RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/pelosi-trump-impeachment-trial-gregg-jarrett

Here we go again. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slowly and somberly walking an article of impeachment through the Capitol flanked by House managers giving their best impression of a funeral procession. Except this time, they’re wearing Covid masks.  

Let’s call it “Impeachment: The Sequel.” It is destined to be as pitiable as the original. Like a cheap movie franchise that Hollywood keeps exploiting, this sham version will be the equivalent of a box office dud. 

Mugging for the cameras, Pelosi will probably mutter something about “making history,” as she did before.  Maybe she’ll again pass out souvenir signing pens like lollipops at a town carnival.  It’s an insult to charades.  Pelosi seeks retaliation masquerading as impeachment.  

The first impeachment trial in the Senate a year ago was a baseless fiasco that ended in the easy acquittal of President Trump. Democrats did not come close to mustering the two-thirds majority votes required for conviction and removal from office.  That predictable outcome rendered the entire exercise a colossal waste of time. 

It is almost certain that the sequel will mimic the same bad ending.  Democrats in the House rushed through an ineptly crafted article of impeachment accusing Trump of “inciting an insurrection” when he delivered a speech on the nation’s mall on January 6, 2021, and criminals chose to riot inside the Capitol building. 

https://www.city-journal.org/biden-touts-california-as-model-for-america

As the Biden administration settles in and begins to formulate its agenda, progressive pundits, politicians, and activists point to California as a role model for national policy. If the administration listens to them, it would prove a disaster for America’s already-beleaguered middle and working classes.

Biden, suggests an ecstatic account in the Los Angeles Times, seeks to “make America California again,” and he will have plenty of help. Californians will run Health and Human Services, the Treasury, Homeland Security, and Energy. Former California senator Kamala Harris is vice president, and San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi rules the House of Representatives. Progressives like Laura Tyson and Lenny Mendonca see the shift as embracing “California’s distinctive approach to market capitalism.” The Golden State, they insist, can “show the way forward” toward a more socially just future.

As a California resident for nearly half a century, I wonder if these worthies see the same state I do. California has its wonderful spots, great neighborhoods, beautiful vistas, amazing entrepreneurs, and great amenities, but it makes a poor advertisement for social democracy. It suffers the nation’s highest poverty rate and presents the widest gap between middle- and upper-middle income earners of any state. Minorities—notably African-Americans and Latinos—do worse in California’s metros than elsewhere in the country, according to a recent study that we conducted at the Urban Reform Institute. In Atlanta, African-American median incomes, adjusted for costs, are almost double those in San Francisco and Los Angeles; Latinos earn $20,000 more in midwestern and southern cities than in the enlightened metros along the California coast.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/01/25/government_waste_thrives_in_darkness_145112.html

In the last 20 years, our country’s national debt has exploded. In 2001, when George W. Bush took office, the national debt was $5.8 trillion. It took around 225 years — booms, busts, depressions, wars, etc. — to amass that much national debt. In just eight years, Bush and a compliant Congress doubled the number to $11.7 trillion. In Barack Obama’s two terms, another $8.6 trillion was added. During the past four years, Donald Trump and Congress fought many battles, but not over this: In that time, America’s future was mortgaged to the tune of another $6.7 trillion. Today, the national debt is around $27 trillion, a four-fold increase in the last two decades. That doesn’t count unfunded mandates. And there is no end in sight. 

Whenever human beings gather to accomplish a task, any task, without strong and effective oversight, a natural evolution takes place. Whether it be in business, academia, philanthropy, or government, every activity morphs from the original goal to self-aggrandizement. In government, this process is particularly toxic. There are no profits, let alone a profit motive. No concern with productivity. No incentive to turn off the proverbial lights. No measure of success. No motivation to end counterproductive activities. 

Add to this mix the influence of public employee unions. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry Truman were opposed to them for reasons that long ago became apparent. The goal of all unions is self-preservation – just as management’s is to maximize profits. But public employee unions add two other noxious elements to the mix: (1) defending job incompetence and (2) heavy-handed involvement in the electoral process in a search for pliant politicians who can help them achieve their objectives by spending ever more of the public’s money.

Now, out of the blue, the experts-for-hire have a new scheme to justify continued fiscal irresponsibility: modern monetary theory. It holds that so long as interest rates are lower than inflation rates, politicians can spend away. That is not a theory. It is idle wordplay, and the victim of such sophistry is the American taxpayer — and future generations of American taxpayers.