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America's Heartland Biden Biden Cartel Commentary Corruption Lies Links from other news sources. Uncategorized

Fact Checking Biden’s State of the Union Hate Speech.

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Fact Checking Biden’s State of the Union Hate Speech. So who didn’t Biden attack last night? The address wasn’t about the state of the union, but about the lies Biden has been telling for the pst three years. Even the MSM was nailing his lies to the Wall.

From the Washington Post.

“And now instead of importing foreign products and exporting American jobs, we’re exporting American products and creating American jobs — right here in America where they belong!”

Biden is being a bit slippery here because he’s only telling only part of the story. Exports are up, which means more U.S. products are being shipped overseas. But that does not necessarily mean jobs are no longer being shipped overseas. Imports are also up during his presidency, though they fell a bit last year.

According to the Census Bureau, exports in goods and services have climbed from $2.16 trillion in 2020 to $3.05 trillion in 2023.

But imports have also gone up, from $2.81 trillion in 2020 to $3.8 trillion last year. That total was down 3.7 percent from 2022, bringing the trade deficit down with it.

The trade figures obscure the fact that many manufacturers import goods that they use to manufacture products that are later shipped overseas. Some of those imports represent lost American jobs.

“There are 1,000 billionaires in America. You know what the average federal tax rate for these billionaires is? … 8.2 percent! That’s far less than the vast majority of Americans pay. No billionaire should pay a lower tax rate than a teacher, a sanitation worker, or a nurse!”

This is another favorite line — the president has referenced this “fact” in more than 30 appearances over the past year — but Biden is comparing apples and oranges. We’ve given the president two Pinocchios for this claim.

The “lower tax rate” refers to a 2021 White House study concluding that the 400 wealthiest taxpayers paid an effective tax rate of 8 percent. But that estimate included unrealized gains in the income calculation. That’s not how the tax laws work. People are taxed on capital gains when they sell their stocks or other assets. So this is only a figure for a hypothetical tax system.

According to IRS data on the top 0.001% — 1,475 taxpayers with at least $77 million in adjusted gross income in 2020 — the average tax rate was 23.7 percent. The top 1 percent of taxpayers (income of at least $548,000) paid nearly 26 percent.

As for less-wealthy Americans, few, such as schoolteachers or firefighters, pay even the lowest rate of 10 percent because of deductions, exemptions and the like.

According to the Tax Policy Center, about 60 percent of all tax returns are filed by those with income under $50,000 — and about half of those pay no income tax at all; 22 percent paid an effective tax rate of less than 5 percent and another 22 percent paid less than 10 percent.

Among taxpayers with income between $50,000 and $100,000, about 60 percent paid an effective tax rate below 10 percent.

And how about The USA Today?

“Since I’ve come to office, our GDP is up.”

Biden is correct that GDP has grown since he came to office in January 2021, but this is hardly a unique achievement. Every president since Harry Truman has experienced GDP growth from the beginning to the end of their presidency, according to data from the U.S. Federal Reserve.  

“Inflation has dropped from 9% to 3% – the lowest in the world!”

Biden is simply wrong here.

The inflation rate refers to the annual percent change in consumer prices compared to the previous year’s prices. That number was 3.1% in the U.S. for the year ending in January 2024, a reduction from 3.4% the previous January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But that’s not the lowest in the world.

The latest data from the International Monetary Fund shows the U.S. has a higher inflation rate than dozens of countries. Those with lower rates include G7 countries such as Canada and France (2.4% and 2.5% respectively) and other advanced economies such as New Zealand, Italy, Switzerland, Finland and China. The global average inflation rate is currently 5.8%, according to the IMF.

And far left Factcheck.org

Biden boasted that “wages keep going up, inflation keeps coming down.” But over the entirety of Biden’s presidency, wages are down when adjusted for inflation.

Average weekly earnings for rank-and-file workers went up 14.8% during Biden’s first three years in office, according to monthly figures compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But inflation ate up all that gain and more. “Real” weekly earnings, which are adjusted for inflation and measured in dollars valued at their average level in 1982-84, actually declined 3.1% since Biden took office.

Biden continues to misleadingly claim, as he did during his address, that’s he’s “already cut the federal deficit by over $1 trillion dollars.”

Budget deficits have declined from the record spending gap of $3.1 trillion in fiscal year 2020, the last full fiscal cycle before Biden took office. In FY 2021, the deficit was about $2.8 trillion; in FY 2022, it was almost $1.4 trillion; and in FY 2023, which ended Sept. 30, it was roughly $1.7 trillion.

But as we’ve explained several times, the primary reason that deficits went down by about $350 billion in Biden’s first year, and by another $1.3 trillion in his second, is because of emergency COVID-19 funding that expired in those years.

On multiple occasions, Biden has left the misleading impression that new jobs in U.S. semiconductor factories would pay above $100,000 annually for those without a college degree.

But only those with a bachelor’s degree ($120,000) or a graduate degree (over $160,000) had wages that topped six figures. Workers with a high school education or less could expect to earn a little more than $40,000. Those with at least some college experience could make $60,000, while earning an associate’s degree could increase that to $70,000.

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Biden Cartel Commentary How sick is this? Just my own thoughts Life Links from other news sources. Opinion Politics

Did you see Bidens Hate Speech Yesterday?

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Did you see Bidens Hate Speech Yesterday? Yesterday Biden showed his hatred for half of all Americans. What a speech. Not one word about what he’s done to grow the economy and unite all Americans.

Now Joe most likely united the hate mongers with his half truths and lies about January 6. Except for the white and black trash outthere, who believed hom?

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Education Links from other news sources. Reprints from others.

Winning. CUNY condemns law school graduate’s ‘anti-American & anti-Israel’ commencement address as ‘hate speech’

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I want to thank FOX Digital for this awesome article.

The City University of New York (CUNY) condemned the controversial commencement address from its public law school as “hate speech” Tuesday following intense backlash.

A statement released from CUNY’s Board of Trustees and its chancellor addressed the divisive comments from law school graduate Fatima Mousa Mohammed, who attacked “oppressive” institutions of law and order such as the military, the police, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. prison system, declaring law is a “manifestation of white supremacy” and called the NYPD “fascist.”

“Free speech is precious, but often messy, and is vital to the foundation of higher education. Hate speech, however, should not be confused with free speech and has no place on our campuses or in our city, our state or our nation,” CUNY wrote.

“The remarks by a student-selected speaker at the CUNY Law School graduation, unfortunately, fall into the category of hate speech as they were a public expression of hate toward people and communities based on their religion, race or political affiliation.  The Board of Trustees of the City University of New York condemns such hate speech,” the statement continued.”

The complete article is here.

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History Leftist Virtue(!) Opinion Politics Progressive Racism Reprints from others.

What can happen when you go after hate speech leftists and race baiters?

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A bizarre string of events is unfolding at the American Historical Association (AHA). Last week, AHA president James H. Sweet published a column in the organization’s magazine on the problem of “presentism” in academic historical writing. According to Sweet, an unsettling number of academic historians have allowed their political views in the present to shape and distort their interpretations of the past.

Sweet offered a gentle criticism of the New York Times’s 1619 Project as evidence of this pattern. Many historians embraced the 1619 Project for its political messages despite substantive flaws of fact and interpretation in its content. Sweet thus asked: “As journalism, the project is powerful and effective, but is it history?”

Within moments of his column appearing online, all hell broke loose on Twitter.

Incensed at even the mildest suggestion that politicization is undermining the integrity of historical scholarship, the activist wing of the history profession showed up on the AHA’s thread and began demanding Sweet’s cancellation. Cate Denial, a professor of history at Knox College, led the charge with a widely-retweeted thread calling on colleagues to bombard the AHA’s Executive Board with emails protesting Sweet’s column. “We cannot let this fizzle,” she declared before posting a list of about 20 email addresses.

Other activist historians joined in, flooding the thread with profanity-laced attacks on Sweet’s race and gender as well as calls for his resignation over a disliked opinion column. The responses were almost universally devoid of any substance. None challenged Sweet’s argument in any meaningful way. It was sufficient enough for him to have harbored the “wrong” thoughts – to have questioned the scholarly rigor of activism-infused historical writing, and to have criticized the 1619 Project in even the mildest terms.

New York Times columnist and 1619 Project contributor Jamie Bouie jumped in, casually dismissing Sweet’s concerns over the politicization of scholarship with contemporary “social justice” issues. 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones retweeted the attacks on Sweet, even though she has previously invoked the “journalistic” and editorial nature of her project to shield it from scholarly criticism by historians.

Other activist historians such as the New School’s Claire Potter retorted that the 1619 Project was indeed scholarly history, insisting that “big chunks of it are written by professional, award-winning historians.” Sweet was therefore in the wrong to call it journalism, or to question its scholarly accuracy. Potter’s claims are deeply misleading. Only two of the 1619 Project’s twelve feature essays were written by historians, and neither of them are specialists in the crucial period between 1776-1865, when slavery was at its peak. The controversial parts of the 1619 Project were all written by opinion journalists such as Hannah-Jones, or non-experts writing well outside of their own competencies such as Matthew Desmond.

The frenzy further exposed the very same problems in the profession that Sweet’s essay cautioned against. David Austin Walsh, a historian at the University of Virginia, took issue with historians offering any public criticism of the 1619 Project’s flaws – no matter their validity – because those criticisms are “going to be weaponized by the right.” In Walsh’s hyperpoliticized worldview, historical accuracy is wholly subordinate to the political objectives of the project. Sweet’s sin in telling the truth about the 1619 Project’s defects was being “willfully blind to the predictable political consequences of [his] public interventions.” Any argument that does not advance a narrow band of far-left political activism is not only unfit for sharing – it must be suppressed.

Within hours of the AHA’s original tweet of Sweet’s article, the cancellation campaign was in full swing. Predictably, the AHA caved to the cancellers.

One day after the offending article went live, the AHA tweeted out a “public apology” from Sweet. It reads like a forced confession statement, acknowledging the “harm” and “damage” allegedly caused by simply raising questions about the politicization of scholarship toward overtly ideological activist ends. It did not matter that Sweet’s criticisms were mild and couched in plenty of nuance, or that they even came from a center-left perspective that also criticized conservative historians for politicizing the debate around gun rights. Sweet was guilty of pointing out that partisan political activism undermines scholarly rigor when the lines between the two blur, because the overwhelming majority of that activism inside the history profession currently comes from the political left. And for that, the very same activists extracted an obsequious apology letter. Its text, reproduced below, reads like a “struggle session” for academic wrongthink.

Sweet’s apology excited the activist wing of the profession, though it did little to placate their ire. The resignation demands continued, because Sweet’s apology was “insincere” and because his argument would be used by the “wrong” people – i.e. anyone who dissents from a particular brand of progressive activist orthodoxy. Simply criticizing the 1619 Project would play into the tactics of “Right-wingers, Nazis, and other bad-faith actors” who could use Sweet’s commentary “in the service of white supremacism and misogyny” announced Kevin Gannon, a historian who’s primarily known for scolding other scholars on twitter when they deviate from the profession’s far-left orthodoxies.

In this branch of academia, it does not matter whether the 1619 Project was truthful or factually accurate. The only concerns are whether its narrative can be weaponized for a political cause or used to deflect scrutiny of the same. As is often the case in the pseudo-moralizing political crusades of academia, the loudest demands against Sweet also came from the least-productive academics – historians with thin CVs and little in the way of original scholarly research to their names, although they do maintain 24/7 Twitter feeds of progressive political commentary.

Lora Burnett, one of the more vocal cancellation crusaders after the initial article posted, scoffed at Sweet, announcing “this apology was basically, ‘sorry I made you sad but I’m still right.’” She continued: “lamenting ‘inartful expression’ is apparently easier than admitting to flawed argument, unsupported claims, and factually incorrect assertions.” Note that Burnett and the other detractors never bothered to explain how Sweet’s argument was flawed or unsupported. Nor did they attempt to pen a rebuttal, which could have produced a constructive dialogue about the role of political activism in shaping historical scholarship. It was sufficient to denounce him as guilty for holding the wrong opinions. No matter the apology that Sweet made, the campaign to eject him from the history profession’s markedly impolite company would continue.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world began to take notice of the bizarre spectacle playing out at the main professional organization for a major academic discipline. As criticisms mounted on the AHA’s twitter feed, the organization moved to shut down debate entirely. They locked their twitter account, and posted a message to members denouncing the public blowback as the product of “trolls” and “bad faith actors.”

Keep in mind that only 24 hours earlier, the AHA had no problem with hundreds of activist historians flooding their threads with actual harassing behavior by bad faith actors. It tolerated cancellation threats directed against its president, calls to flood the personal email accounts of its board with harassing messages and denunciations of Sweet, and dozens of profane, sexist, and personally degrading attacks on Sweet himself. There were no AHA denunciations of those “trolls” or their “appalling” behavior, and no statements calling for “civil discourse” while the activist Twitterstorian mobs flooded the original thread with obscenity-laced vitriol and ad hominem attacks on Sweet.

Sadly, this type of unprofessional belligerence is now the norm on History Twitter. It would never be tolerated from any other perspective than the far-left, but it is valorized in the profession as long as it serves that particular set of ideological objectives.

The final irony is that the AHA only shuttered its twitter feed from the public when it could no longer restrict the conversation to the activist mob calling for Sweet’s cancellation. It’s the same brand of intellectual closure that Sweet’s offending column warned against in its final passage: “When we foreshorten or shape history to justify rather than inform contemporary political positions, we not only undermine the discipline but threaten its very integrity.”

Phillip W. Magness

Phil Magness

Phillip W. Magness is Senior Research Faculty and Research and Education Director at the American Institute for Economic Research. He is also a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. He holds a PhD and MPP from George Mason University’s School of Public Policy, and a BA from the University of St. Thomas (Houston).

Prior to joining AIER, Dr. Magness spent over a decade teaching public policy, economics, and international trade at institutions including American University, George Mason University, and Berry College.

Magness’s work encompasses the economic history of the United States and Atlantic world, with specializations in the economic dimensions of slavery and racial discrimination, the history of taxation, and measurements of economic inequality over time. He also maintains active research interest in higher education policy and the history of economic thought. In addition to his scholarship, Magness’s popular writings have appeared in numerous venues including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Newsweek, Politico, Reason, National Review, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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Opinion Politics

Flag promoting racism, bigotry, and hate will fly at US Embassies and Consulates.

Visits: 42

Flag promoting racism, bigotry, and hate will fly  at US Embassies and Consulates. This is a new low. 1st to honor a career criminal on the anniversary of his accidental death during a justified arrest. And second to fly a noted hate groups flag at our embassies and consulates. We have this from Gateway Pundit.

A source within the Biden State Department wishing to remain anonymous has shared with Human Events News a document that indicates that all U.S. “Diplomatic and Consular posts” are being encouraged to display shows of support for Black Lives Matter on Tuesday, May 25, the one-year anniversary of George Floyd’s death. The memo reads in part, “The Department supports the use of the term ‘Black Lives Matter’ in messaging content, speeches, and other diplomatic engagements with foreign audiences to advance racial equity and access to justice on May 25 and beyond (italics added) We encourage posts to focus on the need to eliminate systemic racism and its continued impact.”

Despite the documented actions of BLM protesters during the riots of 2020, and despite the New York Times reporting on their organization’s declining popularity with American voters, our federal  government has nonetheless decided to endorse and promote an organization with admitted Marxist roots as one having ties to our official foreign offices.

I think I’m going to be sick.

 

 

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The Courts

Reprint. Now this is a Judge who speaks the truth.

Visits: 56

Original article can be found here.

Reprint. Now this is a Judge who speaks the truth. Now if you read the whole article, you’ll see that Judge Silberman is spot on. His disent should be discussed at every law school.

A federal appeals court judge has offered a blistering dissent in an obscure libel case that takes the measure of the mainstream media‘s bias.

The case centers on a 2018 report from Global Witness Publishing that accused Liberian government officials Christiana Tah and Randolph McClain of accepting bribes from Exxon. Tah and McClain sued Global Witness alleging defamation and their claims were dismissed in Friday’s ruling.

However, in the course of his partial dissent, D.C. Circuit Court Judge Laurence Silberman went on an unprecedented written tirade against the press, in which he argued that the Supreme Court should revisit the landmark 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan ruling that granted the media broad First Amendment protections from being sued by public officials.

“[N]ew considerations have arisen over the last 50 years that make the New York Times decision (which I believe I have faithfully applied in my dissent) a threat to American Democracy,” he write. “It must go.”

“The increased power of the press is so dangerous today because we are very close to one-party control of these institutions,” said Silberman, who was nominated to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan and has been a senior judge on the D.C. Circuit Court since 2000.

“Although the bias against the Republican Party—not just controversial individuals—is rather shocking today, this is not new; it is a long-term, secular trend going back at least to the ’70s,” Silberman wrote. “Two of the three most influential papers (at least historically), The New York Times and The Washington Post, are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets. And the news section of The Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction. The orientation of these three papers is followed by The Associated Press and most large papers across the country (such as the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Boston Globe). Nearly all television—network and cable—is a Democratic Party trumpet. Even the government-supported National Public Radio follows along.”

He accused Silicon Valley of filtering news “in ways favorable to the Democratic Party” and fueling censorship, citing the suppression of the New York Post’s bombshell reporting on Hunter Biden in the final weeks of the 2020 presidential election.

“It is well-accepted that viewpoint discrimination ‘raises the specter that the Government may effectively drive certain ideas or viewpoints from the marketplace,'” Silberman said. “But ideological homogeneity in the media—or in the channels of information distribution—risks repressing certain ideas from the public consciousness just as surely as if access were restricted by the government.”

Silberman also sounded the alarm about the “serious efforts to muzzle” outlets like Fox News that aren’t under “Democratic Party ideological control.”

“It should be borne in mind that the first step taken by any potential authoritarian or dictatorial regime is to gain control of communications, particularly the delivery of news. It is fair to conclude, therefore, that one-party control of the press and media is a threat to a viable democracy,” the judge continued. “It may even give rise to countervailing extremism.

“The First Amendment guarantees a free press to foster a vibrant trade in ideas. But a biased press can distort the marketplace. And when the media has proven its willingness—if not eagerness—to so distort, it is a profound mistake to stand by unjustified legal rules that serve only to enhance the press’ power.”

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