The Biden administration’s urgent need for a reset

by Richard Schulman

Joe Biden wanted to be a reincarnation of FDR, but his template was the anti-capitalist FDR of 1933-1937 – when the US was deep in a world depression and suffering unprecedented unemployment. Neither of these exist today. If Biden really wants to recover his reputation, he needs to transform himself into the FDR of 1940-1945, when FDR led the US in a successful fight against two fascist dictatorships on the march.

Instead, up to now, the Biden administration has arguably been the worst in US history. Start with its national security incompetence:

• the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal;
• the campaign to create a Green “woke” military rather than a military that wins wars;
• an initial go-ahead to Germany to approve completion of Nordstream 2, making it susceptible to Russian energy blackmail;
• the failure to adequately arm Ukraine before the invasion took place, for fear of offending Russia;
• Biden telling Russia that all it would face if it invaded were some economic sanctions; and
• the administration spending hundreds of billions of dollars on US welfare-state and Green programs rather than on the military we need in the face of threats of war from both China and Russia.

Here’s what former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott said about Biden’s invitation to Putin to invade the Ukraine:

In retrospect, Ukraine’s fate was probably sealed when President Biden said last month that America might not respond to a “minor incursion” and definitively ruled out “boots on the ground.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tony-abbott-putin-west-weak-ukraine-russia-invasion-military-fossil-fuels-nuclear-germany-lng-woke-covid-regulations-china-11645977566

Energy

Biden and the Democrats have been pursuing energy policies more in the interest of our enemies than the US.  The administration’s trillion dollar package of Green energy bills, its cancellation of pipelines and drilling leases, its slow-walking of drilling permits, and threats against oil and gas producers and the banks that finance them — have fueled inflation throughout the US  economy as well as throwing away the key strategic advantage over Russia and Iran that the US enjoyed during the previous Republican Trump administration. The Biden administration had already gifted Putin with domination over the world’s oil and natural gas supplies and the billions of dollars in oil and natural gas revenues that enabled Putin to build a formidable military and nuclear missile arsenal.

The United Nations’ claim that fossil fuels are bringing the planet to imminent catastrophe is one of the greatest scientific fraud of all time. Climate science is not settled. The UN’s climate models disagree among themselves and fail to model many crucial variables, such as clouds. All warming is by assumption of the UN models attributed to fossil fuel combustion,  whereas natural and human non-fossil-fuel related causes, such as land use changes, are also likely contributors to the modest warming since the 1980s.

CO2 is plant food, not a pollutant. Agricultural productivity has risen significantly since CO2 increased. Green programs are being wielded to expand politicians’ and regulators’ control over the economy and private sector. The chief beneficiary of Biden administration efforts to demonize and destroy fossil fuels are China – with its lock over many solar and wind power products and raw materials – and Russia, that profits the more the US and the rest of the West reduce their energy production and become dependent on oil and natural gas from Russia and Iran.

Iran

Meanwhile, the Biden administration wants to restore the JCPOA, the weak Iran agreement the Obama administration, of which Biden was a leading official, never submitted to Congress as the Constitution requires. Iran is an enemy pledged to destroy the US and Israel and is allied to Russia and China. It was on the point of collapse under the strict sanctions imposed by the Trump administration. Why are Democrats giving a mortal enemy of the US a lifeline again?

Defense

We now have a national defense emergency. All of the Biden administration’s expensive, unscientific, inflation-causing Green energy programs and other waste welfare-state spending must be canceled in favor of a major re-armament effort, such as President Reagan initiated in the 1980s and which helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union. To counter Russia and China’s imperial plans, we need a 600-ship navy, the world’s best anti-ballistic missile system – which Democrats have been opposing for four decades — and a capability, if necessary, of fighting a two-front war. The better we prepare for that possibility, the less likely it will happen.

Education and the need for universal vouchers

Children’s education was badly damaged by Democratic Party controlled teachers unions’ refusal to teach students in classrooms for two years, while health personnel, grocery employees, firemen, policemen, sanitary workers, and critical factory and transportation personnel remained at their posts serving the public throughout the pandemic.

The public school monopoly of education needs to be ended by placing amply funded vouchers in the hands of parents. This will enable them to send their children to the schools of their choice — public, private, parochial, or home school. This will end the bitter fights over curriculum and masking mandates. If progressives want to miseducate their children with spurious versions of US history, racial identity, gender obsessions, and masking mandates on five-year-olds, they will be free to send their children to progressive schools that offer that. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation will use the vouchers to send their children to schools that give them a rigorous education and address their individual needs.

Crime

Democrats sponsored the Marxist-led Black Lives Matter. The result has been property destruction, rising racial antagonism (including numerous black attacks on Asians), attorney generals in Democratic cities turning retail stores into free looting zones, and the release of criminals to the streets to commit new crimes. Democratic mayors and do-nothing Democratic attorney generals have made it clear that they would rather prosecute policemen than criminals.

Inflation

Democrats and their press supporters at first claimed that inflation would disappear by itself. They justified their wild spending by touting “modern monetary theory,” basically Keynesian demand economics with no restraints. The US is now near bankruptcy as a result, and the real wages of most working people and the savings of retirees are declining.

Trade

On behalf of protectionist-minded trade union officials, Biden has been sabotaging US trade growth by means of protectionist tariffs that hurt the US consumer by hiking prices and suppressing the competition that drives innovation. Biden’s trade officials have been slow-walking trade treaties with allies. The few Biden administration treaties that have been been signed are miserable, quota-ridden specimens. Worst of all, Biden has refused to approve US entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership that he himself helped negotiate during the Obama administration. The TPP is crucial for helping US Pacific allies not become economic tributaries of China, as well as insuring that US producers are not locked out of Pacific markets, now the world’s fastest growing.

Covid

Biden meanly downplayed the greatest accomplishment in the fight against Covid — the rapid rollout of vaccines under a program sponsored by the Trump administration. Biden promised to rid the nation of Covid, but instead gave it test kit and stockpile failures and an embargo on shipping lifesaving antibodies to the states. His senseless vaccination mandates imposed on those already immune caused many dedicated employees to lose their jobs.

Illegal immigration

Upon installation in the White House, Biden opened the southern border, creating an influx of hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, including many untested for Covid and many criminals. No attempt was made by the administration to fix its bureaucracy-paralyzed guest worker program for seasonal workers and to establish a generous legal immigration program. That would have stemmed the flow of illegals and relieved a shortage of employees in many important sectors.

Elections

Democrats are attempting to secure a lock on government by federalizing election functions, which the Constitution says should be handled by the individual states, not in Washington, D.C. Democrats are also calling for

• making DC a state in order to create two more Democratic senators,
• packing the Supreme Court, and
• eliminating the 60-vote requirement to end Senate debate.

Meanwhile, as elections approach, Democrats are panicking that voters will punish the party’s misrule at the polls in November. They are therefore attempting to do a temporary U turn on their hated mask mandates and high gas prices. But will anyone be fooled by such transparent attempts at vote buying, so likely to be reversed the moment the elections are over?