Ronald Sherr (1952-2022) studied at the DuCret School of Art in New Jersey and at the National Academy of Design with Daniel E. Greene, Harvey Dinnerstein, and privately with Burton Silverman. He passed away Wednesday, December 7.

From his family:

Our beloved Ron,
who filled our lives
with art, love and laughter
has passed away.

His rich legacy will live on for generations.
We shall treasure the memories
and images he has left us with,
for the rest of our lives.

~May he Rest in Peace~
Love to all,
Lois & Alex

His portraits of notable Americans include former presidents, Supreme Court justices, senators, and governors as well as leaders in business, medicine, academia, and the arts. Sherr is one of the few artists to receive the Hubbard Art Award ($250,000) from the Hubbard Art Museum in Ruidoso, New Mexico.

 

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BY Bradley Blankenship

 

The 118th United States Congress will be inaugurated on January 3, 2023, ushering in a number of changes, including Republican control of the House of Representatives and an attendant flip of the office of the speaker. That means that long-time Democratic Party leader Nancy Pelosi will have to give up her gavel and hand it over, most likely to Republican leader Kevin McCarthy. 

This has been Pelosi’s second tenure as speaker, as she served the first time from 2007-2011 and made history during that time by being the first – and so far only – woman to hold that title. Indeed, Pelosi’s record as the third-highest constitutional officer in the US has been historic – but maybe for some reasons that aren’t so savory. 

For one, the California Democrat is a notorious self-dealer. For instance, Pelosi was one of the most high-profile members of Congress implicated in a five-month corruption investigation by Business Insider. She is reported to have deep holdings in companies such as Tesla, Disney, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), and Meta (Facebook’s parent company), which she is directly responsible for regulating as a member of Congress. 

And it should also not be a surprise that she has repeatedly come out against barring members of Congress from trading stocks and other financial assets, even if she did an about face when public pressure mounted. “We are a free-market economy. They (members of Congress) should be able to participate in that (trading),” she told reporters in December 2021.

There is actually an argument to be made that indeed members of Congress should be able to engage in such investments. After all, they have to pay two sets of housing costs in their district and in the notoriously expensive Washington, DC area. They also have to pay all of their own traveling expenses to and from their district. And they have to do all of that, plus probably also have a family, with a salary of $174,000. It’s not all that glamorous when you think about it. 

But if we look at Pelosi’s net worth of $114,662,521, according to 2018 data by OpenSecrets, then we can see that this argument hardly applies. In fact, if you look at the chart of her individual wealth over the years, you’ll notice that her wealth exponentially increased with her position as speaker. It’s like her power in Congress directly translates to her own personal wealth accumulation – which, I think we can all agree, would be the definition of corruption. 

Along with being greedy, the outgoing speaker is a devout war hawk. She once told reporters in Damascus in 2007, during George W. Bush’s presidency, that “there is no division on policy between us and President Bush, be it on Israel, Palestine or Syria.” For anyone familiar with Bush’s genocidal Middle East scheme, this is basically like saying, “Yeah, we completely agree with Satan on everything.” 

She’s also been instrumental in helping presidential administrations evade multilateral organizations and international law. In a letter to the president (again Bush) on the issue of Palestine, she said that Congress is “concerned that certain nations or groups, if given a meaningful role in monitoring progress made on the ground, might only lessen the chances of moving forward on a realistic path towards peace.” According to her and her colleagues, “The United States has developed a level of credibility and trust with all parties in the region which no other country shares.” 

Even her August trip to Taiwan, amid protests from Beijing that such a thing could fray tensions in the all-important US-China relationship, was dangerously reckless at best and deliberately courting war at worst. It could have easily escalated into open combat between the world’s foremost military powers, which is an eventuality that has become far more likely as a result of her visit in any case.

Given everything just laid out here (and there is no doubt more that could be mentioned), it should come as no surprise that Pelosi will exit her role as speaker in a negative light. According to YouGov as of writing, her favorability rating is sitting at a measly 40.1% – which is actually less than President Joe Biden’s historically low approval rating of 43.1%, according to the FiveThirtyEight opinion poll tracker.

To put in perspective how unpopular Pelosi is, according to Public Policy Polling, a higher share of Americans believe that JFK was killed by a conspiracy (51%) and that Bush intentionally misled the public on Iraq’s WMDs (44%) than like Pelosi, with just a bit less (37%) thinking global warming is a hoax. For the sake of our country, it is to be hoped that the 82-year-old will retire from political life after her term as speaker comes to a close. But unfortunately, as is ever the case with Pelosi, her career might just outstay its welcome and drag on endlessly.

 

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BY Jeffrey Lord

 

Talk about a double standard. 

Talk about abuse of power. 

Again. 

On Friday, Dec. 30, the Democrats running the House Ways and Means Committee are releasing former President Donald Trump's taxes. 

Which is to say, they are launching one of the biggest — if not the biggest — invasion of privacy in the history of the U.S. Congress. 

But unwittingly (as always) the Democrats are clueless about a key problem they have created for themselves. In a word? Precedent. 

Once the barn door of releasing the private tax returns of a former government official has been opened, the demand will — and should — be on to release the tax returns of other government officials past and present — to teach the lesson that this should never happen again — to anyone. 

The first place to start with this precedent would be with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. 

Pelosi has said the following on the subject: 

"When and if I decide to run for president, I will most certainly release my tax returns." 

Got that? Only if she runs for president. As if. She is Speaker of the House, the third in line to the presidency, and when Republicans take charge of the House on Jan. 3, she will still be there as the senior Democrat in the House, and, for that matter, a senior member of the entire House. 

Breitbart has noted this of her refusal to release her tax returns in a story that ran in July 2020: 

Pelosi's refusal to release her own tax returns comes as federal loan data released by the Trump administration earlier this week shows companies connected to her husband received hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Paycheck Protection Program. 

In other words this is the old liberal double standard in play: Rules for thee and different rules for me. In this case that means one set of rules for President Trump — and a second, quite different set of rules for Nancy Pelosi. 

But thanks to the precedent being set by releasing the Trump returns, it is time to change the rules and make them the same for everybody. So if the Trump returns are to be released, the demand should go up to require Pelosi to reveal hers. 

Also on the precedent list? That should be the outgoing chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Congressman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) and his 24 Democrat committee colleagues who voted to invade Trump's privacy by releasing his returns. And yes — no double standards. So the Republican Committee Members should be required to do this as well. 

The larger point here in the invasion of President Trump's privacy is that, yet again, the Swamp that is Washington D.C. has a serious double standard problem in dealing with Trump (and other Republicans), combined with repeated abuses of power by those in power in the Biden Justice Department, the FBI, and elsewhere in the bureaucracy — and media — as well. 

Over there at Conservative Brief is this headline: Paul Sperry Unpacks The Trump-Hillary Double Standard 

The article, by Martin Walsh, details ace reporter Paul Sperry's detailed analysis of the government's treatment of Hillary Clinton versus that of Donald Trump. Walsh begins by saying this, with bold print for emphasis supplied: 

Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch obtained evidence that a computer contractor working under the direction of Hillary Clinton's legal team destroyed subpoenaed records that the former secretary of state stored on a private email server she originally kept at her New York home, and then lied to investigators about it. Yet no charges were brought against Clinton, her lawyers, or her paid consultant. 

The leniency accorded to Clinton contrasts with recent moves by Attorney General Merrick Garland to aggressively investigate former President Trump and his lawyers for allegedly obstructing investigators' efforts to locate subpoenaed records at his Florida home. Legal experts say the apparent double standardmay provide a useful defense for Trump and his legal team.

Later on, Walsh notes this: 

To be sure, the agency has used more intrusive methods probing Trump for similar allegations of mishandling classified information and concealing documents under subpoena. 

Unlike the Clinton probe, where investigators and prosecutors sought to obtain evidence by consentwhenever possible, the department has used a federal grand jury to issue subpoenas to Trump for thousands of documents, as well as surveillance video footage, from his Palm Beach estate. They also obtained a search warrant to raid his private office and family bedrooms. In addition to seizing more than 11,000 documents, agents confiscated some 1,800 personal items, including gifts, photo albums, clothing, passports, and medical and tax records, according to court records. 

Clinton and her representatives were spared such heavy-handed tactics and indignities. 

Now move on from the Hillary-Trump double standard to the current story of the Twitter files and the revelations of the FBI's "investigation" of Hunter Biden. The Federalist's Margot Cleveland headlines this story as follows: 

FBI Office Investigating Hunter Biden Sent Twitter Numerous Censorship Requests Right Before 2020 Election

Cleveland reports this: 

Given the involvement of both Baltimore FBI and FBI headquarters in the investigation of Hunter Biden — and the latter's attempt to shut down the probe — the revelation that "some folks in the Baltimore field office and at HQ" were "doing keyword searches for violations," suggests the FBI undertook a full-court press to interfere in the 2020 election. 

In other words, the FBI is revealed as directly involved in trying to shut down the news of the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story, directly undertaking "a full-court press to interfere in the 2020 election." 

Which reveals that former President Trump's insistence that the 2020 election was rigged was 100 percent accurate. As the Twitter files show, this is 100 percent true. 

The bottom line here is that the double standard in the treatment of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and the behind-the-scenes demands of the FBI to suppress the story of the Hunter Biden laptop prove that there has been serious corruption in the treatment of Trump. Corruption in these cases by the FBI, the Justice Department, and Twitter to rig an election. 

Not to mention that the abuse of power by House Democrats in releasing Trump's taxes — but not demanding the same treatment of Pelosi's taxes, not to mention their own — is itself an assault on Trump's right to privacy in the handling of his tax returns. 

The good news here is that as of Jan. 3 Republicans will be in charge of the House — which means investigations, serious investigations, into this corruption. 

Along with, hopefully, either punishment for those who violated the former president's privacy by revealing his tax returns — or using the treatment of Trump's tax returns as a precedent for opening Nancy Pelosi's tax returns and the tax returns of all those Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee who demand to keep Pelosi's and their own returns private. 

Jan. 3 approaches. And as the great Bob Dylan sang, "The times they are a-changing." 

Buckle in, Democrats. Buckle in. 

 

 

About the Author: 
Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is a former aide to Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp. An author and former CNN commentator, he writes from Pennsylvania at [email protected]. His new book, Swamp Wars: Donald Trump and The New American Populism vs. The Old Order, is now out from Bombardier Books.

 

 

 

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