3am Today

With the US presidential election now over with, a new president and former vice president, bringing forty years of old ways will now take the helm in the “people’s house” – White House – to rein in four years of what most believe to be of political public service.

Unfortunately, I do not believe this will hold true as the American citizen has witnessed over the course of the last several decades. A conundrum of political shift has taken place where the “public servant” has morphed into a self serving person inflicted with the greed of money and power derived from back room deals that none could ever be allowed to know or speak of.

With all of this in mind, lets take a look at ten disastrous plans that await the American people in the four years of future as they usher in the delusional nightmare dream that they voted for.

It’s worth noting that a country – any country – cannot survive without an economy. The economy is what determines what people eat and how they live; car/home ownership, etc. If the economy sinks, that country will fall into ruins.

It’s also worth noting that for a country’s worth to be measured in dollars, there has to be an equal asset for each dollar. For example: if I want to borrow fifty dollars from you, you are going to ask me what I have that is worth fifty dollars as collateral. If I do not have fifty dollars worth of assets, then my worth is zero and I don’t get the loan. The same holds true for an economy. There has to be assets that equal the debt that you incur.

Another way to look at this would be to state that if a country has one trillion dollars of money in circulation, then there has to be one trillion dollars worth of gold stored in a central bank or government vault.

A classic example of a failed economy would be to look at the country of Venezuela. The economy of Venezuela is based largely on the petroleum and manufacturing sectors and has been in a state of total economic collapse since the mid 2010’s. Since the 1920’s, Venezuela has been a rentier state, offering oil as its main export. The nation has experienced hyperinflation since 2015.

The total trade in 2014 amounted to 48.1% of the country’s GDP. Exports accounted for 16.7% of GDP and petroleum products accounted for about 95% of those exports. From the 1950’s to the early 1980’s, the Venezuelan economy experienced a steady growth that attracted many immigrants, with the nation enjoying the highest standard of living in Latin America. During the collapse of oil prices in the 1980’s the economy contracted and the currency continued a progressive devaluation and inflation skyrocketed to reach peaks of 84% in 1989 and 99% in 1996.

Now? The average Venezuelan citizen is forced to grocery shop in a government run market where the cost of a bag of rice is that of three weeks of salary. The average salary for two weeks is not enough to buy a hot-dog from a street vendor.

This scenario holds true in many other countries as well. The people will blindly vote for a public servant, only to discover that their dream candidate is all talk, leaving the common people to suffer while the politician enjoys a lavish lifestyle and squandered food that the starving could only dream about having for dinner.

The Biden/Harris administration has publicly stated that they have a very aggressive/progressive agenda that they are determined to push on to the American people within the first 100 days of being in office. One of them being open boarder immigration for the neighbors from the south.

Before anybody wants to bash me for being a hater of any race or religion, I’m going to state that this article is not about any race, religion, etc. As a matter of fact, I have many dear friends from a multitude of different races and religions and I love them all for being in my life as a friend.

This article is to present to the reader the rainbow buyers remorse that in some cases has already presented itself. Roughly 17% of Biden voters said they wouldn’t have voted for him if they had known about his record. The biggest movement away from Biden among his voters who only after the election learned about the shady business deals involving Biden’s son, Hunter. Forty-five percent of Biden voters said they didn’t know about Hunter Biden’s deals, and 9.4% said they would not have voted for the former vice president had they known. Other issues that plagued Biden’s voters included Hunter Biden’s business dealings, sexual misconduct allegations – not that president Trump had it any better – against Biden, and presumptive Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ ranking as the most leftist senator.

Also, because the US is very influential to the world political stage, it is also a tale of the dysfunction that is about to transpire.

First up on the list is immigration from the neighbors of the south. Mexico. I know several people that are here illegally. Either their visa expired and they have no way to fight an over dominating, maniacal system of government or they just crossed the boarder, pulled-up stake and made a home. The one common denominator to the people that I know is that they all work, pay their bills and are careful in their daily activities. Meaning they are not involved in crime, drugs and do not rely – of being “public charge” – on government hand-outs. While this is good, it still places a burden on the American tax payer. Yes, they pay local and state taxes, but do not pay federal taxes and are not contributing the social security system that is heavily reliant on every citizen to pay into.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform states that illegal immigration costs taxpayers $132 billion annually. For comparison, we could end world hunger with $330 billion, according to the Guardian. So, while illegal immigrants pay an estimated $11.7 billion in state and local taxes, around $1,000 apiece if you use the lowball estimate of illegal immigrants in the country, it’s still far lower than the more than $6,000 the average person in the US pays.

Another highly contested issue is Biden wants illegal immigrants to vote. Who do you think they are going to vote for? A 2012 Pew Research Center study showed that 81% of Latino immigrants favored increasing the size and scope of the federal government (larger government, larger the tax burden). And those who come here, legally or not, will have children born here and receive birthright citizenship, meaning they can vote in the future one day as well. They can vote to restrict the First and/or Second Amendment rights as well as to build a bigger welfare state (yet even more tax burden).

Are you getting the disastrous picture? There are currently about twelve million illegal immigrants residing in the US. It’s worth noting that if a person born in the US goes to jail for a crime they lose the right to vote, yet a person who is in the country illegally will be granted the right to vote. Doesn’t make much sense now does it. It would be the same as me going to North Korea illegally and demanding the right to vote in their elections. I’m sure they would not be to happy about that. This too places a burden on the US tax payer as not everyone that immigrates to the US – legally or not – knows how to speak English, hence, now the US printing office has to spend billions more on printed material in several other languages. So much for the Green New Deal.

Second. Biden declared that he plans to vastly increase the number of annual refugees admitted into the United States. Under the Trump administration, the maximum number of refugees permitted in the US per year is 15,000. Biden pledged that he will dramatically raise that number to 125,000. This will be, as it was with the Obama administration, a huge tax burden, placing the current US debt to an almost tipping point.

Third. This is something that I have wrote about a few times. The concern of the South East Asian continent troubles me considerably. Biden as president-elect, there is a grave concern in Taipei that a return of Obama-era foreign policy advisers in a potential Biden administration could mean a more conciliatory approach toward China and less supportive of Taiwan compared to the Trump administration.

In fact, it hardly mattered who won the election. Geography and history dictate that the American defense policy and the security of Taiwan are one and the same and it cannot be decoupled. More importantly, will the incoming Democrat president – like President John F. Kennedy – pay any price to support Taiwan and its survival and success of liberty against the Communist Party of China?

This, I’m afraid is going to be a really big mistake that the incoming administration is going to make. Sure, we are going to see the sharp-tooth red carpet smiles as the world will be led to believe that a rainbow is now encompassing the globe, but the reality of the back room deals made will be very grim and will also place more pressure on the Chinese people that are already overworked for next to nothing pay.

One of the reasons this matters so much is that Taiwan is one of only a handful of countries that manufacture quality, low cost integrated circuits that are used for everything from smart watches, cell phones, computers, etc.

Fourth. You can expect to see much more of this as you witnessed during the campaign. Former President Barack Obama compared President Trump to a dictator in a new interview, bashing Trump’s presidential disposition and, in particular, his treatment of the press. Although Democrats often pretend to have a fuzzy posture toward reporters, Obama’s record of press relations was less than stellar. In fact, as many Americans may remember, Obama’s administration took significant steps to hide information from the press, going so far as to use controversial laws to spy on reporters.

Fifth. “Do as I say, not as I do.” If this sounds like a dictatorship to you, then you would be correct in your thinking and something that is blatantly obvious to anyone that is awake, upright and walking on two feet.

President Trump’s stump speech saying Democrats wanted to cancel Thanksgiving was met with scoffing from the public. But a few weeks later, here we are, with Thanksgiving gatherings being made misdemeanor offenses in some jurisdictions. California’s Thanksgiving rules were particularly detailed and nettlesome, down to banning singing and chanting, mandating disposable plates instead of the family china, and only allowing gatherings outdoors, for two hours or less. Of course not everyone wanted to do what they were told. For example, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was forced to cancel a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for the small number of newly elected Democratic members of Congress after she came down with a case of bad optics.

Sixth. “We’ll always have Paris,” runs the classic line from “Casablanca,” and it might as well serve as one of the Biden-Harris administration’s central mantras. Biden promises to aggressively combat climate change, starting by rejoining the Paris Agreement, which Team Trump ditched to the horror of the global cognoscenti. Sing it with me, tax burden. Seems like a recurring theme or a bad nightmare that just does not seem to go away.

In 2015, the Obama administration entered the Paris Agreement. Unlike treaties, which must be ratified by the US Senate, the Paris Agreement is “voluntary.” Each signatory nation vows to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions sometime in the future.

China, for example, whose emissions have been increasing rapidly and which in 2019 accounted for 30 percent of global carbon emissions, has “promised” to start reducing its emissions by 2030. In that respect, the Paris Agreement is no different than those of us who each year, after our excesses during the Thanksgiving-to-Christmas season, promise to lose 10 pounds in the coming year. ­Really, we will. Or think of smokers who promise, promise, promise to quit next year, next month, next …. you get the idea.

The US pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to just over one fourth below 2005 levels, which were about 6 billion tons. By 2019, thanks in large part to increased natural gas use made possible by hydraulic fracturing, US emissions were just under 5 billion tons, a reduction of more than 16 percent. By way of comparison, in 2019, world carbon dioxide emissions were estimated to be just more than 34 billion tons and have been growing about 400 million tons a year over the past 10 years.

All of which is to say that the Paris Agreement’s lofty goals are unlikely to be met. Worse still, even if they are met, the accord will have been as successful at “solving” climate change as King Canute was at holding back the tide.

Yet Biden is adamant. According to the “Biden Plan for a Clean Energy Revolution and Environmental Justice,” the Biden administration will rejoin the Paris Agreement and spend $1.7 trillion to achieve US commitments over the next 10 years. Supposedly, that investment will reduce American emissions by 75 billion tons over the next 30 years – all to avoid a global temperature increase of one tenth of 1 degree Celsius.

That doesn’t sound like much. Moreover, the earth’s temperature can’t be measured using a planet sized thermometer. Rather, temperature estimates and forecasts of increases are based on statistical models that average surface or atmospheric temperatures over portions of the planet. And statistics always mean “noise.” That avoided one tenth of 1 degree is within the noise band. In other words, from a statistical standpoint, it’s meaningless.

What the Paris Agreement will do is impose huge costs on American consumers and taxpayers, while other countries, not least China, exploit those self imposed higher costs. Energy costs will rise as fossil fuel use is placed in a regulatory stranglehold and huge subsidies for wind and solar energy, electric vehicles, batteries and much else are shoveled out to the politically well connected.

And higher energy costs will mean higher costs for, well, just about everything from food, clothing, medical supplies, you name it. Those higher costs will reduce US competitiveness. Manufacturing industries will move abroad in search of more relaxed regulations, eliminating thousands of domestic jobs. Higher energy costs will mean fewer dollars available to invest elsewhere.

Despite the Biden Plan’s promise of endless subsidies to consumers and industries to ease the pain of a green energy transition, the simple economic fact is that nations can’t subsidize their way to prosperity; there is no free lunch; the bill will eventually come due.
Want to know who will pay? Look in the mirror.

Seventh. Taxes, more taxes and even more taxes. The main reason that Europe colonized the US to start with! To get away from an over bearing tax burden.

As Margaret Thatcher once stated “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other peoples’ money.”

President-elect Biden has promised to raise taxes on America’s richest corporations on day one of his presidency.

Morris Pearl, a former managing director at BlackRock, writes that the Biden tax plan could be one of the most progressive the country has ever had that “maps out an equitable future for America.”

Billionaire businessman John Catsimatidis disagrees. As CEO of Red Apple Group, Catsimatidis owns the largest supermarket chain in New York City, in addition to owning and operating assets in the energy, real estate, finance and insurance industries.

“Giving the government more money to spend the government way is pretty dumb. I don’t think the government has been spending money the right way in the last few decades, and I believe low taxes has attracted companies to come back to the US,” Catsimatidis told Yahoo Finance. “If they raise taxes all they’re going to do is find a way to leave again.”

President Trump’s 2017 tax cuts reduced the corporate rate to its current 21% from 35%, one of the highest in the world. Biden wants to raise the rate to 28%, which is still lower than it’s been anytime between World War II and Trump’s tax cuts. Biden also supports a so called “Amazon Rule,” which involves a 15% minimum tax rate on net annual income for corporations making over $100 million a year. It’s a way to prevent companies including Netflix, Starbucks and the rules’ namesake from dodging their tax bill because of loopholes and special tax breaks.

On individuals, Biden proposes raising the income tax rate on people who earn over $400,000 a year from 37% to just under 40%, as well as raising the capital gains tax rate for the nation’s highest earners.

Catsimatidis said the problem with American politics is that, unlike CEOs of corporations, politicians don’t know how to effectively cut costs and only know how to “raise, raise, raise” taxes.

Eighth. Codify Roe v. Wade, making it impossible for states to limit or ban abortion for any reason. Biden wants a federal law that makes abortion nationwide a quote-unquote “right.” You should also note that Biden plans to fund – with taxes, I’m sure – abortion clinics in several other countries. Biden wants to end the Hyde Amendment. In other words, every federal spending bill could be used in some way to fund abortion. The pro-life Hyde Amendment, which has stood in the way of that radical free for all for more than 40 years, would be gone. Biden would reinstate the Obamacare mandate, demanding that every business and nonprofit cover abortion causing pills and contraception in their health plans. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court never really settled that issue, so this is a place where Biden right away could do some serious damage to the US economy.

Ninth. Biden has stated that on day one, he’s going to force public schools and colleges to treat biological males as if they’re females. He literally states they’re going to have to let transgenders pick their own gender identity. So literally, Biden will order public schools to say that anatomical males can play on the girls sports teams, use the girls’ shower rooms, and use the girls’ restrooms.

Last but certainly not least, the Obama vice president states he would order insurance companies to cover gender reassignment surgeries not only for adults, but young, impressionable children. Similar to the Hobby Lobby case, he’d make family owned businesses provide that treatment, which is actually mutilation.

Tenth and most certainly not least. The US Conference of Mayors released a letter that supported a Democratic plan to move towards reparations to black citizens for the legacy of slavery in the country. Estimates put the price tag on payments to 41 million black people somewhere in the neighborhood of $6 quadrillion. A quadrillion, numerically boasting 15 zeroes, is the designation that follows trillion.

Quadrillion! That’s 1,000 trillions. The US does not have a quadrillion dollars, much less six quadrillion and even if it did, spending or giving away a quadrillion dollars would completely decimate the country to a pile of rubble, leaving nothing behind to live for. Most assuredly, not only would all of the wealthy move to another country, they would also renounce their citizenship, taking their money with them and not just the wealthy, millions of other US citizens would be gone in a heart beat, leaving no tax base for the country to survive, that is, if it did not start the next civil war.

And if that wasn’t enough. Patrisse Cullors, one of the three co-founders of the Black Lives Matter organization, is calling for Biden to enact far-left legislation that would lead to the abolition of police and prisons, and other radical proposals.

In July, Democratic Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts announced the BREATHE Act, a sweeping far-left piece of legislation that aims to bring revolutionary change to the US. The proposal has not been brought before Congress as of yet.

The drastic legislation calls for the end of life sentences, as well as all mandatory minimum sentencing laws. In a Teen Vogue article, Cullors wrote that the act would “put us on the road to police and prison abolition.” The BREATHE Act demands the dismantling of the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and immigration detention centers. The legislation also demands the repeal of federal laws that “criminalize human movement and border entry.”

Cullors, a self-described “trained Marxist,” called the BREATHE Act a “landmark civil rights bill,” and wants the “next Presidential administration to prioritize the passing” of the legislation. Cullors told The Hollywood Reporter, “We are requesting that in the first 100 days the Biden-Harris administration works to pass this legislation.”

As you can see, if you thought the Trump administration was nuts, hold on to your hat, make a large bowl of popcorn and settle in for a turmoil ride because it’s going to be a rough one.