Got Milk?

Globalism leads to a leveling of the entire world by facilitating convergence to a single economic level.

by Christopher Roach for American Greatness

Systematic shortages have become widespread. One hoped that the panic buying of toilet paper during the height of COVID hysteria was a temporary blip, the result of irrational consumer behavior. But shortages have now become a persistent, systemic problem. 

I’ve noticed what seem like random shortages for items like pet food, green tea, or Aidells’ wonderful Cajun sausages. Bikes and bike parts were hard to come by for a while. Ammunition, of course, has been very expensive and is often out of stock. When there is not a shortage, there are very high prices and quality degradation. For example, meat is super expensive, and the cuts are worse. 

It’s as bad or worse in the “B2B” sector. This is a frequent complaint of any contractor or procurement manager you run into. Everyone’s having issues, and it’s been this way for two years. 

Experts blame it on the supply chain. Of course, this is simply a tautology: when willing buyers and sellers cannot get together, then there is some kind of supply chain problem. The nature of the problem, as well as its causes and potential solutions, are not illuminated by simply labeling it a supply chain problem. 

More importantly, this is not how this country is supposed to be.

Shortages Used to be Only a Third World Problem

Two years ago, I wrote a piece on the Third Worlding of America. It emphasized the rise of corruption, the explosion of crime and disorder, crumbling infrastructure, and the breakdown of the rule of law. Shortages as a feature of contemporary life were less dramatic and less entrenched when the article was written. But these too are a feature of a Third World country, and are becoming very real—deadly, even—with the current baby formula shortage. 

What is the lesson here? What’s the solution? 

Surely the lessons are manifold. One is that, like an old piece of machinery, you can’t necessarily turn off the economy and then turn it back on again. This was exactly what the country did in March of 2020. This has led to various unintended and unforeseen consequences, and this was all set in motion by the massive overreaction to COVID. 

Second, if you try to plan the economy, you will get a misallocation of resources. Remember the “essential industries” and the random ways certain businesses were favored in 2020? In the wake of those policies, industries got more consolidated as small businesses were suffocated by government, particularly in parts of the country that were slow to reopen like Chicago and California. 

Apparently, the baby formula shortage has some very specific features owing to the details of that market. Abbott Labs, the largest provider of formula in the country, makes the familiar Similac brand. One of the five plants where Abbot manufactures the product has been shut down since February due to contamination concerns. The company also instituted a recall. 

Abbott, for obvious reasons of self-interest, appears to be taking this quite seriously. What is missing here is seriousness on the part of the federal government. Where is the crack team of industrial hygienists, FDA experts, and others with know-how working to get this plant up and running yesterday? 

Americans Should Demand Policies Ensuring National Independence

As for more general solutions, I am not entirely sure. I admit that I am not an expert on supply chains. But, as with anything, the first rule when you’re in a hole is to stop digging. Inflation, deficit spending by the government, and shortages are all related. 

The $40 billion Congress just appropriated for Ukraine could buy a lot of baby formula, including from other countries. The baby formula the federal government is sending to border detention facilities would be available for American children, but for Biden’s treacherous betrayal on immigration. 

When Biden’s new press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, was asked who was in charge of the baby formula shortage crisis, she didn’t know. Biden’s few speeches on the subject of the economy have been a collection of bromides aimed at phantom Republican policies. They’re insulting to everyone’s intelligence, and they deny all responsibility, even though high levels of government spending have fueled both inflation and the supply chain crisis. 

There is a more long-term solution that focuses on national economic independence. In economics, there is a tradeoff between efficiency and resiliency. Our “just-in-time” inventory control regimes and the expansion of global trade have made our nation and others vulnerable to supply disruptions. 

Consider the case of Europeans: they get 40 percent of their natural gas from Russia. They cannot easily find viable alternatives. So, while they arm Ukraine, they also send enormous amounts of money to Russia to support their energy needs. This is not sustainable. 

Similarly, we import over $500 billion in goods from China—a product of American companies outsourcing manufacturing jobs over the last 20 years. We have become dependent on China for important goods, including essential drugs, rare earth minerals, and, in some cases, electronics that our defense industry relies upon. We also depend on other nations for critical oil supplies, including Venezuela and the unstable autocracies of the Middle East. 

Tariff policies, anathema to many Republicans and the neoliberals of the Democratic Party, would encourage more to be done at home. When more things are made at home by more companies, we are no longer as dependent upon a single supplier, or as vulnerable to a hostile nation or profit-oriented monopoly. Economic independence supports national independence. 

Since the mid-1990s, America’s corporate leaders have done everything they could to move manufacturing and labor-intensive parts of the economy overseas, while allowing greater consolidation of agriculture and other sectors at home. The end-result is a fragile economy, easily disrupted by problems in a single country or a single company. 

In other words, globalism leads to a leveling of the entire world by facilitating convergence to a single economic level. It is understandable why China or Nigeria would favor globalism. But, for a First World country like the United States, this means that we are being dragged down in various ways to the level of the Third World, with all the danger, poverty, corruption, and mediocrity that entails. And it means American parents are now worried about whether they can feed their kids.

X22, Christian Patriot News, and more- May 16

 

There's literal no behind the scenes or promotional proof that Hetty was on set for the finale, yet I'm hoping that in next week's finale that she shows up and surprises everyone in the last few minutes based off a single sentence from a TV Guide issue that says that 'there will be a huge surprise that will have fans joyfully awaiting Season 14.'. Hetty surprising everyone is the only thing that I can think of that would perfectly fit that description. Yet, there's no hints of what that surprise will be by now, just baseless speculation. And I'm debating with myself if I should watch the finale live, an episode that I know I'm going to seriously dislike, just to see if I get what I want in the last few minutes.

If none of this is 'sheer desperation' mixed in with slight stupidity, then I have no idea what this is. Maybe an interview sometime this week will provide a hint of sorts, or the sneak peaks, but I doubt it. Just, is this a good idea? Or am I just fooling myself once again given how foolishly forgotten Hetty has been all Season?

Enough of that though. Jam packed night tomorrow with 5 state primaries. Here's tonight's news:

The Cycles of Revolutions in Our Midst ~ VDH

The world is fragmenting and changing in all different directions. Unfortunately, contemporary America is offering no guidance.

by Victor Davis Hanson for American Greatness

We are witnessing a number of radical military, social, and political revolutions that are changing the United States—and the world—in fundamental ways that we still have not appreciated. 

The taboo about never mentioning the first-strike use of nuclear weapons in a major conventional war is now apparently over. Vladimir Putin routinely threatens their use. Communist China hints at its growing nuclear capability and is hell-bent on rushing into production a huge new nuclear missile force. The world is defining nuclear incineration down.

The more China and North Korea talk about nukes, the more necessary it is that uneasy democracies such as Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan will make adjustments. And the more the United States bows out of its prior role of extending its nuclear umbrella over Western democracies, the more likely these societies will consider going nuclear themselves. Should Iran acquire nuclear weapons—and its patrons Russia and China seem to be ensuring that it will—then the long feared but heretofore never reified nuclear Middle East arms race will finally break out, as the petro-rich Arab world tries to deter Iran’s unhinged theocrats.

There is also a revolutionary vacuum occurring abroad. Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea are trying to figure out whether there is still any old-style American deterrence, or whether the woke progressives now in power in Washington dislike the customs and traditions of the United States even more than they do.

Lots of disasters have contributed to the current perilous state of affairs, including the precipitous American retreat from and humiliation in Afghanistan. Add in voluntary cutbacks in oil and gas production by the West, and the subsequent embarrassment of a superpower beseeching thuggish regimes to send us their energy. 

The politicized transformation of the U.S. military from a meritocratic force focused on wartime lethality into an  extension of the social welfare state driven by diversity, equity and inclusion has encouraged our enemies to take risks they otherwise might not have taken. 

Other contributors to the American power vacuum are the enormous federal debt, hyperinflation, and likely stagflation and recession this winter—along with the worldwide mania following COVID and the disastrous blanket lockdowns. All of the above has suggested to the world that a cognitively challenged 79-year-old Joe Biden is both an illustration and cause of American decline, rather than a temporary embarrassing aberration. 

Certainly, a wrecked downtown Seattle, the homelessness debacle San Francisco, a Marxist legal regime in Los Angeles, a typical Saturday night of carnage in Chicago, screaming throngs at the homes of Supreme Court justices, and thuggery at the Oscars are now typical vignettes. They should not be the stuff of a supposedly democratic superpower. 

Instead, the new woke United States—from the pride flag that flew atop the now abandoned U.S. embassy in Kabul to its former gender studies programs in now gender-segregated Afghanistan campuses—exudes both arrogance and weakness. That is a fatal combination for a major power. It suggests to those abroad that a once pragmatic, dependable, and competent America no longer exists. Soon it may reach the point that those whom America wishes to help would rather pass on such beneficence, given American propensities to offer sanctimonious and strident lectures coupled with an unreliable and ineffective military record. 

So what should we expect in the next few years? Far greater cohesion between frightened Western democracies on the one hand, while on the other enormous pressures for many to become nuclear themselves. Expect Germany to become more obdurate, either going its own way or ordering the EU and NATO to follow along its path. The more Germany endangers itself and its neighbors with its crackpot policies, the more the world shrugs that 1870, 1914, and 1939 were archetypal, not the anomalous postwar decades.

NATO and the United States may finally invest in credible missile defenses, since they are starting to agree with once-demonized conservatives that in extremisPutin would have no moral problem leveling Florence or incinerating Stockholm—no more than North Korea or China on the brink would hesitate to ensure the cinders of Seattle or San Francisco glow.  

Ukraine has been our Spanish Civil War for nearly three months, a laboratory of strategies, tactics, and weapons of wars to come. What are the lessons so far from that conflict? 

Western military technology still remains the world’s most lethal. Russian equipment is not just noncompetitive but reminds us that weapons are simply tools. Their operations hinge on skilled and zealous soldiers. The majority of Russian conscripts are neither.

Moreover, Ukrainians remind us that well-trained, motivated, and courageous small teams of combatants—mastering online, computerized, and sophisticated Westernized anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and anti-personnel drones and rockets—can nullify vast military investment and manpower. So far, the Ukrainian hit teams have rained death upon thousands of Russian soldiers while destroying millions of dollars of supposedly impregnable Russian traditional assets like artillery, armored vehicles, tanks, and ground support helicopters and aircraft.

Given the recent humiliating U.S. defeat in and retreat from Afghanistan—after abandoning tens of billions of dollars’ worth of sophisticated equipment to terrorists—and the ongoing destruction of the conventional Russian military and billions of dollars of its equipment, we are starting to revisit an earlier pattern of large and well-equipped expeditionary forces of big powers failing to achieve their strategic goals. They prove to be out of place and inept. China may learn the same lessons if it invades Taiwan.

In the American case, the culprits are both White House political ineptitude and the Pentagon’s strategic confusion. In the Russian instance, there was a complete divorce of abstract strategy from reality on the ground, between demoralized conscripts versus motivated volunteers fighting for their families. There were systemic Russian failures to field competent and motivated soldiers and to maintain and wisely employ sophisticated equipment. Russia is showing the world that it is a global player only to the degree it can sell oil and periodically threaten any nation it likes with nuclear weapons—a fact no doubt privately conceded by Putin himself.

In the West in general, and in the United States particularly, we are seeing a final fruition of decades of woke self-loathing. The sight of a pride flag flying on the Kabul embassy as the most lavishly supplied and funded military force in history scrambled to fly home, abandoning allies and employees, was a bitter metaphor of the arrogance, ignorance, and impotence of woke ideology.

What was once an elite boutique parlor game confined to university departments and the schools of education has now filtered throughout all campus courses to the point of being institutionalized. It is lapping into the engineering, math, and physics departments and the schools of medicine and business. The idea of meritocracy is disappearing, replaced by woke reparatory fixations on race, in the manner the ideologically correct Soviet commissariat destroyed Russian institutions or Mao’s cultural revolutionary insanity destroyed millions of Chinese. 

At a time of impending recession, runaway inflation, and climbing interest rates, universities are charging students thousands of dollars in increased tuition and fees to subsidize an unproductive diversity, equity, and inclusion industry. And like all good commissariats, the DEI apparatchiks produce no research, do no teaching, and bully and repress those who do.

Their chief legacy is the millions of opportunistic mediocrities emerging from the shadows to mouth wokester shibboleths about climate change, diversity, equity, and inclusion, identity politics, and transgenderism, while damning the customs, traditions, history, and values of a prior society that alone is responsible for their very affluence and leisure. 

The stuff of life—water storage for agriculture, gas and oil production for transportation and home livability, building materials for shelter, deterrent police to ensure safe streets, and competent medical officials and scientists—is now subordinated to ideological censure and audit. All that is not a sustainable proposition for a sophisticated but vulnerable multiracial democracy of 330 million. Nihilist ideology finally trickles down to shelves empty of baby formula, idled diesel semis, and parked cars left open to thieves in hopes they will merely steal rather than also vandalize. Boutique university theories turn deadly when any society is unhinged enough to adopt them.

So this cannibalistic woke revolution is no Wobbly mine take-over, no 1960s Woodstock, not even a Black Panther, Weatherman, or Symbionese Liberation Army violent spasm. Instead, wokeism is so institutionalized that, like the Soviet Party or the adherents of Mao’s little red book, joining the virtue-signaling wokesters is seen as a smart career move. Going woke is a bully’s paradise, an indemnity against a past ill-considered tweet or a future peccadillo. Indeed, it is quasi-religious groupthink proselytizing. 

The world is fragmenting and changing in all different directions. Unfortunately, contemporary America is offering no guidance. To the extent it seeks to lead and inspire, its current elite wish to take other nations and cultures down a nihilist pathway of self-loathing that few wish to follow.

Bartiromo Interviews Nunes and Patel About Sussmann Trial

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

Devin Nunes and Kash Patel discuss the trial of Michael Sussmann which begins today. {Direct Rumble Link}

Ultimately the issue in the Michael Sussmann trial is quite simple:

Did the DOJ and FBI know the material Michael Sussmann was giving them came from the Hillary Clinton campaign?

We all know the answer to that question, of course they did.  However, there has been –and continues to be– a game of grand pretense from the DOJ/FBI group where they pretend not to have known.

Two groups: the “insider group” (DOJ/FBI) and the “outsider group” (Perkins Coie, Fusion GPS, Clinton campaign, Sussmann, Elias, Mook, etc).

Claiming the DOJ and FBI were duped, is the government firewall that protects the inside group.  However, this claim is now against the interest of Michael Sussmann who has been accused of false representation and lying to the FBI about the provenance of the information he provided.

In her capacity as the DOJ lawyer assigned to the office of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Lisa Page played a role in evaluating the provenance of the concocted Trump-Russia information given to McCabe via FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker (who received it from Sussmann).

Lisa Page (above left) is legally represented by Amy Jeffries (above right), who is the wife of the trial judge (Michael Cooper) in the Sussmann case.  So, think about it…

…The FBI lawyer (Lisa Page) in charge of vetting the provenance of the fraudulent material from Clinton (via Sussmann), retains legal services from the wife of the Judge now determining whether the provenance was accurately disclosed by Sussmann.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Everyone knows the FBI was aware the Sussmann material (Trump-Russia fabrications) came from Clinton’s campaign.

Lisa Page knew the material she reviewed came from Hillary Clinton. However, everyone in the DOJ and FBI has to pretend they didn’t know, or else they’re in deep shit.

So, this grand pretense is taking place, where everyone inside govt (DOJ/FBI) is pretending not to know the Sussmann stuff came from Hillary Clinton, and everyone outside government (Fusion, Clinton, Perkins Coie, Sussmann, Elias et al) is saying the govt (DOJ/FBI) did know the provenance, or else the outside team would be in big shit for lying or perpetrating fraud.

Enter Special Prosecutor John Durham amid this game of great pretense. That’s really what the Michael Sussmann trial boils down to.

INSIDERS – DOJ/FBI saying they didn’t know (or else trouble).

OUTSIDERS – Sussman saying the DOJ/FBI did know (or else trouble).

The “didn’t know” -vs- “did know” is the firewall between the INSIDERS and the OUTSIDERS. Put another way, the DOJ/FBI were duped -vs- the DOJ/FBI were complicit.

As long as INSIDERS can claim they were duped, they are safe. However, if the OUTSIDERS prove the INSIDERS were not duped, then the spotlight shifts.

If Sussmann wins, it means the DOJ/FBI lose. If Sussmann loses, it means the DOJ/FBI firewall remains intact.

Same thing, another way: If Durham wins, it means the INSIDERS are safe. If Durham loses, it means the INSIDERS are exposed.

That’s why the majority of the previous media participants are not writing about the trial. For them, the dynamics are tenuous. They want Sussmann to win, but the media don’t want their INSIDERS exposed. If the insiders are exposed it means the DOJ and FBI knew the information came from Hillary Clinton, AND they pushed that false Trump-Russia information into the media via leaks.

Then the story circles around to the media claiming they were duped by the DOJ and FBI feeding them false information – versus the media admitting they knew the information was false, yet they used the method of reception from the DOJ/FBI to enhance the credibility of claims they knew were fraudulent.

It’s all FUBAR. A through the looking glass game of grand pretense. A public pantomime of silliness and abject nuttery.

Everyone involved, both inside and outside government, are still pretending not to know things.

The trial is ridiculous theater, created to give the illusion of legitimacy to a series of events and investigations that is designed around this game of pretending.

One example of the nuttery. Judge Christopher Cooper is the trial judge. If Michael Sussmann is NOT Guilty, it means the FBI did know he was representing Hillary Clinton when he passed the information along. That means the DOJ/FBI insiders are exposed.

If the DOJ/FBI insiders are exposed, Lisa Page could need Judge Cooper’s wife again.

AP Is Aghast That the GOP Would Use Biden's Failures as a Political Weapon. Aghast!

AP Is Aghast That the GOP Would Use Biden's Failures as a Political Weapon. Aghast!

Rick Moran - PJ Media

The Associated Press is well known — and rightfully so — for writing long, detailed articles on “what it all means.” They’re called “thumbsuckers” in the news business, and the AP has perfected them.

A thumbsucker article presupposes that the reader is an ignorant rube and needs to be guided from Point A to Point B of a topic in order to have it explained to them. The problem for the reader is that the AP reporter writing the story — or most other mainstream reporters writing the story — almost always allows his or her own bias to permeate the story, making a “what it all means” story into a “what it should mean to you, you ignorant wretch.”

But the AP’s latest thumbsucker — “GOP’s new midterm attack: Blaming Biden for formula shortage” — makes a silly attempt to guide the reader to the conclusion that the Republican attack lines are politically motivated.

OMG! Really?

Republicans aiming to retake control of Congress have already sharpened a message centering around blaming Democrats for high inflation, expensive gas, migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and violent crime in some cities.

But GOP leaders landed on an issue this week that it hopes could prove even more potent: tying President Joe Biden to a shortage in baby formula.

The uproarious response says a lot about how much respect the AP has lost in recent years.

The AP tried to assure America that Biden was on top of the problem. They didn’t say, however, whether or not he was awake.

The administration has sometimes been slow in responding to sudden political threats, perhaps most notably when signs of inflation began to surface last year. The White House appears determined not to repeat that mistake, announcing on Friday that formula maker Abbott Laboratories committed to give rebates through August for a food stamp-like program that helps women, infants and children called WIC.

Biden insisted there’s “nothing more urgent we’re working on” than addressing the shortage.

Asked if his administration had responded as quickly as it should have, Biden said, ”If we’d been better mind readers, I guess we could’ve. But we moved as quickly as the problem became apparent.”

The “problem became apparent” in February when Abbot was forced to close its plant in Sturgis, Mich., which supplied 40% of infant formula made in the U.S. and almost all the specialty formulas manufactured in America. In fact, this was an issue only for parents with infants needing specialty formula until the news media awoke from their slumber and discovered that parents were panicking about finding food for their babies.

Then and only then did Biden ramp up some kind of government response. And it wasn’t until last week that the government began to attack the problem as a crisis.

Perhaps the AP should do its job and ask Biden what he has been doing since February to replace the specialty formula market and the 40%t market share held by Abbott? But that might embarrass the old man, and the AP just can’t have that.

And that would be guiding the reader in the wrong direction. Best to keep the article on track and protect Biden from the political fallout of his incompetent leadership.

Race and Gender Checks Coming to a Boardroom Near You

Race and Gender Checks Coming to a Boardroom Near You

New York City pressures Wall Street banks to report "self-identified gender, race and/or ethnicity of individual directors."

Matt Welch- Reason  5.13.2022 2:33 PM

(Erik McGregor/Sipa USA/Newscom)

The Office of the New York City Comptroller was created in 1801 to be the chief auditor of local government and all its various financial activities. The comptroller's top responsibilities, as bullet-pointed on the office's website, are "conducting performance and financial audits of all City agencies," "serving as a fiduciary to the City's five public pension funds," "providing comprehensive oversight of the City's budget and fiscal condition," "reviewing City contracts for integrity, accountability and fiscal compliance," and "resolving claims both on behalf of and against the City."

Or, you know, pressuring private companies to do race and gender checks.

On Thursday, New York Comptroller Brad Lander proudly announced that the city's pension funds, with their estimated $263 billion under management, had successfully pressured four huge Wall Street firms (Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and BlackRock), plus Ford Motor Company, to publicly disclose a "Board Matrix" containing the "self-identified gender, race and/or ethnicity of individual directors."

"Pronounced commitments to diversity and inclusion ring hollow if those values are not reflected in the boardroom where decisions are made impacting their entire workforce," Lander said in a statement. "The strongest boards and management teams are those that reflect the diversity of their workforce, and of our communities. Diversity is a key factor in performance and essential to the long-term value, a priority for many investors."

The comptroller's office expressed disappointment that a sixth firm, NextEra Energy, "refused" to cough up race and gender self-identification of individual board members, opting instead to release that information in aggregate. "The imposition of a prescriptive matrix by individual director can promote a check-the-box approach to refreshment, thus increasing the risk of bypassing a well-qualified candidate," NextEra explained in a statement.

Lander was not having it.

"Investors do not elect directors as a collective body, but as individuals who are accountable to act as fiduciaries in the boardroom and to oversee the long-term strategies of the company," his office shot back. "Aggregate disclosures are not useful for investors making decisions about how to vote on individual directors at annual general meetings."

It's worth taking a step back and thinking that logic through. What Lander and the pension funds are explicitly saying is that not knowing the racial and gender self-identification of a company's board candidate hinders the decision-making process on how to vote. All things else being equal, if Terry Smith self-identifies as a white male instead of a Latinx female, the diversity-valuing city of New York is assumed to be more likely to vote "no" on his candidacy. (One can only imagine where voters' preferences would lie if the nominee refused to self-identify with either a gender or a race.)

There is something both farcical and creepy about this obsession with tracking other people's (mostly) immutable characteristics and using the power of government to compel disclosure thereof. "Race and/or ethnicity" is a tautologically unscientific classification, not improved upon by the city's suggested "best practices" categories of African American, Asian/Pacific Islander, white/Caucasian, Hispanic/Latino, and Native American. What box should Tiger Woods check? Why are we asking individuals to join a group? What on earth does any of this have to do with providing an auditing function on a city government with a $100 billion budget and the highest taxes in the country?

Gotham is hardly alone in conducting race/gender checks on big business. Illinois since last year has required publicly traded companies based in the state to not only provide a board diversity report, but also a "description of the corporation's policies and practices for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion among its board of directors and executive officers," and "whether and how demographic diversity is considered" in senior hiring. A newer law imposes further diversity reporting requirements on any private company with more than 100 employees.

Maryland in 2019 passed a Gender Diversity in the Board Room law requiring publicly traded companies with sales higher than $5 million and nonprofits with budgets higher than $5 million to submit the gender information of their boards.

And just last month, a Superior Court judge struck down as unconstitutional a 2020 California law requiring publicly traded companies in the state to have on their boards at least one member who self-identifies as "Black, African American, Hispanic, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, Native American, Native Hawaiian or Alaska Native, or…as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender."

The Nasdaq, meanwhile, has imposed board-composition requirements of its own (approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission) that could get noncompliant companies delisted as soon as 2023.

The NYC Comptroller's office has been waging this and related pressure campaigns since long before Brad Lander was elected last year, under the specious reasoning that savvy investors (as opposed to Democratic politicians) were hungry for the potentially market-moving information of whether a company's board was sufficiently female or nonwhite.

"It's a liability for NextEra to refuse to disclose specific board composition data," Manhattan Borough President and pension-fund trustee Mark Levine said in Thursday's press release. "We have a responsibility to current and future pension recipients to minimize the funds' risk and ensure the stability of the monthly checks they rely on in retirement. To do so, we must invest in companies that shareholders have faith in, and trust starts at the board level."

It doesn't take too paranoid a read to conclude that the "risk" Levine refers to might well be coming from the government itself rather than some kind of inherent tendency for an overly white male board to underperform the market.

Governments dominated by Democrats tend to treat the private sector as both a permanent revenue stream and a vehicle for enacting social policy. They then act surprised or indignant when the populations of both businesses and residents decline. As ever with regulation, the richest can absorb the burden while the poorer will shrink away.

Meanwhile, this latest push by New York underlines the grim reality that even the most theoretically public-advocating of elected positions, like comptroller, can in a one-party setting become a grandstanding bully pulpit for dinging Russia, weighing in on gifted and talented programs, and producing maybe my favorite government press release headline of 2022: "Comptroller Lander, Council Members Cabán and Hanif Outline Steps for a Feminist Post-Pandemic Recovery."

Maybe, I don't know, audit the government instead?

 

The only difference between the Jan. 6th political prisoners in the Bastille and the rest of real Americans is that most of us weren't there on January 6th. 

Article by David Zukerman in The American Thinker

House Republican 5 should defy the Jan. 6 committee subpoenas

The following assertion appeared in a Politico article on unprecedented action by the "Jan. 6" inquisitorial cabal issuing subpoenas to members of Congress: "The panel believes that these five GOP lawmakers have insight into Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election, an effort they say amounts to a coup attempt."  

Note the accusation by the inquisitorial panel that President Trump made "a coup attempt." This, of course, is an example of projection of the left of its own mindset and conduct onto its political targets.   What was the conduct of the left -- ranging from false accusations that Donald Trump was a Putin puppet, including the base and baseless Steele dossier to vows of resistance, including an aberrant impeachment trial in 2019, and culminating in an impeachment farce post-Trump presidency in 2021 -- if not a series of coup attempts?

And still the attempt at an anti-Trump coup continues -- by means of the Jan. 6 inquisition, not to mention the plethora of actions brought by various prosecutors against the former president -- apparently for the purpose of preventing a third presidential run by Mr. Trump, and, in all likelihood, to block a seismic political shift this November to GOP control of House and Senate.

The left's inquisition against Donald J. Trump and MAGA adherents is laughingly seen as the work of "progressives." But what is "progressive" about the totalitarian context of the left's program?  (One hesitates to call it "Biden's program" as he seems simply the left's useful tool to put finis to the liberty-loving spirit that gave birth to this Republic.)  The label the left applies to itself may well be "progressive," but the reality is that their program,

hearkening back to pre-representative government days, is fiercely regressive.  And do not be fooled: the illegitimate subpoenas against five House Republicans is Creature Pelosi's opening attack on representative government.

How will the House Republican Five, including GOP leader Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Jim Jordan, and Rep. Andy Biggs, respond to the illegitimate subpoenas that have regularly been issued by the Jan. 6 inquisition to many others, and now to members of the House of Representatives?  Should they file complaints in federal court?   Lower courts perhaps would uphold the illegitimate Jan. 6 panel -- which should have been nullified by courts long ago, as an unconstitutional abuse of power by the House majority.  The Supreme Court would likely keep hands off, not wanting to enter a "political thicket."

I suggest that the House Republican Five ignore the subpoenas, while educating the American people how the Jan. 6 inquisition panel is a poisoned governmental tree, with all of its fruits, including its subpoenas, highly toxic in constitutional terms.  The House Republican Five should be backed by all Republican senators with lengthy speeches of support on the Senate floor -- lengthy speeches that, yes, smack of a de facto filibuster.

What is that creature in the House speaker's seat  (to apply the insult to the originator) going to do when the House Republican Five stands firm in defense of free, unfettered representative government:  expel them?  It is time for Republicans to act on the basis of an inaugural observation of Franklin Roosevelt, March 1933:   "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

Republicans in Congress must stop fearing Democrats, turncoat Republicans, the Deep State, the media, and Big Tech to act on the basis of constitutional principle and free representative government.   In this regard, they would do well to take a page out of Donald J. Trump's playbook:  respond to attack --effectively and with vigor.  And trust in the good sense of the American people to heed their call.

 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/05/house_republican_5_should_defy_the_jan_6_committee_subpoenas.html 

 

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Élisabeth Borne becomes France’s first female prime minister in 30 years

 

Élisabeth Borne, the French minister for labour, has been appointed prime minister – the first woman to hold the post in more than 30 years and only the second female prime minister in modern French history.

Borne, 61, an engineer with a long career in government ministries, the senior civil service, public administration and state businesses – was chosen by Emmanuel Macron for the difficult task of delivering his complex policy promises at the start of his second term, against a background of rising inflation and the war in Ukraine.

Borne is the first French female prime minister since Édith Cresson, who briefly headed the cabinet from May 1991 to April 1992 under the Socialist president François Mitterrand.

“It’s more than time,” Cresson told BFMTV when asked how it felt to see a second woman head the government.

Cresson had warned this weekend that French politics remained “macho”. A total of 74% of French people said they wanted a female prime minister, according to an Ifop poll this weekend. Macron, whose government had featured equal numbers of women and men, had nonetheless been accused of surrounding himself with a mainly male group of advisers and confidants.

Borne’s first task is to manage the different political factions of Macron’s centrist grouping who need to win a parliamentary majority in elections next month if Macron is to have a free hand for his planned overhaul of pensions and the welfare state.  

If Macron wins a majority, from this summer, Borne must extend caps on energy prices and introduce further measures to address voters’ concerns about making ends meet amid the cost of living crisis. She is then tasked with leading Macron’s unpopular plans to push back the pension age from 62 to either 64 or 65, which are expected to spark trade union opposition and street protests. Borne will also be given a new brief of overseeing what Macron has promised will be a radical new form of “green planning” to limit carbon emissions and boost environment policy.

Borne is a faithful Macron supporter who held three key ministerial jobs during his first term: transport, environment and labour. She earned a reputation for taking on difficult policies and pushing them through, including Macron’s sweeping reforms to the state rail system which saw the biggest strikes in decades. The Macron ally, Christophe Castaner, had nicknamed the straight-talking Borne “minister of impossible reforms made possible”.

Macron, 44, registered a solid victory in last month’s presidential election against the far-right leader Marine Le Pen, winning by 58.5% to Le Pen’s 41.5%. But he acknowledged that many French people, particularly on the left, had voted for him to keep out the far right. He has promised to change his top-down, centralised way of doing politics and consult more, broadening his base. 

Borne, who was in government for the whole of Macron’s first term, symbolises continuity. Macron’s opponents were quick to attack her appointment. Le Pen, who is running for re-election to parliament said: “Emmanuel Macron has shown his incapacity to unite people and the will to continue his politics of looking down on people, deconstructing the state and wrecking the social [security system], of fiscal rackets and laxism.” The radical left’s Jean-Luc Mélenchon tweeted that Borne’s appointment meant “the continuity of the president’s policies”. He tweeted: “A new season of social and environmental mistreatment begins.”

Borne’s personal background on the centre left is crucial for Macron, particularly in the run-up to the parliament elections. In his first term, Macron – whose project had been described as “neither right nor left” when he won the presidency in 2017 – had appointed two prime ministers from the right. He is under pressure to win back voters on the centre left in the parliamentary elections.

Mélenchon recently persuaded the Socialist, Communist and Greens parties to enter an alliance under his leadership for the parliamentary elections, that unites the left around a common platform for the first time in decades. The left is seeking to increase its seats in parliament.

Borne’s long career has included advising key ministers under the Socialist presidents Mitterrand and François Hollande as well as working in Paris city hall when it was run by the Socialist Bertrand Delanoë.

She never joined the Socialist party, and she is the first of Macron’s prime ministers to be a card-carrying member of his centrist party, which was recently renamed Renaissance.  

Borne has described being personally driven by efficiency, not hogging the limelight. “For me, doing politics is not about getting people to talk about me at any price, it’s about dedicating myself to delivering projects in the service of my country,” she told France Inter radio last year. “Politics is not about pushing myself to the front of stage.”  

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/16/elisabeth-borne-becomes-frances-first-female-prime-minister-in-30-years