U.S. Politics

[Martin Weidmann]

The situation at the border is now completely out of control.  What is the plan of the border Czar Kamala?  Her only comment is that it is up to Congress to solve!  HA HA HA.  What a plan.  I guess she can call it good and go to lunch or whatever she does each day waiting for the call that she has become President.  The human tragedy under Old Joe is unreal.  The US government under his administration has become the greatest trafficker of drugs and people in human history.  And 100K American deaths in just one year from the drugs crossing the border.  Roughly twice the number of American deaths from the ENTIRE Vietnam war.  And, unlike COVID, most of these deaths are among young people.  Nothing to see there though.  Old Joe is taking a nap.

So concerned about Americans dying self-inflicted deaths from drugs, but not a word of sympathy for the innocent victims of (over 300 this year and counting) mass shootings. What a pathetic and deplorable human being!

[Rick Plant]

The flood of illegal immigrants has increased with the surge today.  As with Ukraine, there is no plan from the Biden clown show.  It will just go on and on causing endless harm for generations to come.  Human trafficking, drugs, unknown individuals including many violent criminals are crossing without any measures being taken.

The situation at the border is now completely out of control.  What is the plan of the border Czar Kamala?  Her only comment is that it is up to Congress to solve!  HA HA HA.  What a plan.  I guess she can call it good and go to lunch or whatever she does each day waiting for the call that she has become President.  The human tragedy under Old Joe is unreal.  The US government under his administration has become the greatest trafficker of drugs and people in human history.  And 100K American deaths in just one year from the drugs crossing the border.  Roughly twice the number of American deaths from the ENTIRE Vietnam war.  And, unlike COVID, most of these deaths are among young people.  Nothing to see there though.  Old Joe is taking a nap.

More bogus and blatant disinformation. So pathetic. Start posting facts instead of outright disinformation.

Border crossings are down 50% since Title 42 expired. There is no "flood or surge". 

President Biden's border policy was working before and it's working even better now as migrant numbers plummet even more than before.


Mexican border crossings are down 50% since Title 42 expiration, homeland security chief says
May 14, 2023
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-homeland-security-chief-says-border-crossings-are-down-50-since-title-42-2023-05-14/

Unlawful entries along U.S.-Mexico border plummeted in January after expansion of migrant expulsions
FEBRUARY 2, 2023

The number of migrants apprehended by U.S. Border Patrol after illegally crossing the southern border dropped by roughly 40% in January, when the Biden administration announced a revamped strategy to discourage unlawful crossings, according to preliminary government data obtained by CBS News.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/immigration-us-mexico-border-numbers-january-2023-migrant-expulsions/

[Rick Plant]

6 months in, President Biden's infrastructure plan has 4,300 projects
MAY 16, 2022
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/6-months-in-president-bidens-infrastructure-plan-has-4300-projects/

[Rick Plant]

Donald Trump handed Joe Biden multiple disasters from his 4 failed years in office. And one by one, President Biden is fixing those disasters and cleaning up the mess Trump left behind in a little over two years. Things have gotten so good under Biden, with the most job creation in history, that some people forget the disasters Biden was handed. Here is a reminder from an article on President Biden's inauguration day January 20, 2021.


Trump inherited a booming economy — and handed Biden a nation 'in shambles'
“If you're the average person, do you care if GDP was 3.2 or 3.4 percent? No, you care if you have a job,” said one economist.

Jan. 20, 2021


President Joe Biden speaks during the the 59th inaugural ceremony on the West Front of the Capitol on January 20, 2021.Patrick Semansky / Pool via Getty Images


More so than other presidents, and to the endless frustration of economists, Donald Trump correlated stock market performance with the nation’s economic health. However, President Joe Biden is unlikely to measure his own achievements by the gyrations of the stock market, economic experts say — and that message is likely to resonate with an anxious population.

“I doubt Joe Biden views the stock market as a barometer of his immediate success," said Thomas Martin, senior portfolio manager at Globalt Investments. "He is focused on the health and welfare of Americans. He will gauge success on how much he can flatten the curve, prevent deaths and get the economy back in shape."

For much of Trump's presidency, it was easy for him to claim credit for stock gains, since he was set up for success, economists say.

“The economy was in pretty good shape. Nothing was really out of balance,” said Dan North, chief economist for North America at Euler Hermes.

Corporate expectations of lower taxes and fewer regulations sent business optimism soaring. “It was the right environment to go up. The Biden stock market has an awful lot going against it,” North said.

Last March 9 and again on March 12, as the coronavirus began to take over the country, stocks fell so far, so fast, that electronic “circuit breakers” had to be triggered to stave off a full-blown collapse. That weekend, Trump tweeted, “BIGGEST STOCK MARKET RISE IN HISTORY YESTERDAY!” while saying nothing to address, or even acknowledge, the nation’s growing economic fears. The following week, circuit breakers were again triggered on two different days as stocks continued to slide.

The CARES Act, along with aggressive action from the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and add liquidity to the financial system, ultimately stopped the market’s fall. In the ensuing months, Wall Street recovered, while Main Street suffered.

Experts say this is just one example of why it was not only pointless, but foolhardy, for Trump to claim credit for a rising market. “In the investment business, generally speaking, we know that the things that make the stock market move are myriad and complex. It’s difficult, at best, to gauge cause and effect,” Martin said.

Despite his self-professed business acumen, Trump squandered some of the market momentum he was handed, analysts say. “He did quite a few things to really impede the progress of the stock market,” said Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at the Independent Advisor Alliance. “The trade war with China was, by far, the most detrimental.”

That trade war was widely regarded as a failure: It drew to an uneasy truce in early 2020, with little gained for American consumers or businesses.

The new president, on the other hand, faces a heavier lift. “President Trump is handing Biden an economy in shambles, still down nearly 10 million jobs from its pre-pandemic peak and struggling to avoid a double-dip recession,” Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi wrote in a research note earlier this week.

“Whereas you might say what Trump inherited was a 'normal market,' Joe Biden is inheriting a market that’s at extremes,” Martin said. “You just have a whole new ballgame for Joe Biden.”

Valuations are high, inflation is broadly low but shows pockets of escalation, and market observers say Wall Street seems to be positioned for a best-case scenario regarding Covid-19 containment and immunity. Anything that doesn’t live up to the market’s lofty expectations could trigger a reversal in investor sentiment.

If the market does drop from its current highs, though, economists don’t expect Biden to respond the way his predecessor might have. Unlike Trump, Biden is more likely to focus on containing Covid-19 and getting the sputtering labor market recovery going again. “The Biden administration, I think, is going to focus more on the unemployment rate and jobs and less on what the actual stock market may do,” said Megan Horneman, director of portfolio strategy at Verdence Capital Advisors. “Right now, our immediate problem is still the coronavirus and getting the economy reopened.”

North said: “It’s going to take a long time to get those 10 million jobs back, particularly because there's been so much permanent business closure. That's what I believe the administration will focus on and, honestly, should focus on."

“If you're the average person, do you care if GDP was 3.2 or 3.4 percent?" he said. "No, you care if you have a job.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/trump-inherited-booming-economy-handed-biden-nation-shambles-n1255033   

[Rick Plant]

President Biden @POTUS

For decades, people have talked about fixing bridges, roads, and rail across America.

Our infrastructure investment is actually doing it.

It's been 18 months since I signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
 
Since then, we've announced $200 billion in funding for 32,000 projects or awards across America.



https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1658229527112196097

[Rick Plant]

How Bidenomics Has Finally Defeated Reaganomics

TRICKLE DOWN IS DONE: Two years into his presidency, Joe Biden has revolutionized America’s economic policy—both home and abroad



The last thing many of us expected when Joe Biden became president was that he would be a revolutionary. But just over two years into Biden’s presidency, there is no doubt that he has done more to dramatically transform U.S. policy and thinking in more areas than any of his predecessors since Franklin Roosevelt.

America had failed to adequately invest in its infrastructure for over six decades when Biden made it a priority once again. Biden’s prioritized investment in combating climate change to a degree that no past administration ever did. On foreign policy, he executed the pivot away from a Middle East and terrorism focus to a long-term commitment to placing the Indo-Pacific region and our rivalry with China atop our list of priorities.

Remarkably, he did this while simultaneously handling the threats associated with Europe’s largest land war since World War II and reinvigorating America’s most important alliance, NATO, in a way few thought possible just years ago. He stopped the impetus toward isolation and inaction internationally of the presidencies that immediately preceded his.

What is more, none of the transformations cited above are actually the biggest the Biden administration has overseen.

From day one, Biden has profoundly transformed U.S. economic policy—and related social and international policies. Biden is the man who finally slew Reaganomics and the huckster’s brew of “trickle-down” and “the markets know best” policies at its core. He is the one who at last put an end to the “Washington consensus” that has served the rich worldwide and left the poor to struggle with too little support. He, at last, ended the slavish deference of Washington neoliberals to Wall Street, and the consequent grotesque growth in inequality and injustice it has fueled.



Importantly, Biden not just talked the talk of the revolutionary, he has walked the walk. He has systematically taken steps to prioritize economic approaches that benefited America’s middle class and those who were left behind, approaches that sought fairness in our tax codes and their enforcement, approaches that strengthened the U.S. from within in an effort to better compete and succeed internationally.

Some of the steps he has taken were major but received too little attention, such as the effort (led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen) to create a minimum tax to be paid by corporations worldwide. Some of the bold changes were revealed in policy choices that made headlines—like his decision to place the concerns of the people working in the real economy ahead of the preferences of Wall Street in his American Rescue Plan, his initiative to invest in our infrastructure in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, and his steps to invest in our green economy and combat rising costs for average Americans in the Inflation Reduction Act.

When I was a senior economic official in the Clinton administration, had I mentioned “industrial policy” in a meeting I would have immediately been shown the door. But Biden, through the CHIPS and Science Act illustrated that it was now not only okay to discuss such ideas, but that he would go further and implement them—because they would help create jobs and because they would strengthen U.S. national security.

"From day one, Biden has profoundly transformed U.S. economic policy—and related social and international policies.”

Last week, in Washington, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan delivered a speech at the Brookings Institution that helped tie together many of the core principles underlying Biden’s views and actions. It was certainly the most significant economic speech ever given by a U.S. national security adviser. But then again, it was clear even before he arrived in office that Sullivan would become the most economically savvy and active national security adviser in U.S. history. Work he had been actively involved in, like the Carnegie Endowment’s initiative on Making U.S. Foreign Policy Work Better for the Middle Class was quickly seen to translate into action. Sullivan also wrote on related subjects, including on the fact that foreign policy and economic policy were more deeply intertwined than often acknowledged (by foreign policy experts who were less economically astute) as in an article he wrote for Foreign Policy in 2020 with Jennifer Harris called, “America Needs a New Economic Philosophy. Foreign Policy Experts Can Help.”

Sullivan’s speech began with the assertion that because many of the economic policies of the past were not serving most Americans or our interests, that “this moment demands that we forge a new consensus”—something he described as “a modern industrial and innovation strategy.”

He enumerated its goals to be a strategy that “invests in the sources of our own economic and technological strength, that promotes diversified and resilient global supply chains, that sets high standards for everything from labor and the environment to trusted technology and good governance, that deploys capital to deliver on public goods like climate and health.”

Sullivan’s speech went on to explain that from the outset, Biden and his team saw the country as facing “four fundamental challenges.” These included the hollowing out of the U.S. industrial base.

Here he took a clear shot at Reaganomics when he noted that “the vision of public investment that energized the American project… had faded,” giving way to “a set of ideas that championed tax-cutting and deregulation, privatization over public action and trade liberalization as an end in itself.” Going further, he argued that a core mistake of these recent past policies was that they were based on the deeply flawed idea “that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently.” Recent experience with markets shifting much of our critical productive capacity, jobs, and many supply chains overseas—made clear during the COVID-19 pandemic—illustrated this.

A second challenge he cited was “adapting to a new environment defined by geopolitical and security competition.” Here, his point was that (in the past) economic integration was hoped to “make nations more responsible and open and that the global order would be more peaceful and cooperative” and that “it didn’t turn out that way.” Here, he cites China as exhibit A.

The climate crisis was the third of the four challenges and, critically, at the core of the core of Biden’s ideas, I believe, was “inequality and its damage to democracy.” Again, in this instance, he specifically cites the core elements of Reaganomics (and the Reaganomics-lite embraced by recent Democratic administrations), such as “trickle-down economic policies—policies like regressive tax cuts, deep cuts to public investment, unchecked corporate concentration and active measures to undermine” unions.

Sullivan’s speech then went on to describe Biden’s “foreign policy for the middle class.” He identified a key element as recognizing that we need a national industrial strategy to compete and protect ourselves in a world in which all of our competitors have such an approach. Specifically, he cited the focus the administration has had on revitalizing our semi-conductor and clean-energy production sectors. The second component of the strategy he identified is “working with our partners to ensure they are building capacity, resilience and inclusiveness too.” Here, as evidence of progress he cited the close coordination between the administration and our closest allies on these issues.

The third step—especially welcome to me as a former trade official—is “moving beyond traditional trade deals to innovative new international economic partnerships focused on the core challenges of our time.” This point addresses a criticism of the administration by some that it does not have an active trade policy. Sullivan’s central point was that primarily seeking to reduce tariffs without addressing climate, enforcement, or security concerns is inadequate.

Fourth, Sullivan described the administration’s objective of “mobilizing trillions in investment into emerging economies—with solutions that those countries are fashioning on their own but with capital enabled by a different brand of U.S. diplomacy.” A key element of this approach has been “a major effort to evolve the multilateral development banks so they are up to the big challenges of today.”

“Markets don’t have consciences, neither do they take into consideration the security interests of nations.”

The final point of the plan is the administration’s effort to protect “our foundational technologies with a small yard and a high fence.” This approach, perhaps the one of Sullivan’s points about which I am most skeptical (because I am not sure it is truly feasible in a global economy such as the one we have today) is designed around the worthy goal of helping to ensure that “next generation technologies work for, not against, our democracies and our security.”

Again, the subtext here is China—and keeping that country from gaining advantages in key technologies that could put us at risk.

I’ve spoken with experts about this and they do not think any steps we take will slow down China from acquiring such technologies for more than just a few years. But, certainly the goal is consistent with the other changes described in Sullivan’s speech, and is more forward-looking and strategically framed than many of America’s recent past economic policies.

Sullivan concluded by describing success. “The world,” he said, “needs an international economic system that works for our wage-earners, works for our industries, works for our climate, works for our national security, and works for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable countries.”

The response to the speech and to the policies of the administration indicates how significant the shifts it describes are. In just one illustration of this, Carlos Roa wrote in The National Interest that the National Security Adviser’s “remarks mark a profound shift in American strategic and economic thinking; a confession that much of what the United States has been doing and saying for decades has been wrong, and a recognition that painful and urgent reform is necessary.”

Some old school economists who have been peddling the failed or damaging policies the administration has sought to undo decried the fact that the new approaches represented too much meddling with markets by government officials.

But of course, that is just the point. Biden, Sullivan, Yellen, and their team have finally acknowledged that growth for its own sake—or good performance by markets—are not the only metrics we should have as we make economic policy decisions.

Markets don’t have consciences, neither do they take into consideration the security interests of nations. Companies are by law required to place their bottom line interests ahead of the interests of the rest of society. Therefore, government has an obligation to step in and take steps to ensure that critical social goods are advanced.

Finally, after many decades of deferring to the financial and corporate interests who also happen to be big political donors, a president and his team have come along to say, “enough.” It is time to make economic decisions that serve all the people and address the damage done by the policies of the past.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-bidenomics-has-finally-defeated-reaganomics

[Rick Plant]

House Democrat to force vote to expel embattled Republican George Santos



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic U.S. Representative Robert Garcia on Tuesday started the process of forcing a vote on a motion to expel Republican George Santos, the congressman from New York facing federal charges of fraud, money laundering and theft of public funds.

Two-thirds of the House of Representatives would have to vote in favor for Santos to be expelled, a bar unlikely to be reached in a chamber that Republicans control by a narrow 222-213 margin. But the vote will put many Republicans in the difficult position of defending a colleague with a history of lying about his work experience and biography.

Garcia, who represents a House district in California, used a parliamentary maneuver to force a vote within two days on the motion.

"George Santos is a fraud and a liar, and he needs to be expelled by the House," Garcia said in a statement. "Republicans now have a chance to demonstrate to Americans that an admitted criminal should not serve in the House of Representatives."

Santos's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Santos last week pleaded not guilty to the charges, calling the allegations against him a politically motivated "witch hunt."

He has made extensive false claims about his past, including saying he earned degrees from New York University and Baruch College despite neither institution having any record of his attending. He claimed to have worked at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, also untrue.

He said falsely that he was Jewish and that his grandparents escaped the Nazis during World War Two. He has admitted to fabricating large parts of his resume.

Santos, a first-term congressman, has said he intends to seek re-election in 2024. Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has said he would not support Santos's re-election bid.

Nine House Republicans have called on Santos to resign, including six from New York.

© Reuters