What to expect from Biden by Don Frost

by Don Frost

So what kind of president will Joe Biden be? The press loves him, of course. So the media will maintain throughout the next four years that good ol’ Uncle Joe is a “moderate” and a “centrist.” This is nonsense; it’s propaganda; he’s a “liberal.”

The press, dominated by fellow “liberals,” will edit out – on TV as well as print media – his verbal gaffs, not just those where he stumbles over single words, but those where he changes subjects in mid-sentence; those where he rambles on subjects that have nothing to do with the issue at hand; those where his scattered thinking is evident. The media will treat him with loving kid gloves, unlike Trump whose pronouncements the press routinely reported as, “Trump said today, without evidence . . .”

The press will report Biden’s pronouncements as though Moses had brought them down from the mountain. You will never hear or read this: “President Biden said today, without evidence, that his tax plan will add a million jobs across America.” The press will accept such pie-in-the-sky statements as gospel.

Be prepared for lots of stories about how wonderful things are now – how happy everyone is – throughout the White House, Congress, every federal agency, and every foreign government. The media supported Biden’s presidential bid from the start and, by golly, they’re going to prove they were right to do so.

The press already is greeting his every appointment as inspired, as brilliant, as “historic,” as in, “President-elect Biden made history today when he announced the appointment of Gizmo Fasaris as director of sunflower production, the first left-handed red head to hold the post.”

Biden’s powerful Left-leaning tendencies will be augmented by the Democratic Party’s burgeoning Socialist presence in the Senate and House. A sympathetic press will continue to characterize them as merely the “liberal” or “progressive” wing of the party. Joe danced to their tune throughout the campaign and he will continue to do so.

Biden has been a political animal his entire adulthood. After a brief sojourn practicing law, he discovered his true calling: Politics. It has served him, and his family, well. His personal wealth is estimated at $9 million. So much for President Truman’s observation: “Show me a man that gets rich by being a politician, and I’ll show you a crook.”

To survive the Washington swamp one must master the art of obfuscation, hypocrisy, lying, a chameleon-like ability to change principles, a knack for breaking promises as political winds dictate, and getting away with it all. Joe has flourished in that environment for more than 43 years.

To determine what Biden will do as president we should start by ignoring his campaign speeches which, like everyone’s campaign speeches, were calculated to appeal more to emotions than reason. We should even take with a hefty helping of salt the pronouncements he made during his party’s nominating debates last summer. But those debates are a good starting point for getting a glimpse at what he has planned for us.

Minimum wage: During those debates he said he wants to more than double the minimum wage from its present $7.25 an hour to $15 an hour. It’s great campaign fodder. Who wouldn’t vote for a candidate who promised to get them a raise? But the scheme is fraught with certain inconvenient truths.

A national minimum wage was mandated in 1938 to prevent operators of sweat shops from paying starvation wages to people desperate for any kind of employment. That was its only purpose. It was as the name implied: A minimum wage. Now “liberals” have convinced a significant part of the country that every job, no matter what it is, should pay a wage sufficient to support a family. It is outrageous, supporters claim, that anyone should have to work two minimum wage jobs to support themselves and their families.

Boost the minimum wage and it will force some businesses out of business. It goes against the grain of Socialists, but employers are in business to make a profit. If they can’t make a profit, they go out of business and some of their employees, who may have picketed for $15 an hour, will simply swap the picket line for the unemployment or welfare lines.

Already, in advance of a government-dictated wage hike, employers are turning to automation to cut payroll. In some McDonald’s you go to a kiosk, place your order, pay for it, and walk to the counter where a clerk hands you your order. How many jobs were eliminated?

College: During the debates he said he wanted the government to pay for two years of college. Of course, on the campaign trail and during those debates he called it “two years of free college.” That word, “free,” resonates with everyone. Understandably, they believe that whatever the reference is, it means it won’t cost anything; it’s “free.” But when a government says something shall be “free” it means taxpayers will pick up the tab. As Winston Churchill observed, no government can give you anything it has not first taken from you.

Guns: Biden supports a voluntary buy-back program for semi-automatic rifles. If someone wants to get rid of his rifle and have the government pay for it, that’s their business. But it could prove a costly program for the rest of us that would have zero impact on mass shootings, the alleged purpose of the program. So Joe’s commitment to support this scheme is pure politics. All the popular kids on the Left want it, so Biden does too.

Ditto something called “universal background checks,” a name that suggests that guns can be bought without a background check. So people support it. But it isn’t so. Potential gun buyers already are required to submit to an FBI background check. Universal background checks are simply aimed at gun shows, where no background checks are required. Biden claims this would reduce mass shootings. The point is, neither Biden nor anyone else has – or can produce – evidence that universal background checks or buy-back programs would have the slightest impact on shooting deaths.

Just for giggles: “Joe Biden today made the baseless claim that universal background checks and gun buy-back programs will reduce gun deaths.” Sorry. I couldn’t resist. Onward.

Taxes: Here’s a quick, easy to follow guide to get people to vote for you: Promise them you’ll give them lots of stuff and make someone else pay for it. For decades this has been written in big, bold letters in the Democratic play book; it is the party’s mantra: Promise them anything because you’re going to make “the rich” or corporations pay for it. And Biden agrees, ignoring the fact that corporations don’t pay taxes; they collect taxes.

His Socialist colleagues point out how grandly European welfare states are doing. But, the Wall Street Journal points out, these countries learned long ago “the hard way that the rich aren’t rich enough” or plentiful enough to pay for their entitlements. So they began clobbering their middle classes. In Germany households earning $124,000 a year are taxed at 42%. A comparable U.S. household pays 22%. In Sweden the rate of 55% kicks in for individuals earning $47,000, and in the U.K. those earning $64,000 are charged a 40% rate.

In addition to ambition-robbing income taxes, those European nations have instituted other taxes to help pay for their “free” entitlements. Some of them have “social insurance contributions” which are higher than our Social Security and Medicare taxes. They also have the European version of a sales tax. It’s called a Value Added Tax (VAT), and buyers are dinged an extra 21% on all consumer purchases, and – you guessed it – rich, poor, and middle class alike must pay it.

A comparable VAT in America would mean a typical American grocery bill (minus state and county taxes) of $130 would cost $166.98. That extra $36.98 for a week’s groceries too much for you? Too bad.

The Paris climate deal: Biden wants back in because his “liberal” base wants back in. It doesn’t bother him that it has the effect of a treaty and that our Constitution requires that treaties be approved by Congress. Biden, like Barack Obama, driving force behind the deal, found a loophole in the Constitution: If we don’t call it a treaty, even though it is every bit as binding as a treaty, we can get away with it. We’ll just call it an “accord.” So neither man had to worry about nettlesome Constitutional prohibitions or some recalcitrant representatives of the people in Congress.

Never mind that it commits the U.S. to economically ruinous environmental goals virtually right now while the rest of the world can go about voluntarily cleaning up their environmental act at their leisure. Meanwhile, the world’s biggest polluter – China – doesn’t even have to BEGIN reducing pollution for 16 years.

Bjorn Lomberg, president and founder of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and a visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, calculates that if all the Paris accord’s pledges were maintained through Dec. 31, 2099, planetary temperature rises would be reduced by a meager 0.31 degrees Fahrenheit.

The science behind the Paris deal indicates it’s basically a public relations stunt signed onto by more than 200 of the world’s nations for just that reason: public relations. Even Greta Thunberg, the teen-age Swedish darling of the Left and Time magazine’s Person of the Year, knows the Paris deal is politics, not science. She said so when she stood up before those 200 nations at the U.N. and scolded them with the delicious sound bite, “How dare you!”

The Iran nuclear deal: Biden also wants back in this treaty called an “accord.” Since Biden wants back in, it’s safe to assume he believes – as did Obama, its chief architect – that all we have to do is be nice to Iran and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will abandon his lifelong dream of wiping Israel off the map, he’ll stop supporting global terrorism, and he’ll stop spouting “Death to America.”

So far Iran has shown no signs of decreased hostility toward the non-Muslim world and its infidels. And the clock is ticking: Iran’s pledge to halt its nuclear weapons program ends in about 10 years when it will be free to go full speed on developing a bomb. That’s how far down the road Obama kicked this particular can. And if Biden gets two terms, he’ll be gone, too, and free to join Obama in a rousing chorus of “It’s Not Our Fault” when Iran joins the nuclear club.

People tend to worry about a nuclear-armed North Korea and its bellicose leader Kim Jong Un. He is an idiot and he’s dangerous, but one thing he is not and we should all be grateful: He is not suicidal. His all-consuming ambition is to simply remain in power, not spread his religion around the world. If he were to nuke America, he would invite instant and total devastation and he, personally, would die. If he somehow managed to escape our massive retaliation, we would hunt him down until we found him, cowering in a hole in the ground like Sadam Hussein. He knows that would be his fate if he attacked us.

This is not so with Iran, a theocracy whose mission is to spread Islam around the world. In Iran suicide bombings are viewed as a legitimate and praiseworthy instrument of foreign policy; where some believe such acts are God’s will and a ticket to Paradise. So it is a genuine possibility that someday some devout mullah could get it in his head that a nuclear strike would ignite Armageddon after which Islam would emerge as the victor.

Iran’s negotiators masterfully exploited the American horror of nuclear war in 2015, holding out until Obama caved and bribed the ayatollah with billions in cash to get him to agree to the deal. Iran is fully aware of Biden’s eagerness to appease his base by getting back in the deal. The ayatollah will exploit that. One can only wonder what Iran will make Biden give up to let us back in yet another public relations stunt.

Don Frost blogs at www.Commonsense931.wordpress.com

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