Contempt for Average Americans

Television personality Katie Couric has made it plain. Herb Croly, one of the founders of the modern Progressive Movement, wrote a century ago in his The Promise of American Life, that

the average American individual is morally and intellectually inadequate to serious and consistent conception of his responsibilities as a democrat.

Couric had this to say on Bell Maher’s podcast:

The socioeconomic disparities are a lot and class resentment is a lot and anti-intellectualism and elitism is what is driving many of these anti-establishment—which are Trump voters—so, I think that is a huge problem that we have to address[.]

We average Americans are just too stupid to be taken seriously by the Know Betters, especially press personalities who style themselves the filter, the gateway, of what they deem fit for us to know.

Some Progressive-Democrats…

…are beginning to rue the consequences of their Party’s no borders policies. But only a couple seem willing to say so out loud. The Chicago City Council’s Budget and Government Operations Committee voted 20-8 to move Progressive-Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson’s wish for $70 million for illegal alien support to the Council floor for debate and voting up. (Aside: is there political featherbedding here? 28 Council members on the Budget Committee out of 50 members on the whole Council.)

Progressive-Democrat 29th Ward Alderman Chris Taliaferro is one of only two of those eight willing to demur from this vocally.

We are not taking care of our own. We have all but forgotten the residents on the West Side and South Side.

The 9th Ward’s Progressive-Democrat Alderman Anthony Beale is the other one choosing to speak up.

Here we are begging for more money when we don’t have money for the people here. We don’t have money for after school programs. We don’t have money to help our kids get off the street. Yet, we would just blow money left and right. That’s a fundamental problem.

Wolf pups in sheep’s clothing, bleating in the wilderness.

Free Speech NPR-Style

And by extension, given the leftist (not the nearby center-left part of the political spectrum) bias of National Public Radio, here is the concept of the Left’s free speech. This is illustrated by NPR‘s retaliation against one of its own who spoke apart from the Narrative™.

Recall that Uri Berliner, a 25-year denizen of NPR and lately Senior Business Editor, wrote an op-ed for The Free Press that called out NPR for its far left and growing farther bias in its news reporting, extending even into the stories it chooses to publish or ignore.

NPR has suspended veteran editor Uri Berliner after he detailed his employer’s “absence of viewpoint diversity” last week in a stunning rebuke of the news organization.
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik reported the five-day suspension without pay began on Friday.

This is what the “news” and ideology opinion outlet and the Left generally think of free speech.

National Public Radio needs to have its Federal subsidies—that’s your and my tax money—cut off entirely. That won’t be much given that 69% of NPR‘s financing comes from “Corporate sponsorships” and “Core and other programming fees,” and 30+% comes from other private sources, but at least we won’t be paying for this abuse out of our own pockets.

Update: Following NPR‘s atrocious behavior regarding free speech, Berliner has resigned altogether from that outlet.

“Tightrope”

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is walking a tightrope as he tries to deal with Israel. President faces pressure from both his left and right on Middle East conflict goes the subheadline.

Maybe pressure from the Left is there, maybe not.

There are two possibilities. One is that Biden is letting himself feel pressure from an extremely vocal but small Leftist faction that supports Hamas’ terrorists in their war against Israel, disguising their protests as support for Palestinians. Their constant chants of “from the river to the sea” demonstrates that disguise. If Biden really is that easily manipulated by the loudness of a small minority of the Left, actually feeling their “pressure,” then he’s too weak to be trusted with reelection to that office.

Alternatively, those extremely loud Hamas supporters aren’t a small Leftist faction, but instead comprise a large and growing portion of the Left and especially of the Progressive-Democratic Party. If that’s the case, that’s a Party as well as a Presidential candidate that can’t be trusted with reelection.

Biden’s Inflation

This is what Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s proudly touted Bidenomics has inflicted on us: continued high inflation.

Tacitly, Biden knows his policies are a failure, but he won’t admit it.

For now, officials said, Biden and his senior aides aren’t planning any major policy or rhetorical shifts.

Yet,

Behind the scenes, administration officials said there was no magic bullet to slow rising prices immediately, an issue that has dogged the president for years.

Rising prices—inflation—has been Biden’s problem since he took office; that’s the time frame of that drily put “for years.” From the Biden-caused sharp increase that damaged so many millions of pocketbooks of us ordinary Americans through that partial fall in inflation, of which Biden is so, and so misleadingly, proud, to the last few months of steadier 3+% inflation, we’re still facing price levels increasing at much higher rates than before Biden began his reign.

Some of Biden’s cost-cutting plans will take months to come to fruition and will do little in the short term to slow the rate of price increases.

[T]ake months to come to fruition: yeah—they’ve taken three years and counting.

Some stubbornly high prices, such as the cost of groceries, are mostly out of the Biden administration’s control.

Here, the news personalities who wrote the article at the link are badly mistaken. ­All of those high prices are fully under the administration’s control. Begin with Biden’s war of destruction on our energy industry. Energy underlies every aspect of our economy: fuel for our personal vehicles, energy to heat our homes in winter and cool them in summer, fuel for generating the electricity that’s needed in every aspect of our personal and business lives, shipping costs for all of our goods and services—including shipment of our groceries—and on and on. By seeking to destroy our coal-, oil-, and natural gas-based energy production, and continuing to passively block development and construction of nuclear power plants, Biden is raising the prices of energy, and that alone raises the price of every single item in our economy. Including those groceries.

Most economists don’t believe Biden can do much at this point to bring down inflation, absent major tax increases or spending cuts that could curtail consumer spending. Even those policies, which aren’t being seriously considered in Washington, would take time to work their way through the economy.

Most economists are right as far as they go. And they’re wrong. Tax increases or government spending cuts would take time to have effect. However, tax increases would reduce economic activity in general by taking even more money out of our private economy than our usurious current tax code does. That reduced economic activity will only lead to continued, if not increased, government spending in the form of welfare handouts, and those lead to greater deficits and debt, and to increased dependence on government.

Government spending cuts won’t, though, lead to less consumer spending. On the contrary, with less government competition for the same goods and services our private economy needs, inflation—and real price levels—would come down, making it easier for us consumers to consume, not harder.

But most economists don’t go far enough. There is much the Biden administration—Biden himself as President—can do that would have more immediate favorable effects on price levels. He can remove his Executive Orders that are interfering with the free flow of goods and services and that inhibit coal, oil, and natural gas production. He can instruct his Departments and Agencies to withdraw their rules that interfere with that free flow and that inhibit energy production.

But he won’t.