RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-city-subway-ridership-mta-transit-police-shooting-brooklyn-36-street-station-attack-gas-

The subway system—lifeblood of this city’s economy and vitality—is in a precarious condition. Weekday ridership has hovered below 60% of pre-pandemic levels. Violent crime has risen in raw numbers even with the dramatic drop-off of riders. The perception and reality of danger loom large. A survey last month of the city’s workforce found that nearly 3 in 4 feel less safe on trains than they did two years ago. Transit officials say riders who never returned to the subways are even more terrified of crime underground.

Into this fray enters Frank R. James, the man suspected of releasing a thick gaseous substance into a train car in Brooklyn on Tuesday before opening fire, wounding 10 passengers. The rush-hour attack at a Brooklyn station deals an enormous blow to the city’s effort to win back riders. How can the New York City Police Department and the Metropolitan Transit Authority make the subways safe again?

The system is newly under the helm of three longtime transit-safety practitioners: Mayor Eric Adams, a former transit cop; MTA Chairman Janno Lieber, a transportation adviser to Mayor Ed Koch in the 1980s; and NYPD Transit Bureau Chief Jason Wilcox, a 35-year police veteran. Their challenges are considerable. The number of 911 reports of knives in the transit system was 139% above the spring 2019 level, and drug-sale reports in the subway were up 71%, the NYPD reported in March. By the first week in March there had been 428 reported transit crimes, about equal to March 2019 numbers, when ridership was twice as high.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/14/in-the-ongoing-war-of-the-states-the-red-model-beats-the-blue/

One of the genius elements of the U.S. Constitution was its allowance for competing models of success and failure. It did so by giving states great autonomy under the law, while limiting what the federal government can do. In the wake of a massive pandemic and a growing political divide among Americans, we’re seeing that concept work its magic.

Two new reports that look at how the blue and red states and cities have performed during the COVID pandemic show it’s no contest. Those that hewed to the Red State model of lower taxes, less regulation and respect for the rule of law thrived – while those that followed the “woke” blue-state model, built on socialist top-down control, forced equality and divisive racial identity politics, suffered.

One of the new studies, by Phil Kerpen of The Committee to Unleash Prosperity, Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago, and Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation, and published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, ranked states by how they performed in three major areas during the pandemic: economics, education, and mortality.

That study, for good reason, has garnered much attention. It shows that red states, in general, beat blue states hands down during the pandemic, largely due to the latter’s dedication to damaging COVID lockdowns.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/13/producer-price-index-march-2022-.html#Echobox=1649853296

The prices that goods and services producers receive rose in March at the fastest pace since records have been kept, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The producer price index, which measures the prices paid by wholesalers, increased 11.2% from a year ago, the most in a data series going back to November 2010. On a monthly basis, the gauge climbed 1.4%, above the 1.1% Dow Jones estimate and also a record.

Stripping out food, energy and trade services, so-called core PPI rose 0.9% on a monthly basis, nearly double the 0.5% estimate and the biggest monthly gain since January 2021. Core PPI increased 7% on a year-over-year basis.

PPI is considered a forward-looking inflation measure as it tracks prices in the pipeline for goods and services that eventually reach consumers.

Wednesday’s release comes the day after the BLS reported that the consumer price index for March surged 8.5% over the past year, above expectations and the highest reading since December 1981.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/xinjiang-prison-camp-survivor-and-family-tailed-by-super-suspicious-individuals-in-d-c/

A former Xinjiang prison-camp prisoner, his family, and others accompanying them appeared to have been followed and discreetly photographed by two women on the National Mall yesterday afternoon, sources familiar with the incident told National Review. This raised suspicions about the possibility that the family was being surveilled, though there is no way to confirm this.

The camp survivor, Ovalbek Turdakun, arrived in the U.S. on Friday with his wife and their eleven-year-old son. Turdakun is expected to present significant, high-value evidence to Congress and the International Criminal Court, revealing previously undisclosed aspects of China’s genocidal campaign in Xinjiang based on his ten-month detention in a camp in 2018. In an interview with NR late Tuesday, Turdakun described at length the medical practices to which the Chinese authorities subjected him in the camp. The family’s arrival is also noteworthy because they all arrived together and are ethnically Kyrgyz. They might be the first Christian Xinjiang emigrés to reach the U.S.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/04/12/maher_five_years_ago_no_one_was_talking_about_abolishing_the_police_pregnant_men_or_legalizing_looting.html

HBO host Bill Maher says he hasn’t changed, it is the left that has changed in an interview on Joe Rogan’s podcast.

MAHER: When people say to me, ‘don’t you think you’ve gotten more conservative?’ No, I haven’t. The left has gotten goofier.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

MAHER: So I seem more conservative, maybe, but it’s not me who changed. I feel that I’m the same guy but five years ago, we hadn’t spent $6 trillion to stay home. I understand we had to do something with the pandemic, I’m not sure that was — I remember when a trillion dollars was too much to spend on anything. We didn’t spend a trillion to bail out the economy in 2008. So, we didn’t do that.

Five years ago no one was talking about abolishing the police, you know. There was no talk about pregnant men. I mean, looting was still illegal.

Have I changed? No. If someone had said 20 years ago, ‘I’m not sure looting is a bad thing,’ I would have opposed it then. So I haven’t changed.

https://www.newsweek.com/biden-helping-china-plunder-american-tech-companies-opinion-1697054

The Biden administration has proposed a technical—but critical—change to U.S. patent policy that could have been drafted in Beijing. In fact, a Chinese front organization has formally endorsed the proposal, which will gut protection for an especially important type of American patents.

Last December, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, along with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, issued the Draft Policy Statement on Licensing Negotiations and Remedies for Standards-Essential Patents Subject to Voluntary F/RAND Commitments.

The Draft Policy, according to the Justice Department, would lead to “widespread and efficient licensing” by holders of standards-essential patents (SEPs) and thereby “promote technology innovation, further consumer choice and enable industry competitiveness.”

As the Center for Strategic and International Studies notes in its public comment on the Draft Policy, the Justice Department promotes the change “as an effort to encourage good-faith licensing negotiations.”

Standards are the technical specifications that “shape” products, services and processes. SEPs, which protect the technology included in standards, safeguard American economic leadership. SEPs defining 5G communications are held by American companies, for instance. Standards are a hotly contested tech battleground between the U.S. and China.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/04/12/while-everyone-else-is-kicking-themselves-for-voting-for-biden-college-educated-women-are-doubling-down/

Why are lots of men willing to admit that they were wrong in 2020, while college-educated women are doubling down?

NBC News recently compared several polls to find huge shifts from Democrats to Republicans in 2022 midterm voter preferences. The big exception to these shifts across many demographics was college-educated women, who in NBC’s aggregation showed even stronger support for Democrats now than ahead of the last midterm election.

Here’s the key graphic, which zoomed around social media Sunday, and below that the NBC segment.