RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/07/29/defining-recessions-down-bidens-attempt-to-defy-reality-wont-end-well/

‘For the first time in a decade, our economy is in recession. It’s not official yet – the group that dates recessions doesn’t act until after the fact – but there’s little doubt that we’re in the midst of a downturn.”

That was economist Jared Bernstein back in December 2001. He went on: “The downturn is already taking a toll on those who traditionally bear the brunt of recessions, blue-collar workers in manufacturing, minorities, and other less-advantaged workers.”

That year saw only two non-consecutive quarters of GDP decline. The unemployment rate never got over 5.7%. And when the year was over, GDP had climbed 1%. But it’s still listed on the recession roster.

Today Bernstein, who sits on President Joe Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, is trying to argue that, despite two consecutive quarters of a shrinking economy, we aren’t in a recession right now.

“What is a recession?” he and CEA chair Cecilia Rouse asked in a blog post. “While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/impunity-in-new-york-city-crime-police-eric-adams-alvin-bragg-11659047085?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

Crime will continue to proliferate in New York as long as criminals know they’ll face few consequences.

‘Am I allowed to press charges?” That’s what the 16-year-old who allegedly assaulted a police officer asked the judge Tuesday. Welcome to New York, where criminals have learned they can get away with serial offenses.

The teen reportedly jumped an East Harlem subway turnstile on Saturday, then began mouthing off to the cops who approached him. Video shows him punching an officer in the head more than a dozen times. He was later released without bail and sent to a non-secure detention facility in Queens, where he is subject to a 6 p.m. curfew and monitoring.

One month earlier the same teenager, then 15, allegedly “jumped a 49-year-old man on a Midtown street, punching the victim and running off with his cell phone,” according to the New York Post. He was freed without bail days before the alleged assault on the cop. The New York Unified Court System shows the teen pleaded not guilty.

The Post reports that the same teen was arrested in April “after allegedly being found in a car with a loaded gun and a crossbow in Brooklyn.” A lawyer for the teen could not be reached by deadline.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-chuck-schumer-joe-manchin-pact-climate-spending-taxes-bill-democrats-senate-11659045471?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

“Messrs. Schumer and Manchin played GOP Senators for chumps (see nearby), but they’re doing the same to Americans by telling them the bill will reduce the deficit.”

Talk about bad timing. As the economy slouches near recession, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin late Wednesday unveiled a tax-and-spending deal that they call the Inflation Reduction Act. Is their aim to reduce inflation by chilling business investment and the economy?

Mr. Manchin is selling the deal as deficit reduction and a rescue for fossil fuels. If he believes this, he hasn’t thought through the impact of the 725-page bill. A more accurate name would be the Business Investment Reduction and Distortion Act since that will be the result of its $433 billion in climate and healthcare spending, and $615 billion in new taxes and drug price-control “savings.”

Start with the 15% minimum tax on corporate book income over $1 billion, which Democrats claim will raise $313 billion through 2031. This new alternative minimum tax will slam businesses whose taxable income is lower than the profits on their financial statements owing to the likes of investment expensing, tax credits and business deductions.

Many companies pay less than the 21% corporate tax rate because they can expense investments under the tax code up-front. Hence, the new tax will increase the cost of business investment and—irony alert—the Tax Foundation forecasts the coal industry would be hardest hit. Yet green-energy tax credits would be exempt from the new tax.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Antihero is defined as a character who lacks qualities of a traditional hero – morality, courage, an obeisance to traditional rules of behavior. Wikipedia lists such fictional characters as typifying the antihero: Shakespeare’s Othello, John Milton’s Lucifer, Jane Eyre’s Edward Rochester, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, and George MacDonald Fraser’s Harry Flashman. Do you, as does Wikipedia, see our former President among that group? I leave you to be the judge.

No matter one’s opinion, the word ‘antihero’ may make wince the large swath of Americans who see Mr. Trump as a villain – some for his character, which was revealed in his lack of positive response during the afternoon of the January 6 riots; others for his antiestablishment/anti-elitist credentials, which threatened official Washington, including members of January 6 committee. ‘Hero,’ even when preceded by ‘anti’ would not be to their liking.

Yet even those who despise him cannot ignore the fact he was (and is) a hero to his estimated twenty to thirty million die hard supporters, most of whom live in non-elitist communities and work in non-establishment jobs. His supporters, who encompass all genders and races, see big-city and suburban financial and cultural elites as sanctimonious, hypocritical, and uninterested in the social and economic mobility that has characterized the United States. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Joseph Epstein, wrote “My sense is that just as Mr. Trump gave us Joe Biden, liberal culture earlier gave us Mr. Trump.” I agree. Mr. Trump was thrust upon us, in reaction to those who derided American history, patronized minorites and who treated millions of white, working-class Americans as ‘deplorables.’  Those who now reject him most vehemently bear primary responsibility for his political rise.