RUTHFULLY YOURS

American infrastructure has barely maintained a below-standard grade of “D+” over the last four years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

In its “Infrastructure Report Card” issued every four years, the engineering group forecast that it would cost about $4.590 trillion over the next decade to bring the country’s roads, bridges, public schools and ports up to a safe, functioning level, about $2.064 trillion more than what governments and the private sector are ready to spend.

The association, based in Reston, Va., called for infrastructure investment to increase from the current level of about 2.5% of U.S. gross domestic product to 3.5% by 2025.
“When it comes to your infrastructure you should be worried,” said Norma Jean Mattei, 2017 president of ASCE. “President Trump is onto something as he calls for a new program of national rebuilding.”
President Donald Trump has promised to increase infrastructure investment partly as a way to spur job growth. In his recent address to Congress, Mr. Trump said he would propose legislation aimed at generating a $1 trillion investment in U.S. infrastructure, financed through both public and private capital.

Aging infrastructure continues to create problems for communities around the country, from lead pipes contaminating the water supply in Flint, Mich., to U.S. ports struggling to handle larger volumes and a recent crisis at the Oroville Dam in northern California, where heavy rains almost caused a spillway to give way and about 200,000 people had to be evacuated.

The association’s infrastructure team looked at 16 infrastructure categories and found some areas grew worse in the last four years while other areas improved slightly. CONTINUE AT SITE

We cannot have faster approval for new drugs unless we have serious tort reform….pharma companies have to contend with litigations, which, in some cases have no statute of limitations ….rsk
President Donald Trump plans to nominate Scott Gottlieb, a conservative thinker and medical doctor with previous government experience, to run the Food and Drug Administration, the White House said Friday.

Dr. Gottlieb, who has ties to the drug industry, previously served as deputy FDA commissioner under President George W. Bush.

Dr. Gottlieb also is a frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal opinion pages and a prolific writer on FDA topics. He has promoted provocative views that in some cases would mean less regulation from the nation’s leading medical-products and food-supervisory agency.
His views appear aligned with those of the Trump administration, especially since Dr. Gottlieb generally favors faster product approvals. Mr. Trump has described the FDA product-approval process as “slow and burdensome.”

Dr. Gottlieb supports the core mission of the FDA, and he has long experience with the medical and legal principles he would deal with in the job, which likely would ease his path to Senate confirmation. He is a cancer survivor who is a 1994 graduate of Wesleyan University and holds a 1999 M.D. degree from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

Dr. Gottlieb wins plaudits from people of different political backgrounds. Kavita Patel, a doctor and former Obama administration official now with the Brookings Institution, said, “I found that even when I would occasionally disagree with him on policy, I appreciated that he would take the time to listen.”

Dr. Gottlieb could bring significant changes to the FDA. He wrote in a recent piece in National Affairs that decisions on new drugs should ultimately be made not by the current group of drug reviewers but by a “central committee that is comprised of the agency’s most senior scientists.” CONTINUE AT SITE

CNN has done something no other media have done. They actually found a connection between American Betrayal and Steve Bannon.

Not that this is hard to do. There is a massive queue of stories about American Betrayal at Breitbart under Bannon’s helmsmanship.

These include:

1) A “breaking history” series in five parts that I wrote for Bannon/Breitbart, drawing from American Betrayal’s discoveries.

2) Numerous pieces covering American Betrayal, the controversy (i.e., the disinformation campaign spearheaded by Horowitz and Radosh), as a continuous news beat amid a total news blackout at other conservative media.

3) Op-eds about American Betrayal by David “she should not have written this book” Horowitz, Frank Gaffney, myself, etc.

4) Two lengthy essays co-authored by Vladimir Bukovsky about the book and the controversy — “Why Academics Hate Diana West” and “West’s `American Betrayal’ Will Make History.”

5) My replies to hit pieces at National Review, American Thinker, which I published at Breitbart after these same conservative websites refused to run what I had written.

6) Breitbart also published Chapter 9 of American Betrayal in its entirety!

7) There were so many lies told by Radosh and Horowitz about my book and me, personally, that, on the advice of counsel, I wrote 20,000+ words rebutting all — and Breitbart ran every word in a three-part series, which I later brought out as a book, The Rebuttal: Defending American Betrayal Against the Book-Burners.

There are some related bonuses as well. As a follow-on to his second essay about American Betrayal, Bukovsky would publish the opening chapter of his book, Judgement in Moscow, for the first time in English at Breitbart.

The late M. Stanton Evans, a strong supporter of American Betrayal, would also publish an original essay at Breitbart. It was a project he conceived of during the attacks against my book, so many of which hinged on the continuing slander and belittlement of Joseph Raymond McCarthy, the subject of Stan Evans’ unrivaled expertise. (For instance, I was called “McCarthy on Steroids,” “McCarthy’s heiress” and other terms not meant as endearments.) Indeed, the exciting new kind of research I was able to do in American Betrayal was predicated on my first having read Evans’ trailblazing McCarthy book.

As noted here, CNN recently “reported” the following:

“Steve Bannon in 2013: Joseph McCarthy was right in crusade against Communist infiltration.”

… Bannon made his comments in July 2013 while interviewing conservative pundit Diane [sic] West about her book “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character.”

These statements of facts engender hisses, screams, fainting — but only among media and other fact-proof ideologues. Informed readers will just shake their heads over the hermetically-sealed mindset that kills curiosity and engenders such Pavlovian-prompt reporting.

As in — excerpted from American Betrayal, p. 72

McCarthy, bad.

Communists, good and/or nonexistent.

Anti-Communism, terrible.

Who cares what Venona says, outside of a few academics? Have you left no

sense of decency?

Or, to take a longer excerpt, from pp 229-230.

Left, Good; Right, Bad.

“The people,” good; We, the People, “imperialist.”

Individuals (especially businessmen), greedy.

Hollywood Blacklist, bad.

Hollywood Ten, martyrs (except “squealer” Dmytryk).

Elia Kazan, Judas.

Communists: persecuted freethinkers. Have you left no sense of decency?

McCarthyism: repression.

Mao, expensive decorative art.

Che Guevara, fashion statement.

Ho Chi Minh, agrarian.

Mommy, who’s Ho Chi Minh, and what’s an agrarian?

Attorney General Jeff Sessions told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt Thursday that he would consider appointing an outside counsel to look into actions taken by the Department of Justice during the Obama years.

Hewitt asked Sessions if he would be open to appointing an outside counsel to review the DOJ’s actions regarding the IRS case, the Fast and Furious case, and Secretary Clinton’s server.

The Department just “had a bad eight years,” Hewitt said. “How about an outside counsel, not connected to politics, to review the DOJ’s actions in those matters with authority to bring charges if underlying crimes are uncovered in the course of the investigation, and just generally to look at how the Department of Justice operated in the highly-politicized Holder-Lynch years?”

Sessions committed to nothing, but didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand, either.

“Well, I’m going to do everything I possibly can to restore the independence and professionalism of the Department of Justice,” he said. “So we would have to consider whether or not some outside special counselor is needed. Generally, a good review of that internally is the first step before any such decision is made.”

Hewitt pressed Sessions on the IRS targeting scandal in particular.

“Will you be looking at the IRS investigation specifically?” he asked. “Because that left many of us thinking that the Department of Justice had laid down for a terrible abuse of political power.”

Sessions agreed, saying “that circumstance raised a lot of questions in my mind when I was in the Senate. So it is a matter of real concern to me.” CONTINUE AT SITE