Political considerations still control how our government works

January 7, 2025

As we watch Joe Biden’s presidency ending and prepare for President-elect Donald Trump to take office, some notable things have occurred.

First, Biden continued his questionable behavior by killing the sale of the troubled U.S. Steel company to Japan’s Nippon Steel. This transaction, had it been completed, would have been for more than $14 billion. 

In doing this, Biden said it was his “responsibility to block foreign ownership of this vital American company” as “this acquisition would…create risk for our national security and our critical supply chains.”

There is little evidence to support that. However, had the purchaser been our most significant adversary, Communist China, those who condemn Biden’s action would have celebrated it.

U.S. Steel was founded 1901 by Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan and Charles Schwab. It is the first U.S. company to achieve a worth of at least $1 billion not long after its creation. However, during the 20th century the company had serious problems, which brought about trying to sell it.

Japan is a strong ally of the U.S. and would have been a good owner of the company, keeping it alive. U.S. Steel had warned that, “without Nippon Steel’s cash, it will shift production away from its aging blast furnaces to cheaper non-union electric arc furnaces and move its headquarters out of Pittsburgh,” as reported by the Associated Press.

Biden, who prides himself as the most pro-union president ever, seemed to not notice that possibility.

Also, Biden awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to 19 people at a White House ceremony. The Medal is the Nation’s highest civilian honor, and is presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the United States, to world peace, or other significant endeavors.

Prior to giving the awards Biden noted that the recipients are “a collection of people, with different backgrounds, beliefs, talents, generations, and agendas, using their remarkable gifts and unwavering passion to strengthen our resolve as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Among those receiving this special award were some well-known people, including Robert F. Kennedy (posthumous), Michael J. Fox, Denzel Washington, Lionel Messi, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Ashton B. Carter (posthumous), Bill Nye, and Ralph Lauren.

However, there were two others who are well known, and controversial: former Secretary of State and former Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and notorious philanthropist George Soros.

As Secretary of State, Clinton was lackluster. Her time as a senator and first lady were no better. She is best known for her erroneous claims, such as that as first lady she traveled to Bosnia, and “landed under sniper fire.”

More recently, she said that “If you’re just catching up: The Republican Party, taking orders from the world’s richest man, is on course to shut down the government over the holidays, stopping paychecks for our troops and nutrition benefits for low-income families just in time for Christmas.” Really?

George Soros is a strong supporter of progressive projects, and has poured billions of dollars into them through his Open Society Foundations. He funded groups supporting anti-Israel protests on college campuses.

Worse, he has invested heavily in political campaigns of far-left, progressive — read “pro-criminal” — district attorneys in major cities. Two of these are Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg and Larry Krasner in Philadelphia. These two prefer pursuing criminal justice reform over finding and prosecuting criminals.

Just last week as the 119th Congress prepares to begin working, the House of Representatives addressed its first step, which is electing its Speaker. The Republican candidate, who was depending on a very narrow majority, was former-Speaker Mike Johnson, and the Democrat candidate was Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

The House can do nothing until it elects the Speaker, and a vote to certify the election of the next President is at the top of the list, right after members of the House are sworn in. So, a smooth and quick Speaker election is critical.

What should have been a simple task of taking an hour to count the votes and complete the election was thrown into chaos by a few Republicans who did not want Johnson in the position.

Of the 219 House Republicans all but three understood the importance of getting Johnson elected quickly so they could get on with the important work of the House did vote for Johnson. He then fell short of the needed 218 votes, which was the majority of those voting.

The three who wanted to play games with this important action were Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Rep. Keith Self of Texas. It would have made more sense to elect Johnson and get to work, and if there was strong enough support to replace him, wait until the House was up and running. 

It appeared initially like a second vote would be needed. Johnson talked with each of the three to try and work things out. But ultimately, what did the trick was a phone call from Trump.

So, the efforts of three Republicans to continue the insanity that began with the ouster of former-Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023 did not succeed. And now the House can focus on passing legislation that will help restore America. 

Biden yields to party’s demands and withdraws from the race

July 30, 2024

In convincing President Joe Biden to abandon his fierce determination to run for a second term, the Democrats demonstrated how they work to “save our democracy” by using a highly undemocratic method to persuade him to step aside, and to choose his replacement. This left Democrat voters wondering what happened to their ability to select who will be their party’s candidate.

This action prompted many to say that if the party believes Biden cannot adequately serve another term, he is therefore fit to complete his current term. And the idea of replacing him as president is still being bandied about.

After convincing Biden to step aside, they next undemocratically anointed Vice President Kamala Harris as the new candidate, at Biden’s urging.

And now Harris has her honeymoon period to see if she can sway the voters to her side. Early indications are that she is successfully proceeding down that path. Time will tell, as the anti-Harris movement gears up.

Vowing to work his final few months as the president, Biden outlines his effort to make changes affecting the U.S. Supreme Court through an amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment is a serious matter, as it makes significant changes to the Court as originally established. Biden’s plan includes proposals for legislation to impose term limits for the justices and an ethics code with an enforcement feature, according to sources.

He is also reportedly considering calling for a constitutional amendment to eliminate broad immunity for presidents and other constitutional officeholders, which could have a negative effect on how people perform in those positions, knowing that their best efforts may not be protected.

In considering Harris for this critically important job, her performance in previous positions is important. 

“When she ran for San Francisco district attorney in 2003, she beat incumbent Terence Hallinan in a nonpartisan runoff by running to his right, attacking Hallinan for not being tough enough on crime, while also courting the police union, with whom Hallinan had run afoul,” Politico reported.

“Yet when the Los Angeles Times profiled her a year into her term it referred to Harris not as a tough-on-crime crusader but as being “in the vanguard of progressive reformers who say that California’s criminal justice system is in dire need of drastic change,” the Politico story continued. Her desires at the time included defunding the police. As a prosecutor, she was criminal friendly, and unconcerned about their victims.

Having served as San Francisco's district attorney, and then as California's attorney general, Harris opposed the death penalty for harsh crimes, but took a hard line against banks over home foreclosures. She also prosecuted parents of children who skipped school, but declined the death penalty of a man who had killed a police officer.

While her record in California has earned her the “soft on crime” descriptor, she prefers “smart on crime.” Apparently, this has to do with her penchant for politically motivated policies. Citing her policy contradictions, some critics call her a “shapeshifter” whose ideology is flexible. They say she is someone willing to change her mind quickly as the political moment requires.

Seeking the presidential nomination in 2020, she supported two major progressive legislative building blocks: the radical Green New Deal and the tremendously expensive and socialistic Medicare for All. 

She is somewhat wishy-washy in supporting Israel in the war in Gaza. Harris has been “pushing for a more sympathetic policy toward Palestinians,” according to Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.).

Harris has few if any restrictions on abortion rights. “She has been the most effective voice when it comes to abortion justice … health-care justice, student debt cancellation, the racial wealth gap,” said Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.).

And as a U.S. Senator she is regarded as the most left-radical of all, even more so than Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.

Her most notable and most catastrophic role is as our “Border Czar.” Suddenly, Democrats and the liberal media are jumping up and down in denial of her having that title.

However, Biden said that Harris was “leading the effort to coordinate with Mexico and other Northern Triangle nations to address issues such as the surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border” in a March 24, 2021 video.

According to Politico, Biden had made Harris the "point person on immigration issues." 

"Biden tasks Harris with 'stemming the migration' on southern border," NBC News reported. A headline from the Associated Press read, "Biden taps VP Harris to lead response to border challenges."

While her official title regarding her responsibilities at the border may not have been “Border Czar,” she was clearly placed in charge of the border and its issues. And the millions who have crossed into the country illegally, and the deaths and other harm done to Americans are certainly connected directly to her.

Other favorites ideas of hers are: eliminate fracking, decriminalize illegal immigration, free healthcare for illegal immigrants, student loan cancellation, eliminate private healthcare, infanticide, oppose school choice, oppose Title IX, defund the police, dismantle ICE, support sanctuary cities, nationwide gun registration, and oppose parental rights.

Harris remains relatively unknown to most Americans.  However, if elected she will be a worse president than Joe Biden.

The Biden-Trump debate was certainly an eye-opening experience

July 2, 2024

Last week we saw what Republicans, conservatives and those who don’t favor Joe Biden winning the election in November have been saying for a good while. The debate between President Joe Biden and former-President Donald Trump was such a stark demonstration of Biden’s troubled mental state that his Democrat supporters and media supporters are now saying publicly that he should drop out as the Democrat candidate.

The televised debate showed that the deceivers are those in the media, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and others who accused Biden critics of presenting false evidence of his mental decline by editing videos to show him losing his train of thought, mis-speaking, and wandering around aimlessly.

There for everyone to see on live TV — not just in this country, but across the globe — was Biden revealing his troubled mental state, and showing everyone not just why he must not be re-elected, but also the danger he currently poses as President of the United States.

Biden supporters in the media immediately reacted to his poor performance, with the following comments from some of them.

A former Obama adviser, one who knows Biden close up, Van Jones, who now is a CNN political commentator spoke from a personal viewpoint. "I just want to speak from my heart," Jones said. "I love that guy. That’s a good man. He loves his country. He’s doing the best that he can, but he had a test to meet tonight to restore confidence of the country and of the base. And he failed to do that. And there’s a lot of people who are going to want to see him consider taking a different course now."

Addressing what happens next, Jones said, "We’re still far from our convention, and there is time for this party to figure out a different way forward, if he will allow us to do that. But that was not what we needed from Joe Biden, and it’s personally painful for a lot of people. It’s not just panic, it’s pain of what we saw tonight." 

Columnist Thomas Friedman, who is reportedly a close friend of the President, wrote a column bearing the headline, "Joe Biden Is a Good Man and a Good President. He Must Bow Out of the Race."

"I watched the Biden-Trump debate alone in a Lisbon hotel room, and it made me weep. I cannot remember a more heartbreaking moment in American presidential campaign politics in my lifetime — precisely because of what it revealed: Joe Biden, a good man and a good president, has no business running for re-election," he wrote. 

"The Biden family and political team must gather quickly and have the hardest of conversations with the president, a conversation of love and clarity and resolve," Friedman continued. "To give America the greatest shot possible of deterring the Trump threat in November, the president has to come forward and declare that he will not be running for re-election and is releasing all of his delegates for the Democratic National Convention."

MSNBC’s Joy Reid had the following reaction: "The people who were texting with me were very concerned about President Biden seeming extremely feeble, seeming extremely weak. Joe Biden’s job was to reassure them tonight. His job was to calm his party, to make them feel that, ‘Yes, I can do this. I have four more years in me. I have the ability and the stamina and the strength to do four more' … He did not do that. He did the opposite of that."

The New York Times, an avid supporter of the Democrats and Joe Biden, published the position of its editorial board on Biden’s performance. "President Biden has repeatedly and rightfully described the stakes in this November’s presidential election as nothing less than the future of American democracy," the editorial said. "Mr. Biden has said that he is the candidate with the best chance of taking on this threat of tyranny and defeating it. His argument rests largely on the fact that he beat Mr. Trump in 2020. That is no longer a sufficient rationale for why Mr. Biden should be the Democratic nominee this year."

The Times is correct about the critical stakes in this year’s election. However, it has the matter of who is the threat to the country upside-down. It is Biden and the Democrats that represent tyranny and a threat to the future of our country, not Trump and the Republicans. 

The Democrats and socialists are who want to change history by pushing Critical Race Theory, and the 1619 Project. It is they that promote changing the names of buildings, streets and military bases with the “wrong” name from our history. It is they that want to pack the Supreme Court with liberal/socialist justices who will make law from the bench, and protect their one-party rule.

It is Trump and the Republicans who are, and who have been for years, fighting to sustain the America that our Founders created, which in its original form has led the world in so many good ways for so long. It is those on the right who want to protect the freedoms and independence provided to each of us in the Constitution.

The dangers originating at the southern border are growing

April 16,2024

Not so long ago those in positions of authority and leadership understood the importance of controlling who may enter our country.

In 2012, after winning election to his second term, then-President Barack Obama commented, “America is a nation of laws, which means I, as the President, am obligated to enforce the law. I don’t have a choice about that.” 

Another comment he made was: “Now I know some people want me to bypass Congress and change the laws on my own.” Responding to what he termed the temptation to do that, he said, “But that’s not how our system works … That’s not how our Constitution is written.”

Several years prior to Obama’s comments, then-Sen. Joe Biden took a similar position. “It makes sense that no great nation can be in a position where they can’t control their borders. It matters how you control your borders. Not just for immigration. But it matters for drugs, terror [and] a whole range of other things.”

However, not long after expressing his true and important position on enforcing the law, Obama did what he said he was not permitted to do: he issued an executive branch memorandum titled “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals” (DACA). This declaration provided amnesty for young illegal aliens, and also provided other benefits to them. All of that was un-Constitutional and illegal.

A couple of years later, Obama expanded this illegal declaration and added Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA).  These two actions provided provisional amnesty to more than 4.5 million illegal aliens, and encouraged cartels to traffic illegal aliens into the country.

Statistics reported in 2015 showed that while illegal aliens constituted only about 3 percent of the U.S. population, they represented nearly 14 percent of all offenders sentenced for crimes committed here. That included 12 percent of murder sentences, 20 percent of kidnappers, and 16 percent of drug offenders. Those statistics also showed percentages ranging from 40 percent to 75 percent of the most wanted criminals in border states to be illegal aliens.

A Government Accountability Office study found that between 2011 and 2016, more than 730,000 illegals were in federal, state and local prisons and jails, and accounted for 4.9 million arrests for 7.5 million offenses, including drug crimes, assaults, sex offenses, kidnappings, homicide-related offenses, and terrorism-related offenses.

Then came the election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016, and his ideas about the border and actions he took were very much the same as the prior rhetoric of Obama and Biden.

Trump’s policies were aimed at reducing the numbers of illegals trying to come in, and were successful. And despite the opposition of Democrats, who claimed Trump had no mandate for the actions he took, the number of those apprehended while attempting to cross the border decreased by 88 percent from the peak under Obama. And that wasn’t because border security was weakened, but because the numbers of those trying to get in dropped substantially, due to the new level border security that was in effect.

But then in the 2020 election voters decided that they wanted Joe Biden as President. And Biden wasted no time in reversing the successful policies Trump had implemented.

The number of apprehensions of illegal aliens at the border in October prior to the election of 2020 was right around 69,000. Interestingly, by February of 2021, just one month after Biden was sworn in, that number was 100,441. That trend continued to increase, reaching 212, 672 in July. And the invasion has continued unabated since.

During Biden’s catastrophic tenure, as of February 2024 more than 7 million illegals have entered the country. Worse than that, if you can imagine anything worse than this deliberate trashing of laws and common sense, Biden has reportedly flown nearly 400,000 illegals into the country, bringing them in without having to cross the Rio Grande and battle the razor wire in Texas, and interact with the border authorities.

After cancelling Trump’s border policies, which dramatically reduced the number of illegals coming in, by executive fiat, Biden has consistently said he does not have the power that Trump had, and cannot close the border. Actually, all he has to do is reinstate Trump’s policies, and things will improve almost immediately. 

As pressure has mounted, he has changed his tune just a little, now saying he is investigating whether or not he can close the border. This “investigation” has gone on for weeks without an answer. Biden and the Democrats apparently are the only ones who do not know the answer: Yes, you can close the border.

Meanwhile, the crimes against Americans continue to rise, and deaths to Americans by drugs illegally brought in, and by criminal illegals who have walked in undisturbed. None of this seems to bother Biden. Or, maybe no one has explained this to him.

But Biden knows exactly what is going on. It’s part of the Obama/Biden plan to fundamentally transform the United States of America into another Venezuela. And the plan is working.

What is the solution to the calamity at our southern border?

February 20, 2024

The catastrophe that is occurring at our southern border is currently the most serious national security threat to the nation. Millions of illegal aliens have come across the border with virtually no interference, have been encountered by Border Patrol agents, given a court date several years in the future for which they may or may not show up, and then are released into the country, often being flown or bused to the location of their choice. 

More than a million “gotaways” have sneaked across the Rio Grande without even coming face to face with the Border Patrol, and who knows who they are, where they are, or what their intent is?

This situation has become so intense and wide-spread that the mayors of sanctuary cities are now complaining about the problems this laxness has caused them, with thousands of illegals needing to be dealt with at the cities’ expense (read “taxpayers’ expense”).

Tens of thousands of Americans have died as a result of the lax control of the border that has allowed tens of thousands or millions of fentanyl pills to be smuggled in. Many others have been victims of crimes by illegals, and who knows how many potential terrorists are among those millions coming in from more than a hundred countries, including China?

Despite the painfully obvious failure of the Biden administration to secure the border and protect Americans, the man directly responsible for securing the border, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, keeps insisting that “The border is secure and the border is not open.”

He also blames the ridiculously huge number of illegals entering the country on insufficient border policies, rather than on the true cause: President Joe Biden’s Executive Orders almost as soon as he was sworn in that cancelled several existing policies that were working and keeping illegal entry at a very low level before Biden took office.

But while the border situation may benefit from some policy updates, the problem is that Mayorkas is not following the laws, and chaos is the result. Is not following laws a high crime or misdemeanor?

Finally, some action was taken. The House of Representatives succeeded in passing an impeachment action against Mayorkas on the second attempt.

Republican members of the House Committee on Homeland Security released this statement on impeachment: “After our nearly year-long investigation and subsequent impeachment proceedings, and having exhausted all other options to hold him accountable, it is unmistakably clear to all of us—and to the American people—that Congress must exercise its constitutional duty and impeach Secretary Mayorkas. The Secretary has consistently willfully and systemically refused to follow the laws passed by Congress, abused his authority, and breached the trust of Congress and the American people on numerous occasions. The result of his failure to fulfill his oath of office has been a border crisis that is unprecedented in American history—a crisis that has cost the lives of thousands of Secretary Mayorkas’ fellow Americans.”

The Committee produced reports of its findings in the five-phase investigation, totaling nearly 400 pages, plus interviews with Border Patrol Sector Chiefs:

* Phase 1: DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ Dereliction of Duty

* Phase 2: DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Has Emboldened Cartels, Criminals, and America’s Enemies

* Phase 3: The Devastating Human Costs of the DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ Open-Borders Policies

* Phase 4: The Historic Dollar Costs of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ Open-Borders Policies

* Phase 5: The Massive Waste and Abuse Enabled by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas

* Transcribed Interview Appendix: First-Hand Accounts of the Crisis From Border Patrol Sector Chiefs.

Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee criticized the Republican impeachment effort, saying it was a “baseless sham.” “MAGA Republicans have wasted their opportunity to make progress on immigration and border security policy,” rather than participating “in a conversation about bipartisan legislation,” they said.

But Republicans know, as Democrats should and likely do, that additional legislation is not needed to fix the border. All that is needed is for Biden to reverse his day-one actions and restore the border control that he cancelled in his childish actions against all things Trump.

And exactly how is the Republican effort against Mayorkas different from the Democrats’ twice impeaching then-President Donald Trump, all the while knowing that the Senate would not convict Trump in an impeachment trial?

They impeached Trump twice to make the point that they disapproved of him as President, so it is perfectly acceptable, by Democrat reasoning, that Republicans impeached Mayorkas for his ignoring laws, even though the Senate will not convict him.

Is Mayorkas deliberately lying about there being a crisis? Or, is he satisfied with what is happening, that he and Biden want millions of illegal aliens coming into the country? They apparently like the chaos in the border states and the sanctuary cities, the drug deaths and other deaths caused by illegals, and the potential for some illegals to be terrorists in waiting.

Otherwise, why would they not openly work to fix the problem? Why would they continue to deny that there is a crisis of monumental proportions at the southern border that threatens the very people they were elected to protect?

Fear and desperation define the Democrats’ election strategy

December 26, 2023

In their never-ending effort to prevent former President Donald Trump from being elected for a second term, the Democrats have taken yet another step. Their fear that Trump will win in 2024 has driven them to levels of desperation likely unseen before of as a weapon against a presidential candidate in our history, or certainly in the last hundred years.

Without listing all of the efforts so far unleashed, suffice it to say that every imaginable contrivance has been used. The most recent is perhaps the most ridiculous.

The Colorado Supreme Court, a panel of seven Democrats appointed by a Democrat governor, has ruled that "President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President" under the 14th Amendment.

There was, of course, much delight from this decision, and much irritation. Let’s focus on the response from those who disagree with the Court’s action.

Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, called the action a “flawed decision.” “This is the most dangerous attack on your constitutional right to vote I have ever seen.”

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. commented that "Four partisan Democrat operatives on the Colorado Supreme Court think they get to decide for all Coloradans and Americans the next presidential election. This is un-American and Democrats are so afraid that President Trump will win on Nov 5th, 2024 that they are illegally attempting to take him off the ballot."

 “We trust the U.S. Supreme Court will set aside this reckless decision and let the American people decide the next President of the United States,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-LA, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Trump attorney Alina Habba commented that “This ruling, issued by the Colorado Supreme Court, attacks the very heart of this nation’s democracy. It will not stand, and we trust that the Supreme Court will reverse this unconstitutional order.”

Attorney and former law professor Alan Dershowitz, a long-time Democrat, appearing on Newsmax "National Report," said the following: "In the 60 years I've been practicing and teaching law, I've never seen a decision that's so anti-democratic and so unconstitutional; it is absurd," 

Dershowitz told National Report co-hosts Emma Rechenberg and Jon Glasgow, "The idea that the 14th Amendment was supposed to substitute for the impeachment provision, carefully drafted by the framers, is wrong."

He added that the 14th Amendment stipulates the process, which clearly says Congress shall have the power to ensure that a person cannot run for office.

"If you want to impeach a president, if you want to make him not be able to run in the future, there's a provision. It requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate," he said. "But the idea that the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to circumvent that carefully drawn provision and simply allow any state to make up grounds for denying him the right to be on the ballot undercuts democracy."

Because Trump allegedly engaged in an insurrection, according to the challengers, he is disqualified by Section 3. There are three major legal problems with that claim, however.

1. Trump didn’t hold an applicable office

2. He was not charged, let alone convicted, for ‘Insurrection or Rebellion’

3.  Section 3 is no longer extant. There is an argument that can be made — and which was already adopted by one federal court — that Section 3 doesn’t even exist anymore as a constitutional matter.

Offering more information on this, attorney Hans von Spakovsky with The Heritage Foundation wrote: “First, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment applies only to individuals who were previously a ‘member of Congress,’ an ‘officer of the United States,’ or a state official. Individuals who are elected — such as the president and vice president — are not officers within the meaning of Section 3. Second, no federal court has convicted Trump of engaging in ‘insurrection or rebellion.’ In fact, the Senate acquitted Trump of that charge in his second impeachment.”

Notre Dame University election law professor Derek T. Muller wrote in a blog last Tuesday, “This is a major and extraordinary holding from a state supreme court. Never in history has a presidential candidate been excluded from the ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. United States Supreme Court review seems inevitable, and it exerts major pressure on the Court.

The Democrats, who loudly defend “our democracy,” are now trying to save it by trying to eliminate their chief political enemy in a manner that is stunningly un-democratic. It is more like what one sees in banana republics.

A recent headline regarding the Colorado Supreme Court action read: “Colorado Saves Democracy By Not Allowing People To Vote For Preferred Candidate.”

It is worth noting that among the seven Democrats on the Colorado Supreme Court, three of them disagreed with this action.

This partisan action will act as a lesson for the future, as political parties may use this and similar methods to fight political enemies. Will there soon be a movement to remove Joe Biden from the ballot, too?

If this ridiculous, irrational action is allowed to stand, our nation will suffer a foundational transformation at the hands of Democrats.

Biden’s weak policies increase our risk of terrorist activity

December 5, 2023

No objective person can look at the chaos at the southern border and not be alarmed. Of course, the Biden administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, insists that the border is closed.

However, the New York Times reported in October that “Migrants were caught crossing the southern border of the United States more times in the past year than in any other year since at least 1960, when the government started keeping track of the data.

“It is the third record-setting year in a row,” and there were “more than 2.4 million apprehensions in the 2023 fiscal year, which ended in September. That tops the previous record, set a year earlier, of more than 2.3 million, according to government data released on Saturday. During the 2021 fiscal year, there were more than 1.7 million apprehensions.”

Question for Mayorkas: If 2.3 and 2.4 million people can enter the country illegally in two consecutive years, and those numbers have set records for illegal entry going back 50 years, how many illegal entries constitute a situation where the border could reasonably be considered open?

No doubt the response will be: crickets.

And while states on the border are suffering immensely, and illegals are being transported around the country by the federal government, even the sanctuary states and cities are beginning to understand the pain of these lax federal policies, and want action to be taken.

Critics point out that while many or maybe most of these illegal aliens merely seek a better life, many of them have other intentions: trafficking children, women, and drugs; gang violence; and worse. 

In former President Donald Trump’s final 32 months in the White House, Border Patrol agents apprehended 1.9 million illegal aliens. By contrast, in the first 32 months of President Joe Biden’s tenure, the Border Patrol apprehended 6.3 million illegal aliens.

In addition to the millions of illegals apprehended, there have been 1.5 million “gotaways,” illegals that were spotted and counted, but not apprehended. As the number of those apprehended increases, so does the number of gotaways. We don’t know who they are or why they came. And we don’t know where they went.

Illegals on the terror watch list that have been apprehended have increased in number since fiscal year 2017, when two were caught. In 2018, there were six; in 2019 there were none; and in 2020 there were three.

And then the increases began. In 2021 - 15; in 2022 - 98; in 2023 - 169.

If that by itself isn’t bad enough, wait until you see which countries they are coming from.

From October 1, 2021 to Oct. 4, 2023 some 73,000 “Special Interest Aliens” entered the country from places including Afghanistan, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey and Syria. 

In the first half of October of this year, more than 30 came from Iran and Pakistan each. More than 100 came from Russia. Almost 2,000 came from China.

Are any of these illegals associated with Iranian terrorist proxies, like Hamas or Hezbollah? And many of these illegals are military age males. And what about those from China, our most serious adversary?

This is the reality that the feeble and perilous Biden border policy has produced.

To call on their supporters to conduct attacks on our own soil,” Wray said.

“Terrorists and criminal actors may exploit the elevated flow and increasingly complex security environment to enter the United States,” said the fiscal year 2024 threat assessment by the Department of Homeland Security.

And, FBI Director Christopher Wray told reporters on a call in October that “Here in the U.S., we cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or their foreign terrorist organizations could exploit the conflict to call on their supporters to conduct attacks on our own soil.”

The weakness demonstrated by the Biden administration on the southern border has not gone without notice around the world. Since the butchery carried out in the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, Iranian terrorist proxies have attacked U.S. military installations in the region 75 times. The U.S. response has been meek and scarce. The only good news is that while some military personnel have been injured, none have been killed.

This sort of under-reaction will not deter future attacks; they invite more. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said at the end of October, two weeks after the attacks began, “Iran wants to hide its hand and deny its role in these attacks against our forces. We will not let them. If attacks by Iran’s proxies against U.S. forces continue, we will not hesitate to take further necessary measures to protect our people.”

Austin’s words had no effect on Iran and its terrorist proxies; the attacks have continued. And the tough talk threatening “further necessary measures” has not led to one significant retaliatory strike.

Biden hasn’t been moved to stand up to Iran and order an action to exact a substantial price from the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. And until Iran is shown that we will back up our words with significant action, these attacks will continue, and likely get worse.

The introduction of wokeness into our military weakens it

August 29, 2023

Last July a retired U.S. Army general spoke to an audience on the state of the nation’s military forces. Thomas Spoehr attained the rank of Lt. General in his career spanning more than 36 years in uniform. During that time, he served in positions in the Pentagon, with the 82nd Airborne Division, the 1st Armored Division, and as Deputy Commanding General of U.S. Forces in Iraq.

Spoehr was concerned with some things that had transpired that worked against the efficiency and strength of our military, and shared his concerns with the audience at the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series at Hillsdale College. Following are some of his concerns. 

In 2015, a U.S. Marine Corps study concluded that gender-integrated combat formations did not move as quickly or shoot as accurately, and that women were twice as likely as men to suffer combat injuries. The study was rejected by then-Secretary of the Navy, Ray Maybus.

Later, the Department of Defense under Secretary Ashton Carter opened all military combat jobs to women, committing to “gender-neutral standards” that ensured that female service members would meet the requirements. The Army began to put in place the gender-neutral test promised by Carter. 

However, after finding that women were not scoring as highly as men, the Army threw out the test. Now there is no test to determine whether any soldier can meet the fitness requirements for combat specialties.

Also, that year, President Barack Obama initiated a change to the Pentagon’s longstanding policy on transgender individuals in the military. But after he was elected President, Donald Trump put that change on hold. His Defense Secretary, James Mattis, had information showing, among other things, that transgender individuals suffering from gender dysphoria attempted suicide and experienced severe anxiety at nine times the rate of the general population.

The Trump administration then imposed restrictions on military service personnel suffering from gender dysphoria. However, as one of his first actions, newly elected President Joe Biden signed an executive order that cancelled those restrictions and allowed all transgender individuals to participate in our military services. Later, Biden’s administration allowed active duty military personnel to take time off from their duties to have sex-change surgery, related hormones and drugs, which would be paid for by taxpayers.

The Biden administration has also removed a policy that prohibited personnel with HIV from serving in combat zones, due to the need for special medications and the danger of transmission through shared blood. 

And in recent years, our military’s strenuous physical fitness standard has been weakened, with the goal of “leveling the playing field.” This allows people previously not up to the physical standard to now serve.

In July of last year, a drag queen story hour was scheduled at the base library of Ramstein Air Base in Germany. A drag queen was going to read to children of Air Force personnel stationed there. However, when this news reached lawmakers in the U.S., who complained to the Secretary of the Air Force, the event was cancelled.

Also, in 2021, the Navy released a video instructing Navy personnel that they need to create a “safe space for everybody.” This includes using “inclusive language,” such as saying “hey everybody,” instead of “hey guys.” Spoehr wondered what other “woke” changes might follow. 

Taking things a few steps further down the path, Biden required through an executive order that all organizations in the military services must create Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices, and to produce DEI plans and track the progress toward those goals. The purpose of this is to advance “equity for all.”

Spoehr also mentioned that Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the idea that capitalism is racist are also being used to indoctrinate personnel. The charge of CRT being used was denied by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, but Spoehr said much evidence contradicts Austin’s denial. 

Legislation introduced this year in Congress would halt the use of CRT, the creation of diversity offices, and the easing of physical requirements. Whether this legislation will pass is an open question.

In a write-up of Spoehr’s address printed in Hillsdale’s publication, “Imprimis,” is this: “Wokeness also comes in the form of conflating the mission of the military with environmental ideology. A year ago, President Biden told a group of overseas Air Force airmen that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had determined that the greatest threat facing America was global warming—a claim the Joint Chiefs had to walk back. 

“In the same vein, Biden signed an executive order imposing a massive regime of environmental goals and requirements for the Department of Defense. These goals included transitioning to all electric non-tactical vehicles by 2035, carbon-free electricity for military installations by that same year, and net zero emissions from those installations by 2050. As a result, the Pentagon recently announced it will devote over $3 billion of its already stretched-thin military budget to climate-related initiatives in 2023 alone.”

The job and responsibility of the U.S. military is to protect and defend the United States. Social experimentation and political ideology weaken its ability. The military must have at every position the best qualified and capable person possible, regardless of race or gender.

Biden has been more of a help than a hinderance to Russia

The big news of the last week is the Russian attack on its neighbor, Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin is doing this for one of two reasons, Russia observers tell us. 

One reason they say is that Putin is afraid. He is scared to death of democracy, which Ukraine is reportedly working toward. And he fears that Ukraine could become a part of NATO, which he views as a threat to Russian communism. This, despite NATO having said it does not want to admit Ukraine to the organization.

The other, the more likely reason, is that Putin desires to re-establish the former Soviet Union by retaking those nations that were freed when the communist state fell in 1991, a goal he has firmly expressed in the past.

While the threat of a Russian attack was building, the nations of the world, including the United States, did nothing more than issue mild warnings. Sanctions were threatened, some serious ones, but would not be put in place until after an attack. Sanctions as a deterrent to war were not thought to be useful. Last week, Russia began the attack. 

One of the most serious sanctions would be blocking Russia from participating in the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) banking system. This action has been described as a “Financial Nuclear Weapon.” As this is being written, “selected” Russian banks have been taken out of SWIFT, but not all of its banks.

“For the U.S. and its European allies, cutting Russia out of the SWIFT financial system would be one of the toughest financial steps they could take,” NBC News reported, “damaging Russia's economy immediately and in the long term. The move could cut Russia off from most international financial transactions, including profits from oil and gas production, which account for more than 40 percent of the country's revenue.”

The U.S. buys a good bit of oil and gasoline from Russia. Forbes reported, “The United States imported more gasoline and other refined petroleum products from Russia than any other country in 2021.”

According to Federal Customs Service records, the United States is the single largest buyer of Russia’s heavy-oil products, and during the first five months of this year, U.S. refiners bought nearly 20 percent of Russia’s heavy-oil exports.

That complicates things for the U.S. in placing sanctions on Russia to force the end of the war against Ukraine, especially if one of those sanctions is completely blocking Russia from participating in SWIFT.

This situation exists a fairly short time after the U.S. became a net energy exporter in 2020, after increases in the production of crude oil, natural gas, and natural gas liquids.

President Joe Biden had barely lowered his hand after taking the oath of office last year when he took actions that put the U.S. in a situation of supporting Russia, and at the same time making our country somewhat dependent upon it.

One action was stopping completion of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have moved 830,000 barrels of oil per day to the U.S. from Canada. That would have substantially increased domestic energy production, perhaps to a level where buying oil and gasoline from Russia would no longer be needed.

A second action was stopping oil drilling on federal lands, thereby lessening the amount of domestic energy production. 

And Biden helped Russia directly by removing the U.S. opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that benefits Russian energy sales, and will double Russia’s delivery of energy to Europe, bypassing pipelines in Ukraine and Poland in the process, a substantial financial benefit for Russia.

We have seen the price for a barrel of crude oil rise from $21.04 per barrel in April of 2020, during President Donald Trump’s administration, when energy independence was finally achieved after several decades, to more than $100 per barrel as of last week.

Biden has been more of a help than a hinderance to Russia when being a stalwart figure of opposition would have been much better. This mild stance followed his criticism of former President Trump’s tenure. 

In 2019, Biden said of Trump, “It’s going to take a hell of a lot of work to make up for all of the damage he’s done internationally and nationally.” Then, it seems, Biden said, “hold my beer!”

A cartoon post on Facebook put forth this question: What sanctions can Biden place on Russia?” To which the following answers were provided: Shut down their pipeline. Create supply chain nightmares. And, basically drive their economy into the ground. You know, like what he’s done to us.”

Somehow, that one escaped the censors’ knife.

Putin has put his nuclear forces on alert. This outrageous move ought to cause the most timid national leaders to get serious about the Putin threat.

Thus far, in opposition to his thuggery the world has effectively only stuck out its tongue at Putin. What he deserves, and requires, is to be knocked cold.

Biden’s ‘Build Back Better’ tax and spend dream is being whittled down

In the span of just eight months since January 20, President Joe Biden has given us the border crisis, the Afghanistan debacle, the issues with China and Russia and North Korea, a broken supply chain, ridiculously high gas prices, and staggering inflation throughout the economy. 

That works out to nearly one catastrophe for each month. Some are wondering if America will be able to survive another three-plus years of Biden rule.

If many of the desired elements in Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda are approved, the answer to that is: America will be moving even farther from the country our Founders designed.

Some of the things in that agenda are not legitimate roles for the government of a democratic republic that was founded on the principal of individual, God-given freedoms. They are wrong for a nation which was created by its individual states, and that gave themselves a degree of independence from the federal government. They are wrong for a nation with a government of limited authority.

Our system of government purposefully gave us the ability to follow our desires for how to make a good life for ourselves, and not be dependent upon the government to take care of us from cradle to grave.

If you want to ply a particular trade, participate in a particular profession, start a business, or work in some other way to build your life so that you support yourself and perhaps a family, or just live independently, go for it. You may succeed, or you may not. If not, you are free to try something else.

Eventually you may make a decent living, a pretty good living, or become wealthy. What you choose to do is up to you. It is not the government’s place to tell you what you can or cannot do, beyond some common-sense laws, or to take care of you if you decide you don’t want to try anymore. And in the case of some who have bad luck and are unable to support themselves, the most generous people in the world — the American people — will most likely help you when you need it.

Yes, it is true that through the decades our government has grown well beyond its desired size, costs far too much, goes well beyond its designed restrictions, and interferes in our lives more than it was designed to do. That is not good. But it can be corrected.

Instead, the left in America is working overtime, not at trying to make their individual lives better, but to make our government even larger, more expensive and more controlling.

Some of the things President Biden and the Democrats, who still hold tenuous control of the government, want to do are simply improper. Such things as paying for child care, “free” community college, $450 billion for government-run preschools, are not the proper role of our government.

Some other things, such as amnesty for more than 8 million illegals, complete with payments of $450,000 for some; doubling the size of the IRS to monitor bank accounts of citizens; and spending $3.5 billion for a “Civilian Climate Corps” of Climate Change activists, are not good for the country, or our freedoms.

As Congress struggles to get support to pass Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, the monstrous $3.5 trillion, 2,465-page tax and spend leftist dream is being whittled down. Even though it now spends less money and uses less paper, it is still way too expensive and much too heavy. And Biden’s tax and spend agenda is still a disaster.

One really goofy idea for funding some of the multi-trillion-dollar spending plan is a tax on the “unrealized capital gains” of anyone who makes more than $100 million a year, or whose worth is at least $1 billion. This idea is likely unconstitutional. But if not, it most certainly is an oxymoron. 

A capital gain is the profit you make when you sell an investment asset for more than you paid for it. If you buy an asset for $1,000 and sell it for $5,000, you would pay tax on the additional $4,000. But this weird tax idea would be applied to the increased value of the asset before it has been sold.

If the asset later lost some or all of its gain, would the government return the taxed amount? Nope. This concept beautifully illustrates the twisted understanding many liberals/socialists have for economics.  

The left is determined to transform our nation of maximum individual freedom and world-leading prosperity into a government-run nation like Cuba and Venezuela, and all the others that have failed.

And some of our citizens, who have never seen worse times than these pretty good times of the 21st century, do not understand how things have improved through time in America, and how good of a country they have been blessed to live in. They don’t understand that America’s poor are so much better off than those that live in the poorest nations. 

They are eager to see the left succeed, believing that socialism — and ultimately communism — will make things better for us. It won’t. Let’s hope this effort fails.

Once upon a time, U.S. border security was an important concern!

The disgraceful chaos at the southern border is a topic of great concern to sensible Americans. It is a given that nations need secure and impenetrable borders, and levelheaded people understand that. And sometimes border policies and practices need reworking, such as after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

“Unbelievable as it may seem to us today, it was only 15 years ago — with the 9/11 terrorist attacks still fresh in our minds — when Congress came together in a bipartisan effort to pass the Secure Fence Act of 2006.” That comment came from Mark Morgan, in a speech delivered this past July at Hillsdale College. 

Morgan served as acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Trump administration, and as chief of U.S. Border Patrol in the Obama administration, and provided details on this action. “The Secure Fence Act directed the Department of Homeland Security to take appropriate actions to achieve ‘operational control’ over U.S. land and maritime borders to ‘prevent unlawful entry.’” The measure had the support of 80 of the 100 U.S. Senators.

“It defined operational control as the prevention of all unlawful entries into the U.S., including terrorists, instruments of terrorism, narcotics, and other contraband,” he continued. “And it specifically set the goal of providing ‘at least two layers of reinforced fencing, installation of additional physical barriers, roads, lighting, cameras, and sensors.’ It added thousands of Border Patrol personnel, mandated the acquisition of new technologies, and resulted in the construction of more than 650 miles of physical barrier along the southern border of the U.S. between 2006 and 2011.”

With those actions, the southern border became even more secure than it had been, sparked by concerns of additional terrorist efforts to kill Americans. And Morgan noted that there was substantial support for this action in the Congress before and after those actions were taken. 

In 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama said: “We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.” 

And Senator Chuck Schumer said in 2009: “Illegal immigration is wrong, plain and simple … People who enter the United States without permission are illegal aliens and illegal aliens should not be treated the same as people who enter the U.S. legally.”

And then there was this comment: “Let me tell you something, folks, people are driving across that border with tons, tons — hear me, tons — of everything from byproducts from methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin, and it’s all coming up through corrupt Mexico.” That comment was voiced by then-Senator, and current President, Joe Biden, in 2006.

But since that time, something has happened. Congressional Democrats seemingly no longer care about security at the southern border. “Some attribute the breakdown of the bipartisan consensus on securing the border to the fact that Democrats came to look on illegal immigrants as much-needed Democrat voters,” Morgan said. “For whatever reason, a decade later these same Democratic leaders were lambasting President Trump’s border wall policy as ‘immoral and ineffective,’ even ‘racist,’ and fiercely opposing any and every serious proposal aimed at enforcing immigration law.”

“One of the most ridiculous criticisms I’ve heard.” Morgan noted, “is that the wall is ‘a fourteenth century solution for a twenty-first century problem.’ The same could be said of the wheel, which also still works pretty well.” 

In the minds of at least some of today’s Congressional Democrats, the tighter and more successful border security methods of the recent past are immoral and ineffective, and trying to prevent drug dealers, child traffickers, and terrorists from entering the country is racist. Brilliant!

One of the most effective and sensible programs dealing with illegal aliens crossing the border was called the Remain in Mexico Program. It required people illegally entering or being smuggled into the country with a minor to be returned to Mexico as opposed to being released into the U.S. with only a date for a hearing that most ignore.

Joe Biden, almost as soon as he drew a breath after being sworn in, canceled the Remain in Mexico Program, replacing it with the senseless “catch and release” method that existed prior to the Trump administration’s successful alternative.

Now, however, according to Morgan, “In response to a lawsuit brought by the Texas Attorney General, a federal judge has recently ruled that the Remain in Mexico Program must be reinstated, and the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to overturn that ruling.”

This may be the best thing to occur in the Biden administration’s brief but catastrophic tenure, and Biden had nothing to do with it, other than to have cancelled it early on, and opposed its reinstatement.

It is projected that 1.7 million illegal aliens will enter the U.S. in 2021. Border Patrol documents show that more than160,000 illegal aliens have been released into the U.S. since March, often with little to no supervision.

These illegal aliens have not been vaccinated, and they have not been vetted. What could possibly go wrong? 

Need we even ask that question?

Biden and the Democrats want to increase the size and cost of government

President Joe Biden’s rushed and ill-conceived exit from Afghanistan was a true disaster, with 13 American military personnel and other innocent lives lost, and many Americans and allies still trying to get out of there, without any American assets left in the country to help make that happen.

This colossal mess has damaged our relations with some allies, caused others to question our strength and direction, and has strengthened our adversaries.

Our southern border, which the Biden administration insists is “closed,” still allows and encourages thousands of illegal aliens to enter the country every day. These people — whose identity and character are unknown, and few if any of whom have been vaccinated against the Covid virus — are mostly left in the country, while some are deported.

In the chaos at the border our Border Patrol (BP) officers are now under fire for doing their job: trying to prevent people from illegally entering the country. 

People who see what they want to see, or who never fact-check their perceptions, falsely accused the mounted BP officers of carrying whips and beating the illegal migrants, when in fact the only migrants who received any sort of physical action were those who refused to obey the officers, or were trying to interfere with them by grabbing the reins of their horses as the officers tried to keep them out of the country.

Why aren’t these critics more concerned with the safety of our BP officers than that of the trespassers?

After launching an attack on Border Patrol officers, now Biden has launched an attack on wealthy Americans and large corporations, saying, "I'm sick and tired of the super-wealthy and giant corporations not paying their fair share in taxes. It's time for it to change."

First, let’s look at who pays what in taxes. The bottom 50% who make less than $43,600 per year pay only 3% of total income taxes; those making $43,600 to $87,000 pay 10%; those making $87,000 to $152,000 pay 16%; those making $152,000 to $218,000 pay 11%; those making $218,000 to $540,000 (the top 2% to 5%) pay 20%; and the hated top 1% making more than $540,000 pay 40% of total income taxes, according to data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

If 1% of taxpayers pay 40% of income taxes and the top 5% pay 60%, while those in the lowest tax bracket pay only 3%, what would the fair share of total taxes paid be?

Just like there is some fraud in elections, there is some fraud among tax payers. But you likely would find that most wealthy people and large corporations follow the tax code pretty strictly.

If corporations are not paying enough in taxes, or maybe nothing in taxes, don’t suggest they are “un-American,” change the tax code.

Biden wants to change the reporting requirements for financial institutions, and for the IRS to be able to view transactions of all bank accounts with $600 or more in them. This is aimed at anyone who doesn’t report their income accurately, the tax dodgers. But it puts most people under the IRS microscope.

Biden’s “American Families Plan calls for banks and other financial institutions to report more than just a taxpayer’s interest earned, capital gains and losses,” Forbes magazine reported. “Banks and other financial institutions would also be required to report ‘aggregate account outflows and inflows.’

“In other words, the IRS will know about all of your bank accounts, whether you earned income on that account or not, how much is in the account in a given year, and how much was transferred in and out of the account,” the Forbes report continued. “It is unclear how this would work, but what is clear is that this new reporting obligation will create a massive compliance effort on the part of financial institutions, and eliminate a massive blind spot that the IRS is currently enduring.” Some good things, but also some bad things.

This new big government plan prompted Sen. Chuck Grassley, R–IA, to say, "Instead of promising a chicken in every pot, Biden's plan promises an auditor at every kitchen table."

And to make sure all bank accounts properly report everyone’s financial activities, the IRS will hire 87,000 new employees, and everyone can expect more scrutiny of the flow of money to and from their accounts.

Assuming that these employees make minimum wage, each one will receive gross pay of $15,080 for a year of 40-hour weeks. Figured for all 87,000 new IRS workers, that comes to an additional $1,311,960,000 per year. Most likely, they will make a bit more than the minimum wage, and probably at least double that figure. And that is only the wage cost of the new employees, not including office space and the needed equipment, etc.

Supposedly, this process will find additional income to be reported and taxed. But what it also does is increase the size and cost of government, and increase the weight of government on the shoulders of those who pay the salaries of Joe Biden, and everyone else who is employed by the federal government.

None of this represents the government that our Founders designed.

Biden’s “Building Back Better” is really “Biden Boldly Blunders”

President Joe Biden’s early days in office do not bode well for the next three-plus years.

Changes to successful illegal immigration measures have created a true border catastrophe. This is readily demonstrated by record-breaking numbers of illegal aliens entering the country. 

Some of those seeking asylum surrender to the Border Patrol; other illegals avoid capture when Border Patrol officers are moved from the border to tend to illegal aliens that overwhelm housing facilities, allowing illegals to stream into the country unimpeded.

Why not keep the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy for those seeking asylum? That would reduce the number of people overloading holding facilities by temporarily returning the asylum seekers to Mexico while their cases are adjudicated. 

Some of those avoiding Border Patrol are criminals, gang members, drug dealers, and some are on the terrorist watch list. And, there are significant numbers of all illegals that test positive for the coronavirus. 

And the administration is considering a conditional cash transfer program to help address economic problems that encourage Central Americans to head north. A New York Post story said the administration is “considering sending cash payments to Central Americans in order to dissuade them from making the journey to the United States,” actually paying people not to come to the United States. Like that is going to work.

Illegal immigration is Biden’s most visible and dangerous calamity. So far. 

And then there is the idea of “packing” the Supreme Court.

Biden has said in the past that he is not a fan of Court packing, and called it “a bonehead idea.” Packing would involve adding activist justices to the Court who would apply their personal political and ideological philosophies to their legal rulings.

However, despite his not being a fan, Biden has appointed a commission of mostly liberals to look into various aspects of the Court, including adding justices and placing term limits on justices.

However, in addition to Biden, many other people oppose the idea of packing the Court, including former Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who passed away last September, and current Associate Justice Steven Breyer.

During an interview on National Public Radio in 2019, liberal Justice Ginsburg made it clear that she opposed such proposals. "If anything would make the Court look partisan," she said, "it would be that — one side saying, 'When we're in power, we're going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.'" She added that it "was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court" in 1937.

In remarks prepared earlier this month for delivery at Harvard Law School, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer said, in what ABC News termed a stark public warning, that "It is wrong to think of the Court as another political institution," he continued, "And it is doubly wrong to think of its members as junior league politicians."

Prior to being elected, Biden campaigned on repealing the tax cuts made by then-President Donald Trump as one of his highest priorities, if elected.

In order to defend tax increases, Democrats play down the effects of the Trump reductions in tax rates. The Washington Examiner noted last October that “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has dismissed any benefit to the middle class as ‘crumbs,’ while presidential candidate Joe Biden has said that $1.3 trillion of these tax cuts went to the top one-tenth of 1 percent of wage earners.”

The Washington Post fact-checker gave Biden’s claim that the middle class did not see a tax cut its highest rating of four Pinocchios for being factually deficient.

The Trump economic policy changes resulted in the unemployment rate dropping to a 50-year low 3.5 percent in 2019. And, median household income rose by $4,440 or 6.8 percent, which is the largest one-year wage growth in history. 

Taxpayers in Pennsylvania and Colorado earning between $50,000 and $100,000 saw their tax liability drop by over 14 percent and 13 percent, respectively, while households with incomes over $1 million saw their tax liability drop by just 3.1 percent and 4.5 percent, respectively.

The Examiner also reported that the doubling of the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000 not only reduced taxes for families, “but the number of households claiming the credit increased from 22 million to 36 million.”

When Trump cut tax rates, it helped generate an economic upswing and benefitted millions of not-wealthy families and individuals. 

Biden, however, wants to raise more than $2 trillion over 15 years by increasing the corporate tax rate to 28 percent, the global minimum tax to 21 percent, and placing a 15 percent levy on book income for the largest corporations, and corporate inversion.

Will that money be used to pay down the enormous $28.1 trillion national debt? No, it will be used to support so-called infrastructure, most of which is not what is considered infrastructure, such as manufacturing, $300 billion; electric vehicles, $170 billion, et al. These are corporate subsidies, not infrastructure. 

Where will that additional tax money come from? Higher prices, lost jobs and other undesirable actions.

This is bad spending policy funded by bad tax policy.

Biden’s reversing of Trump immigration policies is very dangerous

Last month, more than 78,000 illegal aliens were arrested at the southern border. That is the largest number of illegal aliens caught at the border during January in more than a decade. Except for the high number, we shouldn’t be surprised by this. 

With the election of Joe Biden as President of the United States, caravans began to form in Mexico and Central American countries, with many thousands of hopeful Hispanics heading north to cross our border illegally.

Many Americans were surprised by how quickly these trips were formed, and not everyone is opposed to the resulting masses moving our way. Many, perhaps most, of those on the Left support the loosening of restrictions on illegal border crossings and illegal immigration in general. And the Biden administration is delivering to them what they want and expect.

Most Americans are alarmed, however, because of the pain and agony the country and its citizens have experienced previously under similar circumstances.

So far, Biden has weakened immigration laws and promised to deliver amnesty and free healthcare to illegal immigrants. And his administration has announced that it plans:

* to expand refugee resettlement to 110,000 persons annually

* end the "Remain in Mexico" policy

* end travel bans on countries with terrorist concerns

* shackle Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from arresting illegal aliens for what they perceive as minor offenses, including drunk driving, drug dealing, and "low-level assaults"

What could possibly go wrong with tens of thousands more illegal aliens in the country, as well as travelers from countries with terrorist histories, some of whom may, like the 9-11 terrorists, have an evil plan in mind?

And if ICE cannot arrest illegal aliens for drunk driving, drug dealing and low-level assaults, will that rule be extended to law enforcement personnel and all citizens and residents in the country? Some governors and mayors may be so inclined, as we saw last summer in riots in several cities/states that went unpunished.

The American people, however, see problems with liberalizing illegal immigration enforcement. A National Public Radio poll from August 2020 found that 78 percent of people wanted to close the border except for essential travel; 60 percent wanted to prevent illegal aliens from bringing their families to the United States, and 58 percent wanted to suspend admittance of refugees and asylum-seekers.

Also, there is concern about potentially COVID-infected people being among the illegal entrants. Daily coronavirus cases this month are roughly double what they were in August.

Biden, however, insists that despite these radical policy changes, he is just "eliminating bad policy."

Some of those imagined bad policies worked well for southern border states. One of them is Texas, and Biden’s proposed 100-day moratorium on deportations got the attention of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. He has sued the Biden administration, seeking a permanent injunction while the merits of the case are being argued in court.

Biden’s executive orders have effectively sent the message that America’s borders are open, Paxton charges, and that they create a risk for his state, which has the largest border with Mexico of all border states.

Paxton said that Texas already is grappling with human trafficking, drug smuggling and gang issues at the border, and that Biden’s orders will only increase the cost of law enforcement, education and health services in the state. "It’s an unfunded mandate for my state and it’s really hard for us to assess what ultimately that’s going to end up costing us," he said.

Biden and those in his administration are making some changes and proposing others that encourage illegal entry into the country, and will put the safety of taxpaying citizens in jeopardy. And yet, some of those citizens think these are wonderful policies that should be celebrated and continued. 

Who knows about the importance of a cogent border policy better than an ICE director? Former director Tom Homan said that Biden’s immigration policies have caused a surge at the border, and it was "designed to be this way" to help Democrats. He added, "It's no longer illegal to be here illegally."

"Be clear what's happening here: President Biden has declared the entire country a sanctuary jurisdiction, which means more tragedies [are going to] come," Homan said. 

How much longer can the United States survive with these foolish and dangerous ideas being given such broad acceptance by people who should know better? People are sensible enough to lock the doors and windows of their homes, and to control who gets into their homes, but many, strangely, do not understand that the same sensible rules are needed for their country.

Among all the potential and likely dangers there may be a bright spot, if history repeats itself. Going back to 2013, then-President Barack Obama did not act to resolve a similar border crisis. As the crisis worsened, so did Obama’s approval ratings, settling in the low 40s. And the Republicans gained substantial victories in the 2014 election.

How much damage can Biden’s foolish policies cause in the next year? Only time will tell, and perhaps there will be a heavy price for it. And there should be.