A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Are you angry yet? You should be. Our economy is slowing, banks are reeling, inflation remains scorching-high, real incomes are dropping, home prices are falling and Americans everywhere are becoming poorer by the minute. On top of everything else, now we have the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, infuriating bailouts and the resulting panic over banks. As with nearly everything that has gone wrong on their watch, including the inexcusable border chaos, the catastrophic pullout from Afghanistan and harmful inflation, the go-to response by the White House has been to blame President Trump.
Specifically, to blame Trump for signing legislation that loosened regulations on regional banks in 2018.That was Joe Biden’s message in the pitiful 5-minute address in which he tried but utterly failed to reassure the nation that our banking system is sound.
Here’s what Biden didn’t say: they knew. Regulators knew that Silicon Valley Bank was on the brink of failure. Supervisors spotted fatal weaknesses at the tech lender last summer, including some deemed “matters requiring immediate attention”; they told SVB management last fall that its model was flawed and could result in a run on deposits.
Despite the grave warning, the New York Times reports, management failed to change course and supervisors failed to act. By early this spring, SVB was in yet another review, this one on its risk management practices. Bottom line: there were none.
In other words, there were plenty of regulations and processes in place to prevent the catastrophe that occurred at SVB. Critics have assailed the San Francisco Fed, the supervisory authority, and its chief Mary Daly, for negligence. Some have rightly said that having SVB CEO Greg Becker on the overseer Fed board posed an obvious and dangerous conflict of interest.
It is hard to dismiss those who assert that the eagerness with which the Fed, the Treasury and the White House stepped in to bail out SVB and Signature Bank, caught in SVB’s backdraft, stemmed from the cozy relationships and giant political donations that Democrats receive from the tech community. It is, indeed, one big Happy Valley.
After all, the bailouts (which must not be called bailouts) infuriated our European allies, and are a great embarrassment to our globalist Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who surely resisted the rescue. Yellen has spent much of her tenure atop our financial edifice working to cede U.S. tax policy to international organizations. To that end she has lobbied financial regulators around the world promising, among other things, that the U.S. would never again bail out banks.
The Financial Times reports that Europe’s “top policymakers are seething” over the decision to cover all SVB’s depositors, “fearing it will undermine a globally agreed regime.” Those critics are reportedly shocked at the “total and utter incompetence” of U.S. authorities.
It did not have to be this way. Do not forget who brought us to this sorry state. Do not be fooled. There is one and only one reason that Americans are struggling, that we are heading into a recession, and our banks are on thin ice.
President Biden, Democrats in Congress, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Fed Chair Jay Powell have orchestrated a reckless trashing of our economy. In a shameless bid to buy votes, Biden and the Democrat majority in Congress spent trillions of unneeded dollars, mainly aimed at politically favored groups like the teachers’ unions and the climate lobby, driving the economy into warp speed and igniting inflation.
Jay Powell, hoping to be reappointed Fed Chair, ignored rising prices for months, continuing to buy hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of bonds and mortgage-backed securities even as inflation topped 6%, aware that his only competition for the job was Lael Brainard, an avowed “dove.” Moving faster to tackle inflation might have cost Powell his job.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Yellen became a cheerleader for blowing up the country’s deficits, all the while dismissing inflation as “small” and “manageable”; it wasn’t until the end of 2021 that she admitted it was not, after all, “transitory”. Once a respected economist, Yellen has become a political hack.
Joe Biden and Janet Yellen lie when they say the economy was “reeling” when he became president; it was actually growing at 6% and recovering nicely from the once-in-a-lifetime shutdown caused by COVID-19. Thanks to bipartisan efforts to prop up stalled businesses and consumers who had lost their jobs, the slump occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic was sharp but mercifully short-lived. The government expanded relief programs, the Fed lowered interest rates; the system was working as planned.
Jobs were coming back, inflation was only 1.4%, and consumer sentiment, key to spending, had rebounded sharply from the low of 72 on April 2020 to 79. (Last month, even before the bank problems, it stood at 67; in February 2020, before COVID hit, it stood at 101. Bravo Biden!)
Joe Biden took office and within weeks rushed to pass the American Rescue Act, throwing $1.9 trillion onto an economy plagued with supply chain problems. The bill passed with Democrat-only support, in part because Republicans recognized that it could prove inflationary (as even Democrat Larry Summers predicted.) Inflation indeed began to climb, to 4.2% in April 2021, and to a peak of 9.1% in June 2022.
The banking sector will likely calm, and inflation has dropped, but we are not out of the woods. There are recession signs aplenty and Biden has offered up a ludicrous and wasteful budget that Republicans must oppose. There will be a fight over raising the debt ceiling as the GOP pushes for needed spending restraint, which could get ugly.
But voters need to remember as the next election nears: it did not have to be this way. This was not an act of God; this was a reckless hijacking of our economy that put the entire country at risk. Voters must fire those responsible.
Liz Peek is a Fox News contributor and former partner of major bracket Wall Street firm Wertheim & Company. A former columnist for the Fiscal Times, she writes for The Hill and contributes frequently to Fox News, the New York Sun and other publications. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter @LizPeek.
It’s painful for me to watch so many smart pundits and politicians on both the right and the left buy into a media narrative that seeks to blame “wealthy speculators” or “tech bros” or venture capitalists for a banking crisis that ultimately started in Washington. Let me explain.
If you want to understand the context for the crisis, look at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chair’s March 6 testimony — a week before Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse — where he explains that banks were sitting on $620 billion of unrealized losses from long-dated bonds. This provided the tinder for the crisis.
The match was lit when SVB announced on Wednesday, March 9, that it had effectively sold all of its available-for-sale securities and needed to raise fresh capital because of large unrealized losses from its mortgage bond portfolio.
Screenshot: Wall Street Journal
On Thursday morning, the financial press widely reported SVB’s need for new capital, and short sellers were all over the stock. The CEO’s disastrous “don’t panic” call later that morning only heightened fears and undermined confidence in the bank.
The idea that one needed “non-public information” to understand that SVB was at risk is drivel being peddled by populist demagogues. Any depositor who could read The Wall Street Journal or watch the stock ticker could understand there was no upside in waiting to see what would happen next.
By Friday, the run on other banks had begun. This became abundantly clear when regulators placed Signature Bank in receivership, announced a backstop facility for First Republic, and temporarily halted trading of regional bank stocks on Monday. Even trading of Schwab was halted.
Some unscrupulous reporters and political types have even claimed that I somehow caused this through my tweeting. Dang, they must think I’m Superman! Or maybe E.F. Hutton. But the timing doesn’t line up at all, as I already explained.
In the never-ending quest for scapegoats, some reporters and political types are asking if @theallinpod could have influenced the bank run. We didn't publish until Saturday morning when banks were already closed! I also never tweeted about SVB until it was already in receivership… https://t.co/ryRP3qx0Kl
Once the run on the bank started, decisive action by the Fed was imperative. This meant protecting deposits (uninsured are 50 percent) and backstopping regional banks. No matter how distasteful you may find those things to be, preventing a greater economic calamity was necessary.
But back to SVB: Its collapse was first and foremost a result of its own poor risk management and communications. It should have hedged its interest rate risk. And it should have raised the necessary capital months ago through an offering that didn’t spook the street.
SVB doesn’t deserve a bailout and isn’t getting one. SVB’s stockholders, bondholders, and stock options are getting wiped out. The executives will spend years in litigation and may have stock sales clawed back. Anyone who thinks there’s a “moral hazard” isn’t paying attention.
But it’s important to understand that SVB’s failure didn’t arise from risky startups doing risky startup things. It arose from SVB’s over-exposure to boring old mortgage bonds, which were considered safe at the time SVB bought them. Perhaps this is why SVB had an “A” rating from Moody’s and had passed all of its regulatory exams.
What turned the mortgage bonds toxic? The most rapid rate-tightening cycle we’ve seen in decades. You can see the connection here between rapid rate hikes and unrealized losses in the banking system.
So, what caused the rapid rate hikes? The worst inflation in 40 years. And what caused that? Profligate spending and money printing coming out of Washington — all while Joe Biden, Janet Yellen, and Jerome Powell assured us inflation was “transitory.”
I warned two years ago that pumping trillions of dollars of stimulus into an already hot economy was an unprecedented and likely dangerous experiment. But this was Bidenomics.
Bidenomics = pumping trillions of dollars of stimulus into a rip-roaring economy. I’m not going to pretend like I know what’s going to happen next. AFAIK we’ve never tried this before.
So, when Joe Biden says he’s going to hold those responsible for this mess fully accountable, he ought to start by looking in the mirror. But I’m sure that’s not going to happen, just as I’m sure the hunt for scapegoats is just beginning.
David Sacks is an entrepreneur and author who specializes in digital technology firms. He is a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital fund Craft Ventures and was the founding COO of PayPal.
Arecession is coming in 2023, concluded more than two-thirds of the economists at big financial institutions recently surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. Inflation is also likely to remain high. Measuring year-over-year inflation by the U.S. government’s 1980s methodology put it at 15.23 percent in November 2022 instead of the government’s claimed 7.11 percent, according to economist John Williams.
Many commentators, including me, were wrong when we previously claimed our grandkids will be paying off America’s massively unaffordable welfare state. We are all paying for it right now and are likely to be for much of our lives in inflation and other economic devastation.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman’s maxim that “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon” — meaning, inflation is always caused by government overspending — predicts continued inflation for at least the next five years, if not longer.
That’s because government entities are continuing to engage in seriously inflationary actions. They’re doing this partly because of ideology, partly to buy votes, and partly because they prefer eating away Americans’ savings to paying off the unprecedented government debt that politicians have accumulated in the last 70 years enriching their friends and buying off voters.
Inflation Means Politicians Stealing from You
A 2021 Politico profile of a former U.S. Federal Reserve member noted, “Between 2008 and 2014, the Federal Reserve printed more than $3.5 trillion in new bills. To put that in perspective, it’s roughly triple the amount of money that the Fed created in its first 95 years of existence. Three centuries’ worth of growth in the money supply was crammed into a few short years.”
That dissenting former Federal Reserve committee member, Thomas Hoenig, “was worried primarily that the Fed was taking a risky path that would deepen income inequality, stoke dangerous asset bubbles and enrich the biggest banks over everyone else,” the profile says. “He also warned that it would suck the Fed into a money-printing quagmire that the central bank would not be able to escape without destabilizing the entire financial system.”
Essentially, the Federal Reserve has been helping Congress manufacture money to buy up the public debt they contracted by promising Americans more stuff than we can pay for. That’s been ongoing since the 1960s Great Society, which basically paid Americans with unaffordable entitlements to shut up about the steady loss of their constitutional freedoms, according to scholar Christopher Caldwell.
The Borrowing Will Go On Until It Can’t
In 2021, 41 percent of federal spendingdependedon borrowing. In 2022, 22 percent did. This means raising the cost of debt by hiking interest rates, as the Fed is now doing, could provoke a crisis because it would make Congress’s unsustainable behavior even more painful.
As a Manhattan Institute analysis by economist Brian Riedl notes, “rising interest rates risk pushing government interest costs, annual budget deficits, and total government debt to unsustainable levels … once the debt surges, even modest interest-rate movements can impose stratospheric costs.”
This would call years of government bluffing about the state of federal finances and institutions. It would require Congress not only to stop spending but to cut programs, which means angering voters. It would usher in the unavoidable and painful new era of managing America’s decline.
“Once a debt-and-interest-rate spiral begins, it is nearly impossible to escape without drastic inflation or fiscal consolidation,” Riedl notes.
However this ends, it is likely to include a lot of economic pain, one way or another. Here are just a few of the many indicators that inflationary times are not going away fast.
1. ‘Covid’ Overspending Continues Until at Least 2024
The funds for the sixth waste-packed “Covid relief bill” will be distributed to big-government donors, states, and local governments through the end of presidential election year 2024. Yes, the American Rescue Plan Act from Covid-tide sends states and local governments $350 billion that is still being rolled out — by design.
That law’s total spending comprises more than 100 times states’ 2020 budget shortfalls, and many state and local governments can hardly figure out what to do with all the money. As they take years to spend it, that money will keep juicing inflationary pressure. A similar effect is occurring with all the so-called Covid relief bills, which together sent $6 trillion spinning through the economy, devaluing our currency. Much of this wild inflationary deficit spending has been electronically printed through the Federal Reserve.
Together, 2020s federal spending allegedly in response to Covid was more than double the inflation-adjusted federal response to the 1930s Great Depression. We’re already seeing the inflationary effects of all this so-called Covid spending, and it’s not over yet.
2. Democrats and Republicans Recently Went on Even More Inflationary Spending Binges
In conjunction with Democrats’ mega-spending “infrastructure” and “green energy” bills soon after Covid that also helped them win Congress and the presidency in 2020, all this extra spending is projected to increase the federal debt by an unprecedented $6.5 trillion, costing more than the 20 years of U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Riedl.
“In other words, the U.S. government is in the early stages of what is projected to be the largest government debt binge in world history,” Riedl notes.
That doesn’t even include the massive federal spending expansions to support a large army of grifters profiting off the human suffering of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022. Congress spent more on the first four months of Ukraine’s war than it did on the first five years of its undeclared war in Afghanistan.
Atop all this, more deficit spending is likely to come. In August 2022, Democrats confirmed yet again that historic levels of inflation that year were no impediment to their big-spending aims when Biden announced that he’d force taxpayers to assume up to nearly $1 trillion in student loans taken on by largely higher-income professionals. That spending is tied up in court and could be allowed at any time.
This all means that the source of inflation — government overspending — is at an unprecedented rate and pace, and even with the House Freedom Caucus’ negotiated limits on congressional spending activity, trillions in new spending is already locked in.
3. Build Back Bankrupt Shoveled Yet More Out the Door for Years to Come
In 2022, the Biden administration managed to get its top-priority grab-bag of increased government spending signed into law. By spending more money the government does not have and imposing more taxes, the ridiculously named Inflation Reduction Act is likely to increase inflation, said a Tax Foundation analysis.
“By increasing spending, the bill worsens inflation, especially in the first four years, as revenue raisers take time to ramp up and the deficit increases,” the foundation’s analysis says. “We find that budget deficits would increase from 2023 to 2026, potentially worsening inflation.”
Continuing to shovel money to cronies while ignoring major structural problems in the U.S. economy and federal budget process has become a hallmark of Congress in the 2000s. This has to end at some point, but until that point comes reasonable people can only expect such legislation to continue to pass, and to continue to worsen inflationary pressures.
Given how reckless both parties have been for decades on fiscal matters, it is likely this norm of spending money Congress can’t actually appropriate will continue until a major disaster ends their ability to fake.
4. Federal Officials Are Destroying the People’s Trust
Inflation happens “When money is no longer a trustworthy measure of value,” note Steve Forbes, Nathan Lewis, and Elizabeth Ames in their 2022 book, “Inflation.” Inflation is at least partly about a crisis of confidence in government — a warranted one, usually, because major inflation occurs as a result of politician malfeasance. Unfortunately, U.S. government officials are doing nothing to restore the people’s lost confidence in them — in fact, just the opposite.
In 2022, federal officials spent months denying inflation was happening. They also denied the United States was in a recession, insisting the traditional definition of two economic quarters in contraction was false when it was applied under Democrat rule. They’ve switched how they measure inflation to hide a large part of it.
U.S. leaders also refuse to stabilize our currency, instead taking actions that further erode Americans’ ability to put food on the table and get ahead through legitimately productive honest labor (as opposed to bullsh-t jobs). This does the opposite of what is needed: restore confidence in our markets by announcing strong steps to strengthen the U.S. dollar. They are also engaging in other activities that only erode confidence in the U.S. financial system, such as monetizing the federal debt and refusing to stop massive deficit spending.
Because politicians have created this situation and keep refusing to actually address it, Americans increasingly don’t trust their government or our debt-driven financial system. Polling shows public trust repeatedly hitting new record lows for every social and political institution. That’s an economic problem as well as a political and cultural problem, because a lack of confidence in markets can trigger economic growth, recession, and panics.
Usually, such crises build under the surface for a long time and then burst out into the open all of a sudden. As Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane said during a panel discussion, “Debt crises are like the Spanish Inquisition; no one expects them to come. If you knew they were coming, they would have already happened.”
5. The U.S. Federal Government Is Effectively Bankrupt and Inflation Helps It Hide That
The on-books U.S. national debt of $31.5 trillion is just the tip of the iceberg. Our entitlement systems are about to start going bankrupt, adding trillions in additional financial burdens on taxpayers. Riedl notes, “The U.S. government is projected to run a staggering $112 trillion in budget deficits over the next three decades, driven mostly by Social Security and Medicare commitments that are already set in law.”
If one adds unfunded and other liabilities that government officials keep off the books such as Federal Reserve debt, the amount the U.S. national government owes is more than $200 trillion. That doesn’t include what state and local governments owe, and many of them are also bankrupt or getting there.
“No matter what interest rate you use, the U.S. needs to immediately and permanently raise every federal tax by at least one third to pay, through time, for what our government plans to spend,” Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff wrote with fellow economist John Goodman in 2021. “The alternative? Massive spending cuts. And, no, the Federal Reserve can’t make this problem go away by printing the money needed by the Treasury. This would end where it always does — in hyperinflation.”
U.S. debt, deficits, and unfunded liabilities — which together form a total picture of U.S. national economic entrapment — are the largest ever measured in world history. Besides Japan, which isn’t spending the majority of its debt on entitlements like the United States is, “Greece and Italy are the only other OECD countries with a total government debt exceeding that of the United States,” Riedl notes. Greece and Italy have had major sovereign debt crises that have destroyed their standards of living and brought their economies into long-term decline.
“When you look at these numbers, you realize we’re Argentina in 1910,” Kotlikoff told CNBC in 2018, before the alarmist Covid response and Biden presidency made things much worse. All it will take for these scary structural problems to become visible and impossible to ignore is a financial panic or another major event like a war. Oh, look, Congress is also pushing us ever-toward open war with Russia instead of toward peace. Brilliant.
6. Child Scarcity Will Drive Higher Prices
In March 2022, The Wall Street Journal reported the opinion of retired British central banker Charles Goodhart that global structural factors will drive higher inflation for years to come. Goodhart helped Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher break inflation in the 1980s. He told the Journal that the rising global crisis of child scarcity will also push inflation up for decades.
As labor becomes more scarce, he maintained, workers will push for higher wages, in turn driving up prices. At the same time, businesses will manufacture and invest more locally to help offset both labor shortages and the nationalist and geopolitical pressures curbing globalized supply chains. That will increase production costs and local workers’ bargaining power. Global savings will fall as older people consume more than they produce, spending particularly on healthcare. All that will push up interest rates, he predicted.
A meeting of global central bankers in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in August 2022 for the first time since 2019 found the bankers publicly reflecting a similar assessment, the Journal reported. “I don’t think that we are going to go back to that environment of low inflation,” European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said on a panel.
7. The People Who Did All This Are Still in Charge
This reality applies to nearly every major political problem: The same people who have created these messes are the same people who largely retain the power to respond to them. The same people writing massive spending bills that divert our economy away from productive labor and into rent-seekers’ pockets are still largely in charge of government spending.
There might have been a slight shift of power in the House, but there hasn’t in the Senate, nor in the presidency. The same guy who claims the power to “pen and phone” a trillion dollars in student loan bailouts is in office, and all his K Street and Wall Street buddies still have gleefully effective access. You can be sure this cabal of crooks isn’t going to be looking out for your best interests now that we’re about to have a potentially dangerous recession.
That may be the most significant systemic reason to expect our markets to be heading for an even rougher ride in 2023 than we’ve had from 2020 to 2022.
Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich on Monday directly called out the Biden administration’s repeated falsehoods about the economy. As election season heated up, President Joe Biden has claimed repeatedly that his policies have resulted in record deficit reduction and a record number of jobs created. But the truth is that deficit reduction and job creation are a result of the economy returning to pre-pandemic normalcy.
CBO projects that the federal budget deficit will shrink to $1.0 trillion in 2022 (it was $2.8 trillion last year) and that the annual shortfall would average $1.6 trillion from 2023 to 2032. The deficit continues to decrease as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) next year as spending related to the coronavirus pandemic wanes …
Meanwhile, despite Biden’s claim that he has created 10 million jobs, that job growth is related to people returning to the workforce. Those are not newly created jobs. In fact, as of the latest jobs report, there are only 514,000 more jobs today than in February 2020 before the pandemic.
After pointing out the facts — that Biden has neither lowered the deficit nor created millions of jobs — Heinrich asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre why Americans should take Biden seriously.
“How are people supposed to take this kind of messaging, on their most important issue, seriously when some of this feels like smoke and mirrors?” she asked.
Jean-Pierre, however, did not answer Heinrich’s question, but instead stumped for Biden and Democrats. She claimed the American Rescue Plan (which economists agree overheated the economy) “put us in a place where the economy turned back on” and attacked Republicans for opposing Biden’s inflationary agenda. Jean-Pierre even claimed, despite the CBO’s own explanation, that Biden’s policies are responsible for deficit reduction.
“None of his programs have actually reduced the deficit,” Heinrich fact-checked. “It just happened on its own.”
Oddly, Jean-Pierre repeated her claims, though she cited zero evidence, and then attacked Republicans for passing tax reform five years ago.
“What is one thing [Biden] did that reduced the deficit?” Heinrich pressed.
And with that, Jean-Pierre abruptly shut down Heinrich’s questioning and moved on to the next reporter.
10/24/22: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre youtu.be
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Democratic Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina claimed during a Thursday MSNBC appearance that the Biden administration and Congressional Democrats knew some of their moves would spur inflation.
“All of us knew this would be the case when we put in place this recovery program. Any time you put more money into the economy, prices tend to rise. And we do know that price gouging takes place and that’s what Senator Warnock is concerned about in Georgia,” Clyburn told host Jose Diaz-Balart. “We knew the moment we went to aid the Ukrainians, the Russians would do what they could possibly do to undercut this administration, so they cut this deal with OPEC nations to reduce the production of oil so as to drive the price of gasoline up.” (RELATED: JPMorgan Chase CEO Issues Another Warning On US Economy: ‘This Is Serious’)
President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan, which had $1.9 trillion in spending, into law in March 2021. Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which largely consists of green energy programs, healthcare spending and a massive increase in funding for the Internal Revenue Service, into law in August 2022.
WATCH:
The Consumer Price Index increased 8.2% year-to-year in September after rising by 8.3% in August, 8.6% in July, 9.1% in June and 8.5% in May. The Biden administration and Democrats have blamed high gas prices on Russian President Vladimir Putin, but some experts have said that President Biden’s hostility towards fossil fuel production is to blame.
“We are not going to allow these kinds of intimidations be it by big, corporations who are raising prices when they should not be or foreign countries who are doing untoward things in retaliation for our assisting our alliances that’s not going to trump, and that’s an intended pun, there our concern for people getting back on their feet in this country, getting more cash in people’s hands, getting people back to work, fixing our infrastructure,” Clyburn said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
President Joe Biden’s approval rating sank below 40% in a poll released Sunday, appearing to contradict various reports of the president making a “comeback” among voters. The ABC/Washington Post poll of 1,006 adults, 908 of whom were registered voters, reported that 53% of respondents disapproved of Biden’s job performance while only 39% approved. Respondents gave Republicans double-digit leads when asked who they trusted to handle inflation, the economy and crime. (RELATED: ‘People Are Feeling That’: Chris Christie Reveals Why New Poll Is ‘Bad News’ For Dems)
Multiplereportshave suggested Biden is making a “comeback” among voters, citing an uptick in approval in recent polls. Only 36% of those polled approved of Biden’s handling of the economy, with 74% describing it as “bad.” The economy was seen as highly important by 84% of those responding to the poll, while 76% considered inflation highly important.
The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade did not seem to help the Democrats, according to the poll, with 76% of those who supported the Dobbs ruling saying they were certain to vote as opposed to 70% of those who opposed the ruling.
Gross domestic product shrank by 0.9% in the second quarter of 2022, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, following a 1.4% decline in the first quarter. Two consecutive quarters of contraction is a commonly-used metric to determine if a recession is taking place, according to Investopedia.
The Consumer Price Index rose 8.3% year-over-year in August, following increases of 8.5% in July, 9.1% in June and 8.6% in May.
The poll had a 3.5% margin of error and was conducted Sept. 18-21.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
On the back of the August CPI report, the hotter-than-expected headline inflation and core inflation (without food and gas) numbers are being perceived as bad news for Federal Reserve policymakers. While investor expectations for next week’s meeting were that the Fed would hike the target interest rate by 75 basis points (three-quarters of a percent), there were hopes that a more positive inflation report would give the Fed cover to raise its target rate only by 50 basis points (half a percent). Now, while the 75 basis-point hike is still the expectation, there is concern the Fed may raise by a full percent.
At issue is what that means for the broader economy. The hopes that the Fed could achieve what investors call a “soft landing” — bringing down inflation without tanking the economy in the process — were never realistic and now are broadly waning. Even Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who spins every bad piece of news (and also told us inflation was going to be “transitory” and not a problem), said in an interview this weekend, “The Fed is going to need great skill and also some good luck to achieve what we sometimes call a soft landing.”
Well, it’s hard to say the Fed has a lot of skill. After years of artificially suppressing interest rates and loading up the balance sheet with trillions of dollars in assets, in March 2020 the Fed said it needed to take swift action to save the economy. Officials’ ensuing actions instead helped to destroy the economy, including enabling historic inflation.
They also told us the “transitory” inflation lie, while refusing to stop their damaging policy. In fact, they didn’t officially reverse course until after inflation had reached a 40-year high. So, depending on their skill is like depending on me not to eat a slice of pizza if it is in front of me — that is, not a high dependability rate.
The luck factor isn’t on their side, either. The Fed’s tool kit of increasing the interest rates and reducing the balance sheet (if officials ever get around to the latter) are demand-side tools. They are meant to quell consumer purchasing, reduce business investment, and slow down the economy. However, we have massive undersupply broadly throughout the economy: an undersupply of workers, food, energy, housing, and other commodities. The Fed can “print” money, but it can’t print people, food, or oil. So, the only way officials can slow things down is by substantially slowing economic activity.
We already have had two quarters of negative real GDP, so aggressively trying to slow things further isn’t the luck a soft landing needs. Add on to that the global recessionary pressure, from those self-inflicted energy issues in Europe to the real estate bubble popping and other issues in China, and the macro backdrop doesn’t present as very “lucky” for the economy, either. The Fed, along with its government cronies, has made a deliberate mess of the economy. Don’t count on skill and luck to fix it any time soon.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Discontent with left-wing policy failures is triggering massive protests all over the world. Just don’t expect to read all about it in the New York Times.
If you skim the front pages of major corporate news outlets, you’ll find no mention of the economic protests raging in Spain, Morocco, Greece, and the United Kingdom.
According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which records protests worldwide, 11 countries are currently seeing protests of more than 1,000 people in response to the rising cost of living and other economic woes in 2022. As of July 5, Carnegie had recorded protests of more than 120,000 people in France, 100,000 in Spain, 10,000 in Greece, 10,000 in Kazakhstan, 10,000 in Sri Lanka, 10,000 in India, 5,000 in Iran, 5,000 in Peru, 1,000 people in Argentina, 1,000 in Morocco, and 1,000 in the U.K.
When vaccine passports were being implemented, protests took place around the world – but there was hardly any coverage from the media.
Due to the cost of living crisis, protests are happening around the world – but again, the media turns a blind eye.
Many of the French protesters took to the streets on May Day for salary increases and against President Emmanuel Macron’s increase of the retirement age. Fifty-four people were reportedly arrested in Paris after some demonstrations turned violent. France’s economy, Europe’s third-largest, shrank in the first quarter of 2022, and in June, inflation shot up 5.8 percent compared to last year. Protesters also held demonstrations in March, with some complaining they had lost 15 to 20 percent of their purchasing power. Meanwhile, France’s answer to inflation? Keep spending; the country is throwing $20.4 billion at the problem.
In Spain, with gas subsidies, direct grants, and an increase in the minimum wage, the socialist-leaning government has seen only rising inflation rates (10.2 percent), and the accompanying price hikes are driving thousands of people onto the streets to protest. The country is finding out the hard way what a 40 percent reliance on renewable energy will do to the labor market. With its high unemployment rate at 13.65 percent as of the first quarter of 2022, labor shortages are raising prices on staple grocery items to an almost 30-year high. Thousands of demonstrators protested in March for relief in the form of tax cuts.
Meanwhile, it’s no surprise that any supply issues, aggravated or initiated by the Russia-Ukraine war, would burden Greece’s weakened economy that only just emerged from a decade-long crisis in 2018 to be sent right back by Covid shutdowns in 2020. In April, thousands gathered at a labor union-organized rally outside parliament in protest of inflation, which followed a February demonstration where about 10,000 people showed up to protest electricity prices that had leaped 56 percent, fuel prices that had jumped 21.6 percent, and natural gas prices that had skyrocketed 156 percent in January.
In India, a country locked in a vicious cycle of going into debt to pay off interest of former debts, the increasing cost of living is racking the country. In March, an estimated 50 million workers participated in a two-day strike to protest the loss of jobs and income, with communist groups organizing rallies in May decrying the high rate of inflation.
The socialist government in Argentina that led the country to default seven times and produced the largest decline in the relative standard of living in the world since 1900 is trying to do something new. On Monday, Argentina’s new economy minister Silvina Batakis announced her plan to cut the fiscal deficit — a proposal more than a thousand Argentines are protesting.
Decades of government spending and faulty economic policies have led to Argentina’s inflation rate growing to 58 percent. Prices are liquid and through the roof, with iPhones costing six months’ rent and a two-hour plane ticket equaling the cost of a month’s college tuition. Batakis plans to hold Argentina to the terms of a $44 billion debt deal it made earlier this year with the International Monetary Fund. Thousands of Argentines meanwhile flocked to protest against the economic hardships felt by the country upon cutting spending and took up banners crying for Argentina’s separation from the IMF.
The United Kingdom is suffering from a high 9.1 percent inflation rate as of May, and many are tired of the government’s response. Brits flocked out in February to protest rising costs of living, with demonstrations held in at least 25 towns and cities and signs reading, “tax the rich” and “freeze prices not the poor.” The U.K.’s inflation rate was already at 5.4 percent in January of this year due in part to the 2020 Covid shutdowns, but it has since almost doubled, largely due to the EU’s sanctions on Russian oil. In June, thousands marched down central London in protest, wanting the government to boost its welfare response.
Still reeling from the worst drought it has had in 40 years, Morocco is seeing price spikes on even the most basic goods. Thousands of Moroccans joined protests in February to decry the increasing cost of living, with unions staging more demonstrations in April. The country has high unemployment rates and large public debt, along with a heavy reliance on imports.
Aside from a scant headline here and there, America’s most popular news providers, The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and NBC, did not cover these protests, despite the French and Spanish protests being 10 to 100 times larger than the protests these corporate media giants did report.
None of these four major outlets wrote a single line on the protests of more than 100,000 demonstrators in Spain, more than 10,000 in Greece, more than 1,000 in Morocco, and more than 1,000 in the U.K. The New York Times published one lone article on the strike in India, where an estimated 50 million people walked off the job. The Washington Post has two small articles on the Argentinian protests of more than 1,000 as inflation appears set to hit 70 percent, and it has reported once on the May Day protests in France where more than 120,000 people protested government pension reforms. NBC mentioned the May Day protests once in a world report. This is the entire 2022 coverage by these media giants of these countries’ protests over economic turmoil.
Of these 11 countries, only four made any major headlines. The corporate press oftentimes only highlights these economic protests when they get so loud they can no longer be ignored, as we saw with Kazakhstan’s kill order to quell protests and the Sri Lankans’ attack on their president’s home. Over the weekend, the biased media finally began covering the Sri Lanka protests that are over 10,000 people strong — but only because footage of demonstrators swarming the president’s residence by the thousands on Saturday went viral.
Corporate media won’t talk about the rest of these protests because the countries are struggling from economically disastrous policies akin to President Joe Biden’s. Any show of economic turmoil in EU member states could be traced back to EU sanctions on Russia or green energy failures, which would fly in the face of the corporate media’s agenda. Many of these countries have inflationary monetary policies.
The leftist media will tell you about Sri Lanka, Kazakhstan, Iran, and Peru, however, but only to bolster its pro-Ukraine/anti-Russia narrative that denies the realities of war to promote Biden’s efforts to empty our pockets and replenish Ukraine’s.
In its treatment of the Kazakhstan protests, The Washington Post made sure to mention the country’s relationship with Russia. The Times’ articles on the Sri Lanka protests framed the economic downturns in terms of problems stemming from Russia’s invasion and ignored Sri Lanka’s Green Deal ban on chemical fertilizer that ultimately crashed its economy. Both CNN’s coverage of protests in Iran and NBC’s reports of those in Peru likewise stressed the Russia-Ukraine war as the cause for economic turmoil.
The media only highlight these world protests when they grow too big to ignore or when the facts can be skewed toward their preferring narratives. Cherry-picking which protests to highlight gives media cover to paint them as isolated incidents in non-Western countries instead of a worldwide trend showing the consequences of embracing left-wing policies. After all, Biden is making the same blunders in the United States, and corporate media can’t have Americans connecting those dots.
The U.S. labor market is in shambles. Inflation has skyrocketed to a 40-year high at 9.1 percent. The Biden administration is drawing down our emergency oil reserves, shipping it overseas to nations that can’t function on their “Green Energy” policies any more than we can. Irony alert: The oil will go through a European pipeline despite Biden citing climate conservation to shut down our own Keystone pipeline.
Discontent with these policy failures is triggering massive protests all over the world. Just don’t expect to read all about it in the New York Times.
Beth Whitehead is an intern at The Federalist and a journalism major at Patrick Henry College where she fondly excuses the excess amount of coffee she drinks as an occupational hazard.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
An astounding 85% of Americans said that the country was headed in the wrong direction in a recent survey. The AP-NORC survey found that only 14% of Americans said that the country was headed in the right direction, a dire result for Democrats hoping to hold on to congressional power in the midterm elections.
The percentage of Americans optimistic about the country’s direction has steadily collapsed from 29% in April to 21% in May and to 14% in June. In the newest survey 92% of Republicans and 78% of Democrats said the country was headed in the wrong direction.
Americans had a worsening negative view of President Joe Biden in the survey. Only 38% said they approved of the job Biden is doing, while 57% said they disapproved of the job he’s doing. Even worse for the president, only 28% of Americans said they approved of Biden on the economy, the lowest rating Biden has received in the survey. When asked about gun policy, only 36% said they approved of Biden’s performance.
While some progressives like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have blamed Biden’s low polling on his lack of attention for his left-wing socialist base, centrists in the part have blamed progressives for pushing unpopular policies like “defund the police” and transgender activism.
One analysis by Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research predicted that economic concerns would cost Democrats control of the House of Representatives in the upcoming midterm elections.
“The most recent readings of most economic indicators we examine suggest that Democrats will lose the majority after this year’s elections,” the group wrote. “While falling real disposable income suggests a large loss, most other indicators suggest… a loss of 15 to 25 seats.”
Here’s more about the pessimism of Americans:
AP-NORC Poll: Pessimism about US economy deepens www.youtube.com
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
Know-nothing pundits and politicians have been communicating to Americans that inflation is, like the weather, a mystery they can’t control. That’s simply not true, write three economic commentators in a soon-published book, “Inflation: What It Is, Why It’s Bad, And How to Fix It.” On the contrary: inflation is a direct result of governments cheating their people, and solving it is pretty simple, if politically difficult.
In the book, businessman Steve Forbes, economist Nathan Lewis, and business journalist Elizabeth Ames give laypeople a concise, readable introduction to monetary policy. They also lay out easy-to-understand policy and personal prescriptions for responding to an inflationary economy such as today’s. The book is short and immensely useful for those of us who are not economic experts or finance minds and just want politicians to stop stealing our hard-earned money and endangering our nation’s security.
It would also be useful to members of Congress and other government officials with the authority to address what especially for the poorest Americans is a frightful economic situation. The authors lay out a one-year plan for stopping inflation in its tracks based on historical and international experience.
In the course of explaining what inflation is and how it works, the authors make the important point that it’s not just about money. Inflation is deeply connected to societal flourishing in general. Societies in which inflation is rampant are often unstable, chaotic, and violent.
“Markets are people,” the authors write. “When money is no longer a reliable unit of value, not only trade but social relationships ultimately unravel. Nations afflicted by extreme inflation end up experiencing higher levels of crime, corruption, and social unrest. As we have seen throughout history, the end result can be a tragic turn to strongmen and dictators.”
After electing a socialist president, Peru hit a 25+ year record inflation rate. The result? Citizens are now rioting over unaffordable food & gas prices.
Meanwhile, in the U.S., Democrat elites dismiss Americans’ concerns over 40+ year record inflation. pic.twitter.com/X8YIHnsDc1
— María Elvira Salazar 🇺🇸 (@MaElviraSalazar) April 8, 2022
In an inflationary economy, the winners are the rich, the well-connected, and the corrupt. The losers are the poor, the middle-class, and those who work hard and play by the rules. Thus, an inflationary economy is inherently an unjust system. This is the top reason it should be combatted.
Not surprisingly, then, the rich and powerful often insist some inflation is a good thing. Maintaining a consistent level of inflation is in fact the Federal Reserve’s open policy goal. But even a “low” level of inflation such as The Fed’s (often wildly missed) target of 2 percent a year effectively steals significant income from especially the working and middle class. For someone earning $50,000 a year, 2 percent annual inflation is a $1,000 pay cut every year. That can be the difference between saving and not saving.
Making it harder to put money aside essentially forces middle and working-class people to depend on welfare rather than their own industry. Inflation thus erodes the middle class that is the bulwark of all free societies. So when it increases, societies tend to experience chaos. More people stop working and creating, and start trying to steal from others, either through government or through crime.
It should go without saying that an unstable society and economic chaos are threats to national security. These invite aggression from foreign enemies and hinders a nation’s ability to respond. This should make policymakers take inflation seriously, but like usual, so far politicians are mostly playing the blame game instead of solving the problem.
What Causes Inflation
Inflation is not merely rising prices, even sharply rising prices. That can occur for sensible reasons, such as sudden consumer demand for some fashionable item, or a crop failure leading to natural shortages. The authors define inflation instead as “the distortion of prices that occurs when money loses value.”
That can be seen, for example, in much of the current housing spike: “If you’ve made few, if any, home improvements and the local housing market isn’t on fire, you can be sure that the near-million-dollar sale price of your house doesn’t mean that it has magically become more valuable. Its worth has been distorted by a gradual, and totally artificial, decline in the value of the dollar,” explains “Inflation.”
When people stop trusting a currency as a stable measure of value, we get inflation. This is another way inflation is not solely about economics. It’s also about the people’s faith in their government and markets. That’s why lower-trust societies are more likely to experience inflation, and inflation is likely to worsen social trust. That’s also why inflation tends to spiral until somebody steps in to restore trust in the economy.
What causes inflation? If it’s true inflation, not price shifts caused by other market factors such as fads or innovation, it amounts to “a corruption of prices resulting from the debasement of currency by governments.” In other words, inflation happens when governments decide to circulate more money without a corresponding increase in economic value. This usually happens when governments want to spend more than they have, which is what the U.S. government has been doing for decades.
Today, the Federal Reserve essentially passes on federal debts and deficit spending to American consumers by creating more money without also creating new value. It is now one of many Western central banks that “effectively financ[es] their [government] deficits by buying their debt.”
In very simple terms, inflation is the result of governments spending far more than they can openly tax from citizens, then attempting to hide their shenanigans with financial gimmicks. So it is absolutely fair to think of inflation as a tax, and as the direct fault of shady government behavior: “Moderate inflation results from short-term ‘stimulus;’ hyperinflation comes from regular money printing to pay the government’s bills…The United States has not begun directly financing itself with large-scale money printing. Unfortunately, that may already be changing.”
Ending Inflation Is a Question of Political Will
The book helpfully explains in very clear and simple detail how the Federal Reserve enables Congress’s refusal to pay for its insane spending and how that all fuels inflation. It also discusses several intricate maneuvers by which this happens and why there isn’t a direct correlation in every case between money printing and inflationary effects. I won’t go into those here, but as a non-economist I did find them very helpful for understanding what’s going on.
I also found especially insightful the authors’ observation that federal overspending is not passed on to future generations, which is what I thought previously, but is inflated away from today’s workers and savers. Inflation is a tax on a nation that is unwilling to live within its means, and it occurs not in the future but in tandem with runaway government spending.
Ending inflation is quite simple, the authors say: “Stabilize the value of money.” Yet most “inflation remedies… more often than not end up making things worse.” That’s because government officials typically either misunderstand the root causes of inflation or are unwilling to take the steps necessary to address it. Thus, governments implement price controls or “austerity” measures, which usually further destroy their economies.
Instead, what’s needed is to tighten the money supply. The authors get into the details for doing this effectively, including their recommendation for the best way to ensure reliable money, a “new gold standard that would work in the twenty-first century.” They discuss this and respond to common arguments against it, still in highly readable prose.
Our Chief Obstacle to Fixing Inflation Is Ourselves
The key obstacle to implementing the authors’ one-year plan for restoring currency stability is widespread economic ignorance cultivated by leftist economists to preserve their control over policy. Yet given these economists have been wrong time and time again, it seems it’s high time to pay attention to experts whose recommendations have a reliable track record.
Unfortunately, since the majority of people working in Congress, the Federal Reserve, and similar commanding heights are the reason we’re in a dangerously inflationary economy in the first place, it’s probably too much to expect they will do anything other than make the situation worse in the near future. That’s why you’re hearing Joe Biden and other Democrats hint at making things worse with price controls or other punitive regulations by demonizing various industries for raising prices.
Not just because such people are at the helm, but also because they’ve already baked more money devaluation into the economic pie for the next several years, expect significant inflation to continue for quite some time. We can only hope and pray that the worst disasters of historic inflationary economies will be averted for us. And obtain some backyard chickens so we have something affordable to stick in the pot for dinner.
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Sign up here to get early access to her next ebook, “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” Her bestselling ebook is “Classic Books for Young Children.” Mrs. Pullmann identifies as native American and gender natural. She is also the author of “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books. In 2013-14 she won a Robert Novak journalism fellowship for in-depth reporting on Common Core national education mandates. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has doubled down on his out-of-touch messaging to Americans who are struggling to pay skyrocketing prices at the pump. Last month, “Mayor Pete” made headlines when he said (in all seriousness) that the obvious solution for dealing with insanely high gas prices is to just go buy an electric vehicle. Maybe Mayor Pete doesn’t realize that most of us can’t afford to buy a new car at all, let alone an EV that costs “roughly $10,000 higher than the overall industry average,” according to Kelley Blue Book.
Now, our tone-deaf transportation secretary has let Americans know that we all need to get used to “wild price hikes” until we “achieve a form of energy independence that is based on clean energy.”
Watch:
BUTTIGIEG: “Until we achieve a form of energy independence that is based on clean energy,” get used to price hikes. pic.twitter.com/UMWBrVPe9R
It amazes me how they never understand where their electricity comes, how or even where the parts come from for these EV cars, and what to do with the used batteries from them. By the time you pay off your solar panels you need new ones. Where do 95% of them come from? China
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Donald Trump.
The president of the world’s largest asset management company just issued a stark warning to members of America’s “entitled generation.”
BlackRock co-founder and president Robert Kapito said Tuesday that the global supply chain and soaring inflation crises will soon have dramatic effects on the U.S. economy that will result in a noticeable scarcity of goods not experienced before by many younger Americans. That scarcity, he said, will likely be a shock to the system for many who are accustomed to an abundant and comfortable lifestyle.
“For the first time, this generation is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want,” Kapito said, adding, “We have a very entitled generation that has never had to sacrifice.”
“I would put on your seatbelts, because this is something that we haven’t seen,” he asserted, in reference to what he called “scarcity inflation.”
Kapito’s remarks, first reported by Bloomberg News, were made at the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association convention — an annual gathering of oil and gas industry leaders. The warning comes just days after Bloomberg economists advised Americans to consider budgeting an extra $5,200 this year — or $433 monthly — to prepare for the effects of historically high inflation.
Inflation under the Biden administration has skyrocketed in the past year, rising at the fastest pace in four decades. Inflation is measured by the U.S. Consumer Price Index, which increased nearly 8% over the past 12 months, according to government data released for February 2022. The dramatically inflated prices have reportedly resulted in 64% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck. The last time inflation rose at such a fast rate was in 1982. That year, the U.S. economy went into a recession. Now, some experts are warning that another economic recession is “inevitable.”
The Biden administration has been peddling a litany of excuses for the economic downturn — including the coronavirus pandemic, corporate greed, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — but American voters reportedly aren’t buying it. A plurality of respondents to a recent NBC News poll (38%) blamed President Joe Biden for the increase in the cost of consumer goods, while just 28% blamed the coronavirus pandemic, 23% blamed corporations raising prices, and only 6% blamed Putin.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated – $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Americans are watching gas prices shoot up a bit higher every single day. Thanks to President Joe Biden’s green energy dreams and relinquishing of U.S. energy independence since his very first day in the Oval, ordinary people are paying the price. As The Federalist reported, it’s affecting everyone — from stay-at-home moms to office commuters, to small and large business owners. Biden, however, doesn’t seem to care. The president and his administration are bizarrely blaming Russian President Vladimir Putin for the high prices, which have been rising ever since Biden took office. Even worse, they’re suggesting the best way for you not to have to worry about the high prices at the pump is to buy an electric car. To prevent the stress of high gas prices in the future, “The best thing we can do is reduce our dependence on fossil fuels” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Monday.
“Loosening environmental regulations won’t lower prices,” Biden tweeted the next day. “But transforming our economy to run on electric vehicles, powered by clean energy, will mean that no one will have to worry about gas prices. It will mean tyrants like Putin won’t be able to use fossil fuels as a weapon.”
In other words, if you can’t afford to pay $4 or $5 a gallon for gasoline, just buy a Tesla.
The fact is that while the president and corporate media point the finger at Putin, Biden is the one really using “fossil fuels as a weapon.” The Democrats in charge don’t care that you can’t afford to leave your house if it means they can force their green energy agenda. Pricing gas-powered drivers out of the market is a feature, not a bug, and they’ve been admitting it all along.
You’ll remember how after the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack, when low supply and high demand caused a gasoline price hike, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm stressed she was “all in” on achieving Biden climate goals and said with a chuckle and contempt for fuel users, “You know, if you drive an electric car, this would not be affecting you, clearly.”
“If you disagree with our policy goals, we’ll make your life a living hell and laugh while we’re doing it” is the official Democrat position.
It’s no slip of the tongue. This has been the consistent refrain from the administration. Oh, you don’t like the price of gas? Good. Buy an electric car so we can hit our climate goals, rube.
The point of Biden’s “transition” was to drive up the cost of energy.
This isn’t just the Democrats’ way of handling the green energy versus fossil fuels debate, either. This is their posture toward all their policy goals — and all the Americans who disagree with them and might threaten to hold up their agendas.
We watched it throughout Covid. When enough Americans (many of them healthy and young) didn’t get the vaccine right away, the administration cracked down and issued federal mandates that workers must get the shot if they wanted to keep their jobs. “Oh, you’re not getting vaccinated. Fine. You’re fired.”
When children were home doing schoolwork under the watchful eyes of their parents, who soon discovered gender propaganda and divisive critical race theory in their kids’ learning materials, they took the fight to their local school boards — to the dismay of Democrats, who then branded them as domestic terrorists. “Oh, you don’t like masks, CRT, and soft porn for your kids? Fine. We’ll sic federal law enforcement on you.”
Now they’re continuing the same attitude with their climate goals and the Americans who aren’t on board. “Oh, you won’t drive electric. Fine. We’ll drive gas prices so high you can’t go anywhere.”
It’s remarkable in light of what Biden, the media, and even Trump-deranged Republicans promised Americans this administration would be: a return of decency and decorum, an outstretched arm, and “unity,” “unity,” UNITY!”
Instead, Americans got nothing but division, derision, and coercion — and the continuing clear message from the administration and its allies that if you disagree with their policy goals, that’s fine. They’ll just make your life a living hell until you have no option but to give in to their control and comply with their demands.
But hey, no mean tweets.
Kylee Zempel is an assistant editor at The Federalist. She previously worked as the copy editor for the Washington Examiner magazine and as an editor and producer at National Geographic. She holds a B.S. in Communication Arts/Speech and an A.S. in Criminal Justice and writes on topics including feminism and gender issues, religious liberty, and criminal justice. Follow her on Twitter @kyleezempel.
In recent months, concern has been growing about the potential for conflict in the Taiwan Straits. American defense officials have publicly expressed worry about the ability of the United States to successfully deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) should Beijing decide to use force against the island of Taiwan. The steady increase in size and frequency of Chinese aerial intrusions into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone has exacerbated these concerns.
Are such concerns justified? Yes. To what extent does the fate of Taiwan affect the United States? A lot.
To begin with, there is the geographic importance of Taiwan. Taiwan is part of the so-called “first island chain,” stretching from Japan through Okinawa and Taiwan to the Philippines and the Straits of Malacca. This chain, if in hostile hands, is a barrier to both Chinese military and commercial access to the seas. As important, since China’s economic center of gravity is on the coast from Tianjin to Shanghai to Shenzhen, it is vulnerable to attacks from the sea — or from that same island chain.
Conversely, in Chinese hands, Taiwan and the broader first island chain will serve as a shield for China. Taiwan, in the center of that chain, would be a key factor determining whether China’s military must operate defensively or could operate offensively.
Ownership of Taiwan would provide Beijing other, greater advantages. If China were able to deploy surface-to-air missiles, radars, and airborne early-warning aircraft to Taiwan, Beijing’s warning time of any attack would be substantially increased. Long-range strike forces deployed on the island would provide the PLA Air Force and PLA Navy an unfettered ability to range deep into the central Pacific to attack oncoming forces, while also interdicting supply routes to Japan and South Korea.
This geographic importance is not solely a wartime concern. The PRC is unique. It is a land power that depends on the seas. China needs the oceans to import key resources, the most important of which is food. China is a net importer of food, including staple grains; without such imports, the Chinese population would experience skyrocketing food prices, which in turn could threaten the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
In addition, the PRC must import energy, including oil, as well as raw materials. The PRC converts said raw materials into a range of products, from steel I-beams to T-shirts to computers, and exports them around the world. All of this is by way container ships, of which China is now one of the largest producers.
Without easy access to the sea, the CCP would have trouble feeding its people, maintaining its factories, and earning income. Even with the Belt and Road Initiative and other infrastructure investments, for the moment China cannot replace its dependence upon the seas.
There is also the reality that Taiwan is a key link in the global supply chain supporting information and communications technologies. Taiwanese firms, along with South Korean and some other companies, are the key producers of microchips, the silicon-based components that effectively animate the world’s electronics. The current shortage of chips has had downstream effects across industrial sectors, extending beyond information and communications technologies to include automobiles.
Taiwanese firms have more than 60 percent of the global market share of chip production. Were China to somehow jeopardize that capacity, Beijing would have the ability to influence other countries to an overwhelming degree. This would affect not only the United States but such key allies as Japan and Germany.
It is not for the United States to determine the ultimate fate of Taiwan, or dictate the relationship between Beijing and Taipei. But it is in America’s interest to ensure that this sensitive region, with its enormous impact on global economic security, does not see the outbreak of conflict. American efforts to support a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan Straits issue, including deterring a Chinese use of force against the island of Taiwan, are an integral part of sustaining global peace and stability.
Dean Cheng is a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation.
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A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated– $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
Tucker Carlson voiced concerns about the financial inequality caused by pandemic on Friday night, noting that the same Democratic forces that are advocating for lockdowns and pushing small businesses out of the marketplace are propping up massive businesses that fray the social fabric and will destroy our free-market capitalist economy.
“Here’s another idea,” Carlson said in defense of the American taxpayer. “Why not make the people who benefited the most from the lockdown—the people who have encouraged them from day one—pay for the effects of those lockdowns?”
“Why wouldn’t you assess them a one-time COVID fee, take it out of their record profits, and make them pay for the next bailout? Why are you paying for it?”
Carlson noted the problems of income inequality that have been escalated by government’s refusal to allow people to earn a living on their own terms and to their own ability. As the pandemic debt grows, Amazon and other massive multi-national corporations are reaping the benefits while the average American taxpayer will be expected to foot the bill.
“The people in charge of our economy are discrediting our system,” he said. “They are giving capitalism a bad name, because what they are participating in is not a market economy, a free open market economy, it’s a closed game run for their own benefit and their benefit alone. Long term this is a disaster for all of us,” he said.
Where calls for socialism have escalated on the Democratic left, under the guise of believing government hand-outs can solve all problems, there has been a disproportionate strain on small businesses while lockdowns have choked the effectiveness of a market economy.
Carlson suggested that the big winners of the pandemic, large, Democrat-party backed corporations like Apple, Amazon, Walmart, should share in the burden of the economic devastation left behind by COVID-19 that has crippled business and markets that would have otherwise remained opened and operational.
“There’s no reason ordinary taxpayers should be on the hook for their spending, they have suffered enough,” Carlson said. He said that universities should pay off student loan debt with their massive endowments, and that the biggest companies should not be profiting at the expense of small businesses.
At its heart, capitalism is driven by a free and voluntary exchange of goods and services. This, per free-market thinking, will allow consumers to purchase products that bring them the most value while providers will endeavor to offer the best product possible at the lowest cost.
But due to shutdowns and restrictions aimed at stopping the spread of COVID-19, the space for a “free and voluntary” exchange has altogether disappeared for entire industries. With a greater demand to re-distributive, socialist policies, Carlson believes that capitalism—as a system—needs to be re-validated in the eyes of Americans. Carlson voiced frustrations that a market economy has been crippled by government restrictions and then given a bad name.
“What they are participating in is not a market economy, a free and open market economy—it’s a closed game, run for their own benefit and their benefit alone,” Carlson said.
It has been a long-standing GOP talking point to specifically not talk about income inequality, and Carlson appears to be breaking ranks over bringing it up on his show. But there’s a difference to Carlson, and to many on the new right that advocates for working class Americans over profit margins, between allowing corporate interests to run rough-shod over the American republic and advocating for a free and open marketplace where individuals can earn and succeed as a result of their own hard work.
The progressive politicians in the House, and at the state level, continue to advocate for the shuttering of our small businesses, while advocating for the giants of industry to stay open and operational. It is those same giants of industry that fill the Democratic party’s pockets, back their unfair policies, and claim they are doing it all for the public good.
My parents and in-laws haven’t seen their grandkids in nearly a year. Because we live states apart, the most time we spend together is during the holidays and a week in the summer. Due to the lockdown this year, the grandparents have only been able to see our kids during video calls.
It could be worse; some dear friends of ours buried a parent during the lockdown with no guests or funeral, and the grandchildren had to stay away. Family bonds do more than just unite people with the same origin or name, however. Those bonds hold us up and together during times of struggle and grief.
These painful life events can shape our perspectives for the remainder of our time on Earth. I learned a lot about dealing with grief when I attended family funerals growing up. When my grandmother passed away years ago, my cousins and I stood solemnly together as we watched our aunts and uncles say their final graveside goodbyes.
When our uncles walked my grandpa to her casket, we witnessed this quiet, strong man cry for the first time in our lives. I would not have been able to watch it without the rest of my family there. He didn’t just cry; his sobs shook his thin, 6’3” frame and threw him off balance. He leaned on the casket to help support his weight, and we gave him a moment before swarming him for comfort.
The sight was a shock that swept us into a new reality: We, the grandkids, wouldn’t be “the grandkids” in our family’s hierarchy much longer. Each generation took one step up that imaginary staircase with the death of our grandparents. Our kids assumed the step below us where we once stood. The presence of family makes that meeting with mortality easier to process.
I had just given birth to my second child when my grandfather passed away, living long enough to learn that his second great-grandson was on this Earth, miles away from him, but healthy. I didn’t get to attend his funeral because it was too soon after childbirth, the day I brought my baby home.
That night, I rocked my son to sleep in the solitude and darkness of his nursery and cried until there was nothing left in my soul to expend. That heavy sort of grief is meant to be borne by more than one. It took a long while to get past that.
Lockdowns Have Caused Immense Harm
That’s the closest experience I have to compare when I read about grief during lockdowns. This is why my heart truly breaks over stories from others who were forced by lockdowns and restrictions to endure this with their loved ones.
The emotional dam of a non-political, grief-stricken friend burst forth on Facebook after she read about politicians defending protest gatherings while she and her sister had to bury their father alone, just themselves, on a cold, clear March day earlier this year. The pain seems endless, and the lockdowns have predictably caused immense unintended consequences:
Depression rates for every age demographic have tripled.
Sixty percent of small businesses that closed during the last lockdown will not reopen, and others barely hanging on are giving up.
Even though schools aren’t superspreaders and medical professionals have been telling districts to reopen, many haven’t. New York City just closed its schools again.
Deaths from non-coronavirus health issues have climbed since the start of the last lockdown as people don’t seek medical care for treatable illnesses. The lockdown could kill more than the virus.
‘Experts’ Have Given Us Every Reason Not to Trust Them
Later, Fauci admitted he lied when he told people masks weren’t essential. Politicians and “experts” shouldn’t be surprised when their actions like these make reasonable people lose faith in their leadership and unwilling to follow their rules.
Many of us comforted ourselves through the dark, lonely spring and desolate summer with visions of family gatherings over the holidays. Now we’re told to skip those too or just have a “virtual Thanksgiving.” If you can’t do that, limit guests, make everyone wear masks, stay away from each other, and have everyone bring their own food — unless your name rhymes with Schmavin Twosome, that is:
California Medical Association officials were among the guests seated next to Gov. Gavin Newsom at a top California political operative’s opulent birthday dinner at the French Laundry restaurant this month.
CEO Dustin Corcoran and top CMA lobbyist Janus Norman both joined the dinner at the French Laundry, an elite Napa fine dining restaurant, to celebrate the 50th birthday of lobbyist and longtime Newsom adviser Jason Kinney, a representative of the powerful interest group confirmed Wednesday morning.
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker dodged a reporter’s question about his family’s Thanksgiving plans — they traveled to their second home in Florida — and it made the rounds on social media. Pritzker had to return to do damage control: “I was taken aback by yesterday’s question about my family’s holiday plans, in part because my wife and I were in the process of making the very hard decision that we may need to celebrate Thanksgiving apart from one another for the first time ever, and it was weighing heavily on my mind.”
He was “taken aback” that reporters, during a press conference about COVID-19 Thanksgiving plans, asked him if he was going to follow his own lockdown orders — especially knowing that Pritzker’s wife violated the last lockdown by fleeing to their multimillion-dollar equestrian estate in Florida?
We would be fined for this, but these Democratic governors are exempt from coronavirus and lockdown concerns, apparently. It’s not just governors, however. Don’t forget House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the shuttered salon.
Before her was Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her lockdown salon trip. Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser locked down residents while she attended Biden rallies. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo refused to wear a mask and self-quarantine.
California lawmakers lived it up in Maui during lockdown on the excuse of a “conference” (We all have to Zoom, why can’t they?). New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio went to the gym while you were locked down at home. The Daily Caller compiled a list of hypocritical lawmakers violating lockdown, and you can find an additional great thread here.
Americans Are Sick of the Double Standard
We have all sacrificed, some more than others, and we are tired of the double standard. We are sick of bureaucrats leading us around, treating us like children instead of the employers whose tax dollars form their paychecks.
Americans are weary of speculation presented as science. We are tired of being told that our businesses are nonessential, that worker lives are nonessential, and that our kids and their wellbeing are nonessential. We are sick of hearing that any deviation from the mandates passed down to us by politicians who refuse to follow the rules means sentencing our neighbors to death.
I rejected that outright:
I wrote about this accusation in April, noting that the intent of our elitist overlords is murky. Who are they to decide which workers are essential? By the politicians’ own rhetoric, those “essential” workers are actually “expendable,” since they are most susceptible to the same virus the electeds use to scare the rest of us into our homes.
For those maligning business owners as murderous monsters because they simply want to pay their bills consider this — certain businesses were declared essential: Food delivery is essential but cancer treatment isn’t. So you’re fine with risking the lives of delivery drivers to avoid picking up your pizza yourself? Is it acceptable to risk the lives of restaurant staff because you don’t want to make your own food? Is it acceptable to risk the lives and health stability of cancer patients as well as the livelihood of medical staff being furloughed around the country to demonstrate a devotion to saving lives? If you want to discuss murkiness of intent, this is it. By declaring that some people are essential, haven’t you already decided that some lives are expendable?
This is an awful virus. Unlike a military battle, this is a foe that will never be vanquished. We can vaccinate against it and build up our immunities, but just as with chickenpox, polio, and other illnesses before this virus, there is no cure, only prevention and acclimation. Overreaction is a lesser enemy, and moderation is an ally. There is a difference between reasonable concern and “Chicken Little” hysteria.
The hysteria is exhausting. We are tired of being told that contracting the virus means instant death when it emphatically does not — it has a 99.98 percent survivability rate. We are tired of being told that because some can’t venture out, no one should. Nothing in life is perfectly safe, including freedom. But freedom is a lot safer than the statist systems so many leftists champion.
It’s Time to Declare Our Freedom
As a daughter who doesn’t have much of her family left, whose kids are growing up faster than she can even capture with her phone camera, I am not going to miss out on life. I am not going to let my parents age out of this world while lying to my own heart that it’s OK if I missed an entire year or more with them. I am not going to tell my children that it’s alright if they don’t see their family anymore because we have to hide in our homes.
More than anything else, I am sick of being told I don’t have the right of risk when risk is part of freedom. I will not be lectured by people who say that eating in a restaurant with health protocols is riskier than shutting down the largest economy in the world. I won’t be bullied by bureaucrats who say it’s risker to reopen schools than to force an entire generation into lockdown for nearly a year, stunting them in every way but loneliness. I will not be shamed by lawmakers who don’t follow their own rules. I won’t be preached at by pundits too purposefully obtuse to see nuance over their partisanship.
I am going to host my parents for Thanksgiving, and I hope to host my in-laws for Christmas. I will continue living as a free and responsible American with liberties for which my family has taken bullets and mine shards, until the day comes that our government wants to stage a modernized version of 1776 by trying to end that perfectly wonderful freedom.
As Teddy Roosevelt said, “For those who fight for it, life has a flavor the sheltered will never know.” Freedom is beautiful and scary. It’s up to each of us to maintain it.
Dana Loesch is a nationally syndicated talk radio host of “The Dana Show” with Radio America and a best-selling author.
TOPSHOT – US Customs and Border Protection agents check documents of a small group of migrants, who crossed the Rio Grande from Juarez, Mexico, on May 16, 2019, in El Paso, Texas. – About 1,100 migrants from Central America and other countries are crossing into the El Paso border sector … PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images
The United States should reopen itself to migration, amnesties, refugee inflows, asylum seekers, and more temporary contract workers, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States said Tuesday.
The U.S. immigration system “has to be based on facts and realities,” Ambassador Martha Bárcena Coqui told a forum arranged by the National Immigration Forum (NIF). She continued: ‘The facts and realities is the need to protect the most vulnerable, the need to keep open the generosity towards refugees, the need to recognize the complementarity of labor markets and demographic profiles, the need for temporary workers in the United States.”
The United States should not view migration as a security threat, she said, adding, “If you conceptualize migration as a national security issue, if you [push for] securitization of migration, and what is even worse, if you criminalize migration, then your approach always be policing, contentious [and] reduction of migration. So what we need is really to conceptualize migration … as an economic and social and political phenomena.”
“With all due respect to Madam Ambassador, she should mind her own country’s business, not ours,” responded Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
“The Mexican ambassador is going to tell us what is in the best interest of Mexico,” responded Rosemary Jenks, policy director at NumbersUSA. “But that doesn’t mean we have to do it — we have to do what’s in the best interest of the United States. of American, of Americans and legal immigrants,” she told Breitbart News, adding:
You know we have the pandemic still raging, we have economic lockdowns still going on, we have unemployment way too high. We have underemployment way too high. We have American citizens hurting. We absolutely do not need to reopen mass immigration — and certainly don’t need to give amnesty and taxpayer benefits to people who came here illegally. If Mexico thinks its plan is to just open up its own southern borders in the hopes that America will open our southern borders, that’s just going to reignite the caravans. I hope that the Biden administration is planning for that because that’s not going to go well, and 2022 is not going to go well for Democrats.
More migrants are coming, the ambassador said, even though the coronavirus crash has blocked the northward flow for the moment:
The root causes of these migrations have [not] disappeared. On the contrary, we are seeing pent up, building pressure. People cannot move now because of the restrictions on movement because of the pandemic. But the root causes are still there, [for example], the drought in Central America … a hurricane in Nicaragua and Honduras that have totally flooded Honduras.
The United States should amnesty many illegal migrants from all over the world, she said, and also import more migrants by accepting asylum applications at U.S. embassies, so the world’s migrants will not have to travel through Mexico. “What we would like to see, of course, is that the U.S. embassies in Central America could process even more of these requests for asylum, instead of having people crossing through Mexico and asking for asylum at the border.”
The ambassador was invited to speak by the NIF, which is a business-funded activist group that promotes cheap labor migration into jobs needed by lower-skilled Americans and by legal immigrants, and also into jobs that can be automated.
Roughly three million migrants have flooded over the southern border since the rules were loosened by Congress in 2008 and by President Barack Obama’s deputies in 2011. Trump stopped the flow in 2020, but few of the migrants — or of roughly 300,000 younger “Unaccompanied Alien Children” — have been sent home because they are being protected by pro-migrant immigration lawyers, by pro-diversity progressives, and cheap labor employers in sanctuary cities.
The large U.S. population of illegal immigrants helps to push down wages for Americans, push disadvantaged workers out of the labor force, reduce corporate investment in technology and training, and spike corporate sales and profits. The large population also shifts the U.S. politics from a focus on Americans’ jobs and wages, and then towards a politics focused on business demands and the 1950’s claim by elites that the United States is a diverse “nation of immigrants,” not a cooperative nation for all Americans.
The flood of cheap labor that is being promoted by the ambassador would be a disaster for Americans, Jenks said. “They would absolutely destroy the employment opportunities for lower-skilled Americans, particularly for minorities and legal immigrants. It would reduce wages among the people who can least afford reduced wages and put downward pressure on everyone else’s wages. The people who would benefit from it, of course, would be the elites who can hire nannies, maids, and housekeepers, and who go stay at resorts and so on, while the rest of us suffer.”
The ambassador’s statement, Krikorian told Breitbart News, “suggests that the [President Donald] Trump really was getting Mexico to change its behavior [after 2018] and that once Trump is gone, the Mexican approach these issues will revert to form, and they will again usher large numbers of third-country illegal aliens into our country.”
But if Mexico is concerned about the migrants coming up from the South, it can take its own defense measures, said Krikorian.
“As far as refugees and asylees go, Mexico is a signatory to the U.N. Convention on these issues. Mexico is about half the population, maybe a little less, of the United States. It doesn’t take a nearly proportionate number of asylum seekers or refugees [as the United States. So, “Physician, heal thyself,” would be my first response.”
Also, Krikorian added, the ambassador may be overstating the view of the Mexican government. “Whatever the ambassador said, it is an open question whether Mexico will truly open the floodgates again. The country has its own interest in limiting this transit migration because Mexican citizens are getting sick of the migrations. And many of these people end up staying anyway, applying for asylum in Mexico, or just hanging around illegally, and that undermines the job prospects of Mexicans in the same way that it can undermine Americans’ job prospects.”
“The United States is a sovereign nation that should and can have complete control over its borders,” said Jenks. “Regardless of what our neighbors may think, our government owes it to the American people to have an immigration system that benefits America. Period. Full stop.”
Overall, open-ended migration is praised by business and progressives partly because migrants help transfer massive wealth from American wage-earners to stockholders.
If I told you an incumbent president had 52 percent approval on Election Day and ended up winning 10 million more votes than during his first election, would you predict victory? What if 56 percent of voters felt they were better off since the president had entered office? What if you knew that the incumbent had a nearly 30 percent enthusiasm edge over his opponent, or that when asked for whom they thought their neighbors were voting, nearly 10 percent more Americans expected the president to be re-elected than to lose?
With those numbers in mind, wouldn’t you feel pretty confident that the sitting president had, indeed, been re-elected? Alternatively, wouldn’t you consider it an amazing feat if, instead, the president’s challenger was victorious? The improbability of that result should be newsworthy all on its own.
Donald Trump has majority approval. Nearly six in 10 Americans feel better off today than when Barack Obama was in office, and 15 percent more voters pulled the lever for his re-election than in his 2016 victory. These are not the numbers of a losing candidate, yet we’re told Joe Biden managed to prevail.
The media and pollsters, of course, predicted a Biden landslide, not a very narrow squeaker in which Democrats lost in almost every other avenue of government. Considering the following five facts about the election, it’s no wonder Biden failed to achieve a landslide victory.
1. 10 Million More Votes
Not since President Grover Cleveland’s re-election campaign in 1888 has a sitting president won more votes the second time around and still lost, which is one reason he successfully ran again four years later. To put this in perspective, Obama lost 5 million votes between his 2008 and 2012 elections. He is the only president to have lost voters and still won re-election.
By comparison, Trump not only added about 10 million votes to his 2016 haul but also shattered the record for most votes received by a sitting president. Trump won a greater share of minority votes than any Republican presidential candidate since 1960 and brought more Democrats over to his side than in 2016. More than nine in 10 evangelical Christians voted to re-elect the president. For Trump to expand his coalition of voters so substantially and still lose is historic.
2. 56 Percent of Americans Better Off Than in 2016
This is a huge number. According to Gallup, only 32 percent of Americans say they aren’t better off since Trump was inaugurated. No sitting president has lost re-election when more than half of the country is doing better than before the incumbent entered office.
In fact, Obama, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan all won re-election, even though only about 45 percent of the country felt better off than when their presidencies had begun. For Biden to have won the election, despite nearly six in 10 Americans doing well under the current president, is noteworthy. It simply has never happened before.
Part of the reason for Americans’ strong sense of being better off under Trump surely stems from the unprecedented prosperity Americans were experiencing until this past spring when the Chinese coronavirus stopped the world’s economies. Under the president, minority unemployment had reached record lows, and minority wealth savings had reached record highs. At the same time, the stock market had risen to all-time record highs. In other words, the Trump economy was benefiting Americans at all economic levels.
After the pandemic caused an election-year recession, the economy has steadily rebounded since summer. Unemployment has already dropped back below 7 percent, much faster than many economists thought possible, and the stock market is back to its pre-pandemic highs.
In the past, the performance of the S&P 500 in the three months before Americans head to the polls has predicted 87 percent of elections since 1928 and 100 percent since 1984. If the S&P is in positive territory by the end of those three months, the incumbent party almost always wins. On the last trading day in July, the S&P 500 closed at 3,271, was up nearly 7 percent by mid-October, and closed at 3,310 on the Monday before the 2020 election. The market predicted a Trump victory.
3. Nearly 30 Percent Enthusiasm Gap Favoring Trump
In June, during the middle of the pandemic, pollster Scott Rasmussen was blown away by the enthusiasm gap between Trump and Biden voters. He wrote in amazement: “Wow! 76 percent of Trump voters are enthusiastic about their candidate compared to just 49 percent of Biden voters.”
This enthusiasm gap, measured consistently as somewhere between 15 and 30 percent, was picked up by many pollsters. Richard Baris, the director of Big Data Poll, told the New York Post in mid-October that enthusiasm for Trump “is historically high,” while “Biden’s enthusiasm level is historically low.”
Anyone who saw a Trump rally would not be surprised. At one of his last campaign stops before Election Day, about 60,000 Trump supporters showed up to see the president in Butler, Pennsylvania. Trump tractor parades, boat parades, and 30-mile-long highway caravans have been a common feature of the 2020 campaign.
Republican support for the president has been higher than for any president of either party since Dwight D. Eisenhower. Until Biden’s presumed victory, no incumbent president winning so handily in voter enthusiasm had lost re-election.
4. More People Thought Neighbors Were Voting for Trump
Just as in 2016, polling this election cycle proved decisively wrong. Republicans in the House, Senate, and state legislatures across the country all out-performed polling estimates. Pollsters consistently predicted a Biden blowout, but instead, the race is one of the closest in American history.
Pollsters have partially excused their efforts by pointing to a “shy Trump voter” error in the polls that failed to capture the president’s true support. To get around this problem, some pollsters asked respondents to name the candidate for whom they believed their neighbors would likely vote, hoping to elicit more candid voting intentions.
By a 7 percentage-point margin, Harvard/Harris polling found in late September that more Americans believed their neighbors would vote for Trump’s re-election than for Biden. In the week before the election, USC Dornsife published a poll asking a similar question: “Do you think your friends and neighbors are voting for Trump?” USC concluded that “it’s looking like an Electoral College loss for Biden.”
5. Trump Still Has 53 Percent Approval
Just 12 days before the election, Trump’s approval rating popped over 50 percent and has held steady since that time. As Gallup noted, “[A]ll incumbents with an approval rating of 50 percent or higher have won re-election, and presidents with approval ratings much lower than 50 percent have lost.”Rasmussen and Zogby both had Trump hitting that “holy grail” approval number tied to certain re-election.
On the day before the election, Rasmussen had Trump at 52 percent approval. At the same point in his presidency, and before his own re-election, Obama had 50 percent. As of Nov. 11, Rasmussen shows 53 percent of the country approves of Trump, compared to 46 percent who disapprove. No incumbent president has ever lost re-election with numbers such as these.
All of these numbers have historically contributed to a victory for an incumbent president. Considering them, it’s no surprise Biden didn’t win in a landslide, but that they did not produce a win for Trump in 2020 is almost unbelievable.
J.B. Shurk is a proud American from Daniel Boone country.
Donations/Tips accepted and appreciated– $1.00 – $5.00 – $25.00 – $50.00 – $100 – it all helps to fund this website and keep the cartoons coming. Also Venmo @AFBranco – THANK YOU!
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and shared by President Donald Trump.
After its worst quarter in history, the U.S. economy just posted its best quarter in history.
For July, August, and September, the gross domestic product (GDP), which measures total goods and services produced, grew at the record-shattering pace 0f 33.1% on an annualized basis.
The previous post-World War II record was the 16.7% growth in the first quarter of 1950. The new burst came after a 31.4% plunge in the second quarter.
“This record economic growth is absolute validation of President Trump’s policies which create jobs and opportunities for Americans in every corner of the country,” President Donald Trump’s campaign said in a statement. “The President built the world’s best economy once and he’s rapidly doing it again, proving that cutting taxes and reducing regulations and red tape clear the way for American ingenuity and our entrepreneurial spirit to thrive.”
“We have regained more than half of the jobs lost to the global pandemic in less than six months, while it took more than two years to regain half of job losses from a recession while Joe Biden was in charge. President Trump will continue to safely reopen the country, while Biden is the candidate of lockdowns, inviting another economic shutdown which would devastate working people and cause even more health problems above and beyond what the coronavirus has caused,” the campaign said.
The Trump campaign also blasted Trump’s opponent, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, saying he “has been an economic disaster for nearly five decades in Washington, backing disastrous trade deals and putting China’s interests ahead of American workers. Biden’s plans for a $4 trillion tax increase and Green New Deal regulations on every person, business, building, and farm in the nation would kill this recovery while it’s already in full swing. For voters, the choice is simple: It’s a Trump boom versus a Biden depression.”
Larry Kudlow, director of the United States National Economic Council, also lauded the numbers.
“We’ve never had anything remotely close to this,” Kudlow said Thursday on Fox News. “And let me add, this thing was kicking on all cylinders. Automobile production, for example, up over 1,100 percent in the third quarter, big numbers on consumer spending, big numbers on housing, big numbers on capital equipment machinery and manufacturing and so forth.”
Kudlow also said that inventories are depleted, “so inventories are going to be rebuilt. This quarter the momentum is going into the fourth quarter and will go into 2021, assuming policies are good. This is not a one time in fact this is going to go on. It’s a strong, strong recovery. The V shaped concept that I coined a while back, looking pretty good right now.”
The news wasn’t all good. Looking exclusively at the quarterly data, the nation’s GDP grew 7.4% in the third quarter, but it was a 9% decline a second quarter. Also, the economy is 3.5% smaller than it was compared to the end of 2019.
Kudlow said by late this winter or early spring, “we will regain all of the Lost output that we suffered during the terrible pandemic contraction, this past winter, and the first half of the year. So it’s an optimistic view.”
biden-suburbs-collage / M. Rourke/AP, J. Sullivan, B. Bell, J. Raedle, S. Olson, S. Keith, A. Gomes/Getty
The 2020 election is the most important one America’s suburban families have faced in more than a century. This November, voters will be deciding whether or not to endorse Joe Biden’s radical plans for rezoning our suburbs, raising taxes on our savings, surrendering to China on trade, and flooding our labor market with cheap foreign workers.
Here are six major problems Americans should brace themselves for if Joe Biden is elected.
1. The value of your home will plummet.
Home prices are up this year despite the sudden recession triggered by the stay-at-home orders and the sudden lockdown of our economy this spring. Americans have been snapping up homes at the fastest pace in a decade, eager for the kind of freedom and security they cannot find in city centers these days.
Donald Trump has given a boost to home values by cutting taxes, leaving middle class Americans with more savings for down payment, and repealing intrusive regulation that threatened the suburbs. This summer Trump repealed the Obama-Biden administration policy known as “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing,” a rule designed to pressure suburbs into building low income housing and abandoning long-standing limits on housing density.
Biden has said he would not just revive the rule—he would put it in steroids. Left-wing writer Matthew Yglesias—whose recent book calls for America to open its borders to increase our population to one billion—has praised Biden’s housing plan as “surprisingly visionary.”
So what’s the plan? It is basically to export the problems of the big cities to Americas suburbs and end single-family zoning. Crowded schools, cheap apartment towers, crime—all coming to your street in the name of “fair housing.” And don’t forget, the left also wants to defund the police.
To Biden and the Democrats, the low-crime and high-quality education available to many suburban families are products of “white supremacy,” redlining, and unfair housing practices—despite the lack of evidence for these claims and decades of federal and state laws making racial discrimination in housing and lending illegal. Never mind fifty-years of liberal housing policy, the fact that some towns or neighborhoods have high priced homes is not a testament to the quality of the community but an indictment of their exclusivity.
“He believes the middle class isn’t a number, but a value set which includes the ability to own your own home and live in a safe community. Housing should be a right, not a privilege,” Biden’s campaign website declares.
Translation: it is morally wrong to require a middle-class income to live in a middle-class suburb. And Biden plans to make it illegal.
2. You will pay for Biden’s repeal of Trump’s tax cuts.
Biden has said he will repeal the 2017 Trump tax cuts that slashed the tax bill for nearly every American family that pays taxes. He says that he will only hike the rates on Americans who earn over $400,000 but every middle class family will pay for Biden’s tax hikes.
Biden’s proposed overhaul of 401(k) plans will hike taxes on the middle class. Under the current law, you get to deduct your contributions to your 401(k) plan right off the top of your income. You don’t pay any tax on the income you contribute or its gains until you start to spend them at retirement. This is one of the reasons 401(k) plans are one of America’s favorite ways to save.
Biden wants to get rid of this tax break. He thinks it is unfair because it rewards people with higher incomes who face higher tax rates. He would replace it with a complicated scheme of tax credits intended to help Americans with lower incomes save more. While the details are complex, the result is not: any married couple earning more than $80,250 would face a higher tax bill.
Biden also wants to hike taxes on corporations. Economists agree that this amounts a tax on shareholders because it lowers the after-tax earnings of businesses. That means lower dividends, fewer buybacks, less investment in growth, and lower stock prices. Over time, this tax hike on businesses will hurt the ability of middle-class Americans to save and invest for their retirement.
3. Your wages will go down as manufacturing continues to be outsourced to China.
Biden now claims he will stand up to China, but he has no plan for preserving American jobs in the face of China’s predatory mercantilism. He has criticized Trump’s tariffs, which helped rescue America’s steel and aluminum industries and are forcing China to negotiate with U.S. trade officials, but offered nothing to replace them.
Tough talk will not cut when it comes to China. Action is all that counts. And Biden’s decades in the U.S. Senate and 8 years in the Obama administration have created a long record of doing nothing at all to protect American jobs from China.
Biden does not even see China as competitive threat to American workers.
“China is going to eat our lunch? Come on man,” Biden said at a campaign event in Iowa.
Does he even know how much American manufacturing has been moved to China? David Autor, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology economist who studied the impact of trade with China has described it as the “China shock.”
“When import booms from Japan, Mexico and Asian “tiger” economies such as Taiwan arrived in the U.S., many cities and towns were able to adapt,” the Wall Street Journalwrote about Autor’s work. “China was different. Its emergence as a trade powerhouse rattled the American economy more violently than economists and policy makers anticipated at the time or realized for years later. “
But Biden scoffs at the China shock. That reflects his decades in Washington, D.C., where government bureaucrats are not threatened by outsourcing. Far from it—government wages have been climbing while wages of the rest of us stagnate and our factories close down.
4. Your wages will go down as Americans are forced to compete with imported foreign labor.
The United States is one of the most generous countries on earth when it comes to immigration. We have welcomed more immigrants than any other country in the world. Currently, nearly 45 million people living in the U.S. were born in another country—one-fifth of all the migrants in the world.
For some, however, no amount of immigration is enough. The radical Democrats supporting Joe Biden have opposed every effort to control our borders or rethink our immigration policies to suit the needs of our economy. They would flood the country with millions of more immigrants—pushing down the wages of working Americans and stifling innovation, as businesses would increasingly rely on cheap labor instead of advancing technology.
“Where Biden pushes regulation in most areas, immigration is not one of them. Biden has proposed relaxing strict immigration policies and instead turning to a model where every type of immigrant, documented or undocumented, could gain access to government resources and a path to citizenship,” according to American Action Forum.
It’s as simple as supply and demand. If America does not limit immigration’s contribution to the labor supply, the price of that labor falls.
5. The crime wave engulfing American cities will spread to the suburbs.
Crime is on the rise once again in the the big cities controlled by Democrats. Shootings incidents have doubled in New York City, and murders are up 40 percent compared with last year. Burglaries are up 41.8 percent year to date.
The Democrats plan to lower crime in the cities is to ship it out into the suburbs. According to Biden, the problem is not the lack of policing or releasing criminals without bail; it’s that the cities have too many poor people. So his policy is to social engineer the urban poor out into the suburbs through aggressive use of federal housing policies.
And don’t forget: the Democrats think that Trump’s campaign for “law and order” is racist dog whistling. Their voters are marching in the streets—and increasingly into the suburbs—in protests against the police. Don’t expect them to stop the crime wave from crashing into our neighborhood streets and parks.
6. The Democrats’ Green New Deal will decimate millions of jobs and lead to California-style rolling blackouts.
Biden has endorsed the so-called Green New Deal that would attempt to rapidly eliminate the use of oil and coal in the U.S. power grid. But we’ve already seen where this leads in California: rolling blackouts, expensive power, and a fragile energy infrastructure.
At the last presidential debate, Biden admitted that his program would end fossil fuel extraction in the U.S. He would not do it right way but would “transition” off of fossil fuels.
Here’s the transcript:
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Would you close down the oil industry?
FORMER VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I would transition from the oil industry, yes.
TRUMP: Oh, that’s a big statement.
BIDEN: It is a big statement.
KRISTEN WELKER: Why would you do that?
BIDEN: Because the oil industry pollutes. It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time. And I’d stop giving federal subsidies to the oil industry. He won’t give federal subsidies to solar and wind. Why are we giving it to the oil industry?
TRUMP: We actually do give it to solar and wind. And that’s maybe the biggest statement, in terms of business, because basically what he’s saying is he’s going to destroy the oil industry. Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania? Oklahoma? Ohio?
That would drive up energy costs. The Green New Deal would also eliminate energy jobs all across America, overturning the fracking revolution in the U.S. that has made us energy independent, created thousands of good paying jobs, and revitalized local economies from Texas to North Dakota, from Arizona to Pennsylvania. Even as far away as Wisconsin, where no oil is pulled from the ground, jobs would be permanently destroyed.
Democratic Party officials and strategists are worried. They know the 2020 election will likely be decided in America’s suburbs. And if the message gets out to voters about what Biden has planned for those suburbs, Biden does not stand a chance.
Breitbart News entertainment editor Jerome Hudson appeared on Fox News’ Fox & Friends morning show on Tuesday to discuss his latest book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know About Trump. The conversation focused on how the president revived manufacturing in the United States and brought about the return of the country’s energy independence.
Jerome Hudson spoke with Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade, who asked why so many of the president’s accomplishments have gotten lost in the mainstream media’s coverage of his administration.
“A large part of it, Brian, is that the political media in this country was much more interested in pushing the phony dossier that led to the impeachment of President Trump, and largely focused on his personality, than they were on his policies that actually lifted the value of life for all Americans,” Hudson said.
During his first term, President Trump worked to revive manufacturing despite Barack Obama’s infamous claim that a “magic wand” was needed.
“The truth is that the Obama-Biden administration gave up on this industry,” Hudson said. “The fact is is that since Donald Trump began cutting red tape, particularly the implementation of his tax reform law that went into effect in December 2017, his administration was able to actually help create half a million manufacturing jobs that pales in comparison to just 73,000 manufacturing jobs created in the last two years of the Obama-Biden administration.”
That has translated to robust wage growth for blue collar workers. Hudson noted that blue collar workers have enjoyed three times the wage growth of the top 1 percent of households. Those wages rose 4.5 percent from November 2018 to November 2019, according to data published by the Federal Reserve bank of Atlanta.
“You can find this. It’s public information. But the political press didn’t care about reporting it.”
Under President Trump, the country achieved energy independence for the first time in decades. This has especially benefited the battleground state of Pennsylvania.
“The United States under President Trump became a net exporter of crude oil and petroleum products, something that hadn’t been done sine 1949,” Hudson said. “What this means for the American people, a family of four, is an average savings of $2,500 per family of four. Particularly, it’s interesting again, because it’s lowering the price of your electricity bill, meaning more money in the pockets of everyday Americans.”
President Donald Trump slashed the inflow of southern migrants from 400,000 in 2019 to just 14,000 in 2020, according to acting homeland security chief Chad Wolf.
The coronavirus crash is creating a new surge of migrants up to the U.S. border, Wolf warned in his October 21 speech. “Should our critics be successful and repeal the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] CDC order, we would face an unimaginable public health crisis,” Wolf said in a Phoenix, Arizona, speech, adding:
The only reason today’s crossings have not reached a crisis level is because of the policies and procedures the Department has put in place during the past four years. If these critical tools are removed or overturned, then the Department—and you, our frontline partners—would be imperiled by another immigration crisis.
Wolf described the administration’s huge and successful efforts to curb the southern migration into U.S. blue-collar workplaces. Prior Presidents did little or nothing, but Trump’s hard-fought upgrades have helped push up wages and opportunities for tens of millions of Americans — including blue-collar blacks and Latinos. Trump’s effort also protected many millions of Americans from losing their jobs amid relentless Wall Street pressure for corporate cost-cutting.
“In perhaps no area did the Washington special interests try harder to stop us than on my policy of pro-American immigration,” Trump said in his August 28 acceptance speech.
Wolf also touted the agency’s efforts to start shielding all Americans from the trillion-dollar economic threat caused by the legal and illegal migration of white-collar workers. Wolf used his speech to describe the administration’s pro-American actions:
1. Border agencies have stopped the catch-and-release of migrants, said Wolf. CBP and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency caught and released 400,000 migrants in 2019, but just 15,000 in 2020, mostly for humanitarian reasons, Wolf said.
We have effectively ended the practice known as “catch and release,” which refers to releasing illegal aliens into the United States while they awaited hearings in immigration court—rather than holding them in detention. Thanks to our actions, illegal aliens will no longer be released into our country. They will no longer be able to abscond without consequence. And they will be quickly returned to their country of origin.
2. Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols ensured that “more than 65,000 aliens have been returned to Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings,” Wolf said. Because they are returned to Mexico, the migrants cannot get the U.S. jobs they need to pay their debts to the coyotes, preventing the coyotes from making a profit and helping to break the profitable business of transporting migrants into Americans’ jobs.
3. The administration has reformed asylum rules to exclude ineligible economic-migrants, according to Wolf. “We want to encourage meritorious asylum claims, adjudicate them expeditiously, and root out fraudulent claims,” he said, by:
Tightening up standards for asylum applicant employment authorization;
Elevating legal standards of proof for asylum and statutory withholding of removal screening; and
Instituting new mandatory bars to asylum.
DHS also suspended asylum for individuals who traverse through a safe country where they could seek asylum but decided not to. DHS is also currently finalizing regulations to prevent criminal aliens from obtaining asylum to remain in the United States.
4. The Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency “is returning approximately 90 percent of individuals who would otherwise be kept in CBP facilities back to Mexico within two hours,” said Wolf. That is a huge shift from prior years because the quick deportations prevent migrant from using lawyers, asylum claims, and jobs to extend their stay in the United States.
5. Border agencies can now prosecute and penalize migrants because Trump ended “prosecutorial discretion,” Wolf said:
Obama’s administration adopted a “prosecutorial discretion” policy … This devastating policy hamstrung ICE’s ability to identify, locate, arrest, and deport criminal aliens. Today, ICE no longer exempts any removable aliens from having our laws enforced on them. If you break our laws, you will be arrested and removed from our country.
…
The results bear out the success of this policy shift. Between 2017 and 2019, the Trump Administration removed from the United States more than 574,000 illegal aliens, including 16,000 gang members … [and] ICE has removed over 182,000 aliens in the first 50 weeks of 2020.
6. DHS has begun using a deportation power granted by Congress in 1996 and long ignored by prior administrations. “The Department has also ensured that certain aliens encountered anywhere in the country within two years of unlawful entry will be removed quickly—referred to as “expedited removal,” Wolf said.
7. The administration has built the border wall to curb migration and drug-smuggling, Wolf said:
Today, we have completed almost 400 miles of the new border wall system in high priority locations like San Diego, El Centro, Yuma, Tucson, El Paso, and the Rio Grande Valley Sectors. And we have another 221 miles currently under construction and 157 miles in a pre-construction phase.
Each and every mile of border wall construction is new—whether we are constructing in a place where previously no barriers existed or replacing a 5-foot steel vehicle barrier with an 18- or 30-foot steel bollard wall complemented with roads, enforcement cameras, and other related technology. In fact, wherever effective border wall systems have been constructed, the number of illegal crossings—and crime—has gone down.
8. Protecting Americans from abuse of the legal immigration system is “equally important,” said Wolf:
this administration has had a laser focus on protecting the American worker. But amazingly, the immigration rules on the books seemed to always put foreign workers first in line for American jobs. In a major historical shift, the Trump Administration has put America First. Our results show the Department’s commitment and success in this area.
…
To that end, DHS announced an interim final rule that strengthens the H-1B nonimmigrant visa program to protect U.S. workers, restores integrity to the H-1B program, and better guarantees that H-1B petitions are approved only for qualified beneficiaries and petitioners. This rule will combat the abuse of H-1B workers to serve as low-cost replacements for otherwise-qualified American workers. It will also deter companies from gaming the immigration system to fill their own coffers.
Supporting this action is President Trump’s philosophy that we must take care of Americans first.
Trump’s 2020 plan offers broadly popular — but quite limited — pro-American restrictions on migration and visa workers. In many speeches, for example, Trump ignores the economic impact of blue-collar and white-collar migration on Americans while stressing issues about crime, outsiders, diseases, or welfare, even though his low-immigration policies have been a popular boon to Americans.
Joe Biden’s 2020 plan promises to let companies import more visa workers, to let mayors import temporary workers, to accelerate the inflow of chain-migration migrants, to end migration enforcement against illegal aliens unless they commit a felony, and to dramatically accelerate the inflow of poor refugees to at least 125,000 per year. This policy has helped Biden to win huge donations from investors on Wall Street.
Open-ended legal migration is praised by business and progressives partly because migrants’ arrival helps to transfer wealth from wage-earners to investors and stockholders.
US President Donald Trump throws masks to supporters as he arrives to hold a Make America Great Again rally as he campaigns at Orlando Sanford International Airport in Sanford, Florida, October 12, 2020. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
It’s all the way back. Optimism among small-business owners climbed higher in September to pre-pandemic levels.
The National Federal of Independent Business said Tuesday its optimism index rose 3.8 points to 204, a level it last reached in January. That is among the highest readings recorded in the closely watched gauge of business confidence. Economists had expected the index to more or less hold steady near last month’s reading of 100.2. The range of estimates was between 99 and 102, so this was twice as strong as the most bullish forecast.
The improvement comes as many businesses have been able to open more fully. It suggests that the end of small-business relief programs, which mostly wrapped up in August, did not hurt business owners as much as feared.
The threat of a second round of shutdowns, however, still hangs over businesses. The NFIB’s uncertainty index climbed to 92, higher than it was when infections were at their height this summer or lockdowns were at their most stringent this spring.
“As parts of the country continue to open, small businesses are seeing some improvements in foot traffic and sales,” said NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg. “However, some small businesses are still struggling financially to operate at full capacity while navigating state and local regulations and are uncertain about what will happen in the future.”
Every component of the index apart from expected credit conditions improved. With interest rates already extremely low, there is not much room for credit conditions to improve. Plans to increase employment, make capital outlays, and grow inventories all rose. So did the share of business owners expecting economic conditions to get better over the next three months. Expectations for sales also improved and more owners said now is a good time to expand.
The NFIB is a trade association for small business owners.
Democratic Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden delivers remarks at a voter mobilization event in Cincinnati, Ohio, on October 12, 2020, where he will speak to the importance of Ohioans making their voices heard this election. / JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said during an interview on Monday that the 56% of Americans who say that they are better off now than four years ago “probably shouldn’t” vote for him, adding that they have “memory” problems.
“Gallup, in a survey between Sept. 14-28, found that 56% of registered voters said they were better off than they were four years ago, while just 32 percent said they were worse off,” Fox News reported. “This is in spite of the coronavirus pandemic, which has also led to an economic downturn and a number of pandemic-related restrictions for businesses and schools across the country. But it suggests that voters still have a strong economy that carried through the majority of Trump’s term in mind.”
Biden was asked about the results from the poll during an interview with WKRC-TV in Cincinnati.
“Gallup reported last week 56% of Americans said they were better off today than they were four years ago—would’ve been under the Obama-Biden administration,” the reporter said to Biden. “So why should people who feel they are better off today, under the Trump administration, vote for you?”
Biden responded, “Well, if they think that, they probably shouldn’t.”
“They think 54% [sic] percent of the American are better off economically today than they were under our administration?” Biden asked. “Well, their memory is not very good, quite frankly.”
“And in addition to that, we have a president who doesn’t share the values of most Americans,”Biden claimed. “He’s not very honest with people. He is flouting the conventions relative to public safety in terms even now not wearing a mask.”
WATCH:
Biden says 56 percent of Americans shouldn’t vote for him because they think they’re doing better under Trump. pic.twitter.com/w3fK1jZi6o
The poll results are a good sign for the Trump campaign as the economy is the top issue for voters in this election, according to polling.
“With the country in the midst of a recession, nearly eight-in-ten registered voters (79%) say the economy will be very important to them in making their decision about who to vote for in the 2020 presidential election – the top issue of 12 included in the survey,” Pew Research Center reported. “The economy is consistently a top voting issue. In a survey asking a similar, though not identical, list of issues in June 2016, the economy also was the top voting issue.”
According to Forbes, Biden has repeatedly told voters notto vote for him, including the following times during his current campaign:
August 24, 2019—Biden, 77, responded to voters’ concerns about his age by declaring, “I say if they’re concerned, don’t vote for me,” to a group of reporters in Keene, N.H.
November 22, 2019—When Carlos Rojas, an immigration activist, pressed Biden at an event in South Carolina on the issue of deportations during the Obama administration, Biden told Rojas, “you should vote for Trump.”
January 29, 2020—Environmental activist Ed Fallon confronted Biden on his climate positions, and Biden responded, “you have to go vote for someone else. You’re not going to vote for me in the primary.”
May 14, 2020—Biden said in an MSNBC interview that voters who believe Tara Reade’s allegation that he sexually assaulted her in 1993 “probably shouldn’t vote for me” and should instead “vote their heart,” adding “I wouldn’t vote for me if I believed Tara Reade.”
The number of job openings dipped by 100,000 to 6.5 million in August, the Labor Department reported on Tuesday. Total vacancies are well off pre-pandemic levels despite a strong rebound earlier in the summer, indicating that the economic recovery is still underway but not as strong as needed to return to normal.
“After a few months of being surprisingly strong, job openings have slowed down,” said Nick Bunker, the director of research for the Indeed Hiring Lab. “This is a sign that while labor demand held up more than we may have expected early in the recovery, that pace is not guaranteed to continue.”
Job openings decreased in a number of industries in August, with the largest decreases in accommodation and food services and in transportation, warehousing, and utilities.
In March, the month that the economy shut down to slow the spread of the virus, there were just over 6 million job openings. As the economy suffered through the shutdown, openings dropped to 4.9 million in April but started to increase as businesses began to reopen. In May, openings totaled 5.3 million, and in June, they were just above 6 million.
The Labor Department defines a job opening as a position that is available but not filled on the last business day of the month. Tuesday’s report, called the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, also showed that the economy continues to suffer from a net employment loss on the year. Over the 12 months ending in August, hires totaled 70.4 million, and separations totaled 77.4 million, yielding a net employment loss of 7.0 million.
The food services sector decreased its hiring by over 170,000 in August. Meanwhile, the federal government added 246,000 jobs, largely because of temporary census hiring. Total separations, including quits, layoffs, discharges, and other separations, were 4.6 million in August, which since July is lower by 394,000.
Former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo recently tweeted that “me-first capitalists”who disagree with injecting political activism into their workplaces will be “the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution.” The company has not commented if the tweet by Costolo, who has an estimated net worth of $300 million, violates its policies against glorifying violence.
In a recent tweet, former Twitter CEO Dick Costolo discussed a decision by Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the cryptocurrency firm Coinbase, to not promote political activism and social justice within the company. Armstrong’s comments fly in the face of ultra-progressive tech firms such as Facebook and Google.
In a blog post to Medium.com, Armstrong stated that the company would not focus on things such as broader societal issues, stating: “We don’t engage here when issues are unrelated to our core mission, because we believe impact only comes with focus.”Discussing politics, Armstrong said:“We don’t advocate for any particular causes or candidates internally that are unrelated to our mission, because it is a distraction from our mission. Even if we all agree something is a problem, we may not all agree on the solution.”
Costolo apparently disagreed with this, commenting on Armstrong’s approach stating: “This isn’t great leadership. It’s the abdication of leadership. It’s the equivalent of telling your employees to ‘shut up and dribble.’”
When one Twitter user took issue with Costolo’s argument, Costolo replied that “me-first capitalists” will be the “first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution.” Costolo, whose personal fortune is estimated at $300 million, added that he would “happily provide video commentary.”
Me-first capitalists who think you can separate society from business are going to be the first people lined up against the wall and shot in the revolution. I’ll happily provide video commentary.
Breitbart News has reached out to Twitter for comment on Costolo’s tweet which has not been removed despite seemingly violating Twitter’s rules relating to the glorification of violence. Many noted that they have been suspended for less:
Twitter has censored President Donald Trump based on claims he “glorified violence.” The company applied the same policy to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) over tweets about Antifa.
Breitbart News will update this story with more information from Twitter when available.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolanor email him at lnolan@breitbart.com
The New York Times dared fact Biden on a claim he made about the economy and liberals had a complete meltdown. One reason why liberals had a total meltdown was that the Times chipped away at his majesty Obama’s legacy.
During the debate, Biden said, “We [Obama/Biden administration] left him a booming economy. And he caused the recession.”
The New York Times said that Biden’s claim was “false.”
The Times wrote, “The economy was not “booming” in the final year of Biden’s time as vice president, and Trump did not “cause” the pandemic recession. The economy was healthy in 2016, but growth had dipped below 2%.”
The libs couldn’t take it.
On the other end of the spectrum, CNN fact-checked the President over Biden calling xenophobic for restricting travel to China. CNN claimed that Trump’s claim was “lacking context.”
“It’s not clear Biden even knew about Trump’s China travel restrictions when he called Trump xenophobic on the day the restrictions were unveiled,” wrote CNN. “Biden has never explicitly linked his accusation of xenophobia to these travel restrictions.”
After the debate, Steve Bannon made a comment on his radio show “War Room: Pandemic” that eluded to the President’s campaign strategy, and the data supports it. Bannon said, “Trump is not going to win over Karens in the suburbs, but he can win the Latino vote.”
After the debate on Telemundo reported that 66% of Hispanics that watched the debate felt Trump won.
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) is pictures on May 26, 2020 at Wall Street in New York City. – Wall Street stocks surged early Tuesday on optimism about coronavirus vaccines as the New York Stock Exchange resumed physical floor trading for the first time since late March. About 30 … Photo by JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
The S&P 500 climbed to a new record high on Tuesday, rising above the previous all-time intraday and closing highs set before the pandemic hit the U.S. stock market and economy.
The broad index of large public U.S. companies has been hovering just below that record high for over a week. On Tuesday morning, it rose three-tenths of a percentage point to 3,395.06, about 0.045 above the February 19 intraday record of 3,393.52.
The new record high was not maintained for long. Shortly after, the index slipped below that level and into negative territory for the day.
But the market turned around again and the S&P closed at 3389.78, the all-time best close.
Communications services and consumer discretionary were the best sectors of the S&P 500 in morning trading on Tuesday. Consumer discretionary rose 1.5 percent. Communications services rose 1.09 percent. Information technology rose 0.39 percent.
In this April 21, 2017, file photo, President Donald Trump poses for a portrait in the Oval Office in Washington after an interview with The Associated Press. Andrew Harnik /
President Donald Trump provided Breitbart News during an exclusive Oval Office interview with a six-page document detailing several of his administration’s accomplishments. The document, which is up to date as of early August and provided by the president to Breitbart News during his Oval Office interview on Monday, goes through what the president said was “page after page” of accomplishments.
“This is for you,” President Trump told Breitbart News as he handed the six-page document across the Resolute Desk. “I just had this done. These are the accomplishments. It’s page after page of stuff look—nobody’s done.”
The document contains just one subjective shot at his opponents in the establishment media, echoing the president’s claim that he has boosted television ratings and subscription sales and website traffic for the media. “Saved the NY Times, saved the Washington Post, and saved Cable TV,” reads the first item at the top of the first page.
In that vein, during his interview with Breitbart News, the president took some shots at establishment media outlets like CNN and MSNBC, which he called MSDNC.
“I think CNN is election interference because, you know, they are just an organ pipeline for the DNC. Look at what they do. Same with MSDNC,” Trump said. “Look, MSDNC is an absolute vehicle to get the word out. They should actually pay campaign contributions on what they’re doing. This is about a campaign contribution. I’ve never seen anything like it. MSDNC, CNN, the networks, everything—and yet, here we are. Look. Do you notice, it’s oval? It’s not round. But when you think about it, it’s hard to believe because the press is corrupt a hundred percent. If you look at it, the press is corrupt. Much of it, not all of it, but I would say most of it.”
Trump said that even Fox News has slipped from its former glory.
“Even Fox is not the same. Let’s not kid ourselves,” Trump said. “Fox is a big difference from what it was.”
Then, he made a comment in line with the document, noting that he believes the establishment media will struggle when the day comes he is no longer president, because whoever replaces him—whether it be Democrat Joe Biden next year, or somebody four years from now—will be boring.
“Someday when I’m not here, they’re all gone,” Trump said. “Because nobody is going to write. They’re not going to write about sleepy Joe Biden.”
While the document does have that one gratuitous shot at the media on the top of the first page, the content on the rest of the six pages of material lists several real demonstrable and actual accomplishments of the Trump administration—including during the coronavirus pandemic. This six-page document that the president handed to Breitbart News serves as perhaps the most substantive compilation the president and his team have put together detailing what they have done to help the American people through the worst of the pandemic, as well as several other successes the president has had throughout his administration.
The first major bullet point on the first page is titled: “The Great American Comeback is already underway.” It cites how the Trump administration added 1.8 million jobs in July,“exceeding expectations for the third straight month.” It also notes that Trump oversaw the addition of nine million jobs since May, “surpassing market expectations by a total of 12 million new jobs.”
“Over the last three months, we added over four million leisure and hospitality jobs; 1.47 million retail jobs; 1.17 million education and healthcare jobs; 743,000 service jobs; 623,000 manufacturing jobs; and 639,000 construction jobs,”the document continues.
It notes that half of the new jobs created are full-time, and that wages have increased by 4.8 percent year-over-year. The document cites the rapidly dropping unemployment percentage during the pandemic, now back down as of July to 10.2 percent, and noted that African American and Hispanic job creation has boomed during the past three months, rising by one million and 2.3 million respectively in those communities. Overall, job gains since April, the document from the president says, have recovered 42 percent of jobs lost to the pandemic already with 80 percent of small businesses reopened and retail sales spiking in May and June with a record-setting 18.2 percent increase in May and 7.5 percent increase in June.
The document cites several other economic successes of the Trump administration during the pandemic and then shifts into the next section, which details efforts the president made during the pandemic to provide economic relief to get the country through the worst of times. Walking through the over $3 trillion in relief that the president provided to American workers and businesses, the document says the Trump administration saved “many tens of millions of jobs” through signing the $2 trillion CARES Act, which sent direct cash payments to 80 million American workers, and approved $670 billion for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which has processed more than five million loans to small businesses and, according to the document, “saved 50 million American jobs.” The document also cites Trump’s recent executive actions to provide a payroll tax holiday through the end of the year, an extra $400 per week in unemployment benefits to those who need it, to help stop evictions, and to defer student loan payments.
Then it shifts into public health actions the president has taken to “vanquish COVID-19,” which the document says is “the greatest national mobilization since WWII.” It cites the Trump administration’s travel restrictions on China, Europe, and Iran, as well as the administration developing the “most advanced testing system on earth” that has already conducted 65 million coronavirus tests—and notes that despite the United States being just five percent of the world’s population, this country, thanks to the Trump administration, has conducted 25 percent of the world’s coronavirus tests so far. The document cites “Operation Warp Speed,” which has moved three vaccine candidates into Phase Three trials already–a “record time” for vaccine production–and the recently announced $1 billion deal with Johnson & Johnson to “manufacture and distribute 100 million doses” of vaccine when approved.
The document notes that the Trump administration has “reduced mortality by 85% since April through the use of therapies such as Remdesivir, dexamethasone, and antibody treatments.” It notes that the Trump administration has “secured over 4.1 million doses of Remdesivir, enough to treat over 650,000 patients,” and has “treated 86,000 Americans with convalescent plasma” which can “reduce mortality by 50%.” It notes too that more than 230 more clinical trials are underway for more potential emerging treatments.
As for personal protective equipment, the document the president gave to Breitbart News noted that the administration has coordinated with private sector partners to deliver more than 196 million N95 respirator masks, 815 million surgical masks, 20 billion gloves, 34 million face shields, and 354 million gowns. The document says the administration has “replenished the long-neglected National Stockpile by tripling the number of N95 masks on hand to over 45 million,” tripled the number of gowns available to 15 million, and quadrupled the number of ventilators to 75,000. It also says the administration, using the Defense Production Act, “awarded contracts for 200,000 ventilators” to be produced, and that no American who has needed a ventilator to fight the coronavirus has been denied one anywhere in the country.
The document also cites various actions the president has taken on prescription drug prices, as well as on law and order. Specifically on that front, it notes that since the president launched Operation LeGend to send federal officers to a number of U.S. cities including Chicago, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, Memphis, Kansas City, and St. Louis, the government has already made 156 arrests, and cites the president’s successes in Portland, Oregon.
The document continues by citing the president’s successes on trade, rebuilding the U.S. military, tax cuts, regulation rollbacks, energy production, confirmation of federal judges, immigration and border security, caring for veterans, healthcare, battling the opioid crisis, fighting human trafficking, and other fronts.
The president also provided Breitbart News with, in addition the six-page document, a notecard on official White House card stock detailing the president’s successes when it comes to appointing and then confirming with the GOP-controlled U.S. Senate federal and appellate court judges and Justices to the U.S. Supreme Court.
That document noted that Trump has so far gotten two U.S. Supreme Court justices confirmed in his first term, as well as 53 appellate court judges and 143 U.S. district court and trade court judges. In total, that’s 232 judges in his first term. By comparison, former President Barack Obama got just 200 total judges confirmed in his first term—and Trump says he will do far more than the 232 he’s at now.
“We’re at 232 judges. We’ll be at 300 judges by the end of the year,” Trump told Breitbart News during the Oval Office interview. “That’s amazing isn’t it?”
President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting with U.S. tech workers, before signing an Executive Order on hiring American workers, in the Cabinet Room of the White House, Monday, Aug. 3, 2020, in Washington.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday which curbs the H-1B outsourcing of jobs at government agencies, including the government-controlled Tennessee Valley Authority.
“We believe jobs must be offered to American workers first,” Trump told attendees at a signing event in the White House.
Staffing companies have used the H-1B program to fill roughly 18,000 jobs in government agencies with foreign contract-workers.
A White House statement said:
President Trump is signing an Executive Order to create a policy where Federal agencies will focus on United States labor in lucrative Federal contracts. It would be unfair for Federal employers to replace perfectly qualified Americans with workers from other countries. The Executive Order will require all Federal agencies to complete an internal audit and assess whether they are in compliance with the requirement that only United States citizens and nationals are appointed to the competitive service.
The Department of Labor will also finalize guidance to prevent H-1B employers from moving H-1B workers to other employers’ job sites to displace American workers.
“Outsourcing hundreds of workers is especially detrimental in the middle of a pandemic, which has already cost millions of Americans their jobs,” the statement said. “President Trump’s actions will help combat employers’ misuse of H-1B visas, which were never intended to replace qualified American workers with low-cost foreign labor.”
The top management at the TVA has been trying to outsource 200 jobs to three companies that import many H-1B workers: Paris-based Capgemini, Canada-based CGI, and Accenture, a former U.S. company that relocated to Ireland.
Many polls show that American voters want to welcome immigrants — but strongly prefer that companies hire Americans before asking to import foreign contract workers.
Trump signed the E.O. after learning about the outsourcing from an online ad paid funded by U.S. Tech Workers. Trump initially dismissed the advertisement:
The invitees included Sara Blackwell, founder of Protect US Workers, and Kevin Lynn, the founder, U.S. Tech Workers. The invite list included several TVA workers: Gay Henson, President of the TVA’s Engineering Association, plus Chuck Charnawskas, Jonathan Hicks, David Littlejohn, Linda McDonald, Renae McKenzie, Wendy Turner, and Stacy Whetzell.
“This is a really significant date for U.S. tech workers,” said Kevin Lynn, founder of U.S. Tech Workers, a grassroots group of U.S. college-graduate professionals. U.S. graduates know “what decades of outsourcing and offshoring of these valuable jobs have done to themselves personally and collectively, to the country,” he said, adding:
“We’ve been very much involved for the last three years to protect and preserve tech worker jobs here in the U.S. and in particular, fighting outsourcing schemes. So this is a great opportunity for us, it’s really a culmination of a lot of hard work … [We’re] really, really overjoyed as of this time that the president of the United States has chosen to act on behalf of American workers.”
Fortune 500 companies and their networks of U.S. and Indian-owned subcontractors and sub-subcontractor have used the H-1B program to outsource millions of college-graduate jobs over the last 20 years.
Currently, Fortune 500 companies keep at least 1.3 million foreign contract-workers in jobs needed by U.S. graduates, including at least 600,000 H-1B workers. This personnel policy is not an “abuse” of the law because the law was carefully drafted to help companies sideline American workers.
Some of the contract workers are hired by prestigious firms at U.S. wages. But many visa workers are employed by subcontractors at below-market wages, and many are hired as gig-worker for minimal wages. For example, the universities help get “Practical Training” work permits for 500,000 foreign graduates each year. These workers do not have to be paid minimum wages, and they are widely used by Fortune 500 subcontractors.
Many executives prefer hiring contract workers because they are compliant and quiet compared to U.S. professionals who can argue with executives and switch jobs. Many of the contract workers are imported for about a year, so they can learn how to do the job from an office in India.
Many foreign workers accept low wages for work in the United States because the U.S. work is preferable to work in India, China, or elsewhere. Also, U.S. employers keep their foreign workers on the job by dangling the promise of green cards and citizenship. For example, at least 300,000 Indian visa workers are working while they wait for promised green cards.
In his 2017 inauguration address, Trump promised a policy of “Buy American and hire American.” Trump said in March 2016, “I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program. No exceptions.” On June 22, Trump announced a temporary halt to the H-1B inflow and directed his deputies to rewrite regulations on the Fortune 500’s use of foreign contract-workers.
President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at the BOK Center, Saturday, June 20, 2020, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
President Trump will expand an executive order on Monday, halting a series of visa programs that bring hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to the United States to take American jobs. The order will halt the inflow of foreign worker pipelines until at least December 31. The visa programs suspended include:
H-1B visas, who take white-collar U.S. jobs
H-4 visas, who are the spouses of H-1B visa holders
H-2B visas, who take blue-collar nonagricultural U.S. jobs
L visas, who take white-collar U.S. jobs
J-1 visas, who take a variety of blue-collar and white-collar U.S. jobs
“Obviously American workers have been hurt, and it’s nobody’s fault that the coronavirus hit, but it did do a blow to the economy and to businesses who were furloughing and laying people off, and we want to make sure that Americans get hired into those spots,” said Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli.
Altogether, the order is expected to free up about 600,000 American jobs for the more than 30,000,000 Americans who are jobless mostly due to the Chinese coronavirus crisis. That includes about 287,000 U.S. jobs freed up for Americans that would have otherwise been taken by H-1B, H-2B, and L-1 visa workers, according to Cuccinelli.
Halting the J-1 visa program through the end of the year is set to free up about 97,000 U.S. jobs that would have otherwise gone to foreign workers. The order will be up for expansion within 30 days and reviewed every 60 days after that date. Those reviews include evaluating all regulations relating to visa programs. Cuccinelli credited the April order’s 60-day review process for giving the administration time to consider Monday’s expansion.
The order includes a handful of exemptions, such as an exemption for foreign au pairs who arrive on J-1 visas to do low-wage nanny work for mostly wealthy American households. Also exempted are H-2B visa workers taking U.S. jobs in the food industry, J-1 visa workers taking U.S. jobs in coronavirus-related medical research or treatment, and the Optional Practical Training (OPT) visa program, which delivers foreign graduates to multinational corporations at discounted wage rates.
DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are given authority to exempt visa workers from the order if they are deemed “necessary to facilitate the immediate and continued economic recovery of the United States.”
A DHS official told Breitbart News the exemption is for specific foreign visa workers who are vital to putting Americans back to work.
“The president is confident this is going to be very popular with the American people,” Cuccinelli said. “It’s proven popular thus far — to start clearing this space … and it is the kind of thing that, frankly, some people on the other side of the aisle have supported in the past.”
Indeed, reductions to overall immigration in the middle of mass unemployment are hugely popular with Americans.
In April, nearly 80 percent of Americans said they wanted immigration halted to the U.S. during the crisis and amid mass unemployment. This month, majorities of 55 to 85 percent of voters in ten swing states said they want less immigration at the moment.
Every year, the U.S. admits about 1.2 million legal immigrants on green cards to permanently resettle in the country. In addition, another 1.4 million foreign workers are admitted every year to take American jobs. Often, Americans are fired and replaced by visa workers. Many are forced to train their foreign replacements.
This is the first time in American history that a president has used this particular executive order authority to reduce annual legal immigration levels, one administration official said. Trump’s authority over immigration, like all other presidents, is vast and broad.
In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court reaffirmed the president’s control over legal immigration. In Trump v. Hawaii, the court stated that presidents have extraordinarily broad discretion to admit or exclude foreign nationals from the U.S. when they believe doing so is in the national interest.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions, (art and politics) and translated them into the cartoons that have been popular all over the country, in various news outlets including “Fox News”, MSNBC, CBS, ABC and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and has had his toons tweeted by President Trump.
American Airlines and Hyatt Hotels Corporation announced in a joint statement Friday that they would be giving thousands of free vacations to New York City health care workers on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic.
The companies said in the statement that more than 4,000 workers employed at the NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst medical center would be treated to roundtrip vacations to destinations throughout the U.S. and the Caribbean once they can “take time for themselves.”
Hyatt Hotels plans to provide accommodations once they arrive at no cost.
The companies said doctors, nurses, physician assistants, facility workers, and food service teams would be among those who qualify for the trips.
“We are extremely grateful to Hyatt and American Airlines for this generous gift to our health care workers, who have been at the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic,” Israel Rocha, vice president of NYC Health + Hospitals and CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst, said.
“Our doctors, nurses, and other staff on the front lines of this unprecedented health care crisis really appreciate the outpouring of support,” he continued.
The New York City metropolitan area has emerged as one of the epicenters of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. As of Sunday, the New York City Health Department reported more than 177,000 cases and 14,505 confirmed deaths reported by New York state.
New York state as a whole has reported more than 21,000 deaths and more than 333,000 confirmed cases.
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Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2020.
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