We’re Not Going Back to a 1970s Economy. It’s Worse than That.

American Thinker

By David Ennocenti

Comparisons are being made of our current economy to that of the Jimmy Carter presidency of the 1970s.  President Biden’s policies appear to parallel those of the Carter administration.  We haven’t heard the term “stagflation” in the news for the past forty years.  That’s the term for high unemployment and high inflation.  It’s measured by what is called the Philips Curve.  There certainly are similarities to our present economy and that of the 1970s.

Presently we are looking at inflation, slow job growth, shortages of materials, and even long lines for gasoline.  While the gasoline shortage was only a temporary one affecting only a portion of the country, it was caused by a pipeline shutdown.  This was exacerbated by the fact that President Biden shut down the Keystone Pipeline his first day in office.  Prices, however, continue to rise due to the lessening of supply.

Image via sites.google.com

Did the poor economy of the 1970s begin under Jimmy Carter?  Not really.  Looking back, we know that as early as President Nixon’s first term, he imposed a wage-price freeze on the United States.  On the night of August 15, 1971, he made that announcement in a nationally televised address.  We were also hit with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) oil embargo of 1973.  This led to long gasoline lines, gasoline rationing, and inflation caused by an increase in the cost of oil.

This inflation lasted throughout the 1970s.  President Ford, who completed the last year and a half of the Nixon presidency, made attempts to deal with inflation.  His means of dealing with it was to have people wear WIN buttons.  WIN stood for “Whip Inflation Now.”  Some people might say it was as effective against inflation as a mask mandate is in stopping a pandemic.

Given these facts, should we conclude that the Carter administration’s policies were the chief cause of the poor economy of the 1970s?  His policies certainly did not help matters.  But Nixon’s wage-price freeze led only to further inflation.  President Ford’s feckless campaign was intended to induce a positive attitude which he hoped would propel the nation through the poor economy the same way the V for Victory Campaign kept people positive during World War Two.  No, while all these attempts at defeating inflation, high unemployment, long gas lines, and an energy crisis, were basically unsuccessful, the real blame for the economy of the 1970s firmly belongs on the policies of the 36th president of the United States: Lyndon Baines Johnson.

In May 1964, President Johnson announced, in an address at the University of Michigan, his plan for the United States.  He called it the Great Society.  It’s been called Johnson’s version of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Although he may have announced the plan in 1964, the many aspects of the plan and its effect on the economy did not take place until just before President Nixon’s administration.  Prior to that, the economy of the nation was growing steadily due to President Kennedy’s implementation of tax reform.

President Kennedy lowered the tax rates.  As he stated, “a rising tide raises all boats.”  The real key to Kennedy’s tax plan was not just the tax cut, but the Investment Tax Credit.  These changes, improvements, to the tax law are largely responsible for the great economy the United States had during the 1960s.  This was true despite the escalation of the Vietnam War over the same period.  All this came to an end when Johnson implemented his Great Society.

The cost of this continues today.  In 2014, the Heritage Foundation published a report disclosing that 22 trillion dollars had been spent on the Great Society programs in an effort to eradicate poverty.  That amount is three times the cost of all military wars in U.S. history.  While there has been an improvement in that regard, there is hardly the benefit that was intended.

The poor economy of the 1970s can be traced not to Jimmy Carter, but to Lyndon Johnson.  With the spending that the Biden administration is implementing and, even more, that it has proposed, a return to the stagflation of the 1970s may be mild in comparison to what we can expect to get from policies of the current Congress.

The same can be said of the shutting of the Keystone Pipeline and canceling of domestic drilling and oil production.  These actions could have results that make the gas shortages of the 1970s pale in comparison.

There is another policy of the Biden administration that is similar to a law passed in 1965: the Hart-Celler Act.  This was known as the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.  This act changed dramatically the immigration policy of the United States.  Our immigration policy went from one of bringing in immigrants who could contribute to the betterment of the country to one in which immigrants were chosen by where they came from.

It is similar to the fiasco that Biden created on our southern border with his reversal of President Trump’s immigration policies.  The three executive orders he signed to this effect place more financial strain on the nation.  With jobs going to illegals and illegals receiving benefits at taxpayer expense, there is added cost placed on our economy.

The American philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  This was stated in his work, The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense.  The political left seems to do this all the time and is quick to give the same excuse when confronted with the truth: “It didn’t work in the past because we didn’t throw enough money at it.”

We may be returning to the economy of the 1970s, but that poor economic period had its roots in the 1960s.  If we are witnessing what has been compared to the 1970s, what does our future have in store for us?  What roots are we planting now?  The bill proposed at this time by the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress is for six trillion dollars in spending.  This alone is more than 25% of the amount the Great Society spent in its first fifty years.  While that is unadjusted for inflation, the point remains.  That doesn’t include the trillions spent in the previous year due to the COVID pandemic.  Are we witnessing the Great Society on steroids?

David Ennocenti is a retired accountant and graduate of the State University of N.Y. at Buffalo, School of Management, with a degree in accounting and finance.  He passed the CPA examination in 1983.  His writing has appeared in American Thinker, USA Today, The New York Times, and several other publications.

Image via Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

High-Ranking Chinese Defector Working With DIA Has ‘Direct Knowledge’ of China’s Bioweapons Program—and It’s Very Bad

AP Photo/Ng Han Guan

PJ Media

By Paula Bolyard

In an exclusive story at RedState, Jen Van Laar reports that sources inside the intelligence community say a high-ranking defector from China has been working for months with the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). According to Van Laar’s confidential sources, that high-ranking defector claims to have knowledge of special weapons programs in China—that include bioweapons.

Adam Housley first reported via Twitter on Thursday that “the increased pressure on China in recent days is due to a defector with intimate knowledge” of the program. According to Housley, FBI director Christopher Wray “didn’t know right away because they wanted to make sure they got all they needed before telling him.”

In fact, Wray was “ambushed” with the information, according to Van Laar’s sources, as was the CIA. “Sources say DIA leadership kept the defector within their Clandestine Services network to prevent Langley and the State Department from accessing the person, whose existence was kept from other agencies because DIA leadership believes there are Chinese spies or sources inside the FBI, CIA, and several other federal agencies,” according to the report.

Why was the defector so important that he had to be kept under wraps?

Housley says it’s because the defector has information on the origins of the Wuhan virus: “China is trying to produce variants that suggest it came from bats to cover up that coronavirus originally came from a lab.” He later clarified: “US intelligence has a Chinese defector with Wuhan info. AND China is trying to produce variants that suggest it came from bats to cover up that coronavirus originally came from a lab.”

According to RedState’s sources, “the defector has been with the DIA for three months” and has provided “an extensive, technically detailed debrief to US officials.”

“In DIA’s assessment, the information provided by the defector is legitimate,” wrote Van Laar. “Sources say the level of confidence in the defector’s information is what has led to a sudden crisis of confidence in Dr. Anthony Fauci, adding that U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) personnel detailed to DIA have corroborated very technical details of information provided by the defector.”

All of this raises many questions. Why, “suddenly,” did the U.S. legacy media en masse turn-tail and start pointing fingers at China and doubting Fauci?  Why did left-wing outlets like the Washington Post and BuzzFeed “suddenly” decide it was the right time to drop Fauci’s emails—just days after the lab-leak story was “suddenly” no longer verboten on social media? Fauci’s emails revealed what we’ve been reporting here at PJ Media for months (mostly behind the paywall for our VIP subscribers to avoid the Gestapo social-media censors): that Fauci was working with a Chinese scientist from the Wuhan lab; that he asked Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg to help with COVID messaging; and that he signed off on funding for dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

One gets the sense that a dam the size of Three Gorges on the Yangtze River is about to blow. The question will be, as it almost is when political figures are caught in a coverup: What did they know and when did they know it? And who knew what was really going on?

If any of this turns out to be true—particularly the suggestion that China may have intentionally unleashed the most deadly bioweapon in world history—you might want to begin thinking about where you’re going to spend the U.S.-Sino War. If, as Housley claims, the FBI, CIA, and other federal agencies are swarming with Chinese spies, it would constitute the biggest national security failure in U.S. history—and the most deadly.

The implications are terrifying.

Stop Calling Them Progressives!

Leftists are totally something else.

Frontpage mag

Joy Overbeck

When I hear prominent conservative media commentators and brainy columnists call America-haters bent on destroying our noble Constitutional Republic “progressives” I feel the top of my head may fly up and stick on the ceiling. They should know better. The sickening behavior of these tyrannical anarchists are the very opposite of progressive which Webster defines as “continuous improvement; the development of an individual or group in a direction considered more beneficial than and superior to the previous level.” There’s nothing beneficial for us as citizens or our nation about lawlessness, destruction of private property by black-masked Antifa terrorists, attacks on the First and Second Amendments, cancelling the voices of those who disagree with WOKE dogma, and shrill Maxine Waters-esque calls for personal attacks. Yet as long as we let them get away with calling themselves progressives, they can claim moral and intellectual superiority over the rest of us. 

Call them radical leftists, fascists, socialists, Marxists…or Democrats. But anointing them progressives automatically makes those of us on the flip side “regressives” – backward-thinking, slack-jawed, snaggle-toothed, knuckle-dragging Neanderthals. Which gives know-nothings like Joe Biden carte blanche to label the governors of Texas and Mississippi lifting Covid mask mandates “Neanderthal thinking…”  Of course, the governors were vindicated when disease cases and deaths in both states dropped dramatically after masks were gone.  

For the radical left, deceptive language is a kind of performance art. They cynically use shiny, promising words to convince the uniformed to line up behind their latest fraud. For example, Obama’s “Affordable Care Act” was a lie from the jump, leading as it did to higher premiums and astronomical deductibles that left millions of suffering Americans paying more but ending up literally without any healthcare insurance at all. Similarly, the “For the People Act” (HB1) in reality allows the gorilla of the federal government to crush the peoples’ voice that the Constitution gives to individual state legislatures in creating election law.  

Rather than advancing progress, the “progressive” credo hearkens back to the bad old days of dictators Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot and the moldy stink of their failed ideas: oppressive government control and stealing from productive citizens under the guise of “leveling the playing field” and “equality.” How curious that the innocents on the receiving end of these marvelous systems, variously known as socialism, Communism, or Marxism, have died in the millions at the hands of their governments rather than enter the earthly utopia they were promised. According to historians, those gullible believers in progressivism amount to between 100 and 120 million lost souls.   

And yet here it comes again, bolting upright from its pool of blood with new life like a horror film villain we thought was slain. This new form of class struggle isn’t the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie of traditional Marxist cant; now all white people are the oppressors and black and brown minorities are cast as the victims. Mix into this ugly lie the social stresses of the China virus which has allowed clueless bureaucrats to paralyze the producers of the richest economy in the world for over a year, plus anarchy and violence in our cities increasing as police presence fades, and we have an unsettled and bewildered people the like of which we have never seen in America. 

What to do? First, fight back against the “progressive” racism that demonizes people for the color of their skin. Organize with other parents and citizens to forbid your local school board to impose “critical race theory” and “gender fluidity,” including the promotion of transgenderism, on children’s education curricula. Help Trump’s prosperous economy return by pressuring politicians to stop sending fat government checks that amount to more than a paycheck for many Americans. 

Economists say people earning less than $32,000 can potentially make more from unemployment aid than from their previous jobs, and that stark fact is delaying the return of a normal healthy economy. Under Biden’s recently enacted $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, workers who lost their jobs to the pandemic shutdowns are now making more in unemployment benefits than they did in wages. And that is stopping people from returning to work — just when employers are trying to reopen across the nation. Combined federal and state unemployment benefits add up to an average of $638 per week, encouraging people accustomed to staying home for the last year to keep staying home. That’s why, with 7.4 million jobs available nationwide, the anemic 266,000 jobs added in April were a dismaying indicator of a real problem with the government’s misplaced generosity. 

The year-plus of no work has robbed Americans of their sense of purpose and added to the malaise depressing so many of us. The satisfaction of work, almost any kind of work, is essential for a healthy sense of self-worth in humans. Even FDR, the Democrat president who created the New Deal to aid the jobless in the Great Depression, warned against the habit of welfare; “relief” as it was called then. “The lessons of history show that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber,” he said in 1935. “To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. The federal government must and shall quit this business of relief.” 

Yes it must – and it must now for us to reclaim our national character: industriousness, personal responsibility, and eagerness for future achievement that have made us the most dynamic and successful nation on earth.

What Have You Done for Me Lately?

Flopping Aces

by Larry Brandes

Bizarre news out of Lexington, Virginia; Washington and Lee University may finally change its name. Actually, the goofballs sitting on the school’s board of trustees may eradicate both of those hallowed names and substitute something more woke. I have a few suggestions. How about “AOC University?” (Bartending for idiots could be an AP course) “Donna Brazile University?” (where you get all the answers to the tests ahead of time) “Clinton & Clinton University?” The Latin inscription on the seal would read Quid enim interest in hac parte, ut non ea (What difference at this point does it make?) At half-time during football games, the marching band could perform “Devil With the Blue Dress On.” That would be a real crowd pleaser. “Fauci University,” has a nice ring to it. (Where the science is fuzzy, gain of function is embraced and lying like a rug is encouraged) All students would be required to buy his new book and learn to speak Chinese.

Actually, the trustees are really on to something. Washington and Lee are so “old school.” Washington was the father of our country who risked his life fighting the British for our independence. Big deal-that was so last week. Lee was a soldier who risked his life in battle for his beloved state of Virginia. Prior to the Civil War, Lee was offered command of a 100,000 man Union army which he declined. He replied, “Save in the defense of my native state, I never desire again to draw my sword.” Virginia debated going to war and then pondered, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Virginia “let slip the dogs of war,” and then begged Lee to lead their army into battle.

During multiple campaigns, when his troops were outnumbered, starving and barefoot from lack of supplies, Lee stood tall and honored his commitment to his beloved state of Virginia. There was no quit in Lee. Four years later at Appomattox Courthouse, Lee sheathed his sword forever. Somewhere down the line, Virginia suffered a terminal case of amnesia and forgot Lee’s sacrifices on battlefields on their behalf. When queried about the oversight, Virginia replied, “Who cares? That was like a zillion years ago, dude.” Virginia recently took disrespect to a whole new level. They further tarnished Lee’s memory by yanking his statue from the U.S. Capital. Apparently, being a hero has a shelf life – who knew? You’ve got to love Nancy Pelosi. She heard the news about Lee’s eviction, clapped her hands and cackled that removal of the Lee statue was “welcome news.” (I would say just wait until you leave Nancy and watch our reaction, but that would be snarky.)

Apparently today, real heroes play basketball, football and baseball. They deserve our unwavering admiration and should be revered for just being. We are so fortunate to have them in our bleak and empty lives. Forget the brave, underpaid, military men and women who keep us safe in Godforsaken, dangerous, countries scattered around the world. Give me the over-paid, pampered NBA superstar lecturing me on woke culture, critical race theory and the wonders of China. I can’t get enough of them droning on and on, ad nauseam. I could easily spend ten seconds or less listening to pundits on TV accuse me of being a horrible human being because of my skin color, belief in God and faith in this amazing country.

Just a thought from right field. Don’t change the name of Washington & Lee University. Both of those men were icons in American history and need to be remembered for their accomplishments. You don’t change history because you don’t like it. History is history. Love it or hate it – it is what it is. Good things happened and bad things happened. Ripping down statues is folly and says to the world, “Hey, we’re really stupid and actually believe that vandalism will change what transpired 200 years ago.” Learn from history. Don’t repeat the mistakes of the past, but endeavor to do better and help this nation become great again. Boldly speak the truth and strive for excellence. Do not go to the dark side. A great philosopher Yoda once said, “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” Don’t be a hater.

Maybe, someday you can attend Washington & Lee University and personally thank the board of trustees for not hating the giants of the past.

Mysterious Explosions Remind Iran That Mossad Neither Slumbers Nor Sleeps

Frontpage mag

Hugh Fitzgerald

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh claims a great “victory” in Gaza, and Iran’s Supreme Leader similarly gloats over the lesson the “axis of resistance” has taught the Zionists. Both men are hallucinating, overlooking the reality that Hamas’ weapons stockpiles, especially its rockets, have been greatly depleted, much of its extensive tunnel network has been destroyed, its command-and control centers, intelligence offices, weapons warehouses, all razed to the ground. During the 11-day conflict, the IDF destroyed more than 6,500 terrorist targets, including Hamas and PIJ operational headquarters, weapon production sites and arsenals, and over 100 kilometers (62 miles) of Hamas’ infamous grid of terror tunnels. At least 225 terrorists were killed in the strikes, including 25 senior Hamas and PIJ commanders. The Israeli military predicts that it will be many years – some say it could be as many as 10 years – for Hamas to return to its prewar strength.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Mossad neither slumbers nor sleeps. A few days after Israel announced it had shot down an Iranian armed drone on its border with Jordan, the world learned of a mysterious explosion at an Iranian drone factory in Isfahan. The report is here: “Report: Facility in Iran Used for Drone Manufacturing Hit by Explosion That Injured Nine, Days After Israel Downs Iranian UAV,” by Sharon Wrobel, Algemeiner, May 24, 2021:

An explosion was reported at a complex in Iran that houses a drone factory, several days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled to European foreign ministers parts from an Iranian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that had been downed during clashes with the Hamas militant group.

The explosion, which reportedly occurred on Sunday at a petrochemical factory complex in Isfahan, injured at least nine workers. According to The Guardian, the Iran Aircraft Manufacturing Industrial Company (HESA), which it said is located in the complex owned by Sepahan Nargostar Chemical Industries, produces a variety of aircraft and drones for Iranian and pro-Iranian forces.

Iran has not provided any information on the source of the explosion or the extent of the damage to the factory. The incident comes after Netanyahu revealed on Thursday that during the hostilities with the Hamas, “Iran sent an armed drone from Iraq or Syria, which our forces intercepted on the border between Israel and Jordan, and that I think says everything on the true patron of terror in the Middle East and in the world: Iran.”

During the conflict, the Israeli army also shot down a so-called armed suicide drone carrying explosives, launched by the Hamas at Israeli territory….

Do you have any doubt that Mossad was behind the attack on Iran’s drone factory? The “mysterious explosion” came just a few days after Israel had shot down an Iranian drone on its border with Jordan. It also came just as Yossi Cohen, Mossad’s spectacularly successful director, is turning over his duties to his successor, David Barnea; possibly this drone factory explosion was Cohen’s last hurrah, a way of reminding Iran that while Israel was for 11 days focused on trouncing Hamas in Gaza, Iran was always in Mossad’s thoughts.

A day later (that is, the day after the drone factory explosion), there was another mysterious explosion, this one at an oil refinery on the coast. The report on that second likely act of Israeli sabotage is here: “Iran: Large fire reported at oil refinery, day after drone factory blast,” by Tzvi Joffre, Jerusalem Post, May 25, 2021:

A large fire was reported at the Kangan Petro Refining Co. (KPRC) in southern Iran along the coast of the Persian Gulf on Monday, just a day after an explosion reportedly impacted a drone factory in the center of the country.

According to Iranian media, a fire at the waste warehouse at KPRC was contained and extinguished within an hour and no operational units were damaged. No injuries were reported in the fire….

The Iranian government, experience has shown, routinely under-reports its own casualties and minimizes the damage inflicted on its facilities by Mossad. The public may never know how extensive the damage was done to the drone factory or to the oil refinery or to many other targets of “mysterious attacks” that have plagued Iran during the last decade with ever greater frequency. But Mossad – which I think Is almost certainly to have been responsible both for this oil refinery fire and for the explosion at the drone factory just the day before – has reminded Iran’s government, yet again, of what Israel’s extensive network of agents in Iran can do.

And on May 26, Iranian state media reported on still a third explosion, this one at an oxygen pipeline in a petrochemical plant in Assaluyeh on Iran’s Gulf coast. There was no mention of its cause.

In these three cases, the Iranians surely know who is responsible. But they don’t want to talk about Mossad’s exploits. They’ll try to accentuate the positive by, for example, continuing to hail the crushing defeat of Hamas in the 11-day war as a “great victory.” But they’ve been badly rattled.

A parting word of advice to the Supreme Leader: “Those who watch over Israel neither slumber nor sleep.”

CNN Admits 2022 Red Wave Could Be Coming – Democrats Could Be Swamped By Wave Of Crime

Patriot Journal

Adam Casalino

Despite what they say, Democrats know they are on thin ice.

Many Americans don’t think Joe Biden belongs in the White House. On top of that, D.C. Democrats continue to fail to help the economy or put Americans first.

The 2022 midterm elections can easily put Republicans in charge of both the House and Senate.

But, wait! There’s more. Even leftist network CNN admits that Democrats’ epic failure on this major issue will help Republicans win big time.

Image via medium.com

From the Daily Wire:

“Republicans can turn rising crime into a culture war wedge issue,” said John Avlon Thursday on “New Day,” CNN’s morning show. “And as we turn the corner into summer, which is usual increase in violence crime, public safety is again front and center in people’s minds after decades of declines.”

“Democrats are going to have to deal with it or risk political backlash,” said Avlon, who hosts the show’s “Reality Check” feature.

An analyst admitted on CNN that the rise in crime all over the country is going to hurt Democrats in the upcoming elections.

Isn’t it sad that Democrats only care about rising crime—when it hurts their election chances?

They don’t care that, you know, innocent people are dying. No, Democrats are the very people who helped create these surges in crime.

In some Democrat-run cities, radical DAs have let criminals back out on the streets (like in Los Angeles).

In New York, they passed laws that abolished bail. Meaning, violent criminals aren’t held in jail at all.

And let’s not forget the countless Democrats across the country that encouraged the idiotic “defund the police” movement.

Or applauded the “protests” in the Summer of 2020. Or continue to push policies that often result in greater crime (i.e.: gun control laws).

Do they really think Americans are going to sit back and let this happen?

As crime rates surge in blue states (not red), Americans will demand a change. And Republicans will be on the front lines, promising a return to law and order come 2022.

CNN is warning this will happen. But even with that warning, radical “social justice” Democrats might not do a darn thing.

TRUMP 2024 – Liberals Worst Nightmare

Flopping Aces

by Larry Brandes

Trump’s private Boeing 757 airplane is currently in the shop getting a spectacular paint job and some new Rolls-Royce engines. The Democrats are in a panic mode. Trump 1.0 was a blessing for America and all the God-fearing, Bible reading, gun toting patriots spread from sea to shining sea. Trump 2.0 in 2024 will make America great again after the disastrous quasi presidency of Joe Biden and his sidekick snarky Harris.

Can you imagine Trump 2.0? During his first presidency he assumed that both parties and the media would totally support his efforts to make American great. I think that he was genuinely surprised when cowardly, rabid, hyenas from both parties aided and abetted by a hostile media attacked him before he and his lovely wife got off the escalator in Trump Tower. They hated Trump with so much intensity that they poisoned their own soul. Trump made America great again, and it made Democrats sick both mentally and physically. Liberals drank the poison of hate and then hoped that Trump would die from the concoction that they ingested.

Trump 2.0 is the liberals worst nightmare. Rumors of his triumphant return haunts their nightly dreams, makes them sweat profusely and howl at the moon. (Tip from Larry: Conservatives who married a liberal should probably sleep in a different room.) Trump spent four years fighting the swamp creatures, and now he knows each one of those dreadful invertebrates by name. Trump 1.0 surrounded himself with too many spineless advisers who morphed into slimy, repulsive, reptilian cowards who betrayed him and then lied on CNN to make a fast buck. Trump 2.0 won’t make those same mistakes.

Trump 2.0 will spend the first day of his new presidency eliminating the 70+ Executive Orders that Biden signed without reading. He will successfully complete that task before lunch. Then Trump will call the leaders of China, Russia and Iran and tell them, “There’s a new sheriff in town, and he ain’t happy with the way you’ve been treating our allies.” During lunch, Trump will task engineers to complete the southern border wall within 10 days. ICE will return to the border with additional personnel and a new mission to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into America. Trump will immediately strengthen our military forces and ensure that all branches are combat ready. The parasites who infested the military and lectured U.S. Marines on worthless diversity training will be cleaning latrines at Ft. Leavenworth. That’s a fact Jack. Trump will also ensure that the Keystone XL Pipeline is completed as soon as possible and then start spending the billions of porkulus dollars allocated for “improving the infrastructure” on actually improving the infrastructure in our country. Trump 2.0 will also support all the wonderful and brave men and women in law enforcement. He will ensure that those who do the crime will do the time that they actually deserve.

Trump 2.0 is the liberals worst nightmare because he stands for truth, justice and the American way. Americans want the truth. We can handle the truth. We are a proud nation filled with amazing people. We are tired of the lies spread by the Democratic Party and the talking heads oozing propaganda nightly on mainstream media. We desperately need a legitimate leader back in the White House.

If you listen real close you can hear those Rolls-Royce engines warming up. The sight of that magnificent plane doing a flyby over the White House would be a welcome sight to 100 million Americans. That will happen; God willing and the creek don’t rise.

100 Days of Failure

Frontpage mag

Bruce Thornton

All Biden had to do was not mess with Trump’s success.

The Biden administration took over the government with the wind at its back thanks to Donald Trump. With the COVID vaccines reining in the pandemic and things getting back to normal, all Biden had to do was not get in the way of success. But a lingering Trump Derangement Syndrome, and a leftwing, noisy base eager to complete Barack Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of the U.S., have led at home and abroad to actions and policies seemingly calculated to compromise our interests and security and erode our political freedom.

We can start with our southern border. Trump’s initiatives such as building a wall, stepping-up deportations, and striking a deal that kept asylum seekers in Mexico had slowed considerably the number of illegal crossings, leading to a reduction in violence from gangsters like MS-13 that flourished in so-called sanctuary cities; the end of the catch-and-release policy that dumped unvetted aliens into the country’s interior; and limiting the cruel deaths of children on the trek north.

But these successful policies interfered with the bipartisan need for de facto open borders to provide cheap labor for Wall Street, and more voters for the DNC. More important, no matter how successful, such polices were tainted by the “wicked” Donald Trump, the populist bull that wrecked the political establishment’s remunerative china shop. So they had to go.

The result has been a return to the Obama era’s spectacle of children and teens packed into squalid holding pens, increased infestations of cartel traffickers in people and drugs, and two consecutive months of about 175,000 apprehensions of border-crossers each month––the highest in two decades. All reports from those on the ground––from border patrol agents to residents to local government agencies––indicate a serious crisis that will insidiously spread across the country. But president Joe Biden is instructed to say that such influxes happen every year at this time, that Donald Trump left a “Godawful mess,” and that “We’ve now got control” over the ongoing stampede of border-crossers.

Then there’s the paradox of 8 million job openings––thanks to the V-shaped economic recovery that was well underway when Biden took office––many of which can’t be filled. Even the promise of cash bonuses and higher pay can’t attract workers. Why? Because his $1.9 trillion “COVID relief” bill actually does little to alleviate the pandemic’s effects, but a lot for bribing voters with free money, and spreading around payola to blue states and “woke” businesses. One such provision bumped up state unemployment payments by $300 a week, largess that will continue until September.

Unsurprisingly, 44% of small business owners report that they can’t fill vacancies, and one-fourth of the openings have been left unfilled. And though a projected million jobs were supposed to be created in April, the actual number was 266,000. You don’t have to be an economist to know what’s going on. When you can make more money on unemployment than you do working, why work? And why create jobs you can’t fill? That moral hazard should have been considered before doling out more cash.

Nor is this a new phenomenon. Little discussed is the role of the “dark economy,” i.e. the off-the-books cash economy, which includes crimes like drug-dealing and trading in stolen goods. No matter the government program, whether state or federal, that gives people money, millions of the beneficiaries work in the cash economy, where no income tax or payroll tax is deducted from wages. That means the reward for not working goes beyond the extra $300 Biden bucks because it includes extra money from working off the books.

That’s just one of the economic disasters the Biden crew has wrought. Donald Trump, like almost every politician, was not averse to fecklessly spending tax-payer money on sketchy policy. But he also understood that economic growth and job creation had to be nurtured by economic policy. This meant lowering the corporate tax rate, which in the U.S. is one of the highest among the advanced economies, and lowering personal and capital gains rates to incentivize investment in the economy. It means as well pruning away the thickets of regulation that cost $1.9 trillion dollars a year and slow down infrastructure and new business development. On Trump’s watch, policies on taxes and deregulation unleashed an economic boom and record-setting job growth, as well as increased wage growth.

So of course, the Biden conglomerate is planning another $6 trillion of spending, raising marginal tax rates, and rolling back Trump’s cuts of corporate and capital gains tax rates. At the same time, he’s undoing Trump’s reforms of the federal regulatory burden on business. What’s astonishing is that there is copious empirical evidence that these methods of generating revenue, which Biden claims will pay for his extravagant tax-and-spend initiatives, don’t work. And don’t forget, these efforts have already contributed to a rate of inflation 4.2%  higher than a year ago–– and the biggest jump since 2008. Flooding the economy with even more cash is likely to increase inflation.

As for the threats to raise taxes, recently Phil Gramm and John Early showed that raising tax rates doesn’t substantially increase the amount of revenue to offset the costs they exact from the economy. The main reason is that actual tax-rates matched statutory rates for only a small number of taxpayers, as history shows:

The top tax rate of 91% in 1962 applied to families with joint incomes, in today’s dollars, of $3.38 million. After deductions and credits, only 447 tax filers out of 71 million paid any taxes at the top rate. The top 1% of income earners paid only 16.1% of their income in federal income and payroll taxes, while the top 10% paid 14.4% and the bottom 50% paid 7%. This followed the pattern set by the top Depression-era and wartime tax rates. Only three filers out of six million paid any taxes at the top Depression rate and only 13 out of 50 million paid any taxes at the top wartime rate. The top 1% of earners paid 12.6% and 23.5% of their income in federal income and payroll taxes in 1938 and 1945, respectively.

And despite the specious rhetoric about the rich and corporations “paying their fair share,” the data show they already do pay a higher proportion of all taxes than their proportion of income:

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development has found that high-income Americans already bear a higher relative share of the income-tax burden than the rich do in other developed nations. The top 10% of American households earn about 33.5% of all earned income but pay 45.1% of all income taxes, including Social Security and Medicare taxes. That progressivity ratio of 1.35 is far higher than the German ratio of 1.07, French ratio of 1.1 and Swedish ratio of 1. As a percentage of their incomes, the top 10% of earners in Germany, France and Sweden paid 21%, 19% and 26% less than the top 10% in America. And the bottom 90% of earners paid 17%, 34% and 21% more as a percentage of their incomes respectively than the bottom 90% in America paid.

This means that the expense of the social welfare and health-care programs in Europe that our progressives hold up as reproach to our stingy ones, is paid for by a regressive tax on consumption that hits the bottom tier of citizens the hardest. We can see a similar phenomenon in California, where plutocrat “woke” obsessions like “clean” energy have led to regulations that affect the poor and working class hardest through some of the highest gas taxes and electricity costs in the country.

Finally, our progressive executive branch is proposing Green New Deal pie-in-the-sky goals like replacing carbon-based energy with “sustainable” and “clean” energy, for example by replacing gas-powered cars with electric ones. We can leave aside the growing consensus that the catastrophes predicted to follow a few degrees increase in temperatures has not been established as a fact. As physicist Steven E. Koonin writes in his new book Unsettled. What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why It Matters, “The science is insufficient to make useful projections about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it.”

But even if catastrophic global warming is true, converting carbon-based energy to “clean” electricity is logistically impossible given the quantities of minerals and rare-earth elements required to make the millions of batteries used in electric cars. As the Manhattan Institute’s Mark C. Mills writes, “A single electric-car battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. Fabricating one requires digging up, moving and processing more than 500,000 pounds of raw materials somewhere on the planet. The alternative? Use gasoline and extract one-tenth as much total tonnage to deliver the same number of vehicle-miles over the battery’s seven-year life.” And much of this mining occurs in countries with no concern for child-labor laws or the destructive impact on the environment.

Electric car batteries, obviously, need to be recharged. If electricity production, as is mandated in California, is to replace carbon-based fuels, then wind turbines will and solar panels will have to be manufactured in the millions. But, as Mills explains, “Building one wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of non-recyclable plastic. Solar power requires even more cement, steel and glass—not to mention other metals.” Those materials will also have to be minded or manufactured, which requires energy. And that energy will necessarily come from hydrocarbons whose emissions will cancel the reductions from using “sustainable” and “clean” energy, which in fact is neither.

Even attempting to reach Biden’s goal of replacing hydrocarbons with electricity will destroy our economy without achieving that utopian goal. What a contrast with the Trump administration, which promoted American energy independence and removed some of the regulatory shackles put on the energy industry during the Obama years. Biden instead has shut down the Keystone pipeline, banned fracking on federal land, and shoveled tons of cash to “clean energy” boondoggles, leaving us more dependent on imported energy.

And this is just 100 days of domestic policy. Much of these proposed tax-and-spend proposals as of now look unlikely to pass, but the Republicans can’t get complacent. This is no time to make deals or “bipartisanship” horse-trading. It’s time to fight tooth and nail against these assaults on our national sovereignty and economic well-being.

Pic of the Day…………

Image via Rightbias

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