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Welcome To America Last: Joe Bidenâs Dangerous First Month
âȘ The collateral damage of the Democratsâ irrational obsession with Donald Trump includes direct attacks on Trumpâs transformative policies that rescued both an underperforming economy, and a foreign policy dangerously mired in stale ânew world orderâ narratives. In just one month the extent of the Democratsâ damage is obvious, with more to come if Bidenâs plans secure legislative approval…
Exhibit One is the COVID relief and stimulus package grift, a nearly $2 trillion boondoggle crammed full of payoffs to political clients like blue-state governments for goodies that have nothing to do with the virus; like nearly $1 trillion in spending for state and local governments, housing aid, and which also includes $130 billion for schools, although between $53 and $63 billion still remains unspent from last yearâs COVID Education Relief Funds. Thereâs also tons more dough for Medicaid expansion, nutrition assistance programs, and raising the tax credits for dependent children; all the usual bribes doled out by redistributionist progressives. And donât forget the $1 billion for âvaccines confidence activities,â progressive marketing ânudgesâ to push people to do exactly what government wants.
Coming right after the previous administrationâs largesse, this new spending binge is totally reprehensible. At least last Spring there was a reason for spending money to mitigate the economic impact of the lockdowns, lost jobs and shuttered small businesses. The December bill was even more problematic; but, handing out free money so near an election is too useful to give up. However now that we are closer to easing the lockdowns and getting the economy back up to speed, this is not the time to load up on even more debt and distort markets with âstimulusâ money that rarely stimulates the economy while rewarding partisan clients. And because an estimated $1 trillion in various relief and stimulus programs from last year still hasnât been spent or remains unaccounted for, borrowing even more is pure fiscal malfeasance.
Remember if this bill passes, another $2 trillion will be piled onto our already $27 trillion national debt, surpassing GDP for the first time since World War II. The inevitable reckoning for this chronic bipartisan debt and deficit binge; along with all the unfunded federal liabilities and entitlement spending for a growing and longer-living population of recipients; will now be much closer than ever before.
Exhibit Two: Biden is now taking steps to implement the economy killing, multi-trillion dollar Green New Deal war on fossil fuels. He has banned fracking and drilling on all federal lands and cancelled the Keystone Pipeline Project by executive order. He’s also rejoined the pointless Paris Climate Accords and instructed every federal agency to make âclimate changeâ their top priority. In other words, all the cheap energy that fueled the last two centuries of astonishing industrial, economic growth and lifted billions out of poverty are now targeted for elimination; not only threatening our own future economic growth & efficiency, but also stalling the economic growth of developing nations who cannot afford the luxuries of trendy âsustainable energyâ and electric cars of the rich and well-fed West.
Still worse yet, the reasoning behind all of this economic self-immolation seems to be the claimed catastrophic consequences of increasing further CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. All based on a dubious, compromised science propped up by sketchy evidence and purposely gamed computer models. The late S. Fred Singer, one of the most consequential physicists of the postwar period, spent almost 40 years exposing the shoddy science and crass political agenda of Anthropogenic Catastrophic Global Warming. In the third edition of his book, Hot Talk, Cold Science, he presents scientific facts that directly challenge this failed warming hypothesis held so dear by the globalist elite who are ever eager to use any crisis to justify their expansion of power over people, governments, and business.
Yet when finally confronted with hard facts of documented skepticism, the behavior of climate warmists ultimately gives away their game. The legitimate âMethod of Science,â as Karl Popper wrote, âis making bold conjectures along with the ingenious, severe attempts to refute them.â Instead, the preferred method of the climate-change industry is to refute the natural skepticism at the heart of all scientific progress and replace it with ad hominem attacks and professional censorship of the opposition. Critics are slandered as âdeniers,â a vicious slur implying a Holocaust denial of sorts; or labelled as merely paid stooges of the fossil-fuel industry. Most damning of all is the fact that even if the U.S. institutes every possible policy of the Green New Deal and the Paris Climate Accords, global temperatures will still not stop rising, given giant pollution emitters like China and India are excluded by the accords from having to join the West in committing economic suicide.
The phony bait-and-switch tactics Biden uses to sell his climate policies; the millions of new, green jobs (10 million on Bidenâs webpage) which will be created by ramping up production of ârenewable energyâ components is nothing but an empty pipe dream. Take for example, his official âclimate czarâ John Kerry claiming how the jobs lost in the fossil-fuel industry because of the war on carbon will be replaced by new jobs making solar panels.
RealClear Policy has completely exposed & exploded this ridiculous canard. Authors Brent Orrell and Mason Bishop remind us we already wandered down that primrose policy path during the Obama administration, which also put a priority on selling renewable energy by promising millions of ânew green jobs.” It never happened.
During that time, the Obama administration directed the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to put millions of grant dollars into the hands of community colleges and other training programs to prepare workers for wind, solar, and other green jobs. What followed were the very high-profile green energy failures such as the $528 million taxpayer loss on the Solyndra boondoggle. Evidence also demonstrates wind and solar training programs fell woefully short of providing a sufficient number of high-paying jobs or sustainable employment opportunities which might have be considered as reasonable replacements for other energy intensive industries and occupations.
Moreover, wage amounts paid in wind and solar energy industry jobs are often substantially less than their equivalents in the fossil fuel energy sector. Today, 60% of the World’s solar panels are manufactured in China, where labor is dirt cheap. Itâs possible Bidenâs similar green programs could initially artificially ramp-up a temporary demand for solar panels, which would be met by Chinese manufacturers rather than plants in the U.S. with American workers & much higher labor costs.
Exhibit Three: Thereâs Bidenâs dramatic changes in foreign policy which promise to undo all of the progress made by Trumpâs realist policies of keeping âmaximum pressureâ on the mullahs in Teheran along with the threat of swift & punitive reprisals should Iran attack or kill any Americans. Continuing in the Obama tradition of appeasement to America’s enemies, Biden has telegraphed his desperate & pathetic desire to reengage with Iran; despite its record of gaming the nuclear deal and violating all previous agreements. With Biden as president, it comes as no surprise Iran has once again taken the hard line; refusing any negotiations until all Trump-era sanctions are lifted. Iran has also repeatedly threatened to end all international monitoring of its nuclear development infrastructure, while continuing to work toward nuclear weapons capability. Sensing Bidenâs weakness, an Iranian terrorist proxy recently attacked a U.S. military base in Iraq, killing a civilian contractor and wounding 9 others, including a member of the armed forces.
How did Biden respond to this aggression? He immediately caved to Iranâs demands. Biden has also accepted offers from the European Union for them to mediate new talks with Iran in order to get America back into the old, failed nuclear deal. An extremely dangerous move given how eager France, Britain, and Germany are to resume their business as usual with Iran. As the Wall Street Journal reported, âWashington now has effectively acknowledged that Tehran has the right to purchase advanced weapons. Itâs a strange way to âhold accountableâ people trying to kill Americans.â
Iran contemptuously dismissed the Europeansâ offer, since they insist they will only resume talks if the fatally flawed 2015 nuclear deal is fully restored and all sanctions lifted. Their insistence on these demands was very clear even last November right before the election. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani boasted, âIt is not important who is elected president, as the next U.S. administration will surrender to the Iranian nation.â Why wouldnât he be so arrogant? He already took Obama and his team to the cleaners once before, and many veterans of that same shameful capitulation are now serving as advisors in the Biden administration.
Should Biden completely give in to all of Iranâs demands, the repercussions for Americaâs global prestige and influence will be extremely dramatic and damaging. Our enemies and Western European allies both prefer an âAmerica Lastâ to âAmerica Firstâ approach; except when it comes to us directly subsiding their national security. Weâre already beginning to see consternation among our Middle East allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia, both targets of Iranian aggression and both diplomatically distanced by Biden. Considering Bidenâs obvious, contemptuous snubbing of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, itâs no wonder the Iranians; now economically reeling from Trumpâs sanctions would calculate yet another capitulation is in the works. To paraphrase Winston Churchill during the 1938 Czechoslovakian crisis, âAmerica and Europe at this time presented a front of two over-ripe melons crushed together; whereas what was needed was a gleam of steel.â
These are only just a few of Bidenâs actions during his first month in office which have signaled an âAmerica Lastâ governing philosophy to the rest of the World. Should he continue on this path, our economy will continue to suffer and our foreign policy will regress back to Obamaâs feckless âleading from behindâ and vanishing âred lines.â Then the leftist slur that America is the opposite of âgreatâ will indeed become fact. âȘ
