RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://asiatimes.com/2021/10/gobbling-chinas-exports-us-sinks-into-dependency/

China’s exports rose 28% in September from the year-earlier level, more than the analyst consensus had forecast. More important is that China’s exports to the United States have risen by 31% since January 2018, when President Trump imposed tariffs on a wide range of US imports from China. At a seasonally adjusted annual rate, the US is buying $635 billion of Chinese goods, equal to a staggering 27% of US manufacturing Gross Domestic Product.

During the same period, China’s exports to South Korea rose by 50%, to Taiwan by 60%, and to Germany by 61%, but China imports almost as much from these three countries.

Demand for Chinese goods after the pandemic disruption has strained China’s production capacity, contributing to a power shortage that is now forcing cutbacks in key industries, including computer chips.

https://quillette.com/2021/10/13/confronting-the-supply-chain-crisis/

For a generation, the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors in California handled more than 40 percent of all container cargo headed into the US and epitomized the power of a globalizing economy. Today, the ships—mostly from Asia—still dock, but they must wait in a seemingly endless conga line of as many as 60 vessels, sometimes for as long as three weeks. These are the worst delays in modern history, and the price per container has risen to as much as 10 times its cost before the pandemic. The shipping crisis is now projected to last through 2023.

A pandemic-driven shortage of parts and labor has combined with a congested transport system to create an inflationary spike, with shipping rates doubling on some routes. Prices for everything from soybeans to natural gas have soared as supplies take longer to produce and arrive, and this high inflation is wiping out wage gains in the US, the UK, and Germany. The chaos on the ground may not disturb the lifestyles of the tech and financial elites, but it is hurting the middle and working classes, the groups most threatened by surging inflation.

The supply chain disaster has also revealed the existence of crippling economic dependence, particularly on China, in high-income countries. Today, whole industries in the West—from medical equipment to chip and car makers to food—rely on China for finished products and key components. When China cannot (or decides not to) supply these parts, whole industries suffer debilitating supply chain shortages. The notion of a rational, self-regulating market system is unraveling and may yet presage the demise of the prevailing neoliberal era.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/tugas-prices-seven-year-high-and-rising-biden-offensive-against-domestic-oil

“Average gas price: June 2020: $2.21 June 2021: $3.07 President Biden’s economy!” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) tweeted during the summer. 

“You forgot to mention that gas prices are the same now as they were in June 2018,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki fired back. “Or that this time last year unemployment was 11.1% — today it’s 5.8%. @POTUS agrees families shouldn’t pay more at the pump — that’s why he’s opposed to GOP proposals to raise the gas tax.”

Yet, the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill reportedly includes an estimated $6 billion worth of charges on U.S. oil and gas operators on federal lands, which could effectively put mom and pop small business, and minority and Native-owned operations out of business, in addition to killing tens of thousands of jobs.   

There isn’t enough oil and gas supply to meet U.S. demand, due to a combination of factors, including the Biden administration halting new leases on federal land, halting the Keystone Pipeline, increasing regulatory burdens, and other measures that will take years to correct, those in the industry argue.

In one of his first acts in office, President Joe Biden, through executive order, halted the issuance of new oil and gas leases on federal lands, effectively stopping much production for existing operations. He also eliminated low-cost Canadian crude from being processed by mid-continent and Gulf Coast and U.S. refiners by prohibiting the Keystone pipeline from opening. 

If Biden had not severely hampered domestic production, the U.S. would have an ample supply of oil and gas and commensurately lower costs at the pump, industry experts argue. 

The $6 billion in additional costs imposed on the industry included in the budget reconciliation bill include new methane fees, inspection fees, severance fees, and bonding requirements, as well as additional requirements for operating on federal lands.

https://dailypatriotreport.com/tulsi-gabbard-americans-are-being-lied-to-by-the-biden-administration/

On Saturday, former presidential candidate and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard appeared on Fox News and told viewers that the Biden Administration is straight up lying to the American people about the border crisis and Afghanistan withdrawal.

Gabbard explained, “The faith and trust that the American people need to have in our leaders is dropping every day. The Department of Homeland Security Secretary recently told Congress our borders are secure. This is what he said, this kind of bald-faced lie, whether it has to do with domestic issues or foreign policy issues. We’ve seen this with Afghanistan and the tragically botched withdrawal of our troops and Americans out of Afghanistan. When people are being lied to, the American people are being lied to, it is revealing of the arrogance and the self-serving nature of leaders who are in power in this country.”

She added, “The disrespect that they have for the American people, and it’s why people are losing faith and trust in those leaders. If we have leaders who respect the people, then the people will respect our leaders. If we have leaders who trust the American people, we will trust our leaders. And that’s the problem here is we don’t have leaders who have that trust and respect and who therefore put themselves ahead of the interests of the people.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/de-nihil-lloyd-billingsley/

“The hatred and resentment of Trump is so deep,” Freedom Center Shillman Fellow Bruce Thornton recently noted, “that we now have a ruling party whose main principle is to do the opposite of whatever Trump did no matter how much it benefited the country.” That statement is freighted with meaning and based on considerable evidence.

President Trump withdrew from the Paris Accords, which gives a pass to major polluters China and India. The Biden Junta, what the late Angelo Codevilla called an oligarchy, rejoined the agreement, promising billions of dollars that will wind up enriching “energy grifters.” For all the spending, the United States gets essentially nothing.

President Trump achieved energy independence for America, reducing the cost of energy in particular and the cost of living in general. By freeing the nation from dependence on oil-rich hostile regimes, Trump also boosted America’s national security in a dangerous world.

Joe Biden, who likes to rule by diktat, canceled the Keystone X pipeline, banned fracking and called off oil and gas leases on public lands. This sent the price of gasoline skyrocketing, a severe blow to working Americans but a windfall for OPEC, where Biden showed up with his begging bowl. Thornton was correct that “our economy and our geopolitical clout have been damaged.”

While under fire from the Russia and Ukraine hoaxes, Trump began construction of a border wall. He also halted ridiculous “catch and release” policies, and tasked ICE to remove dangerous criminal illegals from the United States.

The Biden Junta not only stopped construction of the wall but gave the border an existential problem. Thousands of “migrants” from all over the world are now streaming into to the USA, with no check for COVID or other diseases, and exempt from the rules that now restrict legitimate citizens and legal immigrants. The Biden Junta vilifies the Border Patrol and welcomes the invaders. Many get shipped to other parts of the nation with no accountability to Congress or the people.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/10/fbi-raids-home-nypd-sergeants-union-head-who-robert-spencer/

As Matt Margolis noted in July, the FBI is “corrupt and needs reform.” This reform became all the more urgent last week, when it was revealed that the feds were far more deeply involved in the January 6 insurrection-that-wasn’t-an-insurrection at the Capitol than had been previously known. But instead of moving to restore its shattered reputation and proving it hasn’t become little more than the far-Left’s muscle, the FBI on Tuesday raided the home of Sergeants Benevolent Association (SBA) President Ed Mullins, a Trump supporter and outspoken critic of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio.

According to the New York Daily News, the raid “also targeted the police union’s Lower Manhattan headquarters.” The FBI confirmed that it was “carrying out a law enforcement action in connection with an ongoing investigation” into the 13,000-member SBA. Said de Blasio: “All I have been told is the FBI has raided the SBA HQ and it’s in connection with an ongoing investigation, but we don’t have further details on that at this moment.”

The mayor couldn’t resist, however, kicking Mullins while he was down: “A lot of what he’s done has been really, really destructive — especially in the middle of a crisis where we’re trying to unify and we’re trying to get through together. I think he’s been a divisive voice. … All I hear is the FBI raid. I want to hear the details before I comment further.”

Mullins aroused de Blasio’s ire when he posted the arrest report of Chiara de Blasio, the mayor’s daughter, on Twitter; Chiara de Blasio was arrested in May 2020 during the George Floyd riots in Manhattan. According to the Daily News, Mullins was accused of “violating department rules” in disclosing Chiara’s private information, while his lawyer, Andrew Quinn, noted that the report had already been publicized and stated: “We see this case an attempt to chill Ed Mullins’s First Amendment rights.”

Amid the controversy, Mullins “vowed to continue speaking out whenever he believes cops are vilified or mistreated” and declared: “De Blasio’s City Hall has been at war with cops since his first days in office. Charges against union activism that City Hall doesn’t like — speaking truth to those who claim power — is sadly what we’ve come to expect from this administration.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/garlands-conflict-of-interest-in-the-doj-intimidation-of-parents/?utm_

“The attorney general and his Justice Department did not think this through because the memorandum was not a good-faith effort to inform. It was an abusive effort to intimidate.”

The potential problem underscores how little thought went into the offensive memo issued in the AG’s name.

A s our Brittany Bernstein reported last week, parent groups are alleging that Attorney General Merrick Garland is laboring under a family financial conflict of interest as he directs the FBI to investigate people — mainly parents — who are protesting against the use of public schools to indoctrinate children in critical race theory and other far-left dogma. A week ago, I wrote about Garland’s memo laying out this initiative.

The potential conflict stems from the fact that Garland’s son-in-law, Alexander “Xan” Tanner, the co-founder and president of an outfit called Panorama Education, has a very lucrative gig pushing some of the indoctrination materials.

Brittany cites to some extensive reporting by the Washington Examiner’s Jerry Dunleavy, which describes how “Panorama pushes race-focused surveys and conducts trainings on systemic oppression, white supremacy, unconscious bias, and intersectionality — all under the rubric of ‘Social-Emotional Learning [(SEL)].” The reporting includes an eye-opening look at some of the relevant materials — such as “SEL as Social Justice — Dismantling White Supremacism Within Systems and Self.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/refutation_of_the_1619_project_is_right_there_in_the_creation_of_the_continental_congress.html

By accident, looking for something else, I stumbled on a provision in the 1774 Association Test, or, as it is known, The Articles of Association adopted by the first Continental Congress.

Most importantly for the contemporary accusations that the United States was founded in an original sin of slavery, the second article of the 1774 Association Test reads:

2. We will neither import nor purchase, any slave imported after the first day of December next; after which time, we will wholly discontinue the slave trade, and will neither be concerned in it ourselves, nor will we hire our vessels, nor sell our commodities or manufactures to those who are concerned in it.

I had never heard of this provision before.

So, in one of the first collective acts of the political communities which would become the United States of America, there was a commitment to end slavery.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/merrick-garland-list-school-board-elections-justice-attorney-general-11633960883?mod=opinion_featst_pos3

Merrick Garland’s got a little list.

The attorney general is compiling a steadily lengthening register of “society offenders who might well be underground and who never would be missed,” as Ko-Ko, the hypervigilant lord high executioner, sings in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado.”

Mr. Garland’s list of society offenders is compendious. At the top are right-wing extremists who’ve been officially designated the greatest domestic threat to U.S. security, but whose ranks seem, in the eyes of the nation’s top lawyer, to include some less obviously malevolent characters, including perhaps anyone who protested the results of the 2020 election. Then there are police departments not compliant with Biden administration law-enforcement dicta, Republican-run states seeking to regularize their voting laws after last year’s pandemic-palooza of an electoral process, and state legislatures that pass strict pro-life legislation.

They’d none of them be missed.

Oddly, the list doesn’t seem to extend to the hundreds of thousands of people who have crossed the southern border so far this year and are now presumably at large somewhere in the U.S. without a legal right to be in the country. Nor to those benevolent folk who have reduced several of the nation’s urban centers to crime-infested wastelands.

https://glennloury.substack.com/p/behind-the-new-york-times-megaphone?token=

How does writing for an extremely influential venue like the New York Times affect how you’re perceived? John McWhorter is finding out firsthand, as he continues to put out his outstanding twice-weekly Times newsletter. As you’ll see below, John doesn’t have much time to read through reader reactions. But a recent tweet thread from the historian Thomas Sugrue responding to his column about redlining sparked us to think about the complicated relationship between writer and audience.

Whatever your opinion of the Times, most writers, thinkers, politicians, and academics would jump at the chance to write for them. There’s no more efficient way to get your words and ideas in front of other influential people. But speaking through a megaphone that big naturally leads people to ask what gives you the authority to do so in the first place. An economist writing about the economy or a linguist writing about language may be all well and good. But when an expert in one area steps out of their lane, so to speak, people can bristle in interesting ways.

John and I discuss the complex dynamics of writing for the Gray Lady below. Check it out!

JOHN MCWHORTER: My column was replete with indications that racism still deeply affected the lives of the people—black people—who were redlined, that there was even some racism within who got a loan and who didn’t. I’m not saying that racism played no part. But I’m just saying that to think of socioeconomics as not meaningless and that the socioeconomics was not so insignificant as to be merely parenthetical or merely a footnote, that it mattered, that this stuff is complicated. And I wasn’t chased out of the room for saying this, but some of the response was rather vigorous, and I was especially surprised by Thomas Sugrue. Thomas Sugrue who’s written a really good book.