New York In Financial Fantasyland Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-7-31-new-york-in-financial-fantasy

The blue state progressive political model consists of an endless list of government spending and redistribution programs, expected shortly to deliver perfect fairness and justice among all people, all financed by an assumed ever-increasing gusher of tax revenues. Then along comes the coronavirus: the productive economy gets intentionally suppressed, tax revenues plummet, and then what? Are we now expected to cut back on the government programs so recently touted as the sine qua non of human moral advancement? Worse, are public servants — those selfless individuals giving their lives to the righteous cause of human advancement through government spending — now to be laid off? Or have their pay or benefits reduced?

All of the blue states are currently facing this circumstance to greater or lesser degree, but none more so than my home state of New York. A June Report from researchers at Arizona State and Old Dominion Universities, cited at Bloomberg here, projected an annualized average decline in tax revenues among the states of 20%, but with New York leading all states with a projected 40% decline in tax revenues. Even if the decline turns out to be well less than the 40%, we’re still talking about a large part of the support for most-expensive-in-the-nation spending programs in areas like Medicaid, housing, and K-12 education. What’s the plan, Governor Cuomo?

Good New Yorker that he is, Cuomo’s brain is just incapable of contemplating substantial cuts to state spending or the state workforce, even in areas like Medicaid and K-12 education where our state spends double or more per capita the average of the other states. Nor are meaningful tax increases really an option — we’ve basically already maxed out on the potential for squeezing big money out of a handful of the richest citizens. So there’s really only one option: the federal government just has to step up and pay our bills.

Democrats’ Policies Are Unfit For The Presidency Joy Pullman

https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/31/democrats-policies-are-unfit-for-the-presidency/

In 2016, the news-minding public endured an endless chant branding Donald Trump’s character and personality as “unfit” for office.

It was a slogan deployed against him by no less than President Obama and Hillary Clinton. Clinton debuted it in a major campaign speech echoed in a campaign ad featuring conservative writer Charles Krauthammer. In her speech, Clinton called Trump “tempermentally unfit to hold an office that requires knowledge, stability, and immense responsibility. This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes.” Obama said, “the Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president.”

People who called Trump “unfit” for office in 2016 include Joe Biden; 2008 and 2012 Republican presidential nominees John McCain and Mitt Romney, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, USA Today’s editorial board in its first presidential endorsement ever, later presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, Sen. Rand Paul; RedState editor and “lifelong Republican” Leon Wolf, author of the debunked “Fire and Fury” novel Michael Wolff, TV personality Omarosa, 2020 presidential candidate Rep. John Delaney, Republican former Sen. Gordon Humphrey, and the United Kingdom’s now-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

It didn’t end when Trump took office, of course. This week, Trump’s niece Mary Trump has a new tell-all book just like all the others, also insisting he’s “unfit.” In the intervening time, we’ve heard the same buzzword from the FBI director Trump fired, Jim Comey; the national security advisor Trump fired, John Bolton; writer Andrew Sullivan; New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan; and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Clearly, Democrats have been trying to cement in voters’ foreheads the idea that Trump’s personality is unfit for office. Perhaps that’s because Democrats’ policies never have been as unfit for the office as they are now.

Just this week, in his first semi-public appearance in months, presidential Potemkin village candidate Joe Biden promised to be the farthest-left president in American history.

New Disclosures Confirm: Trump Himself Was the Target of Obama Administration’s Russia Probe By Andrew C. McCarthy

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/new-disclosures-confirm-trump-was-the-target-of-obama-administrations-russia-probe/

Assertions that the focus was ‘the Trump campaign’ are now known to be ludicrous

Long-sought documents finally pried from U.S. intelligence agencies prove that the Obama administration used the occasion of providing a standard intelligence briefing for major-party candidates as an opportunity to investigate Donald Trump on suspicion of being a Russian asset.

I say investigate Donald Trump advisedly.

As I contended in Ball of Collusion, my book on the Trump-Russia investigation, the target of the probe spearheaded by the FBI — but greenlighted by the Obama White House, and abetted by the Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies — was Donald Trump. Not the Trump campaign, not the Trump administration. Those were of interest only insofar as they were vehicles for Trump himself. The campaign, which the Bureau and its apologists risibly claim was the focus of the investigation, would have been of no interest to them were it not for Trump.

Or do you suppose they moved heaven and earth, surreptitiously plotted in the Oval Office, wrote CYA memos to cover their tracks, and laboriously sculpted FBI reports because they were hoping to nail . . . George Papadopoulos?

My book was published a year ago. It covered what was then known about the Obama-administration operation. In collusion with the Clinton campaign, and with the complicity of national-security officials who transitioned into the Trump administration, the Obama White House deployed the FBI to undermine the new president, dually using official investigative tactics (e.g. FISA surveillance, confidential informants, covert interrogations) and lawless classified leaks — the latter publicized by dependable journalists who were (and remain) politically invested in unseating Trump.

Now the paper trail is finally catching up with what some of us analysts long ago surmised based on the limited information previously available.

You don’t like Donald Trump? Fine. The investigation here was indeed about Donald Trump. But the scandal is about how abusive officials can exploit their awesome powers against any political opponent. And the people who authorized this political spying will be right back in business if, come November, Obama’s vice-president is elected president — notwithstanding that he’s yet to be asked serious questions about it.

Turkey’s Brain Drain: Why Youths See No Future There by Burak Bekdil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16277/turkey-brain-drain-youths

Burak Bekdil, one of Turkey’s leading journalists, was recently fired from the country’s most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing in Gatestone what is taking place in Turkey.

SODEV, another pollster, found that 60.5% of youths supporting Erdoğan said they would prefer to live in Christian Switzerland with half the salary they would have earned in Muslim Saudi Arabia.

“These kind of social engineering efforts targeting the younger mind almost always end up with opposite results, primarily because the new generation do not like to be told what’s good and what’s bad for them. Freedoms for most youth are more important than prayers. This is what conservative politicians often miss.” — Turkish university professor who asked not to be named.

In just the first 65 days of the COVID-19 pandemic, 510 Turks were arrested for “spreading baseless and provocative messages in social media.” Before that, by the end of 2019, Turkey had banned access to 408,494 web sites, 7,000 Twitter accounts, 40,000 tweets, 10,000 YouTube videos and 6,200 Facebook accounts.

Erdoğan might sit down and ask himself: Why do the youths whom he wanted to make “devout” want to flee their Muslim country and live in “infidel” lands?

Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, once declared his political mission as “raising devout (Muslim) generations.” Research in recent years has shown that Turkish youths have defied Erdoğan’s most ambitious social engineering project.

Konda, a pollster, found in 2019 that Turkish youths were less likely than the wider population to identify themselves as “religious conservative.” They were less likely to fast, pray regularly or (for females) cover their hair. Ipsos, an international pollster, found that only 12% of Turks trust Islamic clerics. SODEV, another pollster, found that 60.5% of youths that support Erdoğan said they would prefer to live in Christian Switzerland with half the salary they would earn in Muslim Saudi Arabia. SODEV’s study also found that 70.3% of respondents think a talented youth would never be able to get ahead in professional life without political/bureaucratic “connections,” i.e., without a hidden touch of nepotism. And only 30% of them think one could freely express his opinion on social media.

Brexit Diary: What BoJo Can Learn From Disraeli By Stephen MacLean

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/brexit-diary-how-would-disraeli-see-one-nation/91208/

Victorian England was not adverse to the aiding state, but with limits.

“Circumstances are beyond the control of man,” Benjamin Disraeli wrote, and he should know. He will be linked forever with the idea of One Nation Toryism, even though Stanley Baldwin coined the phrase in 1924 as a political ploy to limit Labor’s appeal among the working classes. Baldwin adapted the phrase from Disraeli’s novel “Sybil,” in which the author empathizes that England was in reality two nations: “The Rich and the Poor.” In many respects, though, that is where Disraeli’s connection with One Nation Conservatism begins and ends. What a pity for those who want to coast-by on his dandy’s coat-tails.

One Nation Tories today want more state intervention and welfare redistribution, disguised as a “leveling up agenda . . . absolutely in that tradition.” Disraeli, ever the aristocratic arriviste, wanted social responsibilities to remain with the ancient and noble families of England. Sybil, remember, was written at the height of Disraeli’s “Young England” movement of the 1840s. Its aims, partly romantic but motivated by real concerns for the “condition of England,” was a return to the “merrie” times of feudal responsibilities and noblesse oblige.

Victorian England was not averse to the aiding state, and it became more so as the century progressed, as Herbert Spencer lamented of “reform liberalism” in his famous essay, “The New Toryism.” It was limited, though, and often took the form of permissive legislation: allowing government to intervene if necessary, but trusting that the threat of state action would compel social and economic malefactors to voluntarily mend their ways.

Contemporary Conservatives are constrained by no such compunction. Breitbart London notes that among the One Nation wishlist are “spending high amounts of public money on foreign aid, attaining ‘carbon New Zero’, and raising taxes on so-called ‘unearned’ income.” Such a welfare initiative would have made Dizzy dizzy.

What, though, would Disraeli do differently? First, as an imperialist with global aspirations, he would heartily approve of bilateral trade deals with the world, increasing UK trade and encouraging entrepreneurship and economic growth. The British Empire may no longer color the globe “red,” but Dizzy could hardly object if trade made Britain “great” once more.

Our Summer of Cultural Suicide By Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/summer-cultural-suicide-sports-movies-schools-go-woke/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=

Sports, movies, and schools go woke. And broke?  

Cultural suicide used to be a popular diagnosis of why things suddenly just quit.

Historians such as Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee cited social cannibalism to explain why once-successful states, institutions, and cultures simply died off.

Their common explanation was that the arrogance of success ensures lethal consequences. Once elites became pampered and arrogant, they feel exempt from their ancestors’ respect for moral and spiritual laws  — such as the need for thrift, moderation, and transcendence.

Take professional sports. Over the past century, professional football, basketball, and baseball were racially integrated, and they adopted a uniform code of patriotic observance. The three leagues offered fans a pleasant respite from daily barroom politics. As a result, by the 21st century, the NFL, NBA, and MLB had become global multi-billion-dollar enterprises.

Then hubris ensued.

The owners, coaches, and players weren’t always racially diverse. But that inconvenient truth did not stop the leagues from hectoring their fans about social activism — even as they no longer honored common patriotic rituals.

All three leagues have suffered terribly during the viral lockdown, as American life mysteriously went on without them. And they have almost ensured that they won’t fully recover when the quarantine ends. Many of their often-pampered multimillionaire players refuse to honor the national anthem. In the NFL, players will now broadcast their politics on their helmets. They will virtue-signal their moral superiority to increasingly turned-off fans — as if to make sure that their sources of support flee.

The Misery Compact Agree to the Democrats’ terms . . . or else. By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2020/07/30/the-misery-compact/

The wisecrack in MAGA world is that coronavirus hysteria and the catastrophic consequences of related lockdowns have an expiration date: November 4, 2020.

That, of course, is the day after the presidential election, which our political experts currently predict will be won by Joe Biden. Panic over the flu-like virus will disappear; power-grabbing governors will ease house arrest orders; children will go back to school; face coverings will be torched; and the news media’s coronavirus dashboards will be archived for history.

Further, inner-city unrest magically will be cured. Antifa thugs will go back to Starbucks or their bedroom in mom’s Westport mansion or their Ivy League dorm rooms. 

Crisis over.

But that scenario is more than just the cynical view of Trump supporters wary that the current turmoil is the latest attempt to oust the president from the Oval Office—it appears to be the election strategy of the Joe Biden campaign, the Democratic Party, and the news media. And they are making no effort to keep it a secret. 

“[I]f Trump wins a second term—especially if that victory relies on another rural surge to overcome massive opposition across the big metros—the chaos in Portland might look like only the preliminary skirmish for an even more incendiary collision to come,” threatened Ronald Brownstein, a senior editor for The Atlantic, in a recent column.

In other words, rednecks, mayhem, and destruction will continue unless Bad Orange Man goes back to Mar-a-Lago in January.

Reversals of Fortune

Hydroxy Hysteria Reaching a Fever Pitch By Brian C. Joondeph, M.D.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/hydroxy_hysteria_reaching_a_fever_pitch.html

COVID-19 can cause a fever, but nothing like the fever of hysteria gripping broadcast and social media over hydroxychloroquine, a potential treatment for the Wuhan flu. Ever since President Trump mentioned hydroxy as a possible therapeutic, the media have castigated it as worse than rat poison. They’ve criticized any use of it in a constant barrage of fear porn, telling everyone that this 60-year-old drug would kill anyone who dared take it.

When Trump mentioned he was taking hydroxychloroquine as a preventative, Fox News crank Neil Cavuto had a seizure, telling his audience, “I cannot stress enough. This will kill you.” Tell that to those Americans taking hydroxy to the tune of five million prescriptions written each year.

Hydroxy was FDA-approved in 1955 and is taken for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. FDA approval means the approved drug is both efficacious and safe. All of a sudden, after 60 years, the FDA decided hydroxy is no longer safe because of, “serious heart rhythm problems and other safety issues, including blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries, and liver problems and failure.” If it is so unsafe, why did the FDA not rescind its 60-year-old approval?

It is worth noting that diseases treated by hydroxy for the past half century can cause these problems as well. As can COVID, which if severe, can also cause death. So, the FDA deems it safe to treat those sick with lupus and autoimmune diseases with hydroxy but not those sick or hospitalized with COVID.

That makes much sense as blaming both heat and cold, blizzards and droughts, on global warming. But that’s what happens when medicine is practiced by bureaucrats beholden not to science but to politics.

China Seeds: A Biological Attack on America? by Gordon G. Chang

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16293/china-seeds-biological-attack

Some think the packages [of seeds marked as “jewelry”] could be part of a “brushing scam” — an effort to create fake customer reviews on online retail platforms — but that appears unlikely. For one thing, there is no indication these seeds — there are several varieties of them — are either branded or are offered for sale.

“DO NOT plant them,” officials in every state have warned.

There is also an infamous statement attributed to General Chi Haotian. In a secret speech to senior Communist Party officials sometime around 2002, Chi, then the Chinese defense minister, stated there was a need for “new living space” because of the exhaustion of existing Chinese territory. Chi suggested the “mass colonization” of the land occupied by United States as the best option.

“We are not as foolish as to want to perish together with America by using nuclear weapons,” he said. The way to “clean up” the U.S., Chi argued, would be through biological attacks.

“For forty years, the Chinese have used unconventional tactics to further their ambitious goal of defeating the United States,” said Brandon Weichert of the Weichert Report to this publication. “They employed economic warfare, lawfare, information warfare, and cyber warfare. Beijing looks like it attempted biowarfare with the novel coronavirus from Wuhan. Now, they may be trying their hand at ecological warfare.”

Residents in all 50 states have received packages of seeds, sent unsolicited from China. Many of the packages, mailed through the Chinese state-run postal system, were mislabeled as “jewelry” for U.S. Customs purposes.

“DO NOT plant them,” officials in every state have warned.

“They could be invasive, meaning they may have the potential to introduce diseases to local plants, or could be harmful to livestock,” the Montana Department of Agriculture noted in a statement on Monday, referring to the Chinese seeds. “Treat them like they are radioactive, like they are Kryptonite,” said Texas Agriculture

Systemic Hypocrisy by Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16280/systemic-hypocrisy

“Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 83 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen. This report estimates that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019, and some of them were sent directly from detention camps. The estimated figure is conservative and the actual figure is likely to be far higher.” — “Uyghurs for Sale,” the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), March 1, 2020, with subsequent updates.

Corporate giants might be more successful at convincing the public that they truly care about social justice, inequality and the communities they claim to “serve” if this “care” did not only manifest itself in statements filled with virtue-signaling but in business practices as well — such as not using forced labor and children in the supply chain.

Finally, pledging funds to Black Lives Matter, a self-described Marxist organization whose stated goal is “alternatives to capitalism”, fails to convince one of much else than a corporate desire to ride the latest wave of wokeness to score easy profits and points.

Since the killing of George Floyd, corporate virtue signaling has reached unprecedented heights.

Apple pledged $100 million reportedly to “combat racism.”

“The unfinished work of racial justice and equality call us all to account,” Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said in a Twitter video. “Things must change, and Apple’s committed to being a force for that change. Today, I’m proud to announce Apple’s Racial Equity and Justice Initiative, with a $100 million commitment”.

Starbucks pledged $1 million in “Neighborhood Grants to promote racial equity and create more inclusive and just communities”.