A robust debate has broken out over the underlying causes of the
surge in violence across the country that began last summer. Was the
pandemic to blame, or the riots after George Floyd’s death? That debate
has been healthy, but an indefensible position occasionally crops up:
partisans who insist, against all evidence, that rising crime is nothing
to worry about. That was the view taken
by congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who labeled such concerns
“hysteria” this past June. And it’s the view propounded in a new report
from the think tank Third Way, whose policy chief, Jim Kessler,
similarly suggests that “hysteria” about crime has gripped the nation.
Third Way’s brief has attracted the attention of commentators eager to downplay rising violence. NBC’s writeup
on the report has been widely shared. But the report’s claims that the
crime wave is made up don’t withstand scrutiny. Even Third Way’s own
statistics confirm the surge in violent crime that serious analysts have
been warning about.
To reach their conclusions, Third Way analysts Kylie Murdock and
Nathan Kasai collected data on the frequency of seven crimes—murder,
aggravated assault, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor-vehicle
theft—in 2020 from 22 states and Washington, D.C., and compared them
with 2019 rates of the same offenses in the same states. They conclude
that crime fell by about 4.9 percent between 2019 and 2020—but this
figure is essentially meaningless because it combines all the major
categories. In 2019, police reported
about 8 million crimes to the FBI, of which the majority (5 million)
were larcenies. By comparison, there were about 16,000 homicides. If the
overall crime rate is a rough proxy for the larceny rate, then one must
examine the numbers by offense type to get a sense of actual trends.
Third Way’s analysts do so, finding in the 23 jurisdictions covered that
rapes, robberies, burglaries, and larcenies fell—but that aggravated
assaults rose 11 percent, automobile theft rose 15 percent, and murder
rose a shocking 31 percent.
These results are exactly what anyone following crime statistics
since last year would expect: a decline in most property crime (as well
as rape, which is infamously difficult to track), and an increase in
homicide, assault (a proxy for shootings), and grand theft auto.
Explaining that trend is simple. Most property crimes fell as
lockdowns and Covid restrictions sent people home and shuttered
businesses, reducing the opportunity for offending. Simultaneously,
grand theft auto rose as cars and streets became less attended.
Violence, meantime, spiked last summer, a trend likely driven by anti-police protests and ensuing de-policing.
Property crime might have risen, too, except that concurrent policy
pressures kept opportunities for offending low while funneling trillions
of dollars in relief to individuals who might otherwise have turned to
theft amid the recession.
Inexplicably, Third Way’s analysts do not consider this explanation.
Instead, they reduce any increase in crime to the murder spike, waving
away the aggravated-assault increase (and the ample evidence of surging
gun violence). Murder may be up 30 percent, they argue, but property
crime is down; nothing to see here.
The report makes two other weak arguments. First, it assesses whether
Democratic governance had an effect on crime rates, but only by looking
at the partisan affiliation of governors. This approach not only
results in the amusing classification of Massachusetts as a red state
but also ignores the fact that most criminal-justice policy is set at
the local level.
Second, having ostensibly dispensed with any role played by last
summer’s protests in the violence surge, the authors insist that the
problem is likely attributable to some combination of Covid and gun
sales. They don’t provide evidence for this thesis; as my colleague
Robert VerBruggen has noted, the best available evidence suggests that spiking gun sales were not related to the homicide surge.
Does evidence even matter to Third Way? Rising crime is a political
inconvenience to the center-left think tank. Thousands of people were
murdered last year. Thousands more were irretrievably wounded,
physically and mentally, by the scourge of gun violence. It’s worth
debating what caused the problem and how we can address it—but denying
that the problem exists, especially under the cover of weak statistics
and analysis, isn’t helpful.
City Journal is a
publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a
leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the
magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).DONATE
A day before an ISIS attack killed 13 Marines in Kabul, President Joe Biden declared
cybersecurity “the core national security challenge we are facing.”
Cybersecurity is critical. But with the Taliban retaking Afghanistan
after being routed by the U.S. military two decades ago, calling it the
“core” national security challenge of our time was bizarre. Still,
Biden’s August comments were an improvement from June, when the
president declared climate change the greatest threat to American security.
You would think that the commander in chief responsible for one of
the biggest foreign policy blunders in decades would choose his words
more carefully. But that’s not how his party tends to operate these
days. George Orwell warned of the dangers of imprecise political speech
in his seminal essay “Politics and the English Language.”
The problem, in Orwell’s telling, is that “political speech and writing
are largely the defence of the indefensible.” Political speakers reach
for muddled, vague language to sell the public on their indefensible
policies. This is bad enough, but it presents a broader issue because
“if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”
Orwell’s diagnosis is as true in America today as it was when he
wrote those words 75 years ago. And while both political parties are
guilty of indulging in bad rhetoric that corrupts policy, Democrats are
the more frequent and more serious offenders, largely because linguistic
manipulation is central to so many progressive political ideas.
Twentieth-century progressives, for example, were enamored with philosopher William James’s idea of “the moral equivalent of war.” In his 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson declared
“an unconditional war on poverty,” inaugurating an era of U.S. leaders
declaring war on concepts. More than a decade later, President Jimmy
Carter directly quoted James in a speech
calling the energy crisis the “moral equivalent of war.” By now, we’ve
seen the fallout of the twentieth century social policy’s moral
crusades. As Charles Murray shows in Losing Ground,
poverty rates began climbing in the 1970s, despite the expansion of
government power and spending inaugurated by Great Society antipoverty
programs. Medicare, another campaign in the War on Poverty, is projected to run out of money by 2026.
Democrats today don’t speak in such martial terms as their
mid-century predecessors, but the broadness of their vision and
goals—and the language they use to describe them—is a contributing
factor in spreading already-ineffective federal agencies even thinner.
In addition to a resurgent Taliban and the global challenge presented by
an increasingly aggressive China, the Department of Defense must tackle climate change. With inflation rising, members of the congressional Squad want
the Chairman of the Federal Reserve to focus “on eliminating climate
risk and advancing racial and economic justice.” And the Centers for
Disease Control, whose botched coronavirus response shows that it can barely handle its core mandate, was temporarily given power over rent and evictions nationwide.
Orwell was right to point out that language can corrupt thought.
Since thinking and speaking are the central tasks of politics, language
can also corrupt governance. When all hot-button issues become the
purview of every facet of government, pesky considerations like
specialization or separation of powers fall by the wayside.
Intentionally or not, Democrats’ political rhetoric is moving us
closer to rule by total bureaucracy. Congress will soon vote on a $3.5
trillion “human infrastructure” bill, Biden’s plan to launch Great
Society 2.0. Lumping together everything from free college to
electric-vehicle subsidies and tax hikes under the “infrastructure”
label, the package exemplifies the blurring of crucial distinctions.
We needn’t proceed down this path. Rather than blend all our
priorities together into an expensive, unaccountable policy monolith,
politicians should get specific. Let the Defense Department work on
national security and leave climate change to the EPA. Let the CDC focus
on infectious diseases and leave rental-assistance matters to the
Department of Housing and Urban Development—or, better yet, to state
governments. Our leaders won’t solve all the country’s problems by
speaking more clearly about policy issues. But they won’t make much
headway until they do.
Tim Rice is the associate editor of the Washington Free Beacon.
City Journal is a
publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a
leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the
magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).DONATE
A former Wall Street Journal correspondent, Asra Q. Nomani
is an author, codirector of the Pearl Project, cofounder of the Muslim
Reform Movement, and vice president of strategy and investigations at
Parents Defending Education. She spoke with City Journal associate editor Daniel Kennelly.
Could you tell us about Thomas Jefferson High School, Fairfax
County Public Schools’ changes to the admissions process, and what the
Coalition for TJ is trying to accomplish?
The battle over admissions to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, ranked the number one school
in the United States, is a battle for the American Dream. It’s a
struggle to protect the ideas of merit, hard work, and educational
excellence. A year ago, in summer 2020, a brave group of mostly
immigrant parents, with names like Yuyan Zhou, Suparna Dutta, and
Himanshu Verma, formed Coalition for TJ
to defend not only our children’s school but also America against
ideologues and activists intent on destroying the core of education and
excellence in this nation.
Like the parents of many other students and alumni of TJ, I came to
the United States as an immigrant. My family arrived from India in the
1960s, with dollars to our name. About seven of ten TJ students are of
Asian descent, about two of ten are white, and about one of ten is
black, Hispanic, or multiracial. We all agree that that last number is
too low, but we disagree about how to increase it. At Coalition for TJ,
we believe that the school system must address its decades of failure
and fix the pipeline to TJ, one that our families also struggled to
traverse.
Unfortunately, in the name of “social justice,” bureaucrats and
activists decided, in December 2020, to replace TJ’s merit-based,
race-blind admissions with a “holistic” process that is essentially a
subjective popularity contest and a zip-code quota system.
What effect has the elimination of the merit-based admissions
test had on the makeup of this year’s class? Who are its beneficiaries?
School district officials announced that, as a result of their new admissions system, they had slashed the percentage of Asian students admitted to TJ to 54 percent this year, from 73 percent last year. The percentage of blacks and Hispanics increased—as it also did for white students.
This is a purge against Asian-American students by Fairfax County
Public Schools. The school district illegally made race a factor in the
decisions.
This spring, the Pacific Legal Foundation filed a federal lawsuit
against the Fairfax County School Board, arguing that the new admission
standards violate our children’s constitutional right to equal
protection. We go to court on Friday, September 17, for initial
proceedings. This past May, U.S. District Judge Claude Hilton rejected the school district’s request
to dismiss the case. “Everybody knows the policy is not race-neutral,”
he declared, “and that it’s designed to affect the racial composition of
the school.”
Our battle in northern Virginia is happening elsewhere, too—in San Francisco, New York City, and Boston.
Under the cover of fighting against discrimination and injustice,
activists are launching a new era of discrimination and injustice. It’s
up to parents to stand up against this abuse of power.
You’re involved with another group, Parents Defending
Education, aimed at combating political indoctrination in the classroom.
Could you tell us about that work?
The fight at my son’s school made an accidental educational activist
out of me. It connected me with amazing parents around the country.
Earlier this year, I joined forces with Nicole Neilly, Erika Sanzi,
Marissa Fallon, and other mothers and fathers to launch Parents Defending Education
to help empower other parents, expose the indoctrination that is
happening in schools, and engage with leaders to restore education. This
puts us in the crosshairs of a well-funded, well-organized network of
activists, ideologues, and academics who are hell-bent on “disrupting”
education by infusing schools with their political and ideological
agendas. These activists are pitting students against each other by
dividing them into categories of “oppressed” and “oppressor,” separating
students based on race, and creating a new hierarchy of human value
that is bigoted, cruel, and racist.
What’s at stake in this battle?
We are in an existential struggle for the future of our country’s
children—and the future of America. On the twentieth anniversary of the
9/11 attacks, let me give you an example of how this threat plays out.
On August 27, the Virginia Department of Education posted a webinar
on its official YouTube channel, in which a local educator, Amaarah
DeCuir, a lecturer at American University, instructed teachers not to
call the 9/11 hijackers “terrorists” but instead to call them
“extremists,” without any discussion of Islamic extremism. She also
advised them to avoid any discussion of “American exceptionalism,”
instructing them instead to focus on “anti-Muslim racism.” As a Muslim reformer, I call this woke-washing.
She said, “We’re also not going to reproduce what’s understood as
American exceptionalism—this understanding that America is a land at the
top of a beautiful mountain and that all other countries, nations, and
people are less than America.”
Parents in Virginia shared the video with us at Parents Defending
Education, expressing deep concern about the historical revisionism in
the lesson guidelines and the insensitivity of the speaker and the state
agency to the history of the 9/11 attacks. After we pushed back, the
Virginia Department of Education removed the webinar from its official
YouTube channel. But the agency is still sharing DeCuir’s PowerPoint
presentation as part of its “EdEquity VA” webinar series. And at a
recent Fairfax County school board meeting, board member Abrar Omeish
recommended that the school district’s chief diversity officer use
DeCuir’s recommendations to guide lessons about 9/11. Omeish then voted
against a resolution honoring the victims of 9/11. Her father is a
leader at the local mosque, called the “9/11 mosque,” where the hijackers prayed. Parents, including me, watched these remarks, horrified.
In the hall, a mother stood up and yelled, away from the microphone, “It’s a sham!”
On this issue, too, we sounded the alarm, sharing the video of the
board member’s disturbing arguments. And we shared the voice of the
parent. We must give parents not just the microphone but a bullhorn.
This is a fight for America itself. We all need to stand up and raise
our voices.
City Journal is a
publication of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (MI), a
leading free-market think tank. Are you interested in supporting the
magazine? As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, donations in support of MI and City Journal are fully tax-deductible as provided by law (EIN #13-2912529).DONATE
Perhaps more relevant, that foregone economic growth would translate
into more than $10,000 of lost compensation per job. And a lifetime drop
in living standards of more than 4 percent for younger people. And these numbers are based on research by the Congressional Budget Office, which is hardly a bastion of libertarian analysis. The Biden White House has a different perspective.
How different? Well, the President actually claims that expanding the burden of government won’t cost anything. I’m not joking. Here are some excerpts from an article in the Washington Post by Seung Min Kim and Tony Romm.
President Biden promised Friday that his sweeping
domestic agenda package will cost “nothing” because Democrats will pay
for it through tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations… The remarks
were an attempt by Biden
to assuage some of the cost concerns pointedly expressed by the
moderate Democrats about the size of the legislation… The total spending
outlined in the plan is $3.5 trillion… “It is zero price tag on the
debt we’re paying. We’re going to pay for everything we spend,” Biden
said in remarks from the State Dining Room at the White House.
Biden’s strange analysis has generated some amusing responses. For instance, Gerard Baker opined in the Wall Street Journal about Biden’s magical approach.
…this is a novel way of estimating the cost of something.
That eye-wateringly expensive dinner you had last week didn’t really
cost you anything because you paid for it. …You could have used the
money to invest
in your children’s college fund. You could have paid off some of your
credit card bill, the debt on which has quadrupled in the last year. But
you chose instead to blow it on a few morsels of raw fish and a couple
of bottles of 1982 Château Lafite Rothschild. Don’t worry, It didn’t
cost you anything.
Biden and his team definitely deserve to be mocked for their silly argument.
For all intents and purposes, they want us to believe that there’s no downside if you combine anti-growth spending increases with anti-growth tax increases – so long as there’s no increase in red ink.
But there’s actually a fiscal theory that sort of supports what the White House is saying.
Capital (saving and investment) is a key driver of productivity and long-run growth.
Budget deficits divert capital from the economy’s productive sector to government.
Budget deficits raise interest rates, reducing incentives for investment.
For what it’s worth, all four of those statements are correct.
But the theory is nonetheless wrong
because it elevates one variable – fiscal balance – while ignoring
other variables that have a much bigger impact on economic performance.
For instance, the Congressional Budget Office at one point embraced this approach – even though it led to absurd implications such as growth being maximized with tax rates of 100 percent.
The White House today is basically embracing the IMF’s “austerity”
argument that deficits/surpluses are the variable that has the biggest
impact on growth.
P.S. Folks on the left must get whiplash because some days they embrace the Keynesian argument
that deficits are good for growth and other days they argue that a big
expansion of government will have zero cost because there is no increase
in the deficit.
P.P.S. The folks on the right who focus solely on tax cuts also are guilty of elevating one variable while ignoring others (humorously depicted in this cartoon strip).
The federal government’s insatiable appetite for spending has left
politicians casting about for untapped revenue sources. Enter President
Biden’s tax plan, which contains a death tax on the middle class dressed
up as a capital gains tax on the rich. Having squeezed from the rich
about as much as they are likely to get, politicians are now gunning for
the rest of us.
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren get good headlines when they call
for taxing billionaires’ wealth. But, even if a wealth tax were
constitutional (it isn’t), and even if politicians taxed 100% of US
billionaires’ wealth (they won’t), and even if the billionaires could
sell trillions of dollars in assets for full market value (they can’t),
politicians still wouldn’t collect enough to fund their profligate
spending. US billionaires’ combined $4.2 trillion wealth would fund the federal government’s 2021 budget for less than eight months. And at the end of that eight months, there’d be no more US billionaires.
What politicians know, but won’t say, is that the middle classes are
the great untapped revenue source. What the middle classes lack in
income, they more than make up for in numbers. Before taxes and
transfers, the average household in the middle income quintile earned $77,000
and the average household in the upper middle quintile earned $117,000.
Combined, those households earned $4.8 trillion in 2018. That’s twice
what the top 1% earned. Meanwhile, the top 1% paid an average effective
federal tax rate of 30.2 percent, versus 12.8 percent for middle income
and 16.7 percent for upper middle income households.
The President emphasizes that his plan closes an arcane loophole,
“stepped-up basis,” that has allowed billionaires to get away with
paying less taxes. He and his supporters keep saying “capital gains,”
and “billionaires,” but the fact is that the proposal for closing that
loophole will hit middle class homes, farms, and businesses.
Under long-established law, an heir owes capital gains taxes when the
heir sells, not inherits, assets. So, a family home, farm, or business,
passed down from generation to generation, only creates a tax liability
when the heir at the end of the line finally sells it. Even then, the
heir pays tax on the increase in value from when the heir inherited the
asset to when it was sold. This is “stepped-up basis,” and it partially
compensates for the fact that capital gains taxes don’t adjust for
inflation. For example, under current law, a home purchased for $50,000
in 1980 and sold for $150,000 in 2021 could be subject to more than
$20,000 in capital gains taxes even though, adjusted for inflation, the
home was sold at a loss. Stepped-up basis attempts to eliminate this
inflation bias by resetting the clock on the asset’s value at
inheritance.
Biden’s plan would remove the stepped-up basis, meaning that heirs
would pay tax on the increase in value from when the ancestor purchased
the asset to when the heir sold the asset. For businesses passed down
through multiple generations, this can significantly magnify the tax
bill. And in a one-two punch, Biden’s plan also requires that heirs pay
the tax when they inherit assets, not when they sell them. So rather
than the family home, farm, or business being taxed when the last heir
finally sells it, it would be taxed each time it moved from one
generation to the next.
The President insists on calling this a “capital gains tax,” but the
combination of these two pieces – removal of stepped-up basis and
pay-at-inheritance – causes the tax to behave exactly like a death tax.
It is a death tax aimed squarely at the middle classes.
To mollify farmers, the President has said that heirs can delay
paying the tax provided they continue to work the farm. This is scant
help as the heirs will still be subject to the increased tax. The plan
merely allows them to pay later. To throw a bone to family businesses
and people who have lived frugally to save for their children, Biden’s
plan offers a $1 million exemption.
But passing this new tax plan will be much harder than ratcheting
that $1 million exemption down after the law is passed. Once the new
plan is in place, expect that $1 million exemption to start shrinking
until the new tax hits everyone. For evidence, look at the history of
the federal income tax, which politicians at the time promised would
apply only to “the rich.” Once instituted, it took less than a decade
for politicians to extend the federal income tax all the way down to the
poor.
The President’s tax plan is a death tax on the working class dressed
up as a capital gains tax on the rich. Say what they will about using
the tax code to reduce income inequality, the fact is that
multi-trillion dollar deficits have made politicians desperate for new
sources of tax revenue. And, having eaten the rich, they’re now turning
their eyes to the middle class.
James R. Harrigan is Senior Editor at AIER. He is also co-host of the Words & Numbers podcast.
Dr. Harrigan was previously Dean of the American University of
Iraq-Sulaimani, and later served as Director of Academic Programs at the
Institute for Humane Studies and Strata, where he was also a Senior
Research Fellow.
He has written extensively for the popular press, with articles
appearing in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, U.S. News and World
Report, and a host of other outlets. He is also co-author of Cooperation
& Coercion. His current work focuses on the intersections between
political economy, public policy, and political philosophy.
Get notified of new articles from James R. Harrigan and AIER.
Antony Davies is the Milton Friedman
Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education, and
associate professor of economics at Duquesne University.
He has authored Principles of Microeconomics (Cognella),
Understanding Statistics (Cato Institute), and Cooperation and Coercion
(ISI Books). He has written hundreds of op-eds appearing in, among
others, the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, New York
Post, Washington Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, US News, and the
Houston Chronicle.
He also co-hosts the weekly podcast Words & Numbers. Davies was
Chief Financial Officer at Parabon Computation, and founded several
technology companies.
Get notified of new articles from Antony Davies and AIER.
Earlier this week, I wrote
about a plea deal reached by far-left, Soros-backed Fairfax County
prosecutor Steve Descano under which a serial child molester whose
offenses carry a life sentence would instead receive only 17 years. A
Fairfax County judge reluctantly accepted the deal but called it
“woefully inadequate” and said the prosecutors had “victimized” the
child in question.
Now a second Fairfax judge has done what the first was unwilling to do. Judge Randy Bellows has rejected a Descano plea deal.
In this one, a man indicted for raping a girl four times during a
period in which she was in fifth-through-seventh grade would have
received only a three-year prison sentence.
Three years for four instances of raping a minor. That’s justice, George Soros style.............To Read More...
This commentary is part of a series on the rogue prosecutors
around the country who have been backed by liberal billionaires such as
George Soros and Cari Tuna and the threat those prosecutors pose to
victims and others alike. Previous entries in the series have focused on
prosecutors in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Boston.
One of the most disturbing features of rogue prosecutors is their
utter disregard for real victims of crime and for victims’ rights under
state law.
It’s one of the cancerous features of this radical new breed of prosecutors.
As we discussed in our major paper on the subject here, George Soros-backed
rogue prosecutors also: (1) usurp the constitutional power of the
legislative branch by refusing to prosecute entire categories of crimes;
(2) abuse their offices; (3) enable crime to explode under their watch;
and (4) harm the very people they pretend to care about the most,
including low-income and minority individuals............To Read More...
Editor's Note: This is a take on Abbot and Costello's Who's on First comedy routine. Make sure to read the whole thing!RK
By Mark Hyman
Bud: I got my vaccination. I am now protected from the virus.
Lou: Not me. No one’s gonna jab a needle in my arm.
Bud: You must.
Lou: Why?
Bud: To protect me.
Lou: From the virus?
Bud: Yes.
Lou: But I thought you said you were vaccinated.
Bud: I am.
Lou: You’re protected?
Bud: Correct.
Lou: From the virus?
Bud: Yes.
Lou: So, I don’t need a vaccination.
Bud: But you do.
Lou: Why?
Bud: To protect me.
Lou: I thought you were vaccinated.
Bud: I am.
Lou: And the vaccination protects you?
Bud: It does.
Lou: So, I don’t need to get vaccinated to protect you because you’re
already protected from the virus by the vaccination you already got.
Bud: No, you must get the vaccination to protect me from the virus.
Lou: You mean the vaccination doesn’t work?
Bud: It does work.
Lou: If the vaccination works and you’re protected from the virus
because you already got the vaccination then it doesn’t matter if I
don’t get vaccinated.
Bud: But it does matter. Because if you don’t vaccinated you can give me the virus.
Lou: Let me see if I have this straight.
Bud: Okay.
Lou: You got the vaccination?
Bud: Yes.
Lou: The vaccination protects you from the virus?
Bud: Correct.
Lou: So, it doesn’t matter if I don’t get the vaccination because you’re already protected from the virus?
Bud: No.
Lou: Are you telling me the vaccination doesn’t work?
Bud: No, I’m telling you the vaccination does work.
Evergrande
Group, China’s second-largest property developer, has captured
international headlines for the last two weeks. Aside from the Federal
Reserve, Evergrande is perhaps the biggest and most consequential
story in the global financial markets today as its pending demise could
lead to a tsunami stretching from Beijing to London to New York City.
The crisis unfolding at Evergrande
is unfolding by the hour, with more revelations coming out, which has
not boded well for the company’s stock after cratering 49% so far this
month. So, let’s try to break down some of the key developments.
Evergrande is Grand No More?
There
is a lot of activity occurring between major investment funds and
Evergrande. While Credit Suisse dumped its exposure last year because of
risk, and Chinese Estates may follow suit, others are pouring into the
company. Fund managers, including UBS, BlackRock, and HSBC, have
increased their Evergrande dollar bond holdings, signaling that the most
indebted developer on the globe, with $300 billion in liabilities, is a
buy.
According to The Wall Street Journal,
an auditor gave the company a clean bill of health despite the swelling
levels of debt. In its annual report, the auditor gave the organization
a thumbs up as it was offering investors and consumers discounts to
ensure sales were rising throughout the coronavirus pandemic. As it
tried to sustain itself, Evergrande borrowed too much, but the auditor
did not see anything wrong with the balance sheet. It looks like
Evergrande might have missed its $83.5 million coupon payment. From CNBC
to Bloomberg News, reports suggest that holders of U.S.
dollar-denominated debt, worth $2.03 billion at face value, “gave no
signs” that they were paid the interest owing.
In the end, will
Beijing bailout Evergrande? The consensus in the international markets
is that China will not come to Evergrande’s rescue. However, the
government could implement measures to prevent a contagion event,
including the recent $16 billion injection into the financial system and
ensuring the company used its funds to put toward building properties
instead of paying creditors.
The Tapering, Coming Soon
The
Federal Reserve completed its two-day Federal Open Market Committee
(FOMC) policy meeting on Sept. 22. The powwow’s conclusion left everyone
in suspense and wanting more, much like a theatrical trailer for the
next Bulldog Drummond feature. The central bank’s statement
confirmed that interest rates would remain near zero and that the
institution was monitoring events unfolding in the U.S. economy.
However, what everybody wanted to hear about was the t-word: tapering.
Speaking to reporters after the event, Fed Chair Jerome Powell verified that an official announcement of tapering
of its $120-billion-a-month quantitative easing (QE) would be coming
“soon” – perhaps as early as the November FOMC get-together. It is
estimated that the pandemic-era stimulus and relief efforts could be
decreased to as low as $15 billion per month by spring 2022.
“While
no decisions were made, participants generally viewed that so long as
the recovery remains on track, a gradual tapering process that concludes
around the middle of next year is likely to be appropriate,” said
Powell, whose term is winding down, in his post-meeting news conference.
One
significant component of the monthly session was the revision downward
for key economic measurements in 2021. For example, in June, the Fed
forecast 7% growth for the gross domestic product (GDP). This time, it
was adjusted to 5.9%. The unemployment rate was also changed upward,
going from 4.5% in the June projection to 4.8% in the September meeting.
The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index was increased
from 3.4% to 4.2%. Whatever the case may be, if the Fed is removing the
spiked punch bowl from the table, investors are not happy, possibly
explaining the rush out the door.
Goodbye, Bulls?
Have the monumental gains in the stock market
from the last 18 months been exhausted? Investors seem to think so as
they take the money and run to their local banks and deposit cash in
their accounts.
For the first time in 2021, there was net selling
of equities in the week ending Sept. 22, according to new data from the
Bank of America Global Investment Strategy. The figures show that net
flows into international equity funds slipped into negative territory,
transitioning from $45 billion to -$28.6 billion. This represented the
largest outflow from U.S. stocks since February 2018. Investors were
hitting the sell button across the board: energy (-$200 million),
technology (-$1.2 billion), U.S. large-cap (-$14.2 billion), and retail
(-$1 billion). So, where is the money going? Here is a breakdown of the
allocations during this period:
Cash: $39.6 billion
Bonds: $10 billion
Emerging Markets: $2.6 billion
Japan: $500 million
Gold: $84 million
Despite
the rough week of trading, the Sept. 21 meltdown in the financial
markets may not be an isolated incident. Indeed, there might be more
volatility on the way, particularly if the Federal Reserve slows down
the printing press and blood fills the asphalt jungle on The Street. So,
is it time to take the 105% gains in meme stocks and transfer the
profit into a low-rate savings account?
Many
have observed the reality that hard-left social justice warrior types
approach their politics much in the same way a religious person views
his or her faith. Comparisons between woke ideology and religion have been abundant among critics of the left’s critics.
This
assessment seems valid given that many on the left have displayed a
religious fervor in the way they practice – and enforce – their most
cherished beliefs about culture and politics. However, while proponents
of woke theology might resemble followers of many of the world’s major
religions, their faith system differs in one critical area: Redemption.
Paths to Redemption
Almost
every major religious tradition includes the notion of redemption, a
way to have one’s sins absolved. It is part of the person’s spiritual
journey to reach God and avoid being separated from Him. It is often the
subject of fiery debate among various faiths – and has been for
millennia.
Christianity
posits that redemption occurs when one realizes one’s fallen state,
unable to atone for their sins. One becomes a Christian by recognizing
the divinity of Jesus Christ and acknowledging that he sacrificed his
life on behalf of descendants of Adam and Eve who doomed mankind to a
fallen existence when they sinned against God in the Garden of Eden. One
is redeemed through Christ’s blood; spilled for their sake.
Islam
argues that redemption comes from “tawba,” which is translated as
“repentance” and living life as a good Muslim. The Qu’ran states that
“Allah loves those who are constantly repentant and loves those who
purify themselves.” Muslims take seriously the words of Allah, who says,
“But indeed, I am the perpetual forgiver of whoever repents and
believes and does righteousness and then continues in guidance.”
The
Jewish tradition is similar in that redemption is also predicated on
the notion that one’s actions are what lead to being redeemed. According
to Cambridge Core:
“In rabbinic Judaism, redemption
is conceived of as an “earned response” – human beings merit redemption
through their good deeds and through their “repentance.” The dialectic
of the covenantal bond, of God as a member of the community in relation,
is nowhere more evident than in the repentance – redemption sequence.”
No Redemption In Wokeism
The
idea of redemption seems to have no place in the woke faith. Indeed, it
seems to be frowned upon by those purporting to stand up for the rights
of the oppressed. This tendency can be easily seen in the hard left’s
embrace of cancel culture. People have seen it in action over and over
again – especially during the past five years.
You know how it
goes: A person – especially a high-profile individual – comes under fire
over offensive social media posts or for something said years ago.
Perhaps it was an off-color remark regarding sexuality. It could be an
ignorant comment about a minority group. It could be any utterance that
violates the precepts of wokeism. Once these statements are unearthed,
the Cancel Culture Community swiftly metes out punishment. The social
media mobs aggressively attempt to destroy the person’s career and
besmirch their reputation.
For
celebrities, these attacks might not be as devastating. But when it
happens to an ordinary person, it could potentially destroy their
livelihood. This can be seen in the case of Mark and Patricia McCloskey,
who became subjects of the left’s ire after they brandished
firearms as Black Lives Matter protesters broke into their gated
community and marched in front of their home. Leftists took to Yelp! to
give one-star ratings for their law practice and left reviews claiming
the couple was racist.
In wokeism, there is no element of
forgiveness if one publicly apologizes. Indeed, those belonging to the
woke Sanhedrin vociferously call for an apology that they know they will
discard, even if their target expresses genuine remorse. There is no
path to redemption for those who have transgressed against the Temple of
wokeism – and this is by design. This particular religion mandates that
its adherents completely destroy those who step out of line. It is a
belief system that favors threats of destruction over persuasion and
peaceful conversion.
For those on the hard-left who eschew the idea of civil conversation and rational debate, this precept works perfectly. By cowing
people into subservience, they hope to maintain supremacy over the
national political discourse. They believe forcing people to censor
themselves will make it easier for them to push the nation further
towards their idea of a Marxist utopia. Interestingly enough, they are
right. Leftist and right-wing authoritarians have protected their power
by not allowing the people to voice dissenting views. If those who don’t
want to live in the world the hard left seeks to bring about, they must
be willing to fight for the world they want.
One of the leaders of Black Lives Matter’s Greater
New York chapter slammed Mayor Bill de Blasio for the city’s vaccine
mandate, explaining the “mandate is racist and specifically targets
black New Yorkers,” in a statement to Fox News.
Chivona Newsome cofounded the Greater New York Chapter of Black Lives
Matter and ran as a congressional candidate for New York’s 15th
district in the 2020 election. The former Congressional candidate
blasted de Blasio’s vaccine mandate in a statement to Fox News.
“Although Mayor Bill De Blasio ran on progressives values, nothing in his tenure will attest to his campaign promises,” Newsome explained
to Fox. “The September 13th vaccine mandate is racist and specifically
targets Black New Yorkers. The vaccination passports are modern-day
Freedom Papers, which limit the free will of Black people.”
“The vaccination mandates infringe upon the civil liberties of the Black community,” she told Fox. “It’s
more than where we can dine or enjoy entertainment, it will result in
loss of income. As of Monday, September 27, Black health care workers
and educators will lose their jobs.”............To Read More.....
When did we become a nation of
socialist AOCs wearing “Tax the Rich” dresses to $35,000-a-ticket
celebrity galas, without mandatory masks, while being served by masked
servants—a now tired script from the Obama birthday bash crowd to the
grandees at the Emmys?
When did we discover that we must
listen to oppressed billionaire Oprah from her $90 million Montecito
estate commiserating with a billionaire Lebron or royal Meghan Markle
about the racist white establishment? Is there anyone in the recent
Washington intelligence and investigatory hierarchy who has not
lied or feigned loss of memory under oath—a low bar that nevertheless
excludes, among others, John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew
McCabe, Robert Mueller, or Peter Strzok?
Did anyone just five years ago
believe the following could possibly happen in America—and invoke almost
no popular outrage from a somnolent public?
Item: The Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, does not deny that: 1) he
deliberately aborted the legal chain of operational command—that is,
violated the law—by recalibrating established protocols for using
nuclear weapons in times of crisis. And he says his interventions were
based on his own diagnoses (after prompting from opposition leader,
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi) that the commander-in-chief was crazy, and
thus could be circumvented.
And 2), in freelancing style, Milley,
on more than one occasion, called the top figure of the Chinese
Communist People’s Liberation Army, General Li Zuocheng.
He reportedly announced that his own country was currently in crisis
(experiencing “messy” democracy), reassuring the Chinese that if he,
Milley, the newfound autokrator,
sensed there was any chance of hostile and aggressive action on the
part of his own country, then on his own initiative he would tip off the
Chinese in advance. And far from resigning or being fired for his
Strangelovian efforts, Milley would then be hailed as a hero by the
popular media and progressive civil libertarians. In other words, for
the Left, it is as if Burt Lancaster’s movie character, Air Force
General James Mattoon Scott, was the real hero of Seven Days in May.
Milley has also become the Zelig or
Forrest Gump of our times. He turns up at almost all our recent military
melodramas and disasters. Milley appears variously in the
photo-op/federal troops/tear-gas spoof, the virtue-signaled rumored
resignation, the talking referent in anonymously sourced books,
puff-piece op-eds, and backgrounder quotes, the Inspector Javert of
“white rage,” the student of How To Be An Antiracist, the Afghanistan progress reassurer, the “righteous” drone striker, the adjudicator between January 6 “coups” and 120 days of “penny packet protests” costing $2 billion-dollars in riot and arson destruction and 28 deaths, theArticle 88 violator, the reductio ad Hitlerum promulgator, and the underappreciated but rumored polymath bibliophile.
To understand Milley’s gambit, imagineAdmiral Ernest King,
some time in November 1941 secretly contacting his Japanese imperial
counterpart, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, to warn him and the Japanese high
command that Admiral King felt President Roosevelt was both too trigger
happy for a Pacific war, and was also increasingly infirm and unsteady.
And thus, King would step forward to
promise Admiral Yamamoto and the Japanese military grandees that if he
felt there was any possible aggressive or peremptory presidential order
against Japan, King would tip him off first.
Note that critical contemporaries had
complained both that Roosevelt was pining for a pretext for war with
Japan and that his closed circle had hidden many of his serious health
challenges from the public—and note also that the chances that a
President Roosevelt or Trump would have ever staged a preemptive attack
on a belligerent neutral were—absolutely zero.
Item: The United States
military in the middle of the night abandoned the largest air base in
Central Asia, after investing hundreds of millions of dollars in
retrofitting the vast complex, as part of a hasty end to a 20-year
presence in Afghanistan.
In the last few remaining hours of
our withdrawal, Americans would skedaddle to the airport, lose 13
soldiers to a suicide bomber, while guarding our final escape route,
retaliate for the killing by accidentally blowing up a civilian relief
worker and killing 10 of his family and friends including 7 children,
wait almost 2 weeks to disclose said disaster, abandon a $1 billion
embassy, dismiss 8,000 NATO allied troops in Afghanistan to fend for
themselves, leave behind for Taliban terrorists some $80 billion worth
of weaponry and training investment in their usage, fly into the United
States some 100,000 unvetted, unvaccinated Afghan refugees in the midst
of a pandemic, while leaving behind among the Taliban thousands of
Afghans loyal to the U.S. mission—and likely 100-200 Americans.
Is malleable General Milley in the
chain of command when he wishes to interrupt operational protocols about
nuclear weapons, or to call to warn the Chinese military, but then he
is not when he mysteriously becomes only a Joint Chiefs “advisor”
without any operation control of or responsibility for the greatest
military defeat and humiliation of the last half century?
Item: In the fiscal year
2021-22, how could an anticipated two million illegal aliens simply
swarm the border, illegally cross it, continue to reside in the United
States illegally, and do so in a time of a pandemic without either a
COVID-19 test or vaccination? Who has unilaterally decided that U.S.
executive officials could forsake their oaths to enforce existing laws,
and simply decide to nullify American immigration law?
Are we a neo-Confederacy in which the
nullification of federal law is now normal, whether at the border or in
some 550 sanctuary jurisdictions? Most of the hundreds of thousands of
illegal aliens have headed northward in response to the wink-and-nod
open borders advocacy of Joe Biden and his brag that he had stopped all
construction of the supposedly impractical replacement and new sections
of the border wall—whose current cessation point doubled as the start-off point of the current mass influx.
Item: The nominal head of the
COVID-19 administration task force has been forced to admit under oath
that he directed the U.S. government to route, through a close associate
and third-party medical group, hundreds of thousands of dollars of
American research funding to the Chinese Communist-controlled Wuhan
virology lab, the likely ground zero of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Yet Dr. Anthony Fauci would
strenuously deny under oath that such funding enhanced gain-of-function
virology research, despite clear evidence and agreement in the
scientific community that it did. Fauci, in addition, would concede that
for over a year he has denied any connection between the pandemic and
ongoing efforts at the Wuhan lab where the Chinese military played a
prominent role in overseeing viral research.
At various times during the pandemic,
Fauci would praise the role of the Chinese government in dealing with
the plague, dismiss initially the need for a travel ban to prevent
spread of the virus, urge Americans not to wear masks, to wear masks,
and at times even to wear two masks. And at 80 years of age, he would
become the revered COVID-19 icon who sought to protect us from the virus
that likely originated in a top-security Wuhan virology lab, possibly
the product of a human-engineered, gain-of-function experiment which was
partly funded through likely advocacy of—Dr. Fauci himself.
Item:The U.S. government will
mandate that all federal employees and soldiers must be vaccinated to
retain their tenures even though such a requirement of U.S. citizens
does not apply to the hundreds of thousands of aliens entering the
country illegally. Moreover, after the “science” has finally established
that naturally acquired immunity from prior COVID-19 infections is superior
to protection offered by vaccination, it nonetheless still requires
those with superior levels of immunity to be vaccinated.
The administration promised to
release from the military and fire from the government any soldier or
worker with natural immunity who refused to become vaccinated. If the
government’s position is that naturally acquired immunity is superior to
vaccinated immunity, but nonetheless it still requires additional
vaccinated immunity, will such a mandatory, double-indemnity policy also
require vaccinated Americans to get needed additional superior immunity through exposure to COVID-infection? Who
is better protected from the virus—those who recovered from COVID-19
(according to the CDC, 1 in 3, or over 100 million Americans were
infected) but are not vaccinated, or those vaccinated but who have never had COVID?
Item: As the U.S. national
debt edged toward $30 billion, as annual budgets continued to run over
$1 trillion in the red annually, as annual inflation is headed toward a per annum
increase of 6-8 percent, and as the U.S. economy faces historic
shortages of workers, in part because of generous unemployment stipends,
the Biden Administration unveiled the most dramatic growth in U.S.
spending and expansions of social services in the last half-century.
Is the idea that raising taxes even higher to pay for some of
the even more gargantuan spending means that it is not really spending
because the government is nearing the limits of realistic borrowing, and
now proposes to hike taxes to pay for a bit of the huge deficit
agendas?
Item: The president of the
United States now most often lectures the country on two themes: one,
for the rich to “pay their fair share,” when he proposes huge new
increases in taxes and spending; and two, “systemic racism” and the need
to address white privilege by reparatory action.
How then can it be that he reportedly
has used loopholes and then legal tax manipulation to have welched out
on some $500,000 of prior income taxes to shield his past, vast
multimillion-dollar income, no doubt some of it gained when, as the “big
guy” of Hunter Biden’s emails, he purportedly received “10 percent” of
his son’s multimillion-dollar chronic grifting?
And how can the president berate the
affluent for using their privilege to warp the system when his own son
is currently hocking bad, paint-by-numbers art to wannabe and mostly
foreign lobbyists seeking favors from the well-known Biden, Inc. quid pro quo apparat?
If the president is convinced of the
pathologies of white racism, might he first promise to cease and desist
from his serially racialist language in which he calls one of his
African-American subordinates “boy,” demeans black journalists with
put-downs such as “you ain’t black” and “junkie,” has called the former
president of the United States the first “clean” and “articulate” black
presidential candidate in history, revved up audiences with his racist
“Corn Pop” sagas in which mighty young Joe Biden took on inner-city
thugs with his custom-made chain, and warned a group of black
professionals that Mitt Romney would “put y’all back in chains”?
Was it from this font of such serial
racism, that young Hunter Biden, familiar with the use of the N-word
obscenity, agreed with his similarly racist procuress cousin (who warned
the libidinous Hunter “I can’t give you f***ing Asian sorry. I’m not
doing it”) that a “domesticated foreigner is fine. No yellow”?
Is the president simply warning
others who are not racists and tax avoiders about the dangers of bias
and not paying their fair share, since he knows from his and his
family’s own first-hand trafficking in racism and tax avoidance that
neither is good for the country?
What explains these insanities that
are insults to the American people’s intelligence? Did Americans go mad
because of the perfect storm of COVID-19, the quarantine, recession,
riots, looting and arson of 2020, the wild November election, the
post-election hysterias and riot, and the Biden-socialist Faustian
bargain?
Or do these symptoms of long-standing
illnesses arise from the media and university, where the twins of
incompetence and ideology ruined the critical consciousness of an entire
generation of young minds?
Or is the culprit the affluent,
bicoastal woke professionals, who, as both narcissists and
projectionists, feel the consequences of their own ideology should never
apply to themselves, while fobbing off their own sins onto others as a
way of squaring the circle of their own illiberality?
There is only one bright spot for the
moment: perhaps the Chinese, Russians, North Koreas, and Iranians see
us as so crazy, weird, and self-loathing that they have no idea what our
best and brightest nihilists might do. And for now, they all are trying
to determine the relative deterrence of a nuclear-armed, wacky
social-justice nation led by a president who, by any past measure of
what is required daily of the commander-in-chief, is not really
president at all.
About Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the
Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior
Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American
military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar
of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale
College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in
2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing
raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of
social trends related to farming and agrarianism.
He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won and The Case for Trump.
The compulsion to
find out whether the Wu Flu started in the Wuhan lab, and at whose
behest the research was done, has been almost as strong as the desperate
drive to stop anyone from finding the answer. On Sunday Morning Futures,
Maria Bartiromo discussed this with Devin Nunes, wishing for the
answer. Concurrently with watching the show, I opened my email and found
a link from Alex Berenson to the March 24, 2018 document outlining the gain of function research.
The document is a detailed description of
the proposed research, complete with a chart of expected milestones
(page 31). Page 10 has an easy, colorful chart (unlike the density of
the verbiage) showing us laypeople what they intend. Page 22 shows a
management plan, divided into Host-pathogen prediction and Intervention development stages. This one document is the “Holy S**t!” origin proof.
Notice that Peter Daszak wrote it. Besides being the head of EcoHealth Alliance, which proposedand arranged for
the research in Wuhan, he was the only U.S. representative in the WHO’s
investigation of...COVID’s origins—the same man oft-quoted as saying
there is “NO evidence” that the lab leak theory is true.
Daszak
has ties to Fauci. Before this research started, Fauci provided $600,000
to the Wuhan lab supporting it. That information was obfuscated, and
emails between the two were redacted, but finally released in July...........We now know beyond a doubt that the whole pandemic has been mishandled.
and is continuing to be mishandled. in the US and elsewhere. We also can
see alternative approaches: Norway,
for instance, just decreed normal life should resume, downgrading the
pandemic to an endemic problem, meaning something that will always be
with us, like the flu................To Read More....
The politically motivated and unprecedented overreaction to a virus with a 99.5% survival rate
was launched in March of 2020, thus unleashing what can best be
described as a once-in-a-century fiasco. Nineteen months later it is
impossible to look at the United States and the world and not conclude
that this country and much of the West is in the grip, not of a virus,
but of delusional madness and malevolence.
The governing elites have been so
successful in propagandizing and fear-mongering the populace in many
western nations, including the United States, that the virus has made
far too many people blind to the madness as they wallow in anxiety,
depression, and hopelessness -- deliberately and with forethought
brought about by these malevolent cabals.............To Read More....
It wasn’t exactly the welcome wagon for Speaker of the House Nancy
Pelosi in jolly old England, with protesters shouting, “Trump won” and
“Go back to Epstein Island” during the California Democrat’s visit to
the northern part of the country on Saturday. One man proclaimed, “The whole world knows that Donald Trump won the 2020 election, Nancy!” “Shame on you!” another person shouted.
Other cries included, “You’re not welcome here! Go home!”...........Pelosi, who was in the United Kingdom for a conference
of Group of Seven nations’ heads of parliament, used her visit to bash
former President Donald Trump and Republicans while making several
tone-deaf statements at odds with reality. Because nothing says class like disparaging your political opposition from foreign shores.
Nancy has a lot of class alright, only it's all low. However, she does have a compassionate feeling for the Republican party. Of course your first thought is: Really, you're kidding me, right? No, and here's why? She wants to save the Republicans from being cult like followers of Donald Trump. She pleads with Republicans to "take your party back", so, I have to assume she's really worried the Republican party will cease to exist otherwise. Right?
Then again........and this is just a passing thought mind you.... maybe what she really means she would really like to see them become Bushlike invertebrates once again and just talk the talk while blindly walking with the Democrats into the Church of Wokeness to destroy the Constitution, and America. Wow! Is that possible? Did I miss something?
Another demonstration of her deep sense of compassion is understanding the genocide being practiced by China against their Uighur Muslim population. It may however be unfortunate, but it's not nearly as important as climate change, since China is the overriding CO2 emitter of the world. Therefore, it's best to not upset the Communists in China over some silly human rights issue involving genocide. So, let's see if I understand this correctly. That which is criminal, provable and observable is less important to that which is mythical, unprovable and unobservable and constantly being shown up historically, and factually, as fraudulent junk science, is more important than the lives of all those human beings. Did I get that right? I didn't miss anything did I? Since China doesn't really care about her, or the world's views, on either of those issues it's good she said it in England, where according to this article, they don't care what she thinks either. However, we now know Nancy Pelosi doesn't know how to read! How do we know that? In spite of the fact the world, especially our western "allies" think Biden is an intellectual buffoon, and not only over the Afghanistan disaster, she thinks he's perfect and knows his foreign policy. She didn't mention the Americans he left behind and are still trapped there. Now all that's been in the news for many days, and apparently she's unaware of all that, so she must be illiterate? Right? Of course she could get her news from MSNBC, CNN, and other media collaborators who merely parrot her views so that would be an excuse for her ignorance. Otherwise, either she's illiterate or she's intellectually and morally corrupt. Is that possible? Did I define that properly? Answer: Yes, I defined that properly, because based on her abortion stands and her twisted logic, I think Nancy Pelosiis intellectually and morally corrupt to her core, and after defining this piece in this way I fail to see how anyone can disagree with the author when he says: More hot air was emitted from Pelosi during her appearance at
Cambridge.....It appears the 81-year-old Democrat’s relationship with the truth is
tenuous at best........ Nancy Pelosi is a disgrace, but her days in power is almost over. The House will turn over after 2022 and if she runs she's going to be a nobody for two reasons. She will not be speaker and I don't think the House Democrats will allow her to be minority leader or have any other position of authority in their caucus. However, in spite of her prostestations the Democrats will hold the House in the 2022 election, I don't think she really believes that and I don't think she's going to run again anyway. Either way, at 81 she will soon have the opportunity to explain her views on abortion, where hissy fits, logical fallacies, and refusing to answer honestly won't work.
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