PRESIDENT BIDEN’S FIRST 50 DAYS Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired As I begin this, President Biden has completed 50 days in office. Time for an assessment. Keystone Pipeline: Within the first few hours he shut down the Keystone pipeline construction, put thousands of workers and their families without a paycheck, and, without warning, enraged Canada, our most trusted ally, neighbor, and largest trading partner. Instead of “transporting” 800,000 barrels of petroleum a day by carbon-free pipeline, we will be using carbon-belching trucks and trains. BTW, an 84-car train will carry 60,000 barrels of oil; one tanker truck hauls 210 barrels. Who is doing the math in the oval office? The important thing is, it negates a Trump win.
Suspension of new oil and gas leasing and drilling permits on public land: Just on “public land?” That doesn’t sound so bad until you consider that in eight western states, 97% of the oil and gas extraction is from public lands. Secondly, it has taken over 60 years for the U.S. to regain oil independence. The geopolitical ramifications of returning to imported foreign oil are too mind-blowing to comprehend.
Final point: the impact of Keystone and public land drilling prohibition has had an immediate impact; The price of crude oil and gasoline at the pump in the US has risen sharply. Winners and losers. Winners are Russia and Iran; both were suffering economically with oil their principal export; rising crude prices has given them a reprieve. Losers; every person and business in the US suffers economically when gas prices go up. This is a colossal failure of reasoned thinking but it negates a couple more Trump wins.
Border Wall immediate shut down: Another 5000 jobs immediately lost. Additionally, Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said the shutdown will cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Also consider that 270,000 tons of unused steel bollards are on hand. Wouldn’t it make sense to just finish out the existing, funded contract? No, they needed to wipe out another Trump win.
Immigration “reform”: The on-going humanitarian and national security crisis on the Mexican border was absolutely predictable with the advent of democrat catch-and-release policy, AKA open borders. There were nearly 100,000 illegal immigrants in February, up a whopping 97% over February 2020, and predictions from border control officials is that it will get “much worse.” Drugs crossing from Mexico to the US: Drug seizures from January to February, 2021: cocaine increased 13%, methamphetamine up 40%, and heroin up 48%. Fentanyl seizures are up 360% from a year ago. Good work by the border folks, but, undoubtedly, unknown quantities successfully crossed the border and have been distributed across the nation. Cartel-produced cocaine heavily laced with China-produced fentanyl will kill many Americans. Open-border fallout. I have said this before but it is worth repeating; all of these illegal immigrants can be categorized as follows: All are unemployed and additionally many are also criminals, drug dealers, gang members, cartel operatives, Covid-19 carriers, sick, in need of major medical care, children who need free education in Spanish and those previously deported.
Open borders wipe out another Trump win, and that’s good for America? Another view of the problem: look out your window and watch the buses go by. As Pem Schaeffer recently pointed out, 2000 busloads of illegal immigrants dispatched across the U.S. arriving in your town to be greeted, fed, and housed. And for how long? And that’s just the February arrivals. There are more to come, millions more. Why? Because the border is open.
Thank you, President Biden or Chief of Staff Klain, or Kamala or Susan Rice or whoever the hell is in charge. And, BTW, when the bus arrives in East Overshoe, Montana, the Covid carrier on the bus has probably infected most of the other 49 passengers. Just deal with it America, open borders are just what we need now, right Mr. President?
Stop all ICE operations for 100 days: Of the 85,958 illegal aliens removed from the U.S. interior in 2019, more than 75 percent, 64,991, had criminal convictions. Another 13,498 had pending criminal charges. Using this database, on average, ICE deported 215 criminals per day. Biden’s 100 -day shut-down will keep 21,500 criminals in our communities who could have been/should have been deported. What is the purpose? Net gain for America, zero. "Preventing and combating discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation”: Of course, transgender individuals need and deserve society’s full support and understanding. But, does that include destroying women’s sports as we have known it forever? Consider this: Olympic, World, and U.S. Champion Allyson Felix's 400 meters lifetime best of 49.26 seconds was bettered in 2017, more than 15,000 times by men and boys around the world. In swimming 13–14-year-old boys are faster in races of 200 meters or less than the women's world records. There is no longer a level playing field in women’s sports thanks to our president’s pandering to a democrat identity political group. Defunding Police: HR 1280, “The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act”, a seemingly innocent title, passed the House a couple of weeks ago without a single Republican vote. The wording buried in its 66 pages would cost police departments hundreds of millions of dollars. But perhaps even worse is the provision that limits “qualified immunity”; that is, a long-standing policy that protects government officials from civil lawsuits for their conduct on the job. Now how are cities going to recruit the best and brightest? When Republicans tried to add an amendment to HR 1280, saying “……. condemns calls to ‘defund,’ ‘disband,’ ‘dismantle,’ or ‘abolish’ the police”, 219 Democrats voted against it. If it passes the Senate, Biden will sign it; and this will make America safer while current violent crime stats are going off the charts? To further put this ridiculous law into context, while in 2019 the U.S. violent crime rate fell for the fourth straight year, and property crime fell for the 18th straight year, the National Commission on Criminal Justice reported a “steep increase in rates of violent crimes in the early summer of 2020 has continued through August across a broad range of American cities.” Homicide rates between June and August increased by 53 percent over the same period in 2019. The 2020, crime wave began with the George Floyd riots and police defunding actions in major cities. Led by BLM and Antifa thugs, the killing, burning, and looting of thousands of small businesses raged across America. Recall Kamala Harris’ reaction to the rioting, “They’re not gonna let up, and they should not.” Election “reform”: H.R. 1, For The People Act of 2021 recently passed by the House of Representatives is a complete disaster. It certainly is not an act that is “for the People”; it is a bill specially designed to prescribe, from the federal level, the detailed implementation of the worst of the states’ 2020 election rules, procedures, and results. Many agree that the passage of HR1 strikes such a serious blow to one of our most sacred rights, free and honest elections, that it threatens the very existence of our Constitutional Republic. Some of the requirements: Automatic voter registration, ban witness signature requirements, states must allow mail-in ballots and ballot-harvesting, prevents removal of ineligible voters from voter rolls, forces states to allow voting without an ID. Here is what will happen if this law is passed. Poorly maintained voter registration rolls in most states are the launch point for many types of voter fraud. For example, Judicial Watch won a federal lawsuit requiring Los Angeles County to remove an estimated 1.5 million ineligible voters from its voter rolls. In 2020, all of those 1.5 million ineligible voters would have received a mail-in ballot. HR 1 will require ineligible voters to receive a mail-in ballot. With HR1 and now S1, if passed, states’ rights on elections procedures will all be superseded by federal law. All the pieces will be in place so that the results of future elections will be determined by which party can out-fraud the other. House and Senate democrats are calling this the most significant legislation in decades. Workers’ rights demolished: The House just passed the miss-named bill, “Protecting the Right to Organize Act”. Despite the name its provisions are, quoting the Wall Street Journal, “brazenly opposed to giving workers choices.” WSJ continued, “The legislation, which President Biden has promised to sign if passed by the Senate, would be the most significant overhaul of private-sector collective bargaining laws since the 1940s. It would effectively repeal right-to-work laws on the books in most states which allow employees to decline union membership and not pay union fees.” This is blatant democrat pandering to an identity group. Mr. President, where does individual liberty fall in this scenario? Middle East misguided policies: Former Secretary of State John Kerry (perhaps the worst in history) has been and still is obsessed with Middle East Policy. His/Obama’s/Biden’s view is that nothing positive can happen in the Middle East until the Palestinians are satisfied. FYI Kerry/Biden/Obama, Hamas is a terrorist organization and since 2006 has been the de facto governing authority of the Gaza Strip, current-day Palestine.
Hamas is a Palestinian Islamist political organization and militant group that has waged war on Israel since 1987 and is committed to Israel’s destruction. In 2019 Iran agreed to pay Hamas $30 million monthly in exchange for intelligence on Israeli missile capabilities.
The Obama/Biden/Clinton/Kerry approach to Middle East policy clearly explains their openly non-support of Israel.
Four years of hard, imaginative work by the Trump administration changed everything. Post-Trump, most Middle East nations (Iran and Iran-supported terrorist nations excluded) now, for the first time since the 1948 creation of modern-day Israel, no longer view Israel as their enemy. Quite the contrary, many Middle East countries, led by Saudi Arabia, have seen the light that Iran’s goal is Middle East hegemony and they, Iran, are the greatest threat to Middle East peace. Saudi Arabia’s very cool view of Obama/Biden/Clinton/Kerry morphed into a great respect for Trump’s America and its view of Middle East issues. From that transition, the Saudis took on critical efforts in their area, namely military action against the Houthi terrorist organization which waged a successful coup in Yemen in 2014. Yemen remains one of the primary fronts in the global fight against terrorism and extremism. With U.S. assistance, Saudi Arabia has led a coalition of nine nations against the terrorist network in Yemen. Without the Saudi effort, it is quite possible that the Houthis would have successfully transformed Yemen into a terrorist operational and training safe haven with deadly consequences for the United States and the international community.
So, where is President Joe Biden on all this? In another knee-jerk I’ll-show-you-Trump action, he is planning to remove the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists from the Global Terrorist list. Unbelievable. To add insult to injury, Biden has put a hold on Trump-negotiated arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates worth billions of dollars. Have they lost their minds? Bail out cities and states: Under the guise of Covid relief, Biden pushed through a $1.9 trillion package that included hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out financially mismanaged democrat-led cities and states. While at least two-thirds of the states are financially stable and have substantial rainy-day reserve funds, taxpayers will now be paying the bills for those governors and mayors who will not take the steps necessary to become fiscally responsible. Is there some sense of Biden unity in all that?
Disincentivized unemployed: Biden claims the $1.9 trillion giveaway will lift people out of poverty. His view of value-added defies human nature. Once the government is willing to give you a living income, where is the incentive to work? What’s coming next? $15 minimum wage: Biden will not give up on a $15 minimum wage irrespective of the facts: First, a one-size-fits-all approach makes no sense with the cost of living drastically different from state to state. Secondly, tens of thousands of small businesses across the country are barely hanging on because of Covid. Kicking them in the gut while they are down only adds insult to injury. Experts expect at least 1.4 million low-wage workers will become unemployed; a Biden view of putting working families first. Cut defense spending: Biden will follow the lead of Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama all of whom gutted the forces reducing combat readiness to dangerously low levels. It’s easy to cut but it is a long hard road to get readiness back to acceptable levels when we need it. Our allies and enemies alike, carefully watch our combat readiness and act/react accordingly. Nothing deters enemy intent to do harm more than fully combat-ready U.S. forces.
Gun control: I’m fine with some changes; no one needs a weapon in three days. Extending background-check timing to 10 days or a couple weeks is OK as long as the system is designed to effectively identify those who absolutely should not have a weapon. Also, no one needs a 30-round magazine. The problem with gun control, as the democrats see it, is that “control” is synonymous with “no guns”, period.
Increased taxes: Biden and the democrats continuously use this easy sound bite; “the very wealthy should pay their fair share.” That thought, soak the rich, is appealing to many. What Biden will not do, even with a teleprompter, is define “fair share” and discuss the details/potential negative ramifications. For example, in 2017, the top 1% of taxpayers paid more income taxes than the bottom 90% combined. Included in the bottom 90% are the 44% who paid zero federal income tax. Is that not a “fair share” by the rich? Biden hypocrisy: Next to Covid, “white supremacy” seems to be his new favorite topic. He never seems to pass up an opportunity to inject “those domestic terrorist white supremacists” whenever possible. Yes, there are white supremacists in America. Yes, they are a threat. Yes, they need to be dealt with. But, consider that on the other end of the radical political spectrum is Antifa. It is these violent anarchists who led the murder, looting, burning rampage across America for months on end last summer. Biden will not mention Antifa; he will not even acknowledge that they exist. His definitive exclamation during a presidential debate last fall was, “Antifa is an idea, not an organization.” FBI Director Wray has testified before Congress saying, “Antifa is a real thing.” He went on to say, “we have any number of properly predicated investigations into what we would describe as violent anarchist extremists and some of those individuals self-identify with Antifa.” The trial concerning the death of George Floyd is ongoing. The defense will present two meaningful arguments. One, the knee-on-the-neck was an acknowledged and accepted method of constraint taught by the Minneapolis Police Academy. Secondly, the defense will show that Floyd had a fatal level of fentanyl in his system and died of an overdose. If the jury believes that, cities across the country will burn and Antifa will be at the forefront of the murder and mayhem. What then will Biden and Kamala say and do?
Bottom line: President Trump threw a giant monkey-wrench in the Obama/Biden machine that was designed to, “transform America.” That democrat 2009-2016 transition included federal domination of policies and procedures affecting every American, thereby stomping on States’ and individuals’ rights. Big government was their answer to every issue.
Nothing in Biden’s first 50 days has been made clearer than his belief that it is OK for big government, big bureaucracies, and a regulation-nation to dominate we-the-people. Hang on to your hat America, there is a lot more of the nonsense suggested above to come.
What happened to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”?
What has happened to Biden's inauguration-day impassioned plea to trust him to be president, “for all the people”?
Do President Biden and his handlers have no clue that all those Trump policy reversals have infuriated 75 million Trump supporters? Do they actually believe they can unite America with a soft voice, teleprompter statements, and recriminating remarks about President Trump every time he gets behind a microphone? Has the president already forgotten about uniting America or did he never really mean it in the first place?
Actions always speak louder than words especially when they are the actions of the president of the United States. And that is just the first 50 days of the Biden Administration. God help us.
Marvin L. Covault, Lt Gen US Army, retired, is the author of VISION TO EXECUTION, a book for leaders, a columnist for THE PILOT, a national award-winning local newspaper in Southern Pines, NC and the author of a blog, WeThePeopleSpeaking.com. | 
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