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The subpoenas and discovery requests sent out as part of a lawsuit against the federal government are going to bring back reams of information, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry says.
Landry and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, both Republicans, sued the Biden administration in May, arguing the government colluded with Big tech companies to violate the constitutional rights of Americans.
U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, a Trump appointee, recently ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Government officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci and companies including Facebook were served soon after.
“We’ve got a treasure trove of information that we think are going to come to us here shortly,” Landry said on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders.”
“The subpoenas have gone out. They’re being served. I think Dr. Fauci got served, and he and other members of the president’s Cabinet, and they’re gonna have to send us communications between them and the platforms. And what we believe we’ll find is communications between them telling them what they should and shouldn’t put out or what they should suppress, and what they should amplify,” he added.
Government officials have said they have not acted improperly.
Officials have for years commented on how social media platforms operate, and the federal government is not responsible for how platforms moderate content, U.S. lawyers said in a filing in the case, Missouri and Louisiana v. President Biden et al.
“Those companies independently chose to combat misinformation years ago, before this administration took office, and before the federal officials sued here made the comments at issue. Indeed, although the Complaint cites numerous statements by government officials, it does not identify how those statements are connected to the moderation decisions that purportedly harmed their resident,” they said.
Landry said that the government is violating citizens’ rights by pressuring companies to ban or take other punitive action against users. In a separate case, documents released this month showed U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials highlighting specific posts in messages to Twitter executives while complaining about alleged misinformation from those users. Whistleblower documents released by two U.S. senators in June, meanwhile, showed that U.S. officials had been in touch with Twitter over purported disinformation.
“I think what we found, and what the whistleblowers put out, was that the government was actually engaged, and the White House, in directly communicating with Big Tech on stories and information that they either wanted suppressed or put out,” Landry said.
His office, after putting out a call for information from people who have been censored in some way by platforms, has also collected a number of examples. Those may be used in the suit in question, as well as other suits with which he’s involved.
Landry himself has witnessed censorship from Big Tech, with his posts initially drawing many shares, but engagement quickly falling off.
“We’re trying to get information out to our constituency in a medium—I guess you would say, in a new medium—under which everyone is using more than the other, traditional mediums,” Landry said. “And they are creating a filter between us and our constituents.”
Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.
Let’s unpack this a bit.
If we follow Friedman’s method and divide the M2 money supply by real GDP to get the quantity of money per unit of output, we see Figure 1. This shows a steady increase in this figure over time and then a very sudden jump from January 2020. If we accept that changes in the CPI are largely driven by changes in this figure, current inflation should not surprise us.
Figure 1: Quantity of money per unit of output in the United States
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
What is causing this jump? Changes in the ratio of M2 to real GDP can be driven by changes in either — or both — of M2 or real GDP. Figure 2 shows changes in both M2 and real GDP since the end of 2019. We see that while real GDP — the amount of stuff there is to buy — grew by just 1.9 percent between Q4:2019 and Q4:2021, the amount of M2 — the money there is to buy it — increased by 40.3 percent.
Figure 2: Changes in M2 and real GDP, Q4:2019 = 100
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
Friedman’s view used to be somewhat crudely summarized as saying that inflation comes from “too much money chasing too few goods” and that neatly captures the situation here. The inflation that is damaging the Biden administration so badly, to say nothing of the finances of ordinary Americans, is playing out just like Friedman would have predicted. When it comes to monetary economics, Friedman certainly is still running the show.
Photo of the pro-life center, CompassCare, in Buffalo, New York, allegedly firebombed by pro-abortion activists in June 2022. (Credit: CompassCare Community)
Democrats continue to say that “democracy is in danger” if voters don’t give liberals the majority in November, but violence by the left has defined the summer politically so far, conservative observers have told the Epoch Times.
As Democrats continue to use the Jan. 6 Committee hearings over the summer to make a special case that somehow conservatives pose a danger to the country, the violence from the left has been ongoing, one victim told the Epoch Times.
The issues affronting progressives are numerous, including the reversal of Roe v. Wade, non-action on a climate change scheme, and the lack of momentum of progressive policies under President Joe Biden, which stand out as sources of anger and mounting frustration for leftist activists.
In June, a pro-life pregnancy center in Buffalo, New York, was burned out, allegedly by the radical leftwing, pro-abortion, militant group Jane’s Revenge, said the health pregnancy center called CompassCare, which helps women keep their babies rather than abort them.
“We actually saw the type of [violent] Jane’s Revenge activity happening around our Buffalo location that they were fomenting with their followers” prior to the firebombing of the clinic Rev. James Harden, CEO of CompassCare, told the Epoch Times.
“So we reported it to local law enforcement as well as the FBI two weeks in advance of the firebombing,” added Harden, who said Molotov cocktails were used to set the blaze to the CompassCare clinic.
Harden blames local and national progressive politicians for the violence, calling measures that the state of New York have taken under Democratic Gov. Kathleen Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James to investigate crisis pregnancy centers like CompassCare as “essentially joining Jane’s Revenge in attacking pro-life pregnancy centers.”
A message written on the wall of a pro-choice pregnancy resource center that was set on fire in Longmont, Colorado, on June 25, 2022. (Longmont Police Department)
Jane’s Revenge
The Jane’s group said that they were also responsible for attacks on pro-family clinics in Dearborn, Michigan, Asheville, North Carolina, and more than a dozen other sites around the country in response to the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v. Wade.
“You have seen us in Madison WI, Ft. Collins CO, Reisertown MA, Olympia WA, Des Moines IA, Lynwood WA, Washington DC, Ashville NC, Buffalo NY, Hollywood FL, Vancouver WA, Frederick MA, Denton TX, Gresham OR, Eugene OR, Portland OR, among others, and we work in countless locations invisibly,” said the group in a manifesto published on Abolition Media, an anarchist website.
So far, no arrests have been made in connection with any of the acts claimed by Jane’s Revenge manifesto, although the Catholic News Agency has reported that some youths have been arrested in acts of vandalism not associated with Jane’s Revenge.
Jason Rantz, a conservative talk show host in Seattle, told The Epoch Times that several churches and pro-life crisis pregnancy centers have been attacked in Washington state as well, with no arrests other than one that doesn’t seem to be connected to the abortion issue.
Like CompassCare’s Harden, Rantz makes no bones about pointing the finger for the violence at some progressive politicians, but not all.
“We had a story that I broke several weeks ago where a Democrat state Senator up for reelection … she produced a video that was celebrating the vandalism” against a pro-life billboard in Gorst, Washington.
“They don’t really hide their intent to promote this kind of violent response when they don’t get their way politically,” said Rantz.
Pro-abortion terrorist group Jane’s Revenge leaves threats at Harbor Church in Olympia, Washington on May 22, 2022 (Photo courtesy of Harbor Church)
2020 Redux?
Seattle was the scene of some of the worst violence during the Black Lives Matter protest and riots of the summer of 2020, with sections of the downtown area made unhabitable and unpoliceable for over a month.
While stopping short of calling the 2020 riots a dress rehearsal for today’s more targeted and politically-motivated violence, Rantz does think the violence in 2020 and today are connected in that Democrats think they are best served by allowing the violence to continue.
“I also think that as with the case in 2020, that a lot of the Democrats thought that they would benefit politically from the violence so they don’t want to get too involved” in calling for more rational means of political opposition.
U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh listens during the first day of his confirmation hearing in front of the U.S. Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept. 4, 2018. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Targeted Assassination Attempt
The Buffalo center of CompassCare was burned out just days after a California man was arrested near the house of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in an alleged aborted effort to kill the conservative jurist.
Nicholas John Roske was arrested with a black tactical chest rig, and a tactical knife, along with a Glock 17, clips, ammunitions, and zip ties, according to the probable cause statement filed with the court.
The FBI said that Roske traveled cross-country in what they are now saying was an attempt to kill as many as three Supreme Court Justices.
Roske, 26, said that he was upset over the Supreme Court decision that reversed Roe v. Wade which returned the question of abortion back to individual states.
Roske also expressed concern that upcoming decisions by the nation’s highest court would tend to favor conservative views on the Constitution, said an FBI warrant obtained by Fox News.
‘Democracy in Danger’
According to talk show host Rantz, Democrats have become obsessed with the idea that merely having differing views on political issues of the day from those of Democrats somehow threatens the fabric of democracy.
That message was conveyed by Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.), whose re-election campaign sent a handwritten postcard to at least one constituent warning that “Democracy is at stake this election day. Republicans are the problem.”
Postcard from Rep. Jennifer Wexton’s (D-Va.) campaign office sent to a local constituent. (Provided)
The postcard, obtained by the Epoch Times, appeared to have no identification, such as a signature, but just referred to the need to re-elect Wexton or democracy will be in danger. The flip side of the postcard was marked as having been sent by “Jennifer Wexton for Congress.”
Wexton is being opposed by GOP nominee and Vietnamese refugee, Hung Cao.
Cao, a retired special forces operator who left the Navy as a captain—one rank below the flag rank of admiral—took umbrage at the apparent suggestion by Wexton’s campaign that he would endanger democracy.
“Jennifer Wexton should immediately apologize for her campaign’s claims,” said a Cao campaign spokesman in a statement to The Epoch Times.
“Hung Cao has fought for our country honorably for 25 years. He’s put his life on the line for his fellow Americans to protect our constitution. Wexton ought to be ashamed of her campaign slandering an immigrant to this country who wore our uniform in combat,” added the campaign.
A police officer mans a shooting scene after a gunman opened fire on Republican members of Congress during a baseball practice near Washington in Alexandria, Virginia, June 14, 2017. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Congress Targeted
The Capitol Police stepped up security for this year’s Congressional Charity baseball game, citing threats by leftist climate activists who have threatened to disrupt the game if climate bills aren’t passed by Congress, or at least are on the verge of passing.
“The real violence being committed at this baseball game is by Congress, by Manchin, by his Republican allies and by everybody in Congress who’s failing to take action on climate change, therefore consigning millions of people to die and millions more livelihoods to be destroyed,” said Dan Sherrell, an organizer for the protest at the baseball game.
The threats came years after the game was targeted by a left-wing gunman in 2017, who opened fire on a practice field for the Congressional baseball game, critically wounding then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and three others before being killed by Capitol Police.
The 66-year-old former construction worker and Bernie Sanders supporter, James T. Hodgkinson, attempted to kill Scalise and others because he “hated Republicans,” according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.
Accepting Political Violence?
A pre-print of a study published in July, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, found that “[s]ubstantial minorities of the [US] population endorse violence, including lethal violence, to obtain political objectives,” with nearly 8 million people in the United States at least “somewhat willing” to kill others to advance their political goals.
Published at MedRxiv, the paper concentrated on concepts like QAnon, Donald Trump, stolen elections and Western European traditions as justifications by conservatives who find political violence acceptable.
Yet the paper also found that the largest minority of people who feel political violence is justified are those who find race-based violence justifiable.
“More than a third of respondents (36.2%) reported that violence was at least sometimes justified ‘to prevent discrimination based on race or ethnicity,’” with nearly 10 million Americans saying that violence was always justified to prevent racial discrimination.
With the contemporary expansion of the meaning of words like “discrimination,” to encompass concepts such as “microaggressions,” it’s much easier to see how violence is becoming more commonplace in a future that appears bleak, observers say, even as progressive seek to further expand definitions to widen their dispute on conservatives.
“When you have Joe Biden, two weeks ago, asking Merrick Garland to investigate crisis pregnancy centers for fraud, it’s an all-out war on these pregnancy centers,” said Harden, who points out that they provide their services for free so fraud would be impossible—unless you redefine the meaning of the word fraud.
Harden was referring to a provision in a July 8 executive order “to protect people seeking reproductive health services from fraudulent schemes or deceptive practices.” Biden has appointed Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta to head up the Department of Justice’s task force on abortion. Gupta has been accused in the past of calling crisis pregnancy centers like the one Harden runs “fake clinics,” raising worries that the DOJ will try to shut down pro-life clinics under an expanded definition of fraud.
“It’s like a dystopian novel,” said Harden.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the White House and Hochul, James, and Wextons’ offices for comment.
Whenever I want to get “Lucretia” spun up, I say something like, “Pssst. . . I’ll need to check with Bill Kristol on that!” And then I sit back and open up a new bottle of peaty single-malt. But I did relent when she pointed out that Bill had lately embraced the idea that Democrats are best-suited to fix the country’s problems. Maybe he was just trolling again? Lucretia won’t let him off that easily:
For many conservatives who for years looked forward to the arrival of William Kristol’s Weekly Standard, expecting to devour cover-to-cover the excellent articles, analysis, and commentary, Kristol’s descent into near-fatal Trump Derangement Syndrome has been distressing, to say the least.
The rabid anti-Trump posture adopted by the Weekly Standard proved to be its undoing (I cancelled my subscription in December, 2016), but the cadre of NeverTrumpers doubled-down on their failure. Some still pretended to be conservatives, wanting to “save” the Republican Party and conservatism from Trump; others, like Kristol, aligned themselves clearly with the left in opposition not only to Trump but to any conservative so misguided and corrupt as to continue to support Trump populism or the Republican Party Trump dominates.
Kristol nowadays calls himself a well-wisher of the Democratic Party despite the “sub-optimal performances of it leaders,” writes a wistful column in the laughable, “no tribal prejudices” Bulwark. The Democratic Party faces challenges: the party needs to defend (urgently!) democracy, moderation, and the rule of law; and the party needs to advance (urgently!) major reforms in our broken or damaged institutions.
This is major league self-delusion. Does Kristol really not understand that “democracy” for the Democratic Party simply means “we win and we get our way”? Anything else is not democracy. Voter integrity? If that means Democrats lose, then it’s voter suppression and therefore racism. Moderation? Kristol lists all the ways Democrats need to reform our institutions, as if it were not Democrats who intentionally intended to destroy those institutions to advance their own political power. Kristol calls on Democrats to defend congressional government while pledging to reform Congress: does he not recall that Democrats are those willing to destroy longstanding norms such as the filibuster to force through their unpopular agendas? He calls on Democrats to defend law and order: does he not recall that it was Democrats who encouraged the violent protests allegedly in response to the police killing of a violent, fentanyl-crazed felon and the demand to defund the police?
Kristol calls on Democrats to “to defend the rule of law while being appropriately critical of the current Supreme Court.” This is especially disingenuous on multiple levels: it has become abundantly clear that Democrats define the rule of law as simply punishing their political enemies (e.g., the treatment of the January 6 protestors versus the treatment of Stephen Colbert’s film crew illegally trespassing the halls of Congress). With respect to the Supreme Court, I suppose it was necessary for Kristol to make that obsequious comment; after all, if Kristol were to admit that the Court’s recent rulings do in fact advance the rule of law by returning political power to the appropriate venues for exercising that power (the states, Congress, the American people), he would have to admit that Trump’s appointments to the Court were salutary—something his TDS would never allow. So Kristol is willing to pretend he never favored a conservative understanding of the proper role of the Supreme Court. He may be a little uncomfortable with the lack of moderation in some Democratic methods of protest against the overturning of Roe, for instance, but he can certainly understand the frustration!
Kristol believes that the Biden Administration had the right idea with Build Back Better, because the country really did need to build back after the Trump years and the pandemic. The real problem, of course, is that the country was so thoroughly destroyed by Trump that the challenges we face are very, very serious. And we will need serious, thoughtful Democratic Party leadership, presidential leadership, to meet those challenges. What Kristol does not say, but also does not deny, is that there is no one currently waiting in the wings in the Democratic Party who is capable of providing that kind of leadership. His silence on that point may be his only honest moment in the whole piece.
Joe Biden almost certainly saw this coming. The president spent the last week before the Bureau of Economic Analysis report, which showed another quarter of negative growth, prepping the nation for the bad news: We met the “technical” definition of a recession.
Biden basically said, “Definition? Schmefinition! I’ll make up my own. That’ll get those crazy right-wingers frothing at the mouth in no time.”
This, Biden proceeded to do with gleeful intent. The entire pundit class went to war over the arcane definition of an economic term. Meanwhile, the nation was distracted from the reality of what the 0.9% negative growth in the second quarter meant in comparison to other major economies.
Newsweek reports that the “United States saw worse economic growth than seven other major economies in the second quarter of 2022.” Only China with its COVID-19 lockdowns performed worse.
Even Mexico’s economy outperformed the U.S. economy.
Of the major countries which have released growth figures for the second quarter, encompassing April-June, Spain performed the best with an annualized growth rate of 1.1 percent.
It was followed by Italy and Mexico, both on 1.0 percent, then South Korea with 0.7 percent and France on 0.5 percent.
Germany and Singapore both recorded zero growth, although as their economies did not shrink this was still better than the U.S. figure.
“Coming off of last year’s historic economic growth, and regaining all the private sector jobs lost during the pandemic crisis, it’s no surprise that the economy is slowing down as the Federal Reserve acts to bring down inflation, the White House statement said.
“But even as we face historic global challenges, we are on the right path and we will come through this transition stronger and more secure.”
Brave words. But aren’t these the same bozos who were wrong about inflation?
The Biden administration has spent a lot of energy trying to manage perceptions of the economy. Remember when inflation was going to be “temporary”? That experience should be instructive. Insisting that inflation was just a blip didn’t stop consumers from noticing that prices were rising. Nor did it protect Biden’s approval ratings, which dived even as the administration continued to insist that everything was fine.
Of course, inflation wasn’t the only reason for Biden’s unpopularity, which intensified right around the time that America was flooded with disastrous images from the Afghanistan withdrawal. But inflation was certainly a major contributor, and it is now probably the biggest factor in Biden’s catastrophically low ratings. There’s just not much that political messaging can do when consumers have to stare reality in the face every time they go to the grocery store.
Biden’s rhetorical distraction in trying to redefine bad economic news is an effort at altering perception. When it comes to the economy, perception can be a reality. If workers think that prices are going to rise, they will ask for a larger raise. If companies believe that, they will raise prices. This is what happened in the late 1970s — until Ronald Reagan and Paul Volker ruthlessly wrung inflation out of the economy by ignoring perception and inflicting pain.
Yet their economic confidence is low because real incomes are falling and interest rates have spiked, making it harder to buy a house or a car. You can’t message people out of thinking their economic circumstances have gotten worse — or out of worrying that this portends ill for the future.
So all the spin efforts are likely to come to naught. But contra angry conservatives, it’s probably harmless — except as it’s emblematic of a dangerous tendency on the left to believe they can control reality by controlling the words we use to describe it.
Biden’s attempt to spin his administration out of the coming disaster won’t work because the real-world economic conditions don’t match what’s coming out of his mouth. In the end, it doesn’t matter how you define “recession.” What matters is that average Americans are suffering.
I have an embarrassing confession to make: I once, sort of, respected Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always known he’s a flakey Democrat, and though it’s been fun to entertain him possibly switching parties and causing a meltdown on the left, those hopes were always far-fetched. Still, his stance over the last year against a boondoggle, green scam-filled reconciliation bill was laudable. Even in the face of intense pressure, including personal harassment and threats, Manchin stood firm – until he didn’t.
In a sudden reversal, Manchin stabbed Republicans in the back. Despite assurances that if the GOP voted for the CHIPS Act that the West Virginia senator wouldn’t support another gut-busting spending bill, Manchin came in off the top rope to announce he and Schumer had made a deal. What was in it? $400 billion in wasteful spending on “climate change” initiatives. It also includes tax hikes on corporations which will exacerbate inflation.
For days, those in the political sphere racked their brains trying to figure out what caused Manchin to change his mind. A new report from The Washington Post gives us the answer, and the short of it is that he’s a pathetic coward.
“There are folks in our party who are saying all sorts of terrible things about you, who believe you were stringing us along for a year and that you were never going to come to a deal because of your state or because of your conflicts of interest,” a source recalled Coons saying. The comment appeared to reference long-standing concerns about Manchin’s ties to the coal industry.
Coons then told Manchin: “I can’t think of a better way for you to prove them all wrong than to sign off on a bold climate deal. Prove every critic wrong.”
Manchin thought for a second, the source said, then responded, “It would be like hitting a homer in the bottom of the ninth, wouldn’t it?”
You can’t do anything but shake your head at that excerpt. Sen. Chris Coons actually went to Manchin citing his “conflicts of interest” with the coal industry, something you’d think would be insulting. Coons then basically told him that if he changes his mind on reconciliation, the very people who have treated him like absolute garbage for the last year will love him. And Manchin, instead of preserving some shred of his own dignity, decided to just go along with that. All it took to change his mind was to play to his ego for a few hours on a plane ride to Europe.
I wonder what Manchin thinks of having his beta-esque reasoning for reversing himself out in the open now? Honestly, I don’t really care. He deserves the scorn he’s been getting and will continue to get. Further, I sincerely hope that the far-left keeps gunning for him. Unlike in the past, he won’t have Republicans on his side to defend him. It’s time to let Manchin suffer the consequences of his actions by enjoying his new friends.
Back to my initial confession. I want to apologize for ever believing Manchin could be trusted to be anything more than the weasel that he’s always been. I should have known better. I thought it was safe to take him at his word after he nuked “Build Back Better,” but it obviously wasn’t. Now, it’s up to West Virginians to end this guy’s career. Enough is enough. He’s not moderate and he’s not your friend. He’s just another Washington apparatchik operating as a pawn for the Democrat Party.
