Quote of the Day

By Rich Kozlovich

I've been quoting and linking Walter Williams articles for as long as I've been publishing Paradigms and Demographics. Why?  I have developed a list of  "Finest Thinkers in America Today", and he's one of them.

With all this "woke" stuff flying around, mostly a misrepresentation of race and America, I've decided to run a daily Walter Williams quote.  Am I also quoting him because he's black?  Yes, get over it!  If you can't get over it, move on!

The Most (Unintentionally) Accurate Tweet about Washington

June 29, 2020 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Every so often, I’ll notice a tweet that has some remarkable characteristic.

Best tweet about capitalism vs socialism.

The most depressing tweet.

Trump’s worst-ever tweet.

The best-ever counter-tweet.

The most-flattering tweet about Trump’s policy.

The best-ever tweet about inequality.

Today, we’re going to add to this collection.

The Democratic National Committee sent out a tweet back in April that seems like it should have been issued instead by the Libertarian National Committee.

My answer to the DNC’s question is “never.” 

That’s why I’m a libertarian.  Even when I grudgingly acknowledge that something is a legitimate function of government, I’m never tempted to say or think that “things seem to be going smoothly.”

That’s true when looking at what happens in Washington, what happens in the states, and what happens at the local level.  Needless to say, the DNC wasn’t trying to recruit libertarians. The goal was to condemn Trump’s governing style, specifically with reference to a story about the administration’s chaotic approach to the coronavirus.  And I certainly agree that Trump gives critics plenty of ammunition.  But there are plenty of similar episodes of malfeasance and incompetence during the Obama years. And the Bush years. And in every preceding White House.  

The bottom line (as suggested by my collection of “Government in Cartoons“) is that Washington at best is a clumsy oaf. And quite often is a bloated bully.

Hundreds of Streets and Schools are Named After a Black Nationalist Ally of the KKK

Daniel Greenfield June 28, 2020 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Boston and Dallas have one each. New York City has not one, but two Malcolm X boulevards, along with a playground. Washington D.C. has Malcolm X Avenue. The Los Angeles City Council renamed the intersection near the Bilal Islamic Center, Malcolm X Way.

These are a few of the hundreds of streets, schools, and assorted other civic infrastructure named after the black supremacist leader who worked together with the KKK and the American Nazi Party.

“I sat at the table myself with the heads of the Ku Klux Klan,” Malcolm X later admitted.

There's a Malcolm X statue in Harlem, and the racist leader's family home in Omaha is listed by the Park Service in the National Register of Historic Places even though he became famous preaching the Nation of Islam’s theology that white people are devils created by a mad scientist and would be killed by UFOs.

The Postal Service even came out with a stamp for a racial separatist who campaigned for a separate black country, and against racial intermarriage.

"Check up on these integration leaders, and you will find that most of them are either married to or hooked up with some white woman," Malcolm X ranted. “No black person married to a white person can speak for me!"

These racist beliefs made Malcolm X a natural ally of the KKK in fighting against civil rights.

In 1961, Malcolm X met with members of the Klu Klux Klan in Atlanta to work together on an alliance against the civil rights movement. The meeting was the result of secret diplomacy between Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad and Klan leader J.B. Stoner who would later be convicted of the bombing of the Bethel Baptist Church in Birmingham. While Muhammad and Stoner put on a public show of attacking each other to increase their stature, behind the scenes the NOI and KKK were allies.

Even as Klansmen bombed black churches like Bethel, they would leave the NOI’s mosques alone.

While Malcolm X would later blame this “conspiracy” on Elijah Muhammad, the NOI leader, the former Malcolm Little was a child of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which had previously allied with the Klan and praised Hitler.

“Between the Klu Klux Klan and the NAACP group, give me the Klan,” Garvey had once said.

Alliances between white supremacists and black supremacists would continue under Louis Farrakhan’s leadership of the Nation of Islam. These racist alliances now date back for at least a century.

Malcolm X and his Klan counterparts both agreed that there was a superior race that would defeat the inferior race. They both saw integrationists as their enemies and blamed the Jews for everything.

“The Jew is behind the integration movement, using the Negro as a tool,” Malcolm X told the KKK.

The man now honored as a civil rights leader also suggested that the Klan kill white civil rights activists, or as Malcolm X called them, “traitors who assisted integration leaders”

The murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner came three years later. Viola Liuzzo was killed the year after that. By then, Malcolm X had joined her as a casualty of his former hate group.

The great historical irony is that a black nationalist ally of the Klan who had fought the civil rights movement and encouraged the murders of men like Chaney and Goodman has become a definitive civil rights figure, while Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's march with MLK is airbrushed out of movies.

Malcolm X had never made any secret of his rabid anti-Semitism.

“Jews run the country,” he once declared.

While Malcolm X’s meeting with the KKK was briefly kept secret (though at least one of Little’s fellow Nation of Islam ministers had participated in a Klan rally), his flirtation with the American Nazi Party became very public that same year when Malcolm X delivered a racial separatist speech to an audience that included George Lincoln Rockwell and other members of his American Nazi Party.

Malcolm X introduced George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party, on stage, led a round of applause for the Neo-Nazi leader, and called him, “Mr. Rockwell.”

Behind the scenes, the NOI and ANP had worked out an agreement of “mutual assistance”.

Some will protest that Malcolm X rejected his racist views when he traded in the Nation of Islam and adopted mainstream Islam. And yet we are told that we must judge every historical figure, every statue and street name now being denounced as racist, for their worst moments, not their best ones.

There is an obvious hypocrisy in allowing Malcolm X to grow, but not any American historical figure.

Malcolm X did change, but he didn’t stop being a bigot. Instead he shifted from a racist and religious bigotry to an exclusively religious bigotry. The new Malcolm X could accept the men with blue eyes whom he saw while performing his pilgrimage to Mecca as long as they shared his Islamic religion.

As Andrew Bostom, the historian and author of The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism notes, during his pilgrimage, Malcolm X paid a visit to Hitler’s Mufti, who had lobbied Hitler to kill Jews, and met up with current leaders of the PLO, including Ahmed Shukeiri, who had called for throwing the Jews in the sea.

The year was 1964 and the PLO was not fighting to conquer the West Bank and Gaza, which had been seized by the Arabs in 1948, it was fighting to wipe out the Jews. “Those who survive will remain in Palestine, but I estimate that none of them will survive,” Shukeri would later warn Israeli Jews.

Malcolm X had gone from bonding with the KKK over their mutual anti-Semitism to bonding with a new bunch of Nazis over the mass murder of Jews.

Malcolm X's visit to Gaza took place under Egyptian hegemony, Shukeri was a Nasser puppet, and the civil rights leader was studying his new "moderate" Islam under the auspices of a totalitarian regime that was repressing Coptic Christians and plotting to kill millions of Jews.

The newly tolerant Malcolm X accused "Israeli Zionists" of practicing colonialism in Africa under the authority of their "Jewish prophets" and their "Jewish God". Like so many other antisemites, Malcolm X easily transmuted his old denunciations of Jewish financial dominance into Zionist financial control.

As a Nation of Islam member, Malcolm X had defended the hate group's anti-Semitism by denouncing the "Jews who have been guilty of exploiting the black people in this country, economically." As an Islamist, he raved that, “the number one weapon of 20th century imperialism is zionist dollarism, and one of the main bases for this weapon is Zionist Israel.”

In Malcolm X’s lazy antisemitic stereotype, the Jews were still using money to control black people.

Meanwhile just about every Islamist was controlling Malcolm X. Not only did Malcolm X study at Al Azhar University, the fountainhead of ugly Islamist bigotry, but the head of Saudi Arabia's Muslim World League and Muslim Brotherhood leader Said Ramadan were all teaching Malcolm about Islam.

The old Malcolm X had palled around with the KKK and junior Nazis. The new Malcolm X had finally found the real thing. The Saudis and the Muslim Brotherhood saw in Malcolm X an opportunity to bring down the Nation of Islam, whose beliefs had very little to do with the Koran, and to build up an Islamist presence in America. The Nation of Islam fought back and the power struggle killed Malcolm X.

Malcolm X had gone from the KKK to the Islamist networks that would spawn Al Qaeda and ISIS.

After a plane crash, Malcolm X had celebrated the death toll and declaimed, “Why can’t Allah slay crackers for the so-called Negro?”

The PLO would begin a major rash of airline attacks in a few years that would inspire 9/11.

The new Malcolm X was really no different than the old Malcolm X. What both incarnations had wanted was a separatist Muslim state. The old Malcolm X had admired Muhammad Ahmad, the Islamic leader of the Mahdiist Islamic State, who had responded to British efforts to suppress slavery with a brutal campaign by former slave traders that defeated the British forces and enslaved their wives and children.

"Mahdiism has re-established the slave trade, which is now in full vigour, and almost all those slaves who were liberated in the Government days have been sold again as slaves," Father Joseph Ohrwalder, a captured missionary documented while noting the booming demand for “black” slaves.

Malcolm X’s enthusiasm for a jihad for slavery might seem improbable, but so would his alliance with Nazis and the Klan. It was always tyranny, bigotry and repression that captured his imagination.

The former Little was drawn to Sudan, the gateway of the trade in African slaves to the Arab lands, and the launching pad for Islamist efforts to colonize Africa. While great efforts have been taken to portray Malcolm X’s conversion to Islam as an enlightening revelation of racial tolerance, the former racist had just signed on with an international theocratic movement that was beginning a global jihadist campaign.

Should American streets, schools, playgrounds and libraries be named after such a man?

If we are going to question the legitimacy of statues of everyone from Columbus to Jefferson, what possible reason could there be for leaving in place the legacy of a Klan ally and a vicious racist?

Celebrating Malcolm X shows that this is not about racism or slavery. It’s about racial supremacism.

You can ally with the KKK, party with the Nazis, and romanticize Islamic slavery as long as you’re a black nationalist. The Democrats, and their legion of corporate and media allies, can falsely claim that this is about racism. But it’s about the same racial supremacism that led Malcolm X to make common cause with the Nazis and the KKK. And then to study Islam with the murderers of Christians and Jews.

If they want to tear down statues of racists, then there’s one statue in Harlem they can start with

Malcolm X must fall.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

It Doesn't Matter Who Did or Did Not Own Slaves

June 29, 2020 By Lloyd Marcus

Ill-educated Black Lives Matter protesters are on a rampage tearing down monuments of American heroes that they believe owned slaves or were complicit with slavery. Their rage is the consequence of allowing anti-American socialists and communists to dominate public education for decades. Students have been filled with lies and distortions about American history.

It is good that properly educated adults have taken to the airwaves in an attempt to reeducate the dumbed-down mobs regarding the truth about America and her heroes.

I am a proud and grateful American who happens to be black. And frankly, I do not care who did or did not own slaves. What difference does it make that our founding fathers and other heroes were not perfect their entire lives? Descent people learn, become more enlightened and evolve throughout their lives. I cringe thinking about bad things I believed, said and did in my youth. Should my entire life be canceled? The Bible speaks of repentance and redemption.

The bottom line is that the flawed human beings who founded America created something extraordinary and wonderful based upon biblical principles. Eventually, slaves were freed, a black man was elected president and Oprah, a black woman, has earned $2.6 billion. America is the greatest land of opportunity on the planet for all who choose to pursue their dreams. Now, can we please move on? Leftists are hellbent on keeping us stuck in the ancient past.

It is absurd to pander to ignorant, pampered spoiled brats who demand that every extraordinary “white person” who founded and built our exceptional country be purged from history because they were not saintly enough to walk on water..............

David Horowitz made the excellent point that America did not invent slavery, America ended it.

Leftists are hellbent on instilling the lie in this country's blacks that we are not a part of the American experience; that we are somehow forever victims in a strange land which is not our home.

I feel no longing for Africa. My homeland is Baltimore, Maryland where I grew up enjoying Cal Ripken Jr., the Orioles, and the best crab-cakes on the planet. I could not care less who did or did not own slaves a ga-zillion years ago. ....................... ..To Read More....

DA charges violent protesters in Oklahoma City with 'terrorism,' 'rioting,' and 'assault'

June 29, 2020 By Thomas Lifson

The damage by Mayor Jacob Frey of Minneapolis, who withdrew police from his city's third precinct and allowed rioters free rein, extended across the nation. The message was clear: it was open season for violent thuggery as long as it was in the name of politically correct slogans like "black lives matter" and "antifascism." The toleration of CHAZ/CHOP in Seattle amplified the signal that there would be no legal consequences for lawlessness in the name of the correct causes.

A return to law and order, a situation in which people think twice before committing criminal acts while in mobs, will take longer, but it is finally underway. On the federal level, two New York City lawyers who allegedly aided a Molotov cocktail attack on police car face felony charges that could land them in prison for the rest of their lives. And now, on the local level, a district attorney is bringing grave felony charges against violent rioters.

"This is not Seattle," proclaimed Oklahoma County district attorney David Prater on Friday, adding, "We're not putting up with this lawlessness here" after pressing felony charges related to violent demonstrations there the last weekend in May. Nolan Clay writes in The Oklahoman: ...............Read more

Shutting down CHOP: Seattle's leftist mayor now up to her keister in alligators

June 29, 2020 Monica Showalter


Where do liberals get the idea that if you just talk nicely to warlords, expropriators, pirates, and invaders, they'll do what you say?  That's the approach Seattle's Trump-hating mayor, Jenny Durkan, took, and she's about to learn the hard way how that works, except that she doesn't learn. She called for the shutdown of CHOP, and its defiant and entitled denizens have since walked all over her, making her look like a fool.

Here's the miserable monument to her ineffectualness, according to local KING5:

Seattle officials said barriers around the "Capitol Hill Organized Protest" zone (CHOP) would be dismantled on Sunday morning, but the scene remains intact as of Sunday night.............

Here's her pathetic response:

Seattle has a long tradition of peaceful protest and advocacy for progressive change, and Mayor Durkan strongly supports those rights. Mayor Durkan will continue to listen to leaders in Seattle's Black community. She is working hard to translate the calls for change into real, tangible systemic changes to policing and all the other systems needed for strong and healthy communities. She has prioritized these as Mayor, with investments in housing, education, youth opportunity, and economic equity. She proposes investing an additional $100 million into the Black community...............

She still doesn't quite get that when someone says he's a warlord, believe him. Or that the CHOP doesn't have nice feelings about prosecuting criminals, which is derived from police activity, because, well, they are the criminals. And she still doesn't get it..........Whatever she does, it's a disaster for her.  Look for more foolish decisions from this, given her record of utterly stupid choices.

My Take - Another member in good standing of the Club For the Galacticly Stupid.   

Cartoon of the Day

Why Aren't We Outraged?

By Rich Kozlovich

This article will be another expansion on my regular coronavirus updates, which I've posted regularly in recent weeks.  I would think there would be, at very least, a modicum of outrage over the truth versus the hyperbole being promoted by a corrupt media.  Shockingly, there isn't!  In spite of the fact the vast majority of people I talk to, many of them wearing masks because they have to for their jobs, who believe this is all nonsense.  Oh, there are those who are panicked, make no mistake about that, but almost every one of the people I talked to agreed infectious diseases are a part of life, that people get sick, and people die, and it happens every year, and will happen every year hereafter.  But no one shut down the economy over it.

So that bodes well these two questions:

• Are we to shut down the economy and destroy people's lives every year from now on for every new infectious disease that strikes?   
• Are the rantings of a corrupt and hysterical media to be the criteria for deciding public health issues from now on?

I've posted much to show this "pandemic" is mostly media driven hysteria, and in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, we're accepting insanity versus reality, but here are the actual numbers.

The COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) keeps a running total of deaths and proven infections.  As of 5:30 AM on June 29, 2020 here are the coronavirus rates of infection and the rates of mortality based on a worldwide population of 7,800,000,000 and an American population of 330,000,000 using this internet calculator.

Here are the results:

• Worldwide infections, 10,154, 984. Infection rate, 0.1%.
• Worldwide deaths, 501,955 Mortality rate, 0.006%.
• Confirmed infections in the United States, 2,549,069. Infection rate, 0.7%
• United States deaths, 125,803. Mortality rate, 0.03%.

That number may have been  inflated by fraudulent reporting by as much as 25%.  Cooking the books here, and misrepresentation here, and it continues.

In his article, "When you want to scare the public into submission just assign deaths to a disease without proof", Jack Hellner notes:

The scare campaign around Covid 19 keeps chugging along, making things look as bad as possible, and probably worse than it really is.  

Make no mistake.  This isn't about public health. It's about control.  David Horowitz, a former communist activist, and son of communist activists parents, but now the noted conservative publisher of Front Page Magazine, knows well for which he speaks when he says:

"Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out"

Please note the substantial difference between the infection and mortality rates of coronavirus and past virus attacks.

• In 1968 the Hong Kong flu killed over 1,000,000 people worldwide. Worldwide population in 1968 was 3,534,000,000. The mortality rate was 0.3%! America lost 100,000 that year, and morality rate was 0.05%. 
• In 1957/58 the Asian flu, which originated in Guizhou, China killed up to 2,000,000 people in a worldwide population of 2,900,000,000 had a mortality rate 0.068%. America lost 116,000 people. The mortality rate was 0.07%. 

No one sought to shut down the nation then when the infection and mortality rates were higher. Why are we now?  Let's face it, in the past Americans understood these infections are a part of life, and also understood this is a crap shoot. As Don Sucher , in his article, Epidemics and mass panics, then and now, notes:

 "I have seen similar viruses simply worked through. Nineteen fifty-eight's, for instance, and even the H1N1 virus in 2009.Yes, people got sick, and yes, some died. But both were accepted as part of human life, thus human life continued."

I've seen these events in my life also, and everyone understood this:  Whether or not you got sick was a crap shoot, but that was no reason to destroy the nation's economy.  But until recently the nation wasn't filled with snowflakes and foolish young radicals being manipulated by old radicals with the goal of destroying the American identity, the American culture, the American economy and overturning the Constitution in order to impose a socialist state on a society of lemmings.

Taking something seriously is one thing.  Panicking over it is another.

 The nation is suffering from what  Anthony J. DeBlasi calls the Coronavirus Derangement Syndrome saying:

Again, coronavirus has been killing people forever, via aggravated colds and other serious respiratory infections. That it is suddenly necessary in some states for everyone to be told daily how many coronavirus deaths have occurred, without reporting deaths from other viruses – as though the comparison is not newsworthy – smells too strongly of deception.

In support of the oppressive restrictions damaging lives and livelihoods beyond calculation we are enjoined by experts like Anthony Fauci to respect the science and heed the authorities on the matter. Where have we heard such advice before? Well, from the “climate change” experts who peddle their doomsday scenarios. Could it be that “authorities” who draw their conclusions from “settled science” are actually clueless or, heaven forbid, lying?

Now we're finding out that these claims about asymptomatic coronavirus people, aren't really very infectious after all.  So, if that's true, and it seems that it is, why were we told they were in the past?   It's a lie that has been used to justify all this ridiculous masking and social distancing, and control of society.

Kevin Agorastos notes in his article, How the man who eradicated smallpox would have handled coronavirus:

Whether we realize it or not, we have all been part of a grand experiment. Never before have we had a national lockdown and mass quarantines of healthy people in response to a pandemic. Not during the 1918 Spanish flu, the 1957 Asian flu, or the 1968/69 Hong Kong flu. Even the concept of social distancing is a modern one. We have implemented many of those things before to varying degrees, but never on a national scale. The end result has had huge economic and social consequences.........

He goes on to state Henderson's views saying:

Masks should be worn primarily by those who work in hospitals. Studies have shown that surgical masks do little because the pores in the mask become blocked by moisture from breathing, and the airstream simply diverts around the mask. 

There are few data available for N95 or surgical masks outside a healthcare setting, and N95 masks need to be fit-tested to be effective. 

In short, Henderson’s strategy was to tough it out. Let the pandemic burn itself out, treat the sick, and work on developing a vaccine as quickly as possible. 

Henderson believed the best response to a pandemic is to let society function as normal. 

Strong political and public health reassurance is also necessary to ensure the needed medical care services are provided when needed. If either is seen to be less than optimal then a manageable epidemic could move toward catastrophe.

No one thinks reasonable methods shouldn't be implemented, but we're past reasonable and into twilight zone thinking, and is there a reason why?  The answer is historical.

It's the same of speculatory scare mongering tactics these people have always used, and it's based on leftist philosophy, not science.  Of course social distancing is totally unimportant if you were violently protesting!  In fact,  in New York protesters were in effect given "preferential treatment".  You couldn't go to church, but it was okay to be inches apart if you were protesting in an effort to "reform" the nation.  But a judge disagreed, finding Governor Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio were acting like monarchs.

Cuomo's judgement, and that of a lot of states governors, all of whom complain about Trump, are guilty of crimes against the elderly.   Let's try and get this right.  These leftist politicians are not concerned about public health.  This is just another media created crisis they're not going to let go to waste.

Cuomo is now complaining he's taking political heat for the fact that almost half of all the coronovirus deaths in New York linked to nursing homes.  Nursing homes he forced to take in coronavirus patients.  (and Here).  Furthermore, this post claims that some states had 77% of all their coronaviurs death were connected to nursing homes.  But they say they just follow the science.  Hogwash!

Let's try and get this right once and for all.  Epidemiology isn't science!   It's statistics, speculation, guess work.  All of which are components of science, but in themselves, none of them are science.  Science must be observable and repeatable.  Epidemiological projections are incapable of demonstrating either.  Only time, observation and the actual documentation of events represent science.

There are seven reasons why epidemiology isn't science listed in Steve Bigler's article, " A retired physician's take on epidemiologists."   And what it all comes down to is this:  Epidemiologists are academically anointed well paid crystal ball gazers, only their crystal balls are computer models, and just as unreliable.  But they're always going to make it worse than it is because if they make the numbers large, and they turn out small, no one blames them. If they make them small, and the reverse occurs, everyone blames them. Their goal is to be well paid while having "no personal accountability for the outcome. Nice work if you can get it!"

What will be the long term negative consequences to society and small businesses?  None of this bodes well for small businesses, the economy as a whole, and for the continued stability of society, and it shouldn't take a degree in economics to understand that.  

The Adverse Economic Consequences of Higher Tax Rates

June 28, 2020 by Dan Mitchell

The good news is that Joe Biden has not embraced many of Bernie Sanders’ worst tax ideas, such as imposing a wealth tax or hiking the top income tax rate to 52 percent..

The bad news is that he nonetheless is supporting a wide range of punitive tax increases.

• Increasing the top income tax rate to 39.6 percent. 
• Imposing a 12.4 percent payroll tax on wages above $400,000. 
• Increasing the double taxation of dividends and capital gains from 23.8 percent to 43.4 percent. 
• Hiking the corporate tax rate to 28 percent. 
• Increasing taxes on American companies competing in foreign markets.

The worst news is that Nancy Pelosi, et al, may wind up enacting all these tax increases and then also add some of Crazy Bernie‘s proposals.

This won’t be good for the U.S. economy and national competitiveness.  Simply stated, some people will choose to reduce their levels of work, saving, and investment when the tax penalties on productive behavior increase. These changes give economists the information needed to calculate the “elasticity of taxable income”.

And this, in the jargon of economists, is a measure of “deadweight loss.”

But now there’s a new study published by the Federal Reserve which suggests that these losses are greater than traditionally believed.

Authored by Brendan Epstein, Ryan Nunn, Musa Orak and Elena Patel, the study looks at how best to measure the economic damage associated with higher tax rates. Here’s some of the background analysis.

The personal income tax is one of the most important instruments for raising government revenue. As a consequence, this tax is the focus of a large body of public finance research that seeks a theoretical and empirical understanding of the associated deadweight loss (DWL). …Feldstein (1999) demonstrated that, under very general conditions, the elasticity of taxable income (ETI) is a sufficient statistic for evaluating DWL. …It is well understood that, apart from rarely employed lump-sum taxes and…Pigouvian taxes, revenue-raising tax systems impose efficiency costs by distorting economic outcomes relative to those that would be obtained in the absence of taxation… ETI can potentially serve as a perfect proxy for DWL…this result is consistent with the ETI reflecting all taxpayer responses to changes in marginal tax rates, including behavioral changes (e.g., reductions in hours worked) and tax avoidance (e.g., shifting consumption toward tax-preferred goods). …a large empirical literature has provided estimates of the individual ETI, identified based on variation in tax rates and bunching at kinks in the marginal tax schedule.

And here are the new contributions from the authors.

… researchers have fairly recently come to recognize an important limitation of the finding that the ETI is a sufficient statistic for deadweight loss… we embed labor search frictions into the canonical macroeconomic model…and we show that within this framework, a host of additional information beyond the ETI is needed to infer DWL …once these empirically observable factors are controlled for, DWL can be calculated easily and in a straightforward fashion as the sum of the ETI and additional terms involving these factors. … We find that…once search frictions are introduced, …DWL can be between 7 and 38 percent higher than the ETI under a reasonable calibration.

To give you an idea of what this means, here are some of their estimates of the economic damage associated with a 1 percent increase in tax rates.

As you peruse these estimates, keep in mind that Biden wants to increase the top income tax rate by 2.6 percentage points and the payroll tax by 12.4 percentage points (and don’t forget he wants to nearly double tax rates on dividends, capital gains, and other forms of saving and investment). Those are all bad choices with traditional estimates of deadweight loss, and they are even worse choices with the new estimates from the Fed’s study.

The political impact will be that “the rich” pay more. The economic impact will be less capital formation and entrepreneurship, and those are the changes that hurt the vast majority of us who aren’t rich.

March of the Credentialed Morons

June 28, 2020 By Clarice Feldman

1. Academic Disaster 

For at least the past two decades, our colleges and universities have devolved into leftist training camps where free speech is labeled hateful and induced leftist conformity is the order of the day. Even professors at the University of Chicago, famed for its free speech code, fear to speak out.

Mr. Cochrane wrote on June 15, “I spent much of my last few years of teaching afraid that I would say something that could be misunderstood and thus be offensive to someone. Many of my colleagues report the same worries.”

If that level of fear accurately describes the situation at the University of Chicago, where the university administration has deservedly won national attention for coming down clearly, decisively, and publicly on the “open debate” side of the campus speech wars, imagine just how bad things are in the rest of academia.

In a moment when black Americans fear being killed by police, the concern that tenured professors might be inconvenienced might seem trivial. The worry at Chicago, as described by Mr. Cochrane, was less that university administrators would, on their own initiative, rule speech out of bounds.

It was more that a student would lodge a grievance that would in turn generate an investigation that would then accumulate a momentum of its own -- with no due process. It could end with a teacher falsely labeled as a racist, one of the worst things a person can be called in contemporary America.......... To Read More.... 

Smackdown: Richard Grenell puts rabid leftist Ted Lieu in his place over new Russia hoax canard

June 28, 2020 By Monica Showalter

It's happening again. The left is out of arguments against President Trump so now it's recycling old ones.  In an anonymously sourced article, the New York Times reports that President Trump and his lieutenants knew all about a Russian bounty placed on the heads of American soldiers in Afghanistan.

This, while Trump knew all about it and still was inviting Russia's President Vladimir Putin to a G-7 and otherwise making nice with him. The idea was to make Trump appear indifferent to American lives on the front lines in the name of cozying up to Putin.

American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.

Just one problem: It wasn't true. 

And former acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell, has come out swinging, taking on far-left Rep. Ted Lieu, who bought into it hook, line and sinker...........Grenell, who's out of public office now but served as Trump's acting National Intelligence Director, would be in a position to know. His willingness to open the doors to transparency on the deep state's doings, enhances his credibility further.......the fact that he owes Trump nothing and can do what he likes makes his smackdown most credible of all...........

The left is just trying to paint the Russia target on Trump again,............. Call it what it is: Pathetic.
...... .Read more

All that bar-hopping and spring-breaking: Press ignores protests as source of new wave of COVID-19

June 28, 2020 Monica Showalter

With a new wave, or peak, of Chinese coronavirus cases shutting much of the country down again, and news getting out about how it's younger people being infected, the press is blaming bar-hopping and spring break travel. And in the case of the Washington Post, President Trump's rally in Arizona, too. Here's one account from the Washington Post:

Health officials are imploring young people to wear masks and practice social distancing as coronavirus transmission among younger Americans continues to drive record outbreaks in several states.

The pleas come as governors in Texas and Florida instituted new limits on bars and alcohol consumption to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus, citing the skyrocketing number of young people who are contracting it.

Anything to ignore the elephant in the room: raw, undistanced, unprotected, mass protests over the police-brutality death of George Floyd. The Washington Post actually excuses the protests.

Curiously, the new wave of cases among young people now coincides with the waves of unprotected protests and lootings - five-, ten-day incubation periods, meaning the cases were contracted right about when the protests and lootings were going on. Apparently, everyone was out bar-hopping, according to the press reports seen now. Yet the anecdotal evidence is everywhere:..........To Read More.....

Judicial Watch uncovers emails showing Ben Rhodes and aides joking about Benghazi lies

June 28, 2020 By Thomas Lifson

Judicial Watch once again has proven to be invaluable (donate here) in uncovering official perfidy. This time, its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has uncovered utterly appalling levity among top Obama foreign policy aides over their lies to the public about the September 11, 2012 attack on the Benghazi Consular Annex that took the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens, Information Officer Sean Smith, and two CIA operatives, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, both former Navy SEALs. Readers will recall that UN Ambassador Susan Rice, now touted as a vice presidential nominee for front man Joe Biden, went on five Sunday morning talk shows to lie about the attack and blame it on a YouTube video seen by a handful of people. Nine days later, the-Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes yucked it up with his crew.

Here is what Judicial Watch discloses about the emails (read them here) it brought to light:

It’s hard to keep your story straight if you’re making it up as you go along, which was the modus operandi of Obama fabricator Ben Rhodes.

The Justice Department released 80 pages of records showing top Obama White House officials scrambling to “evolve” its false claims that the September 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on U.S. Government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, began “spontaneously” in response to an anti-Muslim video on the Internet.

 The emails reveal top Obama White House official Ben Rhodes and Clinton State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan joking about being called “liars” and “leakers.”...........To Read More

CNN picked the wrong person to interview about police and BLM

By Thomas Lifson

In the case of Don Lemon interviewing former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, the answer is: tell him to “keep it down,” refuse to listen to what he is saying, and then abruptly cut him off. It’s not as if they are interested in anything that doesn’t support The Narrative. Much less explodes it with data on cops being killed.

Unintentional comedy lasting 2 awkward, hilarious minutes.

Cartoon of the Day

Video of the Day

I wonder why there's no peace in the Middle East?

Every Drop of Blood

June 17, 2020 By Dan Truitt @American Thinker

America’s sin debt for slavery was paid for long ago.

“Fondly do we hope -- fervently do we pray -- that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’” Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural, March 4, 1865

Delivered a scant forty-one days before Lincoln gave, as he himself put it in his address at Gettysburg, the “last full measure of devotion,” our sixteenth president’s language sings, it soars; it is high poetry. Somebody called Lincoln “that sad poet of a president,” words which capture pretty completely what in essence this great man was. The only other American public figure who has even arguably come close to wielding the English language so profoundly and effectively is Martin Luther King. And it is no coincidence that both men were animated by the same cause, in different iterations. 

It was in his Second Inaugural that Lincoln spoke, not just as a skilled political actor, or a poet, but, in a sense, as a prophet. He seemed to have had a unique insight into the heart of the tragedy that was the American Civil War.

I’d been thinking about his ‘wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil’ observation, and wondering how close to the truth Lincoln had struck. It turns out, in fact, that he had struck very close to the truth.

The common accepted death toll for the American Civil war is 618,000. That figure was recently reliably revised upward to 750,000. At any rate, I decided to compare that number with the total number of Africans imported as slaves to the continental US throughout her colonial and national history. I was wondering, frankly, whether the life of at least one American taken during the Civil War, of which its proximate cause was the existence and spread of slavery, was balanced out for every African brought here.

American historian Henry Louis Gates says the following: 

“Between 1525 and 1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World. 10.7 million survived the dreaded Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. And how many of these 10.7l milion Africans were shipped directly to North America? Only about 388,000. That’s right: a tiny percentage.”

So, given the death rate of 14.4% of those who did not survive the Middle Passage, that raises the number of slaves destined for American ports to 443,000.

Now I have a rather grim question for you -- is the death of 750,000 Americans, and the maiming of thousands more, as a direct consequence to the presence of slavery in this country, an approximately fair price to pay for the forced importation of 443,000 Africans to America, for two hundred fifty years of unrequited toil, plus another ninety or so years of Jim Crow laws?

Well, this is an issue only God can fairly adjudicate. But it puts things in an entirely new and interesting perspective- for me, at least.

You may be surprised, given recent events, that the condition of black Americans has actually been improving over the last decades. Here’s Kyle Smith writing recently in the New York Post:

"The Economic Policy Institute found that the difference in high school graduation rates between whites and blacks fell from 27 percent in 1962 to 5 percent in 2004. Last fall, the rate of black and Hispanic unemployment hit an all-time low. Since 1980, the percentage of black adults with college degrees has tripled. Life expectancy of white Americans exceeded that of black Americans by more than seven years as of 1970; that gap has been cut in half, to three and a half years. The percentage of black Americans earning more than $75,000 more than doubled (adjusting for inflation) between 1970 and 2014, according to Harvard professor William Julius Wilson, who studies upward mobility among black Americans."

So what’s the problem, one might ask? With all this wonderful progress, why all this recent brouhaha? The answer can be distilled to a couple major factors: 1) the creation of a permanent black underclass thanks to the unintended consequences of civil rights legislation passed in the 1960s which have given economic incentives for fatherless households in the black community, and 2) the steadily advancing agenda of cultural Marxism, which has led to the tsunami of political correctness and the instant shaming and expulsion of liberals and conservatives of principle from positions of power and influence. Throw in the convulsive collective deliverance from three months of, as it turned out, mostly unnecessary lockdown, and you have a perfect blueprint for bad behavior.

Not all of this is bad, of course. Police tactics can always stand scrutiny, since they’re the only ones in a civilization entrusted with the threat of and the use of force to apply local laws effectively. Individuals who have an irrational distaste for people having a different paint job than they do need to do some serious self-reflection.

Is life more difficult for a black man? Well, yes, it is. Much of this is cultural, however, and not racial. It follows from the fact that 40% of violent crimes are committed by 6% of the population, i.e., black males. If that’s “institutional racism” in the view of a lot of rather shallow thinkers, then march until your shoes wear out; it won’t change until crime stats change. And crime stats won’t change until a revolution takes place in the black underclass.

The first rumblings of that revolution are happening even as we speak; there is very slow tectonic shift taking place in the African-American community as black Americans, by ones and twos, by dozens and hundreds, are slowly waking up to the fact that they’ve been had by the Democrats. That they’ve always been had by the Democrats, who were the fiercest opponents to emancipation, the staunchest supporters of Jim Crow, and the steely backbone of the KKK.

Democrats are scared stiff that they’ll lose their African-American constituents. They should be. If they don’t take their party back from the extreme Left and get their act together vis a vis their historic mistreatment of their most loyal demographic, they’ll be shunted off to the sidelines as a semi-permanent minority party. And that’s bad for the republic. One-party rule always is.

From San Francisco, another Great Moment in Local Government

June 27, 2020 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty 

Some people say that California is the worst-governed state (I would probably choose Illinois or New Jersey, but it’s a close race).  And if you wanted to pick the worst-governed place in California, San Francisco might be at the top of the list.  The city manages to combine horrible zoning laws with insufferable red tape (there have been efforts to ban everything from Happy Meals to…umm…foreskins).

 

Most disturbing of all, San Francisco now has a major problem with public defecation (not that the sewer system is anything to brag about).  In an article for City Journal, Erica Sandberg explores the latest bit of upside-down governance from The City by the Bay.

San Francisco is surreptitiously placing homeless people in luxury hotels by designating them as emergency front-line workers, a term that the broader community understands to mean doctors, nurses, and similar professionals. …the city has evoked emergency-disaster law to keep the information private. Officials refuse to notify the public about what is happening in their community and are blocking the press by withholding the list of hotels and preventing reporters from entering the properties. …obfuscation is ultimately futile. Security guards standing outside hotel entrances, where they had never been before, are clear indicators that something is amiss. An uptick in crime, drug activity, and vagrancy around the hotels is another clue.

This sounds crazy, but it gets even worse.

The Department of Public Health manages the controversial free alcohol, cigarette, and cannabis program for homeless people placed in the hotels. …A public-records investigation into the matter has revealed that, as of June 16, DPH approved $3,795.98 to buy the homeless guests vodka and beer (cigarettes have been scrapped). …concerned inside sources report destroyed rooms and rampant illegal drug use. In one hotel, guests are given needle kits and are advised to call the front desk before shooting up. …The hotels were pressured into accepting the homeless guests, though they were also eager for the chance to recoup some revenue lost to the Covid-19 lockdowns. …The city-sponsored guests also receive personal grooming, sanitary, and cleaning supplies, three delivered meals, and laundry service for clothes and linens.

Free hotel room, along with free food and laundry service? And booze and pot? Who knew being homeless was such a good racket!  Since I’m a fiscal wonk, this is the part that captured my attention.

Rooms are rented at close to $200 per night, totaling $6,000 a month—nearly double the cost of a private one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco.

Though I shouldn’t be surprised by such profligacy. The state government’s “success story” was spending “billions of dollars” to cause homelessness to “dip by 1 percent.”  And San Francisco’s government had a different program for the homeless that cost about $700 per night. So maybe the new approach described in above article is a fiscal bargain.  By the way, it appears that taxpayers across the country are contributing to this insane policy.

Hotel owners consented to the arrangements fully aware of the potential pitfalls, having been assured that FEMA dollars would cover at least some of the damages incurred.

Good ol’ FEMA. Always ready, willing, and able to foolishly spend taxpayer money.

P.S. While San Francisco is a bit of a mess, folks in other cities (such as Seattle, Chicago, New York City, Detroit, etc) can make a legitimate claim that they have the nation’s worst local government.

P.P.S. When he crunched all the numbers, Dean Stansel of Southern Methodist University found that the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan statistical area in California had the worst policy in the country (San Francisco was #38 out of the 55 MSAs with at least 1 million residents).
 

Is China’s military problem what happens when you abort 9.6 million girls?

June 27, 2020 By Andrea Widburg

 America’s not the only country that sometimes looks at its upcoming generation of young men and worries. In China, the military has such a hard time finding young men capable of serving that it’s had to issue a long list of healthy living recommendations, including telling its recruits to cut down on masturbation. The self-love problem seems like a predictable result of China’s one-child policy, which eventually saw the Chinese abort 9.6 million girls. The guys are on their own now. It’s no secret that, in America, our young men, even if they want to serve in the military, are often physically unprepared: 

A full 27 percent of young Americans are simply too overweight to join the military, says Mission: Readiness. "Many are turned away by recruiters and others never try to join. Of those who attempt to join, however, roughly 15,000 young potential recruits fail their entrance physicals every year because they are too heavy."

Nearly 32 percent have other disqualifying health problems, including asthma, eyesight or hearing problems, mental health issues, or recent treatment for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Due to all of the above and other assorted problems, only about two out of 10 American young people are fully eligible to join the military without special waivers, according to the report. 

What’s surprising, though, is to learn that China is having the same problem – although with a twist, because the Chinese military also says young men need to keep their hands out of their crotches. This concern emerged when the Chinese People’s Liberation Army put up an online post saying that the failure rate for recruits had hit an “alarming high...........Read more

Missing the point on the Jones Act

Editor's Note: Until this week, I can only fleetingly remember reading about Jones Law, and that means I'm probably as clueless about it as most of you.  But this week, I posted three pieces about it.  

One by  By Colin Grabow, Inu Manak, and Daniel J. Ikenson, which was, "The Jones Act: A Burden America Can No LongerBear" .  This piece from the CATO Institute opposes it, along with one by one by Peter Zeihan, "Mexico: Triumph Over Geography", which discusses it, and got me started looking into this issue.

Then there was  this piece, What is the Jones Act? Separating Fact from Fiction. by Charlie Papavizas, Partner @ Winston Strawn LLP.  He and his groupt supports it. 

However, it seems to me this piece by Julio Rivera gives a broader picture of the concerns and values than the others.  It also leaves you with the question that we must answer, at least it does for me:  Isn’t there some things that should be protected against foreign influence, even if it’s not economically sound?  After all, how economically sound is it to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the military?  Some things are so vital it just can't be about economics.  Is this one of them?  RK

June 27, 2020 By Julio Rivera

Merchant Marine Act of 1920 or “Jones Act” as it is commonly referred to, turned 100 years old. For the last century, this important piece of legislation has ensured that at least one vital industry has not been exported in the name of nominal economic gains and wouldn’t contribute to the continuing marginalization of “America First” policy in the name of globalism -- shipbuilding.

Over the past several years, for one illogical reason or another, voices have sprung up from the proverbial “peanut gallery” calling for its repeal falsely in the name of the so-called “free market principles” that conservatives and libertarians like myself perpetually champion.

While some have made inconclusive points against the Jones Act regarding the economic impacts of its potential repeal, these arguments fail to acknowledge that the law is primarily intended to uphold national security interests and is not intended to help international fat cats eke out an extra percentage point or two in overall profit margins

While some have made inconclusive points against the Jones Act regarding the economic impacts of its potential repeal, these arguments fail to acknowledge that the law is primarily intended to uphold national security interests and is not intended to help international fat cats eke out an extra percentage point or two in overall profit margins............Read more

Another US researcher arrested for failing to disclose Chinese funding

May 20, 2020

A former researcher who has worked at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, US since 1997 faces criminal charges for allegedly failing to disclose funding he received from the Chinese government while also accepting more than $3.6 million (£2.9 million) in grant support from the US government’s National Institutes of Health (NIH). Qing Wang, who was born in China and became a US citizen in November 2005, was also quietly serving as a dean at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, China while funded by the NIH for his work at the Cleveland Clinic, according to the complaint. He also received grant funds from the National Natural Science Foundation of China that overlapped with his research supported by the NIH.

Wang was arrested on 13 May, and his indictment is expected shortly. At his initial court appearance on 14 May, Wang was released on a $100,000 (£81,000) bond after surrendering his passport, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The investigation is ongoing and additional charges are possible, an FBI representative tells Chemistry World. In a similar recent case at the University of Arkansas, tenured professor Simon Saw-Teong Ang faces up to 20 years in prison.

Wang is accused of participating in the Chinese government’s ‘Thousand Talents’ plan that aims to recruit individuals with access to specialist knowledge and intellectual property. As a result of his admission into this programme in 2008, the FBI says China provided $3 million in research support for his lab at Huazhong University. In addition, Wang received free travel and lodging for his trips to China, including a three-bedroom apartment on campus for his personal use, according to the agency.......To Read More....

Coronavirus, George Floyd, and Leftist Dystopia

By Rich Kozlovich 

My friend Alan Caruba was the author of the very conservative website called Warning Signs ,and he graciously allowed me to publish is work. Sadly Alan passed away five years ago, but one of the things about Alan's work was it's timelessness.  I think this 2012 article is as valuable now as it was then.

On June 21, 2012 he posted the article, Why Liberals are Like Zombies, saying:

I hope Barack Obama lives to a very old age. I want him to look back at the wreckage of the Democratic Party and the senility of Liberalism that has wreaked such havoc on the world stage. To me, Liberalism is a zombie philosophy, devoid of any connection with reality, but still able to cause great harm...... 

Occasionally I read that the ranks of Liberals have continued to thin over the decades. The Reagan presidency in the 1980s gave momentum to the rise of conservatism that had begun in the 1950s, but the politics of the nation no matter whether a Republican was in office or not still reflects Liberal ideas and agendas. The government and the debt continues to grow.........  

He went on to promote “The Death of Liberalism” by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., who outlines in his book "the failures of Liberalism that have brought America to the brink of financial failure as the result of its misbegotten belief in Big Government, unsustainable “entitlement” programs, and its penchant for taxing everything.  Here were some of the comments from that post. 

Guy in Ohio said...The problem is that even people who think of themselves as conservatives are prone to falling for the endless promises of goodies coming from our ruling class. Until people wake up and realize that they themselves are part of the problem, and quit falling for all the pandering, things aren't going to improve much. It seems that Benjamin Franklin was probably right when he said ... "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic..."If we can get enough of the population to realize the wisdom of those words and start acting like adults instead of children, we might have a chance to turn this around, but I'm not holding my breath ...

Lime Lite said...And yet it's liberals who are in power where it matters: heads of government departments and local councils - where the general conservative population have to live under their loony rules and regulations. Liberalism will never die - there is, after all, a fool born every minute. The Greenies and the liberals should be banned to their own little island where they can live in their hessian sacks and in peace with one another and leave the common sense people to their own devices!

LarryOldtimer said...I am neither a "conservative nor a modern liberal. I am a realist. It is not large federal spending programs that are bad, it is the purpose of those large federal spending programs that is useless. Being a professional civil engineer, I am very qualified in the matter of "Engineering economics", calculating all of the real costs, calculating benefits over the life of the constructed device, (wind and solar energy devices) and it is obvious to me that the cost of construction for solar energy and wind installations and the maintenance are far greater than any energy benefits derived. In other words, these concepts when constructed and put into actual use are noting more than economic follies.

There have been large federal spending projects which caused very returns on investment. Some are the Rural Free Delivery of mail, the Rural Energy agency, and the space program. In my humble opinion, the only federal spending should be on positive programs which individuals or groups of individuals could not do for themselves. All other federal, state and local spending is nothing than governmental taxpayer waste.

Rich Kozlovich said...It turns out that the Liberals are in a quandary (both parties). There is not enough money to throw at everyone and their traditional allies have eaten up so much of the public’s finances that they are in a position to bankrupt all the local governments in the nation, especially the teachers unions. Now we have Democratic mayors fighting the very people they catered to; public and teachers unions which they signed super sweetheart contracts with to gain their political support; because the local people have had it with all of these insane deals.

We have the racial issues that have been the backbone of the Democratic Party ever since the Republicans passed all the civil rights laws that the Democrats fought against and now claim credit for as their own.

Illegal immigration is a jobs issue. Blacks will have to compete with these illegals and they don’t like it; and the illegals, especially Hispanics, want ever more latitude regarding what is legal….and of course everyone is ignoring the decent, patient and honest immigrants trying to get in through legal channels that can’t come into the country because there are so many illegal’s taking their place.

The Jews have traditionally been liberal and Democratic voters for almost 100 years and has been a rock hard foundation for liberals. However, that is changing. The leaders of the liberal party and movement, have turned anti-Semitic and anti-Israel to the point that Jews worldwide, including Europe, are being openly persecuted and they are scared. Rightly so! Although the story is still fascinating. New York Jews will still be voting liberal...although that is changing.

The two groups that have absolutely been foundational to liberalism is Big Labor and Big Green. Now they have to turn on Big Labor to appease Big Breen, i.e., the XL pipeline, and they will have to turn on Big Green to appease Big Labor. Both of whom are coming under attack from the public. As we review this situation the question that one has to ask is this.

What reason do they have to exist at all?

They exist to have power. That is all the more reason to reject their views, their actions, their philosophy and them personally. I keep hearing that the left isn't evil, just wrong. Wrong! Leftists, including the fascist and communist monsters of the 20th century and the environmentalists, have killed over 200 million people in the last 75 years, and the greenies are still at it. Anyone who supports them share in the blame for the evil they have wrought.

Alan Caruba said...Rich: So many stupid people and policies. So much of a mess to clean up, if we have the time left to do it. Congratulations on a great analysis.

AG Barr is under attack by most of the media and other Democrats because they believe Obama admin criminals are above the law.

June 27, 2020 By Jack Hellner

Most of the media and other Democrats are out to destroy AG Barr because they claim he has politicized the Justice Department, but that is clearly not true. The Justice Department had been politicized throughout the Obama administration and no one in the mainstream media cared. Eric Holder committed perjury more than once, was never charged, and called himself as Obama’s “wingman.” and most of the media and other Democrats didn’t care.

Eric Holder: 'I'm still the president's wingman'

Most of the media and other Democrats were not mad that Hillary Clinton and her aides got off for their crimes. They were mad that Comey told the public the crimes she committed.  James Comey exonerates Hillary Clinton, July 5, 2016 (YouTube screen grab) There were no hearings by Democrats on the politicization of the Justice Department. 

F.B.I. Director James Comey Recommends No Charges for Hillary Clinton on Email

Most of the media and other Democrats or career prosecutors and former Justice officials did not demand that AG Loretta Lynch resign when she met with Bill Clinton a few days before a pretend interview with Hillary. Of course, Lynch wanted any investigation into Hillary’s crimes termed as “matters” instead of an “investigation.” That shows candidate Clinton was going to get off no matter how many crimes she committed. 

 Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch describe their infamous “tarmac meeting”

There was no outrage and there were no resignations when the FBI railroaded General Michael Flynn. In fact, the media and Democrats are angry that this innocent man, who was financially destroyed by the vengeful, corrupt FBI and Justice Department officials, is finally receiving justice. 

Why dismiss the Flynn case? Because the FBI can't prove it

> This should be a big story, but most of the media and other Democrats won’t care that Obama and Biden were deeply involved in the targeted attack on Flynn. It is clear that Obama was deeply involved with the Justice Department during his entire term, as the media pretended that it was independent. There was little concern about the rule of law. 

Explosive New FBI Notes Confirm Obama Directed Anti-Flynn Operation

The media is too busy campaigning for Biden and seeking to destroy Trump to cover this bombshell of a story. After all, Stone only got forty months and Bolton has a book. They are also spending every day trying to keep the country in a depression to help Biden win. The reason that Barr is being attacked every day is because he and Durham are seeking the truth and the media and other Democrats have been lying continuously and don’t want the truth to come out. They certainly don’t care about the rule of law and equal treatment under the law. If anyone wants to see how massive and extensive corruption at the Justice Department has been for a long time, read the book Licensed to Lie by the great Sidney Powell, who finally got justice for a decorated retired General. I thought the media and other democrats said all generals should be respected. 

Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice

In Licensed to Lie, attorney Sidney Powell takes readers through a series of disturbing events, missteps, and cover‐ups in our federal criminal justice system. According to Powell, the malfeasance stretches across all three branches of our government — from the White House to the U.S. Senate, to members of the judiciary. Even worse, the law itself is becoming pernicious. Americans can now be prosecuted, convicted, and imprisoned for actions that are not crimes. And if acquitted, there is no recourse against prosecutors who hid evidence vital to the defense. Join us for a discussion of these distressing legal trends and what might be done about them.

So, the next time Democrat campaign workers posing as journalists and other Democrats claim they care about the rule of law, equal treatment under the law, the Constitution, separation of powers or the politicization of the Justice Department, everyone should recognize they don’t mean it. All they care about is getting a Democrat elected as president so they can infect the public with radical leftist policies that will enrich powerful politicians and career bureaucrats and absolutely decimate our freedom and prosperity.