Biden's Press Secretary Can't Identify Inflation Factors Without Implicating Democrat Party

"We got a lot of incoming on this yesterday & look, the point that the president was making is that the factors that cause inflation were in place when he took office."  - White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre answering a question on May 15 from Ed Lawrence (FBN) regarding Biden's repeated claim that inflation was 9% when he took office instead of 1.4% as reported by the BLS.  (Note - KJP's quote is cleaned up grammatically & repeated "uh"s removed.)

The interesting thing about KJP's above statement is that it is correct - but she can't tell the public why without fingering her boss; namely that the highest inflation factor put in place under Trump in 2020 was $3.6 trillion of irresponsible stimulus deficit spending - the exact same type of irresponsible stimulus deficit spending that Biden did in 2021 to the tune of $1.9 trillion.  KJP can't identify irresponsible stimulus deficit spending by Trump as the root cause of our inflation problem because it is the heart & soul of Democrats' answer for everything they see.

Professor Friedman taught that inflation "is always & everywhere, a monetary phenomenon.  It's always & everywhere, a result of too much money, of a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than an output.  Moreover, in the modern era, the important next step is to recognize that today, governments control the quantity of money.  So that as a result, inflation in the United States is made in Washington & nowhere else."  The great libertarian professor used graphs during his lectures that prove that there has never been an inflation in history that was not accompanied by an extremely rapid increase in the quantity of money & interchangeably there has never been an extremely rapid increase in the quantity of money without an inflation.  

Professor Friedman explained that during Diocletian's rule of the Roman Empire (284 to 305) the money supply was increased by replacing the silver in full body silver coins like the denarius with a worthless alloy, until the denarius (once equal to a day's pay for a common laborer or a quart of wheat plus 3 quarts of barley)) became little more than a copper coin with a wash of silver.  As silver was spread (i.e., the % of silver decreased) into more & more coins, the denarius lost value & prices were distorted by inflation.

We are currently seeing the definition of inflation play out - namely, what happens when too much money chases too few goods & services.   

Conservative pundits like to blame our inflation misery (real wages are still 0.8% below 2019 levels) on Biden's signing of a giant $1.9 trillion stimulus bill as if Trump's $3.6 trillion spending spree the year before, including $900 billion in December, 2020, has nothing to do with our inflation.  The conservatives never mention Trump's even larger contribution to the inflation problem &, since inflation started to rise during Biden's first full month in office, leave that fact out.  But both Trump & Biden doled out direct deposits to adults & children & made substantial increases to unemployment benefits that made going to work less attractive than collecting these new benefits.  The quantity of money was increased under both Trump & Biden & the amount of goods & services produced (i.e., the real GDP) was reduced.  See graphic that follows.

The difference in Trump's case was that the lockdowns in 2020 provided a forced savings mechanism - i.e., there was no place to go to spend the money being doled out by the government.

Professor Friedman also taught that monetary changes (like the stimulus giveaways) have their effect (in this case inflation) only after a lag - that can be long & variable.  (Professor Friedman's research over 18 business cycles in the 19th & 20th centuries showed the lag between monetary policy action & its economic effect ranged between 4 & 29 months, but also that there was little basis for knowing where in this range it would fall.  Source - Bill Dupor, St. Louis Fed.)  This is something akin to not feeling the full effects of being in a car accident until 72 hours after the accident.  Source - my chiropractor.

Trump's spending binge in 2020 did not start to be felt with stepped up inflation until February, 2021.  This lag is easy to understand - the lockdowns had gradually been lifted & as a result people were able to start spending the direct deposits & enhanced unemployment benefits they had saved.  Unfortunately for Biden this noticeable stepped up inflation coincided with his first full month in office.  Biden then signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act in March, 2021 - his second full month in office - further fueling the inflation that was just beginning.  But note, inflation was on its way up before Biden signed one penny of inflationary stimulus into law.  The following graphic illustrates this point.

In concert with the above, the following graphic illustrates that while the M2 money supply was increasing 15.7% in the three months from February to May, 2020 the real GDP was decreasing 9.5% from December 31, 2019 to June 30, 2020 - i.e., "a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than an output."

The above graphic shows that consumer spending - personal consumption expenditures, PCE - (the main component of GDP) decreased 17.6% from February, 2020 to April, 2020 due to the lockdowns.  The graphic below shows the excessive savings (the amount above what would have been saved if there was no pandemic) that developed as a result of both Trump & Biden's stimulus spending being sent to people in a country in lockdown or partial lockdown.

Click here to hear KJP's exchange with Ed Lawrence where she blames everything she can think of to be the cause of our inflation problem except the real cause, namely irresponsible stimulus deficit spending signed into law by both Trump & Biden.  To identify Trump's spending binge in 2020 as the root cause of our inflation that was in place in January, 2021 would necessarily implicate & connect her boss, Joe Biden, as a willing offender of the same thing in 2021 as well as expose the Democrats' playbook for government dependency & all the misery & mediocrity that follows.

Coolidge's 150th July 4th Anniversary Speech Refutes Progressivism

History shows that three of our first five presidents died on the fourth of July - John Adams & Thomas Jefferson within hours of each other on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after July 4, 1776 & James Monroe on July 4, 1831.  

But only one president was born on July 4 - Calvin Coolidge on July 4, 1872.

Following all of the principles of supply-side economics President Coolidge presided over one of the strongest periods of economic growth, prosperity, & a rising standard of living in American history.  

The income tax, ratified by the 16th Amendment in 1913, was supposed to be a flat tax with a single rate of 4% but it quickly changed to a graduated tax of 1% to 7% with the income brackets determined by the ability to pay.  By 1921 Congress had raised the top marginal rate from 7% to 73%.   President Coolidge was the only president to follow all of the supply-side economic principles: 1) the reduction of the size of government & its claims on earned income, 2) a lower marginal tax rate for the highest income earners, & 3) sound-money policies – the gold standard.  Silent Cal reduced the top 73% income tax rate to 25% by 1925, reduced the national debt, & balanced the budget – a budget that actually was smaller when he left office than when he took office.  Federal spending was 3% of GDP in 1928 – it is 24.2% today.  

The Coolidge administration emphasized limited government, personal responsibility, & free enterprise & came to power soon after the anti-American progressive movement started to take shape under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson.  Wilson had nothing but disdain for the relevance of the Founders & our founding documents to his way of life - he promoted the progressive idea that human nature is changeable & that each generation should define liberty, rights, & equality for itself rather than refer to what the Founders thought of as universal, timeless, permanent, & immutable principles listed @ the beginning of the Declaration of Independence.  In short, Wilson wanted to move beyond the principles & practices of the American founding.

Below is an excerpt from President Coolidge's July 4, 1926 speech on the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence that debunks Wilson's progressive theories.  The points from the speech can still be used today to counter arguments to slow the speed of our ever increasing progressive world.

Excerpt from President Coolidge's 1926 Independence Day Speech: 

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.  It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.  But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter.  If all men are created equal, that is final.  If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.  If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.  No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.  If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.  They are reactionary.  Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

The Difference Between Trump's First Three Years & Last Year In Office

"The thing about this election cycle with these two candidates for president: They both have a record.  You don't have to listen to rhetoric or theory or talking points.  How were you doing in the first couple of years of the Trump administration?  How are you doing now?"  - House Speaker Mike Johnson

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In answering Speaker Johnson's question we don't have to ask much about the years under Biden because Biden's policies & practices have been a deliberate assault on America that favors every progressive plank that will fundamentally transform our country from one of prosperity & high achievement where everyone has the equal opportunity to succeed to one of a tilted playing field of mediocrity where social equity is achieved by giving everyone under whatever circumstance they find themselves whatever they need to reach an equal outcome with anyone else.  In short, Biden has provided or attempted to provide equality of outcome by redistributing wealth to ensure that economic & social equality are actually achieved.  Biden's administration has not only been anti-American, its performance has risen to the level of betrayal of America with every one of its harmful actions & failures documented on this blog since his inauguration.

It's interesting that in his query the Speaker breaks out "the first couple of years of the Trump administration" from the last year Trump was in office because there was a tremendous difference that should be focused upon.

In the first three years under Trump you would be hard pressed to find one RTE post that was not favorable toward Trump.  If you do please let me know.  After all, I was a supporter of Trump from the official presidential announcement after the golden escalator ride on June 16, 2015 when most current Trump die-hards in this readership were still supporting Ted Cruz.  Ask yourself if you are holding a memory of the first three years & ignoring the performance of the last year including the near constitutional crisis that followed the presidential election of 2020 with what Trump asked Pence to do on January 6.  With all the bluster it is easy to misjudge Trump's record especially since he never mentions the last year.  The fourth year was entirely different from the other three starting with Trump's very poor handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trump began well enough on January 31, 2020 by banning travel to the United States by foreign nationals from places like Communist China, where the Wuhan coronavirus originated.  This travel ban was extended on March 11 to twenty six European countries - all in accordance with Congress extending its authority to regulate commerce to the Executive Branch "to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable disease from foreign countries into the States or possessions."

But then Trump "got rolled by his bureaucrats, he caved in, & many of our most fundamental rights began to disappear practically overnight."1  

Although Trump complained about Dr. Fauci he approved his duplicitous method of "following the science" & let him run wild, unsupervised, for months, initially issuing social distancing guidelines telling Americans to stay more than six feet apart, refrain from nonessential travel in airplanes, stop going out to dinner in restaurants, & avoid gatherings of more than ten people – like @ NBA games or church services.  These initial federal guidelines were followed shortly by “Stay @ Home” orders from governors & mayors mandating the shutting down of schools & businesses these officials did not deem essential – like gun stores, but liquor & marijuana stores that bring in large amounts of revenue to states were deemed essential.  Businesses previously deemed non-essential had been allowed to operate between 5 AM & 8 PM in some states such as NJ. 

And right out of the box, from March 3 to March 27, Congress did what it does best – it produced a series of spending bills that Trump signed into law totaling $2.3 trillion the first 24 days that Covid was acknowledged as being in America - the total was $2.7 trillion by April & $3.6 trillion by December plus a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill.  Trump & Congress didn't take the time to find out what Covid was but their instincts were to throw money @ it including direct cash payments to households ($1,200 per adult plus $500 per qualifying child under 17), an additional $600 per week in unemployment compensation plus increases in food assistance, tax credits for employers who offered paid sick leave, bailouts & loans for airlines & other industries, & loans & grants for small businesses.

The federal guidelines & state orders described above are in violation of the Constitution of We the People of the United States as follows: 1) the prohibition of the free exercise of religion & assembly violates the First Amendment; 2) the picking of winners & losers, as in providing money to some industries, like the airlines, but not others in the rescue bills, violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; 3) the impairing of the ability of people to fulfill contracts by forcing them to shelter in place is a violation of Article I, Section 10; 4) the threatening of seizure & jailing people, without a warrant or due process, for disregarding orders to not assemble is in violation of Amendments Four & Fourteen; 5) the deprivation of liberty & property without due process of law when ordered to shelter in place with no means of securing the necessities of life violates the Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments; 6) the shutting down of gun stores to prevent the sale of firearms or ammunition is a violation of the Second Amendment: & 7) none of the money spent was for any of the constituionally enumerated functions of Congress or the President.

 

Here’s what the above constitutional violations specifically meant to people all over the country: 1) members of a church in Greenville, MS sitting in their cars with windows closed in the church parking lot listening to a church service on the radio, were asked to leave by police, & those who didn’t were each served with $500 tickets; 2) a paddle boarder alone on the ocean in Malibu was arrested; 3) San Clemente officials ordered the filling in of a skateboarding park with 37 tons of sand; 4) a man in Brighton, CO was handcuffed for playing ball with his wife & six year old daughter in an empty field; 5) the mayor of Louisville, KY prohibited drive-thru church services in which people never left their cars but did not prohibit a multitude of other non-religious drive-ins & drive-thrus like drive-thru liquor stores; 6) the Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer micromanaged her constitutional violations by proclaiming which products stores could sell – people could stand ten feet away from cordoned off paint & vegetable seeds they could not buy after buying lottery tickets, liquor, & candy; 7) Whitmer also OKed boat rides for a man & his dog in the lake to go fishing as long as the boat did not have a motor; 8) the newly elected KY governor sent state police out to record license plates of people attending mass church services on Easter Sunday so the people could be contacted & forced to self quarantine for two weeks; 9) Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned people they will be locked up for going to local parks – later violating her own stay @ home orders when she was caught getting her hair done saying she is in the public light & needs to look good (much like NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio being driven to his gym, while other gyms were closed).

The above examples coupled with the unchecked BLM & Antifa violent crime spree (arson, assault, & damaging business owners' property & federal court buildings) during the "summer of love" in 2020 was America on Trump's watch in his final year in office.  Instead of demonstrating presidential leadership to ameliorate the hard Covid times by fulfilling his oath to "take Care that the laws be faithfully executed," Article II, Section 3, Trump regularly disrupted the daily Covid TV briefings-updates by getting into arguments with members of the Press over minutia while vulnerable senior citizens, who were interested in the updates as a matter of life & death, only saw non-productive sparring matches day after day. 

Since Trump's last year in office & continuing today he has not produced a record of freedom, & bad jokes about being a dictator for one day & the speech to the National Rifle Association regarding the concept of a three-term presidency should be taken seriously by the man whose primary requirement for selecting a vice presidential running mate is that he or she believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.

If Trump is reelected, will his second term be more like his first three years in office or the last year including his despicable actions & false claims made after the 2020 presidential election that persist today?  I for one don't want to find out.

In short, in his last year in office "Trump presided over the greatest restriction of individual liberties this country has ever known.  He didn't stand up for the Constitution when it really mattered."2

__________________

1.  RFK Jr. speaking @ the Libertarian National Convention on May 24, 2024.

2.  Ibid.

The History & Future of Abortion In America

With Congressman Mike Gallagher's (R, WI) resignation from the House on April 19 the 2022 GOP midterm election red wave victory has now dwindled to effectively one vote: 217 to 213.  The original red wave five vote margin in January, 2023 was bad enough @ 223 to 212 but that majority has shrunk with George Santos being expelled (& replaced by Democrat Tom Suozzi) & four GOP resignations (McCarthy, Bill Johnson, Buck, & now Gallagher).  Democrat Brian Higgins, who resigned on February 2, will be replaced by Democrat Timothy Kennedy who won a special election to replace Higgins on April 30.  Also McCarthy will be replaced by a Republican in the May 21 special election in California CD 20 so that will be a pick up.

Republican commentators had forecast a red tsunami in the 2022 midterms by Republican candidates winning 245 House seats & expanding their total in the Senate to as many as 55 seats.  What else would you expect after two years of Biden's progressive onslaught on the country & his cognitive decline - which has only gotten worse since November, 2022.  

The basis of Republicans' 2022 enthusiasm for the probability, in their minds, for taking back control of both the House & Senate in a red wave was the historical fact that the sitting President's party loses congressional seats in midterm elections most of the time - especially ones, like in 2022, where three quarters of the citizens thought the country was going in the wrong direction.  But in addition to the poor House showing Republicans actually lost one seat in the Senate (Fetterman over Oz succeeding retiring Toomey) & two governors races - one flip in Arizona (Hobbs over Lake succeeding term limited Ducey) & one pick up in Maryland (Moore over Cox succeeding term limited Hogan).

In 2018 Democrats made a net gain (blue wave) of 41 House seats thereby putting a check on Trump's last two years in office - a typical check made regularly on all but a very few presidents in our history.  So why didn't the country put this type of check on Biden?  There were clues all over the place leading up to the 2022 midterm elections & they centered around abortion - as described below.

In June, 2022 the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization concluding that the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion thereby overturning both Roe v. Wade (1973) & Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey (1992) - the two previous decisions that people who sought abortions relied on for legality.  

In summary, the Supreme Court found in Dobbs that "the Constitution makes no reference to abortion, & no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision.  The primary holding of the decision - "The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe & Casey are overruled; & the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people & their elected representatives."

In response to the Dobbs decision French President Emmanuel Macron pledged to make abortion an irreversible right in France & he lived up to that pledge when on Monday March 3, 2024 the French parliament changed Article 34 of the French Constitution to read "a women has the guaranteed freedom to have recourse to an abortion" - two thirds of the French citizenry had polled in favor of abortion rights which now are legally entrenched in France in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy.  See the difference between how France & America treated this in the analysis of Roe v. Wade & Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey that follows hereinafter that shows American courts were more interested in getting what they wanted than doing their job of applying the law under the Constitution.

Naturally, the hostile anti-American media thought of the worst ways they could to describe the Dobbs decision, reporting such things as the Supreme Court "repealed the constitutional right to an abortion" or "eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion," as if there ever was a constitutional right to have an abortion - which we will see below there never has been.

The Founders created a government whose purpose was to secure individual natural rights with the power of the people superior to any power of the new government created under the Constitution.  The national government has limited & enumerated powers & functions under the Constitution & no general authority over state governments other than to require all officers of the several states to be bound by oath to support the Constitution.  The primary holding of the Dobbs decision above is in accordance with these principles.

But let's delve deeper than the text of the Constitution. 

Although both anti-abortion groups & pro-choice groups try to tilt the history of the legality of abortion in early America the records show that from 1600 through the 18th century abortion was practiced in some places & outlawed in others.  In British colonies abortion was legal if performed before quickening while in French colonies abortion was illegal but frequently performed.  Abortion was illegal in Spanish & Portuguese colonies in the Americas.  Although not illegal in most states in colonial America, by 1776 & until the mid-1800s abortion was considered socially unacceptable.  But one by one states started passing anti-abortion laws during the 63 years of the Victorian era (1837 to 1901)  The laws got stronger after 1860 & were more vigorously enforced.  Except for Kentucky, by 1910 abortion was an illegal criminal offense in every state, other than to save the life of the mother.  Abortion was illegal in Kentucky but not considered a criminal offense.

.  

So we can see that the history of abortion from 1776 to 1973 has been that there was neither a national ban nor a national right to abortion.  The people of each state decided the legality of abortion in their respective states for the first 197 years of our country - meaning the Dobbs decision was in accordance with the country's history.

Additionally, I researched the above history with a special eye as to whether abortion could be considered a privilege or immunity of citizens of the United States as stated in both Article IV of the Constitution & the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution that was ratified July 9, 1868 - although I thought that the history makes this virtually impossible for the following reasons: 1) abortion was not enumerated in the text of the Constitution in 1868, 2) abortion was not enumerated in the Civil Rights act of 1866, 3) abortion has not been enumerated in the Constitution after 1868, & 4) abortion is not an unenumerated right that has been deeply rooted in our nation's history & traditions in a supermajority of the states.  In fact the above history shows that abortion was not deeply rooted but was uprooted over time to the point that by 1910 it was illegal in every state in the Union.

So what happened in 1973 was that an unmarried pregnant woman from Texas, pseudonym Jane Roe for Norma McCorvey, wanted an abortion & found feminist lawyers & an activist Supreme Court ready, willing, & able to oblige - after the birth of the child, her third.  Abortion was illegal in Texas, except for those performed to save the life of the mother, during these legal proceedings which started in 1969 .  

In Roe, the 1973 Supreme Court had relied on the 1965 Griswold v. Connecticut decision that struck down a contraceptive ban to married couples based on a made up constitutional right to privacy.  The 1965 Supreme Court had found the right to privacy because "specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life & substance."  The 1973 Justices extended the right to privacy to Roe because this right was imagined to be implied by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. 

Instead of using the type of analysis I provided above using the Privileges Or Immunities clause & the history of abortion like the 2022 Supreme Court did in finding that there is no constitutional right to abortion, the 1973 Supreme Court found that women had the right to end pregnancies through abortions up to viability & that individual state laws banning abortion before viability were unconstitutional which has resulted in over 50 million lives lost.  It is the height of insult & judicial activism to base such a momentous decision by extending a fictitious right to privacy found in the Griswold case that was based on penumbras (partially shaded outer regions of the shadow cast by an opaque object) & emanations (an abstract but perceptible thing that issues or originates from a source) hiding a right to privacy not clearly seen or stated & that never existed under the Constitution.  It is no wonder that Justice Antonin Scalia called the Roe reasoning "garbage."

The Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey decision of 1992 reaffirmed abortion rights also based on the Due Process clause but this time using the 1992 Justices definition of "liberty" - namely, "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, & of the mystery of human life."  This definition of liberty was another rejection by progressives of the founders belief in an unchanging human nature.  The Casey decision is also as insulting as Roe - both cases go to the heart of fundamental questions of morality, liberty, & government power. 

In deciding the Roe & Casey cases the way the Justices did is tantamount to reading a sentence containing no more than three letter words like "The car is red" & concluding that the car is one of pink polka dots on a black background. 

Both the Roe & Casey decisions rate with Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) as the worst Supreme Court decisions in our history & deserved to be overturned by Dobbs.  The Dred Scott decision was overturned by the 13th & 14th amendments - the amendment process provides a much more entrenched way of making law than relying on the courts like the plaintiffs in Roe & Casey did.  See above reference to France enshrining abortion rights into the French Constitution.

In summary, the two Supreme Court decisions, Roe & Casey, making abortions legal were clearly using the courts to make abortion law never passed by the elected branches while the 2022 Supreme Court was interpreting law in Dobbs based on the Constitution & the principles I laid out above regarding the history of abortion in the United States.  A tremendous difference.

But let's get back to June, 2022 when the Dobbs decision was announced & progressives saw a great opportunity for electoral gain.  Of particular importance to Republicans who were denied the red wave they expected in November, 2022 is the fact that inflation reached its 40 year annual CPI high point of 9.1% the same month in 2022 that the Dobbs decision was released, meaning that in @ least the 2022 midterms abortion was a more important issue to the voters than inflation.

Republicans had called for the repeal of Roe for over 50 years & many conservative states enacted trigger laws that were prepared for such an overturning, but this euphoria was short lived.

Right out of the box, on August 2, 2022 conservative Kansas overwhelmingly voted to keep abortion a state constitutional right by a 60 to 40 landslide margin.  Conservative commentators said the uproar of the May leak of the Court's draft opinion overturning Roe would fade by November & would not be a significant issue compared to inflation in the midterms.  Well, the abortion issue brought every Democrat, most Independents, & some Republicans out to vote in the 2022 midterms. 

Since the Dobbs decision Kansas, Kentucky, California, Vermont, Michigan, & Ohio have all moved in the pro-abortion direction with ballot initiatives.  In addition, Milwaukee County elected a judge by 11 points who campaigned on striking down the state's anti-abortion law that had been enacted in 1849 (part of the history presented above).

States planning (or hoping) to put abortion directly on the ballot in 2024 to either directly reject further restrictions or fully enshrine abortion into their constitutions include Florida, Arizona, Montana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, & Maryland.  I added "hoping" because there are tens or hundreds of thousands of signatures required plus approval of the wording of the ballot measure so some may not make it.

Recognizing the potent electoral power of the abortion issue, coupled with the fact that they have no other issues to campaign on @ all, Democrats obviously plan to keep abortion front & center especially in swing states.

So far in 2024 the Florida Supreme Court approved the law enacted after Dobbs that banned abortion after six weeks but also approved a ballot measure for November, that if successful, would undo the ruling regarding the six weeks law (making that law unconstitutional) & would restore abortion rights like the state had before Roe was overturned.

And in swing state Arizona you can expect an all out effort to get a pro abortion ballot initiative ready for November after the Arizona Supreme Court's decision to ban nearly all abortions when they brought back an 1864 law (again, see above history) that did just that.  A WSJ poll shows good prospects for the initiative with 9 out of 10 Democrats, two thirds of Independents, & one third of Republicans supporting abortion rights in Arizona.  Arizona had a 15 week ban on abortions before the 1864 law was reinstated but what restrictions, if any, for the expected initiative are not yet known.

And there is no presidential leadership from Biden or Trump regarding all this abortion activity.  Issue by issue they both consistently prove they do not deserve to be president.

Biden is a self-proclaimed practicing Catholic who paradoxically called for restoring Roe v. Wade as the law on the land in his State of the Union Address on March 7 - "Like most Americans I believe Roe v. Wade got it right.  And I thank Vice President Harris for being an incredible leader, defending reproductive freedom & so much more.  But my predecessor came to office determined to see Roe v. Wade overturned.  He's the reason it was overturned.  In fact, he brags about it.  Look @ the chaos that has resulted. . . If Americans send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you, I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again."  See more on "the law of the land" hereinafter.

Several Catholic bishops have found Biden's position on abortion to be an offense to the Catholic church & that many of his actions, such as making the sign of the cross @ abortion rallies is sacrilegious & a mockery of the Catholic faith.  Bishop Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois specifically has called Biden's advocating for abortion an act of heresy that goes against the sixth commandment (Exodus 20:13): "Thou shalt not kill."

Although Biden attends Mass regularly his political actions show he has no respect for Catholic doctrine.  But like so many things he does & says that are obviously false he may not understand the significance of what he is doing & saying as he repeatedly mumbles various phrases or reads off a teleprompter about Bidenomics or the willful non-enforcement of illegal crossings @  the southwest border or abortion.

Biden is just another temporary politician incapable of following his oath of office but is expert in determining how many votes an issue will bring him.  In this case he went from his specific clear oath to "preserve, protect, & defend the Constitution" to supporting a non-existent right to privacy found in the "penumbras, formed by emanations" in the Bill of Rights that leads to a right to abortion tied by implication to the Due Process clause.  In short, his presidency can make anything up.

After waiting many months to state his position on abortion post Dobbs, Trump released a milquetoast video on the subject on April 8 that only made Democrats happier as it did little more than restate most of the primary holding of the Dobbs decision that Roe is overturned & the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the states - the problem Republicans were facing before the video was released.  Trump also took credit in the video for nominating three justices who helped make the Dobbs decision a reality, which is red meat for Democrat campaign ads.

Much of Trump's position on abortion in the video is similar to Nikki Haley's position - talk about a birdbrain!

Like Biden, Trump said that "the Supreme Court decision is the law of the land, or in this case the law of the states."  No, the "Constitution, & the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; & all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land" - Supremacy Clause, Article VI, Clause 2.  Dobbs was the Supreme Court decision that interpreted,  followed, & applied the Supremacy Clause in the above named abortion case.  Wouldn't you hope that these two would know this by now?

For 50 years Republicans have emphasized that overturning Roe will not eliminate abortion in America - it will merely return the issue to the states.  Of course Democrats have a field day pointing out that a woman living in a state where abortion is illegal has the inconvenience & impracticality of traveling hundreds of miles to have her abortion.  It takes only a few seconds to say "returned to the states" but the effort involved with what this means will also be a focus of Democrat campaign ads.

Whenever Trump takes a back seat to someone else's supposed power (like when he said Pelosi was in charge of Capitol security on January 6 as if he had nothing to do with it although he was responsible for security of the entire nation) you know that something is not right with the issue for him personally - in this case blaming the Supreme Court for putting abortion in the hands of the states.  Trump uncharacteristically looked for company in the video by saying that Ronald Reagan had the same exceptions to bans on abortion as Trump does himself.  I never remember Trump talking about President Reagan in this respectful tone before. 

In 2015 Trump said that he had "evolved" on the abortion issue from 1999 when he was pro-choice.  Trump said in 2016 that he would select Supreme Court justices from a list prepared by Leonard Leo, then Executive Vice President of the Federalist Society - which Trump did resulting in Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, & Barrett joining the high court with all of them voting to repeal Roe.  Trump is now very careful about bragging about this.

In 2018 Trump endorsed a 20 week federal abortion ban, which turned to a 15 week federal ban in March, 2024.  In April Trump said he would not support any Federal ban on abortion so we can see his position is all over the map.

In 2023, when Trump went out of his way to disparage Ron DeSantis, he called the Florida law banning abortion after six weeks "a terrible thing & a terrible mistake."  And in Arizona, after the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a law banning abortion throughout pregnancy that had been in effect from 1864 to 1973, Trump said the pre-Roe law & outright ban had gone too far & called on the Arizona legislature to remove it.

Majorie Dannenfelder, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said "We are deeply disappointed in President Trump's (current) position . . . Saying the issue is 'back to the states' cedes the national debate to the Democrats who are working relentlessly to enact legislation mandating abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy.  If successful, they will wipe out states rights."

But when all of the Trump abortion dust settles it comes down to Trump saying both in the video & last January referring to the abortion issue "I will say this: you have to win elections.  Otherwise, you're going to be back where you were, & you can't let that ever happen again.  You have to win elections."  So Trump will keep changing his position on abortion until he thinks enough people have heard him say what they want to hear - enough people that will get him the votes "to win elections."  

That is no position @ all.

Community Colleges Augment ACTA School Evaluations

Every year I present an update of the evaluations of colleges & universities of the American Council Of Trustees & Alumni (ACTA) that is published as the ACTA What Will They Learn? report.  The original report started in 2009 & each year ACTA updates their evaluations of over 1,100 colleges & universities grading them from A to F based on what the schools require students to learn in order to graduate.  There are some famous high priced schools that receive failing grades year after year.

Thanks to ACTA Vice President of Development & Philanthropy Emily Koons Jae for letting me know that the grading category has expanded to acknowledge seven schools as A+.  ACTA also has developed a B+ grade that 71 schools have earned.

In summary, out of the 1,132 schools ACTA evaluated this year 7 are A+, 13 are A, 71 are B+, 262 are B, 339 are C, 291 are D, & 149 are F.

Click here to view ACTA's homepage from which you can select any school you want more information on.  I know of no better place to start, or really finish, in choosing a college.  Without this resource a student may have a certain school or two in mind but nothing to objectively compare them to.  What better way than to use this resource to see if there is a better &/or more cost effective way to get a college education.  

Emily reminds us that "With the college decision deadline right around the corner, we encourage students, parents, and high school counselors to visit WhatWillTheyLearn.com. On the website, users can view and compare each school’s WWTL grade, as well as data on tuition costs, graduation rates, student-to-faculty ratios, free speech policies, and more.  ACTA updates the WWTL ratings on a rolling basis, providing much-needed transparency into educational quality at America’s colleges and universities."

In this regard I have put together this link that lists all 91 schools that received a grade of B+ or higher.  The schools are shown alphabetically thirty on a page so click on all four pages to see them all - Xavier being the only school on page 4.  There are some on this list that I never heard of & plenty that I have, including recent NCAA national champions in both football & basketball.  All five of the service academies, the universities of Georgia, Oklahoma, & Mississippi, Baylor, Clemson, Hillsdale College, JMU, NYU, & Columbia are well known schools that made the list based on academics.  

NYU & Columbia, like other progressive schools, require further evaluation because of their critical-theory-woke alignment & tendencies, including the anti-Israel protests & "Gaza Solidarity Encampments" going on @ campuses across America today.  Mark Levin addressed this on page 258 of American Marxism: "Thus the parent must become intimately familiar with a school's reputation for academic freedom, free speech, traditional education, & the like, or whether it is a hotbed of Marxist radicalism & intolerance."

Usually the ACTA grading system protects against poor school management problems (i.e., school grades of A & B indicate serious institutions of higher learning) but with NYU & Columbia we see that wokeness can sneak in anywhere.

In my forty years of direct personal involvement in higher education I have never tolerated anything close to the encampment protests that encroach on other students ability to learn & freely participate in campus life - whether it was the Duke lacrosse players episode, pie throwing @ Brown, or the minuteman incident @ Columbia let alone campuses with "speech codes."  Once a school shows they don't have the management & leadership to squelch critical-theory-wokeness, parents & students have to be ready to pull the plug & move on to a university that can provide the education they are looking for.  It is that important & I know a student who recently transferred 2,000 miles from their last school to find the right fit.

There are reports that even medical schools have been infected with critical-theory-wokeness.  Glenn Beck has reported "our top medical schools are teaching often MANDATORY classes on social change, antiracism, 'race, power, and privilege,' 'confronting U.S. history,' and how 'gender is a social construct."'  If you are paying tens of thousands of dollars per year to become a doctor (or professional engineer, CPA, pharmacist, airplane pilot, or other professional) & don't think mandatory courses or seminars on critical race theory & gender ideology should be part of your curriculum you should run as fast as you can from that school & transfer to another.   I have seen that finding the right college is a real chore for the last twenty years.  You are making important decisions in the first quarter of your life that will affect your standard of living throughout the rest of your life.

I reported years ago of impending doctor shortages & some readers of this blog have started to experience it & this wokeness in medical schools will only exacerbate the shortage.

But back to the ACTA report.  To tailor your own list - like, for instance, to make a list of all schools receiving an F - click on "Explore Schools" @ the top of the home webpage.  Go to the left hand side & select F from the drop down menu for "Select Grade(s)."  I just did it while writing these instructions & 5 pages of 30 schools per page came up.  You may be surprised @ some of the schools on the F list.

In doing my own surfing on the ACTA website I was glad to see that the University of Oklahoma had virtually the exact same chemical engineering curriculum & academic requirements that UMD had decades ago when I was there.  It was gratifying to see this test of time hold up.

Last fall I finished a two year study to determine whether it is cost effective to replace the first two years of a four year college with study @ a two-year community college.  My work centered on the example of a chemical engineering student graduating from Raritan Valley Community College & transferring his credits to nearby Rutgers.

I found that not only was there significant savings with this arrangement but the success rate outcome is very high - which of course is the most important thing.  The Director of Transfer & Career Services @ Raritan Valley provided me with quite a bit of information including the following criteria of Raritan Valley's chemical engineering curriculum that would be submitted by a graduating Raritan Valley student to Rutgers for transfer acceptance.  Note in this example it is recommended that a summer school course or two be completed before starting the junior year @ a four year college - which in the overall swing of things is a small consideration compared to what is gained using a qualified community college to reduce the ever increasing cost of four year colleges. 

Major: Chemical Engineering - BS (Starting FALL 2001)

Raritan Valley Community College to Rutgers-School of Engineering

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RTP Last Updated: June 22, 2021