Read the Fine Print Before You Buy

President Biden’s speech to Congress last night was long on platitudes as he lulled many to sleep with the Lullaby of the Left.  (See "Lullaby of the Left" here)   What it was short on was specifics.  It was also a bit short on honesty.  And it left out important facts and issues. 

First, what was left out.

The speech didn’t deal with the border crisis or Biden’s problem of migrant hoarding (See essay here )  Yes, he gave some nod to the divisive issue of amnesty and to the Vice President’s alleged leadership on the crisis (even though she has yet to visit our southern border or hold a press conference or answer questions about what she is doing).

Biden did not mention the radical Left plan to pack the Supreme court or to make Washington D.C. a state.  Both these plans are blatant political acts designed to ensure permanent power for the Democrats.

He also said little about H.R. 1 which is the Democrats’ bill that is intended to remove state control of elections, placing full control in the hands of the federal government.  He did not discuss that bill’s provisions that essentially destroy any election integrity: simply another Democrat power grab.

The speech failed to give credit to the work that went before him to get a vaccine ready and distribution started or that the return to normal (due in large part to efforts that began with the previous administration) will hopefully return to the booming economy achieved by the prior administration. 

Beyond the obvious omissions, the speech was short on honesty.

Ian Haworth examines this problem in detail HERE.   Let me just mention a few of the more glaring dishonest moments. 

The President repeatedly misstated figures, including: the amount of our GDP that we invest in research and development; the amount of time/travel/discussions he has had with China’s President XI; the gun violence and mass shooting numbers per year;

Biden often fudged to imply something that he did not say.   For example, he bragged that everyone is now eligible to get vaccinated right away.  What he left out was that just being eligible to be vaccinated does not mean one will be able to do so or that vaccine will actually be available for that person.    

Similarly, Biden seemed to take credit for a current booming economy while not mentioning that all he has done is remove some of the economic blocks enforced by Democrats or that the job increases under his administration pale in comparison to the 12.6 million jobs that were added by the Trump administration after the initial pandemic caused collapse.  He lamented the number of women who have left the workforce but ignored that a driving factor behind that statistic is the closure of schools due to Covid.

There were many more moments of intentionally misleading statements.  But that is just part of the lullaby – it all sounds good, and so people don’t notice.

The big stuff and the small print.

What is really disturbing are the grand Leftist plans that the President put forth without any specifics or any honesty about what they will cost this nation.  Again, the platitudes are lovely, but the reality may very well be quite different; it is that reality that the President and the Left do not want you to notice and which they try to cover with their soothing bromide.

I am not an economist, and you can yourself find a number of articles online that explain the devastating details of Biden’s latest money giveaway plan.  But just a few things of note.

The $1.8 trillion (that’s $1,800,000,000,000.00) American Families Plan comes on top of the $1.9 trillion ($1,900,000,000,000.00) Covid relief law and the $2.25 trillion ($2,250,000,000,000.00) “infrastructure” plan.  That is a total of $5.95 trillion in new spending in just the first 100 days. 

This money comes from taxpayers.  Yes, Biden says that it will not affect the middle class, but the reality is that it must, and it will.  He promised that he will only tax corporations and the wealthy, wealthy apparently being any family that makes more than $400,000 per year.  He ignores the fact that large corporations have ways of moving their tax base out of this country.  Then where does that money come from?  If not the middle class, then from the small and family-owned businesses that do not have the options that large corporations do.  And what will that do to employment opportunity and for the economy? 

Our national debt is currently around $28 trillion ($28,000,000,000,000.00).  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or an economist) to see that we are likely headed for economic collapse if Biden’s Leftist wish lists are passed.  It doesn’t take a genius to see what effect this debt will likely have on our children and grandchildren.

The President’s comments on his climate change and “infrastructure” agenda focused on how they will build jobs.  Yet he failed to even consider the research as well as real-world examples of how what he is proposing destroys rather than creates jobs.

Perhaps the worst is the continuing lie of “unity”.

By the end of the speech, those who were still awake heard a lot of platitudes about unity and America and how great we are.  Except that the entire speech that was given to that point was full of divisiveness and clear partisanship.  To that point the agenda that the President put forward would not maintain American greatness but would drastically remake this country and likely not for the better.

Read the fine print.

I look at this speech as something of a sales pitch by a deceitful salesman.  I want to see the fine print and read it carefully.  Every American should do the same.  Platitudes and pretty words might make us feel good but the Devil is in the details. 

And then there is the rebuttal.

I think that Senator Tim Scott said more in his 15 minutes than the President said in over an hour.  Sen. Scott seemed to be truly speaking from his heart, not just reciting a list of campaign promises that would lull the audience into ignorance.  If you missed his rebuttal, you can watch it HERE. 

What does Sen. Tim Scott get for his honest rebuttal that disagreed with the Biden agenda?  An attack from the Left calling him “Uncle Tim”, an obvious reference to Uncle Tom, a derogatory reference for a subservient Black person.  But that shouldn’t surprise us:  you will recall that candidate Biden said to Blacks that “If you don’t vote for me then you ain’t really Black.” 

The Biden-Left agenda has no room for dissenters.  It is about power and not really about America or her people.  Read the fine print before you sign on. 

Jobs Report, Politicians, and Courage

Today the monthly job report for May was good news for anyone looking for work in this country.  The economy added about 223,000 net new jobs in May and the jobless rate hit an 18 year low at 3.8 percent.

This should please anyone who cares about the well-being of this country and its people.  Yet, in checking my afternoon news feed, the first headline I see is: “May Jobs Report is Great News for Everyone Except Democrats” and similar stories focused on how this will affect Democrat chances in November.

And therein lies a huge problem in this country.  Rather than caring about the well-being of the country, too many politicians care more about their own political success and power.  Rather than support and cheer successes of opponents when those successes are good for America, they prefer to cheer only when their opponent fails, not realizing that a failure of any politician, even an opponent, is a failure for the country if the opponent was working for the country's good. 

People, and especially the majority of politicians, take sides and rigidly sit there, attacking successes of those not in their own party and cheering failures of their opponents.  Am I crazy to think that there was once a time when people actually cared about the country, a time where politicians put that country first and above any particular party?

Currently in my state there is a race for Congressional Representative (the seat will be open because the current incumbent, a Democrat, is running for a different office, so the field is wide open).  The primary will take place next week and there are currently 5 (there were 6) Democrats vying for the chance to represent their party in the November election.  One would hope that any one of these people, if ultimately elected, would represent all the people of the District upon their arrival in Washington.  This, however, is likely not the case.

In a debate last month, the first question put to the field of 6 candidates was whether they would stand with the Democratic party and vote to impeach the president.  The first 4 answers were basically a simple “Yes.”  A fifth was more of a “yes, eventually.”  Only one candidate gave the thoughtful answer that he would want to let any investigation play out and then review all the facts before arriving at a decision on this issue.  Responses to most other questions followed a similar pattern.  Of course, the candidate whose answers were deep, thoughtful, and not just a regurgitation of party line is running behind in the polls. 

These 5 (previously 6) candidates are a microcosm of problems with politics and political leadership today.  Most simply say they will make things better or take care of this or that problem but provide no concrete plan of how they will do so.  Many voters seem to be willing to accept platitudes without more.  Most (candidates and voters) fail to see the depth and interconnections of many issues.  They seem to accept party rhetoric without thought or investigation of actual facts.  Many are playing the identity politics game:  the woman, the Native American, the son of immigrants, the homosexual.  While they (and many of their followers) may think that alone is a reason to vote for them, I would prefer to vote for someone for less superficial and more substantive reasons.  I would prefer to vote for a candidate with the courage to think for him or herself.

Sadly, across America we have candidates and voters who are willing to make major decisions based on such superficiality.  I realize it takes work to understand the duties of a particular elected office and to research and understand the substantive abilities and qualities of a candidate.  But this is work that it is any American’s responsibility to undertake.

Today we have many elected representatives not representing the entire body of their constituents, but rather representing their party.  Now it is fine to run on a party ticket; that allows voters to understand generally how the candidate will lean on various issues.  But, once elected, the representative is supposed to represent the people of the district – all the people – and not just those who are members of the same party.  But, because a majority of our politicians don’t seem to understand that, we have little more than robots in Congress:  individuals who fail to think for themselves but simple repeat and vote for the party line, regardless of whether that is best for their district or for the country.

And what is the result?  The answer is what we see daily:  two sides securely dug in, unwilling to actually carry on a dialog with those with opposing views and seemingly only capable of name-calling and otherwise attacking those who do not walk in lock-step with their and their party’s rhetoric.

I, personally, see this problem far more entrenched in the Democrats.  Perhaps that is simply because they are currently out of power or still looking to unseat the duly elected president whose election so shocked them to the point that many still think of him as illegitimate.  I don’t know.  But I do know that when we see things like Democrats being upset with a very positive jobs report, when we see them so focused on finding something – anything (as they grasp at straws) – with which to charge the president, when we see them and their supportive MSM ignoring the many accomplishments of this administration and/or actively tearing them down, then I do know that when I see this I become dismayed about the future of our country.   

So, today I will pray that there will be some Democrats, even those facing elections in November, who will have the courage to stand and applaud this jobs report along with other accomplishments of this administration that are positive for our country.  I will pray for the courage of politicians to care more about the country than their party of themselves.

(Note:  the specific election to which I refer above is that for Congressional District One in New Mexico; the candidate that I see as having courage to think for himself and go beyond mere party rhetoric is Paul Moya).