Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
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More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 19, 2024 • 08:35 AM

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Biden’s Record Poll Collapse Driven by Policy Mismanagement, Not Misfortune Print
By Timothy H. Lee
Thursday, February 03 2022
Both domestically and abroad, rapidly deteriorating conditions are the result of Biden’s far-left policy mismanagement, incompetence and weakness, not unforeseeable circumstances or an underappreciative American public.

Quick: Name a single situation involving an element of uncertainty – whether domestic or abroad – that Joe Biden has improved through his decision-making wizardry.  

Is there any issue that, as a consequence of Biden’s choice among available options without any obvious answer, he has improved since entering the White House?  

One year into Biden’s term, the American people render a damning verdict.  

Biden has suffered the steepest approval collapse in recorded presidential history, and Rasmussen Reports announced last week that he recently set a new record low approval differential at -33 (defined as the gulf between “strongly approve” and “strongly disapprove” among poll respondents).  For purposes of comparison, President Trump’s worst approval differential was -26, and the previous record low as George W. Bush at -30 as he left office.  

Rasmussen also reported this week that 54% already believe that Biden “will be remembered as one of the worst presidents in American history,” whereas only 15% believe that he’ll rank among the best.  Only 25% even expect him to be remembered as “average.”  Again for purposes of comparison, 41% of respondents believe that Trump will rank among the best presidents in history, while 34% believe that Barack Obama will be so remembered.  

Biden and his apologists naturally rationalize all of this as a perception problem, a failure of the American public to appreciate the gifts that his “Build Back Better” agenda has bestowed upon the nation.  If everyday Americans only recognized how great things are, they claim, we wouldn’t even be discussing it.  

For example, Biden claims credit for creating a record number of new jobs last year, but several problems immediately surface.  First, the number of jobs created under President Trump in 2020 from May through December averaged 1,543,000 per month.  In 2021, however, that pace slowed to 537,000.  Accordingly, just comparing the sheer numbers, job growth slowed under Biden from the pace that he inherited.  

Even more damning, however, Matt Weidinger of American Enterprise Institute (AEI) points out that jobs created in 2021 fell far short of what Biden promised if his agenda was passed:  

[T]he president and other leading Democrats projected millions more jobs would be created under the trillion-dollar stimulus legislation they enacted last March.  Specifically, White House economists stated that the legislation would make “a difference of 4 million jobs in 2021” on top of the “dire baseline” of over six million new jobs CBO projected without additional legislation.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D – CA) later repeated that claim, stating that “if we do not enact this package, the results would be catastrophic,” including “4 million fewer jobs.”  And the day after he signed the massive stimulus bill into law, President Biden dialed up the job creation claims again, suggesting that “by the end of this year, this law alone will create 7 million new jobs.  Seven million.”  

All of which confirms that last year’s job creation, while significant, fell between four and seven million jobs short of what the president and other Democrats promised their trillion-dollar policies would yield.  In reality, those expensive policies didn’t create even a single one of the millions of additional jobs they promised.  Yet that hasn’t stopped the president from now bragging about his record – and suggesting he actually over delivered on jobs.  

In addition to falling short on his job creation promises, Biden’s policies have also punished Americans on another front:  inflation.  While Biden boasts that wages increased approximately 4% last year, he fails to acknowledge that consumer prices increased approximately 7%, for a 3% real wage decline.  

Moreover, inflation punishes working Americans beyond simply that 3% effective pay cut, as Judge Glock of the Cicero Institute cogently explained in The Wall Street Journal:  

Wages are what economists call “sticky,” meaning they don’t change as fast as other prices do.  When inflation comes along, gasoline stations can switch their price signs in an hour and restaurants can adjust their menus in a day, but most employees get a salary bump only once a year.  Some unions renegotiate their salaries only every five years.  

Meanwhile, Americans’ perception of current economic conditions just dropped to levels unseen since the onset of the Covid pandemic in April 2020, while Gallup reports that satisfaction with the state of the U.S. economy has tumbled from 43% one year ago to 33% today.  

Didn’t Biden promise during the 2020 campaign to shut down the pandemic, not our economy?  On that front, more Americans have died since he took office than under Donald Trump, even though Biden inherited multiple vaccines developed in less than one year under Operation Warp Speed and a working understanding of the virus.  

Overseas, Russia is on the march, the Chinese menace grows, Iran escalates its malfeasance, our Afghanistan withdrawal was an operational disaster and North Korea couldn’t seem to care less about Biden’s admonitions.  

Both domestically and abroad, rapidly deteriorating conditions are the result of Biden’s far-left policy mismanagement, incompetence and weakness, not unforeseeable circumstances or an underappreciative American public.  Without an immediate course correction, he only invites more of the same.  

Notable Quote   
 
Happy Easter!…[more]
 
 
— From All of Us at CFIF
 
Liberty Poll   

Do you believe the U.S. Supreme Court will ultimately reject the new Biden administration automobile emissions rule as beyond the scope of administrative agency authority?