Author: Papa Giorgio
The Democrat Modus Operandi: Lawfare
In a previous post I excerpted the article from POWERLINE noting the real Constitutional Crisis!
LAWFARE is the Left’s way forward:
Here is another wonderful telling of it:
Democrats have launched a pre-planned, well-organized lawfare campaign against the Trump administration.
The NY Times reported in late November 2024 on the massive effort which was two-years in the making and in the immediate post-election period focused heavily on finding plaintiffs and lining up legal groups to challenge expected Trump policies:
More than 800 lawyers at 280 organizations have begun developing cases and workshopping specific challenges to what the group has identified as 600 “priority legal threats” — potential regulations, laws and other administrative actions that could require a legal response, its leaders said. The project, called Democracy 2025, aims to be a hub of opposition to the new Trump administration….
Democracy Forward has spent the last two years working to identify the possible actions the new Trump administration could take on issues they see as key priorities to defend, the group’s leaders said, using as a blueprint Mr. Trump’s first-term actions, his campaign promises and plans released by his allies, including the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 agenda….
The flotilla of lawyers is preparing to challenge new regulations released by the Trump administration, even beginning the process of recruiting potential plaintiffs who would have legal standing in court.
We have seen the fruits of the lawfare planning in the opening three weeks of the Trump administration, with several dozen lawsuits filed, and many (not all) district court judges willing at least to grant temporary restraining orders, incuding one ex parte TRO issued by an emergency duty judge at 1 a.m. last Saturday morning that by its terms removed political appointee control of Treasury payment systems. (That TRO was scaled back by the judge permanently assigned to the case, and is under review by her in a ruling expected soon.) It may be that the short-term TROs are not extended to longer-term preliminary injunctions, and if that happens the “crisis” may solve itself, but I’m not hopeful.
Here is my ‘hot take’ on how the lawfare, not the Trump administration, is creating the real ‘constitutional crisis’. This is a short excerpt from my much longer (almost 20 minute) explanation as part of the podcast we just posted….
HERE IT IS! Via RPT:
Taxation Is Theft
Yes, taxes in an abusive system are theft. A great analogy that explains the dilemma of our “redistribution program” here in America (welfare, food stamps, or Medicaid, etc.) is one of a triplex. I must thank Neal Boortz for this analogy (in his book, The Terrible Truth About Liberals):
Our government, as our Constitution says, derives its powers “from the consent of the governed.” The idea here is that we cannot and should not ask the government to do anything for us that we cannot legally or morally do for ourselves. Sounds logical, doesn’t it? With that premise in mind, lets build the following scenario.
You live in a triplex. You are in apartment No. 1, Johnson is in apartment No. 2, and Wilson lives in No. 3. You discover that Wilson is ill and cannot work. He never bothered to buy a health insurance policy because he just didn’t believe he would need it for quite some time. Wilson, it seems, is not good at making rational decisions. He has no savings because it was more important to use that money for bondo on his Camaro and a good Panama City Beach vacation every summer.
You believe that Wilson is about to starve to death. His electricity is going to be cut off, and he can’t afford to buy his blood pressure medication. You decide to help, charitable soul that you are. You scrounge through your bank account and find $200 to help your neighbor out.
Good for you. What a guy!
A month later Wilson is still in trouble. Your $200 wasn’t enough. It turns out that he spent $20 for a case of beer and at least another $100 or so at the horse races. Things may not be all that desperate, though. One of the thirty-five Lotto tickets he bought with that carton of cigarettes might pan out.
You decide to visit Johnson in apartment No. 2 to see if he can chip in. Johnson tells you that, while he certainly understands the seriousness of Wilson’s situation, he needs his money to send his daughter to college in the fall and to pay some of his own medical bills. Besides, he’s trying to save up some cash for a down payment on a house so he can get out of this weird apartment building.
You make the determination that it is far more important for Wilson to have some of Johnson’s money than it is for Johnson to keep it and spend it on his own daughter’s education and a new home. So, here’s the question:
Do you have the right to pull out a gun and point it at the middle of Johnson’s forehead? Can you use that gun to compel Johnson to hand over a few hundred dollars for Wilson’s care, and then tell Johnson that you’ll be back for more next month?
Obviously, when put like this, you won’t run into too many people who will tell you that they have the right to take Johnson’s money by force and give it to Wilson. They might say that they would try to talk Johnson into being a bit more charitable, but they don’t think that they have the right to just rob him at gunpoint. But this is the next question:
QUESTION
“Well, if our government derives its powers from the consent of the governed, how can you ask your government to do something for you that, if you did it for yourself, would be a crime? Why would it not be OK for you to take that money from Johnson by force and give it to Wilson, but it would be perfectly OK with you if the government went ahead and did it?”
Last time I checked, IRS agents were armed.
Another way to put this is an example from J. Budziszewski’s book, The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man:
On a dark street, a man draws a knife and demands my money for drugs.
- Instead of demanding my money for drugs, he demands it for the Church.
- Instead of being alone, he is with a bishop of the Church who act as bagman.
- Instead of drawing a knife, he produces a policeman who says I must do as he says.
- Instead of meeting me on the street, he mails me his demand as an official agent of the government.
If the first is theft, it is difficult to see why the other four are not also theft.
The Argument from Reason | David Wood (PLUS: Greg Bahnsen)
Originally posted in March of 2016
(H/T ~ Debunking Atheists)
…. Darwin thought that, had the circumstances for reproductive fitness been different, then the deliverances of conscience might have been radically different. “If . . . men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think of interfering” (Darwin, Descent, 82). As it happens, we weren’t “reared” after the manner of hive bees, and so we have widespread and strong beliefs about the sanctity of human life and its implications for how we should treat our siblings and our offspring.
But this strongly suggests that we would have had whatever beliefs were ultimately fitness producing given the circumstances of survival. Given the background belief of naturalism, there appears to be no plausible Darwinian reason for thinking that the fitness-producing predispositions that set the parameters for moral reflection have anything whatsoever to do with the truth of the resulting moral beliefs. One might be able to make a case for thinking that having true beliefs about, say, the predatory behaviors of tigers would, when combined with the understandable desire not to be eaten, be fitness producing. But the account would be far from straightforward in the case of moral beliefs.” And so the Darwinian explanation undercuts whatever reason the naturalist might have had for thinking that any of our moral beliefs is true. The result is moral skepticism.
If our pretheoretical moral convictions are largely the product of natural selection, as Darwin’s theory implies, then the moral theories we find plausible are an indirect result of that same evolutionary process. How, after all, do we come to settle upon a proposed moral theory and its principles as being true? What methodology is available to us?
- Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, eds., Contending With Christianity’s Critics: Answering the New Atheists & Other Objections (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing, 2009), 70.
A few of my resources:
- I explain some of this in my introductory chapter of my book: Technology Junkies
- See more at my post: Evolution Cannot Account for: Logic, Reasoning, Love, Truth, or Justice (lots o’stuff)
- And, Love Is Illusory (a manageable amount of stuff)
Laws of Logic | Greg Bahnsen VS. Gordon Stein
I played with the audio a lot. About the best on the WWW:
The full debate can be found here (FULL DEBATE). This is a classic back-n-forth showing that in order to deny God’s existence based on the immaterial nature of God, non-physical laws of logic [reasoning that crosses all cultures, time, and space] are used. The video portion/graphics are not my creation. I note that YouTube Channel in the video. I merely enhanced the audio:
In a short [and excellent] article, Dr. J.P. Moreland notes the BIG THREE:
There are three fundamental laws of logic. Suppose P is any indicative sentence, say, “It is raining.”
The law of identity: P is P.
The law of noncontradiction: P is not non-P.
The law of the excluded middle: Either P or non-P.
The law of identity says that if a statement such as “It is raining” is true, then the statement is true. More generally, it says that the statement P is the same thing as itself and its different from everyhting else. Applied to all realty, the law of identity says that everything is itself and not something else.
The law of noncontradiction says that a statement such as “It is raining” cannot be both true and false in the same sense. Of course it could be raining in Missouri and not raining in Arizona, but the principle says that it cannot be raining and not raining at the same time in the same place.
The law of the excluded middle says that a statement such as “It is raining” is either true or false. There is no other alternative.
These fundamental laws are true principles governing reality and thought and are assumed by Scripture. Some claim they are arbitrary Western constructions, but this is false. The basic laws of logic govern all reality and thought and are known to be true for at least two reasons: (1) They are intuitively obvious and self-evident. Once one understands a basic law of logic (see below), one can see that it is true. (2) Those who deny them use these principles in their denial, demonstrating that those laws are unavoidable and that it is self-refuting to deny them.
The basic laws of logic are neither arbitrary inventions of God nor principles that exist completely outside God’s being. Obviously, the laws of logic are not like the laws of nature. God may violate the latter(say, suspend gravity), but He cannot violate the former. Those laws are rooted in God’s own nature. Indeed, some scholars think the passage “In the beginning was the Word [logos]” (Jn 1:1) is accurately translated, “In the beginning was Logic (a divine, rational mind).” For example, even God cannot exist and not exist at the same time, and even God cannot validly believe that red is a color and red is not a color. When people say that God need not behave “logically,” they are using the term in a loose sense to mean “the sensible thing from my point of vew.” Often God does not act in ways that people understand or judge to be what they would do in the circumstances. But God never behaves illogically in the proper sense. He does not violate in His being or thought the fundamental laws of logic.
Paul Washer: Freedom In The Gospel (Part 1) | Mississippi Prison
Part 1 of 7 from a prison in Mississippi. Paul Washer shares seven messages that take you through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. One message of the series, “Freedom In The Gospel”, will be released every week starting Friday, January 24th, only on our YouTube channel and website.
Throwing Gold Bars Off the Titanic |Lee Zeldin (plus: Constitutional Crisis)
Criminal!
I wanna set up the following wonderful article by POWERLINE with the latest “Constitutional Crisis” in the iteration of them in the Left’s eye. NEWSBUSTERS has this:
… As far back as 2017, the media were seeing constitutional crises around every corner. Nancy Pelosi once remarked in 2019 that Trump had triggered one, and the cable (CNN, MSNBC) and broadcast (ABC, CBS, NBC) networks eagerly parroted that claim 386 times in five days.
The journalists are very frustrated that nobody’s taking their protestations seriously anymore. But it was their own overuse of the term that caused it to lose whatever potency it once had. After all, what does a journalist really expect of you when he bursts into your bedroom at 11 p.m., sobbing about the constitutional crisis lurking under his bed? And really, what can you do — except get him a glass of water, tuck him back in, and make a show of checking under his bed before you return to your room? ….
POWERLINE has this excellent commentary on what the Democrats are calling a “Constitutional Crisis”
[….] In my view, we are indeed experiencing a constitutional crisis. But it is not the one the Democrats have in mind. For President Trump to assert control over the executive branch is not only proper, it is long overdue. Under Article II of the Constitution, the President doesn’t just run the executive branch. He is the executive branch. All employees of federal agencies are members of the executive branch, and as such, ultimately report to the president. Their job is to carry out his policies.
The fact that this, to many, is not self-evident illustrates the real constitutional crisis that we face–the slow-moving crisis that has been underway now for close to a century. That crisis is the growth of the administrative state, the fourth branch of government that is mentioned nowhere in the Constitution. There is a strong argument that the administrative state is unconstitutional. What is incontrovertibly unconstitutional is the concept of an executive branch that is independent of the president.
But that is exactly what the Democrats want–a fourth branch that is not accountable to the president, but for which, at the same time, Congress need not take responsibility. Take the case of USAID. Trump and his minions have brought to light that USAID has been spending money on a transgender opera in Colombia, a transgender comic book in Peru, and so on. Beyond such obviously inappropriate expenditures, it has also come to light that USAID functions largely as a slush fund for politically-connected NGOs. Thus:
Since 2010, USAID has disbursed at least $2.13 billion in contracts and grants for Haiti-related work. Overall, just $48.6 million has gone directly to Haitian organizations or firms, just over 2 percent. Comparatively, more than $1.2 billion has gone to firms located in DC, Maryland or Virginia.
So what is the Trump administration supposed to do when it finds that an executive branch agency is wasting money, engaging in corrupt practices, or spending resources in ways that actually undercut the administration’s policies? According to the Democrats, nothing. Once Congress has appropriated money to USAID or any other agency, the Trump administration has no option but to spend it–and, apparently, to spend it in the ways that the unelected bureaucrats in that agency choose.
Of course, if you look at the appropriations bill that covers USAID, you will see no reference to transgender operas. Nor will the phrase “transgender comic book” appear. USAID’s funding is allocated in broad categories that sound noble. But where the money actually goes, Congress has no idea.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has talked about this. When he was in the Senate he tried to exercise oversight over USAID. Employees of that agency would appear before his committee, and he would ask them how money is a particular category was being spent. Where is this money going? Who is being paid, and for what purpose? And the USAID witnesses would refuse to answer. They didn’t have to say; they were independent.
That is a constitutional absurdity and a policy outrage. And it also is one of the reasons why Democrats love the fourth branch. They use vague appropriations to enable spending for which they would never want to take responsibility. Can you imagine a Democratic House member trying to explain to constituents why he voted to fund a transgender opera in a foreign country? But no such explanation ever becomes necessary. The fourth branch is shrouded in secrecy and “independence.”
If you take seriously the fact that the President runs the executive branch–indisputable, under Article II–then, if the president learns that money is being wasted, that an agency has gone rogue, that its officials are pursuing policies that contradict those of the administration they serve–the president’s duty is to stop it. Stop the spending, fire the employees, neuter the rogue agency.
Of course it is true, as the Democrats say, that the President doesn’t have the power to abolish an agency that Congress has created. Thus, for example, President Trump cannot, by executive order, abolish the Department of Education. But he can run the Department of Education, and if that department is spending resources in ways that are wasteful or that contradict his administration’s policy goals, he can stop or redirect that spending.
The Democratic Party press has the current crisis exactly backward. The fact that President Trump is asserting control over the federal employees who work for him is a natural, if long-overdue, return to constitutional norms. The idea that the executive branch is somehow beyond the control of the president is the real crisis, one that has been long in the making. Ultimately, the Supreme Court will sort out the respective powers of Congress and the President with regard to the agencies that are established by Congress. In the meantime, President Trump needs to continue to assert his constitutional responsibility for the executive branch.
Yes, The Central Park Five Are Guilty (Updated)
Posted/Updated in September 2019 ~ Re-Posted Today
This is an update to the post by way of a visual adaptation by the interviewer, Larry Elder. How anyone can even think these kids weren’t involved is beyond me. A great video update to the original post. (Video description to follow)
UPDATE
Larry takes a look at the accuracy of the Netflix mini-series When They See Us. The series was inspired by the 1989 Central Park jogger case where 28-year-old Trisha Meili was raped and assaulted, while other victims were attacked and robbed. Five black teens were indicted for attempted murder and other charges in the attack. They were found guilty, but the charges were later vacated. Claims of mistreatment and abuse by police were claimed by the defendants, popularizing the incident. Larry takes a look at the details and shares his interview with black detective Eric Reynolds, who was on the scene at the time, to see just who was to blame for what in this incident. See the interviews for yourself: https://centralpark5joggerattackers.com
Below are three separate shows, weeks apart, by LARRY ELDER. The first upload garnered a mass amount of thumbs down and negative comments. All by people who didn’t listen to it and are incurable victicrats. If you listen to these three uploads — below — and still believe the crap peddled over at NETFLIX… you may also be an incurable victicrat.
PART ONE
This is basically an excoriation of the idea that the “Central Park Five” are innocent. Psalm 97:10 says, “Let those who love the LORD hate evil.” I think of that when Trump mentions society “hating” these rapists (12:05 mark) Larry Elder plays how Van “commie” Jones and Chris Cuomo deal with one of the few Republicans left over at CNN (a MUST read article about CNN can be found at the WASHINGTON TIMES) who differed on the “Central Park Five.” Around the 6:00 mark Larry interviews (from last year) Ann Coulter, and then later (at the 14:41 mark) reads from a DAILY BEAST article, “The Myth of the Central Park Five”
Ann Coulter has a couple good articles on the topic:
- What You Won’t Read in The Papers About the “Central Park Five” (April 2014)
- Central Park Rapists: Trump Was Right (July 2018)
The refusal to allow dissenting views is a BIG issue at CNN and MSNBC. In fact, Larry Elder says this episode where Lawrence O’Donnell refused to let John O’Neill of Swift Boat fame speak is what got him a job on MSNBC. NOT ONLY does the MSM censor conservative and Republicans, by doing so they perpetuate the innocence of thugs and killers. Thus, bringing a net evil to society in various ways (attacking truth, attacking innocent civilians, allowing criminal to be emboldened).
See also:
- 7 Things You Need To Know About The Central Park Jogger Case (DAILY WIRE, August 2016)
- Donald Trump Isn’t Alone in Believing “Central Park Five” Are Guilty (LAW and CRIME, October 2017, )
- The “Central Park Five”: Still Guilty (FRONT-PAGE MAGAZINE, August 2014)
PART TWO
Larry Elder reads from various sources, one being the Wall Street Journal piece by Linda Fairstein entitled, “Netflix’s False Story of the Central Park Five: Ava DuVernay’s miniseries wrongly portrays them as totally innocent—and defames me in the process“. A previous upload can really be PART ONE to this audio: “Yes, The Central Park Five Are Guilty“. I highly suggest LEGAL INSURRECTION’S post on this topic as well.
Enjoy… I will share a thought from a comment from part one:
- “The comments are filled with people who didn’t listen to the video and didn’t look at the evidence independently.”
I can only assume the same will happen here.
PART THREE
Larry Elder interviews Detective Eric Reynolds regarding his intimate knowledge of the Central Park Five.
This really is a death knell for the lies regarding this case. Detective Reynolds mentions a website where one can view all the confessions and read the judges ruling and the police report. The website is called: “THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE JOGGER ATTACKERS: Guilty – In Their Own Words”. This is great radio, enjoy, and I hope to get the detectives book at some point when (not if) he is published.
Detective Reynolds recently appeared on CNN to discuss the matter as well:
Walter Cronkite on Ice-Age (1972 Video) Billion Dollar Ind.
Originally posted March 2015
Flashback: Al Gore vs Reality (11-years ago today)
Cold Is the New Warm (Climate Change “Unscience”)
Via NEWSBUSTERS:
…On September 11, 1972, Cronkite cited scientists’ predictions that there was a “new ice age” coming. He called that prediction from British scientist Hubert Lamb “a bit of bad news.”
Cronkite continued. “That while the weather may be just a little colder in the immediate years to come, the full extent of the new ice age won’t be reached for 10,000 years. And if you can stand any more good news, even then it won’t be as bad as the last ice age 60,000 years ago. Then New York, Cincinnati, St. Louis, were under 5,000 feet of ice. Presumably no traffic moved and school was let out for the day. And that’s the way it is, Monday, September 11, 1972.”
Lamb, the scientist Cronkite cited, was no fringe scientist. He founded the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in Great Britain. When he died, the CRU director called him “the greatest climatologist of his time,” according to the Global Warming Policy Foundation. He was also credited with establishing “climate change as a serious research subject.”
Unlike scientists often quoted by the media today, GWPF said that Lamb viewed the Earth’s climate as changing constantly and naturally. Unlike its founder, CRU now has a major role in spreading global warming alarmism. CBS said in 2009, CRU “wields outsize influence” in warming circles. The Climategate scandal centered around leaked documents and emails from that organization….
Scaring the public in order to get funding is a multi-billion dollar industry, as is the push by leftists to “conquer” once and for all (since the days of Marx) “capitalism.” M.I.T.’s Richard Lindzen notes:
- Billions of dollars have been poured into studies supporting climate alarm, and trillions of dollars have been involved in overthrowing the energy economy. So it is unsurprising that great efforts have been made to ramp up hysteria, even as the case for climate alarm is disintegrating.
One should FOLLOW THE MONEY!
The following resignation letter was sent by Hal Lewis, professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, to the American Physical Society:
Sent: Friday, 08 October 2010 17:19 Hal Lewis
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society
6 October 2010
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).
Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society….
(HEARTLAND | WATTS UP WITH THAT | CLIMATE REALIST | NEWSMAX)
Selected highlights from the above video via CLIMATE DEPOT:
Lindzen on VP Joe Biden saying ‘Denying climate change is like denying gravity.’
Lindzen: ‘He’s absolutely right. Climate has been changing for 4.5 billion years and on all time scales.
This is the problem. These guys think saying climate changes, saying it gets warmer or colder by a few tenths of a degree should be taken as evidence that the end of the world is coming. And it completely ignores the fact that until this hysteria, climate scientists used to refer to the warm periods in our history as optima.
Lindzen on CO2: ‘So here we are demonizing a chemical — a molecule essential to life – CO2– we are declaring doom based on things we used to like and somehow we are supposed to overturn our whole economy in order to deal with this purported disaster.’
Lindzen on EPA Chief: ‘Obviously I don’t think [the science] matters to [EPA Chief] McCarthy. She has a political aim. She has her marching orders and they are the orders regardless of what the underlying science is.’
Lindzen on what impact EPA regs will have on climate: ‘No matter what you believe about climate, none of them will have any impact on climate. They do make energy more expensive less available, less useful, they do hurt the poor, and they raise prices. It’s hard to see what the upside is excerpt for the people who get the subsidies. The whole thing is fairly absurd. There is so much money changing hands.’
Large Cover Picture Of The 1974 “Radio Times” Cover (HERE).
ADDITION
BREITBART notes another interesting “evolving” positions towards evidence:
The American Physical Society (APS) has signalled a dramatic turnabout in its position on “climate change” by appointing three notorious climate skeptics to its panel on public affairs (POPA).
They are:
Professor Richard Lindzen, formerly Alfred P Sloan Professor of Meteorology at Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a highly regarded physicist who once described climate change alarmism on The Larry King Show as “mainly just like little kids locking themselves in darkclosets to see how much they can scare each other and themselves.”
John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who has written: “I’m sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when Isay this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smokinggun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming wesee.”
Judith Curry, Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, a former Warmist (and still a self-described “luke warmer”) who has infuriated many of her more extremist colleagues by defending skeptics and by testifying to the US House Subcommittee on the Environment that the uncertainties in forecasting climate science are much greater than the alarmists will admit.
As Anthony Watts has noted, this is news guaranteed to make a Warmist’s head explode.
The reason it’s so significant is that it comes only three years after one of the APS’s most distinguished members – Professor Hal Lewis – resigned in disgust at its endorsement of what he called “the global warming scam.”…..
He-Man Official | The Ice Age Cometh | He-Man Full Episode
Leftist Proclivity: We Can Print Money (An Eleanor Clift Flashback)
Originally posted July 19, 2010
~ Rebuilt like the 6-million dollar [$42,649,324.32]* man ~
- During this runaway inflation, Hitler coined the telling phrase, “starving billionaires,” for there were Germans with a billion marks that would not buy enough food to feed themselves. — Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics 4th Ed (See PDF excerpt of “inflation” and “deflation” from this 4th edition. As a reminder the UK Conservative Party leader had her worldview rocked by this book.)
Eating the rich in other words.
NewsBusters h/t – their video is dead, but I found the Mc Laughlin Group’s PBS (July 18, 2010) video and combined it to update the issue to today.
HYPERINFLATION:
… Hyperinflations are caused by extremely rapid growth in the supply of “paper” money. They occur when the monetary and fiscal authorities of a nation regularly issue large quantities of money to pay for a large stream of government expenditures. In effect, inflation is a form of taxation in which the government gains at the expense of those who hold money while its value is declining. Hyperinflations are very large taxation schemes ….
WHO WANTS TO BE A TRILLIONAIRE?
How would you like to pay $417.00 per sheet of toilet paper? Sound crazy? It’s not as crazy as you may think. Here’s a story of how this happened in Zimbabwe. Around 2000, Robert Mugabe, the President of Zimbabwe, was in need of cash to bribe his enemies and reward his allies. He had to be clever in his approach, given that Zimbabwe’s economy was doing lousy and his people were starving. Sow what did he do? He tapped the country’s printing presses and printed more money. ….
How did Milei of Argentina fix the problem of their countries inflation? Deregulate, deregulate, deregulate. Price controls are the worst possible response — another proclivity of the Left! 3 Examples:
Javier Milei Slashes Argentina’s Inflation in Just 1 Year
Argentina’s annual inflation rate fell to 117.8 percent in 2024, marking a significant drop of 93.6 points compared to the record 211.4 percent inflation rate of 2023. The sharp decline signals a significant turnaround for Argentina’s economy under President Javier Milei.
In December 2024, inflation stood at 2.7 percent, Argentina’s National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC) claimed in a new report. While slightly higher than the record low of 2.4 percent in November, Economy Minister Luis Caputo attributed the uptick to “seasonal factors” tied to the holiday season and the start of summer vacations.
Despite the minor increase, December marked the third consecutive month in which prices rose by less than 3 percent. The data “confirms the disinflation process is continuing,” Caputo posted on X following the report’s release. …
Javier Milei Deregulates Food Imports and Exports
In a sweeping move to overhaul Argentina’s food trade policies, Javier Milei’s administration officially deregulated food imports and exports on Monday. The reform, outlined in Decree 35/2025, seeks to boost foreign trade, cut bureaucratic red tape, and lower consumer prices.
Federico Sturzenegger, head of the Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation, explained in a post on X that the measure “seeks cheaper food for Argentines and more Argentine food for the world.”
Under the new policy, food products and packaging certified by countries with “high sanitary surveillance” can now enter Argentina without any additional registration or approval processes. These items will be automatically recognized under the Argentine Food Code, cutting down on administrative delays and costs for importers. ….
Javier Milei Got Rid of Rent Control in Argentina. Housing Supply Skyrocketed
Argentina’s recent repeal of rent control by libertarian President Javier Milei has led to a surge in housing supply, with the freedom to negotiate contracts, previously restricted, directly causing a drop in rental prices.
Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” known for his free-market approach, repealed the 2020 Rental Law, enacted by former leftist President Alberto Fernández, which had imposed restrictions on landlords and led to a significant decline in rental availability.
With Argentina’s inflation reaching 211.4%—the highest in 32 years—rent prices were adjusted every 12 months, and leases had to last at least three years. The law, introduced in 2020, ended up distorting the real estate market and hurting both landlords and tenants.
The law aimed to provide tenants with more financial security, but by the end of last year, an estimated one in seven homes in Buenos Aires was sitting empty as landlords chose not to rent them out in Argentine pesos. Deposits were capped, and it was nearly impossible to end tenancies early.
For many locals, finding a new apartment had become “mission impossible.” But after the repeal, Buenos Aires saw a doubling of available rental units, and rental prices have stabilized. Under the new rules, landlords and tenants have more freedom to agree on lease terms. If the duration isn’t specified, it defaults to two years.
“We’ve seen a significant increase in rental apartments, and in some cases, we had to lower prices in pesos because of fewer viewings,” Soledad Balayan, head of the real-estate agency Maure Inmobiliaria, told Argentine newspaper La Nación.
Since Millei’s repeal of rent control laws took effect on December 29, the supply of rental housing in Buenos Aires has jumped by 195.23%, according to the Statistical Observatory of the Real Estate Market of the Real Estate College (CI).
[….]
The debate over rent control is not specific to Argentina. In the U.S., where housing affordability is a major issue, the Argentine example is drawing attention. The libertarian Cato Institute in Washington D.C. pointed out that Argentina’s experience shows the inherent problem of price controls, which in the case of housing can both limit supply and worsen affordability problems more broadly.
“Milei cut rent control and other tenancy regulations. The result confirmed economic theory: the supply of rental accommodation is surging, and rents have fallen,” said Ryan Bourne, chair for the public understanding of economics at Cato.
President Joe Biden has proposed federal rent control measures, saying they’re needed to protect tenants from corporate landlords. He proposed limiting rent hikes to 5% a year for the next two years for landlords with more than 50 units.
Vice President Kamala Harris has also recently indicated support for rent controls, saying at her first major rally since becoming the nominee that she wanted to “take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases.” In 2019, after Oregon passed a statewide rent control measure, she praised the bill on Twitter.
Biden’s plan was meant to last two years, which the White House argues is enough time to build more housing that would relieve some of the affordability issues, particularly in cities. However, critics argue that even with exemptions for new construction, rent caps discourage building more homes.
“Evidence shows that rent caps may push landlords to convert rental units into condos, cut back on maintenance, and become more selective about tenants,” read a Cato Institute analysis of Biden’s proposal.
TO WIT …
Argentina Offers a Textbook Study in Why Rent Controls Are a Bad Idea
…. An environment of high inflation worsens these risks for landlords. With surging prices, it makes sense to change rent levels more regularly. This allows tenants and landlords to find contract provisions to make sure rents both reflect market realities and tenants’ ability to pay (as wage growth often lags inflation). Yet these regulations only allowed rent adjustments once per year (or twice from October 2023). High and volatile inflation thus interacts with these regulations to raise rent risk and vacancy risk (given the sharp jumps in rents). Landlords might therefore like to hedge against inflation by charging in another currency, like dollars. But this was prohibited too.
The results of all this were predictable. Around the policy’s introduction, it’s estimated that 45% of landlords stopped renting to instead sell their properties, not least because most home sales were made in dollars. A lot of landlords shifted to short-term rentals on AirBnB too. In 2019, Buenos Aires had 10,000 properties listed on AirBnB; now it’s over 29,500. There have thus been no end of stories about a rental housing crisis, with tenants unable to find rental accommodation, despite the Financial Times reporting late last year that energy use implies ‘one in seven homes’ in Buenos Aires, the capital, laid empty.
This supply crunch led to soaring rents. Bloomberg reported that rents jumped sharply after tenancy rent controls were announced, as landlords opted out of the market or front-loaded rent increases to protect against inflation. Having been falling in real terms through 2018 and 2019, and tracking inflation for most of the previous decade, rents in Buenos Aires grew at 1.7 times the pace of inflation in 2020, broadly tracked inflation in 2021 and 2022, and then accelerated much faster than inflation again in 2023 as the rate which rents could be increased within tenancies was tightened further to the lower of wage growth or inflation.
As a result, the average rent for a two bedroom apartment in Buenos Aires has surged from 18,000 pesos per month at the end of 2019 to 334,000 pesos today, far above the 210,000 pesos if prices had merely tracked broader inflation, as used to happen. This relative price hike obviously hurts the poor most, because they cannot easily afford deposits to buy homes, or more expensive shorter-term dollar rentals. ….
What are the Left’s response to all this inflation today? PRICE CONTROLS. Here is another combo video discussing how our inflation happened as well as discussing the Soviet idea of price controls.
Biden/Harris & Harris/Walz Monetary Policy Cause Inflation and Shortages
Supply chains were broken by Government Regulation and Enforcement (already discussed above) during covid. It just “didn’t happen” by accident or natural causes. Supply chains were cut by enforcement. As above… long haul video! NEWSBUSTERS: “Brooks Surprised ‘Responsible’ Harris Would Endorse Soviet-Like Price Controls”
If you have the time, watch this series on hyperinflation from the National Inflation Association:
A Bag Of Money To Buy A Loaf Of Bread?
One of the stories that she would tell took place after the First World War. Germany lost and, in so doing, agreed to the Treaty of Versailles. In addition to the loss of geographical territory, the German Weimar Republic was forced to pay enormous sums in reparations. In essence, the Germans had to pay for all of the damage done in the war. Germany did not have the financial means to pay these damages and their solution was to just print money.
Catastrophic Consequences
As this new money moved into circulation the impact was devastating to the German economy. The inflation rate was absolutely staggering. A few years after the end of the war the German economy had an inflation rate in excess of 300% per month! The economy had essentially collapsed and the country was experiencing a depression of enormous proportions. This set the stage for the rise of the Nazi party several years later.
Which brings us back to my grandmother’s story. She would tell me how her father and brothers, all coal miners, would get paid twice a day. The currency was devaluing so fast that it needed to be spent as fast as it was earned. My grandmother told of collecting the money and going shopping for food. The grocers didn’t even bother counting it, they just estimated the amount by how large the stack was. A loaf of bread could be purchased for two bags of money in the morning, by the afternoon the price might be three bags. The currency had so little value that people would burn it in their stoves for heat because wood had more value than the money.
We Are Getting $700 Billion From Where?
The US dollar is a fiat currency. That means that it is not backed by gold or any other asset but instead is backed by “the full faith and credit” of the United States Government. As we increase the national debt we are destroying faith that the rest of the world has in our economy. As that faith erodes the dollar will fall further, and imported goods (read oil) will cost more and more. The inflation that we are already experiencing can quickly turn to hyper-inflation if we keep spending money that we don’t have.
Hyper-inflation is an end-stage terminal cancer to any fiat currency. However that inflation does not immediately follow the event that caused it. In Germany the Weimar republic began printing excess money in 1919, but the hyper-inflation didn’t take hold until a few years later. It may be several years before we see the real effects of the proposed bailout that we have before us.
…(DEAD LINK)…
Full faith and credit in the backing power of our fiat money depends on the faith in our government. Which means honesty. Lol.
(September 6, 2009)
* $6,000,000 in 1973 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $42,649,324.32 today [January 2025], an increase of $36,649,324.32 over 52 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.84% per year between 1973 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 610.82%.
This means that today’s prices are 7.11 times as high as average prices since 1973, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index. A dollar today only buys 14.068% of what it could buy back then.
The inflation rate in 1973 was 6.22%. The current inflation rate compared to the end of last year is now 2.89%. If this number holds, $6,000,000 today will be equivalent in buying power to $6,173,283.43 next year. The current inflation rate page gives more detail on the latest inflation rates.
FLASHBACK: Red Eye [Greg Gutfeld] Exposes Contessa Brewer’s Bias
(Originally posted here November 2011) YouTube nixed this a long time ago from my Channel. So I grabbed it from a hard-drive and with new A.I. TECH, I made the audio waaay better.
(ABC 15 News Phoenix) On August 17, 2009 an unidentified black man carried an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle during an ObamaCare protest outside of the Phoenix Convention Center in Arizona. At a safe distance, President Barack Obama was speaking to Veterans of Foreign Wars for a health care reform rally.
On August 18, 2009 on MSNBC Morning Meeting, Contessa Brewer portrayed the man, displayed above, as a gun carrying white man — near the President ( ‘a man of color.’)
Here’s what she brewed up:
- “The reason we’re talking about this — a LOT of talk here, Dylan [Ratigan] — cause people feel like — ‘Yes, there are Second Amendment Rights’ for sure, but also there are questions about whether this has a racial overtones (sic) — I mean — here you have a man of color in the presidency and there’s white people showing up with guns strapped to their waist, or onto their legs.” ….
(Background via: Arlington Cardinal)
Usually I upload so there are no ads, but this way more people can see it:
Dems/MSM Were Against Pre-Emptive Pardons Before They Were For Them
Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” shares a DM clip of his talk with co-host Russell Brand about Joy Reid, Adam Schiff, and other mainstream media pundits having their previous comments on Pre-Emptive Pardons blow up in their faces now that Joe Biden has issued a flurry of pre-emptive pardons of his family members. Watch Dave Rubin’s FULL SHOW:
Schumer/Schiff Flashback!
Schumer/Schiff Flashback pic.twitter.com/1lwVnvq4oZ
— Blood Bathed Pony Soldier (@papagiorgio200) January 22, 2025
The Real Lie of the Year | The “Shadow Presidency”
1st Posted 12-29-2024 ~ Updated Info:
President Joe Biden is not fully in charge of the country due to cognitive decline, and a “shadow presidency” is controlling him, a Democratic National Committee member has said.
Lindy Li, a member of the DNC‘s National Finance Committee, expressed her concerns about the mental acuity of the 82-year-old president in an interview on NewsNation on Sunday.
(NEWSWEEK)
REAL CLEAR POLITICS has the transcript of this video
Here is the WALL STREET JOURNAL article not behind a pay wall
PolitiFact said the “lie of the year” was Trump saying that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs. (CAUTION – SEE: here, here, here, here.) But in reality, the Democrat establishment gets the award in my opinion — AS — this is truly a scandal based on a coverup.
Known as lies. To wit…
@Scott Jennings KY just dismantled a CNN panel as they attempted to defend Joe Biden’s legacy:
“I think he’s going to leave office in disgrace.” “The Hunter Biden pardon was disgraceful. He’s going to be remembered largely for inflation and for the disastrous Afghanistan pullout. And I think as we continue to we’re just getting the first draft of this now.”
“But as we continue to learn about the massive cover up that went on, not about his health, but about his mental acuity to cover that up, the efforts, that were undertaken by the White House staff, by his family, not in the last couple of months, but for all four years. I think it’s going to be a really ugly chapter.”
“I think we still don’t know the full extent of what they did to try to hide what they’ve been doing over in the West Wing.”
????@ScottJenningsKY just dismantled a CNN panel as they attempted to defend Joe Biden’s legacy:
“I think he’s going to leave office in disgrace.”
“The Hunter Biden pardon was disgraceful. He’s going to be remembered largely for inflation and for the disastrous Afghanistan… pic.twitter.com/V8dvlGW6LT
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) December 29, 2024
This is a must listen to Armstrong and Getty excerpt. Wow. The Wall Street Journal article is behind a paywall. So here is an unlocked version:
- “How the White House Functioned With a Diminished Biden in Charge: Aides kept meetings short and controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted. The administration denied Biden has declined.” (TOVINA.COM| Posted Below)
WSJ ARTICLE:
Aides kept meetings short and controlled access, top advisers acted as go-betweens and public interactions became more scripted. The administration denied Biden has declined.
During the 2020 presidential primary, Jill Biden campaigned so extensively across Iowa that she held events in more counties than her husband—a fact her press secretary at the time, Michael LaRosa, touted to a local reporter.
His superior in the Biden campaign quickly chided him. As the three rode in a minivan through the state’s cornfields, Anthony Bernal, then a deputy campaign manager and chief of staff to Jill Biden, pressed LaRosa to contact the reporter again and play down any comparison in campaign appearances between Joe Biden, then 77, and his wife, who is eight years his junior. Her energetic schedule only highlighted her husband’s more plodding pace, LaRosa recalls being told.
The message from Biden’s team was clear. “The more you talk her up, the more you make him look bad,” LaRosa said.
The small correction foreshadowed how Biden’s closest aides and advisers would manage the limitations of the oldest president in U.S. history during his four years in office.
To adapt the White House around the needs of a diminished leader, they told visitors to keep meetings focused. Interactions with senior Democratic lawmakers and some cabinet members—including powerful secretaries such as Defense’s Lloyd Austin and Treasury’s Janet Yellen —were infrequent or grew less frequent. Some legislative leaders had a hard time getting the president’s ear at key moments, including ahead of the U.S.’s disastrous pullout from Afghanistan.
Senior advisers were often put into roles that some administration officials and lawmakers thought Biden should occupy, with people such as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, senior counselor Steve Ricchetti and National Economic Council head Lael Brainard and her predecessor frequently in the position of being go-betweens for the president.
Press aides who compiled packages of news clips for Biden were told by senior staff to exclude negative stories about the president. The president wasn’t talking to his own pollsters as surveys showed him trailing in the 2024 race.
Presidents always have gatekeepers. But in Biden’s case, the walls around him were higher and the controls greater, according to Democratic lawmakers, donors and aides who worked for Biden and other administrations. There were limits over who Biden spoke with, limits on what they said to him and limits around the sources of information he consumed.
Throughout his presidency, a small group of aides stuck close to Biden to assist him, especially when traveling or speaking to the public. “They body him to such a high degree,” a person who witnessed it said, adding that the “hand holding” is unlike anything other recent presidents have had.
The White House operated this way even as the president and his aides pressed forward with his re-election bid—which unraveled spectacularly after his halting performance in a June debate with Donald Trump made his mental acuity an insurmountable issue. Vice President Kamala Harris replaced him on the Democratic ticket and was decisively defeated by Trump in a shortened campaign—leaving Democrats to debate whether their chances were undercut by Biden’s refusal to yield earlier .
This account of how the White House functioned with an aging leader at the top of its organizational chart is based on interviews with nearly 50 people, including those who participated in or had direct knowledge of the operations.
Many of those who criticized Biden’s insularity said his system nonetheless kept his agenda on track.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates said Biden “earned the most accomplished record of any modern commander in chief and rebuilt the middle class because of his attention to policy details that impact millions of lives.” Bates, who rejected the notion that Biden has declined, added that the president has often solicited opinions from outside experts, which has informed his policymaking.
He said it is the job of senior White House staff to have high-level meetings regularly and that they were executing Biden’s agenda at his direction.
He also said that staff alerted the president to “significant” negative news stories. Bernal, via the White House press office, declined to comment.
‘Good Days And Bad Days’
The president’s slide has been hard to overlook. While preparing last year for his interview with Robert K. Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified documents, the president couldn’t recall lines that his team discussed with him. At events, aides often repeated instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage, that would be obvious to the average person. Biden’s team tapped campaign co-chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg , a Hollywood mogul, to find a voice coach to improve the president’s fading warble.
Biden, now 82, has long operated with a tightknit inner circle of advisers. The protective culture inside the White House was intensified because Biden started his presidency at the height of the Covid pandemic. His staff took great care to prevent him from catching the virus by limiting in-person interactions with him. But the shell constructed for the pandemic was never fully taken down, and his advanced age hardened it.
The structure was also designed to prevent Biden, an undisciplined public speaker throughout his half-century political career, from making gaffes or missteps that could damage his image, create political headaches or upset the world order.
The system put Biden at an unusual remove from cabinet secretaries, the chairs of congressional committees and other high-ranking officials. It also insulated him from the scrutiny of the American public.
The strategies to protect Biden largely worked—until June 27, when Biden stood on an Atlanta debate stage with Trump, searching for words and unable to complete his thoughts on live television. Much of the Democratic establishment had accepted the White House line that Biden was able to take the fight to Trump, even in the face of direct evidence to the contrary .
Biden, staffed with advisers since he became a senator at age 30, came to the White House with a small team of fiercely loyal, long-serving aides who knew him and Washington so well that they could be particularly effective proxies. They didn’t tolerate criticism of Biden’s performance or broader dissent within the Democratic Party, especially when it came to the president’s decision to run for a second term.
Yet a sign that the bruising presidential schedule needed to be adjusted for Biden’s advanced age had arisen early on—in just the first few months of his term. Administration officials noticed that the president became tired if meetings went long and would make mistakes.
They issued a directive to some powerful lawmakers and allies seeking one-on-one time: The exchanges should be short and focused, according to people who received the message directly from White House aides.
Ideally, the meetings would start later in the day, since Biden has never been at his best first thing in the morning, some of the people said. His staff made these adjustments to limit potential missteps by Biden, the people said. The president, known for long and rambling sessions, at times pushed in the opposite direction, wanting or just taking more time.
The White House denied that his schedule has been altered due to his age.
If the president was having an off day, meetings could be scrapped altogether. On one such occasion, in the spring of 2021, a national security official explained to another aide why a meeting needed to be rescheduled. “He has good days and bad days, and today was a bad day so we’re going to address this tomorrow,” the former aide recalled the official saying.
While it isn’t uncommon for politicians to want more time with the president than they get, some Democrats felt Biden was unusually hard to reach.
That’s what Rep. Adam Smith of Washington found when he tried to share his concerns with the president ahead of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Smith, a Democrat who then chaired the powerful House Armed Services Committee, was alarmed by what he viewed as overly optimistic comments from Biden as the administration assembled plans for the operation.
“I was begging them to set expectations low,” said Smith, who had worked extensively on the issue and harbored concerns about how the withdrawal might go. He sought to talk to Biden directly to share his insights about the region but couldn’t get on the phone with him, Smith said.
After the disastrous withdrawal, which left 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 Afghans dead, Smith made a critical comment to the Washington Post about the administration lacking a “clear-eyed view” of the U.S.-backed Ashraf Ghani government’s durability. It was among comments that triggered an angry phone call from Secretary of State Antony Blinken , who ended up getting an earful from the frustrated chairman. Shortly after, Smith got an apologetic call from Biden. It was the only phone call Biden made to Smith in his four years in office, Smith said.
“The Biden White House was more insulated than most,” Smith said. “I spoke with Barack Obama on a number of occasions when he was president and I wasn’t even chairman of the committee.”
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said his interactions with the White House in the past two years were primarily focused on the reauthorization of a vital section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that authorizes broad national security surveillance powers. Biden’s senior advisers and other top administration officials worked with Himes on the issue, and he praised the collaboration.
But Biden wasn’t part of the conversation. “I really had no personal contact with this president. I had more personal contact with Obama, which is sort of strange because I was a lot more junior,” said Himes, who took office in 2009. Congress extended the surveillance authority for two years instead of the administration’s goal of five years.
Bates said that in every administration, some in Washington would prefer to spend more time with the president and that Biden put significant effort into promoting his legislative agenda.
One lawmaker who did get one-on-one time with Biden noticed that the president lacked stamina and heavily relied on his staff: Sen. Joe Manchin , the West Virginia Democrat-turned-independent who held up chunks of Biden’s legislative agenda during the first half of Biden’s term. Manchin said the job required a level of energy that he wasn’t sure Biden had been able to sustain.
“I just thought that maybe the president just lost that fight,” Manchin said in an interview. “The ability to continue to stay on, just grind it, grind it, grind it.”
Instead of Biden directing follow up, Manchin noticed that Biden’s staff played a much bigger role driving his agenda than he had experienced in other administrations. Manchin referred to them as the “eager beavers”—a group that included then-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain . “They were going, ‘I’ll take care of that,’ ” Manchin said.
Klain, who was chief of staff for Biden’s first two years in office, said that “the agenda and pace” of the White House was at the “president’s direction and leadership.”
Dealing With Advisers
Interactions between Biden and many of his cabinet members were relatively infrequent and often tightly scripted. At least one cabinet member stopped requesting calls with the president, because it was clear that such requests wouldn’t be welcome, a former senior cabinet aide said.
One top cabinet member met one-on-one with the president at most twice in the first year and rarely in small groups, another former senior cabinet aide said.
Multiple former senior cabinet aides described a top-down dynamic in which the White House would issue decisions and expect cabinet agencies to carry them out, rather than making cabinet secretaries active participants in the policymaking process. Some of them said it was hard for them to discern to what degree Biden was insulated because of his age versus his preference for a powerful inner circle.
Bates said Biden has daily conversations with members of his cabinet. Several cabinet secretaries contacted the Journal at the White House’s request to attest to the smooth operations between their agencies and the White House. They said Biden would call them individually on the phone when seeking information or to give direction.
“I spoke with him whenever we needed his guidance or his help,” said Denis McDonough , Biden’s Secretary of Veterans Affairs and former chief of staff to Obama. “A lot of times it was him reaching out to us.”
Most often, however, they dealt with the president’s advisers, not the president himself, some of them said.
“If I had an issue or I needed attention on something, I had multiple avenues to explore to raise the issue,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “You don’t always have to raise the issue with the president.”
Vilsack, who also served as the agriculture secretary under Obama, said that presidents should primarily get involved when there’s a dispute between agencies.
Obama would often meet with smaller groups of cabinet members to hash out a policy debate, former administration officials said.
But that often wasn’t the experience under Biden’s administration. Instead, cabinet members most often met alone or with a member of the president’s senior staff, including Brainard, the economic adviser, or National Security Adviser Sullivan. The senior adviser would then bring the issue to the president and report back, former administration officials said.
Former administration officials said it often didn’t seem like Biden had his finger on the pulse.
Traditionally, presidents have more frequent interactions with certain cabinet secretaries—often Treasury, Defense and State—than others.
But Treasury Secretary Yellen had an arm’s length relationship with the president for much of the administration. She was part of the economics team that regularly briefed the president, but one-on-one discussions were more rare, and she typically dealt with the NEC or with the president’s advisers rather than Biden directly, according to people familiar with the interactions.
Some current and former administration officials said they would have expected a closer relationship between the two.
Bates, the White House spokesman, said Biden “deeply values Secretary Yellen’s expertise and counsel” and is “grateful for her service.” The Treasury Department declined to comment.
Defense Secretary Austin also saw his close relationship with Biden grow more distant over the course of the administration, with Austin’s regular access to Biden becoming increasingly rare in the past two years, people familiar with the relationship said.
During the first half of the administration, Austin was one of the cabinet members who would regularly attend Biden’s presidential daily briefing on a rotational basis each week. That briefing would be followed with a routine one-on-one in which Austin and Biden would meet personally behind closed doors.
Officials familiar with these meetings said they helped cabinet members to understand the commander in chief’s intentions directly, instead of being filtered through others, such as Sullivan, the national security adviser.
But in the past two years—a period when the wars in Ukraine and Gaza demanded the president’s attention—Austin’s invitation to the briefing came less frequently, to the point where the one-on-one meeting was seldom scheduled. When the one-on-one meetings did take place, they were more typically virtual meetings, not in-person. Still, Austin could always get an unscheduled meeting with the president if he needed it.
Bates disputed that there was any decline in regular contact or attendance to presidential daily briefings, adding that Austin “is a fixture in these briefings and they speak often.”
A Pentagon spokesman said Biden frequently called Austin on the phone for matters that varied from urgent to lower in priority.
Biden has a close relationship with Secretary of State Blinken, whom he has known for decades, former administration officials said.
Over four years, Biden held nine full cabinet meetings—three in 2021, two in 2022, three in 2023 and just one this year. In their first terms, Obama held 19 and Trump held 25, according to data compiled by former CBS News correspondent Mark Knoller.
Early in his vice presidency during the Obama administration, Biden sought to gather cabinet leaders once a week, saying in a speech that the synergy brought about by the regular meetings made the government more competent.
The White House said Biden meets with smaller groups of his agency heads and that the contemporary work environment means full cabinet meetings can be fewer and farther between.
In the fall of 2023, Biden faced a major test when Hur, the special counsel, wanted to interview him. The president wanted to do it, and his top aides felt that his willingness to sit down with investigators set up a favorable contrast with Trump, who stonewalled the probe into why classified documents appeared at Mar-a-Lago, according to people familiar with the sessions.
The prep sessions took about three hours a day for about a week ahead of the interview, according to a person familiar with the preparation. During these sessions, Biden’s energy levels were up and down. He couldn’t recall lines that his team had previously discussed with him, the person said.
A White House official pushed back on the notion that Biden’s age showed in prep, saying that the concerns that arose during those sessions were related to Biden’s tendency to over-share.
The actual interview didn’t go well. Transcripts showed multiple blunders, including that Biden didn’t initially recall that in prep sessions he had been shown his own handwritten memo arguing against a surge of troops in Afghanistan.
The report—one of just a few lengthy interviews with Biden over the past four years—concluded with a recommendation that Biden not be prosecuted for having classified documents in his home because a jury was likely to view him as a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
Insulated On Campaign
Biden’s team also insulated him on the campaign trail. In the summer of 2023, one prominent Democratic donor put together a small event for Biden’s re-election bid. The donor was shocked when a campaign official told him that attendees shouldn’t expect to have a free ranging question-and-answer session with the president. Instead, the organizer was told to send in two or three questions ahead of time that Biden would answer.
At some events, the Biden campaign printed the pre-approved questions on notecards and then gave donors the cards to read the questions. Even with all these steps, Biden made flubs, which confounded the donors who knew that Biden had the questions ahead of time.
Some donors said they noticed how staff stepped in to mask other signs of decline. Throughout his presidency—and especially later in the term—Biden was assisted by a small group of aides who were laser focused on him in a far different way than when he was vice president, or how former presidents Bill Clinton or Obama were staffed during their presidencies, people who have witnessed their interactions said.
These aides, which include Annie Tomasini and Ashley Williams, were often with the president as he traveled and stayed within earshot or eye distance, the people said. They would often repeat basic instructions to him, such as where to enter or exit a stage.
The White House said that the work by staff to guide Biden through events is standard for high-level officials.
People who witnessed it felt differently. In the past, aides performing these duties were often on their phones, chatting with other people or fetching something from a car or a computer nearby, they said.
The president’s team of pollsters also had limited access to Biden, according to people familiar with the president’s polling. The key advisers have famously had the president’s ear in most past White Houses.
During the 2020 campaign, Biden had calls with John Anzalone, his pollster, during which the two had detailed conversations.
By the 2024 campaign, the pollsters weren’t talking to the president about their findings, and instead sent memos that went to top campaign staff.
Biden’s pollsters didn’t meet with him in person and saw little evidence that the president was personally getting the data that they were sending him, according to the people.
People close to the president said he relied on Mike Donilon, one of Biden’s core inner circle advisers. With a background in polling, Donilon could sift through the information and present it to the president.
Bates said that Biden stayed abreast of polling data.
But this summer, Democratic insiders became alarmed by the way Biden described his own polling, publicly characterizing the race as a tossup when polls released in the weeks after the disastrous June debate consistently showed Trump ahead. They worried he wasn’t getting an unvarnished look at his standing in the race.
Those fears intensified on July 11, when Biden’s top advisers met behind closed doors with Democratic senators, where the advisers laid out a road map for Biden’s victory. The message from the advisers was so disconnected from public polling—which showed Trump leading Biden nationally—that it left Democratic senators incredulous. It spurred Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) to speak to Biden directly, according to people familiar with the matter, hoping to pierce what the senators saw as a wall erected by Donilon to shield Biden from bad information. Donilon didn’t respond to requests for comment.
On July 13, Biden held an uncomfortable call with a group of Democratic lawmakers called the New Democrat Coalition, aimed at reassuring them about his ability to stay in the race.
The president told participants that polling showed he was doing fine. He became angry when challenged, according to lawmakers on the call. At one point, Biden looked up and abruptly told the group he had to go to church. Some lawmakers on the call believed someone behind the camera was shutting it down.
Biden dropped out of the race eight days later.