RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/04/11/hey-about-that-not-so-surprising-drop-in-inflation/

No doubt you’ve already heard the news that inflation actually declined in March on a month-to-month basis for the first time in almost three years, and fell to 2.4% on a yearly basis. This is horrible news, at least for the Democratic Party, which continues to hope for the worst under President Donald Trump.

Economists had actually expected inflation to rise for the month. Instead, this is the first time since July 2022 that the index declined. “Surprising,” said a number of headlines.

Recall for a moment last year’s bold promise from Trump on inflation: “Prices will come down and come down dramatically and come down fast,” he said.

So far, so good, as Trump himself noted on X.

Despite Trump’s imposition of tariffs on much of the rest of the world, in particular China, which he had promised to do, his moves so far have had zero impact on inflation and are unlikely to for months to come.

Democrats are in a tough spot. Unable to tar Trump with President Joe Biden’s inflation disaster, Democrats earlier found what they believed was a point of inflation vulnerability for Trump: The soaring cost of eggs!

https://amgreatness.com/2025/04/10/ten-tariff-questions-never-asked/

1. Trump’s So-Called “Trade War.”

Many call the American effort to obtain either tariff parity or a reduction in the roughly $1 trillion trade deficit and fifty years of consecutive trade deficits “a trade war.” But then what do they call the policies of the past half-century by Europe, Asia, China, and others to ensure asymmetrical tariffs, pseudo-health and security trade restrictions, and large surpluses?

A trade peace? Trade fairness?

2. Do Nations Prefer Surpluses or Deficits?

Why do most nations prefer trade surpluses and protective tariffs?

Are Europe, Asia, China, and others stupid? Are they suicidal in continuing their trade surpluses and protective or asymmetrical tariffs?

Is the United States uniquely brilliant in maintaining a half-century of cumulative trade deficits? Do Americans alone discover the advantages of a $1 trillion annual trade deficit and small or nonexistent tariffs?

Why don’t America’s trading partners prefer deficits like ours—given we supposedly believe they are either advantageous or perhaps irrelevant?

3. Would Our Trade Partners Prefer to Trade Places With Us?

Would our trade partners prefer to have America’s supposed benefits of a $1-trillion trade deficit? Would the United States then “suffer” like they do by running up $200 billion annual surpluses?

4. What if Wages Went Up at the Rate of the Stock Market?

What would now be the reaction of the stock market if over the last decade wages had increased at the rate of stocks—and the stocks at the rate of wages?

5. Is Wall Street’s Panic Based on What Might Happen—Or What Is Happening?

Is Wall Street’s meltdown a fear of what might happen in the future? Or is it reacting to March’s latest jobs report that there were 93,000 more jobs created than predicted? Was the Wall Street panic predicated on reports of much lower oil prices? Did the furor arise over the March inflation report that the annualized inflation rate dipped to 2.6% per year?

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/09/trump-is-right-to-take-on-the-free-trade-fundamentalists/

It’s easy to dismiss Donald Trump’s haphazard tariff barrage as silly and self-defeating, especially after so many days of global market turmoil. But critics among liberal Democrats and Republican free traders still need to address the overriding goal behind the seeming madness. The key strategic objective of Trump’s approach is simple: restoring American industrial power. Opponents of the US president ignore this at their peril.

It is true that the American economy continues to outperform those of Europe and the UK, especially in terms of tech, communications and finance. Yet the situation for blue-collar professions and working-class communities has not improved with the pace of globalisation. Between 2004 and 2017, the US share of world manufacturing shrank from 15 to 10 per cent. Since 2000, notes an Economic Policy Institute study, China’s export barrage has cost as many as 3.7million US jobs.

The ‘China shock’ is not just an American but a global phenomenon. Today, China boasts nearly as many factory exports as the US, Japan and Germany combined. Overall, Europe’s industrial sector continues to decline, losing 850,000 manufacturing jobs between 2019 and 2024. Germany could lose around half of its 800,000 auto jobs to Chinese competition by 2030.

To be sure, the early stages of globalisation reaped enormous benefits, both for Western consumers and for developing countries. But China’s admission into the World Trade Organisation in 2000 changed the dynamic. Here was a huge country, with enormous human capital, which adopted a highly mercantilist drive to dominate industries, first at the lower end of manufacturing and then, increasingly, in the most sophisticated sectors.

Wall Street bankers and tech oligarchs may be untroubled by the consequences of Beijing’s mercantilism, as they have little contact with America’s working and middle classes. The poorest have increasingly been forced to subsist on expanding welfare benefits which, in turn, subsidise the affluent for whom they work for a pittance as nannies, gardeners and day labourers.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

President Trump bears responsibility for the rout in the world’s equity markets. His tariffs, if used to raise revenues, as he claims, will cause a global recession, or worse. If they are used to negotiate lower tariffs on U.S. exports, which he also claims, they will strengthen the economy and may lead to global free trade. He is right, however, in his complaint that there is much in our politics and culture that has gone wrong over the past several years. We are a country, like much of the West, with a spending problem. Federal debt, as a percent of GDP, is higher than it was in 1945 (121% in 2024 versus 112% in 1945). Both political parties are at fault for excessive spending. As well, there has been a rise in anti-Semitism, fueled, in my opinion, by dislike for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and often masked as anti-Zionism. And, of course, our border was open throughout President Biden’s term in office.

In this age of technology, we must focus on ensuring access to needed raw materials. Over the past several years, we have let defense spending lapse, while permitting China unchallenged access to commodities and markets across Africa and South America. We have allowed unfettered (and illegal) migration into our country, and not just for those seeking political refuge from despotic governments, but for criminals and gang members, some of whom brought in fentanyl, a drug that has killed an estimated quarter of a million Americans since 2018. We have seen the Democratic Party take a sharp turn to the left, as it became increasingly patronizing in tone – do as I say, not as I do. The Party has focused on equity, not equal opportunity. In the name of diversity, it has encouraged racial division and allowed identity policies, rather than ability and diligence, to become the standard for admissions into colleges and businesses; it has let universities become beacons of “social justice,” rather than pinnacles of learning where students debate controversial subjects in a respectful and tolerant manner; it has encouraged sports venues to allow males to compete against females. Just last year, the Party knowingly nominated a man for President who was mentally unfit, and now we have a Supreme Court Justice who is unable to define a woman. In all of this, mainstream media has been complicit.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-legal-trick-being-used-to-trip?utm_campaign=260347&utm_source=cross-post&r=8t06w&utm_medium=email

Judges are issuing orders that block government policies from taking effect anywhere in the country. Jed Rubenfeld explains what to do about them.

It’s been a relatively good week for President Donald Trump when it comes to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled more or less in his favor on three different challenges, including upholding on jurisdictional grounds his deportations of migrants to El Salvador. But the most pressing legal issue for Trump—the “nationwide injunctions” that have hamstrung many administration priorities—remains unresolved.

According to one count, only some 27 “nationwide injunctions”—orders issued by judges that block government policies from taking effect anywhere in the country—were issued throughout the twentieth century. Yet against Trump, counting both administrations, judges have so far handed down at least 79.

Supporters of these injunctions claim that they are a necessary check on unconstitutional actions by the administration, such as Trump’s moves to end birthright citizenship. The White House and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill say that district court judges are subverting the will of the people and want the Supreme Court to limit or halt the issuance of these injunctions.

Who is right? Let’s take it one step at a time. What are nationwide injunctions? Are they really being used against Trump more than other presidents? And are they legal?

The term nationwide injunction—a.k.a. “universal injunction”—has no legal definition, but it generally refers to a judicial order prohibiting the government from enforcing a measure anywhere in the country. That means that the ruling goes beyond the particular plaintiffs who brought the case, effectively allowing district courts to halt a policy from being applied anywhere in the U.S.

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/04/09/the-word-went-out-get-trump/

It’s fair to ask how Donald Trump went from celebrity real estate developer to the man most detested by about half of Western society. We think we know this vilification happened.

Read on.

In 1949, William Randolph Hearst, owner of the largest newspaper chain in the U.S., sent a two-word message to his editors: “Puff Graham.” It made evangelist Billy Graham, in Los Angeles for one of his early crusades, into “an instant celebrity nationwide,” according to the Los Angeles Times.

“The sudden front-page coverage showered on Graham by Hearst newspapers in mid-October (after three weeks of little notice) was quickly matched by other newspapers and news magazines – literally a media circus descending on his rallies under a big tent,” says the Times.

Graham’s fame soared as he later appeared on the covers of the day’s leading magazines, from Time to Newsweek to Life.

The Billy Graham Library calls Hearst’s order “a watershed event,” and Graham himself thanked Hearst in a letter, telling him that “Literally millions of church people across the nation are rejoicing and thanking God for your interest and backing of the recent Los Angeles evangelistic campaign.”

We don’t discount the possibility of divine intervention, but Graham’s popularity is owed in large part to the power and reach of one man (who might have been moved divinely to “puff” the evangelist).

No postings until I return on April 10

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/democrats-demand-accountability-for-signal-leak-after-giving-a-pass-to-biden-clinton-administrations/

Signalgate Critics Overlook Democrats’ Own Failures

After Atlantic editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg was mistakenly included in a Signal chat of top Trump administration officials discussing an upcoming attack on the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Politico Playbook boldly claimed that there is “no administration in the world” where a “blunder of these proportions happens and nobody gets fired or resigns.”

“Not in London. Not in Moscow. Not in Tokyo. Not in Pyongyang. Nowhere,” the outlet underscored.

Playbook’s author missed at least one glaring example: President Biden’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, which cost the lives of 13 service members but did not result in a single firing.

CNBC host Joe Kernen brought up the Biden administration’s abysmal withdrawal during an interview with Senator Mark Warner (D., Va.), who actually laughed off the comparison.

During an appearance on Squawk Box, Warner dismissed those who voiced concerns about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s email scandal and former President Joe Biden’s “incompetence,” saying the Trump administration was no better.

But Kernan noted the air strikes against the Houthis were a success, while Biden failed disastrously in Afghanistan.

“You remember the Biden administration started with the biggest f-up in history with Afghanistan and 13 dead Americans,” Kernen said. “Let’s not get too sanctimonious and high and mighty about screwing up.”

Warner laughed and said, “Should we go back to even to—”

“That’s only four years [ago], senator!” Kernen interrupted.

Fox News also reported on Warner’s hypocrisy on the issue, with the senator having used the Signal app himself to work with a lobbyist for a Russian oligarch to connect with the disgraced Steele dossier author.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/03/31/musk-demolishes-medias-trump-dictator-fantasy-n4938443

Elon Musk headlined a town hall in Green Bay, Wisc., on Sunday evening, just days before Wisconsin voters decide a pivotal state Supreme Court race. During the event, Musk underscored his opposition to activist judges by signing two $1 million checks to supporters of an online petition against judicial overreach. Wearing a Wisconsin cheesehead, which he later autographed and tossed into the crowd, Musk used the event to highlight the stakes in the election between conservative candidate Brad Schimel and Democrat-backed Susan Crawford.

During his speech, he also sharply criticized the media’s treatment of President Trump, calling out the absurdity of comparisons between Trump and some of history’s most notorious dictators. Musk argued that such hyperbole reveals both a political agenda and a fundamental failure in historical education.

“They’ve called President Trump every name in the book,” Musk said. “I think there was one article that called the president worse than Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin combined.”

Musk dismissed such comparisons as not only ridiculous but also factually indefensible. “Uh, actually, President Trump has not killed anyone,” he said. “In fact, he’s very good at stopping wars — not starting them.”

Musk’s comments reflect a growing frustration with the left-wing media’s efforts to demonize Trump, often with exaggerated and unfounded claims. The idea that leftists could equate Trump with mass-murdering dictators, Musk suggested, exposes a serious lack of historical knowledge among those making these arguments.