The Problem With the U.S. Dietary Guidelines

      

 

      Rejecting the advice of its scientific advisers, the federal government has released new dietary recommendations that sound a familiar nutritional refrain, advising Americans to “make every bite count” while dismissing expert recommendations to sharply reduce consumption of sugar and alcoholic beverages.   The “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” are updated every five years, and the latest iteration arrived on Tuesday, 10 months into a pandemic that has posed a historic health threat to Americans. Confined to their homes, even those who have dodged the coronavirus itself are drinking more and gaining weight, a phenomenon often called “quarantine 15.” 

 

 

Earlier this year, a 20-person committee of scientists known as the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee recommended that the departments modify the guidelines to suggest Americans consume less than 6% of calories from added sugars, citing high rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancers in the U.S. – all underlying conditions that contribute to a higher likelihood of severe COVID-19.

For the average American, added sugar accounts for more than 13% of daily energy intake – almost 270 calories – most of which comes from sweetened beverages, desserts and sweets, snacks, coffee and tea, candy and sugars, and breakfast cereals and bars, according to the guidelines.

The committee also recommended that Americans who drink alcohol should drink no more than one drink per day, where one alcoholic drink is equivalent to 12 fluid ounces of regular beer, 5 fluid ounces of wine, or 1.5 fluid ounces of 80 proof distilled spirits.

 

 In general, processed food and beverage companies have an intense interest in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the nation’s leading set of science-based nutrition recommendations.

 But instead the US government released a report that many experts say shows just how much it succumbed to pressures by the meat and the soda industry — yet again.  As expected, due to strong lobbying by the meat industry and the resulting strong pressure that Congress put into the developers of the 2015 DGAs, the recommendation to reduce consumption of red and processed meats was not included.  I know most people believe it would lead to some type of dystopia, but no society has ever become worse off because of fewer government controls. The dystopias happen in the exact opposite environment.

 

 In the midst of a worldwide obesity and diabetes crisis, we don’t need more input from experts who aren’t paying attention to the latest science or who can’t break free from 50 years of conventional thinking about healthy eating. Promoting the same dietary advice over and over again while expecting different results is indeed a kind of insanity, and worse, is doing nothing to combat rising disease and death rates. Consumers need solid information about how to eat for good health

The Nashville Bomber

 

 

      No sooner had Anthony Quinn Warner been named as a person of interest in an apparent Christmas Day suicide bombing in Nashville, Tennessee, than conspiratorial circles began casting doubt on his identity, or else applauding his actions.  Warner, 63, is accused of setting off a bomb in downtown Nashville early Christmas morning, damaging more than 40 businesses, killing himself, and injuring several others. Investigators have not yet identified a motive for the attack. Officials have not announced Warner’s possible motives, or whether the incident is being treated as an act of terror.

Investigators are analyzing property belonging to Warner that was collected during the investigation, including a computer and a portable storage drive, and are continuing to interview witnesses as they try to identify a potential motive for the explosion, a law enforcement official said. A review of his financial transactions also uncovered purchases of potential bomb-making components, the official said.

Warner had recently given away a vehicle and told the person he gave it to that he had been diagnosed with cancer, though it is unclear whether he indeed had cancer, the official said. Investigators used some items collected from the vehicle, including a hat and gloves, to match Warner’s DNA, and DNA had also been taken from one of his family members.

Warner also apparently gave away his home in Antioch, a Nashville suburb, to a Los Angeles woman a month before the bombing. A property record dated Nov. 25 indicates Warner transferred the home to the woman in exchange for no money after living there for decades. The woman’s signature is not on that document.

Warner had worked as a computer consultant for Nashville realtor Steve Fridrich, who told the AP in a text message that Warner had said he was retiring earlier this month.

 

Here is one possible motive:   

AT&T got a contract to do forensic audit on Dominion voting machines and those machines were being moved to Nashville this past week.

The former owner of the AT&T building in Nashville, William Kennard, is a board member for Cerberus Capital Management and AT&T.... He also was Bill Clinton’s FCC chair, and Obama’s Ambassador to the EU. 

Dominion voting is owned by Cerberus Capital Management.... Cerberus is run by Staple Street Execs. Joe Bidens Brother in Law, Steven Owens, is the cofounder of Staple Street Execs along with William Kennard (mentioned above). 

Super Computer in TN was connected to the AT&T internet in NASHVILLE.... yesterday evening the Cumberland river cooling system was compromised due to internet outage and Supercomputer fried.....
If you don’t know, “Kraken” is a reference to a supercomputer former prosecuter, Sidney Powell, has been talking about. 

So, the explosion “just happened” to be at the AT&T location where they “just so happen” to control the cooling system for the super computer and house the dominion voting machines and drives for forensic audit... 

Does it make sense now why no lives were lost? Does it make sense now why the FBI task lead couldn’t even put together a coherent sentence in the press conference yesterday? Does it make sense why the mayor was making light of the situation, almost laughing yesterday?

Democrats care more about helping illegal aliens than Americans

     What explains the Democratic romance with illegal aliens?  There is no clearer and more shameful example of betrayal in modern American politics than Big City Democrats who support foreigners over their own citizens.  Democrat lawmakers care more about illegal aliens than they care about their own constituents.  The phenomena is very real — the poor, mostly black residents of many urban neighborhoods have been forced to put up with levels of violence and squalor that would turn the stomachs of white, liberal suburbanites. Instead of facing that reality and demanding change, those left wing suburbanites just ignore it.  The irony of today’s Democrats is that they espouse values claiming to care for minority communities, but in reality the low-income communities they represent are mostly populated by minorities who have had their economic interests betrayed at every turn by the Democratic Party’s dedication to fighting for open border policies.

 

      The open borders rhetoric coming from the Democratic Party today fails to represent the economic interests of black Americans. It is a reflection of mostly white, bleeding heart liberal priorities — bolstered by corporate America’s desire for cheaper labor — and it has co-opted the voices of black Americans, whose votes the Democratic Party takes for granted.

 

      Asked if an illegal immigrant in the interior of the country who hasn’t committed another crime should be deported, Joe Biden replied that such a person “should not be the focus of deportation.” Kamala Harris said he “absolutely” should not be deported.  This is a promise to gut interior enforcement that, coupled with the latitudinarian attitude at the border, would be a huge step toward open borders.

 

 

     Illegal immigration is a hugely divisive issue for Democrats. Here are some different groups -

     1.) Union Democrats - These are mostly white middle aged male blue-collar worker types from the east coast who DEFINITELY disapprove of illegal immigration. They vote Democrat because their dad did and they view themselves as workers and not management, but they hate the concept of illegal aliens stealing their jobs just as much as any Trump supporter.

     2.) "Victims Are Great"/"Guilt Porn" far-left Democrats (Social Justice Warriors) - A small but growing segment of the democratic party who defines everything in terms of racial and social identity, and views victim hood as the ultimate "good". Meaning being in a position of poverty or disenfranchisement automatically makes you right in their eyes. Mexicans are viewed as being "nonwhite" by them (even though many Mexicans are clearly white), being white is viewed as a negative by them. So, illegal immigrants are all precious little victims who deserve to be treated like royalty in their mind, because, you know, white privilege something something. The simple fact that illegal immigrants are poor and desperate makes them good people in the eyes of this group, any evils they do can be explained as being the fault of rich white people somehow. This group always finds a way to make it a rich white guy's fault. We should all be giving up our homes and positions to people who fit the victim profile. They probably disapprove of the US being a country in the first place and would rather the world was a border less love fest.

     3.) Intellectual Democrats - you won't get a straight answer on illegal immigration from this group of scientists, professors, and business people. These are the Democrats who are in a position with something to lose - coming across as racist or afraid of immigrants makes them look bad, and they know it. Often, they are the ones who lose their jobs when the SJW crowd gets up in arms about something. So, you're likely to hear something like "undocumented immigrants are a complex issue" when they open their mouths, with no indication as to what their opinion actually is. You would think they are running for office with the way they avoid the question.

     4.) Average Joe Democrats - These guys are the ones who turn up for presidential elections but wouldn't be caught dead voting in any other election. They largely don't even view themselves as Democrats, rather they simple vote for Democratic candidates every 4 years. They generally don't have opinions on undocumented immigration. They'll say stuff like "well obviously its bad that people come into the country illegally, but i don't know, aren't they taking the jobs Americans don't want anyway?" 

 

      But there is a more sinister long-term answer for the Democrats’ whole-hearted embrace of illegal immigration.  A 2018 Center for American Progress (CAP) Action Fund memo sheds light on this. The memo, co-authored by former Hillary Clinton communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, argues that the Democratic Party needs to protect illegal immigrants brought here at a young age as a result of President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program because they are “a critical component of the Democratic Party’s future electoral success.'' This is an astonishing statement. With declining support from white and older Americans, the Democrats have concluded that their future lies in importing a new electorate from south of the border.  So it is full speed ahead on illegal immigration for the Democrats, and they don’t want Republicans gumming up the works even if their name is not Donald Trump. They will claim their position is rooted in compassion and in upholding American values when in fact it is primarily about naked politics and importing a new set of voters, as their ideas become increasingly too far-fetched for the citizens who currently reside legally within America’s borders.

 

      Anyone who supports illegal aliens and opposes law enforcement’s efforts to protect communities from criminals should be shown no quarter – not in the media, not in the courtroom and not in our political campaigns.

BLM’s Defund Agenda will Hurt the Black Community

 

 

 

      Black Lives Matter (BLM) organizations are flexing their new political muscles. They are pressuring the incoming Biden Administration as well as state and local lawmakers to fulfill their personnel and policy demands. However, their radical ideas could be devastating to the black community leaving minority neighborhoods more lawless and dangerous.  Most people think that Black Lives Matter is a grass-roots, black created, black run organization dedicated to fighting racism. It most certainly is not. The Black Lives Matter movement is the creation of a group of a few very wealthy individuals, non-profit corporations, and the corporate media (incidentally, 90% of the U.S. media is controlled by only six corporations).  Who funds Black Lives Matter? It’s funded by billionaires George Soros (Open Society Foundation), Rob McKay (Taco Bell heir), the Ford Foundation, the Borealis Philanthropy, the Democracy Alliance, and many others. Not exactly what I would call a black run grass-roots organization. If these facts alone don’t cause you to rethink the whole Black Lives Matter thing, then you just aren’t paying attention.

 

 

      Many Americans thought they were embracing progress toward greater equality as they chanted or posted #blacklivesmatter. They were actually supporting organizations that advocated for far-left policies, the cornerstone being to defund police in America. The constellation of organizations that comprise the BLM movement also have a host of other demands that would undermine public safety in the black community. After the November election, BLM has the megaphone, the manpower, and the political might to get it done.

 

      Local chapters are pushing for their police forces to be defunded among sundry other priorities including removing resource officers from schools, legalizing sex work, and even reparations.  Nationally, BLM movement has drafted a comprehensive federal policing and justice reform bill, the  BREATHEAct.  The BREATHE Act would starve law enforcement of significant federal infusions of cash and reshape our criminal justice system. Championed by Squad members, U.S. Representatives Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, this bill would strip federal resources from incarceration and policing, reduce immigration enforcement, close prisons and immigration and youth detention centers, pilot universal basic income programs, and give voting rights to incarcerated individuals and illegal immigrants (in local and states laws.)

 

     When criminals know that there are fewer police patrolling or likely to respond and investigate crime, they may feel emboldened. This summer violent crime in cities spiked across the nation after months of lockdowns, rising unemployment, police funding cuts, and mass protests. In the nation’s 50 largest cities, reported homicides increased by 24 percent this year. Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is on the path to dismantle its police force, shifted $1 million from its police force to hire violence interrupters. Instead of more peace, the city experienced a spike in the number of reported violent crimes such as assaults, robberies and homicides compared to 2019. Startlingly, more people have been killed in the city in the first nine months of 2020 than were slain in all of last year. Burglaries, auto thefts, and arson have also all increased.

 

      Black Americans recognize the recklessness of defunding police, which is why 81 percent of them want the same or more police presence in their neighborhoods. BLM’s defund-the-police movement employs dehumanizing rhetoric to encourage disrespect, disobedience, and even violence against officers. Not only do police officers believe that their jobs have become more difficult, but police forces face significant retention and recruitment challenges.  When police budgets are cut, the first things to go are often youth programs, diversity initiatives, and police training programs — the very programs that have proven effective in reducing negative interactions between the police and members of the community. Such programs should receive more funding, but defunding the police will only gut them.

      In the African American community where there is the highest crime rate and the biggest problems with drug abuse, they push to release the inmates from prison and put them back on the streets, let drug use and drug dealing run wild, and then take away the police. What do you think the outcome of these policies will produce? More crime and drug abuse in the African American community. High crime and drug areas minus police equals hell, – easy math. Policies that promote more crime and drug abuse in the black community are what I call anti-black policies.

 

      What we are seeing happening in the world right now under the guise of “eliminating racism”, – the destabilization of society, the protest, rioting, looting, burning, and killing are not spontaneous, grass-roots events. It’s all thoroughly coordinated by those at the top of the Black Lives Matter / medial cabal. They are indeed the enemy of African Americans, but they are actually the enemy of us all. African Americans are just being used as cannon fodder in their game of global domination.

Why doesn't America implement a national gun licensing system?

 

 

     The obvious answer is because we don't license civil rights.  It's simple, really.  We have 100+ years of history of seeing licensing systems abused, and we've seen the advocates of these licensing schemes working desperately to allow the issuing authorities to continue to abuse them.

 

      What would be the point? - When you purchase a firearm from a licensed firearms dealer in the United States, you already have to undergo a background check which allows you to purchase the weapon. If someone can pass the background check to obtain the weapon, what would additional licensing and/or paperwork do, exactly?  Anyway, if they are a criminal, they are simply going to avoid any process that requires them to provide ID or undergo a background check, which means licensing wouldn't catch them.

 

 

      There’s also the fact that a gun licensing scheme, aside from being very expensive, would amount to little better than a gun registry. American’s don’t like gun registries, because that means that when the government decides that we can’t be trusted with firearms, they know exactly who has what. And that’s not something that anyone should be happy about. Look at what happened when Australia implemented their gun control scheme. They basically had a ‘buyback’ that was mandatory, where you had to sell them whatever firearms you owned at a reduced price, and then you couldn’t buy most of the common firearms of the time. Oh, and if you didn’t show up for the mandatory buyback, they came to your house, because they had this handy little registry that said where the gun was and who exactly had it. It made firearm confiscation a breeze.   America has had bouts of firearm confiscation (New York, California, D.C.). None of this could have been possible without registration. Americans are rather stubborn about individual rights, and reject measures that materially endanger them. Hence, most Americans who know the history of gun confiscation here reject licensing.

 

      In this country, there is a sharp division of power between the federal government and the state governments. With a few notable exceptions (the automatic weapons ban in 1934 and the 'assault weapon' ban in 1994), the states are in control of that kind of legislation and enforcement. Many states have an equivalent to the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution in their constitutions, too. In those two cases I mentioned the federal government laid down a blanket ban with limited exceptions, and took on the mantle of regulating and enforcing them. Since federal law of that kind would trump state laws, no state can allow open ownership of automatic weapons, for instance. However, it is only in a situation where there is a compelling interest on the part of the federal government, traditionally involving interstate commerce in some way, that they can do this sort of thing.  

     There is nothing which the federal government could do without infringing on the rights of state and local governments. Some states, for instance, have stricter laws than others. To try and coalesce gun regulations and policing so that all the states would be satisfied would be nearly impossible. The US Congress would have to pass such legislation, and since they are representative of the populations of the states where they were elected, we could easily have 50 different versions of such a law with few agreeing on any of them. This is how we check the power of the federal government, and it was designed into the Constitution for a reason- to prevent a tyrannical central government from exercising dangerous control over our everyday lives. I dare say, every single country of Europe could more easily be overtaken by tyranny because of their highly centralized power structure. Here, it would be much more difficult. Most Americans, no matter their political bent, prefer it that way.

 

 

     Americans are allowed to have guns because it is not that uncommon for Americans to find themselves in situations in which the use of lethal force in self-defense is justified — and without guns, the use of lethal force in self-defense is just too difficult for most Americans.

     Any policy that deliberately tries to suppress the use of lethal force in self-defense when it is justifiable amounts to the protection of criminals as they are committing violent crimes — which would make those who implemented the policies accomplices in those crimes, from a moral perspective.

The crisis of liberalism

 

 

 

 

     The progressive desire to marry dominance of culture with dominance of politics should by now come as a shock to no one. One consequence of the Trump years has been the abandonment of any pretense that much of mainstream media, culture, and academia is anything other than liberal, and the radicalization of many already openly liberal institutions. In response to what they identified as the unique threats President Trump posed to the American political system, many on the left adopted a decidedly antagonistic pose toward him. In some cases they were right to find Trump’s words or actions abhorrent; in many others, they treated a more typical, if almost always clumsily advanced, conservatism as fascism, or indulged outright lies about him and other Republicans. Trump, of course, often invited such treatment and seemed to relish the scorched-earth political combat.

 

     Trump lost, but not in the landslide for which his opponents had hoped; down-ballot Republicans did far better than expected, making gains in the House and giving themselves a good chance to hold the Senate.  Outside the liberal tent, the feeling of being suffocated by the left’s cultural dominance is turning voting Republican into an act of cultural rebellion — which may be one reason the Obama years, so good for liberalism in the culture, have seen sharp G.O.P. gains at every level of the country’s government.  In the aftermath of Biden’s victory, progressives would do well to ask themselves why that is — why the 2020 election was not the decisive despoliation of the Republican Party that they’d hoped for.

 

     Talk of socialism and defunding the police may excite Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her fans, but it angered swing-district Democrats struggling to hold their seats, and the party’s House majority shrank when it had been expected to grow.  If left-wingers continue to push leftward while castigating those who won’t come along for the ride, then their power could fade even as their control over many institutions lingers.

 

      The liberal meltdown we saw over the last four years is exactly what happens when people who don't understand politics get all their news from late night comedians. Infotainment is poisoning the discourse. Democrats now frequently support larger expansions of government, and more vehemently scorn Big Business and Big Finance, than most liberal Democrats did a few years ago.

 

    The activist left has remade the Democratic Party in several ways. First, it has pushed Democrats, who in the Bill Clinton and Obama eras sought the approval and support of corporate and Wall Street titans, to treat monied interests as adversaries. In 2008, Obama raised more cash from the financial, insurance, and real-estate industries than his Republican opponent, John McCain, did. Once in office, he named former investment bankers to serve as three of his first four chiefs of staff. 

 

      Among many liberals, there is an understandable impulse to raise the drawbridge, to deny certain ideas access to respectable conversation.  Democrats are having to reckon with reality. When your strategy is incessant fear-mongering, you're gambling as to whether your voters will stand and fight or take a flight.

The Myth of the Food Desert

 

 
     Many think that a key cause of nutritional inequality is food deserts – or neighborhoods without supermarkets, mostly in low-income areas. The narrative is that folks who live in food deserts are forced to shop at local convenience stores, where it's hard to find healthy groceries. If we could just get a supermarket to open in those neighborhoods, the thinking goes, then people would be able to eat healthy.

     The food desert narrative suggests the lack of supply of healthy foods is what causes reduced demand for them.  But in the modern economy, stores have become amazingly good at selling us exactly the kinds of things we want to buy. Lower demand for healthy food is what causes the lack of supply.  In other words, people don't suddenly go from shopping at an unhealthy convenience store to shopping at the new, healthy supermarket.  The trouble is that it is impossible to truly see a causal relationship between inner-city obesity and the distance of the supermarket when you live, for example, in New York.

      Fairway has been thriving in West Harlem for 15 years, with gorgeous, accessibly priced produce practically spilling out onto the sidewalk. Plenty of local black people shop in it. It's a walk away for many, and for others, there is even a shuttle service. It is not inaccessible to poor blacks and Latinos in any way.

      Yet obesity is still rife in West Harlem, including among teenagers raised on food bought there, in a way that it is not in Greenwich Village. Throughout the city, there are supermarkets amply stocked with fresh produce priced modestly, in struggling neighborhoods where the average weight of people is distinctly higher than on the Upper East Side.  The U.S. Department of Agriculture's food desert locator — unveiled in 2011 — found almost no food deserts in New York City except in some of the wide-open spaces near Kennedy airport.  As far back as 2006, there was sunny coverage in these parts of the Healthy Bodegas Initiative, stocking bodegas in Harlem, the Bronx and Brooklyn with fresh produce and lowfat milk. The media have been less interested in the uninspiring outcome. By 2010, people were buying more vegetables in only one in four bodegas, for example.

 

       The key point is that supermarkets have never been inaccessible to poor people in the way that we have been told.  Overall, these results indicate that the nutritional quality of household purchases responds very little, if at all, to changes in retail environments. This suggests that policies which either encourage the entry of new stores offering healthy foods or encourage existing retailers to offer more healthful products will do little on their own to resolve socioeconomic disparities in nutritional consumption.

 

 

      I personally have found the food deserts argument dubious and think the problem stems from poor eating habits formed at home, and not addressed in school. Certainly the prevalence of cheap sugar and our method of food production is an issue; however the wide blame placed on food deserts, almost entirely by liberal, is even possibly wrong.

Why do so many TV shows feature liberal propaganda?

 

     Conservatives tend to avoid risk and change. A conservative opinion is one that is based on tradition. A conservative estimate doesn’t allow for assumptions, guesswork, or speculation. A conservative investment is in reliable, slow-but-steady performers. Conservatives believe in obedience to authority and that every person is responsible for their own actions and deserves to succeed or fail on their own terms.  There is a progressive or liberal mindset to a lot of television shows. I think the reason for this is similar to the reason we see so much multiculturalism in retail and advertising. Companies want to sell to everyone. So they put out products that appeal to as wide a swath of the populace as they possibly can. Shows that feature or seem intolerant to certain groups inherently limit the show’s appeal.

 

The big points:

 

 EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT: Entertainers, writers, directors … most come from liberal arts universities. These institutions are generally left of center.
Universities have devolved into “cloud palace” thinking in part by constant recirculating of subsets of information and perspective (keep in mind Brian was a tenured professor, so he saw this from the inside). Students graduating from such places will carry with them the biases of the institutions … unless they are surviving free thinkers.

THE ENTERTAINMENT ENVIRONMENT — PEOPLE: If you enter a field where people largely share the same ideology, you will conform for sake of career and social interaction. Hollywood and New York had a bit of a head start on leftist logic, so entering the entertainment field likely put one in the middle of the mindset.

THE ENTERTAINMENT ENVIRONMENT — NARRATIVE: “Hollywood celebrates dysfunction.” Interesting stories have some dysfunction. Hollywood thrives on over-the-top stories of broken, sick, rude, vulgar characters. This does two things. First, it resets their perspective on normalcy. Second, it occasionally requires the dysfunction to be evaluated through personal lenses. Any connection the writer/actor/director has to the dysfunction will be treated more personally to remove their personal stigma. Anything “conservative” in review of that dysfunction has to be rejected because it is less forgiving.

But the big element is ……

THE MEDIA-POLITICAL COMPLEX: Politicians know that the media can help them get elected. Since New York and Hollywood had left-of-center biases long ago, they naturally associated with left-of-center politicians. The incestuous relationship had the same effects as real incest, namely horrible disfiguring of future generations. The entertainment industry protects their political associates, and the simple way is to demonize their opponents.

     Liberalism has been hijacked by progressive authoritarians and like all authoritarians they believe in complete conformity of thought. One way they attempt to achieve this is through entertainment. Anyone that doesn’t adhere strictly to their narrow belief system is “cancelled” and shunned out of the industry. As the left become increasingly more authoritarian there will be less and less creativity and unique ideas in the entertainment industry and more and more conformist propaganda.

 

 

     There is this concept called “group think”. Those who think differently from the crowd, get verbally attacked. There are conservatives in Hollywood, but they need to keep a low profile. Liberals don’t believe in thought and world view diversity. Their way or you get “canceled”. Liberals see themselves as superior to others. They must school the less enlightened, the idiots who dwell outside of the Hollywood cocoon. This has been going on since the 60s.

     In communism the way to control the people is through media and education. Change a culture by putting it on the big screen.

     Hollywood is also liberal because conservatives are just not allowed to have a voice.

Will Joe Biden Resign Immediately After He is Sworn In?

       

 

     I think that if Joe Biden does assume office, there’s about a 40% chance he’ll resign almost immediately due to his son’s connections to China (his brother is now also reportedly a target of the investigation, by the way). 

     He would say something like, “I have done nothing wrong, but at this time, I can’t in good conscience oversee a Justice Department that is investigating members of my family. I have no doubt that Hunter and my other family members will be cleared of these charges, but right now, our nation needs to come together, and I believe that these allegations against my son could inhibit the healing process that our nation needs right now. That’s why I am stepping down, and turning over the reins to the totally capable and brilliant hands Our First Woman President, Kamala Harris.”

     This would be viewed as a big win by the Republicans, and would in theory bring a lot of them back to the table of the democracy system. They would feel vindicated, after they were screaming about “Beijing Joe” during the election and the media shut them down. It would also allow them to feel like they’re doing the reverse thing that Democrats did to Donald Trump with the Russia hoax.

 

      The idea is easy to understand from Biden’s perspective. The promise of a single term could, in theory, encourage some Democrats who would prefer a female, minority, and/or younger candidate to back him as the most electable choice against Trump, safe in the knowledge that he would soon be followed by a more compelling president and a more diverse administration. 

 

    This makes sense if one understands the central project of the Joe Biden campaign to be making Joe Biden the president or, more charitably, denying Donald Trump a second term. This has been the clear focus of Biden’s bid from the beginning—defeating Trump is the objective he talks the most about and a major reason why so many Democrats, terrified by the possibility of Trump’s reelection, have chosen to back him despite a wide-open field of alternatives and the controversies that have beset his candidacy. It’s never noted by the press that Biden, on a promise-to-accomplishment basis, would be one of the most efficient presidents in American history. The very act of winning would fulfill the most solemn vow he has made to the American people.

 

    This makes sense if one understands the central project of the Joe Biden campaign to be making Joe Biden the president or, more charitably, denying Donald Trump a second term. This has been the clear focus of Biden’s bid from the beginning—defeating Trump is the objective he talks the most about and a major reason why so many Democrats, terrified by the possibility of Trump’s reelection, have chosen to back him despite a wide-open field of alternatives and the controversies that have beset his candidacy. It’s never noted by the press that Biden, on a promise-to-accomplishment basis, would be one of the most efficient presidents in American history. The very act of winning would fulfill the most solemn vow he has made to the American people.

 

 

 

      In these circumstances, the choice is between compromise and gridlock. And because the parties are so ideologically divided, compromise is unpopular with the bases of both parties and gridlock has become the order of the day.

Defunding The Police’ Is Insane

      

 

 

      Over the past 30 years governments have done an abysmal job dealing with society’s ills. Governments defunded mental health, putting thousands of mentally ill people on the street. They inadequately fund drug health programs, while failing to prosecute drug companies and salespeople, resulting in a surge of opioid and other drug abuse. Over the past 50 years, economic inequality in the U.S. has steadily increased, resulting in more poverty. We have thrown hundreds of millions of dollars at homelessness, with minimal effect.  And a flood of firearms continues to flow into our communities, making them more dangerous for the average person as well as police officers.

 

     The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis clearly shows, however, that police departments need change, and they need it fast.  Simply cutting police budgets is ludicrous.  Clearly, a tiny minority of police officers guilty of unnecessary brutality ought to be forced to turn in their badges. Police chiefs, sheriffs and politicians who protect them ought to be fired, too.  But hamstringing law enforcement generally would be a gift to criminals of all stripes, including some fond of using violence to get what they want. Try jerking the financial rug out from under a police department or two and see what happens quickly.

 

      Most citizens are law abiding and have no contact with the police, except for the occasional speeding ticket or equipment violation. The police constantly deal with the chronic spouse abusers, drunks, addicts and career criminals. Most law enforcement officers will tell you they spend 85 percent of their time dealing with 15 percent of the population.  Within the mayhem and chaos, some of it media manufactured, it is seldom the offender’s fault, you see. It must be someone else’s fault. The police and society are constantly blamed for individual shortcomings. What we have is analogous to a collective psyche of addicts and enablers blaming everyone else for their woes. These folks ignore the perpetual draining of their time, energy and funds by the miscreants they shelter from reality.

 

 

 

 

     They've been loudly supported by left-wing Democrat politicians like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Ilhan Omar, and by many celebrities including Lizzo, John Legend, Common and Jane Fonda who all signed an open letter calling for a defunding of the police.

     One of the signatories was actress Natalie Portman who posted a lengthy statement on Instagram to explain why: 'When I first heard #defundthepolice,' she wrote, 'I have to admit my first reaction was fear. My whole life, police have made me feel safe. But that's exactly the center of my white privilege: the police make me as a white woman feel safe, while my black friends, family and neighbors feel the opposite: police make them feel terror. And for good reason. Police are the 6th leading cause of death for black men in this country. These are not isolated incidents. They are patterns and part of the system of over-policing of black Americans. Reforms have not worked. Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered, is one of the most progressive police forces in the country, having undergone extensive anti-bias training. I am grateful to the leaders in the @mvmnt4blklives who have made us question the status quo. And who have made us imagine, what a world could be like in which we invested in nourishing people; (in their education, healthcare, environment, shelter)— rather than putting all of our money into punishment. I've gotten to the age in my life, where if my gut feels uncomfortable, I take the situation as wrong. But this concept initially made me uncomfortable because I was wrong. Because the system that makes me feel comfortable is wrong.'

     Portman was swiftly backed by fellow actresses.

'     Beautifully said!' gushed Ellen Pompeo.

'     So well said,' agreed Olivia Wilder. 'Thank you, Natalie!'

     Well.......I'm afraid my gut had a rather different reaction when I read Ms Portman's clarion cry to defund the police.  This, surely, is celebrity virtue-signalling at its most laughably hypocritical?

    All these stars live in secure protected homes.

    Most of them employ expensive bodyguards or even full security details.

     It's very easy for them to sit safely in their mansions and tell those who can't afford such luxuries that they'll be just fine without the police around.  But the truth is they won't.  But getting rid of the police altogether is frankly a batsh*t crazy idea.  This may not be a popular view right now - but I believe the majority of police officers do a good job; they're brave, diligent, and care about protecting people, not killing them.

 

 

     The police remain a vital corner stone of any democracy.  At their best, they keep order, protect the public, and save lives.

New district attorney of Los Angeles George Gascón announced a suite of policy reforms

      

 

 

     George Gascon, Los Angeles County's new head prosecutor, unveiled an agenda Monday that will usher in changes to the local criminal justice system by his refusal to prosecute certain crimes on top of other sweeping changes.  Gascon, a former San Francisco District Attorney and former Los Angeles police officer, announced in a series of policy directives that many misdemeanor cases will be dismissed, saying that nearly half of those incarcerated on pre-trial misdemeanor offenses suffer from mental illness.

 

      Gascon belongs to a wave of well-funded left-wing prosecutors who have come to office promising to eliminate racial disparities in the criminal-justice system. They are doing so by eliminating key components of the criminal-justice system itself. Gascon’s office will no longer prosecute a wide range of misdemeanor offenses. 

 

      Los Angeles streets, in all but its wealthiest neighborhoods, are already overrun by squalid encampments. Business owners who have managed so far to survive the lockdown regularly have to sweep vagrants off their property in the morning, along with ­feces and drug paraphernalia. The vagrant won’t leave? Don’t bother calling the police. Any arrest an officer makes will simply be dismissed. If a homeowner sees a ­vagrant climbing the fence to his house, he will have to deal with it himself.  Ending such low-level public-order enforcement has long been a goal of anti-cop activists, who allege that it is racist. But polls consistently show support for such “broken-windows” policing in minority neighborhoods.

      Gascon’s most stunning exemption from prosecution is the ­directive not to charge suspects with resisting arrest. The vast majority of police shootings, however, could be eliminated tomorrow, if all suspects complied with officers’ ­commands. Resisting arrest is the biggest predictor of officer use of force. Decriminalizing such resistance is a recipe for more ­police shootings, of black as well as of white suspects.

 

 

     As of Tuesday, many misdemeanor cases will be declined or dismissed prior to arraignment unless "factors for considerations" exist. The list of offenses includes trespassing, disturbing the peace, a minor in possession of alcohol, driving without a license, driving with a suspended license, making criminal threats, drug and paraphernalia possession, being under the influence of a controlled substance, public intoxication, loitering to commit prostitution and resisting arrest.  In addition, prosecutors will not seek the death penalty and those accused of misdemeanors and low-level felonies will be referred to community-based programs.  For juveniles, those accused of misdemeanors will no longer be prosecuted.  Gascon's office will also decline to seek bail for anyone charged with a misdemeanor or non-violent crime and will end the use of sentencing enhancements.

 

     So  someone who is arrested for beating someone up could be allowed to walk free regardless of anything else as soon as the paperwork is completed.  This means, in theory, that same suspect could walk out of the jail and commit the same crime on the same day.

 

 

     One of the things cash bail enables is to keep those in jail that need to be there…but, also affords them an opportunity to be released upon certain conditions which is designed to keep them ‘honest’ until their next court date.  Say, for example, you are arrested for any crime, and you are given a $100,000 bond by a judge. That means that you have to find a bondsman that is willing to take the risk for you not to escape or commit further crimes while you are out. It also means that you have to put a minimum of 10% cash down on the bond or turn over something worth $100,000.  If the person who is bonded walks away, commits another crime, or runs, the money they put toward the bail and whatever they put up as collateral is forfeit to the bondsman.  Now, bonds do not always work and often times people out on bond continue to commit crimes or try to flee.  However, it works enough to keep the people that may be salvageable on the straight and narrow until their court case is heard.  A growing number of prosecutors also are seeking to uncover and reverse wrongful convictions, which occur in a small percentage of cases, the move to release those who were correctly convicted but have now served decades in prison could have a far wider impact. More than 2 million Americans are in jail or prison, which is believed to be the highest incarceration rate in the world.

 

      When police know that a crime is not going to be prosecuted, they are understandably less inclined to arrest that person. And when your local leadership doesn’t have your back as the “defund the police” mentality infuses city leadership, why would an officer put him or herself at risk?  When police know that a crime is not going to be prosecuted, they are understandably less inclined to arrest that person. And when your local leadership doesn’t have your back as the “defund the police” mentality infuses city leadership, why would an officer put him or herself at risk? 

 

      Gascon has said in the past that he wanted to incorporate two different forms of the justice system in Los Angeles.  One for the American citizens and one for those illegally in the country.  His office released a plan that would work to help illegal aliens who had been arrested avoid jail time and deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Gascon’s idea proposed factoring in “severe collateral consequences in charging decisions, plea negotiations, and use of diversion programs.”  The hope was that by utilizing this scheme, it would keep illegal aliens from any jail time or deportation risks.  Gascon also has proposed recently that he plans on reducing “prosecution of low-level, ‘quality of life’ offenses.”  Those may include drug possession, driving without a license, and public urination. The rationale behind this is that illegal aliens that are arrested for these crimes, face what he believes are unfair immigration laws.  The State of California is termed a “sanctuary” state. The local governments do their best to prevent illegal aliens, regardless of reason, from being deported or having any official dealings with ICE.  One of those local jurisdictions, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office, has a very strict policy in which their deputies are forbidden to turn criminal illegal aliens over to ICE regardless of reason.

     While essentially decriminalizing a slew of crimes and eliminating bail requirements, Mr. Gascon is creating a crime soup that will further make living in Los Angeles a genuine hellscape where no one wins, crime rises, tourism suffers, lives are destroyed and businesses fail. We’ve seen the results in great American cities where so-called progressives tell citizens policing is racist, business owners are tyrants, and the successful are thieves.

Why forgiving student debt is a bad idea

     

 

      If President-elect Joe Biden follows through on his campaign promise to forgive student loans to many borrowers, he’ll be checking off an important box for his political constituency.  As a boost to the struggling U.S. economy, however, the move may not have much impact and will draw substantial opposition early in his presidency.  What to do about the burgeoning $1.6 trillion in education debt has been a nagging question for government officials. Fully half of the debt has piled up over the past decade, when effective nationalization of the process opened a floodgate of tuition increases and college loans that left many graduates struggling to pay bills, buy homes and raise families.  The most likely path Biden will follow is a $10,000 forgiveness plan at a time when the average burden per graduate is just shy of $30,000.  That would provide an aggregate savings of more than $400 billion, according to many estimates.

 

      But in doing so, it would raise a series of thorny questions that the new administration may have a hard time answering. Among them are issues over wealth inequality, given that higher-income borrowers owe a larger share, moral hazard of wiping out loans to a select group, and whether forgiveness is even the most effective way to address the issue.

 

      Providing outright debt relief raises the question of, “Do we really want to subsidize tuitions? That’s what you’re doing. You’re giving money to students to give to universities that raised the tuition … and it doesn’t really help anybody.”  There also will be general political backlash on moral hazard grounds from those who see folly in rewarding students for racking up huge debts they couldn’t afford to colleges that took advantage of government largesse to jack up costs.  Government has allowed universities to go on this crazy trajectory of increasing their costs without any additional benefit to students.  Colleges bear a lot of the responsibility, and they have basically been taking the dollars facilitated by government in a predatory way.  We have to move away from governments picking winners and losers.  The government shouldn’t be doing that, and it’s not fair to have people who decided not to go to college, whether it’s directly or indirectly, bearing the burden for the situation they had no role in causing.

 

 

      Besides the cost, the student loan forgiveness proposed by Biden and others suffers from three major flaws: It’s not targeted to help the people most in need; it wouldn’t help the economy; and it wouldn’t solve the massive underlying problem.  Progressives are pushing this remedy despite the inescapable fact that bailing out people with college educations is the opposite of progressive, given that more education generally yields more income. Student loan forgiveness does nothing for Americans whose education ended with high school.  Another element of unfairness is that the erasure would deliver a lump of coal to borrowers who diligently discharged their obligations. Many of them would legitimately resent having made sacrifices that others will be spared.

 

      We can deduce this from the $1,200 stimulus checks sent out this year to Americans largely without regard to need. Only about 40% of that money actually got spent, partly because so much went to the well-to-do.  Which brings me to the politics. Most Americans, especially most poor Americans, don’t have student debt, because most of them didn’t go to college in the first place. Moreover, most people who did go to college have no or very little student debt.  Despite what you may have heard about the student debt crisis, only 6% of borrowers owe more than $100,000. Virtually all of them borrowed so much because they attended graduate school.

      You can argue that people who choose to get graduate degrees — including many young doctors, lawyers and engineers in training — deserve relief. But do they deserve help more than truck drivers, mechanics or short-order cooks? Heck, do they deserve relief more than the doctors, lawyers and engineers who chose to pay off their loans?

 

      One reason teachers unions — a huge source of donations and political organizing for the Democratic Party — want loan forgiveness is that teachers and administrators can boost their pay by going back to school to get advanced degrees. Other municipal and federal workers — another major constituency for Democrats — have similar rules.  The popularity of this idea stems from the fact that the Democratic Party has increasingly become the party of educated professionals, as the GOP has become more working-class. Lots of poor people are still Democrats, but they aren’t a major source of power within the party — the bureaucrats claiming to speak for them are. And that’s who Democrats are prioritizing.

 

 

     So how come taxpayers are stuck with the tab? Don’t let the label “free college” fool you. Someone will be picking up the bill. Maybe most people can stomach the idea of paying taxes for bridges and roads. But those people would probably draw the line at paying other people’s tuition bills.

     I’ve been lectured by President Obama and countless millionaire celebs with private jets and 400-foot yachts that I need to pay my “fair share.” Well, maybe it is time for our revered institutions to pay theirs. They can certainly afford it more than the rest of us.