The IRS Pleads Poverty - WSJ Opinion

The IRS poverty plea is part of an effort to blame Republicans for not agreeing to the Biden request to expand the IRS budget by $80 billion over 10 years. But most of that money won’t go to faster or better IRS service. The money is for more auditors and audits, even as tax revenue is soaring. The tax agency shouldn’t be rewarded for inefficiency with more money.

It’s just like the “American Rescue Plan,” a massive spending bill to fight COVID, keep schools open, and increase testing capacity. 10 months later, testing supplies are scarce and schools are closed.

The government is an inefficient distributor of capital, and these are but two more reminders.

Biden Follows the Trump Playbook - WSJ Opinion

Mr. Trump went to Georgia just over a year ago to rally voters for the Senate runoff elections. In a rant of a speech, he made false claims about the electoral system, accused Democrats of undemocratic aims, and attacked the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Mr. Biden this week went to Atlanta to rally support for two federal voting bills. In a rant of a speech, he made false claims about the electoral system, accused Republicans of undemocratic aims, and pre-emptively attacked the legitimacy of the 2022 election. Now who’s the wrecking ball?

How great is wireless printing?

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Biden Expresses Doubt About Passage of Elections Bill - WSJ

“The honest to God answer is I don’t know if we can get this done,” Mr. Biden told reporters Thursday after a closed-door lunch with the Senate Democratic caucus.

Tough to see the day when the sitting President gives up so easily and join sides with Jefferson Davis. Our democracy is now hanging by half of a thread!!!

Weather station soaking up the rays. Really enjoying the day taking it easy and recharging its batteries.

Supreme Court Blocks Biden Vaccine Rules for Private Employers, Allows Them for Healthcare Workers - WSJ

The high court, however, did give the administration more latitude in the healthcare industry, allowing it to impose a vaccine mandate for more than 10 million healthcare workers whose facilities participate in Medicare and Medicaid, a holding that leaves one part of the president’s Covid-19 playbook in place.

Vaccination requirements for employees in healthcare are the industry norm. They aren’t standard in non-healthcare employment.

I think the big disappointment is that it took SCOTUS to affirm such a basic principle.

Sinema Rules Out Weakening Filibuster, Dealing Blow to Biden’s Election-Law Push - WSJ

“While I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” Ms. Sinema said on the Senate floor.

More like Senator Davis, amirite?

Recent polling shows softness in support for the president among some younger voters and other traditional pillars of the Democratic Party, groups that could be energized by a renewed push on voting rights.

To be clear, Biden knows these bills will never pass and the filibuster won’t get changed, but he’s on a war path to bolster his deeply underwater poll numbers.

Redesign the Senate and federalize elections all for the political benefit of a single politician? Talk about self-serving.

But, then again, what has this Administration and Congress been but over-promising and never delivering?

Tensions Rise Between Fauci, GOP Over Covid-19 Pandemic Response - WSJ

In an unusual move, Health and Human Services spokesman Ian Sams on Tuesday issued a statement defending Dr. Fauci and accusing Republicans of spreading misinformation. “At a time when America is seeing rising Covid cases, it’s disappointing and frankly unacceptable that Republican senators chose to spend a hearing with the country’s leading public health experts spreading conspiracy theories and lies about Dr. Fauci, rather than how we protect people from Covid-19,” Mr. Sams said.

I’m old enough to remember when Dr. Fauci worked in the Trump Administration and the media accused him of lying about the pandemic from the podium.

Putin Is Running Rings Around the West - WSJ Opinion

Now the Biden administration is simultaneously proclaiming overseas that America is back, in all its order-building awesomeness, and maintaining at home that democracy is one voting-rights bill away from collapse.

Russia, NATO Fail to Resolve Differences in Ukraine Talks - WSJ

“We have made it clear and we told the Russians directly again today that if Russia further invades Ukraine, there will be significant costs and consequences well beyond what they faced in 2014,” Ms. Sherman told reporters Wednesday in Brussels.

Except that Obama and NATO basically threw Putin the keys in 2014 and the G7 wouldn’t let him come to the clubhouse anymore.

U.S. Inflation Reaches Fastest Pace Since 1982 - WSJ

The Labor Department said the consumer-price index—which measures what consumers pay for goods and services—rose 7% in December from the same month a year ago, up from 6.8% in November. That was the fastest pace since 1982 and marked the third straight month in which inflation exceeded 6%.

But the climate, tho.

Bottom line is very simple: The ideologues in the Senate want to turn what the Founding Fathers called ‘the cooling saucer of democracy’ into the rubber stamp of dictatorship. We will not let them. They want, because they can’t get their way on every judge, to change the rules in mid-stream, to wash away 200 years of history. They want to make this country into a banana republic, where if you don’t get your way, you change the rules. Are we going to let them? It’ll be a doomsday for democracy if we do.

- Sen. Chuck Schumer, 2005

Walmart Online Grocery’s “out of stock” feature is not good at all.

Why must the joy of morning coffee dissipate so quickly?

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This is the definition of sin: the misuse of powers given us by God for doing good.

- St. Basil the Great

My son, hold fast to your duty, busy yourself with it, grow old while doing your task.

- Sirach 11:20

SEC Pushes for More Transparency From Private Companies - WSJ

“When they’re big firms, they can have a huge impact on thousands of people’s lives with absolutely no visibility for investors, employees and their unions, regulators, or the public,” said Democratic SEC Commissioner Allison Lee, who has called for the change.

If investors aren’t given information to satisfy their due diligence requirements, then they won’t give the companies their money.

So why does the SEC need to be involved in private market transactions?

Ms. Lee, fellow Democratic commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, and key members of SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s staff have all expressed a desire to draw more companies into the public markets. Doing so would also increase the impact of Mr. Gensler’s plans to scale up disclosure requirements for public companies around climate change and other issues, supporters say.

Oh, not to promote healthy markets, to encourage good governance, or for economics. It’s for purely ideological reasons.

Report: Of The 4.2 Million Americans Who Quit Their Jobs In December, 74% Worked For Kamala Harris - The Babylon Bee

“The turnover in there is unimaginable. I was still in the parking lot when I saw my replacement dive out of the second-story window just to get out of there.”

This is one of those satire articles that is so close to the truth that people think it’s real.

Globalization Was Supposed to Prevent War; Russia May Be Showing the Opposite - WSJ

The Wall Street Journal has reported that, while the U.S. is loudly threatening harsh economic reprisals against Moscow for any move on Ukraine, it also is reluctant to take steps to curb Russian energy exports, or to expel Russia from the dollar-denominated international finance system. Why? Because, in today’s global energy market, such moves would risk raising energy prices for U.S. consumers in a time of already-high inflation, while also hurting the economies of European allies with much more extensive trade and financial ties to Russia.

This is one of the aspects of the “strategic pause” Joe Manchin was talking about. We need to confront a belligerent Russia, but the wasteful policies of the last year used up all of our dry powder. Now the Administration can’t afford the political cost of higher inflation and prices and Putin is further enabled to do as he pleases.

It can hardly be a coincidence that Mr. Putin has threatened Ukraine now, in the depths of winter, when Europe’s need for Russian gas is highest, and public fears of lost access to that gas, and of the resulting global effects, are greatest.

Elizabeth Holmes Can’t Be the American Dream - WSJ

Peloton Interactive sold investors on a fantasy that financing and the internet could render its multithousand-dollar hardware both accessible and affordable, thus revolutionizing fitness through “democratization”—no matter that running and walking outdoors has always been available and free to all.

Okay, that’s pretty funny.

Banks Are Making It Easier to Get Credit Cards - WSJ

The average annual percentage rate, or APR, on interest-charging credit cards climbed to a near-record high of 17.13% in the third quarter from 15.91% in the first quarter, according to the Federal Reserve, before slipping to 16.44% in November.

How’s the weather up there?

AOC Accuses COVID Virus Of Just Wanting To Date Her - The Babylon Bee

Typical COVID, just completely obsessed and trying to get with a brave woman of color.

The Vaccine Mandate ‘Work-Around’ May Run Aground - WSJ Opinion

The Chief brought up a re-tweet last year by White House chief of staff Ronald Klain hailing the mandate as the “ultimate work-around.” “I mean, this has been referred to the approach as a work-around. And I’m wondering what it is you’re trying to work around?” the Chief asked

Carving Up Biden’s Inflation Beef - WSJ Opinion

Thanks for the lecture, but back to Econ 101, Mr. President. Meat prices fell in the five years before the pandemic, and markets didn’t suddenly become less competitive. Like so much else in the Biden era, meat prices have soared amid surging demand, rising production costs and constrained supply.

A year of bad policies gets runaway inflation and mismatched supply and demand.

That or all of the sudden, as the Administration suggests, major players in every sector all decided at the same time to engage in separate but identical criminal price-fixing schemes.

The hilarious part about the disconnect of Team Biden is how apparent their incompetence is to the public. They keep telling us that the Emperor is wearing the finest of clothes, but our eyes tell us the real truth.

It’s 12 months of executive orders, misguided policies, and reckless spending that’s culminated in this particular brew of economic hardship.