Biden's Naked
In "The Emperor's New Clothes," the emperor is gulled by a conman who convinces him to purchase "invisible clothes." Determined that he is right — and determined not to admit his mistake — the emperor parades around in his finely woven suit of clothes, totally naked and without comment from the crowd until a young boy cries out, "He's not wearing any clothes."
Biden's troops have been out claiming that the recession we're in, defined as two consecutive quarters or GDP decline, is not really a recession. The definition of a recession, they say, is more complex, and so, "technically," we're not in one. It doesn't take a truthful young boy to point out that this is ridiculous. On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported a decline of 0.9% in the second quarter following a decline of 1.6% in the first quarter. That's two consecutive quarters of GDP decline, so we're in a recession.
Why does Biden choose to parade around naked in spite of the economic data? Not just because he doesn't want to take responsibility for his mistakes, which caused the recession, but because he wants to continue with them. Admitting the truth would mean he has to examine his policies and begin correcting them. But Biden has never reversed a single one of his failed economic policy decisions.
Even Senate Democrats have begun to doubt the president. Led by Senate majority leader Charles Schumer, they are on the verge of passing a near-trillion-dollar package that would require some new oil and gas lease sales on federal lands over the next decade. Increased drilling would help lift America out of the current recession by gradually helping to lower energy costs and the costs of all goods and services dependent on oil and gas. Drilling will also provide high-paying jobs in the oil and gas industry and in businesses that support it.
If the "Inflation Reduction" bill passes, will Biden sign it? Biden has repeatedly pledged to end oil and gas drilling. Now he has the opportunity to continue doing so by vetoing the bill, but at great political cost to himself and to his party.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 presents Biden with a major conundrum. As late as last week in his televised response to the second-quarter GDP numbers, Biden stated that the economy is growing rapidly and that inflation is "temporary." If things are that good, why spend another $430 billion to reduce inflation? Maybe because Biden knows that inflation is not temporary or part of a "transition," as he sometimes puts it.
But then, why spend months insisting that the U.S. economy is growing and that inflation is just temporary when every American knows that they are not?
Because Biden seems to have spent his entire political career believing in what Hitler called the Big Lie. If you repeat a lie often enough, and loudly enough, others will be led to believe it, or at least be cowed into not opposing it.
Biden has instructed his supporters in politics and the media to join him in the Big Lie. Liberal groups like americanprogress.org continue to insist that "real GDP is just one of many economic indicators used to assess the state of the U.S. economy."
So how much worse does it have to be? According to Bloomberg news, the present recession will be "long, moderate and painful." According to Forbes, recessions like this one can lead to "job losses" and "financial difficulties" for ordinary Americans. And the average post-WWII recession lasts 11 months. If this one is longer, as Bloomberg predicts, it will last into 2023 and cause a great deal of pain.
But still Biden pretends everything is just fine. When was the last time he visited a grocery store? Probably back in 1970, when he was first elected to political office, where he has remained ever since. Gas and grocery prices have doubled, in some cases, over the last 12 months, with the Consumer Price Index now at a 40-year high.
Real wages are not keeping up, so how do workers, especially hourly workers, survive these increases? And how do those who are losing their jobs in this recession survive?
Again, Biden seems blind to the naked truth, which is that he has caused the recession and higher prices.
Those who do not admit their mistakes will never correct them. That is one reason Bloomberg is probably correct in saying the current recession will be longer than usual.
Since nearly every forecaster missed in the second quarter — with higher estimates than actually came in — it's impossible to rely on their GDP estimates for the third quarter and beyond. The Philadelphia Fed's Survey of Economic Forecasters, for example, predicted in May that real GDP growth would be 2.3% in the second quarter of 2022 and 2.5% in the third quarter. The "professional" forecasters seem to know less than the average American, who is angry at the total blindness of the Biden administration.
Biden is walking around naked, apparently without any idea that the U.S. has entered a recession and without a plan to end it. That plan should be, quite simply, to stop spending more money — such as the $280-billion CHIPS bill and the Inflation Reduction Act — and to actually begin cutting government spending overall.
America does not need a doddering old fool as president, especially one who can't see what is obvious to every working or retired American. The U.S. has entered a recession at precisely the point of highest inflation. Many of those who lose their jobs in this recession will be living on the streets before it's over, and Biden will still be going on national TV, naked to the truth, proclaiming that things have never been better. Better for him, and for the ever-resourceful Hunter, maybe. But not for ordinary working Americans.
Jeffrey Folks is the author of many books and articles on American culture including Heartland of the Imagination (2011).
Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
Joe Rogan: People should be angry about this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnSkOeVgIg4
Similar to the Schumer-Manchin bill, Biden’s plan would have provided a $625 billion tax cut for the wealthiest Americans living in blue states — paid for by working and middle class Americans.
In the face of the daily cuts in their standard of living resulting from the highest inflation in more than four decades, workers are compelled to undertake a struggle for necessary wage increases. But as they are driven into this fight, it is necessary for workers to understand what is at stake in order to better conduct the battle at hand.
VIDEO
Ralph Nader: Biden's First Year Proves He Is Still a "Corporate Socialist" Beholden to Big Business
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jTIUtjkDss&t=28s
Hauser also didn’t like the prevalence of Big Law talent on the Department of Justice team, which signaled to him that the Biden administration could go soft on corporate malefactors. Alexander Nazaryan
THIS POS LAWYER HAS NEVER OPENED HER FAT MOUTH THAT LIES DID NOT POUR OUT!
Democrats in Washington D.C., such as Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, have made noises about corporate “manipulation,” denouncing the handing over of billions of dollars to investors through share buyback programs instead of investing those funds in expansion or the hiring of more workers. Warren, who has repeatedly called herself a “capitalist to my bones,” has been working with the Biden administration on toothless legislation to tax share buybacks, which are expected to reach a record $1 trillion in 2022.
Oil giants reap record profits from war, pandemic and skyrocketing prices
As working class families the world over struggle to afford basic necessities amid historic inflation, driven by the pandemic and the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, the world’s largest multinational oil corporations are announcing record profits.
Poll: Most Voters Think Democrats Ran Economy ‘Straight Into the Ground’
A majority of likely voters believe Democrats are responsible for plunging the United States into a recession, a Rasmussen Reports poll released on Wednesday found.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in late July that “Democrats inherited an economy that was primed for an historic comeback, and promptly ran it straight into the ground.” Out of 1,000 likely voters surveyed between July 28-31, 59 percent say they agree with McConnell’s statement and 35 percent disagree. The margin of sampling error is ± 3 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.
“As might be expected, 85 percent of Republicans at least somewhat agree that Democrats “ran [the economy] straight into the ground,” as do a majority (57 percent) of unaffiliated voters. However, even 38% of Democratic voters agree with the quote from McConnell, including 23% who Strongly Agree,” according to the poll report.
Most likely voters (62 percent) think the United States economy is in a recession, even as the White House and its Big Tech allies attempt to redefine the term. Less than a quarter (23 percent) believe the United States economy is not in a recession, and 15 percent are unsure.
President Joe Biden’s recession denial has done little to quell concern in his own party, with nearly half (47 percent) of Democrats also saying they believe the economy is in a recession. However, Biden’s strongest supporters are most likely to think there is no recession (58 percent). Unsurprisingly, Republicans (83 percent) and voters who “strongly disapprove of Biden’s performance” (89 percent) are more likely to believe there is a recession. Fifty-seven percent of unaffiliated voters agree.
An overwhelming majority (91 percent) think the economy and inflation will be important in the 2022 congressional elections, a result mirrored in various other surveys. Among those who say the economy will be crucial in the upcoming elections, 61 percent “strongly agree” with McConnell’s condemnation of Democrats.
Higher earners (annual income of over $200,000) agree that the economy will take center stage in the upcoming elections, even though they “often side with Democrats on cultural issues…,” Rasmussen Reports noted. Upper-income voters are also most likely to “strongly agree” with McConnell that Democrats “ran [the economy] straight into the ground.”
Democrats Latest Plan: Target Middle Class Americans with IRS Audits, Keep Billionaire Loopholes Open
A bill backed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) would unleash the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on middle class Americans while keeping tax loopholes open for billionaires and their multinational corporations.
The plan, which Schumer and Manchin have agreed to, would massively bulk up IRS audits and criminal investigations to the sum of tens of billions of dollars — nearly all of which will be dedicated to going after middle class Americans squeezed by inflation.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board details the scheme:
The bill earmarks $45.6 billion for “enforcement,” including “litigation,” “criminal investigations,” “investigative technology,” “digital asset monitoring” and a new fleet of tax-collector cars. The result will be far more audits, civil suits and criminal referrals. [Emphasis added]
The main targets will by necessity be the middle- and upper-middle class because that’s where the money is. The Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s official tax scorekeeper, says that from 78% to 90% of the money raised from under-reported income would likely come from those making less than $200,000 a year. Only 4% to 9% would come from those making more than $500,000. [Emphasis added]
The IRS knows the super-wealthy employ lawyers and accountants who make litigation time-consuming and risky. It also knows that Democrats would howl if the agency pursues fraud in the earned-income tax credit program, despite what the IRS has estimated are $18 billion in improper payments each year. [Emphasis added]
At the same time, tax provisions hugely benefitting billionaires and their multinational corporations would go untouched.
The Schumer-Manchin plan includes billions in green energy tax credits that would be swooped up by billionaires to cut their corporations’ annual tax burdens. Jeff Bezos’s Amazon notoriously employs this strategy to pay close to zero in corporate income taxes.
Breitbart News’s John Carney writes:
Amazon’s tax bills were part of the inspiration for a minimum tax. The company faced no federal corporate income tax liability in 2017 and 2018. In the years since, it has had an effective tax rate that is just a fraction of the 21 percent rate put in place by the Trump administration’s tax reforms. According to the calculations of Matthew Gardner of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, over the past four years Amazon’s effective aggregate tax rate was just 5.1 percent. [Emphasis added]
…
While the alternate minimum tax would prevent companies from using deductions for capital investments or stock-based compensation, it continues to allow them to use tax credits, Daniel Bunn of the Tax Foundation told us. In fact, the bill includes hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new tax credits aimed at fostering green technology adoption. And Amazon plays in beast mode when it comes to using tax credits to reduce its tax bill. [Emphasis added]
Jeff Bezo’s retail giant said in its annual report that tax credits reduced the taxes it would have otherwise owed by $1.1 billion. The company has said that most of those tax credits are federal research and development credits, although it does not give much detail in its annual reports. The Manchin-Schumer tax bill would not touch this. Amazon will lose the benefit of the write-off for stock-based compensation, but the company will most likely at least partially offset that by using the green tech tax credits. The end result could be no change in Amazon’s tax rate. [Emphasis added]
President Joe Biden and House Democrats tried to pass a similar tax plan last year as part of the administration’s “Build Back Better” agenda that has failed to catch on in Congress.
That plan would have targeted an additional nearly 600,000 working and middle class Americans earning less than $75,000 a year with IRS audits. Of those new IRS audits, more than 313,000 would have targeted the poorest of Americans who earn $25,000 or less a year.
Similar to the Schumer-Manchin bill, Biden’s plan would have provided a $625 billion tax cut for the wealthiest Americans living in blue states — paid for by working and middle class Americans.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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