HOW IS PRESIDENT BIDEN GOVERNING?

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INTRODUCTION

Joe Biden has been president for over three years so it’s far past the time to assess how he’s doing.  America is doing very poorly in almost every metric and it appears to be almost entirely the Biden Administration’s fault. Biden’s approval polls reflect this, though you would never know it if you only watch Main Stream Media. How did the President destroy the economy, raise inflation, make illegal immigration out of control, mess up our departure from Iraq, weaken the military,  etc., in three years?

While Joe Biden campaigned as a moderate, he governed as a far-left radical.  In addition, President Biden appears to have  diminished mental capacity with other Biden far-left officials and friends actually formulating the policies Biden is implementing.  These are my speculations as to why the Biden Administration has failed at every single endeavor it has engaged in.  If there are any Biden policies or actions you believe have been successful, then your sources of news have been corrupted (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, etc.).  Let’s examine some of President Biden’s policies.

BODY 

I believe the following issues are the most important to the public: 1) The Economy, 2) Energy Independence, 3) Illegal Immigration/Border Security, 4) Crime, 5) Covid, 6) The Military, 7) Ukraine-Russia, 8) Afghanistan.

1.THE ECONOMY:  To adequately examine the economy, let’s look at a) inflation, b) employment, and  c) GDP (gross domestic product).  Trillions of dollars of unnecessary spending that was requested by the Biden Administration, and approved by the Democrat Congress caused this unprecedented inflation.

a) Inflation hits the poor hardest.  In April ’22, it was 8.3%, though it’s lower now  (in 2020, under Trump, 1.4% inflation).  The cause began with the $1.9 Trillion “2021 American Rescue Plan”.

b) Employment appears to currently be doing well with unemployment at under 4%.  This was expected because of the “V-shaped Recovery” that President Trump enabled with his “across-the-board” tax rate cuts for everyone.

c) Gross Domestic Product (or GDP) measures the total cost of all goods and services produced by the United States.  It actually decreased in the first two quarters of 2022 which traditionally meant  the U.S. was/is in a recession (in 2020, under Trump, GDP growth was 6.5%).

2. ENERGY INDEPENDENCE: On the day he was inaugurated as President, Joe Biden began his war on fossil fuels that he promised during his presidential campaign. He immediately shut down the Keystone and Dakota pipelines and the permitting of oil and gas exploration and drilling on Federal lands.  He discouraged financial institutions from loaning money to oil and gas companies and significantly raised fees for existing oil and gas leases on Federal lands.  He’s now stopped very large  oil and gas leases in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico.

The consequences of all of the aforementioned is the price of gas significantly increasing in price as well as the 6,000 products made from oil significantly increasing in price.  Most consumer products are trucked to their destination so their prices have also necessarily vastly increased because of the cost of fuel that transports them.

3. ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION-BORDER SECURITY: 2020 Presidential candidate, Joe Biden, promised “open borders” if elected President, as did all of the other primary election Democrat candidates.  Since being elected, illegal immigration has vastly increased to over 200,000/month and was expected to triple if Title 42 is ever lifted (it didn’t) Most of the illegals are young single men, some of whom (the “got-aways”) carry backpacks containing Fentanyl and other illegal drugs in order to pay the cartels their $4,000-$8,000 fee to cross the U.S. southern border.  Moreover, there are a number of criminals intermingled with non-criminals…human trafficking is also rampant.

4. CRIME:  The Democrat-supported “Defund the Police” movement that coincided with the 574 riots that took place in the summer of 2020, destroyed countless small businesses, including many black-owned businesses.  Even V.P. Kamala Harris got involved by raising money to bail out rioters. The January 6 protest in the U.S. now appears to have been directed by a FBI-collaborator (Ray Epps) and arranged by the Democratic Party.  Democrat District Attorneys in Democrat-run cities are not prosecuting many classes of misdemeanors resulting in crime increasing exponentially in those cities.  Moreover, the-illegal the protests around Supreme Court justices over the then-draft Roe vs. Wade Alito opinion, were not investigated by the US Department of Justice nor condemned by the Biden Administration.  All of the aforementioned leads me to ask the obvious question, “why is the Democrat Party soft on crime,” and why isn’t the Department of Justice doing its job?

5. COVID: Response to Covid by the Federal and most State governments were a combination of incompetence, anti-science, and political malfeasance The victims of this chaos was the American public, many of whom lost their lives, their livelihoods, or their health and well-being.  Unnecessary lockdowns of the economy hurt many State and localities, and mandatory vaccinations resulted in many people being unnecessarily fired, including from some critical jobs and the military.  Moreover, CDC (centers for Disease Control) officials were not transparent in their decisions, nor did they recognize the obvious, like the superiority of the natural immunity acquired when one caught the virus.  Consequently, a one-year pandemic has lasted years!  Why did States and the Federal government do what they did?

6. THE MILITARY: China is in the process of surpassing the U.S. military.  Its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is very close in size to the United States and therefore China has the money to spend on its military for China to become a superpower like the U.S.  Fortunately it’s still  behind in nuclear weapons.  Russia does have a large nuclear arsenal to match the U.S.  It also has, unlike the U.S., many small tactical battlefield nuclear weapons, which Ukraine may eventually see. Recently, it has demonstrated its hypersonic missiles which are so fast and travel so close to the ground that they can’t be shot down.

While our adversaries are getting stronger, the U.S. military’s budget was increased only enough to keep up with inflation.  Also, U.S. military leadership is emphasizing teaching CRT (critical race theory) to all of our troops.  Our military has also fired soldiers that refused to be vaccinated. Why?

7. UKRAINE-RUSSIA:  Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022 with the expectation of defeating Ukraine in a few days.  That was years ago and Ukraine is still fighting and holding its own against Russia, using mostly American weapons.  To date the U.S. has given many billions to Ukraine, all of the money being given is borrowed and will add to U.S. inflation.  Meanwhile, the Ukraine-Russia war probably could have been avoided had President Biden started arming Ukraine when Russia started moving troops to its border with Ukraine, and if he refused Ukraine membership into NATO (instead of signing an agreement to support Ukraine).  Why?

8. AFGHANISTAN:  Unilaterally (with no consultation with other world leaders), President Biden changed the U.S. departure date from Afghanistan to August 31, 2021. as well as not adhering to the Trump policy of making the departure “conditions-based.”  He also made the departure site the Kabul airport and asked the Taliban to oversee the departure of all civilians.  Consequently, 13 American soldiers were killed, over 100 Americans and tens of thousands of Afghans that helped us were left stranded in Afghanistan, many of whom were eventually assassinated.  Moreover, $85 billion in U.S. military equipment was abandoned in Afghanistan.  Ultimately, this fiasco led to Russia and China to be emboldened and to become more aggressive with Ukraine and Taiwan.  Was this simply incompetence?

9. Israel-Hamas-Iran:  President Biden and his Administration is getting the U.S. closer and closer to war with Iran though this, of course, is not his intention. His and Obama’s  attempts to bribe/coerce Iran into behave peacefully has not worked.  President Trump’s policies toward Iran did work: enforcing strong sanctions, keeping oil prices very low by producing as much oil as the U.S. was capable of, etc.

Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023 attack is exactly what’s needed…don’t play with terrorists, destroy them or defang them. However, the U.S. might prevent Israel from finishing the job of destroying Hamas.

As long as Joe Biden is president, the U.S. is extreme danger of being attacked from within or from without.

CLOSING 

President Biden is on course to become our very worst president, by far.  The nine areas I looked at above are simply a small part of his actions that are destroying the U.S.  It’s understandable given his reliance on the far-left in the Democrat Party for guidance.  He will probably remain President for another year, so it’s anyone’s guess how bad the U.S. will be by then.  I blame Mainstream Media for this debacle because none of this would have been possible had it done its job covering the news rather than covering up any news that made the Biden presidential campaign and then its Administration look bad.

DID GOVERNMENTS PROLONG THE COVID PANDEMIC?

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Ending the Covid-19 Pandemic was not only important for everyone’s health, but also for every nation’s economy to normalize.  From the beginning of the pandemic most governments around the world made poor decisions that resulted in the pandemic lasting many years.  They did this by misusing the authority governments are granted during emergencies. Most, but not all, had good intentions.  Because the Pandemic was caused by a novel (new) virus, and authorities and scientists therefore didn’t know how to properly handle it, the early miss-steps by governments were completely understandable.  However,  many later studies provided in-depth information that suggested the best policies to pursue to deal with the virus.  Since I’m an American who has followed U.S politics since 1960, I’ll restrict my analysis to America.

Americans were told that “lockdowns” of businesses were necessary to slow the spread of Covid.  Many States and Cities did this which resulted in hundreds of thousands of small businesses and restaurants going out of business and millions of Americans losing their jobs.  Most public schools were also locked down resulting in many millions of school children missing over a year of in-person learning.  Americans were forced to endure other hardships including even low-risk children and young adults wearing masks and proven therapeutics which were scandalized and denigrated.  I contend that most of these actions were politically-motivated, did little or nothing to combat the Pandemic, and even made the situation worse than it would have otherwise been.

Some of these actions have been uncovered and are widely acknowledged, like New York governor Cuomo’s directive that had elderly  nursery-home residents hospitalized for Covid  returned to their nursery homes (which led to widespread Covid deaths in nursery homes). Many bad actions by governments have not yet been uncovered but are suspected with much justification.  For example, each month over 200,000 migrants illegally cross our southern border, almost none being tested for Covid-19 or vaccinated. To me this indicates how the Biden Administration really felt about controlling the virus.  I believe, as do many Americans, that it wanted to prolong  Covid-fear until the 2024 Presidential election so that there would be  justification again for unsolicited ballots being blanket-mailed, allowing similar unprecedented election fraud that occurred in the 2020 Presidential election.

What should governments have done to overcome the virus and get back to normal?  With many Covid studies now completed, as well as the results in from countries around the world, it has become much clearer what path should have been taken and what path should be followed now. One of the relevant facts are from an Israeli study that shows that the natural immunity one gets from having had the virus is 27 times more effective than vaccine immunity.  In addition, natural immunity stops a person from being infectious to others, which the vaccine does not.  Finally, while vaccine immunity begins to wane after 3-6 months, natural immunity lasts much longer.  Other relevant facts come from countries, such as Sweden, and States such as South Dakota and Florida, that did not lock down.

Today, countries and States that rode out the virus without imposing lockdowns are doing much better than States like New York and California, with their non-mandated-state economies are booming.  Very high doses of Vitamin D strengthened my immunity to the extent that my Covid lasted  only 2 days.  For those who got sicker, therapeutics like Regeneron and Ivermectin were very effective in curing Covid, and even more therapeutics are now being widely used.  With the Pandemic over, Covid should be treated like one more illness that can make you ill and even kill you. Vaccinations should be encouraged but not mandated.  Governments, hopefully will follow the science next time.

The author of this post, Mike Russo, is not a physician but does have a Masters degree in Government Administration from the University of Pennsylvania, including  a course in research methods.  Moreover, he has taken Masters-level courses in program analysis and evaluation, and law from George Washington University.

 

WHY IS INFLATION SO HIGH (& WHAT CAN BE DONE TO REVERSE IT)?

Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), was 8.2% in October 2022 and decreased to 4.0% by May 2023.  The working and middle classes are being seriously hurt and the government doesn’t appear to care.  It blames everyone but itself, though it is responsible for most of it.  How, exactly, did the government accomplish this?  And if the government is totally responsible, shouldn’t the government be able to fix it?

Government deficit spending is the main culprit. It began its huge increases in earnest with “The American Rescue Plan of 2021” which cost $1.9 trillion, then $1.2 trillion for the “Infrastructure Plan,” $1.8 trillion add-on to the FY  ’23 budget, and finally a $6.8 trillion proposed FY ’24 budget (fortunately reduced by 2 trillion thanks to the U.S. House of Representatives).  Not the oil companies, not Covid, not Russia, but President Biden’s Administration, as well as almost all Democrats in the House and Senate, along with a few RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) who supported and voted for spending trillions that the U.S. does not have, so it borrowed it, bringing the National Debt to over $30 Trillion.    The Federal Reserve, which controls the U.S. money supply, is also to blame because it should have begun raising Federal interest rates long ago to slow down rising inflation.

Another culprit is the huge increase in the price of oil which has enriched and enabled Russia and impoverished many Americans.  Here again, the more-than-doubling the price of a barrel of oil is totally due to the Biden Administration because of its war on fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal).  Perhaps in 25 years from now a mostly fossil-free U.S. might be feasible, but currently the world does not have dependable and affordable technology to achieve this goal.

So what can be done now to significantly reduce inflation?  A few things, but it will take awhile to see results.  In the meantime, people need to economize in every area of their lives to get them through this period of high inflation.  To begin, the government must not pass any more huge spending bills since most of the money would be borrowed, which, of course, would only increase inflation.  Also, the Federal Reserve needs to be cautious in raising interest rates any further because it could cause a recession, but it might be necessary and is the price for reckless spending and the war on fossil fuels.  Next, voters must vote out of office Democrat Representatives and Senators to serve as a foil to President Biden’s out-of-control spending.

All of these things should stabilize inflation.  To actually reduce it to under 2%,  voters must vote in Donald Trump in 2024 with his pledge to the Nation and its people that he will bring inflation down to under 2%.  President Trump is the only politician that I believe can do it because he has already done it in his first term and demonstrated that he is tough enough to stand up to the crazies on the Left.