RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/18/10-steps-to-save-america/

Most Americans know something has gone terribly wrong—and very abruptly—with the United States. They are certain that our wounds are almost all self-inflicted. The current pathologies are not a result of a natural disaster, an exhaustion of natural resources, plagues, or an existential war. 

Crushing national debt and annual deficits, spiraling food and fuel costs amid “normal” seven-percent-plus annual inflation, bread-and-circuses entitlements, a nonexistent border, a resurgence of racial tribalism, pandemic violent criminality, and humiliation abroad—all these pathologies are easily cited as symptoms of a sick patient. Our crises are not as the Left maintains—a nine-person Supreme Court, the Electoral College, or the filibuster—all distractions from existential problems the Left largely created. 

So, what are the therapies and prognoses for America?

In the spirit of constructive rather than blanket criticism, here is a partial, 10-point plan of national recovery.

Cut the Debt 

Americans’ national debt is now $31 trillion. That is about 123 percent of current GDP. The liabilities are unsustainable. We run annual deficits of $1.6 trillion. These financial obligations will eventually ensure that rising interest rates to service the debt crowd out essential spending for national defense and the general welfare. 

Or in extremis, in the not too distant future, the government will be forced to default on what it owes the “rich” bondholders and foreign debt holders. Or the government will be forced to confiscate private wealth, as for example occasional crazy suggestions to nationalize and absorb 401(k)k retirement plans into the soon-to-be-insolvent Social Security system. Or the state will simply print millions of dollars to pay off obligations, Weimar-style.

In addict style, the more we come to realize that our binging habit cannot go on, the less we can practice self-restraint. And the more it is the case that those who receive government redistributions outnumber those who pay the majority of federal income taxes, the less hope there remains to avoid insolvency.

In 2010 then-President Barack Obama appointed a bipartisan “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.” More commonly  remembered as the Simpson-Bowles commission, after chairmen Senators Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Erskine Bowles (D-N.C.), it included private citizens and elected officials. 

The commission recommended radical tax simplifications and some cuts—along with reductions in tax deductions and credits, an increase in the gas tax, restraints on entitlement spending, and various spending caps. 

Obama and Congress ultimately rejected the recommendations and the commission’s blueprint died. But had it succeeded, the current debt would have long been frozen at the 2014 level of $17 trillion—with annual reductions ensuring that this coming year 2023 the debt would have plunged to $10 trillion and then disappeared in another decade. 

Something like Simpson-Bowles could still stop the madness and avoid the natural corrective on the horizon of financial collapse. Note that federal tax revenue has increased almost every year since 2010. Sometimes it grows by nearly a half-trillion dollars per annum, even as we sink deeper in debt. Our crisis, then, is one of spending what we do not have rather than one of declining revenue.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-fbis-heart-of-darkness/

“Comey was a neophyte at partisan hackery compared to our current Attorney General. AG Merrick Garland is the heart of darkness behind much of the current politicization rampant in the halls of FBI HQ.”

Our military and federal law enforcement structures are rotten. The culture of the armed forces has been corrupted by subversive campaigns to degrade our ability to confront, deter, and destroy the adversary — particularly the Chinese.

COVID mandates were designed to cull those who aren’t automatons. Liberal, compromised politicians have waged a psyops war to demoralize our troops by foisting humiliation (i.e. the Afghanistan “withdrawal” debacle) and confusion (the LGBT identity psychosis) on our military men and women. It’s a rust that erodes the chain of command and oxidizes discipline and good order.

The culture of the armed forces has been corrupted just like the culture at the FBI — by the same people.

In many respects, the FBI is a paramilitary organization. It shares a deference to chain of command like the military. And, it’s a massive bureaucracy staffed by cumbersome layers of management. It’s a top down organization just like the military.

“Defund the FBI,” has become a fashionable trope. But this time, oddly enough, the rant is coming from the right, not the left, having just run out of hot air for “defund the police.”

Would you say it’s reasonable to sloganeer for “defund the Marine Corps” just because there are politicized elements inside the Pentagon? The statement seems absurd on its face. In real, practical terms how would you replace the Marine Corps? And, even if you could perform such a herculean task, would it be any better than the storied branch of the Armed Forces that currently exists?

https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/3772772-its-time-to-tell-the-story-of-black-success-not-black-victimhood/

EXCERPTS

“Garvey’s vision provided hope for poverty-stricken Black communities all over America — and the world. Hope that they could help themselves, that they could respect themselves. And his hope has been vindicated.It’s time to tell the story of Black victory, not Black victimhood. It’s time to build a future where Black Americans have the independence, optimism and pride Garvey saw for them: A future of thriving Black enterprise.”

….among those who do remember Marcus Garvey, too few know his real legacy. To some, he was a “Black Moses” who tried and ultimately failed to initiate a radical “back-to-Africa” movement that would unite all Black people under one government. To others, he was a prophet who foretold the victory of anti-colonialist movements throughout Africa and the diaspora.

But Garvey’s true significance for America today is as one of the first and most successful champions of Black self-determination, exhorting Black Americans to become agents of their own uplift. He was the first leader to reach and motivate masses of low-income Black men and women with a vision of independence, pride and enterprise.

The story of his rise and ultimate betrayal by the civil rights establishment is one of the greatest and most tragic in our history. Garvey could be biting in his criticism of groups such as the NAACP, which had more political clout but far fewer rank-and-file members than UNIA. In response, leaders including A. Philip Randolph and W.E.B. DuBois denounced Garvey as a demagogue. Their “Garvey Must Go!” movement, along with the efforts of a hostile young Justice Department investigator named J. Edgar Hoover, effectively ended Garvey’s public career. He was convicted on trumped-up mail fraud charges and deported as an undesirable alien.

We’re living with the results of the “white guilt” model. Black America has gone from the self-determination of the Garvey era to self-extermination of the present; our communities are wracked by senseless violence and deprived of real, community-based solutions in favor of federal-level programs. Black schools, which a century ago were capable of outperforming their white counterparts in major cities such as New York and Washington, now struggle to educate at all. Systemic racism is not the cause of this crisis in low-income, predominantly Black neighborhoods, but rather, systemic betrayal by those governing officials who look like, but don’t look out for, those they serve.