August 20, 2024

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

Biden-Harris Iran-Israel policy proves extortion works

By Rick Manning

Thousands of Islamo-fascist protesters are surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week. Businesses in the area surrounding the convention center have already boarded up their windows and closed their doors in anticipation of the likely destruction to follow.

The sad fact is that these protests are largely a creation of the same Biden-Harris administration that they are attacking.

While the violent protests of the left have been a feature of our political system since at least the 1968 Democratic National Convention, also conveniently held in Chicago, the normalization and excusing of it is a relatively recent phenomenon. 

When the Democrats and their mouthpieces in the media did not condemn the numerous attacks on former President Donald Trump’s supporters in early 2016, it gave a clear signal that targeted violence was acceptable.

It is hard to forget a proposed rally for Trump in 2016 in Chicago that had to be cancelled because Chicago Police told the campaign that they could not guarantee the safety of the participants. 

The images of Trump supporters being pelted with eggs as they left a Trump rally in the once conservative enclave of Orange County, California still burns in the brain as a benchmark of the acceptance of violence against Trump supporters as being okay.

In order to reach the California Republican Party convention in 2016, candidate Donald Trump was forced to walk through an unplanted field adjacent to the building in San Jose in order to enter, as violent protesters attacked Trump supporters both coming to and leaving the event.

Groups like Antifa became a household name between 2016 and 2020 as federal buildings were regularly attacked in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere.

The “civility” that the Democratic Party now claims to want to return to America was regularly replaced by violence by Democratic Party leaders through both their active support and in some cases quiet complicity with violence against their political opponents.

It is hard not to remember, Republican Party members of Congress practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball game were attacked by a Bernie Sanders supporter who came armed with the intent to kill everyone on the field, only to be stopped due to the presence of Capitol Police due to the participation of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise. 

Even that attack did not stop the wink and nod acceptance of political violence against Trump supporters.

Less than a year later, Representative Maxine Waters famously told supporters to, “get in their face” when referring to Trump administration officials, and Cabinet Secretaries and White House officials were regularly harassed at their homes and when trying to eat with their families at restaurants.

When President Trump accepted the Republican nomination for president in 2020 at the White House, this author and thousands of other Trump supporters exited the grounds into a crowd of crazed protesters, many forced to walk for miles out of their way in order to get to their vehicles conveniently parked two blocks away at the Willard Hotel.

St. John’s Church just north of the White House was set on fire by these mostly peaceful protesters, and President Trump was blamed when he had the National Guard clear a perimeter around the White House to increase safety. If any Democrats praised Trump for making the White House grounds safer after two incidents where radicals intent on attacking the President broke through the fences surrounding the White House causing the Secret Service to evacuate Trump and his family to a secure shelter.

And none other than former President Trump was nearly the fatal victim of political violence at his failed assassination attempt on July 13 at a Butler, Pa. campaign rally.

The left will always point to Aug. 12 Charlottesville, Va. and Jan. 6, 2021 in Washington, D.C. riots while ignoring their own long history of culpability in promoting violence.

The ultimate irony about the Islamo-fascist protests around the Democratic National Convention is that President Joe Biden’s decision to change his Israel policy in response to a Muslim boycott of voting for him in the Michigan primary proved that pressure could change policy.

Since that moment, the anti-Semites have been unleashed on college campuses, discovering if they took over a building at Columbia University, denying tuition paying students the ability to go to class and doing physical damage to the building, there would be few if any repercussions.  This quiet quitting by the leftist adults who were supposed to be in charge led to more and more aggressive, mostly peaceful protests.

Pandora’s Box had been opened and the consequences are now seen on the streets of Chicago. 

I hope and pray that those who choose to protest at the Democrat Convention, as they are constitutionally allowed, avoid the violence that their predecessor protests have embraced.  But if violence does occur, the irony will be that the chief arsonists who fanned the flames of hate, will be those now caught in its ugly grip.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

Biden is wrong. Inflation has far outpaced wages and personal incomes by every measure since Biden and Harris took office. You are not better off.

By Robert Romano

“Wages up, inflation down, way down and continuing to go down.”

That was President Joe Biden in his political farewell address to Democrats assembled in Chicago, Ill. for the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 20 that is nominating Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee, touting in part his administration’s economic record since taking office in Jan. 2021.

Here, Biden wants to say that, yes, there has been inflation since he took office, but it’s “way down” now and “wages [are] up”.

There’s just one problem. Consumer inflation has far outpaced nominal wages, whether hourly or weekly, and nominal personal incomes by every measure. There’s no question about it.

Since Feb. 2021, consumer inflation as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has increased by a whopping 18.95 percent, or an average 5.2 percent a year, for all categories including food, energy and shelter, things that no household can go without.

In the meantime, median nominal weekly earnings measured by BLS for wage and salary workers have not kept up with the spiraling prices, only up 17.1 percent to $1,151.

Nor have average nominal hourly wages kept up, which are only up 17.17 percent to the current $35.07.

And personal incomes, which includes government transfer payments, have not kept up either, and are only up 18.2 percent to $23,948.

By every measure, the American people are no better off than they were four years ago, and are actually worse off than when Biden and Harris came into office on the economic issue that matters the most: their financial freedom and independence.

In contrast, overall consumer inflation between Feb. 2021 and Dec. 2020 was 7.37 percent, or an average of 1.9 percent a year, when former President Donald Trump was in office.

And wages more than kept up, they were well ahead, with median nominal weekly earnings up 14.56 percent.

Similarly, overall average hourly wages were well ahead of inflation at 15 percent through Trump’s term of office.

And personal incomes were up 15.66 percent. By every measure, economically and in their financial positions, the American people were far better off at the end of 2020 from when Trump took office.

In the meantime, interest rates were much lower, for example, the 30-year mortgage interest rate was just 2.65 percent when Trump left office while today it is 6.49 percent, more than double.

What hurt Trump in 2020 were factors largely beyond his control or as a function of policy per se, but were dependent on the once in a century Covid pandemic that temporarily saw 25 millions jobs lost in the BLS household survey’s employment level. But the Federal Reserve temporarily took interest rates to near-zero percent and engaged in quantitative easing, while Congress acted on a bipartisan basis to pass the $2.2 trillion CARES Act that included measures to shore up small businesses during the lockdowns, and by the end of 2020, more than 16 million of the 25 millions jobs lost had already been recovered.

That was more than enough stimulus, but Biden and Harris wanted to keep going, and so the Fed kept interest rates at near-zero percent for too long and continued purchasing treasuries and mortgage-backed securities, meanwhile, on a partisan basis, Democrats in Congress, passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan for even more helicopter money and then another $891 billion of green subsidies in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act.

By the end of Biden and Harris’ first year in office, inflation had risen from 1.4 percent in Jan. 2021 to a whopping 7.5 percent by Jan. 2022 before Russia had ever invaded Ukraine. By then, the damage was already done, and there was simply no way American households would be able to keep up with the inflation onslaught.

Now, even as the rate of inflation has cooled, wages and incomes still have not caught up, but consumer credit growth has slowed to just a trickle as the economy overheated, and now unemployment is once again up by almost 1.5 million since its low in Dec. 2022. It’s moving in the wrong direction.

It’s the reason the 2024 election is close at all and the incumbent Democrats are not walking away with it. It's the reason why Biden was trailing Trump in the majority of national and battleground state polls taken between them, and ultimately, is the true reason by Biden was asked to stand aside in the presidential race. The hope is that Harris will inherit the incumbency advantage without the incumbent's record.

But it usually doesn't work that way. Elections are almost always a referendum on the current ruling party, regardless of who the nominee is. 

Biden said with an almost straight face to the American people, “America is more prosperous… today than under Donald Trump.” But American households know that’s not true, and in November, all window dressing aside, it might not just be Joe Biden who is losing his job as Kamala Harris may indeed be judged as the incumbent when the American people go to the polls. Stay tuned.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/08/biden-is-wrong-inflation-has-far-outpaced-wages-and-personal-incomes-by-every-measure-since-biden-and-harris-took-office-you-are-not-better-off/

ALG expresses disgust for the Democrats discarding of President Joe Biden

Aug. 20, 2024, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement responding to the treatment of President Joe Biden at the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Ill.:

“Americans for Limited Government believes that Joe Biden committed impeachable offenses and should be legally removed from office, but what the Democrats did to Joe Biden over the past month has been breathtakingly efficient and equally disgusting. The final ignominy was their decision to force the President of the United States to cool his heels behind AOC and a list of lightweights until he was allowed to take the stage at 11:28 p.m. EST on the little watched first night of a convention that was supposed to be his coronation.

“In just a month, the Democrats turned Joe Biden from their symbol of moving forward in America to an afterthought and embarrassing crazy uncle who they had to let out of the basement to rant in a time slot reserved for Jimmy Kimmel.

“I don’t know Joe Biden personally, and believe that his weaponization of government and on-going characterization of Donald Trump and his supporters as being lower than gum to be scraped off of America’s shoe has fueled the rapidly increasing violence on the left, but as President of the United States, Biden deserved more than the ceremonial funeral he was given on Monday night. Left to deliver his own eulogy, Biden was his usual self, but those who orchestrated the coup which ended his bid for a second term should have had the class to give him an honorable send off. 

“It was once said, ‘if you want a friend in politics, get a dog.’ On Monday August 19, 2024, that lesson was made abundantly clear to America. Once the Democrat elites determined that Joe Biden no longer served their purpose, they not only kicked him to the curb, but they are trying to erase him. For those who reject truth as absolute and believe the ends justify the means, what else could be expected? They have an election to win, power to retain and they won’t let even the current occupant of the Oval Office who they celebrated in June get in their way in August.”

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2024/08/americans-for-limited-government-expresses-disgust-for-the-democrats-discarding-of-president-joe-biden/