RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/05/monster-who-sent-infected-patients-nursing-homes-daniel-greenfield/

This monster, not having a conscience of his own, would like to “shock your conscience”.

A state senator from Franklin County has called for the immediate resignation of Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Richard ‘Rachel’ Levine, saying his actions were a major factor in the large number of covid-19 cases and deaths in the state’s nursing homes.

Wolf’s Secretary of Health, Dr. Richard (Rachel) Levine, had transferred his own mother out of a nursing home and to a hotel.

To date, state figures show that nursing homes residents have accounted for 2,529 of the state’s 3,707 reported covid-19 deaths. That is a pattern that has been echoed in most states across the country, however.

In a policy guidance issued in March, the Health Department stated, in part: “Nursing care facilities must continue to accept new admissions and receive readmissions for current residents who have been discharged from the hospital who are stable to alleviate the increasing burden in the acute care settings. This may include stable patients who have had the covid-19 virus.”

The death toll is a good deal higher now. 

Biden decided to pick Dr. Rick, who wrongly identifies as a human being, as Assistant Health Secretary. Now he’d like to “shock your conscience”.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-implies-obama-devised-ministry-of-truth-disinformation-governance-board/

Former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard implied that former President Barack Obama devised the formation of President Biden’s recently announced Disinformation Governance Board, which critics have likened to the “Ministry of Truth” from George Orwell’s 1984.

“Biden is just a front man,” Gabbard tweeted Sunday. “Obama, April 21: social media censors ‘don’t go far enough,’ so the government needs to step in to do the job. Six days later, Homeland Security rolls out the ‘Ministry of Truth’ (aka Disinformation Governance Board).”

Gabbard’s tweet was in reference to Obama’s speech at Stanford University last week, where he declared that tech companies have an obligation to more strictly police disinformation and called for the government to facilitate that.

“Now the good news is that almost all the big tech platforms now acknowledge some responsibility for content on their platforms, and they’re investing in large team of people to monitor it,” Obama said during the speech. “Given the sheer volume of content, this strategy can feel like a game of Whack-A-Mole.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/02/bidens-loan-forgiveness-fraud/

His popularity flagging, President Joe Biden is using the oldest trick in the book to return voters to the Democrats’ fold: Don’t earn their future votes, buy them. And that’s exactly what Biden is doing with his $1 trillion plan to “forgive” student loans.

Biden had already allowed students to “postpone” paying their loans during the pandemic “emergency,” even those who have jobs and could make the payments.

So why now forgive the loans? The truth is, one of the biggest recent declines in Biden’s support comes among Americans of college age and slightly older, the very group most likely to have a pile of student loans.

What better, or more cynical, way to revive their flagging political support than to bribe them with a “free” education?

Hard-left Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley called Biden’s plan “a tremendous victory.” In fact, it is yet another betrayal of working Americans who will now be paying taxes to support rich kids’ higher education.

That’s not hyperbole. If anything, it’s understatement. As a devastating University of Chicago study conclusively shows, wealthy families disproportionately benefit from loan forgiveness programs.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/disinformation-for-dummies-governance-board-orwell-1984-mayorkas-homeland-security-11651431969?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

We realize public schools don’t teach the classics any more, but has no one in the Biden Administration read George Orwell ? Apparently not, because that’s the only explanation for its creation of a new Disinformation Governance Board.

We have to admit that when we first read about it, we thought the news was itself disinformation from the Administration’s political enemies. Surely, no one in this age of polarization and public mistrust of institutions would think it’s wise to set up a government shop with the job of telling Americans what is true.

We were wrong. No less an authority than Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, broke the news about the board last week in an appearance before Congress. He said the purpose of this new corner of the bureaucracy will be to warn Americans about falsehoods coming from foreign adversaries such as Russia, China and cartels that smuggle migrants into the United States.

“It works to ensure that the way in which we address threats, the connectivity between threats and acts of violence are addressed without infringing on free speech—protecting civil rights and civil liberties, the right of privacy,” Mr. Mayorkas told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/04/30/the-great-american-free-speech-panic/

The American elites have come up with all kinds of convoluted reasons as to why it’s good and proper for Silicon Valley to wield its unprecedented power against those they disagree with. But those reasons keep changing in revealing ways. Before this week the argument was that Twitter can set whatever speech policies it likes because it’s a business and anyone who doesn’t like it can go elsewhere. Now they’ve suddenly changed their tune. And for all their deeply felt concern about misinformation the elites have turned a blind eye in recent years to how their war on misinformation has produced its own kind of misinformation – such as the hasty branding of the Hunter Biden story or the Covid lab-leak theory as bonkers conspiracy theories, only for it to turn out later that there was actually something to them.

This has become a vicious circle. Some of the genuinely mad movements unleashed in recent years – from QAnon to Stop the Steal to Covid anti-vax guff – are actually a demonstration of a well-worn argument against censorship. Namely, that censoring bad ideas doesn’t make them go away and can give them a glamour they do not deserve. Censorship has a way of making people think they’re on to something. Combine this with a mainstream media that now routinely prizes The Narrative over the facts – calling BLM riots ‘mostly peaceful’ and Kyle Rittenhouse a ‘white supremacist’ – and you’ve got a toxic mix. The crisis of trust in the mainstream has sent many looking for answers at the margins. And the more that do, the more censorship is meted out.

But then again this was never really about misinformation, was it? This is about America’s ruling class becoming deeply sceptical about one of America’s founding values, and deeply sceptical about their fellow citizens. So-called liberal elites simply do not believe that ordinary people can be trusted to sort truth from illusion and are now convinced that some higher power must vet their reading material for them. They believe that the answer to bad speech is not more speech, but ruthless corporate censorship. They have convinced themselves that free speech is a threat to civilisation, rather than the core of civilisation.

Remember the date: April 27, 2022

That’s when the mask came off the creaky Orwellian juggernaut that is the Biden Administration. 

The senile rictus disappeared and something far more threatening took its place. 

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell called the enforcement mechanism of his totalitarian propaganda regime the “Ministry of Truth.” Appearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee, the ironically named Department of Homeland Security was slightly more subtle. 

Too many people have read Nineteen Eighty-Four. Calling a government-funded effort to suppress criticism of the regime the “Ministry of Truth” would cause people to worry and complain. Instead, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced the creation of the “Disinformation Governance Board.” 

No, I am not making that up. 

I sympathize with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who said he wondered whether this new assault on free expression was a “belated April Fools’ joke.”

Unfortunately, it’s not.  

Granted, it is as preposterous as an April Fools’ Day prank. So is its director, Nina Jankowicz, a 33-year-old anti-Trump hack, who is described—God help us—as an “internationally recognized expert on disinformation.” You can judge how expert by looking up her truly embarrassing videos on the subject (among many other subjects). 

So what will the Disinformation Governance Board actually do—besides, I mean, provide fodder for standup comics and incredulous commentators? In one sense, it is a little hard to say for sure since its actual duties and extent of its powers have yet to be spelled out.  

But one doesn’t need fine print to know that this new police force will have essentially two jobs.  

One job will be to suppress criticism. Former U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) is right. This is exactly the sort of thing, she told Fox News, one expects to see in dictatorships, not in free countries. The board, she said, amounts to a “department of propaganda” promulgated by a government that is afraid of its own people. Did someone discover that the president’s son had a laptop full of compromising, and probably criminal, information?  

https://pjmedia.com/columns/rabbi-michael-barclay/2022/04/30/nazi-comparisons-n1594179

A criminal is wrongfully killed, and “peaceful demonstrations,” which are actually violent riots, break out nationwide. The flag of a radical and violent group is placed next to the national flag on government buildings. Out of fear of being canceled and losing business, individuals and corporations succumb to publicly supporting this violent organization. Mandated behavior is compelled upon threat of arrest by the political elite and leadership. Despite objections from parents, schools begin teaching an alternative “history” and embrace prejudice, anti-Semitism, and sexual permissiveness as part of the school curriculum.

A President overreaches and takes on “emergency powers,” which create an authoritarian regime that demands supportive behavior and calls any criticism “disinformation.” A new agency of the government is created to “fight this disinformation”… an agency that even has access to armed personnel. This new agency is led by a fanatic who is arguably delusional in their own self-perception and fully committed to stopping the dissemination of any information that is not part of the authoritarian narrative. And through it all the media is a willing accomplice, even striking against other media outlets that try to present opposing views.

Sound like a brief recap of the recent past in this country?

The challenge is that this is actually a description of the development of the Nazi regime in Germany almost a century ago.

If this scares you, it should.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/new_york_trump_grand_jury_ends_not_with_a_bang_but_a_whimper.html

Two successive Manhattan District Attorneys, Cyrus Vance, Jr. and Alvin Bragg, have dug for dirt on Donald Trump, looking for something – anything – on which to indict him. And they have failed.

A six-month grand jury that was convened late last year to hear evidence against Donald Trump was set to expire this week, closing a chapter in a lengthy criminal investigation that appears to be fizzling out without charges against the former president, people familiar with matter said.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D), who took office in January, inherited a probe launched by his predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who was convinced that there was a case against Trump for crimes related to manipulating the value of property assets to secure tax advantages or better loan rates.

The grand jury was convened in November with a mandate to hear evidence against the former president. But the decision on whether to finish the presentation and ask the panel to vote on charges would ultimately fall on Bragg, who decided to pause the process, according to people with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss information that has not been declared publicly.

Nobody wants to be publicly associated with this disappointment for Trump-haters.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/darkest-day-yet-under-biden

DARKEST DAY YET UNDER BIDEN. The specter of recession and war settled over Washington on Thursday, on top of inflation that has already cut into the public’s standard of living and increased its worries about the future. It was, in short, a very bad day — one of the most concerning so far in the presidency of Joe Biden.

Many experts professed to be surprised by the news that the economy shrank by an annual rate of 1.4% in the first quarter of 2022. “Gross domestic product unexpectedly declined at a 1.4 percent annualized pace in the first quarter … the worst since the pandemic-induced recession in 2020,” the business network CNBC reported. “The negative growth rate missed even the subdued Dow Jones estimate of a one percent gain for the quarter.”

For his part, in the course of a single sentence, Biden tried to suggest that the drop was the result of “technical factors” while at the same time blaming events around the world — and, most importantly, not himself. “While last quarter’s growth estimate was affected by technical factors,” he said in a statement, “the United States confronts the challenges of Covid-19 around the world, Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, and global inflation from a position of strength.”

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2022-4-28-another-progressive-policy-disaster-homelessness-in-san-francisco

Three and a half years ago, in November 2018, the good people of San Francisco enacted by a referendum called Proposition C a new special corporate payroll tax which would raise multiple hundred million dollars per year for the specific purpose of finally and once and for all solving the problem of homelessness. During the run-up to that referendum, in October 2018, I had two posts discussing Proposition C, the nature of the progressive thinking behind it, and its prospects for success. On October 26 it was “The Morality Of Our Progressive Elite”; and on October 30 it was “More On The Morality Of Our Progressive Elite.”

Toward the end of that second post, I posed this question: “[What are] the prospects that San Francisco’s new $300 million might actually reduce the population deemed ‘homeless’?” My answer was: “Right around zero.”

In the intervening three plus years, I have from time to time checked back to see how it was going with San Francisco’s great project to end homelessness. But up until now I haven’t been able to find good information. Among other issues, the implementation of the new tax was delayed for two years by litigation. However, the information drought on this subject has now ended. On April 26 the San Francisco Chronicle ran a big feature article on the subject, with the headline “Broken Homes” (behind paywall). On April 28, that article was then reviewed and commented on by Steven Hayward at PowerLine (“California’s Ongoing Suicide Attempt”), and by Erica Sandberg at the City Journal (“San Francisco’s Housing First Nightmare”).

And the answer is: The results are far, far worse than mere failure to reduce the population deemed homeless. Since 2018 San Francisco’s spending on the homeless has soared by approximately a factor of four. But meanwhile the number of people deemed homeless has increased by somewhere between 47% and more than 250% (depending on what data you believe for the number of homeless in SF back in 2017). And, at least if you accept the Chronicle’s current reporting, the conditions under which the homeless live have seriously deteriorated. It is an epic disaster of progressive public policy.

How could everything have gone so terribly wrong?