Pity poor Joe? No.
President Biden fell three times while climbing the steps to Air Force One. What’s most noteworthy about this is that he had a firm grip on the handrail throughout. This should have kept him largely upright despite catching toes on the steps or misjudging their height or being knocked over by a breeze. There’s something really wrong where his internal gyroscope resides.
And not just physically. His interpersonal relationships seem to be suffering. Joe has a huge team of folks he relies on to prop him up as he stumbles, bumbles, and mumbles through the public aspects of his presidency. Surprisingly, several have been purged now due to the already known and vetted factor of prior self-impairment through drug use. Too bad VP Harris wasn’t one of them. This President is already reaching new heights of promise-breaking and hypocrisy.
We’ve just witnessed a notably cringe-worthy week from Biden and his administration – signing the $1.9 trillion boondoggle bill, then being sued by the State of Ohio; talking smack about Russian President Putin, who then pulled his ambassador back home; being baited by Putin and made to look like a fool when he refused to have a conversation with him; declaring in the face of all opposing evidence that there is no crisis at our southern border; and being threatened by North Korea on Monday only by Thursday to announce that we would be ready to fight them that evening. I hesitate to call it a catastrophe, as most likely the worst is not yet upon us.
Coming off the previous week, when he forgot who the Secretary of Defense was and where he worked, this past week Biden forgot who is the President of these United States, naming Kamala Harris in that position.
For months now, I’ve been listening to conservative commentators decrying elder abuse and asking, “Why are they doing this to poor old Joe?” Forcing him to run when he’s clearly unable, with Dr. Biden right next to him acting as though all is well, or at least normal. And then to serve in a position he simply hasn’t the capacity to comprehend, with both Jill and Kamala hovering every moment. It takes Biden a week to carry out a schedule that President Trump could have completed in one day and still been home for supper.
Although a plagiarist, mean-spirited, and not a great student, candidate Joe Biden was not ignorant. He would have been smart enough to perceive when his mental acuity began to fade and his memory capacity diminished. We who are aging are all aware that certain dementias can be slowed significantly in their progress if attacked soon enough. A simple web search reveals that 44% of Americans between the ages of 75 and 84 have some form of dementia. Biden’s family doctor, or even the White House physician, would have advised that changes in routine and environment, as well as increased stress, can make dementia symptoms worse.
Why did he do it? Well, I have a theory: Promises made but not yet kept.
VP Joe was in and out of China. As we know, he took Hunter with him and they came back $1.5 billion richer. The quid pro quo? He made promises but didn’t have enough time left to keep them all. China trusted Joe, but 2016 was not Joe’s turn, it was Hers. China trusted Hillary. Hillary let them down by not winning, and Trump’s victory slowed the implementation of China’s program for unquestioned regional dominance.
So, it was up to Joe -- to run, to win, to serve, and to keep promises made to the Middle Kingdom that would probably terrify us if we knew. And run he did, and win, for all intents and purposes, however fraught with deceit, he did. Now he must serve.
What would those promises have been? O’Biden was famous for standing America down. Together their administration stood us down and funded Iranian expansionism and proxy terrorism. Stood us down in confronting nuclear threats and ISIS. Stood us down while Russia resurrected its imperialist designs starting with Crimea and Ukraine.
China’s increasing military aggressiveness these past couple of years was at war with its need to concede to Trump to keep commerce flowing. Then the Wu flu threw a monkey wrench into their plans. Lately, they’ve been all over the map behaving badly.
What “standing down” would Joe have promised the Chinese? Tibet, Kashmir (the gateway to vast under-utilized Afghan agricultural land), Hong Kong, Taiwan, the South China Sea lanes, strengthening both Iran and Venezuela who look to destabilize the United States in any way possible, continued cyber-attacks, the Uighurs, a still partially slave-based economy? What other horrors was Biden prepared to look away from in exchange for Hunter’s position, power, and wealth, as well as Joe’s own?
It’s proper to feel sympathy for those among us who suffer from dementia and their families. Some are my friends. But I don’t feel sorry for Joe Biden. He chose this path.
Anony Mee is a retired public servant.
Latest Stimulus about Politics, not the Economy
Since the pandemic began, the federal government has passed three stimulus packages totaling $5.6 trillion (which was entirely borrowed): including $900 billion in December 2020 and $1.9 trillion in March 2021 (the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). What makes the pandemic spending harmful is the continued growth in debt by: 1) the consistent inability of the federal government to limit itself to only the revenue it has; and 2) the size of U.S. overall debt in comparison to the size of the economy (the U.S. GDP -- $21.43 trillion in 2019).
The budget for the U.S. in 2019 was $4.4 trillion. But 20% or $0.9 trillion was borrowed. Since 1968, our federal leaders have produced a balanced budget only four times in 52 years while the federal debt has grown from $271 billion in 1957 and has never been reduced. Consider the last budget stalemate in 2018-2019. The two sides couldn’t come to a consensus so they eventually “compromised” resulting in an 8% increase in spending with built-in borrowing. States (except for Vermont) are not allowed to budget this way. They are required to adopt balanced budgets with no borrowing. If an unanticipated deficit develops, then borrowing becomes an option. Somehow both Red and Blue States manage it every year.
The debt that we all owe as citizens was $17.4 trillion in pre-pandemic 2020 which represented 81% of U.S. GDP. Adding $5.6 trillion makes it $23.0 trillion and a whopping 107% of GDP. Since GDP includes what the government spends, this increase in spending has resulted in an all-time high of 44% of GDP that is based on “priorities” of D.C. politicians. But high debt levels slow economic growth. Each percentage point of debt above 77% costs 0.017% in annual growth - equating to about a 1/2 of a point of growth. This may not seem like a lot growth has only ranged between 1.6% and 2.9% over the last ten years.
It would take the average American more than 2.5 years using up all their annual income to pay off their debt portion. Each American “owns” more than $82,000 of the debt but per capita income is only $32,000. This is the largest external public debt in the world. High debt levels are sometimes described as “driving with the emergency brake on.” In 2019, interest on the debt totaled $375 billion or 8.5% of the budget which crowds out other spending.
Perhaps the most troubling part about the most recent stimulus packages is that they were arguably not needed and may actually hurt the economy. In early 2020, a stimulus in the face of Coronavirus uncertainty seemed reasonable. But with multiple vaccines being distributed, overall positivity increasing and new market highs, the Fed in December 2020 predicted an economic growth rate for 2021 of 4.2% up from 4.0% in September. The forecast even before the vaccine came out was higher than the last ten years! The Fed also predicted an unemployment rate of 5.0% for 2021 (“full employment” is considered 4.1% to 4.7%) which is lower than most of the past 40 years (the average unemployment rate since 1983 is over 6% and has only dipped below 4% in 24 months -- 19 of which occurred during the Trump years). We have strong growth and above average employment -- but still we need huge stimulus packages?
When growth is robust and the government pours massive amounts of money into the economy, especially at a time of stock market highs and with pent-up demand due to the fading pandemic, high demand will drive prices upward. But inflation erodes the value of money. For those people that are nearing/are already in retirement that have their money in low-risk/low-interest investments, the value of their money goes down. Older people are especially likely to use certificates of deposits (CDs) as investments. They remember the 18% interest rates 
of the early 1980s. Back then CDs were a simplistic hedge against inflation, but since interest rates have been kept artificially near zero since 2008, CDs only earn about 1/2%. When inflation rises above investment interest the investment loses value. This can have a serious impact on retirees and the economy since retirees will have less money to spend. And they do spend. People 50 years and older make up about 39% of the economy.
The fear of inflation is growing. It is now the #1 risk among portfolio managers polled by Bank of America. The fear is that the already surging economy will heat up too fast, spurring inflation. A major cause for this is the unprecedented amount of money that is being poured into the economy. It is well known that a major tool the Fed uses to spur the economy is to lower interest rates; and to slow the economy the Fed can increase interest rates. These efforts affect the amount of money available in the broader economy -- but the federal government is releasing a massive influx of $2.8 trillion into the economy when it is already doing well. This will likely heat things to a point where the Fed will have to raise interest rates that they otherwise would not have had to.
And the spending is mostly profligate and barely thought through. For example, Sec. 1003 of the ARPA appropriates $47.5 million “for necessary administrative expenses associated with carrying out” pandemic administration without any guidance as to how it should be spent. That’s the norm. The bill also contains $350 million for state and local governments. When asked by reporters if states could use the funds to offset tax revenue declines, “a senior Biden administration official did not clarify. The aid is intended to be flexible” the official said. In some states/municipalities, the feared 2020 crisis did not materialize with overall state revenues declining by less than 2% resulting in a windfall of 20% above normal revenues.
There are too many non-pandemic related items in the act to cover here, but the area that has gotten the most coverage has been the direct payment component of the package, in which individuals with incomes under $75,000 will receive $1,400 with a phaseout above that which costs $410 billion. Even if you are fine with someone making $75,000, not having any income loss and getting a check for $1,400 no questions asked, what about the other $1.5 trillion? Unlike the hastily written, empty impeachment articles of a mere 566 words, the ARPA is a solid 242 pages of a dizzying array of programs, projects and beneficiaries, and reads like a package of Democratic priorities/giveaways masquerading as pandemic relief, line after line of doling out money.
People who worked through 2020 with no reduction in pay talk amongst themselves about how they are going to spend their “stimmy” checks. A poll conducted by a securities firm found that 40% of the respondents plan to invest at least some part of their checks in stocks/bitcoin. Other interviewees will fund a Robinhood account, donate $800 to a Buddhist Center, help fund a side business, and fund college savings accounts.
The sad reality is that they, or someone else, will have to pay the bill in the future. The impact of this unrestrained borrowing and spending will eventually be realized in negative consequences for America, but as we have seen all too often, it will take a crisis to stop it.
Book Review: Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency
Why the Democratic Party can never be reformed
The Democratic Party ranks, alongside the Tories in England, as the oldest capitalist political party in the world. This decade, it will enter into its third century of existence, carrying behind it a record of great social crimes.
In its infancy, this was the party of Andrew Jackson and Indian Removal, in its childhood it fought a war for the expansion and then defense of slavery. Its young adulthood was the violent suppression of the working class in the aftermath of the Civil War and a “humanitarian” cover for American imperialism’s bloody appearance on the world stage. Entering maturity in the 20th century, the Democratic Party launched two world wars, dropped two nuclear bombs and waged neocolonial wars in Korea and Vietnam. In the 21st century, it replaced social reform with identity politics, bailed out the banks and destroyed large swaths of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.
In 2021, the Democratic Socialists of America still argue that socialism can only come from within this capitalist party. They say: elect good Democrats, place good people in the cogs of this party’s machinery, and all will be well. Apply enough pressure and after 200 years, the Democrats will finally see the divine light!
Anyone who still believes this myth should read Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen’s recent account of the 2020 election entitled Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency. Lucky shows how the ruling class, through the Democratic Party, brings to bear 200+ years of experience to accomplish its chief task: crushing left-wing opposition and ensuring that the interests of working people have no impact whatsoever on state foreign or domestic policy.
The book is based on interviews with staff for the major Democratic primary campaigns, so pop a handful of anti-nausea pills and take a peek behind the curtain. What makes Lucky remarkable is that its revealing character is entirely unintentional. Parnes and Allen are so complacent, unoriginal and so deeply embedded in the milieu of Democratic Party politics that they fail to realize that their attempted hagiography is actually a devastating exposure.
Parnes and Allen uncritically describe a party comprised of people who treat the coronavirus pandemic and the mass suffering it has unleashed with near total indifference. The authors quote Obama-Biden confidant Anita Dunn, explaining that she “told one associate what campaign officials believed but would never say in public about the disease’s effect on Biden’s fortunes. ‘COVID is the best thing that ever happened to him.’”
Similarly, the police killing of George Floyd is significant only in terms of its immediate impact on the campaigns: “Police killings and violent protests drove a clear wedge between young Black voters and the swing-set whites,” the authors remark. These are hyper-pragmatists, uninterested in and incapable of looking past the end of the news cycle. It is taken for granted that nobody has any political principles whatsoever, and that everyone will say anything to get elected.
The only constant is a visceral hostility to socialism or anything that resembles left-wing politics.
“This is not going to be the party of Bernie,” Bill Clinton declared in the primaries. The authors note with hands on pearls that the Democratic Party “saw the hard left as an obstacle to reclaiming power and a scary bunch who, if given enough authority, would take too much from the haves and give too much to the have-nots.” When Sanders appeared poised to win the largest states of Texas and California on Super Tuesday, the authors quote an unnamed “party heavyweight” as saying, “a panic set in.” (We will return to the South Carolina operation that crushed Sanders’ campaign momentarily).
The authors cite profound Democratic concern over polls showing a majority of Iowa primary voters supported socialist policies. This became the fixation of the party.
Contrary to the strategy of the DSA, the more pressure from below, the more resolute the party became in efforts to crush the threat of socialism. Herein lies a fundamental lesson of Democratic Party politics.
Parnes and Allen write that the Democratic Party was actively considering supporting Trump if Sanders won the nomination. Many party leaders, they write, “weren’t sure what they would do if it came down to Trump and Sanders in a general election. Founded or not, their fears of losing their party to socialism competed with their fears of Trump winning a second term.”
The ruling class had no fear of Sanders himself, or of fellow DSA members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who, the authors note “was interested in expanding her political turf beyond the boundaries of the hard left” anyway. Democratic leadership knew these are team players with marching orders they will not disobey. They are not oppositional figures, they are part of the political establishment, and they play a critical role in its defense.
In 2020, Sanders and the DSA members of Congress were not victims of some scheme to sideline them, they were active, knowing participants in a plan to suppress the real “scary bunch”—their own supporters—who mistakenly supported them believing they were genuine opponents of social inequality and war.
The authors gratefully note Sanders’ pliancy after the 2016 primary, when he campaigned avidly for Hillary Clinton. This time, Sanders caused even less trouble before the convention and practically disappeared from the post-Super Tuesday storyline like a soap opera actor in a contract dispute. He spent the second half of 2020 quietly risking his own life in the midst of the pandemic (he had suffered a heart attack in 2019) and traveling the country whipping his own reluctant supporters behind Biden, who later snubbed him from the cabinet. There is no reference to any concessions Sanders was able to gain from Biden after winning 10 million votes in the primaries.
Identity politics was the torpedo that sank Bernie Sanders’ campaign. Parnes and Allen comment that “Unlike Trump, who used race to define his political tribe, Biden had used it as a fulcrum.”
There is some truth behind this thoughtless comment—identity politics was a fulcrum used by Biden to pose as left while advancing ever more right-wing policies. Parnes and Allen write, “To get through the primary without being pulled too far to the left, [Biden] wanted to find ways to signal to progressives that he shared values with them.” His aides were concerned that by raising money from Wall Street, he would alienate left-wing voters. In order to “buckrake from big-time donors,” he had to “bring in more diverse staff at senior levels.”
One top Biden adviser told him: “Have a woman of color who is your traveling aide.” Parnes and Allen add, “He meant that it should be visually clear to voters that representation mattered.” In other words, trick voters by taking pictures near black people. This is the level at which these people think.
Race is a sort of professional currency used by the Democratic Party courtiers to promote their own careers and destroy their rivals. Everything is a racial issue in the dirty scrum to the top of the Democratic garbage pile.
Proponents of the use of Zoom were racist because “Black people don’t get on Zoom,” Biden adviser and former Bernie Sanders aide Simone Sanders declared. Those operatives who argued it was unsafe for the campaigns to knock on doors in the general election due to the pandemic were also racist: “An undercurrent of racial tension within the party jostled the dynamics of the door-knocking controversy,” Parnes and Allen write, because white people apparently do not like people knocking on their doors.
At one point, advisers apparently fought about the darkness of the skin color of various potential nominees for vice president. Parnes and Allen quote one adviser as saying, “The other thing that plays out is Stacey is a dark Black woman and Kamala is lighter skinned.”
The comical absurdity of Democratic Party identity politics was on display in Biden’s effort to solicit support from Al Sharpton to shore up his bona fides among black voters. “Reverend Al’s ring needed to be kissed,” Parnes and Allen explain, adding (strangely) that Biden wanted Sharpton to be his “half Sherpa and half flack jacket” among black voters.
Here is the description Parnes and Allen give of the man the Democratic Party presents as a representative of all black people:
Once a chubby, tracksuit-wearing acolyte of Jesse Jackson who was dismissed by much of white America as a loud-mouthed agitator, the slimmed-down sixty-four-year-old Sharpton now ate dry toast, sipped tea, and puffed cigars at Manhattan’s Grand Havana Room alongside onetime targets of his protests, like former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Tens of millions of struggling black workers can be forgiven if they don’t think smoking cigars with fascists is the promised land Dr. King spoke of in Memphis the day before he was assassinated. Sharpton and leading black Democrats like South Carolina’s James Clyburn do not represent “black people” any more than Trump represents “white people.” They are corrupt self-promoters and opponents of workers of all races. They used racial nationalism to force through the nomination of Biden, who championed anti-crime bills leading to the incarceration of hundreds of thousands of impoverished black youth.
Nowhere was this more clearly on display than in South Carolina.
By February 29, 2020, the date of that state’s primary, Bernie Sanders had won the Iowa caucus, the New Hampshire primary and the Nevada caucus. He was climbing nationally in the polls and primary voters overwhelmingly supported his proposals for universal health care and taxes on the wealthy.
The authors acknowledge that early that spring, the Democratic Party had mobilized the trade union bureaucracies in an effort to sink Sanders’ campaign on an anti-communist basis. The DSA also argues these pro-management organizations defend the interests of workers.
The operation to use the trade unions to crush Sanders was in full force in Nevada, where UNITE HERE told Sanders, “Medicare for All was a bridge too far.” Likewise, the “Culinary Workers Union advised its members that it opposed Medicare for All.” Threats from bureaucrats were aimed at intimidating workers voting in in-person caucuses.
Parnes and Allen explain that “the decision to caucus for Sanders meant bucking the same shop stewards who negotiated contracts with management and influenced promotions, pay, and benefits for workers. The union’s message was clear: anybody but Bernie. And, in a caucus, there was no secret ballot.”
Nevertheless, workers in Las Vegas and Reno repudiated the bureaucracies and Sanders won the state caucus by an overwhelming margin. He was poised to win the most populous states on Super Tuesday. This filled the Democratic Party with even greater fear.
Four days before the South Carolina vote, during a debate in Charleston co-hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus, Biden made a litany of racial appeals and concluded by pledging to appoint a black woman to the first open Supreme Court seat. The next morning, Congressman James Clyburn announced his endorsement of Biden in an open racial appeal: “We know Joe, but most importantly, he knows us.”
After Biden won the South Carolina primary, the Democratic machine swung into action, presenting the vote in this small Republican safe state as definitive proof that black voters want Biden and that the primary must therefore come to an end. Biden campaign headquarters had prepared a list of “Democratic elites who liked Biden but were supporting other candidates. These were the people who could be leaned on to lobby their own favorites to get out of the race at a crucial moment.”
Barack Obama “made a round of calls to Biden’s rivals after South Carolina,” Parnes and Allen write, as the state and party decided the primary was over.
Perhaps from the veranda of his newly-purchased $12 million mansion on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama placed calls to Amy Klobuchar, who “was smart enough to know he wasn’t calling to encourage her to fight for every last vote.” He called Pete Buttegieg and told him, “Pete, you will never have more clout than you do right now.”
Even the nonagenarian Jimmy Carter was called in to put the kibosh on Buttegieg’s campaign, inviting him to a homely Georgia tavern and ordering him to end his run. Klobuchar and Buttegieg promptly dropped out and endorsed Biden, while Elizabeth Warren remained in the race to siphon progressive votes from Sanders. As a result, Sanders was crushed on Super Tuesday.
Sanders accepted his pathetic fate without so much as a whimper. In a one-on-one debate with Biden later that spring, Parnes and Allen describe how the self-proclaimed socialist acted like a loyal wingman for the Delaware Senator from Citibank: “Sanders made his points but hardly threw haymakers at Biden. It was damn near impossible for a trailing candidate to make up ground without hitting the front-runner, but Sanders knew that no one in the party was in the mood for blood sport in the midst of a scary public health and economic crisis.”
The book provides other interesting tidbits. We learn of Biden’s Irish temper and the fact that he gets sleepy quite early in the night, such that aides attempted to avoid late starts to televised debates. We are told Jacobin’s David Sirota was paid a $150,000 salary on Sanders’ staff, where his responsibilities largely entailed boosting Sanders on Twitter—no wonder the DSA is comfortable within the Democratic Party! The ever-lurking Hillary Clinton also repeatedly floated entering the primary as a unity candidate, as did John Kerry. Parnes and Allen describe how Kerry decided he would not be reporting for duty this time around:
“Maybe I’m f*cking deluding myself here,” Kerry said, as he began to play out the practical considerations of making a late bid for the presidency. “I’d have to give up Bank of America,” where he sat on the board. “I’d have to give up my speaking.” He’d just finished making payments on his house, he said, and would have “enough to live on”—a couple million bucks in the bank—to “be in a position to see if I’m working” on the trail.
Profound statesmanlike meditations.
This is what the Democratic Party looks like on the inside. There is no division between “establishment” and “non-establishment” Democrats. The Democratic Party is the establishment, it is the state, it is the CIA and the military and the FBI. It is an institution through which the capitalist class maintains its rule, suppresses social opposition and plunders the world on behalf of the corporations. Genuine socialists have nothing but contempt for those who tell workers and young people that the path to socialism passes through this stinking cesspool of political reaction.
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