systemic racism’ and encroaching ‘white supremacy’ has accompanied his early actions and seems to have shaped many of his appointments.

The left’s and the media’s embrace of racial apocalypse, both in the US and in Britain, remains sadly selective. The recent Atlanta murders, given exhaustive coverage, appear to be the product not of Trumpista brownshirts but a singular, screwed-up madman. Meanwhile, attacks on Asians historically have come in large measure from minorities, largely African Americans. The most recent attack on Capitol Hill came not from Trumpistas but a follower of the ultimate anti-white, Louis Farrakhan.

The same media that hypes anti-Asian violence by whites usually ignores that by other ‘people of colour’. When the perpetrator is a Muslim jihadi, as was the case in Colorado, coverage has been less, even if the body count was twice as high. The ‘people of colour’ solidarity that bleeds over the pages of mainstream media has little room for nuance. It tends to ignore the fact that many Asians, and many Hispanics, oppose such things as quotas to selective high schools and colleges.

Similarly, most minorities seem not to share common ground with posturing politicians, and progressive intellectuals, who have excused looting as a form of racial redress. Minority business people generally don’t regard random violence as justice; the impact on business enterprises is felt particularly keenly in Minneapolis. A focus on police abuse is clearly needed, but the vast majority of Americans – including millennials and minorities – do not favour defunding law enforcement. They may be more concerned with the resurgence of violent and other crime in our core cities, even though it is often downplayed in the media.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/04/soccer_moms_might_turn_on_biden_if_they_learn_hes_attacking_their_homes.html

Stanley Kurtz noted that part of Biden’s alleged “infrastructure” bill continues the left’s war on the suburbs. Even though affluent suburbs are increasingly filled with Democrat voters (college grads who passed through the propaganda mill), the administration wants to make them more densely urban because that ensures reliable Dem voting. However, if Republicans can get the word out about this feature in the bill, they might get an unexpected ally: Soccer moms.

First, let me share some of Kurtz’s analysis with you, although I urge you to read the whole thing:

How, exactly, does Biden plan to end single-family zoning? According to the fact sheet released by the White House, “Biden is calling on Congress to enact an innovative new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate [‘exclusionary zoning’].” In other words, Biden wants to use a big pot of federal grant money as bait. If a county or municipality agrees to weaken or eliminate its single-family zoning, it gets the federal bucks.

The wildly overreaching Obama-Biden era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation — which Biden has pledged to revive — works in a similar fashion. The difference is that by adding another gigantic pot of federal money to the Community Development Block Grants that are the lure of AFFH, Biden makes it that much harder for suburbs to resist applying — and that much more punishing to jurisdictions that forgo a share of the federal taxes they’ve already paid so as to protect their right to self-rule.

The practical effect of ending single-family zoning means that you just bought a lovely 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom home for your growing family, on a quiet street with large lots, each boasting a big garden. It’s the perfect place to play. However, when your neighbors move out, a developer buys his property, razes it, and builds a Section H multifamily unit on it. When this happens a few more times, you just overpaid for a large home on a busy street, complete with Section H housing – and the drugs and crime that inevitably follow when Section H comes to your neighborhood.

What Biden’s handlers might not realize is that suburban moms, the ones who worked hard and delayed childbearing so that they could raise their children in a safe, healthy environment, don’t like plans to turn their green retreats into copies of the same busy cities they left. And it’s not just Republican suburban moms who don’t like this idea; it’s Democrat suburban moms too.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/who-cares-if-nation-islam-racist-killed-white-cop-john-perazzo/

Last Friday, a 25-year-old Nation of Islam supporter named Noah Green rammed his car into a barricade outside the U.S. Capitol, killing police officer William Evans and injuring another officer in the process, before Green himself was shot and killed by a cop at the scene. In stark contrast to the countless lamentations – by media outlets and elected Democrats – that the people who stormed the Capitol building on January 6 were an undifferentiated pack of “racists” and “white supremacists,” Democrats and their leftwing allies have been remarkably uninterested in the element of race vis-à-vis Mr. Green and the white policeman he killed on Friday. Senator Chuck Schumer, for one, soberly claimed, without reference to race, to be “heartbroken for the family and loved ones” of the fallen officer. President Biden offered his “heartfelt condolences” to Evans’ family. And Nancy Pelosi called Evans “a martyr for our democracy” — a far cry from her July 2020 statement comparing federal anti-riot police in Portland to Nazi “storm troopers.”

Why the sudden, uncharacteristic reluctance to jump to stupid, uninformed conclusions about the motivations of a criminal perpetrator?The colossal hypocrites who run social media platforms have been similarly averse to wading into racial waters in their dealings with Noah Green. Consider Facebook, whose militant censors and “fact-checkers” have been so keenly on the lookout for messages conveying even the baresttrace of support for “hate,” “misinformation,” or “conspiracy theories” promulgated by white conservatives. For some mysterious reason, those same censors were apparently asleep-at-the-wheel when Mr. Green, as recently as March 17, used his Facebook page to express his deep admiration for former Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. Neither did the censors object when Green again used Facebook on March 21 to describe Louis Farrakhan, who has been the Nation of Islam’s principal leader for more than 40 years, as “the man who can carry us through the dark hour.” Nor did the censors balk when Green recently stated on Facebook that “my faith is centered on the belief of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Jesus, the Messiah, the final divine reminder in our midst.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/biden-admin-revives-funding-to-anti-semitic-u-n-agency/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=

The United States, Antony Blinken announced this afternoon, will “restart U.S. economic, development, and humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people.”

In addition to reviving direct U.S. funding to a variety of projects in Gaza and the West Bank, this will also include $150 million to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, a specialized organization that aids Palestinian refugees. The Trump administration had suspended funding to UNRWA in 2018, calling the agency “irredeemably flawed.” And it remains so today.

First, it’s worth recalling the true purpose behind UNRWA’s creation. Consider that of all the millions of people displaced around the world, only Palestinian refugees have their own, distinct U.N. agency. Refugees from every single other country on the planet instead seek assistance from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

In addition to that, although the agency purports to represent over 5 million refugees who it claims may one day return to Israel, most of them don’t actually qualify as refugees according to the U.N.’s criteria. Most have never even stepped foot in the country, since they were born well after the 1948 conflict. According to a recently released U.S. government assessment, the number of true refugees, applying the standard criteria, ends up at around 200,000, and perhaps even less than that.

So why stand up this separate organization? The very existence of the program, and the widespread support that it consistently receives at the U.N. General Assembly, stands as yet another example of the U.N.’s pervasive, institutional bias against Israel. After the U.N. Human Rights Council, which disproportionately singles out the country in its every session, UNRWA is the single most obvious example of this discrimination, which is designed to make Israel into a pariah state on the international stage.