Monday, December 4, 2023

BLOG LAUGH OF THE DAY - JOE DESTROYS THE ECONOMY AS FAST AS HE DID THE BORDER - Democrats Drop ‘Bidenomics’ Catchphrase: ‘Ineffective,’ ‘Tone-Deaf’ - MUST HAVE BEEN BORDER TSARINA KAMALA HARRIS' IDEA. WELL, ACTUALLY, SHE'S NEVER HAD AN IDEA!

 

The Bidenomics Brief

REVIEW: ‘Ours Was the Shining Future’ by David Leonhardt

L: (AP Photo/George R. Skadding) R: (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
December 3, 2023

Despite gloomy consumer sentiment, President Joe Biden is proud of the economy he has created.

"[I]t wasn’t that long ago we were losing jobs in this country," the president said at a Labor Day event with a Philadelphia metal workers’ union. "In fact, the guy who held this job before me was just one of two presidents in history that left office with fewer jobs in America than when he got elected office. By the way, do you know who the other one was? Herbert Hoover."

The line works on two levels: by comparing President Donald Trump to Hoover, a presidential failure, but also by analogizing Biden to Hoover’s successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The implication, delivered to a union audience, is not an accident. FDR was a union-backed president who oversaw passage of the Wagner Act, ushering in decades of union dominance. Biden has sought to pick up that mantle, walking picket lines, barnstorming union halls, and otherwise signaling that he is, in the words of former AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka, "the most pro-union president in history."

This affinity, furthermore, is just part of the Rooseveltian picture Biden has tried to paint of himself. His moderate image (if only by comparison to the far-left flank of his party) is a gesture at rebuilding the center-left coalition that sent Roosevelt to the White House. His massive spending programs—the "Build Back Better" agenda and the Inflation Reduction Act—are routinely compared to the New Deal. The Biden thesis is that "the era of big government is over" is over; big government is back with a vengeance.

To draw the Biden-Roosevelt connection is to assent to a particular theory of the past century of American economic history. Perhaps the most effective statement of that theory, and certainly the most timely, is Ours Was the Shining Future, the new book by New York Times writer David Leonhardt.

In the book, Leonhardt covers roughly a hundred years of history, from the early days of the Roosevelt administration to the present. He does so to argue that "capitalism remains the best system for delivering rising living standards to the greatest number of people—but only a certain type of capitalism." That type of capitalism, which Leonhardt calls "democratic capitalism," is the political economy of the New Deal: careful regulation, a distaste for wealth acquisition, and close cooperation between business, government, and labor. That form has been replaced, in Leonhardt’s telling, by "rough-and-tumble capitalism." Deregulation and the aggressive prioritization of growth have, in Leonhardt’s view, driven widening inequality and the decline in American life expectancy.

How did this replacement happen? Leonhardt’s story goes something like this: In the postwar era, a coalition of moderate business and labor leaders, corralled by government, kept the economic peace, and produced broad-based economic prosperity. But this coalition proved fragile. The New Left of the 1960s and ’70s prioritized social over economic issues, while labor unions failed to redirect the conversation. The right, instead, took advantage, banking on its own culture war issues to push through a radical reform agenda. Certain social pressures—rising immigration and educational polarization—exacerbated these basic trends, contributing to the declining status of the working class.

This story is told primarily through a series of biographical portraits of Americans involved, in one way or another, with economic policy. There are presidents and professors, activists and lawyers. Reference to academic research is sprinkled throughout, but most of the focus is on the people. If you have a more-than-passing familiarity with the history of latter-20th century social policy, none of the names will be new. But if you don’t, it’s a serviceable review.

But that review is in service of a larger project, the restoration of what Leonhardt calls "democratic capitalism," but which one could just as easily think of by the more popular term: Bidenomics. After all, isn’t the president’s vision precisely a return to the kind of corporatism that defined post-WWII America? Isn’t his thesis that capitalism is good, but needs to be managed? Even Biden’s positioning on social issues, and his attempts (however ineffective) to distinguish himself from his party’s left, is a repudiation of the very politics Leonhardt blames for the fall of "democratic capitalism."

So on the level of political essay, does Ours Was the Shining Future persuade that the Rooseveltian past is the Bidenomic future? Not so much. The fall of democratic capitalism wasn’t an accident—it was baked in.

The New Deal gave way to the Great Society, and the vast, sclerotic social services bureaucracy that trapped its clients in cycles of poverty. The labor unions became entrenched interest groups, whose demands grew to retard growth. (In one of the book’s less self-aware sections, Leonhardt bemoans the power of special interest groups, conveniently missing public sector unions in his enumeration thereof.)

Most importantly, massive government spending proved unsustainable. Leonhardt acknowledges the inflation of the 1970s, but prefers to attribute it to the OPEC oil shocks, avoiding discussion of Milton Friedman’s insight that the ever-expanding money supply was the real problem. A similar burst of inflation following Biden’s first wave of mass spending programs has continued to dog the president politically, for similar reasons. The problem with democratic capitalism, to paraphrase Thatcher, is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.

All of this is not so much a criticism of Ours Was the Shining Future, which is valuable as a statement of the Bidenomics theory of the case. Rather, it is a criticism of that vision as such. It didn’t work last time, and it won’t work now.

Ours Was the Shining Future: The Story of the American Dream
by David Leonhardt
Random House, 528 pp., $32

Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor to City Journal.

Democrats Drop ‘Bidenomics’ Catchphrase: ‘Ineffective,’ ‘Tone-Deaf’

Biden
ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

House Democrats abandoned their economic catchphrase “Bidenomics” in recent weeks because it is reportedly an “ineffective” and “tone-deaf” messaging vehicle to hype President Joe Biden’s struggling economy.

The dropped catchphrase highlights the Democrat Party’s infighting about how to shore up Biden’s economy heading into the 2024 election.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and House Majority PAC no longer use “Bidenomics,” a phrase the White House coined earlier this year to cushion Biden’s “troubling” approval rating, Axios reported Sunday. “The term is nowhere to be found in any of the House Majority PAC’s public releases and posts except for a single press release on July 31,” the outlet noted.

Axios reported Democrat concerns:

The term was seen as tone-deaf to voters still struggling economically and also invoked a president with lackluster polling numbers.

One Democratic strategist said the biggest problem wasn’t using “Biden,” but that the term was too philosophical and required too much explanation.

House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.) has avoided “Bidenomics” on his social media and press releases, except sharing one article on Facebook with the term featured in the headline. His team said he has invoked “Bidenomics” during press conferences.

Biden also dropped the catchphrase during his prepared speeches, NBC News reported: “He hasn’t used it in public remarks since Nov. 1.”

Biden reportedly believed the phrase could “backfire” if the economy remained sluggish. “I can understand that,” Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) told NBC News when asked about the president’s “unease” with the term. “I don’t like it either.”

Polling shows Biden’s economic messaging failed to impress voters:

  • Biden’s struggling economy is the number one issue for 2024 voters.
  • Voters trust former President Donald Trump over Biden on economic issues.

Follow Wendell Husebø on “X” @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.

JOE BIDEN   = TAX EVADER ON ALL HIS GLOBAL BRIBES HE PASSED AROUND THE BIDEN MAFIA AS 'LOANS' FOR WHICH NO REPAYMENT WAS EVER MADE!

MEET JOE’S HAREM OF BILLIONAIRES

 

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/10/26/american-oligarchy-meet-the-billionaire-mega-donors-behind-the-biden-presidency/

 

 

HA, HA, HA! JOE. LAUGH'S ON YOU! YOU'RE GOING TO PRISON BRIBES SUCKER!

White House: High Prices Are ‘a Challenge’ But There Are ‘a Lot of’ Indications ‘People Are Optimistic’

During an interview with Bloomberg TV on Friday, White House Council of Economic Advisers member Heather Boushey stated that higher prices are “a challenge” “and it’s taken a while for things to get to a more steady state” after the pandemic, “And I think that has been hard on folks,” but there’s “a lot of economic news that indicates that people are optimistic.”

Boushey said, [relevant remarks begin around 1:11:30] “When inflation happens, all the prices go up. And then, you’re right, even as the pace of price gains slow[s] over time, it doesn’t mean that prices have come back down. Now, we have seen some cases of prices coming down, and that’s important. We talked a lot over last week, over the week of Thanksgiving, that the price of affording that Thanksgiving dinner was lower than last year. That’s certainly good news for families, giving them that little bit of breathing room. We, of course, have seen energy prices coming down, gas prices have fallen $1.77 from their peak at the height of the energy crisis that was caused by the unprovoked war that Putin has been waging in…Ukraine. So, that’s also good news for consumers, where they’ve actually seen those prices come down, but it does remain a challenge.”

She continued, “One of the things that we really need to focus on is that other side of the equation. Folks have jobs. We want to see those real wage gains, which, of course, we’ve been seeing for the past six months. So, families are able to rely on that income. They’re able to have that additional income that is now higher than the pace of inflation, as the pace of inflation has come down. And that’s giving families also a little bit of breathing room on the other side. Let me say one more thing here: For the president, it’s been really important that we focus on what we can do to lower prices that families are facing. So, for example, one of the early things the president did was made it possible for people to buy their hearing aids over the counter…his competition agenda. But that is a way to lower the prices facing families for things that are really important. For all the work that the president has done to make Internet affordable and to make sure that every family has access to [the] Internet. So, there are so many different examples of prices that the president has been able to lower through specific policy actions on top of the lowering of the pace of overall inflation.”

Co-host Romaine Bostick then said, “There’s what the president has done and there’s also, though, what the president communicates. And I’m sure, as you know, Heather, we could sit here and parse the data and see the disinflationary trend. But, for a lot of folks, we know they’re just looking at absolute price levels. And if you go to them, and you ask that proverbial question, are you better off now than where you were four years ago or even a year ago, there are a lot of people, rightly or wrongly, that are going to say no.”

Boushey responded, “I think of this in two big buckets: Number one, the pandemic was really challenging. And it led to this weird recession, a recession that I certainly haven’t seen over my career. A recession where you had inflation that was really pushed because of these supply chain challenges, these challenges of people being able to get the things they need after they’d been sent home and needed to — their lives were upended. And then we come out of this pandemic and things are more expensive and it’s taken a while for things to get to a more steady state. And I think that has been hard on folks, just how long it’s taken. It was easy to turn things off, it’s been a lot harder to work out all the kinks of turning everything back on again.”

She continued, “But I’m optimistic that the fact that so many people are entering the labor force, that we have these historically high numbers of labor force participation, that people have jobs, that they are out there, that folks are starting new businesses. It looks like 2023 will go down as the third-highest year of small business formation, that’s a lot of economic news that indicates that people are optimistic. And I’m not in any way saying that higher prices aren’t challenging, those are certainly challenging, but these have been challenging times overall. And, I think as people get back into those new rhythms, I think they’ll see the benefits. And, let’s note, we are seeing these historically large investments in communities all around the country. People are going to be able to drive across bridges that have been repaired.”

Boushey concluded, “Last Congress was a historic Congress. The president was able to get through — much of it in a bipartisan way — legislation that is historic and is transforming our economy, and we’re starting to see the fruits of that all across the country. … So, shifting an economy, especially after a historic pandemic, it’s going to take a little bit of time, but I think the president has a lot of things, concrete things that we can point to after this historic amount of congressional action in the last Congress.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

THE GREATEST TRANSFER OF WEALTH IN MODERN AMERICAN HISTORY HAS BEEN UNDER THE BANKSTER REGIMES WITH OPEN BORDERS BILL CLINTON, BARACK OBAMA AND JOE BIDEN. THE RICH HAVE GOTTEN MUCH RICHER AND ILLEGALS THE JOBS TO KEEP WAGES DEPRESSED.

STOP AND ASK YOURSELF WHY ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS? THE PARTY OF THE WEALTHY, AND CRIMINALS ON WALL STREET.

Amazon And Walmart Will Flip Retail Upside Down In 2024

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2JIzleadeY&ab_channel=TheAtlantisReport

 

American Oligarchy: Meet the Billionaire Mega-Donors Behind the Biden Presidency

1 J. Minchillo/AP; D. Angerer, P. Moreira, P. Fallon, C. Ratcliffe, J. Harris, S. Granitz/Getty

Alexander Marlow

26 Oct 2023999

12:59

Liberals used to decry the influence of money in politics. But in Joe Biden’s America, we have seen the rise of a noxious new generation of left-wing donors. I identify some of the biggest power players in Joe Biden’s American in my book New York Times bestselling book Breaking Biden.

Joe Biden is the quintessential oligarch. He has empowered America’s moneyed elite, and they have empowered him. Biden’s 2020 campaign was the first to raise over $1 billion. Democrats raised more $600 million more in “dark money” than Republicans in 2020. Look for those numbers to explode even higher in 2024.

It is important to understand a key principle in modern Democratic politics: if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. Today, it’s Joe Biden’s table, and he’s happy to provide the entertainment.


IRS Increases Penalty for Tax


Underpayments to Eight


Percent AS MOST OF BIDEN'S CRONY BILLIONAIRES, LIKE JEFF BEZOSHEAD, PAY LITTLE OR NO TAX

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks about goals for the 2024 tax filing season, at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) headquarters in Washington, DC, on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Stefani Reynolds / AFP) (Photo by STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images)
STEFANI REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

Americans who fail to keep up with their tax payments may soon feel a sting in the pocketbook, thanks to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

According to the Wall Street Journal, the IRS is charging eight percent interest when it comes to estimated tax underpayments, noting the move went into effect October 1.

RELATED VIDEO — Maher: People Hate the Economy Because of the Price of Goods They Buy Every Day:

Two years ago it was three percent, and “the increase is one of the many effects of rising interest rates,” the Journal article continued:

These higher penalties, which can run in the hundreds or even thousands of dollars, are particularly relevant for gig workers and consultants who don’t have taxes withheld and figure they can pay their taxes come April. People who get steady paychecks with tax withholding could also be affected if they have additional income and get the math wrong.

To avoid underpayment penalties, most filers must pay 90% of their taxes through withholding during the calendar year, or through estimated payments due quarterly. The payment for the fourth quarter of 2023 comes due Jan. 16, 2024. The IRS won’t charge an underpayment penalty if the balance due is less than $1,000 after taking into account withholding and credits. (Though it is called a penalty, it is essentially interest tied to the federal short-term rate.)

RELATED VIDEO — Yellen: People’s View of Economy Has “Disconnect” with How Economy’s Doing, People Positive About Personal Finances:

According to the IRS website, “The Underpayment of Estimated Tax by Individuals Penalty” is for persons, estates, and trusts if they fail to pay enough estimated taxes on income or if the payment is overdue.

“The penalty may apply even if we owe you a refund,” the site read.

IRS officials recently delayed making gig workers report payments over $600 acquired through apps such as Zelle, Cash App, Venmo, and PayPal, according to Breitbart News.

“The postponement of the rule is a victory for gig workers who work more than one job to make ends meet in President Joe Biden’s struggling economy,” the article said.

In January, a survey found most Americans agree that Congress should repeal funding for 87,000 additional IRS agents, per Breitbart News.

Biden yells about corporate price-gouging. Speaking of price-gouging ...

Joe Biden idiotically has said that if companies didn't lower the prices of their goods (now that the rate of inflation is slowing), they will be targeted by federal authorities for price-gouging. 

According to the Washington Post:

President Biden blasted corporate “price gouging” more forcefully this week than ever before, reflecting a renewed administration effort to respond to widespread voter discontent over the economy as next year’s election looms.

After weeks of internal meetings led by White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, Biden aides recently pitched the president on a plan to sharply rebuke firms for not lowering prices despite record profits, according to three people with knowledge of the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect internal deliberations. The president liked the idea and quickly approved it, the people said.

It really takes an economic illiterate to not understand that if inflation still exists, prices are not going down. 

Here is what real price gouging looks like:

The IRS has increased late payment penalties by 167% over the last two years even though its costs haven't risen nearly that much.

Americans who fail to keep up with their tax payments may soon feel a sting in the pocketbook, thanks to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

According to the Wall Street Journal, the IRS is charging eight percent interest when it comes to estimated tax underpayments, noting the move went into effect October 1.

Two years ago it was three percent, and “the increase is one of the many effects of rising interest rates.

By way of contrast, Social Security recipients have only received an increase of around 12% which is what the government says covers their cost increases. So why does the IRS think they deserve 167%?

Biden also is trying to target companies for what he says are junk fees, but not once have I seen him suggest that the government lower its massive fees or taxes.

You see, for Democrats the government can never confiscate enough. They are special!

The problem with Biden is not his age, it's his policies and no matter who you replace him with on the Democrat side, you essentially get the same radical, destructive policies.

Image: Screen shot from Monstera Productions video, via Pexels // CC0 / public domain


Why the U.S. is broke…your tax dollars at ‘work’

November 22 article on the Judicial Watch website reveals exactly why the U.S. is over $30 trillion in debt. Sadly, Judicial Watch had to file a Freedom of Information request to obtain the 25 pages of information on this project.

Remember the giant yellow “BLM” that was painted on the street near the White House after the June 2020 BLM riots? Apparently, the geniuses in the Department of Transportation (led by World Economic Forum Young Global Leader Pete Buttigieg) thought it needed to be spruced up. Aside from it being egregious and outrageous to support the race-baiting grifter organization, the price of this project should make even the most ardent big-government supporter cringe.

A purchase order dated September 15, 2023, shows that a vendor charged U.S. taxpayers over $53,000 for “supplies” to repaint the street. Now, granted, the 50-ft tall letters require a lot of paint…but over $50 grand?!? You or I could go to our local Home Depot or Lowes and buy enough paint and brushes, etc., to do the job for a tenth of that cost, easily. But hang onto your hat because that’s not even the worst of this boondoggle.

The labor costs for the repainting totaled $217,680! (No, I didn’t put the comma in the wrong place.). A memo showed that the project “required” a foreman, an operator, a laborer, a carpenter, and a mason. Equipment included a backhoe/loader, a portable air compressor, a Bobcat, a dump truck, a pick-up truck, and a service truck. Why not just a couple of guys in a pick-up truck with some long-handled brushes? Oh, yeah, I forgot…it’s government work.

So, our overpaid career government bureaucrats think that over a quarter-million dollars is a fair price for painting three 50-ft tall words, approximately three to four feet wide? None of these overpaid career bureaucrats could recognize the sheer audacious idiocy of such an outlay of taxpayer dollars? Clearly, none of them have ever bought a can of paint, let alone actually painted anything around their house.

Image: The BLM pavement mural in D.C. YouTube screen grab.

Ah, there’s the rub! The people in government, both elected and appointed in the bureaucracy, clearly don’t look at money the same way most working Americans do. And why should they? It’s not their money, is it? Instead, it comes from a bottomless pool of taxes, so why should they bother to economize or try to get a sensible, reasonable rate for work done? After all, there’s always more where that came from, right? And it looks good on the resume: “Managed a quarter-million dollar beautification project.”

Actually, I guess we should be glad that it “only” cost that much because the original bid submitted was rejected due to hourly labor rates that were considered too high. Good grief! What must that original labor cost have been? Labor costs of over $200K for five people equates to over $40,000 per person…for what (at most!) should have taken only two days (hey, it’s government, so I’m allowing for the gross incompetence, inefficiency, and standing around inevitably found in government projects).

Even if it took two weeks (and that’s plausible, considering how government operates), that’s five people times 40 hours times 2, or a total of 400 man-hours (oops, it’s government, so that would be “person-hours”). Do the math, and that comes out to over $540 per hour!!! If it “only” took a week, double that to over $1,000 per hour…to paint three words on a street (words that should have never been there in the first place)!

As economist Thomas Sowell has often said, the worst form of government is to allow people to govern who never are held accountable for their decisions. Do you think anyone on the org chart who signed off on this travesty will suffer any negative consequences? More likely, they’ll be promoted.

Could you run a business this way or your own household? Of course not! Then why do we continue to allow this idiocy to occur?

Several decades ago, there was a huge scandal about the Defense Department paying $430 for $15 hammers, but the government explained that they “normalized their research and inventory costs” across all assets (i.e., say, $420 was added to the actual price of every asset, from engines to vehicles to tools, etc.). With that explanation, the government wasn’t really paying $435 for $15 hammer. Got that?

I’m sure the bureaucrats have some equally rational “explanation” about these ridiculous materials and labor costs, but don’t go down that rabbit trail. The fact is that you and I paid—not once, but twice!—over a quarter-million dollars for a sign celebrating a racist, anti-American organization that has proven to be corrupt.

Just think about all the other expenses, materials, and labor you and I are paying for in every department of the federal government. You know this was not just a one-time glitch in the matrix; this is how the government spends your hard-earned money and part of the reason we’re over $30 trillion in debt.

Albert Einstein said that the world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but “because of the people who don’t do anything about it.” Well…are you going to do anything about it?

His services to the corporate elite continued through his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, when he oversaw both the bailout of Wall Street and the bankruptcy restructuring of the auto industry, in which wages for new workers were cut in half.

 

JOE BIDEN TO HIS BANKSTERS:

It was to his supporters in the financial aristocracy, at an exclusive fundraiser last year in Manhattan, that Biden made his notorious pledge—the most truthful declaration of his entire campaign—that if he were elected president, “No one’s standard of living would change. Nothing would fundamentally change.”

 

The difference between the campaigns is accounted for primarily by big dollar contributions, with Biden raising far more than Trump. As the New York Times admitted in an article posted on its website Wednesday, “the elite world of billionaires and multimillionaires has remained a critical cog in the Biden money machine.”

 

Corporate America puts its money on Biden and the Democrats

The final financial reports before the election were filed by candidates for Congress and the White House by Oct. 15 with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), detailing fundraising and spending in the third quarter, July 1 through Sept. 30. These reports are limited to the funds raised directly by the campaigns themselves, and exclude fundraising through supporting PACs (political action committees) usually funded by billionaires. Nonetheless, the FEC data provides some eye-opening insights into the political calculations of the American ruling elite, where there is increasing expectation of a Democratic victory on Nov. 3.

Two preliminary observations can be made. First, large sections of big business favor a shift from Trump to Biden, partly because of differences on foreign and domestic policy, partly because they regard a second Trump term as more likely to provoke an uncontrollable social and political explosion in America. Second, the corporate elite now views Biden and the Democrats as the favorites to win the election, and campaign contributions are a form of political insurance, giving the donors a “seat at the table” when a future Biden administration is staffed and determines its policy priorities.

The Democrats hold a decided edge in fundraising in each of the major sectors of the 2020 political battlefield. In the presidential campaign, Trump’s early dominance is a distant memory. Biden has outraised him beginning in May, and his lead has grown with each passing month.

 

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden peeks out of the roof of an SUV as he leaves a fundraiser on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, in Manhattan Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the Biden campaign has raised $810 million and supporting organizations have raised $373 million, for a total of $1.183 billion. The Trump campaign has raised $552 million, supplemented by $256 million from outside groups, for a combined total of $808 million.

In the Senate, the Democrats have outraised Republicans by a margin of more than 50 percent, $767 million to $500 million, despite the Republicans holding 23 of the 35 seats being contested on Nov. 3. In the 435 House contests, the Democrats hold a slightly narrower lead, $772 million to $653 million. Both figures represent a sharp departure from recent congressional elections, at least until 2018, in which the Republican Party has generally enjoyed a huge financial edge.

The presidential fundraising figures represent sharp increases from 2016, when Democrat Hillary Clinton raised a combined total of $770 million while Trump raised $433 million. By Oct. 1, the Biden and Trump campaigns had already spent three times the amount expended at a similar point in 2016, a reflection both of the massively increased fundraising and the need to reach early and mail-in voters.

The Democratic Party and the corporate media have generally attributed the Biden campaign’s financial edge to a surge of small-dollar contributions. There certainly has been such a surge, at least compared to the early stages of the Biden campaign for the Democratic nomination, when small-dollar internet contributions went overwhelmingly to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. At that point Biden was sustained by a relative handful of wealthy backers.

But according to a recent tabulation by the Center for Responsive Politics, which maintains the Open Secrets database of campaign finance information, Trump and Biden have raised roughly equal amounts in contributions of $200 or less, between $200 million and $250 million apiece, mainly over the internet.

The difference between the campaigns is accounted for primarily by big dollar contributions, with Biden raising far more than Trump. As the New York Times admitted in an article posted on its website Wednesday, “the elite world of billionaires and multimillionaires has remained a critical cog in the Biden money machine.”

The Times continued:

From Hollywood to Silicon Valley to Wall Street, Mr. Biden’s campaign has aggressively courted the megadonor class. It has raised almost $200 million from donors who gave at least $100,000 to his joint operations with the Democratic Party in the last six months—about twice as much as President Trump raised from six-figure donors in that time, according to an analysis of new federal records.

Million-dollar donors came from Hollywood (Jeffrey Katzenberg), Silicon Valley (Reed Hastings of Netflix and many others), and high finance. “Top executives with investment, private equity and venture capital firms like Blackstone, Bain Capital, Kleiner Perkins and Warburg Pincus all contributed handsomely,” the Times noted.

While Biden has lately attempted to sound a populist note, claiming that he represents Scranton (his birthplace, a decaying industrial city in northeastern Pennsylvania), while Trump represents the moneyed elite of “Park Avenue,” it turns out that “Scranton” has a different meaning to his campaign finance operation. Any affluent donor who solicits a total of $250,000 in contributions is considered a member of the “Scranton Circle” of elite donors, with special access to top advisers of the candidate. There is also a “Philly Founder” level for those generating $500,000 in contributions and a “Delaware Circle” for those accounting for $1 million or more.

Entering the month of October, the Biden campaign had $180.6 million in cash on hand, while the Trump campaign reported only $63.1 million, one-third of the Democrat’s total. This disparity was despite the Biden campaign’s outspending Trump’s by two to one during the month of September. After raising a record-shattering $365 million in August, the Biden campaign raised an even larger amount, $383 million, the following month.

Trump has not lacked for megadonor support, including $75 million from casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, $21 million from Isaac Perlmutter, chairman of Marvel Entertainment, and $10 million from banking heir Timothy Mellon.

But these sums are dwarfed by the $100 million for Biden from billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who briefly sought the Democratic presidential nomination for himself—and spent $1.1 billion in that effort—and another $106 million from the Future Forward PAC, based in Silicon Valley, whose funding includes $22 million from Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, $6 million from Jeff Lawson of Twilio, $5 million from crypto-currency trader Sam Bankman-Fried and $2.5 million from Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google.

Such figures make nonsense of the fascistic rhetoric of Trump, who continually denounces Biden as the tool of socialists, communists and the “radical Left.” Actually, Biden is a tried and tested tool of Wall Street and corporate America, dating back to his days as a senator from Delaware, a center of tax evasion. The tiny state has more corporations headquartered there for tax purposes, over one million, than human beings.

His services to the corporate elite continued through his tenure as vice president in the Obama administration, when he oversaw both the bailout of Wall Street and the bankruptcy restructuring of the auto industry, in which wages for new workers were cut in half.

It was to his supporters in the financial aristocracy, at an exclusive fundraiser last year in Manhattan, that Biden made his notorious pledge—the most truthful declaration of his entire campaign—that if he were elected president, “No one’s standard of living would change. Nothing would fundamentally change.”

The financial constraints on the Trump campaign are unmistakable. In the final week of September and the first week of October, for example, it stopped advertising in four “battleground” states—Iowa, Ohio, Texas and New Hampshire. One advertising industry tally had Biden topping Trump in campaign spending in 72 out of 83 media markets where both campaigns were still competing.

The disparity between the Biden and Trump campaigns has been exacerbated by the timing of their expenditures. Trump spent lavishly in the early months of 2020, even before the Democratic nominee had been determined, and has raised less overall. The result is a cash crunch in the final weeks of the campaign.

Biden began the month of August with a three-to-one advantage in terms of financial resources and has outspent Trump in three critical battleground states—Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—by that margin, $53 million to $17 million. According to figures reported in advertising trade publications, Biden has a 5–1 advantage in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, market, and more than a 2–1 advantage in Detroit and Philadelphia.

In Omaha, Nebraska, where a single electoral vote is at stake in the Second Congressional District, Biden has spent $2 million on advertising, six times the Trump total.

With Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden holding an apparently comfortable lead over Trump in the polls, much of the media attention has shifted to the question of which party will be in control of the Senate after November 3. The Republicans currently have a three-seat majority, 53-47, so the Democrats must gain a net of three seats if Biden wins, as a Vice President Kamala Harris would then have the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. The Democrats must gain four seats if Biden loses, but that combination is highly unlikely, since a Biden defeat would signify a broader Democratic debacle.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden peeks out of the roof of an SUV as he leaves a fundraiser on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2019, in Manhattan Beach, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

In the Senate, the Democrats have outraised Republicans by a margin of more than 50 percent, $767 million to $500 million, despite the Republicans holding 23 of the 35 seats being contested November 3. In the 16 seats considered competitive (two held by Democrats, 14 by Republicans), the Democratic lead is $643 million to $415 million. The average Democrat has a $40 million war chest, while the Republican, usually an incumbent, averages $26 million.

More so than Biden, the Senate candidates have benefited from a flood of small-dollar donations over the internet, which expresses, in a distorted way, the popular hatred of the right-wing policies of Trump and the Republicans. But corporate and billionaire cash also plays a significant role. Both small-dollar and large-dollar donations have fueled a record-breaking third quarter of fundraising for the Democrats, with many challengers doubling or tripling the amount raised by the Republican incumbents.

Ordinarily, incumbent senators have a huge fundraising advantage over their challengers, and this applies particularly to Republican incumbents, who usually have closer ties to wealthy donors. But in 2020 this is not the case, and the disparities are remarkable. There are at least eight Democratic challengers who have outraised their Republican opponents. Three of these Democrats have raked in more than $80 million apiece, an astonishing total for an election in a single state.

Democrat Jaime Harrison reported raising $86.9 million in South Carolina, compared to $59.4 million for three-term Senator Lindsey Graham. The combined total of $146.4 million in a relatively small state, where only 2 million people voted in 2016, means an expenditure of better than $70 a vote.

In an even smaller state, Kentucky, Democrat Amy McGrath has raised $84.2 million for her uphill contest against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has raised $53.4 million. In Arizona, Democratic challenger Mark Kelly has raised $82.8 million and leads in the polls against the incumbent Republican, appointed Senator Martha McSally, who has raised $50.9 million.

Several other Democratic challengers, while raising smaller total amounts, have a much larger percentage edge over Republican incumbents. In Iowa, businesswoman Theresa Greenfield has raised $40.4 million against the $21.8 million raised by first-term incumbent Joni Ernst. In North Carolina, former Army paratrooper Cal Cunningham has raised $43.4 million for his race against first-term incumbent Thom Tillis, who has raised $20.9 million. In Maine, Sara Gideon, the Democratic leader of the state legislature, has raised $63.6 million for her campaign against three-term incumbent Susan Collins, who has raised less than half that sum, $25.2 million.

In Colorado, opinion polls suggest that the contest is a runaway, and political action committees supporting the Democratic candidate, former Governor John Hickenlooper, have pulled out, regarding his victory over first-term Republican Senator Cory Gardner as a certainty. Hickenlooper has outraised the incumbent by $36.7 million to $25 million. And in Montana, Governor Steve Bullock has raised $38.1 million for his challenge to first-term incumbent Steve Daines, who has raised $24.5 million. In Alaska, millionaire orthopedic surgeon Al Gross leads incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan, $13.9 million to $9.3 million.

The most lopsided financial disparity is in Kansas, where no Democrat has been elected to the US Senate in a century, but polls show a close race between former Republican state senator Barbara Bollier, who switched to the Democrats only two years ago, and Republican Congressman Roger Marshall, to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Republican Senator Pat Roberts. Bollier has raised $20.7 million, nearly four times the $5.5 million raised by Marshall.

Georgia has both Senate seats at stake, because of the resignation of Senator Johnny Isakson for health reasons. The Democrats, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, have raised $46 million between them, while the two Republican incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, both multi-millionaires, have raised $45.2 million.

In only one state is there a seeming Republican financial advantage in a contested race. Senator John Cornyn of Texas has the edge over his Democratic challenger, Mary Jennings Hegar, and that is not an overwhelming one, $29.6 million to $20.6 million. And even this apparent advantage is illusory. The Silicon Valley-based political action committee Future Fund is pouring $28 million into the Texas race to support the Democratic candidate, more money than Hegar has raised herself. This advertising blitz will benefit not only Hegar, but also a group of Democratic candidates for the House of Representatives and a Democratic effort to gain control of the lower house of the Texas state legislature.

Of the two Democrat seats in the Senate which are at greatest risk on November 3, one confirms and one represents an exception to this pattern. In Alabama, incumbent Democrat Doug Jones has outraised his Republican challenger, former football coach Tommy Tuberville, by $24.9 million to $7.5 million, but he is nonetheless considered a distinct underdog in the conservative state. In Michigan, Senator Gary Peters is a slight favorite over Republican challenger John James, a former paratrooper, and he holds only a narrow fundraising lead, $35.7 million to $33.9 million. Only three incumbent Republican senators have raised more money than James, who is being promoted by the Senate Republican leadership and Trump as an African American face to disguise their reactionary politics.

Finally, there is the not-insignificant question of what corporate America is buying through this flood of cash into the coffers of the Democratic Senate candidates. The beneficiaries of this corporate largesse are a collection of political reactionaries deeply committed to the defense of American imperialism abroad and big business at home. They differ only at the margins with their right-wing Republican opponents.

Of the candidates already listed, four have military-intelligence backgrounds as their principal credential: Mark Kelly is a career military pilot and former astronaut; Amy McGrath a retired Marine fighter-pilot; Mary Jennings Hegar flew helicopters for the US military in Afghanistan; Cal Cunningham was an Army Ranger, and still teaches new Rangers every year as a reserve officer. These four are the Senate equivalents of the CIA Democrats who played such a prominent role in the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in 2018.

Other top Senate Democratic challengers include South Carolina’s Jaime Harrison, a longtime corporate lobbyist; Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, a millionaire businesswoman; Al Gross in Alaska, a millionaire surgeon whose father was state attorney general; Montana Governor Steve Bullock and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, both failed presidential candidates who ran in the right-wing “lane” that produced Biden instead; and Barbara Bollier, who was a Republican state senator in Kansas until switching parties in 2018.

In the House of Representatives, now firmly controlled by the Democrats, 232-197, with five vacancies and a Libertarian, the Democrats are expected to increase their numbers, although by less than the 41 seats they gained in 2018. Republican hopes of retaking control, which would require a net gain of 21 seats, have virtually collapsed, as nearly all the first-term Democrats who won Republican-held seats in 2018 are considered likely victors this year.

The Democrats hold a smaller edge in fundraising for the House of Representatives than in the Senate, having raised $772 million through September 30 according to FEC filings for the 435 seats, compared to $653 million for Republican candidates.

The overall total is less significant, however, because the vast majority of House seats are in districts whose boundaries ensure the victory of one party regardless of how much money the other party spends. Republicans will spend $7 million, for example, in support of businesswoman Kim Klacik against Democrat Kweisi Mfume, in the Baltimore district held by the late Elijah Cummings, and $9.4 million to back millionaire investor Lacy Johnson against Democrat Ilhan Omar in Minneapolis. Both Mfume and Omar will win reelection easily despite being heavily outspent.

The more important figure is how much is raised in more closely contested races, fewer than 100 of the 435 seats in the House. In these contests, there are 85 Democrats who have raised more than $3 million, compared to only 50 Republicans. This includes a number of challengers for Republican seats, including Wendy Davis and Gina Ortiz Jones in the 21st and 23rd congressional districts of Texas, with $7.2 million and $5.9 million respectively, and Nancy Goroff and Tedra Cobb in New York’s Second and 21st congressional districts, with $5.1 million and $5.5 million respectively.

In 41 congressional districts where first-term Democrats are defending seats captured from Republicans in 2018, the fundraising is lopsided in favor of the Democrats: $216.5 million to $98.2 million. Only two of the 41 Democrats have less campaign cash than their Republican challenger.

An especially financially advantaged subset is the group of 11 new Democratic representatives with military-intelligence backgrounds, whom the WSWS identified in 2018 as the CIA Democrats. In their 11 reelection contests, the CIA Democrats have raised $62.5 million. Their 11 Republican opponents have raised only $21.4 million.

All 11 CIA Democrats are favored to win reelection, and they will be joined by at least one military-intelligence candidate who won his primary in the heavily Democratic Fourth Congressional District in Massachusetts, and is a prohibitive favorite, Jake Auchincloss. Several more such candidates are likely to win on November 3: Jackie Gordon in the Second Congressional District of New York; Dan Feehan in the First Congressional District of Minnesota; Sri Preston Kulkarni in the 22nd Congressional District of Texas; and Gina Ortiz Jones in the 23rd Congressional District of Texas.

The result of the election is likely to be a greatly strengthened group of CIA Democrats, including Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, first elected in 2014 and the founder of the VoteVets political action committee that has been responsible for recruiting and funding many of the military-intelligence candidates in the last two elections. Together with the 11 elected in 2018 and another half dozen or so in 2020, this would make a “caucus” of nearly 20, enough to exercise considerable influence in the new Congress and in a future Biden administration.

 

REMEMBER WHEN BRIBES SUCKING LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS SAID OL' JOE'S FINANCES WERE ENTIRELY 'TRANSPARENT'?

This Is How the Left's Power Structure Collapses

By David Prentice

Weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh mentioned that the issues defining the election had not come forward yet.  He was correct.  Not entirely, because all the issues coming out right now have existed.  In plain sight.

They just weren't distilled yet.

It's now here, served up on a silver platter.  No, not Hunter Biden.  This Hunter Biden laptop story simply leads us to the issue.  The word.  One word that rules them all, and in the darkness binds them.

Corruption.

There it is.  That's the issue.  To begin, you have the corrupt family Biden.  They've been scamming us and our system well for almost fifty years.  The man is supposedly worth over 250 million dollars.  How is this possible on his salary?  It's not.  So where did his wealth come from?  Not from being a brilliant businessman.

Enter Hunter's laptop.  We now know that this is a family steeped in crime and corruption.  Ole Corn Pop appears to be awash in money kicked back to him by his family members who have grifted off his reputation for years.  Hunter's laptop has betrayed all this and more.  Much like Al Capone's bookkeeper.  Who would have thought Capone would have been destroyed so completely by a set of crooked books?  Such delicious irony.  And who would have known that this would become the October surprise of all October surprises?

Corruption.  Full grown.  Oozing its way into America.  It's everywhere on the left.  The Biden family.  Clintons.  The Democratic Party.  The FBI.  The CIA.  The mainstream media.  The tech giants.  It's a full-out plague, aided and abetted by their demonic philosophy, all of them gone astray.

All of them corrupt.

The New York Post story has been there for about a week now.  The Democrat-media complex has ignored it entirely; the tech giants went into overdrive removing all evidence from their platforms.  Google.  Facebook.  Twitter.  Instagram.  The whole lot of them.  Covering up a story that deserved universal distribution and condemnation.  Instead, they covered up the most damning story to their side, their chosen side.  All of them colluded to bury this mounting evidence of wrongdoing.

How far the mighty have fallen.  And are falling.

What's the word for a media establishment that won't report this story?

What's the word for the FBI having this laptop for almost a year, watching dispassionately as the Democrats impeached Trump with hard evidence in their hands of his innocence and the Bidens' guilt?

What's the word for the above group of bad actors colluding to forward the Russia lies for almost three years?

What's the word for Director Wray's involvement?

What's the word for CIA director not releasing documents of the Russia hoax, documents that have been available for a long time?

What's the all-encompassing word that has been revealed at the heart of all these colluding to hide the truth from an America that deserves to know?

Corruption.

This is an issue that won't go away.  All the attempts to deep-six the truth here are failing, and miserably at that.  It's causing a slow-walk of information to drip out to the American public.  First the stories of Ukraine.  Drip-drip-drip.  Then the stories of drugs.  Then the sex problems.  Then the Chinese stories.  The story of kickbacks to Pop.

It's as if all the smartest people in the world colluded to destroy themselves.  By purposefully and unanimously excluding all information concerning this story from the American public.  The smartest people in the world actually believe they can be successful in spiking one of the biggest stories to pop up in any American election cycle.  Their hubris is so advanced, so viral, so awful, that they can't see what they've done to themselves.  They really believe they are going to keep a cork on this.

The derogatory phrase for the establishment has been "the swamp."  How bad is this, how deep is this, how criminal is this, how horrifying is it to find out the vast amount of corruption and collusion in so many of our institutions and corporations?

It's staggering.  It's infuriating.

These are the most powerful among us.  All rich.  All corrupt.  All once respected by Americans of all stripes.  And here, in one fell swoop, they reveal themselves to the average American.  As arrogant bullies, as deceitful liars, as evil as anything we've seen in our generation.  They have revealed themselves as the cabal of darkness.  Terrible motives, terrible actions, virtually unforgiveable in what they have done, and yet failed to finish.  And due to the hubris of the cabal, the exposé will be slow-walked until the election.

Today, Trump had an exchange with reporters, where he said, "Biden was a criminal."

This shocked the corrupt media.  Reverberations rocked the corrupto-sphere.  The lion had roared.  There is no way the corrupto-sphere keeps this lid on.  There is also no way all these corrupt actors go back on their solemn pledge to one another.  They are bound together.  They're stuck with each other.  And it will overwhelm them.

As this careens into the debate, as this careens into voting, as this careens into Election Day, the ultimate narrative will be set.  The doomsday clock will start.  All the corrupt actors will be pointed out.  All of them will rue the day they couldn't get rid of Donald Trump.  He, above most anyone, knows just how corrupt these people are.  He above anyone knows how to handle them.  He, above all, knows what's all coming out in the next weeks.

It's going to be an avalanche of material.  It's going to be a number of fires even Google, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the DNC, the Bidens, the media, the corrupt government officials, the whole shooting match, will not be able to handle.  If they all overtly held emergency meetings with each other, they'd never stop the flood.  When Trump roared, you know he had one of his famous moments, that moment when he knows how and when to bring this to a head.  Trump the narrative-builder, Trump the destroyer will be unleashing hell on these people.

Anyone who has seen him operate knows.  This is his time.  This is how the beginning of the end of the swamp, or should I say the sewer, begins.  This is the kind of chaos these smartest people in the world, ever, haven't seen before.  Algorithms will not help them.  Censorship will not help them.  It will be a rushing mighty wind, coming to destroy all those who didn't understand that their corruption could be turned on them.

This is going to be epic.  Corruption will be their end; it's just a matter of time.  And Trump will have four years to finish their corruption.

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