Loss Of U.S. Moral Authority Undermines Democracy Around The World

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  • Around the world today, lots of countries claim to be “democracies”; but then the state thugs use various ploys to assure that no opposition can ever prevail. Among such ploys, the tactic currently in vogue is to gin up some collection of flimsy criminal charges to get the opposition leader and/or his/her supporters arrested or otherwise sidelined.

  • If you haven’t been following the subject closely in recent months, you may not realize how pervasive the use of this tactic has become.

  • Sure, imprisoning the opposition leaders has long been part of the playbook of the worst thugocracies. It’s what you would expect of a small-time African dictatorship or of a Central American banana republic, not to mention the likes of Russia or China.

  • But recently the tactic has been spreading like a case of poison ivy to countries otherwise pretending to grown-up, or semi-grown-up, status. Countries like India, Bangladesh, and Brazil. And, did I mention, the United States — once known for claiming to be the shining exemplar for the world of good governance, and for seeking to use its moral authority to induce others to follow its lead. Today, governing cliques in other countries are greatly emboldened by the brazen abuse of power orchestrated by Biden and the gaggle of Democratic prosecutors pursuing Trump. Hey, we’re just conducting business the same way you Americans do in your own country! You have no standing to criticize us!

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A Visit To The Trump Civil Fraud Trial

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  • One of the benefits of living in Manhattan is that there are many interesting things to go and see. For example, there are lots of plays, concerts, museums, and even the occasional political show trial.

  • Today, I thought I might stop by the state government’s civil fraud trial against ex-President Trump, to see how it’s going. The trial, now nearing the end of its second week, is taking place at the main state courthouse at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan.

  • The last time I dropped in on a political trial in Manhattan, it was the New York AG’s case against Exxon for supposedly defrauding its investors by using different valuation methodologies to assess projects for internal versus external corporate purposes. I covered that trial in an October 2019 post titled “A Serious Contender For The Stupidest Litigation In The Country Goes To Trial.” The AG quickly lost that case ignominiously, which I covered in a further post in December 2019.

  • Is this case any better?

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Thoughts On The Federal Trump Indictment: It's Shockingly Weak

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  • Two days ago (June 8) a federal grand jury in Florida, at the behest of Justice Department “special prosecutor” Jack Smith, indicted ex-President and current presidential candidate Trump over matters related to the retention of classified documents generated during his time in the White House. The full text of the indictment can be found here.

  • You might think that indictment of the currently-leading opposition candidate to the incumbent president in the upcoming election would be something reserved for a case of extraordinary significance.

  • After all, using the criminal justice system to prosecute political rivals is one of the hallmarks of the Banana Republic. Among those who have used the strategy are Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and, of course, Vladimir Putin of Russia.

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Biden And Trump Classified Documents Scandals: Progressive Talking Point Falls Apart

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Biden And Trump Classified Documents Scandals: Progressive Talking Point Falls Apart

  • I have so far avoided weighing in on the Biden and Trump classified documents scandals, but I guess the time has finally come.

  • I’ve had a “Secret” clearance in my life, and almost all of the “classified” documents I have seen have been of very underwhelming significance. So when the Trump classified document thing blew up with the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago back in August, I was not impressed.

  • It reeked of something highly likely to be completely devoid of real world significance, but useful to Biden and the left because Trump would be put in a position of not being able to defend himself publicly without disclosing the contents of the documents.

  • Meanwhile Trump as President had had complete authority to declassify the documents if he wanted, and his position was that he had done so. But even if Trump had a good or even excellent position that he had declassified the documents, he would not take the risk of disclosing their contents to defend himself.

  • So it seemed like a total freebie for Biden to go on 60 Minutes in September and say “How could anyone be that irresponsible?”

  • I want to look at two aspects in particular: (1) Do the facts support that Biden was “fully cooperating” with respect to this likely criminal matter involving him? and (2) Does Trump have a reasonable position that documents in his possession with classified “markings” had been declassified?

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A New Low For New York Attorney General Letitia James

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  • When I was young, the New York Attorney General’s office had a reputation for integrity. But somewhere along the line, the office went completely off the rails.

  • Eliot Spitzer was elected AG in 1998, and spent his two terms in frightening misuse of the office to further his naked political ambitions, mainly through shaking down financial institutions on the thinnest of pretexts. After eight years improperly using this tactic to keep his name in the headlines, he was then elected Governor; whereupon his successor — Andrew Cuomo — followed the same playbook for one term, and with the same result of becoming Governor. The next guy, Eric Schneiderman, was, if this is even possible, the worst of the three in the category of politicized prosecutions and shakedowns. Mercifully, Schneiderman was forced from office in a sex scandal before he could move up to the governorship.

  • In the 2018 election, we got a woman named Letitia James. By this time, all pretense that the Attorney General ought to be an impartial law enforcement officer had been long forgotten.

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The Latest Pre-Election Bait And Switch On Poverty Statistics

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The Latest Pre-Election Bait And Switch On Poverty Statistics

  • It’s September, in an even year. Labor Day has passed. The big mid-terms are less than two months away. It’s time for a pre-election bait and switch on poverty statistics to deceive any low information voters who aren’t paying attention to how the poverty scam works.

  • The poverty scam has been a big topic over the years at this blog, although perhaps less so in the most recent couple of years. This link will take you to all my prior posts on Poverty, some 129 in total.

  • The most important recurring theme has been that the government cynically manipulates the poverty statistics so that the official measured rate of poverty never goes meaningfully down, no matter how much taxpayer money is spent, thus manufacturing a fake basis to hit up the people for ever increasing funding at regular intervals.

  • But there is an exception. When a big election is coming up and the Democrats are in power, suddenly alternative statistics magically emerge showing that poverty has dropped dramatically, all of course due to compassionate programs put in place by the Democrats.

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