This example is about as Orwellian as one can find…
It involves a proposed $15 vehicle tax for entering New York City.
Please listen to New York Governor Kathy Hochul explain how she is saving taxpayers 40 percent in her Orwellian Video.
.@GovKathyHochul: “We’re saving you 40%” by starting to charge $9 to enter Manhattan instead of $15 as we originally planned; “this lower toll will save daily commuters nearly $1,500 annually.” pic.twitter.com/rOWLY963j8
From day one, I have made affordability for New Yorkers a top priority. I always have and I always will fight to put more money in the pockets of everyday New Yorkers. That’s why, back in June, I stood up on behalf of hard working families and simply said no, no to a new $15 congestion toll that at that particular time was just too much.
Too many people are worried about high costs, groceries, rent, child care. These are real challenges to our families. …. As governor, it is my job to make decisions that take into account the needs of all working New Yorkers. So, I made the decision to put the congestion pricing on pause while we devise a different path forward.
I believe no New Yorker should have to pay a penny more than absolutely necessary. … You heard that correctly. It was $15 before and now it is $9. That is a 40 percent reduction. This lower toll will save daily commuters nearly $1,500 annually. And that kind of money makes a big difference for our families
How to Save Money New York Style
Step One: Announce a $3,750 tax on commuters
Step Two. Announce a hold on the tax until after the election.
Step Three: Reduce the tax to $2,250
Step Four: Explain how this was a new path forward
Step Five: Proudly brag about saving New Yorkers $1,500
This is so preposterously stupid that I wonder how many can possibly believe what she is saying.
But since she seems serious, she should have started at $30 thereby saving New Yorkers an amazing $5,200 per year.
“Very Intense Storm” May Dump Snow At Higher Elevations Across Northeast
The National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center said an upper-level low-pressure system would develop above the Great Lakes and the Northeast at the midpoint of the week. The system could be a major snowmaker for parts of the Ohio Valley to Mid-Alantic to Northeast.
“This will result in cooler temperatures, a cold rain from the Ohio Valley to the East Coast, and early season accumulating snow for the central Appalachians and the higher terrain of the interior Northeast,” NWS wrote in its latest forecast.
Weather forecaster Joe Bastardi posted an image on X of the latest computer model, which forecast heavy snow for high elevations in the Great Lakes and interior Northeast, especially for the central Appalachians.
Models in good agreement that high elevations across the northeast will see snow Thursday-Sunday. Because temps will be pretty close to freezing, a couple degrees colder or warmer will make a big difference in snow totals. Either way, ski resorts should be happy! #mewxpic.twitter.com/JRa5jhujvc
Watching an upper-level disturbance moving from the Northern Plains to the #Northeast Wed-Fri, bringing wintry weather. #Snow swath expected from Michigan to WV, lifting into PA & New England. Timing differences exist between ECMWF (earlier) & GFS (slower). More details to come. pic.twitter.com/PhNbmLkNmO
This biggest thing in the pattern is the change in the eastern ridge which gets beaten down for the first time in months this week enough so that snow is in the forecast for elevation in the northeast. pic.twitter.com/xLR780Dz8G
Very intense storm system develops over the Northeast later this week. Some rain, gusty winds, and mountain snow expected Wednesday night into Friday. The details on @7NewsDC and https://t.co/Oi9nbPq3Sopic.twitter.com/0dBC0s6wv5
On this very terrain, four years ago, I asserted that we can “never again” allow an election like 2020 to happen. I’m back to say that despite Trump’s near landslide, America’s election system is still broken.
And the time to fix it is immediately, while President Trump has the wind at his back with a Republican Congress and the public on his side.
You most clearly see a broken election system when the margins are extremely tight. We saw it in 2020 when approximately 40,000 votes in key states tipped the election, and not so much in 2024. But rest assured, the public still lacks confidence in the integrity of our elections, and rightly so. They are only partially transparent. The tools to cheat are still on the table and able to be used. This is a ticking time bomb that could throw America into chaos in a future close election.
The main problems are ridiculously extended voting periods, mass absentee ballots, lack of voter ID, flimsy signature verification, unsecured drop boxes, voting machines with opaque software and connectivity to the internet, and sloppy, inaccurate voter rolls. We wouldn’t accept any of these third-world standards in our personal banking or accounting practices – why are we OK applying them to our precious votes?
Under our Constitution, we entrust election administration to the states. Some, like Florida, run a tight, efficient ship, counting all votes on Election Day in a few hours and posting ballot movement online in real-time. The public trusts those results. Others, like Arizona, have created a bizarre process that takes days to count the ballots. Even if there is no fraud whatsoever, the public is distrustful of such a Byzantine system. It boggles the mind that in 2024, in the United States of America, we are still counting votes days and even weeks after the election in Arizona and several other states.
The incoming Trump administration must make election integrity a top priority through federal legislation or persuading states to pass reforms. Standards such as voter ID, accurate and transparent voter rolls, and shortened voting periods should be emphasized publicly and perhaps incentivized by the federal government. There are constitutional issues at play here, but there are countervailing constitutional issues when blue states affect federal elections by relaxing their standards to enable cheating.
We are at a crossroads. More people are using absentee ballots and getting used to them. However, as the Commission on Federal Election Reform, headed by Jimmy Carter and James Baker, concluded in 2005, mass absentee ballots invite voter fraud. Many other civilized countries agree – they ban them or sharply limit their use.
Like with money or other valuables, flawed human beings will steal them if you don’t provide strict guardrails and safeguards. In one-party areas without oversight, partisans will be tempted to break the rules and steal votes if they think they can get away with it.
Part of the reason there were fewer voting irregularities in 2024 compared to 2020 is that our organization and others dispatched tens of thousands of lawyers and volunteers to keep an eye on things. And, of course, it helped that the margin was “too big to rig” this time.
Let’s act to close the gaping security holes so we can spend more time debating the issues rather than paying hundreds of lawyers. Our great country deserves a great election system. It is within our power to make it happen in 2025.
Doug Truax is founder and CEO of Restoration of America, one of the most active and effective political organizations in America. He is a West Point graduate, successful entrepreneur, and former Army Ranger.
Berkeley Communists Call For “Righteous Anger & Revolutionary Determination” Against MAGA
The Revolutionary Communist Party USA, led by Bob Avakian, is outraged that their Marxist-aligned allies within the Democratic Party were defeated in the presidential election by the nation-loving, God-fearing Trump-Vance ticket.
Now, the communists are calling for “righteous anger and revolutionary determination,” as their efforts to shape policy outcomes and push for a socialist reconstruction in America will be temporarily derailed under Trump’s upcoming second term.
X user Andy Ngoshared an image of a flyer stapled to a telephone pole in Berkeley, California, calling for a communist workshop to plan a revolution against “Trump fascism.”
“Two Countries” Within This Country—And The Whole Damn System’s Got To Go!” the title of the poster reads. It states there will be an in-person meeting to plan for revolution at a Berkeley bookshop on Sunday evening and a Zoom meeting on Tuesday.
A QR code attached to the flyer led folks back to Bob Avakian’s Substack. He stated the group’s intent:
“This is not a time for demoralization and despair—it is a time for righteous anger and revolutionary determination.”
Other revolutionary communists promoted the upcoming meeting, indicating an “urgent call” for “revolution against Trump fascism and the whole system.”
On election night, anarchists, communists, and other socialists in the Antifa group were activated in downtown Seattle, sparking mayhem.
Hamas Guns Down 20 Palestinians After Over 100 Aid Trucks ‘Violently Looted’
Amid the ongoing humanitarian and severe food and medicine crisis in war-ravaged Gaza, a United Nations agency has confirmed a Saturday incident which saw a convoy of 109 aid trucks come under attack by desperate Palestinians.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has described the worst such incidnet since the 13-month-old Israeli military assault on Hamas and the Gaza Strip began. A UN official called said it “highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza.” The UN further said the situation in the Strip has reached a low point.
“The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive.” The UN didn’t identify who carried out the assault on the large convoy.
In a new Monday development, Hamas said it has shot at Palestinians who carried out the robbery of aid trucks, resulting in 20 killed. In a highly unusual statement Hamas said it shot and killed over 20 people who it called“gang members”:
The Hamas TV channel Al-Aqsa quoted Hamas interior ministry sources in Gaza as saying that over 20 gang members involved in looting aid trucks were killed during an operation carried out by Hamas security forces in coordination with tribal committees.
It said anyone caught aiding such looting would be treated with “an iron fist”.
This seems an unprecedented first wherein Hamas conducts a mass slaughter of other Palestinian groups seeking to access aid.
Details of who exactly was behind the looting remain unclear, and Hamas describing that “gang members” were behind it seems dubious or at least a surprising development. The more desperate things have gotten in the Strip, the more that violence spirals out of control.
However, the NY Times and many other outlets have described that the initial weekend theft of over 100 trucks was conducted by armed gunman, and that the truck drivers were forced to abandon their vehicles at gunpoint.
The UNRWA, said it happened at Kerem Shalom border crossing in southern Gaza. Given the large-scale nature of the theft, those attacking the convoy were likely lying it wait, and thus the plot had some level of pre-planned organization.
Prior footage from many months ago shows the break down in security at aid stations and warehouses in the Gaza Strip:
Hamas stole the food from the people of Gaza? ✋⛔️
A new video shows Hamas warehouse full of supplies.
It seems that when the Hamas reduced the number of guards, people were able to break into them pic.twitter.com/leu99ynXyp
Some large swathes of the Stip have been in a state of lawlessness since the Israeli military ground invasion began. Israeli officials have argued that this underscores the need to keep a permanent IDF military presence there.
Several top Hamas leaders have been assassinated over the past several months, and it remains unclear of the degree to which the terror group still has a governing and command structure in tact.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of health policy at Stanford University, is a top contender to lead the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the next Trump administration, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Bhattacharya was a key figure who spoke out against COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates during the pandemic.
The consideration, first reported by The Washington Post, comes after President-elect Donald Trump named Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH.
If Bhattacharya is ultimately nominated and confirmed to lead the agency, he would be responsible for 27 institutes and centers on issues ranging from cancer and aging to drug abuse. Those include the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was formerly chaired by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The agency’s $48 billion budget funds medical research on cancers, vaccines, and other diseases through competitive grants to researchers at institutions across the nation. The agency also conducts its own research with thousands of scientists working at NIH labs in Bethesda, Maryland.
In October 2020, Bhattacharya was a lead author of the Great Barrington Declaration alongside Harvard University’s Martin Kulldorff and Oxford University’s Sunetra Gupta. That document, which garnered hundreds of thousands of signatures, called for an end to the COVID-19 lockdowns, which had been in effect for most of 2020.
“As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies,” the letter reads.
In the letter, Bhattacharya and his co-authors described the COVID-19 vaccines as merely one aspect of public health policy, which they said should also focus on immunity through natural infection because of the low risks the disease posed to the young and healthy.
Bhattacharya and his co-authors were opposed to both lockdowns and mask mandates.
In emails obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, former NIH Director Francis Collins—who left the post in December 2021 but continued to work as a science adviser to President Joe Biden—expressed concern that the declaration was “getting a lot of attention.”
“There needs to be a quick and devastating public takedown of its premises,” the October 2020 email from Collins to Fauci reads.
Bhattacharya said during an April 2022 appearance on EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” that COVID-19 policy was “the biggest public health mistake in history,” citing both the direct harms it caused to the economy and the indirect harms it caused to children.
Research by the University of California–Riverside released in March 2023 found that lockdowns alone contributed to a more than 5 percent dip in U.S. gross domestic product and caused a 7.5 percent dip in consumer spending.
NIH research into the effect of COVID-19 policies on children has also found that these policies caused children to miss important opportunities for crucial early socialization in the first five years of life. Since then, the NIH has found a marked increase in developmental delays, learning disabilities, and behavioral disorders in children.
Bhattacharya told The Epoch Times that these and other costs were ignored. He blamed senior health officials for this, who he said imposed a narrative of medical unanimity on how to respond to COVID-19 that didn’t truly exist.
If Bhattacharya is chosen and confirmed, he would be subordinate to Kennedy if the latter is also confirmed. Trump’s HHS secretary pick has said he would fire about 600 NIH employees on his first day.
“We need to act fast, and we want to have those people in place on Jan. 20, so that on Jan. 21, 600 people are going to walk into offices at NIH and 600 people are going to leave,” Kennedy said on Nov. 9 at the Genius Network Annual Event in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Kennedy told The Epoch Times in September that he would order the NIH to focus on the sharp increase in autism, autoimmune diseases, and neurodevelopment disorders in recent decades.
The Associated Press and Jeff Louderback contributed to this report.
Five Reasons Why The 2024 Election Has Been Devastating For Leftists
The political left’s whole world has been turned upside down and just like 2016, millions of people are sitting back and enjoying the show on social media with a big tub of popcorn. However, some may have noticed that the behavior of the woke mob is even more unhinged than eight years ago. The defeat of Hillary Clinton hit Democrats hard because polling had been so drastically weighted in Clinton’s favor. Trump’s win in 2016 shook their faith in the mainstream media, election statistics and their belief that progressive ideology was the dominant force in American society.
Their response to the loss was tears and rage. They acted as if they had been betrayed by the system; that ever present cradle rocking them to sleep with a sense of false security. Nanny government was no longer there to protect them from scary words and contrary ideas. Unfortunately this led to years of false Russian collusion conspiracies and race riots.
This year’s election, though, seems to have broken progressive brains. They aren’t just lashing out, they’ve gone completely insane. Liberal women have been shaving their heads in protest of men (as if men care), Kamala Harris supporters have taken to social media to scream incoherent gibberish about misogyny and racism, and many are threatening to divorce their spouses, cut off ties to their families and even kill Trump voters using poisons, guns, knives, etc.
The WORST Election Day Meltdowns – @CarolineDowney_ reacts to the worst and most extreme meltdowns from progressive TikTokers over the re-election of Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/LupSgV0dg3
The corporate media has been actively endorsing and encouraging this behavior. It’s a good thing their ratings are plunging and their influence continues to wane.
Yale psychiatrist tells people not to spend the holidays with their family members if they voted for Trump. pic.twitter.com/HX5gejOfDV
The amped up media rhetoric might explain the hysterical fears of fascism, but there’s more to it than the forked tongues of CNN and MSNBC. Why does it seem like leftists have gone far more insane during the latest election cycle? What’s different this time?
Losing The Popular Vote
Democrats often fall back on the argument that “something is wrong” with American voting methodology when they lose an election. They blame the electoral college because they don’t understand how it works or why it’s important. Needless to say, the Founding Fathers were highly suspicious of pure Democracy and sought to prevent tyranny by the majority. The EC helps to stop the major population centers of the nation (people that lean towards exploitation of rural producers) from ruling over all the people in the “flyover states”.
Because the protections of the 10th Amendment and state’s rights have been diluted over the past century, the Electoral College is usually the only thing standing in the way of fully centralized government under the control of blue population centers holding a few million more votes more than the rest of the country.
In 2024, though, Trump won the popular vote on top of the EC. The Democrats have no excuses to hide behind and they can no longer claim they’re the majority. They realize the popular vote, which they hold in reverence, is against them. The “democracy” they claim to protect did not work in their favor and now they’re confused.
Desperation For A Token Female President
The establishment media initially argued that Kamala Harris lost because of her race. But when it became clear that more black men and a large percentage of Hispanics voted against her compared to Barack Obama, the MSM shifted their narrative and blamed “misogyny” instead.
The same people who refuse to accept the scientific definition of a woman are mad that we still don’t have a woman president. Trump has defeated Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, and this has driven third-wave feminists into a spiraling breakdown. The problem is not that Democrats ran two women against Trump, the problem is that they ran two corrupt and reprehensible women against Trump. The character of the individual matters far more than identity politics.
Kamala Harris’ massive loss heralds the death of the social justice crusade and feminism in general, and this is very difficult for leftists to handle.
Get Woke, Go Broke Confirmed
When asked why they voted for Trump Americans often mention the economy, but in the same breath they cite woke ideology as the reason why they no longer support the Democrats. For years the political left built up their power using woke taboos as a basis for social control. People don’t forget. Even when Dems tried to go more centrist towards the end of the election cycle the public wasn’t buying it.
The last straw was undoubtedly the targeting of children with trans propaganda. Voters will only tolerate drag queen story hour, sexualized dances in front of kids (or involving kids), men in women’s bathrooms or tampons in boys bathrooms for so long. The public finally snapped and sent leftists a clear message: Your ideology is cancer and we’re cutting it out.
For a long time progressives have denied that “Get Woke, Go Broke” is a reality. Now it’s undeniable. Kamala Harris, the ultimate DEI candidate who once argued that all of America needs to “go more woke” has been rejected by the masses.
The Fall Of The Mainstream Media
If it wasn’t obvious before it’s clear now; the mainstream media is done. Their viewership is dwindling to nothing. Certain outlets (like MSNBC) are about to be parceled out in a fire sale. Only a tiny percentage of the population watches or listens to corporate journalists anymore. They’re about to be jobless.
The era of the Fourth Estate is over and the alternative media has won. The political left clings to the false legitimacy of the academic elite, the end of the establishment controlled media leaves them in a whirlwind of doubt. The “experts” have been exposed as impotent but the left refuses to move on with the rest of Americans. Their beloved gatekeepers have been crushed.
Brainwashing And Irrational Fears Of “Fascism”
For the past four years Democrats have been drowning in a sea of anti-conservative propaganda telling them that anyone who disagrees with them is a fascist, an insurrectionist and an enemy of democracy. The corporate media has been conjuring endless images of Nazi marches, genocidal purges and book burnings. Even though Trump was already President for four years and none of these things happened under his direction, leftists are convinced that he intends to resurrect the Third Reich in his final term.
Nationalism by itself is not a precursor to fascism and the system has nothing to do with conservative principles. In fact, fascism is a creation of the far-left. Both Hitler and Mussolini held up Karl Marx as the inspiration for the development of National Socialism. Hitler’s efforts to expand control over the means of production was rooted in Marxist ideology and most industries were run behind the scenes by the fascist leadership. They also instituted price controls, wage controls and inflated the money supply to expand their power, just as Marxists do.
Leftists have spent decades trying to plant the association of conservatives as fascists into the collective consciousness, but as Adolph Hitler noted in 1934:
“National Socialism derives from each of the two camps the pure idea that characterizes it, national resolution from bourgeois tradition; vital, creative socialism from the teaching of Marxism.”
Socialists and communists go to war with each other all the time. Leftists turn on each other all the time. It’s not surprising that they turned against each other during WWII, and it’s not surprising that leftists today have no understanding that they have more in common with Nazis than conservatives do. The defeat of the progressives in 2024 is forcing them to question if they’re on the right side of history. Some of them are starting to wonder if they might be the baddies, and that revelation is devastating.
Many commentators cannot understand why Trump won the elections despite a robust economy. The reality is far more complex. I have repeatedly stated in my articles and TV appearances on Making Money (Fox News) and CNBC’s Squawkbox Europe that the U.S. economy was significantly weaker than the official headlines suggested. I called it a “private sector recession”.
Anyone who has delved into the supposedly solid headline figures can clearly see the real weakness of the U.S. economy. An unsustainable increase in government spending and federal debt bloated the official GDP, making gross domestic income significantly weaker than headline GDP. Additionally, the Conference Board and University of Michigan consumer confidence readings, well below 2019 and 2021 levels, indicated a stagnant economy. Significant negative revisions and concerning elements were evident in the job reports. The entire improvement of the labor force since 2021 came from foreign workers, and the employment-to-population and labor force participation ratios remained significantly below 2019 levels. Real wages were stagnant in the past four years using official figures. Investment was weak, and the Russell 2000 index, which includes the top small-cap companies generating most of their business in the US, reflected an insignificant 1.8% sales growth and no real earnings growth between 2021 and November 2024.
Professors EJ Antony and Peter St Onge recently published an excellent study, “Recession Since 2022: US Economic Income and Output Have Fallen Overall for Four Years,” through the Brownstone Institute. It perfectly summarizes why Americans have not responded favorably to Bidenomics and his assessment of his economic legacy as the “best economy in the world” or “the best economy ever.” The study concludes that adjustments reflecting a more realistic measure of average price increases in the period have understated cumulative inflation by nearly half since 2019. An enormous divergence between reported CPI and adjusted inflation led to an overstatement of cumulative GDP growth by roughly 15%. Furthermore, these adjustments indicate that the American economy has been in recession since 2022.
As the authors rightly say, “Our results are consistent with the perceptions of the American public, of whom a majority believe we are in recession.”.
The study reveals that understating the CPI and GDP deflator measures of inflation has boosted GDP and real disposable income, resulting in figures that no American who pays bills and receives a wage can relate to. Once adjusted, the harsh reality arrives. The U.S. economy has been in recession for years. Interestingly, Keynesian economists spent these past two years trying to explain why the disaggregated macroeconomic figures I mentioned before did not match the strong headline GDP and disposable income. Despite their numerous justifications, the underlying issue was the government’s overstatement of the growth in disposable income and real GDP.
Americans are not stupid. You cannot tell them that the economy is marvelous and stronger than ever when they do not see it in their daily finances. Such ludicrous propaganda may work in France or Spain, but not in America. Thus, the optimism, publicity, and complacency of a government that constantly repeats that the economy is great backfires. Normal.
Governments create inflation, a hidden tax that erodes the purchasing power of the currency through increased spending and money printing. People often mistakenly report inflation and CPI as identical. CPI is just a measure of the loss of purchasing power of the currency.
Economists often criticize the CPI and GDP deflator measures of inflation for their inadequate reflection of real inflationary pressures. Indeed, there have been numerous studies that show how CPI calculation understates real inflation. “Underweighting of rising food prices and overweighting of falling transport prices are the main causes of the underestimation of inflation,” according to the IMF’s Marshall Reinsdorf (COVID-19 and the CPI: Is Inflation Underestimated?). Peter Schiff also explains it perfectly: “If you run today’s price data through the old formula, you will find that the CPI is nearly double the number the government reports. So, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 9.2% CPI in June 2021, it was closer to 18% when calculated using the 1970s formula.” Why Do You Say the Consumer Price Index (CPI) Understates Inflation?). Vahan P. Roth also comments that, “One of the most important effects that an inaccurate and possibly biased measure of inflation has on the consumer and taxpayer is that it directly influences and justifies monetary and fiscal policy decisions”
Indeed, “the CPI is a government statistic, and since the government’s expansionary monetary policy creates the inflation, officials have an incentive to underestimate it” (Mark Brandly at Mises). According to Professor Joseph Salerno, author of the excellent book “Money, Sound Unsound” (Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2015), the current method of calculating the annual inflation rate is backward-looking, as the previous eleven months’ rates significantly outweigh the most recent monthly rate. In contrast, calculating the annual inflation rate by compounding and annualizing the most recent monthly or quarterly rate of change in the CPI gives a better idea of what inflation currently is and how it may be trending.” Thus, after the recent figures, no one would declare victory over inflation, and the Federal Reserve’s policy would be completely altered.
Bloated government spending has disguised a private sector recession and the real decline in real disposable income, real wages, and margins of SMEs (small and medium enterprises). We can now see that real GDP has been in contraction for the past two years, even after accounting for real inflationary pressures. Furthermore, the temporary and exogenous factor of widespread weaker commodities boosted the external contribution of gross domestic product.
The issue is that attempts to lessen the impact of currency destruction have repeatedly compromised the reliability of official data. As the government’s influence in the economy increases, technical recessions may not show up in official data, but they still affect citizens. Furthermore, deficit spending and money printing now result in both higher taxes and lower real wages in the future. Therefore, the unintended consequence of an official recession is an increase in government debt, an increase in taxes, and a decrease in the purchasing power of the currency.
Biden and Harris believed that strong official headline figures would reward them, leading them to implement an ultra-Keynesian approach: the most aggressive government expenditure and debt increase plan in decades. They also thought that citizens would fall for the trick of blaming corporations and shops for inflation. They were wrong. They engineered a recession, and families and businesses suffered as a result. However, many people mistakenly believe that Bidenomics was a miscalculation that ultimately backfired. The objective was to advance the stealth nationalization of the economy by increasing the public sector size and dissolving the wealth of the private sector, making it impossible for the next administration to undo the damage. That is what all socialist parties do. They leave a mess that is difficult to unravel, then return in the next election to continue raising taxes and expanding the role of government in the economy.
The United States should steer clear of these impoverishing Keynesian policies and instead adopt a private sector-driven pro-growth strategy, coupled with a sound money policy, to stabilize public sector finances and restore prosperity to America. It has successfully achieved this in the past and can continue to do so in the present.
Boeing Lays Off 438 Union Workers As Drastic Cuts Begin
Boeing, still grappling with financial setbacks, regulatory scrutiny, and the aftershocks of an eight-week machinists’ strike, has begun delivering layoff notices to more than 400 members of its unionized workers as part of a broader plan to cut approximately 10% of its workforce, or 17,000 jobs.
The layoffs target members of the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), a union representing thousands of Boeing employees. According to the union, 438 members received pink slips last week, with affected employees remaining on the payroll through mid-January.
According to an October statement by Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, the layoffs are the result of ‘overstaffing,’ adding that the company must “reset its workforce levels to align with our financial reality.”
Of the 438 SPEEA members impacted:
218 are engineers and scientists from the union’s professional unit.
220 are from the technical unit, which includes roles such as planners, technicians, and skilled tradespeople.
SPEEA, which represents 17,000 Boeing workers, noted that most of its members are based in Washington State, though the layoffs also affect employees in Oregon, California, and Utah.
For those losing their jobs, Boeing is offering limited support, including career transition services, subsidized healthcare benefits for up to three months, and severance packages typically amounting to one week of pay per year of service.
A Company Under Pressure
Boeing’s challenges have been mounting for years, exacerbated by a series of missteps and external pressures.
Boeing, based in Arlington, Virginia, has been in financial and regulatory trouble since a panel blew off the fuselage of an Alaska Airlines plane in January. Production rates slowed to a crawl, and the Federal Aviation Administration capped production of the 737 MAX at 38 planes per month, a threshold Boeing has yet to reach. -AP
The company’s troubles worsened in September when its machinists went on strike for eight weeks, further disrupting operations. Although unionized machinists began returning to work earlier this month, the strike strained Boeing’s already fragile finances.
Ortberg has insisted that the layoffs are unrelated to the strike and are instead part of broader efforts to address overstaffing. However, the timing has raised questions among labor advocates and analysts, who point to the compounding financial pressures Boeing faces.
WSJ Issues Scathing Indictment Of How Democrats Blew It On Inflation
The Wall Street Journal has issued a scathing postmortem analysis of how the Biden administration completely botched the economyand supercharged inflation.
President Biden hadn’t even been inaugurated when he and his senior advisers made a monumental gamble in January 2021 that would reverberate through his presidency. Fresh on the heels of a $900 billion Covid-relief bill that Congress had approved weeks earlier, Biden proposed a $1.9 trillion stimulus bill.
Biden and his team, many of whom had served in the Obama administration, claimed they were correcting their mistakes from 2009: spending too little to combat a major economic crisis. Instead, they overcorrected, flooding an already fragile economy with cash and setting the stage for soaring inflation that has burdened millions of Americans ever since.
Key among their policies was the American Rescue Plan (ARP) – a package which boosted the child tax credit, showered Americans with $1,400 per person, and directed $350 billion to state and local governments. The plan was passed against a backdrop of already unprecedented government spending. Americans were awash in federal aid from bipartisan measures under Trump, supply chains were breaking down, and businesses were struggling to rehire workers. The administration dismissed these concerns, prioritizing speed over prudence.
The plan, of course, totally backfired.
“If inflation had been less severe in that first year, if it had peaked at a lower level, could Vice President Harris have survived that? My intuition is yes,” said Michael Strain, head of economic-policy studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
On election day, approximately 40% of voters polled said the economy was their top issue – with those voters backing Donald Trump by a 22% margin.
The White House is unrepentant, of course.
“Any scenario that envisions less inflation from a reduced ARP also has to wrestle with slower growth, higher unemployment and more child poverty,” said White House Council of Economic Advisors chair, Jared Bernstein.
White House and Democratic officials have argued that overall U.S. economic outcomes were better than those achieved in nearly every other advanced economy. But politically, those arguments fell flat and gave Trump his opening.
“It comes off as cold comfort to say that people have it worse in Germany, the U.K., France,” said Rep. Brendan Boyle (D., Pa.). “People naturally compare their experiences today to what things were like prepandemic.” -WSJ
Senator Joe Manchin, a critical swing vote in the Senate, had warned Biden directly that the plan was excessive – telling the president that it didn’t make sense to throw another $2 trillion on top of the stimulus approved just weeks earlier. Biden, unmoved, forged ahead. “I’ve got to do it, Joe,” he reportedly said.
Manchin ultimately gave his reluctant support, but inflation surged almost immediately. By the end of 2021, prices were climbing at their fastest rate in 40 years, fueled in part by fiscal stimulus that Biden’s own administration championed.
Inflation and Voter Backlash
Rather than earning credit for economic recovery, Biden faced a political firestorm as inflation eroded household purchasing power. Consumer prices rose by 20% during Biden’s term – compared to just 8% under Trump -leaving voters furious.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration fed the American public an ongoing stream of bullshit as inflation surged – describing rising prices as “transitory,” a term that became a symbol of their detachment from reality. Even as inflation broadened and worsened, White House advisers clung to the narrative, stalling action that might have mitigated the damage.
“They kept insisting it was transitory because they were trying to shove Build Back Better down my throat,” Manchin said, referring to Biden’s separate $3.5 trillion spending plan, which he eventually torpedoed.
In short, the White House treated inflation as a public relations problem, attempting to spin temporary drops in price growth as evidence that the problem was under control. Behind the scenes, Biden’s economic advisers proposed measures like rolling back Trump-era tariffs on Chinese imports to reduce costs. Yet these ideas were shelved under pressure from labor groups and foreign-policy hawks. Biden sided with political advisers over economic pragmatists, a decision that critics say reflected his administration’s misplaced priorities.
“President Biden said inflation was his No. 1 priority, and I don’t think he acted like it was his No. 1 priority,” said Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute.
Economic Success, Political Failure
The ARP undoubtedly accelerated job growth and contributed to a faster recovery compared to many other advanced economies. But these accomplishments meant little to voters dealing with higher grocery bills and gas prices. Democrats’ assurances that Americans were better off than their counterparts in Europe or Canada came across as tone-deaf and dismissive.
“It comes off as cold comfort to say that people have it worse in Germany, the U.K., France,” said Rep. Brendan Doyle (D-PA). “People naturally compare their experiences today to what things were like prepandemic.”
Meanwhile, the administration’s insistence on pressing forward with its broader spending agenda compounded its political missteps. By the time the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, many Americans had already soured on Biden’s economic stewardship. Critics argued that the White House could have done more to cut deficits and curb inflation, instead of leaving the Federal Reserve to bear the brunt of cooling the economy.
Critics say the White House could have done more to cut deficits that were unprecedented for a peacetime economy with low unemployment. Instead, the administration passed several pieces of legislation that boosted spending on infrastructure and clean-energy investments, including the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022.
“The whole job of fighting inflation shouldn’t just be up to the Fed. I’d prefer a whole-of-government approach,” said Robert Kaplan, a former Dallas Fed president, in a June interview. Kaplan at the time argued for hitting the pause button on some of the spending from the IRA out of concern that subsidies to encourage new factory construction were working against efforts to lower inflation.
The spending blitz of 2020-21 revealed that “these things have a momentum of their own,” said Raghuram Rajan, a former governor of India’s central bank. “It is hard to reverse on a dime, and then it goes further than you want.” -WSJ
Ultimately, the Biden administration’s actions coming out o f the pandemic will likely be remembered as a gamble that backfired and most likely cost them the election (Kamala Harris’ obvious limitations aside). It showcased a willingness to prioritize progressive ambitions over economic caution, leaving voters to shoulder the consequences. While the administration points to strong job growth and relative economic stability, the costs of its missteps – both in inflation and political fallout – are undeniable.
