RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/05/justice-clarence-thomas-trump-twitter-ban-479046

The decision by social media giants Twitter and Facebook to ban former President Donald Trump from their platforms appears to have drawn the ire of one of America’s most prominent jurists: Justice Clarence Thomas.

As the Supreme Court issued an order Monday declaring moot a lawsuit over Trump’s blocking of some Twitter users from commenting on his feed, Thomas weighed in with a 12-page lament about the power of social media firms like Twitter.

“Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties,” Thomas wrote. “We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms.”

Thomas singled out the owners of Google and Facebook by name, arguing that the firms are currently unaccountable personal fiefdoms with massive power.

“Although both companies are public, one person controls Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg), and just two control Google (Larry Page and Sergey Brin),” Thomas wrote.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hundreds-of-transgender-california-inmates-request-transfers-to-womens-prisons/?utm_source=

The California prison system has received 261 applications since January 1 from transgender, intersex, or non-binary inmates to transfer to facilities that match their preferred gender identity, the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday.

The requests were filed after a state law came into effect allowing transgender inmates to transfer to different prisons. Around 1 percent of prisoners in California, 1,129 inmates in total, have notified the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that they are transgender, intersex, or non-binary.

The transfers have been welcomed by transgender women who reported suffering sexual violence while incarcerated at men’s prisons. However, inmates at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla told the Times that staff have warned them of potential sexual violence from men who may try to take advantage of the transfer system.

Guards said “that if we think it’s bad now, be prepared for the worst. That it’s going to be off the hook, it’s going to be jumping,” inmate Tomiekia Johnson told the Times. “They say we’re going to need a facility that’s going to be like a maternity ward. They say we’re going to have an inmate program where inmates become nannies.”

Nina McQueen, a transgender woman and inmate at Mule Creek , said she had helped prison staff identify male inmates who attempted to transfer to women’s facilities by pretending to be transgender.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/04/06/will-you-be-drowned-by-bidens-coming-tidal-wave-of-tax-hikes/

Joe Biden’s massive $2 trillion “infrastructure plan” is in fact another giant tax hike disguised as a jobs program. Even worse, the Bidenites pretend that the taxes will hit wealthy people and big corporations hard, while the spending will provide jobs for struggling workers. Don’t believe any of it.

First, a reality check. Spending was up sharply last year, and will likely be up at least 50% this year. Yet, even the tax hikes now being discussed won’t come close to covering the spending increases.

Let’s review: During the pandemic year, the U.S. spent $6.5 trillion, a 47% surge in just one year. This year, we’ve already added about $4 trillion in new spending. Debt is now an unimaginable $30 trillion, and headed much higher. And yes, we have to pay it off, even if we “owe it to ourselves,” as some like to say.

With a deficit of $3 trillion last year and perhaps even higher this year, Americans are soon going to feel the pinch. Yes, the Fed can print more money by buying government bonds. But eventually, it all has to be paid back. And when that happens, the taxes will hit the economy hard, forcing the government to spend more (while crowding out private sector spending and investment), and jack up taxes at the same time.

The Biden administration’s great lie is that it will “go after” big companies and the rich to pick up the tab for the infrastructure spending.

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2021/04/05/debunking_the_covid_vaccine_doomsayers_771222.html

It’s hard to ignore the wave of anti-vaccine videos circulating on social media. Curiosity makes us click, and we watch yet another doctor’s emphatic advice—“Do not take the COVID-19 vaccine if you value your life!” They all speak with the confidence and authority of spies planted last year in the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson labs. Now these self-proclaimed experts—some with acceptable medical backgrounds, but others more questionable—have become whistleblowers predicting horrific outcomes from the vaccines. They look into our eyes and claim to care deeply about our health, urging, “Pass my video on to everyone you know as fast as you can.”

Having viewed several, I asked myself, “Can I find the truth?” My hands-on science training consists of dissecting and drawing a frog in tenth grade. But I can dissect long sentences and draw conclusions, use a dictionary, and apply critical thinking with logic. 

So I intensively researched respected sources and found most of the doomsayer doctors’ assertions to be wrong. Here’s what my homework found. (Note: some names are changed but the claims are reproduced accurately.)

“Dr. Whistle Blower” insists the new medication is not a “real” vaccine because it does not fit the CDC’s own definition: “A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease.” The meaning of immunity is the hangup for him.

Dr. Blower wrongly limits his definition of a “real,” immunizing vaccine to the sterilizing type, which kills the pathogen on contact and establishes immunity by preventing any disease from entering the body. This “gold standard” has not been achieved for many diseases which, nevertheless, are no longer a threat, thanks to vaccines.

https://newcriterion.com/blogs/dispatch/crony-capitalism-and-professional-sports

On public funding for professional athletic arenas.

Professional athletic leagues have traditionally steered clear of politics in order to emphasize the purity of their entertainment and to avoid dividing fans over partisan controversies. That has changed in the last year. Players in the National Football League have “taken the knee” during playing of the national anthem as a protest against police practices; the National Basketball Association has embraced Black Lives Matter, also as a protest against the police; and now Major League Baseball has taken this year’s All-Star game out of Atlanta as a protest against Georgia’s new voting law, though baseball executives do not appear to have studied that law. Through these gestures, formerly non-political organizations have allied themselves with explicitly political causes.

These steps are unusual and unprecedented. Business corporations generally prefer to serve inclusive markets while avoiding controversies that might divide customers for or against them. The new corporate alliance with liberals and the Democratic Party is not only new – it is also dangerous. It will politicize the country along new lines, introduce political controversies into the internal operations of corporations, encourage boycotts and assaults on all sides, and much more. Some of this is already happening. As a strategy for dividing America, this one would be hard to beat.

Professional sports leagues, while mostly operating as for-profit enterprises, nevertheless receive generous subsidies from federal, state, and local sources to build and maintain modern stadiums and arenas. Importantly, these subsidies assume that the enterprises are non-political and non-partisan in nature, otherwise they would not be granted. Are professional sports franchises violating the bargains they made with taxpayers and public authorities?

Up until the 1950s, professional stadiums were constructed with private funds provided by owners. Fenway Park in Boston was built in 1913 by the franchise itself, as was Ebbets Field in Brooklyn (1913), Yankee Stadium in New York (1923), Wrigley Field in Chicago (1913), and nearly every other professional ballpark and stadium built in that era. Many professional football franchises leased these stadiums to stage their games. It did not occur to the owners that the public might pay for their facilities. That mindset disappeared in the 1950s when owners began to ask cities and states to pay for their stadiums.