Like Punxsutawney Phil, a largely unseen Joe Biden has finally emerged from his Oval Office burrow to declare that a new progressive spring awaits. Full of doom and gloom, he slogged through a depressing, monotone speech, delivered at a podium with no audience, staring vacantly into the teleprompter, almost like he dared not take his eyes off it for fear he would lose his place. Even as he held up his mask and then fumbled in his pocket for the note he keeps to “remind” him of how many Americans have died during the Covid pandemic. A reminder alright. Not so much for its motivational importance but more likely because Joe simply can’t remember the figure. After eight years of being Obama’s lackey, you certainly would have expected Joe to have have picked up some of Barry’s teleprompter proficiency. Apparently not. And when the speech was over, what was with that silent, long walk down the flag-lined, red-carpeted hallway? Like he was walking off into the sunset. Not very uplifting and frankly, kind of creepy. Not since Calvin Coolidge has a President failed to address the public for so long, and totally avoided taking questions from the press. Much like his campaign, Joe has remained cloistered, protected, and hidden in his first 50 days in office. Why is that? You know why. And then the day after his speech, to hear the glowing, gushing liberal media fawning all over him. The worst case, not surprisingly brought to you dramatically by CNN’s uber-partisan mouthpiece Don Lemon: “ (Big sigh)…how refreshing….how human….how compassionate….how American.” How nauseating. Once again another example of the media imploring us not to believe our own senses and explaining to us what we actually saw and heard. A spoon-feeding for the intellectually lazy. And it only cost the American taxpayer 1.9 Trillion dollars to witness this spectacle. And quite the spectacle it is. 1.9 Trillion dollars. Think about that for a minute. That’s unfathomable. That’s a one, followed by a nine and eleven zeroes. That’s nearly six thousand dollars per American citizen. As Tucker Carlson pointed out for reference, that’s more than the gross domestic product of Canada, and more than FDR spent on the New Deal, adjusted for inflation. So what do we get for that investment, what’s our return on investment? At 800 pages, you can bet this is yet another exercise in redistribution and pork. Witness Nancy Pelosi, drunk with power, enthusiastically rattling her gavel as she rammed through another progressive tax-and-spend initiative on a strict party line vote, using the questionably applicable reconciliation rule. That should annoy every American. Not for the partisan power wielding, but how she gleefully, almost casually, is condemning our grandchildren to paying off that debt. But 75% of Americans support the legislation, screams the liberals and every progressive new outlet. How coincidental. It seems that roughly 75% of Americans will qualify for a $1400 handout. And how exactly do you think that polling went: Question: Do you want free money? Answer: Duh. Well then, let the redistribution festival begin. A check for $1400 with an additional $1400 per dependent will likely go out as early as this weekend to Americans making less than $75000 per year or married couples making less than $150000 with reduced payments gradually phased out to an income threshold of $80000 per year. So potentially a family of four that meet the criteria could receive a check for a total of $5600. Show me the money. Additionally the bill provides a $300 supplement to weekly unemployment checks extended through September and provides a one-year extension to the child tax credit that will provide monthly checks per child that could amount to over $3000 per year. And they plan to make those child tax credits permanent. Time to ditch those contraceptives, the government has incentivized baby-making. I wonder if abortion clinics will suffer. But, I digress. Even with this cash outlay, the math doesn’t add up to $1.9 Trillion, so what else is hiding in those 800 pages? Turns out there’s pork a-plenty that is best described by Karl Rove as being “sprinkled into a gigantic trough of taxpayer dollars on which democratic constituencies will gorge”. Rove reports that according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, only 1% of the bill goes to vaccines, 5% for public health, and “more than 15% for things unrelated to Covid.” Disturbingly they report that close to 50% “ is dedicated to poorly targeted rebate checks and state and local government aid including jurisdictions that have experienced little or no financial loss”. The first clue to potential pork in the mix came when the impotent Republicans sought to trim the bill to Covid-related expenditures only, and reduced the cost by some $1.2 Trillion. That’s quite the haircut. Their amendments included such outrageous plans like sending checks out to only the truly needy, and extending the supplemental unemployment benefits only through July while still providing aid for reopening schools and vaccination programs. Nope. How about not sending checks to felons in prison? No dice. Reducing $86 Billion for union pension funds? Not a chance. Reduce Obamacare subsidies for those making up to $500000 per year down to $132000? Obamacare, are you kidding? How about pairing relief to school districts to reopening? Nope, just give the teachers more money. And by more money, I mean $129 Billion for K-12. And what about the massive money dump for blue states, theoretically to make up for their budget shortfalls during the pandemic? California for example, stands to receive $26.2 Billion when reportedly they will start the fiscal year with a $19 Billion surplus. New York, similarly, will receive some $54 billion as a reward for their fiscal mismanagement with $105 million to airports, $426 million to the Department of Transportation, $4.2 Billion to Emergency Transit relief, $313 Million to the Governor’s (yeah that guy) Emergency Education Relief Fund, $1.4 Billion to the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund, $13 Billion to New York governments, and $1 Billion to FEMA. Nationally the total state bail out package totals some $350 Billion in aid to “cash-strapped” states and cities plus an additional $10 Billion for local infrastructure projects. Could they coincidentally be “cash strapped” due to their exorbitantly overfunded pension plans? And is it coincidence that the vast majority of these funds are going to blue states? A possible reward for loyalty to the cause and an incentive to continue with the status quo rather than balance your bloated budgets, perhaps? Even Mitt Romney, a RINO if there ever was one, pointed out that 21 states have revenue at or above pre-Covid levels. Why do they need a cash infusion? And that’s just what the Republicans were able to address before the bill sailed through Congress. How about the $140 million rail project coincidentally located in Nancy Pelosi’s California district? Related to Covid how? $200 million to Amtrak in addition to the $1.5 Billion already appropriated by the House. Amtrak? Really? And how about setting the stage for future redistribution measures by putting in place rules for making future student loan forgiveness tax-free? Yup, it’s in there. Funding for the Kennedy Center for the Arts? Check. And setting the stage for future reparations, we get our first race-based law, that allows non-white farmers to write off their government loans for being, and I quote: “socially disadvantaged”. This isn’t just bad policy, this is governmental malpractice on a grand scale. Call it what it is: a payoff to unions, a reward for loyal blue states, a redistribution of wealth finally realized and a blatant attempt to buy votes in the mid-term elections. The Democrat Party has become the mob.
And get ready, they are taking this act out on the road: Joe, Doctor Jill, Kamala and the “First Gentleman”, fronted by the wholly unimpressive Jen Psaki coming to a bandstand near you to spread the word, preach the gospel according to Joe and to trumpet their accomplishments. Like I need some nobody that married Kamala Harris three years ago to tell me what I can and cannot do. And they will justify this victory lap: after all, as Harris said: they “started from scratch” with no stockpile of vaccines. Cue the media obediently nodding their heads. Apparently in only 50 days Biden made the vaccine miraculously appear out of thin air, as if Trump never existed. The reason there was no stockpile, Kammie, is that they were distributed to the states where, even under gross mismanagement like that seen in Rhode Island, New Jersey and California, they were still getting into the arms of the public. And despite the democrat party’s aversion to pipelines, this vaccine pipeline was in place and, as manufacturers ramped up production, the doses were forthcoming. It doesn’t take a genius to order a million more doses, as Biden recently bragged, especially when the infrastructure is already there. But this is how it will all play out: the media will continue to parrot the administration’s claim that Trump bungled the Covid response, and promote the narrative that Biden heroically stepped in to inherit a pandemic-stricken country on the brink, echoing the darkness and morose seriousness of his speech. But as restrictions eased, infections subsided and vaccines were distributed, the economy was already poised for recovery before Biden took office. The heavy lifting was already done and he will inherit the success. Worst of all he will lay claim to the resultant economic recovery and pandemic abatement as being of his own making. Watch it unfold.
There is a reason Joe Biden looks alarmingly like the old man Muppet in Jim Henson’s balcony box. He is a puppet of the radical left, supporting and promoting their most progressive agenda, enabling the democrat party to be hijacked by extremists that don’t represent the values of the majority of Americans. And maybe, just maybe, if you toe the line, if you follow the rules, says Joe, your government will let you get together for a family gathering on July 4th. Not a large gathering mind you, but small groups. If not we will shut you down again. Just do what you are told. That’s it right there in a nutshell, Comrades. America is slipping through our fingers.
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