RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-way-out/

The following is adapted from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College reception in Overland Park, Kansas, on November 18, 2021.

Here are two questions pertinent to our times: (1) How would you reduce the greatest free republic in history to despotism in a short time? and (2) How would you stop that from happening? The answer to the first question has been provided in these last two disastrous years. The answer to the second has begun to emerge in recent months. Both are worthy of study.

Reducing a Great Republic to Despotism

To establish despotism in a nation like ours, you might begin, if you were smart, by building a bureaucracy of great complexity that commands a large percentage of the resources of the nation. You might give it rule-making powers, distributed across many agencies and centers inside the cabinet departments of government, as well as in 20 or more “independent” agencies—meaning independent of elected officials, and thus independent of the people.

This much has been done. It would require a doctoral thesis to list all the ways that rules are made in our federal government today, which would make for boring reading. The truth is that very few people not directly involved know how all this works. Although civics education is practically banned in America, most people still know what the Congress is and how its members are elected. But how many know how the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) came to be, under what authority it operates, and who is its head? Here is a clue: it is not Anthony Fauci.

Admittedly, this new kind of bureaucratic government would take—has taken—decades to erect, especially in the face of the resistance of the Constitution of the United States, which its very existence violates. But once it has been erected, things can happen very fast.

What, for example, if a new virus proliferates around the world? There have been procedures for dealing with such viruses for a long time. They begin with isolating the sick and protecting the vulnerable. But suddenly we have new procedures that attempt to isolate everybody. This is commanded by the CDC, an element of this bureaucratic structure, and by a maze of federal and state authorities, all of which see the benefit to themselves in getting involved. The result is that large sections of our economy were closed for months at a time, and citizens placed under the equivalent of house arrest. This has not happened before. The cost of it, and not just in monetary terms, is beyond calculation.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/dr-fauci-smears-rand-paul/

Nothing in Paul’s critique of Fauci calls for any violence. It calls for a mendacious government official to be fired because he’s been awful at his job.

It’s no surprise that Anthony Fauci, who believes attacks on him are “attacks on science,” is extraordinarily thin-skinned. But today, after being grilled by Senator Rand Paul over his involvement in concerted attacks on apostate scientists, Fauci deflected by noting that a man who’d threatened to kill him had been arrested a couple of weeks ago. Fauci went on to, in part, blame Paul for threats against him, claiming that Paul’s accusations “kindle the crazies,” and even pulled out a printed copy of a “Fire Fauci” headline from the senator’s website.

Is Fauci really arguing that calling for his firing — from a job he’s held since 1984 — is tantamount to inciting violence? Does that go for the Democratic Party rhetoric that motivated a Bernie Sanders fan who attempted to murder, among other Republicans, Paul on a baseball field in Alexandria in 2017? Or progressive rhetoric that motivated a mob to menace Paul and his wife on D.C.’s streets in 2020? Nothing in Paul’s critique of Fauci calls for any violence. It calls for a mendacious government official to be fired because he’s been awful at his job. Even if Paul is wrong, political discourse shouldn’t be inhibited by the prospective actions of third-party nuts. We don’t let those nuts undercut our ability to freely express our political disagreements. Those who do are usually engaged in a transparent attempt to chill speech.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/education-secretary-cardona-solicited-nsba-letter-comparing-parents-domestic-terrorists-email

FIRST ON FOX: Education Secretary Miguel Cardona solicited the much-criticized letter from the National School Boards Association that compared protesting parents to domestic terrorists, according to an email exchange reviewed by Fox News.

The email exchange indicates Cardona was more involved with the letter’s creation than previously known.

President Biden’s Department of Justice relied on the NSBA letter, which suggested using the Patriot Act against parents, in creating its own memo directing the FBI to mobilize in support of local education officials.

In the Oct. 5 email, NSBA Secretary-Treasurer Kristi Swett recounted that NSBA interim CEO Chip Slaven “told the officers he was writing a letter to provide information to the White House, from a request by Secretary Cardona.”

Previous emails had revealed that the NSBA was in contact with the White House and Justice Department in the weeks before it publicly sent the letter.

The emails were obtained by the parents group Parents Defending Education in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

“Should this allegation be true, it would reveal that this administration’s pretextual war on parents came from the highest levels,” PDE President Nicole Neily told Fox News Digital.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/01/06/capitol_police_officer_w

When U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd went on “NBC Nightly News” to tell his side of shooting and killing unarmed Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt, he made a point to note he’d been investigated by several agencies and exonerated for his actions that day.

“There’s an investigative process [and] I was cleared by the DOJ [Department of Justice], and FBI and [the D.C.] Metropolitan Police,” he told NBC News anchor Lester Holt in August, adding that the Capitol Police also cleared him of wrongdoing and decided not to discipline or demote him for the shooting.

Terry Roberts, Babbitt family attorney:  “It’s astonishing how skimpy his investigative file is.”
Roberts & Wood

Ashli Babbitt: Her family calls the rushed Byrd investigation a “whitewash” and a “coverup” of misconduct by the officer.

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/if-you-are-a-vaccine-company-executive

Remember NINJA loans?

NINJA stood for “No income, no job/assets.” Back in the mid-aughts, when the banks and not the regulators were the ones going crazy and setting the financial system on fire with free money, they were all the rage.

I remember hearing ads for them in 2006 and 2007 and thinking, this has to be a bait and switch. You cannot walk into Your Friendly MegaBank and walk out with a few hundred grand for a house with no proof you even have a job! A job seems pretty basic.

But you could. And people did. Lots of people.

Underlying this madness was a model, naturally. American housing prices had never collapsed nationally and simultaneously since at least the Depression. Therefore the models that the banks and mortgage originators used said they never would.

Therefore on a national basis the collateral – the houses – underlying the mortgages would always be fine, even if the borrowers couldn’t repay them. The lenders just needed to be in different markets to be geographically protected. Besides, the bankers were all reselling the loans and offloading the risk. They got paid up front, whether the loans were paid back or not.

It was a very good business.

Until it went bad.