RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-civil-rights-to-diversity-affirmative-action-grutter-harvard-supreme-court-race-discrimination-america-jfk-treatment-11661886845?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

In a nation where the issue of race never seems to be fully settled, we are again confronted with the question of what to do about affirmative action. America is dedicated to the proposition that each of us is equal at birth and constitutionally entitled to be treated equally by our government. We enshrined that right as the 14th Amendment. But the spirit of fairness sometimes compels us to take a detour from our foundational principles in the name of becoming a more perfect union.

America has come a long way since 1939, when I was born in Jim Crow Louisiana. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which required federal contractors to take “affirmative action” to ensure that employees wouldn’t be discriminated against because of race, creed, color or national origin. It wasn’t meant to discriminate against formerly favored groups. “Race has no place in American life or law,” JFK said.

Martin Luther King Jr. believed Kennedy’s order was insufficient to achieve integration, and he lobbied President Lyndon B. Johnson to strengthen affirmative action. After Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, LBJ signed Executive Order 11246 on Sept. 24, 1965, firmly establishing that nondiscrimination in employment would be the law of our land.

Yet this strategy to prevent discrimination ended up driving discrimination against whites and Asians in education—all in the name of “diversity.” That’s a word I rarely heard before I began my 12-year term as a regent of the University of California in 1993, but I heard repeatedly until my departure in 2005. It wasn’t a description but a goal, something we were expected to make a conscious effort to “build.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18902/national-debt

For as long as there have been politics there have been deals.

Of course, it is illegal to trade one’s vote for cash, but those with the power to dispense patronage, projects, and promotions have a unique advantage in seeking the support of those whose endorsements can tip the balance for any given issue.

Whether it was the drafting of the Constitution, confronting the infamous slave trade, Tammany Hall’s “favored sons” or directing federal funds for a bridge, this kind of give-and-get has long been woven into the cynical side of politics.

It is unprecedented, however, when the stakes have become so high that these kinds of backroom deals can disrupt an election or even plunge a nation into an unrecoverable cycle of debt and economic despair.

That is why the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022” that has come out of the Senate “sausage machine,” courtesy of its current majority leader, Sen. Charles Schumer, and his surprising enabler, Sen. Joe Manchin, needs to be closely examined. With its $700 billion price tag, it has the potential to seriously harm our nation’s economic future.

One of its elements requires a particularly hefty dose of sunlight. This massive spending plan will allow John Podesta, a Biden adviser, former Clinton aide, and longtime Democratic political strategist, to administer some $370 billion in energy programs of his selective choosing.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/09/14/by-2-to-1-voters-call-biden-maga-remarks-divisive-ii-tipp-poll/

President Biden’s recent comments about Trump supporters espousing “semi-fascism” and accusing the former president’s followers of representing “an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic” shocked many Americans. Now, despite White House denials of ill intent, a majority of voters call Biden’s remarks divisive, September’s I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

During his campaign for the presidency and even in his inauguration speech in 2021, Biden vowed to “unify” the country after years of often-bitter political division. Voters warmed to the idea that he could bring Americans together after years of angry ideological debates, polls showed.

But the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows Americans no longer believe that Biden is a uniter, but a divider.

The online poll of 1,277 adults taken from Sept. 7-9 showed that 62% of Americans believed Biden’s comments about Trump and his MAGA followers “increases division in the country.” Just 29% disagreed. The poll’s margin of error is +/- 2.8 percentage points.

Perhaps surprisingly, Democrats — at 73% — were more likely to say that Biden’s MAGA comments increased division than either Republicans (50%) or independents (57%). Blacks and Hispanics (70%) exceeded white respondents (58%) in seeing the comments as divisive.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/3641386-as-economic-woes-continue-biden-will-struggle-to-make-midterms-a-referendum-on-trump/

As President Biden travels the country touting his economic successes and excoriating former President Trump, we prepare for the next debacle courtesy of this president: Biden’s stagflation.

We’ve had Biden’s inflation, Biden’s recession and Biden’s natural gas shortage. Now we have renewed inflation and the very real possibility of a double-dip recession.

Tuesday’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics dashed hopes that inflation was cooling. While prices did not budge in July, they rose by 0.1 percent in August, despite a significant swoon in energy costs (gasoline prices declined nearly 11 percent in just one month) and a sharp increase in the value of the dollar. Both of those trends helped stem the rise in prices, but not as much as expected.

Over the past 12 months, the consumer price index (CPI) rose 8.3 percent overall; analysts were expecting 8.1 percent. While the top-line rate of increase has dropped from the four-decade high of 9.1 percent reached in June, the rate of decline is alarmingly slow. Core inflation, absent food and energy, came in at 6.3 percent, up from 5.9 percent in July, and also worse than expected.

Positives other than falling gasoline prices, like some improvement in supply chains, declining commodity prices and lower used car prices also pumped up the “inflation is cooling” story.

The Federal Reserve is now expected to push rates up more rapidly, and for longer, than previously expected. Almost immediately, markets priced in a 20 percent chance of a 100 basis-point hike next week; prior to the latest CPI report, those odds were set at zero.