On matters of foreign policy, Joe Biden has a clear history of ineptitude. As former Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it, Joe Biden has been wrong about “nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
What makes matters worse is the apparent growing problem of Biden’s mental and physical decline, fueled by the overt weakness of his style of leadership — whether it be avoiding the questions of journalists or simply struggling to form basic sentences.
Combined with the celebrated return of the Obama-era globalist diplomacy of feckless apologies and denial, the United States is, once again, viewed as weak by our enemies.
And the vultures are beginning to circle.
During the first high-level talks between the United States and China under the Biden administration, former Obama foreign policy disaster, Antony Blinken, was seemingly bulled over by the Chinese delegation. Accepting no culpability for the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese officials deflected all criticism and redirected it at the Western world, alongside veiled and open threats of consequential action.
One day after the EMA left the door open to the possibility that the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID jab might have harmful side effects for a small subset of patients, researchers in Germany are claiming to have determined the link between the vaccine and the rare blood clots that have resulted in a handful of deaths.
German public broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk reported that researchers at the Greifswald teaching hospital in northern Germany claimed on Friday to have discovered the cause of the rare blood clotting found in some recipients of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, most notably a trio of Norwegian health care workers, one of whom died due to complications arising from the condition.
Hours before the EMA released its final safety assessment on Thursday, a top Norwegian government doctor claimed to have found a potential link between the vaccine and the rare reaction.
But some cases also involved a rare thrombosis (ie clots) in the brain. For these cases, the German researchers claimed common medicine could be used to treat the condition when and if it arises.
Germany, along with several other EU member states, suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine on Monday following reports of unusual blood clots, though a dozen states have already re-started vaccinations.
On Friday, the WHO largely confirmed the EMA’s findings. And in the US, officials moved ahead with a program to donate some of the American stock to Canada and Mexico as the FDA looks set to approve the AstraZeneca jab in the near future. The agency added the jab has “tremendous potential” since the jab accounts for 90% of the vaccines distributed through COVAX, the WHO-Gates Foundation scheme to vaccinate the entire world by providing vaccines to poorer countries for free.
By Thursday, Germany had administered over 10MM doses of COVID-19 vaccines, including the AstraZeneca vaccine. While Europe continues to lag the US and Europe in terms of the percentage of its population who have received the vaccine, the total number of doses distributed in the West now exceeds the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases several times over.
As for how to identify any potential risk factors, the team said patients exhibiting certain symptoms, like dizziness, for more than three days, should receive another check-up by a doctor. This might further strain health-care systems, but it could help save lives in the rare cases where a reaction may occur.
While a dozen EU countries, including Italy, France and Germany, re-started use of the shot on Friday, Finland was a notable holdout. After halting vaccinations last week, the country pledged to carry out an independent review of two possible cases of blood clots.
President Biden has explicitly vowed that Democrats will increase taxes on the wealthy, adding fuel to congressional Democrats’ plan to ram through higher taxes on party-line votes.
“Anybody making more than $400,000 will see a small to a significant tax increase,” Mr. Biden said in an interview that aired Wednesday on ABC. “If you make less than $400,000, you won’t see one single penny in additional federal tax.”
He doesn’t necessarily expect to win Republican support.
“I’ll get the Democratic votes for a tax increase,” the president said.
“He’s being blunt. He wants the money to spend,” said Grover Norquist, president of the low-tax, small-government activist group Americans for Tax Reform.
Democrats are rolling out a slew of tax plans now that they control the White House and both chambers of Congress. Whatever measures get pushed to Mr. Biden’s desk are expected to be the biggest tax increases since 1993.
Among other changes to the tax code, Mr. Biden wants to increase the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, lift the top individual tax rate from 37% to 39.6% and increase capital gains taxes on people with more than $1 million in annual income.
“Yet they’re complaining because I’m providing a tax credit for child care? For the poor? For the middle class?” Mr. Biden said.
One problem with Mr. Biden’s tax pledge is that the corporate tax rate increasingly hits the middle class indirectly through consumer prices, 401(k) retirement accounts and other ways, Mr. Norquist said.
“This is not going to be a fun thing to do. This is how he loses the suburbs,” he said. “You go and mess with everyone’s 401(k) and orange man isn’t on the ballot. How do you carry the suburbs with a declaration of war against everybody with a 401(k) as class enemies?”
Senate Republicans want no part in rolling back parts of the 2017 tax law, one of President Trump’s signature legislative achievements. Senate Democrats would have to use a fast-track budget tool to muscle their tax and spending plans through the 50-50 split Senate.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, warned that the Democrats’ infrastructure package would serve as a “Trojan horse” for tax increases.
“That’s exactly what I think they have in mind, is to call it an infrastructure bill,” he said on Fox News. “But, in fact, in it, they will have a massive tax increase to, in effect, reverse the tax reform that we enacted in 2017 when we had an entirely Republican government.”
Mr. Norquist led a group of dozens of conservative leaders who sent a letter to Congress voicing opposition to a carbon tax, which some lawmakers have floated as a way to pay for Mr. Biden’s multitrillion-dollar proposals on infrastructure and climate change.
A carbon tax imposed on the burning of coal, oil and gas would increase the costs of goods, lower take-home pay and increase “the power, cost and intrusiveness of the government in our lives,” the letter said.
Some congressional Republicans have supported a carbon tax in recent years as part of efforts to combat climate change, though the letter signers note that carbon taxes have fallen short in the revenue department and hit poorer people harder.
“Every place it’s been tried, it hasn’t worked. It doesn’t raise the money that they expect,” said Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, who also signed the letter. “Any tax or policy that raises the cost of energy has a disproportionate impact on low-income families.”
Even apart from its regressive nature, some liberal Democrats have been critical of carbon taxes. They say the taxes are insufficient for what they see as an existential fight against climate change.
Lawmakers have talked about a “miles driven” tax or fee as another way to offset some of the costs of a far-reaching infrastructure and climate change proposal.
Congressional Democrats signaled that they are on board with Mr. Biden’s proposals and want to take them further.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernard Sanders of Vermont rolled out legislation to tax CEOs if the ratio between their pay and the median employee pay at their company is too high.
“At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, the American people are demanding that large, profitable corporations pay their fair share of taxes and treat their employees with the dignity and respect they deserve,” said Mr. Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts has pushed her own “wealth tax” proposal, which would levy a 2% tax on net worth above $50 million and an additional 1% tax on net worth above $1 billion.
The White House didn’t dismiss Ms. Warren’s proposal out of hand, though press secretary Jen Psaki pointed out that Mr. Biden introduced his own tax proposals on the 2020 campaign trail.
Liberal economists say the Democrats’ upcoming “green infrastructure plan” that could cost up to $4 trillion shouldn’t necessarily be funded anyway.
“If a sizable portion of this plan is deficit-financed, as I believe current macroeconomic conditions warrant, then the green infrastructure plan could also ensure the economy is brought to true full employment,” said Mark Paul, assistant professor of economics at New College of Florida and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute.
Update (3-19-2021) Representing GraceLife Church‘s Pastor James Coates, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) released a statement on Wednesday March 17, 2021 that said they expected the release of Pastor Coates this week. This news came after the JCCF said they had reached an agreement with the Crown to withdraw one of the charges for violating COVID-19 restriction orders that the pastor faces.
The hopes of GraceLife Church’s pastor being back in the pulpit this Sunday were crushed on Thursday after the court said, “Contrary to reports that have been circulated by parties involved in the case, there will be no court proceedings involving James Coates on March 19, 2021.”
The court said Pastor Coates’ case is planned to be heard on Monday, which will hopefully lead to his release until the May 3, 2021 trial date but will keep in jail for at least another weekend.
Update (3-11-2021)The Edmonton Journal reported yesterday that GraceLife Church has been charged for continuing to ignore government mandated health orders relating to the COVID-19 virus.
In a news release, Police revealed GraceLife Church’s legal counsel had been served on March 4, 2021 with a summons to appear in Stony Plain Provincial Court on May 5, 2021.
GraceLife Church has been charged because they did not adhere to the 15% maximum allowed capacity for indoor gatherings. The charges were specifically for worship gatherings they help on February 21, 2021 and February 28, 2021. Two worship services that took place without their Pastor James Coates, who remains in jail for disobeying government mandated COVID-19 orders.
The charges do not include GraceLife Church’s gathering they held this past Sunday March 7, 2021.
When Fauci agreed to an interview with Eugenio Derbez, he may have assumed the Mexican actor, director and producer would treat him with kid gloves. That didn’t happen.
Dr. Anthony Fauci is no stranger to media interviews. Since the pandemic made him a household name, he’s even been called a media darling.
So when Fauci agreed to an interview with Eugenio Derbez, he may have assumed the famed Mexican actor, director and producer would treat him the way the U.S. mainstream media usually does — with kid gloves.
That didn’t happen. Instead, Derbez lobbed one pointed question after another — and didn’t settle for non-answers.
A full year western Media has had the chance to make the right questions. It took a Mexican comedian to do it. And not just any comedian: hats off to the great Eugenio Derbez! Is there a chance that Bill Gates gives him an interview? 🤨 4/4 pic.twitter.com/JFKhPv0slt
The privilege of living in the US affords poor people more material resources than the averages for most of the world’s richest nations.
A groundbreaking study by Just Facts has discovered that after accounting for all income, charity, and non-cash welfare benefits like subsidized housing and food stamps, the poorest 20 percent of Americans consume more goods and services than the national averages for all people in most affluent countries. This includes the majority of countries in the prestigious Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), including its European members. In other words, if the US “poor” were a nation, it would be one of the world’s richest.
Notably, this study was reviewed by Dr. Henrique Schneider, professor of economics at Nordakademie University in Germany and the chief economist of the Swiss Federation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. After examining the source data and Just Facts’ methodology, he concluded: “This study is sound and conforms with academic standards. I personally think it provides valuable insight into poverty measures and adds considerably to this field of research.”
The “Poorest” Rich Nation?
In a July 1 New York Timesvideo op-ed that decries “fake news” and calls for “a more truthful approach” to “the myth of America as the greatest nation on earth,” Times producers Taige Jensen and Nayeema Raza claim the US has “fallen well behind Europe” in many respects and has “more in common with ‘developing countries’ than we’d like to admit.”
“One good test” of this, they say, is how the US ranks in the OECD, a group of “36 countries, predominantly wealthy, Western, and Democratic.” While examining these rankings, they corrupt the truth in ways that violate the Times’op-ed standards, which declare that “you can have any opinion you would like,” but “the facts in a piece must be supported and validated,” and “you can’t say that a certain battle began on a certain day if it did not.”
The Times is not merely wrong about this issue but is also reporting the polar opposite of reality.
A prime example is their claim that “America is the richest country” in the OECD, “but we’re also the poorest, with a whopping 18% poverty rate—closer to Mexico than Western Europe.” That assertion prompted Just Facts to conduct a rigorous, original study of this issue with data from the OECD, the World Bank, and the US government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis. It found that the Times is not merely wrong about this issue but is also reporting the polar opposite of reality.
Poor Compared to Whom?
The most glaring evidence against the Times’ rhetoric is a note located just above the OECD’s data for poverty rates. It explains that these rates measure relative poverty within nations, not between nations. As the note states, the figures represent portions of people with less than “half the median household income” in their own nations and thus “two countries with the same poverty rates may differ in terms of the relative income-level of the poor.”
The OECD’s poverty rates say nothing about which nation is “the poorest.” Nonetheless, this is exactly how the Times misrepresented them.
The upshot is laid bare by the fact that this OECD measure assigns a higher poverty rate to the US (17.8 percent) than to Mexico (16.6 percent). Yet World Bank data show that 35 percent of Mexico’s population lives on less than $5.50 per day, compared to only 2 percent of people in the United States.
Hence, the OECD’s poverty rates say nothing about which nation is “the poorest.” Nonetheless, this is exactly how the Times misrepresented them.
The same point applies to broader discussions about poverty, which can be measured in two very different ways: (1) relative poverty or (2) absolute poverty. Relative measures of poverty, like the one cited by the Times, can be misleading if the presenter does not answer the question: Poor compared to who? Absolute measures, like the number of people with income below a certain level, are more straightforward and enlightening.
Influential people in public health, government and the media failed to rise to the moment
The Covid-19 pandemic represented a test of elites in the U.S., from public-health experts to the corporate media. The results have been disappointing. Policy makers who bucked the elites and challenged the narrative have been proven right to do so.
To begin with, highly publicized epidemiological models were as consequential as they were wrong. The model produced by Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London—which forecast millions of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. without mitigation efforts—sparked panic among public-health elites and served as the pretext for lockdowns throughout the U.S. and Great Britain. The lockdowns failed to stop the virus but did a great deal of societal damage along the way—damage that a more targeted approach, seeking to reduce total harms, would have been able to avoid (and did, in places like Sweden and Florida).
Similarly, models predicting massive shortages of hospital beds helped to precipitate the disastrous policy—enacted by states like New York, New Jersey and Michigan—to send contagious, Covid-positive hospital patients back to nursing homes. States like Florida that rejected the models and adopted policies to protect nursing-home residents had comparatively lower nursing-home mortality rates as a result.
The reliance on faulty models was matched by poor public messaging. Elites sent conflicting messages about the efficacy of cloth masks, the uniformity of risk across age brackets, the danger of outdoor transmission and the practical benefit of taking a Covid vaccine.
Perhaps most damaging to public trust was the public-health campaign urging “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” This short-term mitigation, we were told, was necessary to buy time to prepare hospitals for any patient surges. But that reasonable aim was soon transformed into a lockdown-until-eradication approach that left no end in sight for most Americans. Going from “save the hospitals” to “zero Covid” represents one of the greatest instances in history of moving the goal post.
Lockdowns proved a huge boon to America’s corporate media, which primed its captive audience with fear and partisanship. Everything the corporate press did regarding Covid coverage was inseparable from its yearslong obsession with attacking Donald Trump. Weaponizing Covid in an election year superseded any obligation to present the facts with needed context and perspective.
While it was abundantly clear by May that schools represented low-risk environments for the spread of Covid and that the consequences of prolonged school closures were potentially catastrophic, the corporate media did its best to obscure the data and stoke fear and panic among parents and teachers. After all, the media had to take the position opposite Donald Trump.
Had the media presented the data on schools in a rational fashion with proper context and perspective, it is quite possible that the extended school closures we’ve seen in lockdown states would have been untenable and millions of students would be in markedly better shape academically and socially.
For months we were told to “trust the experts,” but far too often over the past year those who were most influential in our society—in public health, government and media—proved incapable of rising to the moment.
Florida cut against the grain of elite opinion and bucked the media narrative. The result is open schools, comparatively low unemployment and per capita Covid mortality below the national average. We cannot simply undo the harm caused by flawed policies advocated by our elites, but we can resolve that we never let this happen to our country again.
(China In Focus) Top U.S. and Chinese officials clash in their first in-person meeting. The Chinese side responded to American comments on human rights violations with a 15-minute monologue.
The Chinese regime is blaming the U.S. government for alleged #antiAsian crimes, but a China analyst says it’s actually the Chinese Communist Party’s fault.
Joe Biden’s administration has granted an $86 million contract for hotel rooms to hold about 1,200 illegal migrants, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed.
As the migrant crisis has been overwhelming the U.S.-Mexico border in recent weeks, Biden has been mulling different strategies to mitigate the surge he started.
“It’s a sign of growing numbers of migrant families trying to come to the U.S. — in addition to already overwhelming numbers of kids crossing the border without their parents or legal guardians. Both trends appear to be straining government resources,” Axios reported Saturday.
The six-month hotel contract is through a Texas-based nonprofit called Endeavors, but the contract could reportedly be extended and expanded.
The hotels will be near border areas, including in Arizona and Texas, though it’s not known which hotels would hold the migrants.
Axios noted that “hotel rooms are likely a safer option than border patrol stations”, they don’t have to follow the same “safety protocols that official government detention spaces do,” presumably including COVID-19 screening.
“To suggest that someone like [Bongino] would replace a God-fearing Christian behind the golden EIB microphone is totally absurd, and completely incomprehensible.”
Stew Peters, host of the “Patriotically Correct” radio show, slammed a “misleading headline” from Fox News this week that claimed former Obama administration Secret Service agent and current Parler shareholder Dan Bongino is “replacing” the late talk radio icon Rush Limbaugh in the 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. EST time slot.
“I saw a headline yesterday that was a little disturbing to me,” Peters said. “Actually, ‘a little disturbing’ is quite the understatement, I’m gonna go full-blown B.S. on this one. I’m actually extremely insulted by the three sentences they struggled to put together at FoxNews.com, and I’m blown away by the misleading and completely inaccurate article.”
The article in question, titled “Dan Bongino to take over Rush Limbaugh’s radio time slot,” states that Fox News contributor Bongino “will be launching a new radio show during the time slot left vacant by conservative talk radio icon,” and goes on to draw parallels between a health scare Bongino had in 2020 and the invasive lung cancer that took Limbaugh’s life.
“Now, I don’t know if this was just some regurgitated story that was published by Fox after receiving a press release from the Bongino camp, or if this was a real story that Fox may have manufactured on a slow day in the cycle of media, but this is complete garbage,” Peters noted.
