RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/trumps-tax-returns
Disappointed by Robert Mueller’s failure to demonstrate President Trump’s perfidy, Democrats are focusing anew on the president’s tax returns. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is refusing to order the release of Trump’s federal returns to the House, saying that there is no legislative purpose for doing so, but a new effort to expose Trump’s tax history runs through Albany, where Democrats in 2018 gained solid control of the state senate for the first time in decades. Governor Andrew Cuomo has promised to sign a bill making its way through the legislature that would submit any New Yorker’s state tax returns to Congress, on request from the chairs of any of three revenue-related committees.

The excitement among Democrats is palpable. “We are facing a constitutional showdown,” says State Senator Brad Hoylman, the legislation’s sponsor. “New York, as the home of the president’s state taxes, has a special responsibility to step into the breach.” Assemblywoman Pat Fahy concurs, saying that “we can help hold the president accountable and we will set future precedents for all elected officials, that neither you as a president nor your business interests are above the law.”

National politicians and media are equally enthusiastic. “We will press on, because if we don’t, Trump will escape scrutiny and we won’t be able to hold future presidents accountable for abuse of power, malfeasance or corruption,” says House Investigations Committee chair Adam Schiff. New York writer and Trump critic Jonathan Chait asks: “Do Republicans believe Trump’s financial secrets contain no signs of serious corruption or vulnerability to leverage by a hostile power?”

https://www.city-journal.org/mayors-presidential-candidates

Mayors have had little success in becoming president, with only one big-city chief executive, Grover Cleveland of Buffalo, later governor of New York, actually making it to the White House. Yet this year’s running of the donkeys includes several: a minor-city chief executive, Pete Buttigieg of South Bend; a former big-city mayor, Cory Booker of Newark; former San Antonio mayor Julian Castro; and John Hickenlooper, formerly chief executive of Denver before becoming Colorado’s governor. They may yet be joined by New York’s Bill de Blasio. Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti considered a run but thought better of it, perhaps realizing that his city’s burgeoning homeless population and rampant inequality would dog him on the campaign trail. The other mayors’ records are not much better than Garcetti’s, but they didn’t hesitate to jump in.

Buttigieg’s record is nothing remarkable. South Bend remains plagued by racial tension and a high murder rate. Buttigieg’s big challenge, according to Slate’s woke take, is whether being gay will make up for the unfortunate reality that he is also white and male, especially given his failure to embrace “the idea of gayness as a cultural framework, formative identity, or anything more than a category of sexual and romantic behavior.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273768/tlaibs-anti-semitic-hate-elicits-stunning-support-ari-lieberman

Just when we thought the Democratic Party could stoop no lower into Corbynism, we are treated to comments made by Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich), which were stunningly breathtaking in terms of their sheer mendacity and revisionism. In a podcast interview with Yahoo’s Skullduggery, Tlaib noted that she always has a calming feeling when thinking of the Holocaust because it was her Palestinian ancestors who provided safe haven for the Jewish survivors of post-Holocaust Europe. Then she lamented about the high cost her ancestors endured because of their alleged benevolence toward the Jews, and cited the loss of their homes, land, livelihood and human dignity as examples.

Tlaib, who is an avid supporter of the anti-Semitic BDS crew, ended her revisionist version of history by hoping for a one-state solution. This is a pernicious euphemism for flooding Israel with millions of hostile Palestinian “refugees” and their descendants, and is a common refrain for those wishing for Israel’s destruction.

Tlaib’s lies were so outrageous and revisionist that it’s difficult to believe that her interviewers allowed them to go unchallenged but unchallenged they went. Perhaps their lack of challenge was a function of ignorance or perhaps something more nefarious was at play; either way, it is incumbent on those interested in furthering the truth to rebut these fabrications whenever they rear their ugly heads.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/22nd-dem-enters-2020-race-with-tirade-against-free-speech-in-politics/

On Tuesday morning, Gov. Steve Bullock (D-Mont.) announced his candidacy for president in the Democratic 2020 presidential primary. Bullock may have a #MeToo scandal brewing — New York Mayor Bill de Blasio “ripped” into him for failing to warn about an aide’s history of sexual harassment before that aide became de Blasio’s chief of staff. Bullock is virtually unknown across the country, and he decided to enter the gates campaigning against free speech in politics.

That’s right — spinning a yarn on the evils of corruption, Bullock condemned free speech in politics in his campaign announcement video. In fact, he made it the center of his campaign.

Democrats like Bullock don’t phrase it this way, of course, but when they condemn “Citizens United,” they’re condemning the ability of everyday Americans to band together and spend money to promote political messages in the public square. Americans should be able to do this anonymously, just like Benjamin Franklin did under the pen name “Silence Dogood.” Contrary to the narrative spun by Bullock and others, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010) was a victory for free speech in politics and primary challengers, not corporate interests or corruption.

Bullock begins his video with an image of Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana. The open pit copper mine is a toxic threat to the water in the area, and the Montana governor tried to make it an image of corruption. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/warren-fox-news-is-a-hate-for-profit-racket-that-gives-a-megaphone-to-racists-and-conspiracists/

While some 2020 Democrats have appeared in town halls on Fox News, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) drew a line in the sand against the network on Tuesday.

“I love town halls. I’ve done more than 70 since January, and I’m glad to have a television audience be a part of them. Fox News has invited me to do a town hall, but I’m turning them down—here’s why,” she began in a long Twitter thread.

“Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists—it’s designed to turn us against each other, risking life and death consequences, to provide cover for the corruption that’s rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class,” Warren tweeted.

“Hate-for-profit works only if there’s profit, so Fox News balances a mix of bigotry, racism, and outright lies with enough legit journalism to make the claim to advertisers that it’s a reputable news outlet. It’s all about dragging in ad money—big ad money,” she said. “But Fox News is struggling as more and more advertisers pull out of their hate-filled space. A Democratic town hall gives the Fox News sales team a way to tell potential sponsors it’s safe to buy ads on Fox—no harm to their brand or reputation (spoiler: It’s not).”

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kamala-harris-medicare-for-all/

Soon after Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign back in January, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked her, at a televised townhall, the following question about Senator Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill (a piece of legislation that Harris is cosponsoring): “I believe it will totally eliminate private insurance. So for people out there who like their insurance, they don’t get to keep it?”

“Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on,” Harris said after making some brief comments about the problems with private insurance.

On Sunday, Harris appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” for her first interview with Tapper since January, and she insisted she had only endorsed eliminating health-care “bureaucracy” and “waste” in her previous comments.

“But the bill gets rid of insurance,” Tapper interjected.

“No, no, no, no, it does not get rid of insurance. It does not get rid of insurance,” Harris replied, insisting that “supplemental” insurance coverage would be available.

After Tapper pressed her some more on the details of the bill, Harris eventually seemed to concede that supplemental private insurance would exist only for things like cosmetic surgery that are not services covered by the government under Medicare for All.

So why did Harris insist in the first place that the Medicare for All bill doesn’t eliminate insurance? It is not a factual claim that is in dispute. As the New York Times has put it: “At the heart of the ‘Medicare for all’ proposals championed by Senator Bernie Sanders and many Democrats is a revolutionary idea: Abolish private health insurance.”

The Medicare for All bill “outlaws the market for selling insurance that covers the same services included in Medicare for All. You can only sell private insurance that covers services outside of what is covered by that bill,” James Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute tells National Review Online. Sanders wants “to fight what occurs in most other countries, which is people opting out of the [single-payer] system through private insurance and going to privately run, privately paid doctors and hospitals that are a little better than the public utility system that everybody else uses.”