From our friends at Unleash Prosperity, another fantastic visual aid to rebut the predictable default…
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Image of the Day: Climate Change Causing Wildfires? No.

From our friends at Unleash Prosperity, another fantastic visual aid to rebut the predictable default rationalization that climate change, rather than incompetent leadership, underlies wildfires in California or elsewhere:

 

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="874"] Climate Change? No.[/caption]

 …[more]

January 17, 2025 • 07:50 AM

Liberty Update

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Remember the Lessons of Biden’s Disastrous Presidency Print
By Timothy H. Lee
Thursday, January 16 2025
Asked whether the United States has 'made progress, stood still or lost ground' over the past four years on 18 salient issues, more respondents said that we’d 'lost ground' on 17.

This week marks the milestone end of the Biden/Harris administration, and for beleaguered Americans and our friends across the world, it arrives not a moment too soon.  

As we dust our shoes of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and welcome Donald Trump’s return, that milestone offers an important opportunity to assess the lessons of the past four years in order to correct course and avoid repeating them in future administrations.  

Although history doesn’t always repeat itself, it often rhymes.  Accordingly, future years will offer presidents and voters similar pivotal decision points, and we must remember the lessons of the past four years lest we invite the same predictable consequences.  

For a measure of just how disastrous the Biden/Harris administration has been, a new Gallup survey released this week offers a grim picture. 

Asked whether the United States has “made progress, stood still or lost ground” over the past four years on 18 salient issues, more respondents said that we’d “lost ground” on 17.  It’s worth reciting those issues in descending order to fathom the stark reality:  federal debt, immigration, income disparity, taxes, the economy, America’s position in the world, crime, education, terrorism, trade relations with other countries, national defense and the military, healthcare, race relations, the nation’s infrastructure, the situation for black Americans, energy and even climate change.  Only on the topic of the “situation for gay, lesbian and transgender people” did more respondents say that the United States had made progress.  

What explains that state of affairs and the Biden/Harris administration’s abject failure across so many pressing issues?  

On domestic policy, causation can be found in its unrelenting agenda of excessive spending, higher taxes and more regulation.  

Take the federal debt, the issue on which respondents rated the Biden/Harris administration worst.  For fiscal year 2024, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the administration’s final deficit rose $139 billion from the previous year to $1.83 trillion.  For purposes of comparison, pre-Covid deficits under President Trump came in at $665 billion, $779 billion and $984 billion – half the amount of the Biden/Harris administration’s outgoing deficit.  

On economic issues, that same Biden/Harris emphasis on runaway spending sent inflation soaring for everyday Americans.  Americans today pay nearly $20,000 more each year for the very same basket of consumer goods and services than they paid four years ago.  That resulted from needless “stimulus” spending even after Democratic economists warned that it would trigger runaway inflation because our economy was already on the road to recovery before they even entered office.  

And what do we have to show for all of that excess spending?  As just one illustrative mark of dishonor, homelessness in America rose to a record high this past year.  

Whereas Biden repeatedly claimed to be building an economy “from the bottom up and from the middle out,” the takeaway lesson for Americans is to pursue the opposite of his course.  By reducing wasteful spending and reining in administrative state bloat, we can return to the supply-side, free-market policies that brought instant and ascendant prosperity under presidents like Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump.  

Maintaining focus on domestic affairs, it’s important to note that the Biden/Harris administration’s soft-on-crime approach also led to deterioration in that realm.  Late last year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) acknowledged its error in initially reporting a 2.1% drop in crime in the latest year reported.  In reality, crime had actually increased 4.5%.  Meanwhile, a National Crime Victimization Survey of 230,000 Americans showed that violent crime has increased 40% since 2019.  

Shifting to foreign affairs and national security, the Biden/Harris administration legacy is nothing short of disastrous and the enduring lessons for American voters and future presidents no less obvious.  

Beginning with its incompetent withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Biden/Harris administration signaled weakness to the world.  Mere months later, Vladimir Putin capitalized by invading Ukraine and beginning the worst European land war since World War II.  

Elsewhere, the Biden/Harris administration inexplicably reinstated the Obama/Biden administration’s soft approach toward Iran, ending President Trump’s “maximum pressure” policy that depleted Iran’s oil export revenues.  That ultimately resulted in Iran subsidizing Hamas and greenlighting the murderous attacks of October 7, 2023.  

China continues its expansionist campaign as well, and just this week the administration announced that it will remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on which President Trump placed it.  

Throughout this period, the Biden/Harris administration has reduced inflation-adjusted military spending.  

As with domestic and economic affairs, the lesson is obvious.  America must return quickly to a peace-through-strength policy that won the Cold War under Ronald Reagan and quieted America’s enemies during the Trump administration.  

Restoring peace and prosperity may not be easy, but the solutions are straightforward.  What matters now is that the Trump/Vance administration pursues those solutions and Americans remember the lessons of the Biden/Harris administration in order to not repeat them.

Notable Quote   
 
"In a letter that no doubt sent shock waves through Washington's permanent, untouchable bureaucracy, President Donald Trump's acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday informing it that the Justice Department will no longer defend the constitutionality of federal laws that limit the ability of the president to remove the heads of 'multimember regulatory commissions…[more]
 
 
— Hans von Spakovsky, a Senior Legal Fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation
 
Liberty Poll   

Which of the following actions regarding the federal Department of Education most closely represents your personal view?