A Destructive Piece of Legislation The House of Representatives should reject the Inflation Reduction Act, which will harm Americans by reducing pharmaceutical R&D and expanding needless Obamacare subsidies. Joel Zinberg

https://www.city-journal.org/inflation-reduction-act-needless-health-care-provisions

The House of Representatives will soon take up the inaptly named Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA, which cleared the Senate by the barest of margins—51 to 50—through the reconciliation process, will do little to control inflation. More importantly, its health-care provisions will harm Americans in order to fund an expansion of government-run health care that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, leads to inflation, and provides inferior care.

The highly regarded Penn–Wharton Budget Model estimated that the impact of the IRA on inflation over the next ten years would be “statistically indistinguishable from zero.” Inflation might rise slightly in the first few years and decline slightly thereafter. The CBO concurred, finding that the bill would have “negligible effect” on inflation.

The anti-inflationary effect is likely even lower since both assessments were made before the Senate parliamentarian knocked out a provision that purportedly would have saved around $40 billion. Moreover, almost half of the IRA’s projected budgetary savings ($122 billion) results from a budgetary gimmick—repeal of a Trump-era drug-rebate rule that was challenged in court, has been delayed multiple times, has never had any money spent on it, and would likely never have gone into effect. Even Senator Bernie Sanders, before voting yes, labelled the IRA “the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.”

The deception doesn’t end with the bill’s title. Despite President Biden’s assurance that no American earning less than $400,000 would pay “a single penny” in additional taxes, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation found that the IRA would raise taxes on Americans in every income bracket and that people earning less than $400,000 would bear most of the increase. In fact, the IRA appropriates $80 billion for the IRS—more than six times the agency’s annual budget—to boost enforcement and collections. The bill’s authors are counting on tens of thousands of additional tax collectors to find the money to finance the IRA’s increased spending. Their targets will not be limited to Sanders’s “millionaires and billionaires.” They don’t have enough money. Inevitably, working- and middle-class people along with small businesses and sole proprietors will be targeted—that’s where the money is.

House hunters: House incumbents on track to see most primary losses in decades by Abigail Adcox,

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/house-incumbents-on-track-most-primary-losses-decades

Incumbent House members are on track to lose the most primaries in the 2022 midterm election cycle in decades.

So far, 11 House members have lost their primaries, including seven Republicans and four Democrats, with 10 of the incumbents being ousted as they faced off against a colleague due to redistricting, according to Axios. In 2020, 13 House incumbents lost their seats, the most primary election losses in a non-redistricting year since 1974.

Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) secured the Democratic nomination against his rival progressive incumbent Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL) after a majority of Newman’s district fell into Casten’s due to the state’s redrawn maps. Illinois lost a congressional seat for the first time in over 200 years after the 2020 U.S. census showed a population decline.

Several incumbents faced tough primary races as former President Donald Trump endorsed their opponents. Rep. Peter Meijer (R-MI) was defeated by John Gibbs, a former senior official in the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Trump administration, in the Republican primary for Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District.

One incumbent will lose as Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) and Jerry Nadler (D-NY) face off in New York’s 12th Congressional District on Aug. 23.

At least two other incumbent members are at risk of losing their seats, including Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Mondaire Jones (D-NY). Cheney, who is one of two Republican members on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot, is facing a challenge from Trump-backed Harriet Hageman.

If the total loss of incumbents rises to 14, it would be the most since 1992, when 19 incumbents lost renomination, according to Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball.

Defund The FBI!

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/08/12/defund-the-fbi/

No, that headline’s not a joke. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, once so popular it had its own TV show solely dedicated to its heroics, has become a hyper-politicized, jackbooted bully that no longer serves the American people or the U.S. Constitution, which its employees are sworn to protect. It has become, instead, the intelligence arm and domestic enforcer of the far left.

Did we say defund? Yes. But we don’t mean simply to cut its funding, as leftists have disastrously proposed for police forces across the country. We mean tear down the entire rotting edifice of the FBI and replacing it with a new agency that respects the Constitution and holds itself accountable to all Americans, not just the woke far left.

The raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound may be the breaking point, but it’s only the latest FBI outrage. In recent years, under Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, the Bureau has acted overtly to aid one political party over the other, demonizing those who oppose the Democrats’ “woke,” “progressive” agenda for America.

To be sure, this has been going on for some time now, starting with the FBI’s feeble investigation of Hillary Clinton’s home-based server, which intelligence sources say was almost certainly hacked by the Russians, the Chinese, or both. It was a clear violation of the law, exposing America’s secrets to our worst enemies.

And the FBI did nothing.

IRS Deletes Job Posting Seeking Applicants Willing to ‘Use Deadly Force’ Diana Glebova

https://news.yahoo.com/irs-deletes-job-posting-seeking-212152157.html

The IRS deleted a job posting Wednesday seeking a Special Agent “willing to use deadly force” for its law enforcement division, Criminal Investigation (CI). The deletion came amid renewed scrutiny of the IRS in response to a Democrat-backed spending bill that would double the size of the agency.

“As a Special Agent you will combine your accounting skills with law enforcement skills to investigate financial crimes,” the job advertisement read.

“No matter what the source, all income earned, both legal and illegal, has the potential of becoming involved in crimes which fall within the investigative jurisdiction of the IRS Criminal Investigation. Because of the expertise required to conduct these complex financial investigations, IRS Special Agents are considered the premier financial investigators for the Federal government,” the job posting continued.

The “Major Duties” listed in the job description included “a level of fitness necessary to effectively respond to life-threatening situations on the job,” and being “willing and able to participate in arrests, execution of search warrants, and other dangerous assignments.”

It also included a requirement of carrying “a firearm and be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”

The Sanctification of George Soros by James Kirchick

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/sanctification-george-soros-district-attorneys-james-kirchick

How the left stopped worrying about Soros the billionaire and learned to love Soros ‘the Jew’.

Two weeks ago, George Soros took to the op-ed pages of the largest paid circulation newspaper in the United States to explain why he has spent tens of millions of dollars backing progressive district attorney candidates across the country. “Americans desperately need a more thoughtful discussion about our response to crime,” the billionaire philanthropist began in a piece for The Wall Street Journal titled, “Why I Support Reform Prosecutors.” Decrying the “demagoguery and divisive partisan attacks that dominate the debate and obscure the issues,” Soros elucidated his reasons for championing prosecutors who support, among other things, abolishing cash bail, reducing prison time for violent offenders, and declining to prosecute whole categories of crime altogether.

The scope of Soros’ efforts has been extensive. Through a combination of direct contributions to candidates, subventions to political action committees, and funding of other third party groups via his Open Society Foundations, Soros has spent upwards of $40 million over the past decade helping to elect some 75 prosecutors in metropolitan areas ranging from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, Manhattan to St. Louis. His pursuit of this agenda has been met with no small amount of controversy, and in some cases active resistance. In San Francisco, the Soros-backed District Attorney Chesa Boudin lost a recall vote earlier this year following a disastrous tenure marked by sharp increases in both violent and petty crime rates. George Gascon, a Soros-backed prosecutor in Los Angeles, will also face a recall. It was no doubt in response to the backlash his public efforts have caused that Soros decided, not unreasonably, to defend his political interventions. “I have done it transparently,” he wrote in the Journal of his massive outlays, “and I have no intention of stopping.”

Jihad and peace: When apples grow on cherry trees By Ruthie Blum

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-714517

Operation Breaking Dawn, Israel’s 55-hour war against Islamic Jihad in Gaza that ended on Sunday night, not only aroused the wrath of the world’s usual antisemitic suspects; it also caused the small but vociferous domestic “peace camp” chorus to sing its tired refrain about the desperate need for a political solution to the conflict.

The tired “two-state” mantra is also reiterated by White House and State Department officials at every opportunity, other than when they are busily beseeching Iran to return to the nuclear deal. Naturally, US President Joe Biden repeated it during his visit last month to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

He went beyond his already foolish even-handedness, however, when touring the Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. On his way to the medical center that treats Palestinian patients from East Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza, his team removed the Israeli flag from his limousine and forbade Israeli reporters from covering the event. He then gave a little speech in which he likened the plight of the Palestinians to that of his Irish forebears.

“[W]e have a long history not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish-Catholics over the years, for 400 years,” he said, before quoting an Irish poem about hoping for a “tidal wave of justice.”

The US Must Ditch Its Incoherent Policy on Taiwan by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18791/us-policy-taiwan

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, moreover, provides a timely illustration of what can happen when the West does not take sufficient action to safeguard the security of its allies.

In February, for example, the US approved a $100 million support package to improve the island’s missile defences, which were designed to improve its Patriot missile defence system. But bureaucratic wrangling in Washington means Taipei has still to receive the support it needs.

Consequently, now that Beijing has provided the West with its military template for intimidating Taiwan, this has provided the US and its allies with an indication of the military defences, such as anti-missile, anti-aircraft and anti-warship missiles, to thwart any future Chinese attack.

So if Washington, as the Biden administration keeps insisting, is really serious about defending Taiwan from Chinese aggression, then it should get off the fence and abandon its confused policy of “strategic ambiguity” in favour of one that will deter future acts of Chinese aggression against this freedom-loving island state.

China’s extreme military response to Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan sends an unequivocal message to the US that it can no longer sustain its policy of “strategic ambiguity.”

At a time when the very existence of the democratic island state is under threat from China’s communist rulers, what Taipei badly needs is unconditional declarations of support from its Western allies, not the diplomatic equivalent of sitting on the fence, which essentially sums up the Biden administration’s inadequate response to date.

Jiminy Cricket may have to go into hiding Diane Bederman

https://dianebederman.com/jiminy-cricket-may-have-to-go-into-hiding/

News Alert: Jiminy Cricket may have to go into hiding. He has been heard expressing surprise, shock and astonishment that his fellow crickets are now being bred for food in first world countries. Who knew?

Why would we need to turn to crickets for food?

The WEF under the leadership of Klaus Schwab is promoting crickets as a major source of protein as he and his colleagues – leaders of the West; including my hero Justin Trudeau, start to take down farming and demand reductions in livestock – seems they belch dangerous gasses that are destroying our climate.

It all kicked off in June as Dutch farmers protested over their government’s proposals to slash emissions of damaging pollutants, a plan that will likely force cultivators to cut their livestock herds or stop work altogether.

And the attacks on farmers spread across Europe into New Zealand and on to Canada and the USA. Bet you haven’t heard a word from main stream media!

In Canada, Our Dear Leader, Justin Trudeau is one of many leaders concerned about the dangers of…get ready for it… fertilizer. This despite the fact that 72% of farmers said that crop yields and food production will plummet should the Trudeau government’s 30% fertilizer emission targets be implemented.

More reason for crickets.

MY SAY: THE POLL QUIZLINGS

Hmmm. Just as we are nearing the November 8, 2022 Elections there are new polls, harbingers of GOP losses and possible Dem retaining majorities in the Senate and Congress.

Many questions are designed to elicit answers the pollsters want.

Here is an example from a political pollster who called me:

The first question had me identify myself as a conservative Republican.

Then the question: ” If it were proven beyond a doubt that Governor Ron de Santis is corrupt would you support him in 2024? ”

No doubt they would list “no” as a signal that conservative Republicans would not support Florida’s governor.

When I challenged the question and asked if its exact text would be revealed I got a dial tone.

So take those ominous results with a grain of salt.

rsk

Iran: Systematic Persecution of Baha’is by Mohshin Habib

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18780/iran-bahai-persecution

Samin Ehsani had been running educational courses for Afghan children living in Iran, but who did not have access to education in the country. During the trial, her activities were presented as an example of the charges against her.

In Iran, an estimated 300,000 followers of the Baha’i faith are being denied many fundamental rights such as access to education, employment, political office, and practice of their religious rituals. Iran’s clerical regime evidently considers the Baha’is to be heretics and as having no religion.

Baha’is consider Baha’ullah as a messenger in succession to Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed. For that, no other religion or state suppress them except Iran.

On June 15, 2022, Samin Ehsani, a follower of the Baha’i faith and an activist for children’s rights in Iran was arrested and transferred to the infamous Evin Prison in Tehran. Earlier, on July 2, 2011, Ehsani had also been sentenced by Branch 28 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran to five years in prison on charges of “propaganda against the regime, acting against national security, and being a member of the heretical Baha’i faith.”