RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/12/the-fury-of-the-fatherless

The Trump administration’s recent designation of several American cities as “anarchic jurisdictions” may turn out to have been nothing more than a quixotic gambit in the supercharged run-up to November 3. But the fact that it was thinkable in the first place points to a truth beyond electoral politics: The frenzy that has been enacted in city after American city since May 2020 demands more scrutiny than it has yet received.

It is true that most protests have been peaceful. It is also true that the exceptions—marked by violence and biliousness and unreason and, well, anarchy—have been far more common than many people have understood, at least until recently. As of late September, a USA TODAY/Ipsos poll reports that two-thirds of respondents believe that “protesters and counterprotesters are overwhelming American cities.” The majority is on to something.

According to the first thorough examination of the street protests triggered by the death of George Floyd, undertaken by Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project in conjunction with the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton, more than 10,600 incidents of what is benignly called “unrest” were recorded between May 24 and August 22. Of these, some 570 involved violence. Of those, most have involved Black Lives Matter activists. Preliminary insurance estimates show that the damage will surpass the $1.2 billion in damages accrued during the 1992 Rodney King riots. And then there are the atmospherics that separate these protests from many that have gone before: lusty screaming, ecstatic vandalism, the menacing of bystanders.

The ritualistic exhibition of destructive behaviors in city after city is without precedent in America. Neither the civil rights demonstrations nor the protests against the war in Vietnam looked remotely like this. The differences demand explanation. Blame what you will on the usual bête noirs: ­Donald Trump, cancel culture, police brutality, political tribalism, the coronavirus pandemic, far-right militias, BLM, antifa. All these factors feed the “­demand” side of the protests and rioting, the ­reasons for the ritualistic enactment. But what about the “supply” side—the ready and apparently inexhaustible ranks of demonstrators themselves? What explains them?

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/our-real-systemic-problem/

America’s got a problem that’s systemic in nature. This problem has less to do with individual intentions than the structure within which our intentions are formed. That structure explains a great deal about observed disparities in wealth, and other advantages, between various racial and ethnic groups. It helps explain why we’re torn apart by arguments over school shootings and abortion. It even helps explain why we’ve turned away from traditional religion and patriotism and adopted a secular faith built around hollow and pernicious ideas like systemic racism instead. In short, our systemic problem helps explain many of the core disagreements around which contemporary American politics are organized. The challenge I refer to — our real systemic problem — is family decline.

A twist of this issue—and a telling sign of our times—is that we’re barred from discussing it. Charles Murray once said, commenting on the connection between a vast range of positive outcomes for children and being reared by two biological parents who remain married, “I know of no other set of important findings that are as broadly accepted by social scientists who follow the technical literature, liberal as well as conservative, and yet are so resolutely ignored by network news programs, editorial writers for the major newspapers, and politicians of both major political parties.” That Murray himself is periodically shouted down on college campuses adds a nice touch.

While our fake systemic problem is on half the country’s lips, our real systemic problem is verboten. We don’t want to risk offense by mentioning an issue so touchy — and that touches nearly everyone nowadays in some way or other because … well, because it’s systemic. Because the family has been seen since approximately forever as society’s foundation, it makes sense from the traditional point of view that family decline would have pervasive social effects. Yet no one dares discuss it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/return-of-the-obama-economists-11606778301?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

If Joe Biden is trying to distinguish his emerging Administration from Barack Obama’s, he hasn’t succeeded in the choice of economic advisers he rolled out Monday. They’re Obama veterans who believe in more spending, more regulation, higher taxes, and easier money. Let’s hope the result is better than what became known as “secular stagnation” during the Obama years.

Janet Yellen, the Treasury nominee, is an economist with a distinguished political resume. She’s a Keynesian from the James Tobin school who believes in spending as fiscal stimulus and low interest rates. As Federal Reserve Chair in Mr. Obama’s second term, she was slow to raise interest rates and reduce the Fed’s bond purchases. She’ll likely favor a 2009-style policy mix next year with a spending blowout while urging the Fed to monetize it.

Mr. Biden has also signed up Jared Bernstein, an architect of the Obama stimulus who famously predicted in January 2009 that spending would keep unemployment below 8% and hit 7% by autumn of 2010. Not quite. The jobless rate hit 10% in October 2009, stayed at 9.9% through April 2010, and didn’t fall below 7% until November 2013. Mr. Bernstein put his trust in the Keynesian “multiplier” that $1 of new spending yields as much as an extra $1.57 or more of additional GDP. Wrong again.

Mr. Bernstein will join the White House Council of Economic Advisers, where his boss will be Princeton economist Cecilia Rouse. She’s a veteran of the Clinton and Obama White Houses. Her academic work has focused on microeconomic subjects such as education and the labor market, and her research is skeptical of the benefits of school choice.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/30/trumps-michael-flynn-pardon-is-only-the-be

The corporate media has refused to tell Americans the truth, so I will. Here are six key aspects of the case that expose the Obama-Biden administration’s travesty of justice.

On Wednesday, President Trump pardoned an innocent man. Just before Thanksgiving, he signed an executive grant of clemency that provided Michael Flynn a full pardon and ended the criminal case against the retired lieutenant general.

Yet justice has not been served. And it may never be served. Justice for Michael Flynn requires something our country no longer possesses: an honest press.

Justice for Flynn requires the public to understand how the Obama-Biden administration, political appointees, career employees, special counsel attorneys, and a federal judge sought to destroy a war hero’s life to wreak revenge on Flynn for his service to Trump—and with a hope that Flynn’s demise would trigger Trump’s destruction. Justice for Flynn requires that those involved in this scandal be the object of public scorn.

The corporate media has refused to tell Americans the truth, so I will. And the damning facts go much beyond the evidence U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen, whom Attorney General William Barr charged with investigating the prosecution of Flynn, discovered. Here are six key aspects of the Flynn case the press buried that expose the travesty of justice heaped upon Flynn.