RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/elon-musk-remain-twitter-ceo-keep-free-speech-fight

Elon Musk is a hero of our times. Risking his personal safety and fortune, he bought Twitter and pushed back against the Left’s repugnant effort to shut down Americans’ freedom of expression. In addition, he has exposed the dangerous collusion between our social media giants and the FBI, which appears to have subverted our elections.

Now Musk is threatening to call it quits. This must not happen.

In an online poll, Musk asked the Twitterverse whether he should “step down” as head of Twitter, and promised to abide by the outcome. He tweeted soon after the launch of the referendum: “As the saying goes, be careful what you wish, as you might get it.”

The bad news for Musk fans is that 57% of the 17 million people who participated said he should indeed quit his post; 43% said he should not. 

Will the quixotic entrepreneur follow through, and abandon his $44 billion undertaking? Will he allow the Leftist thought police to resume their control of what Americans can see and read? 

We can only hope he changes course, or somehow accedes to the letter of his self-imposed plebiscite without actually abandoning the fight. Nothing could be more important.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-jan-6-inquirys-not-so-grand-finale-donald-trump-criminal-referral-justice-department-11671488663?mod=hp_opin_pos_1

The House Jan. 6 committee decided Monday that the best way to cap its 18 months of work would be a political gesture. It thus referred President Trump to the Justice Department for potential criminal prosecution for his efforts to reverse the 2020 election, which culminated in the Capitol riot.

What is this supposed to accomplish? A Congressional referral to the Justice Department has all the legal force of an interoffice memo. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed special counsel Jack Smith to investigate Mr. Trump’s schemes to stay in office. The Jan. 6 committee’s loud public intervention makes his job more complicated, given the clear partisan context.

The House Jan. 6 inquiry has done useful work gathering documents and putting witnesses under oath. The wiser course was to let the established facts speak for themselves, while releasing full transcripts of its interviews to provide a complete public record.

***

The questions for Mr. Smith are whether Mr. Trump’s reckless conduct was criminal and whether indicting him is prudent and good for the country. The House referral cites laws against insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and conspiracy to make a false statement to the government. But getting a conviction requires a unanimous jury, and the House theories of the case have serious problems based on the current public evidence.

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.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/12/18/lets-talk-about-joe-bidens-millionth-embarrassing-gaffe-n2617278

It wouldn’t be a speech without President Joe Biden embarrassing himself and the rest of the Democrat Party. In Biden’s latest dementia-fueled claims, he got several things wrong. 

First, he confused First Lady Jill Biden’s father for her grandfather, then he claimed his uncle received the Purple Heart, and then exaggerated trips he took to Afghanistan and Iraq. 

On top of all of that, Biden belittled the Irish culture. 

During a speech to U.S. veterans in Delaware, Biden 102-year-old World War II veteran Ray Firmani applauded his time serving, to which he thanked the president. 

In response, Biden made an off-putting comment saying “thank you. I may be Irish, but I’m not stupid…. I married Dominic Giacoppa’s daughter. So, you know, I got a little Italian in me now, you know?”

However, Giacoppa is not his wife’s father. Donald Carl Jacobs from Hammonton, New Jersey is her father and Giacoppa is her grandfather. 

https://amgreatness.com/2022/12/16/justice-department-lies-about-absent-prosecutor/

To hear the media tell it, Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Donald Trump’s alleged theft of classified documents and any illegal interference in the certification of the 2020 election results, is feverishly working away.

Smith, according to a recent story in Yahoo News, issued subpoenas seeking more information related to Trump’s attempts to “overturn” the 2020 election. The subpoenas target “election officials in seven battleground states that were key to former President Trump and his allies after the 2020 election,” Brad Dress reported on December 14.

“These grand jury subpoenas make clear that Special Counsel Jack Smith is aggressively pursuing the January 6th investigation, including the ‘fake electors’ scheme,’” legal analyst Renato Mariotti swooned on Twitter.

Smith has “[hit] the ground running,” the Washington Examiner claimed on December 12. 

Except there’s a tiny problem—it’s unlikely Smith can hit any ground running. According to CNN, Smith is still on the mend after undergoing knee surgery last month. And not only is Smith not in Washington, D.C., to manage the investigation that bears his name, but he also isn’t even in the country.

“Though he remains in Europe recovering from a biking accident, Smith has made a series of high-profile moves since he was put in charge last month, including asking a federal judge to hold Trump in contempt for failing to comply with a subpoena ordering him to turn over records marked classified,” CNN reported on December 11.

But Smith isn’t making any “moves” in court. His condition also explains why Smith was not in attendance during Garland’s press conference on November 18 announcing his appointment. Garland insisted he had no choice but to name a special counsel after Trump announced his intention to run for president again in 2024. 

“The Department of Justice has long recognized that in certain extraordinary cases, it is in the public interest to appoint a special prosecutor to independently manage an investigation and prosecution,” Garland said. “Such an appointment underscores the Department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.”

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2022/12/16/the-latest-edition-of-the-twitter-files-reveals-the-cozy-relationship-between-twitter-and-the-fbi-n1654314

Over the past couple of weeks, Elon Musk has treated us to a regular exposé of what went on behind the scenes at Twitter before he took it over. Musk has relied on independent journalists tweeting the information in threads to get it out to the public.

Part six of the Twitter Files dropped on Friday afternoon, and, in this installment, Matt Taibbi revealed how closely the Twitter folks worked with the FBI and other agencies to silence “election misinformation.”

Taibbi reported that the relationship between the FBI and Twitter was cozy, even chummy. In fact, Taibbi suggested that the social media giant operated as if it were a “subsidiary” of the FBI.

“Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary,” Taibbi tweeted. “Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety chief Yoel Roth.”

Taibbi noted that, while some of the emails were anodyne and humdrum, most of them consisted of requests for Twitter to review and take action on information relating to what the FBI deemed “misinformation” relating to elections. And the FBI’s involvement in rooting out “misinformation” led to bureaucracy on a massive scale.

https://www.city-journal.org/affirmative-distraction

The United States has a problem with persisting racial inequality. It is, in part, a legacy of our ignoble past: the institution of chattel slavery and a century of unfreedom and unequal citizenship for African-Americans after emancipation. Americans have a moral imperative to redress the consequences of that past. But affirmative action isn’t the remedy for this problem. It’s a distraction.

That doesn’t mean that affirmative action should never be practiced, that it’s morally wrong, or that it can never be a suitable policy. Those are separate questions. Racial inequality is deep and abiding, showing no sign of going away, and we are a lesser nation for it. Yet while affirmative action helps to obtain an adequate representation of diverse ethnic groups at elite institutions of higher education, it imposes serious costs.

Institutionalizing the practice of preferential affirmative action when assessing African-Americans for selection into highly competitive arenas—in other words, using different standards when judging the fitness of blacks competing with others for access to certain venues—is inconsistent with the goal of racial equality. It invites us to become liars—to pretend that false things are true. It invites us to look the other way. It’s not equality; it’s the opposite of equality. Knowing that I’m being judged by standards that are different and less rigorous by virtue of the fact that my ancestors suffered some indignity is itself undignified.

Racial preferences persist because they represent the path of least resistance. If an administrator of a selective institution saw that blacks were a minuscule percent of his student body, he would want to change that. If he found that admitting African-American students at a lower percentile of performance would ease his public-relations problem, then he would do it. But when thousands of people in that same situation make the same decision and place it beyond criticism, the goal of equality suffers. Failing to address ourselves to the developmental disparities manifest in test scores, as well as failing to change the dynamics of human development at the root of black underrepresentation in elite and selective venues, means failing to solve the inequality problem.

Head counts are no substitute for performance, and everyone knows it. No policy can paper over the racial dimension of academic disparities. True equality would seek to remedy the foundational circumstances reflected in the underrepresentation of African-Americans at the Bronx High School of Science, Brooklyn Tech, Holy Cross, or Harvard. I’m for racial equality, not patronization. Don’t patronize my people, inflict on us the consequences of a soft bigotry of low expectations, or presume that we’re not capable of manifesting excellence in the same way as any other people. Don’t judge blacks by a different standard.

https://www.newsweek.com/waste-abuse-paycheck-protection-program-opinion-1766582

JAMES PIERESON AND ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI

When COVID-19 began to infect Americans in early 2020, Congress appropriated $787 billion under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to allow businesses and nonprofits to pay employees when they were forced to close. These payments were made in the form of low-interest loans that would be forgiven if the funds were spent on salaries, wages, and related expenses. PPP’s purpose was to maintain payrolls and incomes while the country fought through the early months of the virus.

A recent study from OpenTheBooks, an organization devoted to transparency in government spending, reports that more than 95% of these loans were forgiven, and many were sent out to wealthy organizations, including top law and accounting firms, country clubs, and even family offices that were facing little financial concern.

OpenTheBooks reports that $1.4 billion in forgiven PPP loans went to some of the largest law and accounting firms in the country. Nearly half of the largest 300 law firms in the United States took payments from the program, as did three-quarters of the largest accounting firms. Overall, some 25,000 law and accounting firms received $13 billion in PPP loans. While those firms may have qualified for the payments, it is questionable whether they really needed them.

Among law firms, Boies Schiller Flexner, led by long-time Democratic Party counselor David Boies, received the maximum of $10 million in forgiven PPP loans, even as the firm billed clients for $480 million during 2020 and 2021 and equity partners in the firm received $4.5 million each in average profits. Meanwhile, partners and employees in the firm donated $1 million to candidates during the 2020 and 2022 campaign cycles, almost all of it to Democrats.