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Hunter Biden Firm Got A Mysterious Stash Of Money
(JustPatriots.com)- Hunter secured business deals with global partners who wanted access to the power his father wielded. He secured those deals while battling crippling addictions to drugs, alcohol, and sex. Hunter Biden documented the extent of his depravity on his laptop and then forgot to retrieve it from a Delaware repair shop.
In short, Hunter Biden is fantastic if you’re a Republican and want a simple window into how corruption operates in Biden’s world. But why would Democrats consider him a gift that keeps on giving?
The report explains that during the pandemic, when most places were shuttered, the government provided loans to businesses to keep them afloat. According to a report by Miranda Devine of the New York Post, one of these companies was the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner. Its most prominent partner is David Boies, the go-to attorney for Democrat establishment figures. He is best known for losing the Supreme Court case Bush v. Gore.
The law firm took out the largest Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan of the 300 top law firms investigated by a non-profit organization. A staggering $10.14 million. And the loan was forgiven in 2021.
The PPP was intended to aid the survival of small businesses on Main Street. Devine reported that Boies Schiller Flexner charged clients $480 million in 2020 and 2021, and equity partners earned $4.5 million each.
The report also revealed that while the firm was receiving $10 million in taxpayer funds and billing clients nearly $500 million in 2020 and 2021, Boies partners and employees donated almost $1 million in federal campaign cash during the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, including $213,966 to Biden’s presidential campaign.
First son Hunter Biden became a counsel at the Boise firm in 2010, earning $216,000 per year for a position that did not require him to keep regular office hours or attend meetings.
It was reported last year that the firm was also embroiled in the Burisma scandal. Emails from Hunter’s MacBook revealed the firm actively attempted to avoid disclosing to Congress that it had worked with the Ukrainian energy giant.
Still curious about the business habits of a semi-functioning First Son? There’s more here.
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Corrupt FBI.
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The most damning Twitter File just dropped, highlighting FBI wrongdoing
Michael Shellenberger has published the latest expose on Twitter, and this time, it’s not Twitter that looks corrupt; it’s the FBI, which knowingly lied to social media outlets about the Hunter Biden laptop. It’s impossible to believe that it did so for any other reason than to affect the outcome of the 2020 presidential election by hiding Joe Biden’s corruption.
Let’s get the most important point out first: The FBI knew at all relevant times that Hunter Biden’s hard drive was the real deal and that every bit of information on it—crooked dealings with foreign governments, money laundering for Joe, sexually obsessive videos, drug usage—was entirely legitimate. Nevertheless, the FBI aggressively worked with Twitter and other social media outlets to suppress this fact by falsely claiming that the hard drive was “Russian disinformation” or a hack.
Shellenberger’s Twitter thread exposing this manifest election interference is extremely long, so I’ll summarize the high points. The thread itself is at the end of this post.
1. FBI officials always knew that Biden’s hard drive was real.
2. The day before the NY Post wrote about the laptop, the FBI was reaching out to Yoel Roth on its special one-way FBIàTwitter line.
3. The NY Post publishes its completely accurate exposé, which Twitter and other social media companies immediately censor. What happened? The FBI.
4. Long before the NY Post story, when word was getting out about Hunter’s laptop and its intersection with Joe Biden, the FBI continuously told Twitter and Facebook to dismiss the information as a Russian “hack and leak” operation, even though the FBI conceded it had no information of hacks and leaks in 2020.
5. Twitter itself had almost no evidence of Russian intrusion on the site. The FBI, though, was so insistent about getting Twitter to share what little info it had that even Roth pushed back. Nevertheless, in Jul7 2020, the FBI gets temporary top secret clearances for Twitter executives to “share information” about election threats. The continuous pressure primed Roth to believe anything the FBI said about alleged “Russian disinformation.”
6. At this point, Shellenberger notes that Twitter’s upper management was teaming with employees who worked for the FBI, including Jim Baker, many of whom were affiliated with James Comey’s anti-Trump campaign.
7. In September, the prestigious left-wing Aspen Institute had a “tabletop exercise” to prep social media and traditional media people for a “hack-and-dump” relating to Hunter Biden—all aimed at shaping coverage
8. By mid-September, the FBI had created an encrypted virtual war room for itself, Twitter executives, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
9. A month before the NY Post broke the Hunter Biden laptop story, the FBI’s Laura Dehmlow (head of the Foreign Influence Task Force) and Elvis Chan (the senior agent who communicated most frequently with Twitter) gave a classified briefing to Jim Baker. Again, the agents knew the laptop was real.
10. Right after the Post story broke, Roth was troubled that he couldn’t find a clear reason to ban it. Baker—who knew otherwise—insisted that the laptop was faked, hacked, or both.
11. Within hours of the story's publication, primed by the FBI’s and Baker’s lies, Twitter believed the hacking narrative. That same day, Baker had a phone call with Matthew Perry in the FBI’s General Counsel Office.
12. The FBI persuaded Twitter that the laptop did not come from a whistleblower.
13. The FBI may have created a false warning to elected officials about foreign influence, a warning they could then leak to the media.
14. The FBI then falsely and unnecessarily briefed Sens. Grassley and Johnson, saying the Russians were interfering with their investigation into Hunter Biden, again shaping the narrative.
15. Thanks to the FBI’s pressure, social media and traditional news outlets censored the absolutely true Hunter Biden laptop story that showed Hunter’s and his father’s corruption.
16. While the FBI was pushing Twitter so hard, it was paying Twitter for staff time: $3,415,323 by February 2021. This is important because Sundance, at the Conservative Treehouse, has consistently said that Twitter didn’t make money from advertisements; instead, it was a government-funded communication operation (although I can’t find the specific post in which he said it).
Here’s the coda to the above narrative showing the FBI actively trying to interfere in an election by knowingly and falsely claiming that the Hunter Biden laptop was fake so that the FBI could get social and traditional media outlets to censor the story. A recent TIPP poll reported that more than half of American voters would have been at least somewhat likely to change their votes had they known the truth.
The above is my summary. Here’s Michael Shellenberger’s complete “Twitter Files: Part 7”:
In Twitter Files #6, we saw the FBI relentlessly seek to exercise influence over Twitter, including over its content, its users, and its data. https://t.co/g66XzH9ISr
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
The story begins in December 2019 when a Delaware computer store owner named John Paul (J.P.) Mac Isaac contacts the FBI about a laptop that Hunter Biden had left with him
On Dec 9, 2019, the FBI issues a subpoena for, and takes, Hunter Biden's laptop. https://t.co/TdaYhHMVRH pic.twitter.com/JxdkrkgAkI
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
Shortly before 7 pm ET on October 13, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, George Mesires, emails JP Mac Isaac.
Hunter and Mesires had just learned from the New York Post that its story about the laptop would be published the next day. pic.twitter.com/59RV5h8ZsM
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
8. The next day, October 14, 2020, The New York Post runs its explosive story revealing the business dealings of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. Every single fact in it was accurate. pic.twitter.com/TC2AnLNJAw
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
10. On Dec 2, @mtaibbi described the debate inside Twitter over its decision to censor a wholly accurate article.
Since then, we have discovered new info that points to an organized effort by the intel community to influence Twitter & other platforms https://t.co/1ZF3oottKR
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
12. And yet, during all of 2020, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies repeatedly primed Yoel Roth to dismiss reports of Hunter Biden’s laptop as a Russian “hack and leak” operation.
This is from a sworn declaration by Roth given in December 2020.https://t.co/IvTjyYw9iR pic.twitter.com/5iq2ATB3bW
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
14. Were the FBI warnings of a Russian hack-and-leak operation relating to Hunter Biden based on *any* new intel?
No, they weren't
“Through our investigations, we did not see any similar competing intrusions to what had happened in 2016,” admitted FBI agent Elvis Chan in Nov. pic.twitter.com/tFPMqbydbA
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
16. In fact, Twitter debunked false claims by journalists of foreign influence on its platform
"We haven’t seen any evidence to support that claim” by @oneunderscore__ @NBC News of foreign-controlled bots.
“Our review thus far shows a small-scale domestic troll effort…” pic.twitter.com/fWYNv7mMea
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
18. It's not the first time that Twitter's Roth has pushed back against the FBI. In January 2020, Roth resisted FBI efforts to get Twitter to share data outside of the normal search warrant process. pic.twitter.com/NAssnLMpds
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
20. Time and again, FBI asks Twitter for evidence of foreign influence & Twitter responds that they aren’t finding anything worth reporting.
“[W]e haven’t yet identified activity that we’d typically refer to you (or even flag as interesting in the foreign influence context).” pic.twitter.com/ghGNz4ZzXB
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
22. Then, in July 2020, the FBI’s Elvis Chan arranges for temporary Top Secret security clearances for Twitter executives so that the FBI can share information about threats to the upcoming elections. pic.twitter.com/YXCR2Guxz5
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
24. Recently, Yoel Roth told @karaswisher that he had been primed to think about the Russian hacking group APT28 before news of the Hunter Biden laptop came out.
When it did, Roth said, "It set off every single one of my finely tuned APT28 hack-and-leap campaign alarm bells." pic.twitter.com/RKoR4NtH1s
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
26. Who is Jim Baker? He's former general counsel of the FBI (2014-18) & one of the most powerful men in the U.S. intel community.
Baker has moved in and out of government for 30 years, serving stints at CNN, Bridgewater (a $140 billion asset management firm) and Brookings pic.twitter.com/FggRI2zITX
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
28. Baker wasn't the only senior FBI exec. involved in the Trump investigation to go to Twitter.
Dawn Burton, the former dep. chief of staff to FBI head James Comey, who initiated the investigation of Trump, joined Twitter in 2019 as director of strategy.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
30. Efforts continued to influence Twitter's Yoel Roth.
In Sept 2020, Roth participated in an Aspen Institute “tabletop exercise” on a potential "Hack-and-Dump" operation relating to Hunter Biden
The goal was to shape how the media covered it — and how social media carried it pic.twitter.com/lQSorONUSh
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
32. By mid-Sept, 2020, Chan & Roth had set up an encrypted messaging network so employees from FBI & Twitter could communicate.
They also agree to create a “virtual war room” for “all the [Internet] industry plus FBI and ODNI” [Office of the Director of National Intelligence]. pic.twitter.com/Dhy8LotZHU
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
34. On Oct 14, shortly after @NYPost publishes its Hunter Biden laptop story, Roth says, “it isn’t clearly violative of our Hacked Materials Policy, nor is it clearly in violation of anything else," but adds, “this feels a lot like a somewhat subtle leak operation.” pic.twitter.com/xMnEWzgxdU
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
36. And yet it's inconceivable Baker believed the Hunter Biden emails were either fake or hacked. The @nypost had included a picture of the receipt signed by Hunter Biden, and an FBI subpoena showed that the agency had taken possession of the laptop in December 2019. pic.twitter.com/hwr2zBouly
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
38. By 10 am, Twitter execs had bought into a wild hack-and-dump story
“The suggestion from experts - which rings true - is there was a hack that happened separately, and they loaded the hacked materials on the laptop that magically appeared at a repair shop in Delaware” pic.twitter.com/n2Xj9mP1Hs
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
40. The influence operation persuaded Twitter execs that the Hunter Biden laptop did *not* come from a whistleblower.
One linked to a Hill article, based on a WaPo article, from Oct 15, which falsely suggested that Giuliani’s leak of the laptop had something to do with Russia. pic.twitter.com/VdrQhf2YMB
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
42. In 2020, the FBI gave a briefing to Senator Grassley and Johnson, claiming evidence of “Russian interference” into their investigation of Hunter Biden.
The briefing angered the Senators, who say it was done to discredit their investigation.https://t.co/5QsJKMPhpM
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
44. Notably, then-FBI General Counsel Jim Baker was investigated *twice,* in 2017 and 2019, for leaking information to the news media.
“You’re saying he’s under criminal investigation? That’s why you’re not letting him answer?” Meadows asked.
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
46. The FBI’s influence campaign may have been helped by the fact that it was paying Twitter millions of dollars for its staff time.
“I am happy to report we have collected $3,415,323 since October 2019!” reports an associate of Jim Baker in early 2021. pic.twitter.com/SmNse97QxK
In response to the Twitter Files revelation of high-level FBI agents at Twitter, @Jim_Jordan said, “I have concerns about whether the government was running a misinformation operation on We the People.”https://t.co/nlbBPTeDg8
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
Anyone who reads the Twitter Files, regardless of their political orientation, should share those concerns.
END
— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 19, 2022
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Most Americans know something has gone terribly wrong—and very abruptly—with the United States. They are certain that our wounds are almost all self-inflicted. The current pathologies are not a result of a natural disaster, an exhaustion of natural resources, plagues, or an existential war.
Crushing national debt and annual deficits, spiraling food and fuel costs amid “normal” seven-percent-plus annual inflation, bread-and-circuses entitlements, a nonexistent border, a resurgence of racial tribalism, pandemic violent criminality, and humiliation abroad—all these pathologies are easily cited as symptoms of a sick patient. Our crises are not as the Left maintains—a nine-person Supreme Court, the Electoral College, or the filibuster—all distractions from existential problems the Left largely created.
So, what are the therapies and prognoses for America?
In the spirit of constructive rather than blanket criticism, here is a partial, 10-point plan of national recovery.
Cut the Debt
Americans’ national debt is now $31 trillion. That is about 123 percent of current GDP. The liabilities are unsustainable. We run annual deficits of $1.6 trillion. These financial obligations will eventually ensure that rising interest rates to service the debt crowd out essential spending for national defense and the general welfare.
Or in extremis, in the not too distant future, the government will be forced to default on what it owes the “rich” bondholders and foreign debt holders. Or the government will be forced to confiscate private wealth, as for example occasional crazy suggestions to nationalize and absorb 401(k)k retirement plans into the soon-to-be-insolvent Social Security system. Or the state will simply print millions of dollars to pay off obligations, Weimar-style.
In addict style, the more we come to realize that our binging habit cannot go on, the less we can practice self-restraint. And the more it is the case that those who receive government redistributions outnumber those who pay the majority of federal income taxes, the less hope there remains to avoid insolvency.
In 2010 then-President Barack Obama appointed a bipartisan “National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.” More commonly remembered as the Simpson-Bowles commission, after chairmen Senators Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Erskine Bowles (D-N.C.), it included private citizens and elected officials.
The commission recommended radical tax simplifications and some cuts—along with reductions in tax deductions and credits, an increase in the gas tax, restraints on entitlement spending, and various spending caps.
Obama and Congress ultimately rejected the recommendations and the commission’s blueprint died. But had it succeeded, the current debt would have long been frozen at the 2014 level of $17 trillion—with annual reductions ensuring that this coming year 2023 the debt would have plunged to $10 trillion and then disappeared in another decade.
Something like Simpson-Bowles could still stop the madness and avoid the natural corrective on the horizon of financial collapse. Note that federal tax revenue has increased almost every year since 2010. Sometimes it grows by nearly a half-trillion dollars per annum, even as we sink deeper in debt. Our crisis, then, is one of spending what we do not have rather than one of declining revenue.
Secure the Border
We no longer have a southern border. There have been 5 million illegal border crossings just since Joe Biden took office. He intentionally destroyed immigration law for cheap political advantage. Nearly 50 million current American residents were not born in the United States. Well over 20 million—and perhaps 30 million—are illegal aliens. Old melting-pot efforts at assimilation and integration eroded into the salad-bowl metaphor that has just become tribalism—even as intermarriage is at an all-time high.
The Left brags that “demography is destiny” as it cheers the changes in the electorate aimed at ensuring its political dominance. And simultaneously, it smears conservatives who agree with its triumphalism as “great replacement theory” conspiracists.
Yet we finally found a solution in 2019-2020. Had we continued replacing rickety border fencing with an effective wall and then completed it along the entire border, had we stopped catch-and-release, had we continued demanding that refugee status be obtained before entry, had we forced Mexico and Central American governments to stop exporting human capital and subjected them to taxes on more than $60 billion in annual remittances (along with trade penalties) for their complicity with the situation at the border, had we continued to deport those who entered illegally, had we returned to assimilation and integration on the theory any who entered America did so because they wanted to become Americans, then a desired legal, meritocratic, and diverse immigration policy might easily have assimilated and absorbed perhaps 200,000 skilled and legal immigrants per year.
Again, we had the outlines of a solution and then simply destroyed it for liberal political agendas and cheap corporate labor.
Tap Natural Resources
Similarly, by 2020, the United States enjoyed inexpensive fuel. It was all but independent in gas and oil. It had become the world largest combined gas and oil producer. That status radically curtailed the need for optional military engagements in the Middle East. It gave America enormous clout against hostile oil exporters like Russia, Iran, and Venezuela. And such independence helped reduce vast trade deficits.
Again, the Biden Administration simply exploded the idea of fossil-fuel independence as a gradual transition to sustainable energy. So simply doing the opposite of its policies would correct the pathology almost immediately: Issue more federal gas and oil leases, approve the Keystone and Constitution pipelines, reopen the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, and build nuclear power plants. The present course of high-priced and scarce gasoline and oil is eroding the middle class, spiking inflation, widening class divisions, and reducing American autonomy abroad.
Oppose Discrimination
Never has the United States seen more evidence of progress in racial relations, and never has such progress given way to more tribalism. If we do not return to a Martin Luther King, Jr. “content of our character” policy—one that views race as incidental rather than essential to who we are—then our future is a sectarian one with echoes of the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Iraq.
Affirmative action was never envisioned as permanent quotas and race-based reverse-discrimination. Yet after over a half-century it has ballooned under the idea of “diversity” to invent a victim class of nearly a third of the nation, absurdly and loosely defined—in an age of commonplace intermarriage—as “non-white.”
Help for the underprivileged should be race-neutral and entirely based on class and income, given numerous ethnicities exceed the so-called white medium income. The labyrinth of racial categories grows unfathomable. The identity politics mess logically results, on the one hand, with rank iconic frauds like Elizabeth Warren, Ward Churchill, and Rachel Dolezal, and, the other hand, with well-off poseur victims in the manner of a Meghan Markle, Colin Kaepernick, or Jussie Smollett.
Substitution of racial criteria for merit, rather than aiding the poor of all races, is creating a commissar-like drag on the economy, spiking racial and ethnic tensions, and ensuring that every group will eventually, for its survival, go tribal on the basis of the same logic that applies to nuclear proliferation. Again, the remedy? Just enforce civil rights statutes that prohibit racial discrimination and consider the Pavlovian shriek of “racism!” as the revealing projection of racists.
Disrupt and Reform Higher Education
Our universities are failing to produce competent graduates essential to a meritocratic nation engaged in fierce global competition. Increasingly, students are politicized, largely ignorant, indebted, bitter, and unable to ensure American preeminence in basic science, technology, engineering, and math.
Yet the solutions are again simple: get the government out of the student-loan business that ensures escalating tuition hikes greater than the rate of inflation. Eliminate faculty tenure and replace it with five-year contracts that require demonstrable achievement. Subject large endowments to taxation on their interest income to curb their wasted spending. Allow public schools to hire either those with school of education credentials or one-year master’s degrees that focused solely on academic study. Require standardized exit tests, in the fashion of erstwhile SAT and ACT entry tests, for the certification of the bachelor’s degree. Force universities to follow the Bill of Rights on campus, regarding due process and freedom of expression.
These are not radical suggestions. Yet the likely fierce faculty opposition to them is proof that the Left envisions higher education as it views Silicon Valley—another private monopoly that helps to maintain political power in lieu of popular support.
Revive the Armed Forces
Our military is in dire straits. It is overcommitted, under-resourced, and without any geo-political strategy other than ad hoc responses without defined objectives. It has become politically weaponized and, inevitably, unable to meet recruitment goals. The Pentagon remains obsessed with exorbitantly priced weapons that cannot be produced in sufficient numbers in an age of hostile swarms of cheap, mass-produced drones and thousands of batteries of ground-to-air and shore-to-ship missiles.
Constant profiling, racial, and gender quotas and obsessions over proportional representation and disparate impact increasingly apply to training, education, and promotion—to everything except worries over the disproportionate profile of those killed in battle. The Pentagon has become adept in publishing racial data on every aspect of military service to emphasize disparity and bias—except concerning the combat dead.
To address the changes, retiring high-ranking officers should refrain from board memberships on contracting corporations for at least five years upon leaving the military. The uniform code of military justice must be strictly enforced, including article 88 which prohibits retired officers from attacking in personal terms high-ranking elected officials, and in particular their commander-in-chief.
Woke training is destroying morale and battlefield efficacy. The military must return to a race and gender neutral stance that does not erode meritocratic standards to fit political agendas. We should never again witness a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff virtue signaling to Congress and the nation his intention to understand “white rage” in the ranks, without supplying any confirmatory evidence or data for his apparent allegation of systemic racism in the ranks—particularly not while the greatest U.S. defeat and humiliation in a half-century was unfolding on the horizon in Kabul. Any high-ranking military officer who informs his Chinese counterpart of his own psychiatric diagnosis that his commander-in-chief is unhinged and thus U.S. strategic intentions will first be relayed to Beijing should be summarily dismissed.
Fix Voting
Elections are a mess. The greatest political revolution in our election history has been the change—accelerated under the cover of COVID and the George Floyd riots—in many key states from a 20-30 percent “absentee ballot” vote to 70-80 percent early/mail-in balloting. In a mere four years we have all but destroyed Election Day voting and Election Night final tabulations as we had known them for decades.
All discussions of voter IDs, fraud, and charges and countercharges of election denialism are irrelevant if there is no real mechanism to validate the authenticity of mail-in ballots that have incomplete or false addresses, names, and signatures, or do not match registration rolls. Third-party ballot harvesting and ballot curing should be outlawed at the federal level, and we should return to the requirement of requesting absentee ballots rather than automatically sending them out. Otherwise, no future election will again win the confidence of a majority of Americans. And without trust in balloting, consensual government becomes nonexistent.
Drain the Swamp
Americans distrust the “swamp,” administrative state, or deep state. Call what you will, the Washington nexus of bureaucracies, media, and lobbyists has created a huge, unelected permanent army of auditors, regulators, investigators, and punishers, all mostly exempt from audit and accountability and without fear of their elected overseers.
The easiest solution is to break up concentrations of power. Transfer out of Washington, in this age of zoom and telecommunications, major cabinet departments like Health and Human Services, Energy, or Agriculture into the hinterland. Restore the idea that lying to Congress, feigning amnesia, or pleading ignorance under oath to Congress or federal investigators or in depositions is a prosecutable felony with jail time.
Had we restored equality under the law, then an Andrew McCabe, James Clapper, and John Brennan would not have dared lie under oath. And a Robert Mueller, James Comey, Anthony Fauci, or Jack Dorsey might have not so easily believed they simply could plead memory loss or mislead in a fashion that no American would dare to do with the IRS.
Being forced to tell the truth would be a powerful deterrent against bureaucratic overreach.
Finally, ossified centralized agencies like the FBI need to be broken up and their bureaus redistributed through the cabinet-level departments to avoid past pathologies resulting from a concentration of power.
Upend the Welfare State
The number of those receiving federal and state subsidies is beginning to match the number of those who subsidize them. “No one wants to work anymore” is now a common public lament. Inflation and recession may come and go, but workers are now scarce whether we are in boom or bust times. Labor non-participation remains at an all-time high. Soon only 60 percent of the available labor force will be working. Trillion-dollar COVID subsidies have accelerated the idea that Americans need not work full-time to maintain a living.
We can easily return to the “workfare” championed by a triangulating Bill Clinton in the 1990s that demanded healthy and able recipients to be gainfully employed upon receipt of state and federal cash. In the context of the homeless, we need to return to pre-Reagan norms of institutionalizing the mentally ill and creating hospitals and safe spaces away from American downtowns to house those who either cannot or will not take care of themselves. Defecating, urinating, injecting, and fornicating on city-streets are not victimless crimes, but assaults on civilized life as we once knew it.
Restore Norms
The fact is, few public norms are left. Rather than the current therapeutic obsessions that seek to divide Americans into binaries of oppressors and the oppressed, we are in desperate need of civic education in K-12 that acquaints all children and teens with American institutions, key events like Gettysburg or D-Day, and familiarity with the Constitution and the duties of the citizen. We will get nowhere basing our understanding of the world on psychodramas and therapeutics.
Neither journalists nor elites understand, much less appreciate, the First Amendment, and in ignorance despise the Second.
Like it or not, the nuclear family remains the bulwark of the American nation, which will not survive if current fertility rates of below 1.7 children per woman continue to diminish and age the population. The government must incentivize childbearing and child raising.
Without clear punishment for violent crimes, deterrence is lost, and the innocent become victims of the exempt criminal class. Critical race theory, critical legal theory, and critical criminology theory are euphemisms for unleashing lawbreakers upon the vulnerable. We are in a strange cycle in which we deliberately do not enforce gun laws in our cities and then when murder reaches near historic proportions we blame unenforced guns laws rather than the criminals who are exempt in using deadly weapons as the cause.
These are just a few of the many ways that the United States could stop the present madness—which, after all, was entirely self-created.
About Victor Davis Hanson
Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, The Case for Trump and the newly released The Dying Citizen.
And
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Dead but can't bury:
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Joe Biden blurts out Iran nuclear deal ‘dead’ — but he can’t ‘announce’ it
By Steven Nelson
WASHINGTON — President Biden let slip to a group of protesters that the Iran nuclear deal “is dead” before adding, “but we are not going to announce it — long story,” a video that surfaced Tuesday reveals.
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Joe Biden continued to baffle millions of Americans this week when he seemingly forgot the identity of his wife’s father and called Irish people “stupid.”
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