State of disunity

Biden's state of the union speech was good, Sanders response was better

Like a carnival huckster, Joe Biden won round after round of applause by promising to spend what seems like $5 trillion to solve every problem in America in a rambling speech rife with slurred speech and malapropisms that seemed to offer Americans everything except Ginzu knives. Biden and I have two things in common - we are both in the autumn of our lives and we both have made a career out of taking credit for the work of others. My business success was not my doing, but the good fortune I had in attracting and motivating talented subordinates without whom I would have been a dismal failure. Biden spent a lot of oxygen taking credit for the economy he inherited from Donald Trump and claiming as successes his outright failures.

Biden’s speech touched on but glossed over the open Southern border which he tried to blame on Trump (the only President in recent memory who did anything constructive to limit the flow of illegals and terrorists into America); the rampant inflation that his reckless spending not only caused but also continues to fuel; and, the global shortage of fossil fuels which he spun as a victory over climate change and the recalcitrance of oil companies to invest more capital to expand oil production ignoring the reality that his policies make expanded output virtually impossible for them to realize. CO2 is harmless and Biden’s “climate change” rhetoric is pure political science devoid of any contact with the laws of physics.

Biden served the American public with shiny objects, capitalizing on their need to find a culprit for their financial problems. He promised to fund his massive spending programs by increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, despite the reality that the top 1% of Americans pay over 40% of all taxes collected and the bottom 40% pay no taxes at all, and the parallel reality that corporations don’t pay taxes - they collect them and pass them on in price with the burden landing on the poorest Americans who spend virtually all of their income on the goods that higher corporate taxes simply inflate. Biden continues to use the rhetoric we see regularly in Canada from leftists like Jagmeet Singh who lambastes “corporate greed” and rants that the wealthy don’t pay their “fair share”. Both Biden and Singh have an odd definition of “fair” which they seem to believe means taking money from those who have earned it and giving it to those who have not, while vilifying the former for their successes and praising the latter for their failures.

Biden rambled on for what seemed like hours promising the sun, moon and stars - red meat for the far left who have no idea where the money will come from to pay for the promises other than the trope that taxing the wealthy can pay the freight. Once their wealth has been taxed away, precious few years at the rate Biden wants to spend, the programs will continue and the ability to fund them will disappear while the most productive members of society will abandon America for jurisdictions that have less hostile tax regimes. Wealth taxes have failed pretty well everywhere they have been attempted.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders speech was short and powerful. She correctly stated that Americans faced a choice not between Democrats and Republicans but between normal and crazy. The “woke” left is batshit crazy by any definition. Sanders summed up what Americans want in a few short sentences - to get on with their lives, enjoy individual freedoms, pursue their dreams in a country devoid of needlessly restrictive legislation, and earn their success through effort without becoming dependent on government largesse. The contrast between 40 year old Sanders and 80 year old Biden was stark - a young woman who has already become the youngest governor in American history and a man who is the oldest President in American history with the younger of the two embracing traditional American values and the older promoting toxic left wing ideology which is the real threat to democracy.

We will see which vision of America prevails in 2024. The betting line points to Biden’s next two years as his last years in office and America will be better off if that is the outcome. The 2024 election is shaping up as a contest between Ron de Santis and Gavin Newsom, a clear indication that Sanders was right that Americans face a choice between normal and crazy.