America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Monday, May 30, 2022
JOE BIDEN - I LOVE INFLATION AS MUCH AS I LOVE OPEN BORDERS FOR HORDES OF 'CHEAP' LABOR - THERE'S A REASON WHY WALL STREET LOVES A GOOD GAMER LAWYER IN THE WHITE HOUSE
“Joe Biden wants this crisis. He wants to reshape America in his image, he thinks that these are future voters for him,” he said. “He wants this crisis. They’re willing to take a political hit now to get more future Democrats across the border.”
How Biden Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love Inflation
Joe Biden as a senator in 1979 and as president in 2021 / edited from Wikimedia Commons and Getty ImagesJoseph Simonson • May 28, 2022 4:59 am
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Rampant inflation dooms the incumbent, vindicates right-wing economic theories, and sets back the post-war liberal welfare project a generation. Those are not the words of a Wall Street Journal editorial, but of Joe Biden.
They came during an interview in 1987, at the early stages of Biden's first presidential run. At the time, he lamented voters' disillusionment with government and large spending proposals associated with the New Deal and Great Society. The skyrocketing inflation that defined the presidencies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter, according to Biden, sparked a suspicion of government.
"Government was making the wrong decisions," Biden told the Atlantic. "As much as 5 or 6 percentage points on the inflation rate were due to oil. Another 5 percent was due to Vietnam. And so you have 10 or 11 percent on top of the inflation that had accumulated since 1932, as conservatives had predicted, and BAM—everything's gone."
If those conditions sound familiar, it's because they are. Inflation is the highest it's been in 40 years—driven in part by the war in Ukraine, rising oil prices, and an unprecedented amount of federal spending—and it risks completely sinking Biden's presidency just as they sank Carter's.
Yet the Biden of the 1970s and the Biden of 2022 might as well be two different people, with the latter challenging economic orthodoxy and alleging that new entitlements and stimulus in the form of Build Back Better will actually bring consumer prices down. As a young, reform-minded senator in the 1970s, Biden introduced bills to slash tens of millions of dollars from what believed were ineffective and useless federal agencies and insisted the only way out of America's stagflation nightmare was massive spending cuts. His 180-degree change reflects the leftward lurch of a Democratic Party and White House staffed with ideologues (many of whom never lived through the 1970s) able to convince a nearly 80-year-old president that everything he once understood about how the economy worked was completely wrong.
"The taxpayers of this country have been charged $52 million to support 1,500 advisory committees, despite the fact that 397 of these committees have never even met and another 891 have never produced a single report," Biden said in 1975.
Those positions earned praise from such then-conservative-leaning publications as U.S. News & World Report, which wrote that lawmakers such as Biden "are increasingly disillusioned with Great Society-type programs."
Biden agreed with that assessment: "We newer liberal Democrats are rejecting the theory of our more senior colleagues, which was that if you spend enough money you can solve any problem," Biden said in 1972.
Democrats, according to Biden in 1974, had lost focus on who their main constituency should be: the middle class. The persistent inflation that defined that decade convinced the average working man who makes "$12,000 a year" (around $70,000 today) that "he's been had." Poor Americans, Biden said, had received an inordinate amount of attention from lawmakers.
When angry truckers appeared in 1973 in Washington, D.C., as part of their nationwide effort to shut down transit in protest of rising gas prices, Biden was one of the few lawmakers who met with them. His appearance at the protest set him apart from more liberal members of the Democratic Party—then-senator George McGovern (S.D.), a former presidential candidate and supposed ally of labor, was nowhere to be found—and helped Biden paint an image of himself as a pragmatist.
A year and a half into his first presidential term, Biden has been dogged by criticism that he's not doing enough to lower gas prices (as well as by an angry trucking industry with grievances that his White House refuses to acknowledge). Critics point to shutting down pipelines and failing to renew oil licenses on federal lands.
After reviewing then-president Gerald Ford's budget, Biden expressly attacked the White House for not doing enough to address high gas prices and for its tax hikes on corporations, arguing there were better ways to cool demand. During a Senate hearing in 1974, Biden chastised liberals for forgetting "the vast resources of the ocean and their importance to us … [which] range from lobsters to oil."
Although Biden called for some tax hikes on the margins, his plan to curb inflation was defined mostly by spending cuts. During his Senate reelection campaign in 1978, Biden took out a full-page advertisement in the News Journal, one of the largest newspapers in his home state of Delaware, to promote his "sunset bill" that would force "a thorough and complete review of federal spending programs every four years … [that] would automatically end a program that wasn't proved useful or effective."
"The spiraling costs of inflation are ripping into the fabric of American society," the ad reads. "We must bring these problems under control and the first place to start is with the cost of government."
Biden's earliest days in the Senate were defined by bills to reduce federal spending. One of the first bills he introduced was to cap pay raises for all federal employees and block automatic cost-of-living adjustments.
By 1978, Biden said he earned the moniker one of the country's "stingiest senators." His bills targeted the budgets of the Department of Labor and what was then called the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. He criticized the welfare system as "wasteful" and said it largely functioned as a way "to build political patronage."
"I plan to keep chopping away—cutting wherever I can—so that eventually, we're going to bring the monstrous federal budget under control," Biden said during his first term in the Senate. "It'll take time, but I know we can do it. We must."
By 1979, the federal budget deficit was roughly $40.7 billion. In 2022, the federal budget deficit neared $1.4 trillion—an increase of $500 billion since 2019. In 1978, the inflation rate sat at 7.59 percent. Today, it sits at 8.5 percent.
A Gallup poll taken in April 1978—a year and a half into Carter's term—found that just 39 percent of voters approved of the then-president's job performance, with the firm concluding that the economy was responsible for Carter's 9-point drop in one month. In April 2022, Gallup found that 41 percent of voters approved of Biden's job as president, with a majority concerned about the economy.
One month before the 1978 midterms, Carter gave a televised address to the country on the state of the economy. In a rhetorical maneuver that Biden has also employed, Carter championed the improving labor market and pointed to rising inflation rates across the world.
"We know that government is not the only cause of inflation," Carter said. "But it is one of the causes, and government does set an example. Therefore, it must take the lead in fiscal restraint."
Those speeches, like many Carter gave during his only term in the White House, did little to reassure the public. Democrats would end up losing 3 seats in the Senate and 15 in the House.
Although Democrats did not lose control of either chamber of Congress, several Republicans who later led a conservative policy revolution, including Newt Gingrich, gained power. Carter, who afterwards attempted a pivot to the center, in 1980 faced a primary challenge from the left and then lost in the general election to Ronald Reagan.
Confronted with a similarly plummeting approval rating and a grim midterm cycle, party insiders are already speculating on who might replace Biden on the top of the ticket in 2024. An adviser to socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), Biden's former left-wing rival, said recently Sanders has not ruled out another presidential run.
In a National Journal interview conducted nearly a decade after the 1978 midterms, Biden reflected on the political problems that plagued Democrats.
"There is a consistent pattern that crept into the Democratic Party in the late 1960s and through the 1970s: We forgot who our people were," Biden said. "The moral business of this country is not the way liberals think of it."
BIDENOMICS: SERVE THE RICH, CRONIES AND CRIMINALS ON WALL STREET AND THEN GIVE AMERICAN JOBS TO ILLEGALS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.
From 2001 to 2018, U.S. free trade with China eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the
20 U.S. Health Care Statistics That Will Absolutely Astonish You
Most recently and dramatically, Biden lied about his knowledge of his son's shady dealings, lied about his own involvement in corruption and ribery, and lied about his current presidential agenda and what he wants to implement in regards to energy, fracking, court-packing, health care, education, and COVID among other issues.
MARK CHRISTIAN
The U.S. health care industry has become a massive money-making scam, and in today's video, we are going to show the statistics that prove it. The United States spends more on health care per person than any other country in the entire world, and even though we are the most medicated population on the planet, we are also one of the sickest. Amongst developed countries, we have the worst life expectancy and the highest infant mortality despite having to pay the highest prices for health care services by far. While millions of Americans are drowning in medical debt, big pharmaceutical corporations are recording billions of dollars of profits every year, but the quality of the health care that the U.S. population receives in return is rather quite poor.
Right now, health care bills cause more bankruptcies than anything else does. Millions of people are afraid to go to the hospital because they know that even a short visit could result in a gigantic financial burden that could devastate them for decades. Meanwhile, rates of cancer, heart disease and diabetes continue to rise all over the nation. Considering the gigantic piles of money we shell out for health care, we should have the greatest system in the entire world. But we definitely don't, and this is a major indication that something has gone horribly wrong.
According to Brookings data, spending on health care in the United States has grown steadily over the past two decades, rising from $2,900 per person in 1980 to $11,200 per person in 2020, marking a staggering 290% increase.
With each passing year, health bureaucrats and greedy corporations get increasingly richer with the demise of the U.S. health care system while the rest of us go broke trying to pay for our health care. Over the past three decades, Americans had to face an absurd rise in medical bills and deal with insane levels of medical debt.
According to estimates released by the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2021 alone, 70% of Americans with medical bills had to lower their spending on food to avoid bankruptcy, while 59% had to dig into their savings, using most or all of it to cover an unexpected health expense, 41% were forced to take a second job to be able to pay their debt, and 37% had to borrow money.
Rather than doing something to address the abuses of the health insurance and pharmaceutical corporations, over the past two decades, U.S. politicians have actually come up with policies that gave these companies even more power. Under the current policies, our health care costs will go up even faster, and the quality of health care services will continue to go down.
Right now, the health care system in the United States is so broken that it probably cannot be repaired. The entire structure needs to be dismantled and completely reinvented if we want to see actual improvement. But considering that the wealthy bureaucrats are pretty confortable with their billion dollar profits, most of us won't likely see such a change happening in the U.S. health care system in our lifetime.
For more info, find us on: https://www.epiceconomist.com/
Biden Continues Exempting China-Made Medical Supplies from U.S. Tariffs
President Joe Biden’s administration will continue exempting a number of China-made medical products from United States tariffs even as the Chinese coronavirus crisis exposed the nation’s over-reliance on foreign countries for vital supplies.
Late last week, the Biden administration announced that certain medical products made in China would continue to be exempted from U.S. tariffs. The tariff exclusion would have ended at the end of May but now they will be in place until at least the end of November.
The announcement means the Biden administration will allow China-made surgical gloves, face masks, hospital gowns, and medical devices to be sold in the U.S. market, free of charge.
Decades-long U.S. free trade with China, which continues gutting America’s working and middle class communities, has ensured the American economy relies on China and many other foreign countries for key supplies in medicine, tech, minerals, and other industries.
For instance, in 2020, the U.S. imported nearly $300 million worth of hospital and sanitary supplies made of paper — about 51 percent of which was made in China. Likewise, in 2020, the U.S. imported $470 million worth of rubber surgical gloves. More than 70 percent of those gloves arrived from Thailand and Malaysia while over 15 percent were imported from China.
Also in 2020, the U.S. imported over $7 million worth of clothing and accessories made of paper, including paper face masks that were used in the midst of the pandemic and continue to be used by medical professionals in hospital settings. Nearly 60 percent of those imports were made in China.
As Breitbart News reported, in the midst of the pandemic, small-t0-medium American manufacturers said they were not only not being awarded federal contracts to produce these vital medical supplies but that they were not even being contacted.
Though Biden has touted his infrastructure bill as a boost to American manufacturing, the legislation includes huge carve-outs where federal agencies can bypass “Buy American” rules for any infrastructure project.
From 2001 to 2018, U.S. free trade with China eliminated 3.7 million American jobs from the economy — 2.8 million of which were lost in American manufacturing. During that same period, at least 50,000 American manufacturing plants closed down.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
Up, Up, and Away: U.S. Gas Prices Hit Another Record-High
U.S. gas prices bounced to a fresh record-high again Sunday, touching an all-time peak of $4.61 per gallon. That is more than 50 percent higher than the cost of a gallon a year ago.
The pump price surge came as tens of thousands of Memorial Day weekend holiday makers hit the road to enjoy some time with family and friends after two years of coronavirus uncertainty.
The Daily Mailreports experts expect a fresh set of numbers will likely surpass the $6 mark by the end of the summer – as pump costs in West Coast cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco already tipped that mark earlier this month.
Last week, the price of a gallon in each of the 50 states surpassed the $4 marker, impacting travel plans for many.
By the July 4 holiday, more states could see average prices above $5 a gallon, analysts say, driven by the inflation wracking the entire economy under President Joe Biden.
“I don’t think as many people are going to hit the road, and if they do, I think a good portion are going to be staying close to home,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told CNBC.
“They’re definitely should be a noticeable bump, but my impression is people are not driving as far. The concern is high prices that are keeping people a little closer. There’s also work-from-home that changed things. There’s a strong subset of people that can basically work from the road all the time.”
Vehicles drive on the Capital Beltway, Interstate 495 ahead of the Memorial Day weekend, May 27, 2022 in McLean, Virginia. Despite record high gas prices AAA predicts Memorial Day car travel to be the busiest since 2019 with over 34 million Americans traveling greater than 50 miles. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty)
AAA expects 39.2 million people in total will travel 50 miles or more this weekend, an increase of 8.3 percent over last year. Of that, there are expected to be 4.6 percent more drivers on the road during the three-day weekend, but that number is still down 7.2 percent from 2019, according to the report.
Across the U.S., prices vary widely, with a high $6.07 per gallon average in California and $4.13 per gallon in Georgia.
As high prices impact consumers, analysts say they will not fill up their vehicles as often, and that reduced demand could act to curb the pace of further price increases.
Soaring Prices, Cancellations, and Delays for Air Travelers over Memorial Day Weekend
If you’re traveling over the Memorial Day weekend, expect plenty of company – and disappointment. The summer travel season is now officially underway with anyone heading for an airport warned to be prepared for soaring prices, cancellations, and delays.
AP reports upwards of 1,500 flights were canceled as of 9:50 p.m EDT Saturday, according to flight tracking website FlightAware. That followed more than 2,300 cancellations on Friday.
Flight no-shows are only the beginning of the problems that lie in wait across Joe Biden’s America as the nation embraces the busiest travel season since the start of 2019.
Domestic airline fares for summer are averaging more than $400 for a round trip, 24 percent percent higher than this time in 2019, before the pandemic, and a full 45 percent higher than a year ago, according to travel-data firm Hopper.
Travelers queue up move through the north security checkpoint in the main terminal of Denver International Airport, Thursday, May 26, 2022, in Denver. Flyers are not only facing sticker shock this Memorial Day weekend but they’re also battling a pileup of flight cancellations. More than 1,000 flights were canceled as of Saturday afternoon according to flight tracking website FlightAware, after 2,300 cancellations on Friday. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
The price rises are driven by demand as airlines and tourist destinations ready for monster crowds this summer as travel restrictions ease and pandemic fatigue overcomes lingering fear of contracting coronavirus during travel.
Soaring oil prices are also adding to the cost burden as Americans feel the pressures across the board.
Many forecasters believe the number of travelers will match or even surpass levels in the gloried pre-pandemic days. However, airlines have thousands fewer employees than they did in 2019, and that has at times contributed to widespread flight cancellations, according to the AP report.
Which carriers are experiencing problems?
People travel through the terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport at the start of the Memorial Day weekend on May 27, 2022 in New York City. The holiday weekend is expected to be the busiest time for travel since 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
People wait to board trains at the Moynihan Train Hall in Manhattan at the start of the Memorial Day weekend on May 27, 2022 in New York City. The holiday weekend is expected to be the busiest time for travel since 2019, with AAA predicting a more than eight percent increase in Americans traveling compared to last year. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
AP outlines Delta Air Lines suffered the most among U.S. airlines, with more than 250 flights, or nine percent of its operations, eliminated on Saturday.
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, where Delta is based and has its largest hub, experienced heavy travel delays. On Saturday, five percent of the flights there were canceled, while 16 percent were delayed.
Delta noted in an email to AP that Saturday’s cancellations were due to bad weather and “air traffic control actions,” noting it’s trying to cancel flights at least 24 hours in advance this Memorial Day weekend.
here's what it's looking like from the grassroots:
Behind the scenes the collapse is gaining momentum. Without parts and supplies lay offs coming.
“There was money that was appropriated that Joe Biden diverted … there are huge holes in the wall that weren’t finished, contractors have been sent home,” Marshall said. “We were paying them $40,000 a day to not build the wall.”
“Joe Biden wants this crisis. He wants to reshape America in his image, he thinks that these are future voters for him,” he said. “He wants this crisis. They’re willing to take a political hit now to get more future Democrats across the border.”
New Homes Sales Cratered in April Amid Rising Rates and High Prices
Sales of new single-family homes in the U.S. plunged in April, the fourth consecutive monthly decline, falling to the lowest level since April of 2020.
New home sales decreased 16.6 percent in April compared with the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 591,000, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That is just barely above the 582,000 level hit during the initial lockdown phase of the pandemic when the economy was brought to a near halt.
Economists had forecast home sales to fall 1.7 percent to 750,000 from the preliminary March report of 763,000. The March report was revised down to 709,000.
Existing homes sales have been cratering, as well. April home sales declined by 2.4 percent compared with March. At a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.61 million, sales were at the slowest pace since June of 2020, according to data released last week from the National Association of Realtors. Compared with a year ago, sales were off by 5.9 percent.
The sharp slowdown in home sales is consistent with the possibility of a recession beginning over the next 12 to 16 months. On the other hand, rising mortgage rates and rising home prices likely indicate that a recession is not yet imminent or already underway.
New home sales are off a sharp 26.9 percent below the April 2021 level, when purchases stood at an annual rate of 809,000. ales were 26.9% below the same month a year earlier, when they stood at an adjusted annual rate of 809,000.
The median price of a new home jumped in April to $450,600 from $435,000 the previous month. That is an all-time record high. After adjusting for inflation, the pre-financial crisis high of 2007 would be $365,000 in today’s dollars. In real terms, new house prices are up by around 23.3 percent since 2007.
Mortgage rates have moved sharply higher this year. At the end of last year, the 30-year fixed conforming mortgage rate was at 3.353 percent. By the end of March, it had moved up to 4.811 percent. As April came to an end, it was at 5.415 percent. As a result, the monthly payment a buyer would owe on a home purchased in April is hundreds of dollars higher than what it would have been at the start of the year. That may have pushed some would-be buyers out of the market.
What’s more, sixty-nine percent of Americans say the economy is bad, according to a recent poll from CBS News and YouGov. Combined with worries about a recession looming in the near future may also be discouraging some families from buying. High levels of inflation and falling real incomes have hurt consumer confidence.
New home sales are counted at signing, so the figures for April would reflect market conditions and consumer sentiment at the time. Existing home sales are counted at closing, which typically happens 30 to 60 days after the signing, making them a lagging indicator.
Housing starts are counted when construction begins on a project and tend to be a leading indicator for both real estate and the broader economy. Single family housing starts fell in three of the first four months of the year. In April, single-family starts were down fell to a rate of 1,087,000, 13.4 percent below the March rate.
The number of single-family homes available for sale has been on steep climb. In April, there were 444,0000 homes available for sale on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis. This represents a supply of nine months at the current sales rate, an indication that home builders have more than the typical supply of inventory. Around four to six months is normally considered a balanced, normal supply.
Supply chain constraints and a tight labor market are also holding back construction, leaving many homes unfinished. The inventory of new homes under construction is at 5.9 months, close to the record set in 1980. At 288,000, there are more homes under construction than any time since December 2006.
There are 118,000 homes for sale for which construction has not been started, the most ever, which is also reflective of supply constraints. This amounts to 2.4 months supply, almost double the normal level.
White House Warns of Global Food Shortages After Ukraine Invasion
The White House confirmed Monday they expect certain parts of the world to suffer a food shortage as an effect of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We do anticipate that higher energy fertilizer, wheat, and corn prices could impact the price of growing and purchasing critical food supplies for countries around the world,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday.
She said food shortages were not expected to hit the United States, but rather countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.
Reports have pointed out that both Ukraine and Russia produce a significant portion of the world’s wheat, corn, and barley as well as energy and fertilizer.
Despite Psaki’s assurance that the United States would not suffer a food shortage, the cost of fertilizer, grain, and fuel could have a significant impact on food prices.
Psaki said the White House could continue to work with global organizations to “do everything we can” to “mitigate” food shortages around the world.
“There are active discussions now,” she said, describing the Biden administration’s efforts to tackle the problem.”We’re certainly mindful that even if we’re not seeing an impact at this moment that sometimes supply chain impacts can have a lagging impact.”
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