Hoist your glass, hum a few bars of “So long it’s been good to know you. Elvis (aka Joe Biden) has left the building. As he departs stage left, democratic pols and main stream media perennially in the tank for the dems along with befuddled celebs jump into action. As they sprint to the podium to declare their love and devotion for the man they just threw overboard, both their relief at Biden’s downfall and their desire to make sure the condemned man had a stupendous last meal is evident.
The dynamic duo, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff got out ahead of the crowd: “he’s beloved, he is respected, and people want him to make that decision.” [Nancy Pelosi, 4 days before she slammed down the hammer on him]. “[Joe Biden] has been one of the most consequential presidents in our nation’s history, and his lifetime of service as a Senator, a Vice President, and now as President has made our country better.” [Statement from Congressman Adam Schiff who also participated in the Biden (symbolic) beheading]. Other media personalities and celebs kissing the ring included Rachel Maddow (of course), Stephen Colbert. Even the Veep and now presidential candidate, weighed in with her usual styleless prose: “Joe Biden’s legacy of accomplishments over the past three years is unmatched in modern history” [Kamala Harris].
Everyone who mattered got in on the benediction. Look over there, a war criminal singing the praises of a fellow war criminal: “From a proud Israeli Zionist to a proud Irish American Zionist, I want to thank you for fifty years of public service and fifty years of support for the state of Israel.” [Benjamin Netanyahu, July 25] Make no mistake about it, Biden’s “support for the state of Israel” has brought him a very bountiful ROI. During his 36 years in the Senate, Biden was the chamber’s biggest recipient of donations from pro-Israeli lobbyists taking in $4.2 million. Moving on to his 2020 presidential campaign, grateful Zionists passed the hat and made his campaign the top beneficiary of their largesse: $3,747,383 [Open Secrets]
“Biden will go down as one of the great ones” Wait a minute what is this a coronation or a requiem for a fallen hero? Should we be readying a spot on Mount Rushmore? Or has TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) induced a state of total amnesia in America’s movers and shakers? History matters and in the case of Joe Biden who has been around so long, it matters immeasurably. So let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane and see how Joe the Senator, Joe the Veep and Joe the President fulfilled his promises to the people who elected him. The two areas that might reveal the real Joe Biden are first his foreign policy with particular emphasis on U.S. wars—both shooting wars and economic ones and second his domestic economic policy.
As a senator Joe Biden had the nasty habit of voting with the republicans as they pandered to the donor class. He voted yeah with his republican brothers and sisters in 1981 to slash the top tax rate paid by the 1% from 70% to 50% and created exemptions from the estate tax for lots of millionaires and billionaires. That was just the beginning. In 1986, Biden voted (along with 32 other Democrats) to pass another of Ronald Reagan’s tax “reforms,” which lowered the top marginal tax rate, already at 50% to 28%. During his long tenure in the Senate, he always took the low road, voting to balance his gifts to the 1% with austerity for the 99%. When it came to making the 99% pay for the government revenue lost by tax cuts to the rich, he voted for draconian changes in Social Security including a gradual increase in the “normal” age for full retirement benefits from 65 to 67. Here’s how slippery Joe defended the undefendable —“While this program is severe, it is the only proposal that will halt the upward spiral of deficits, [which threaten] an economic and political crisis of extraordinary proportions.”
There’s much more havoc that Joe’s undying support of corporate and financial interests wreaked on the 99%. We’ll only touch on two acts which together precipitated the 2008 financial collapse in which 11 million Americans lost their homes — the repeal of Glass Steagall, originally passed during the 1929 depression, prohibiting commercial banks from engaging in risky security trading (too late he described his vote as the “biggest regret” of his career) and the 2000 Commodity Futures Modernization Act, another pig in a poke.
When it came to U.S. involvement in wars (which it never won), both as senator and vice president, Joe never saw a war he couldn’t cheerlead. An early advocate of NATO intervention in Bosnia in the mid-1990s, he doubled down by supporting a resolution authorizing President Clinton to send in American ground troops. He was all in for the Iraq wars (both Clinton’s and Bush’s). You’d be hard pressed to find a war that Joe couldn’t get behind including the war on drugs which by dint of its harsh penalties helped make America the number one penal colony in the world particularly for people of color (another war the U.S. lost).
But the best is yet to come. As Obama’s VEEP, he was pleased as punch to cheerlead the coups and war policies that resulted in the overthrow of democratically elected governments in Honduras, Egypt, and Ukraine and military assaults on Yemen, the destruction of Libya and assassination of its leader, expansion of AFRICOM, the aggressive “pivot to Asia,” the subversion of Venezuela and war against Syria.
“I’m the first president this century to report to the American people that the United States is not at war anywhere in the world.” [Joe Biden, address to the nation, 7/24/2024]
That’s your president doing what American presidents do best. Lying. On the same day he made that [ludicrous] claim, the Pentagon announced air strikes in Yemen (which were unsuccessful). But what really gets the Prez’s juices flowing is the engagement of U.S. ground forces, which he managed to do in five countries (not counting Ukraine or the genocide in Gaza). [Cost of War Project, Brown University Annual Report]
How do we know all this? Because Biden told us —Oh, sure, I had months [to challenge Trump], but I was also doin’ a hell of a lot of other things, like wars around the world, like keeping NATO together, like working––anyway, But look…” [Biden to George Stephanopoulos, 7/25/2024]
While we’re at it, the War Hawk in Chief forbade Ukrainian President Zelensky from negotiating with Putin to end the Ukraine war several months after it started. A tragic decision from the view of both the Ukrainian and Russian people and an expensive decision for Americans who watched $175 billion U.S. taxpayer dollars fly into the most corrupt country in Europe.
But demented Joe wasn’t through enriching those who least deserve it. He was Johnny-on-the-spot becoming a full-blown accessory to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
We can see how well Joe is doing at blowing up the world by checking out the Doomsday Clock (The Doomsday Clock illustrates how close humanity is to self-destruction, due to nuclear weapons and climate change). For purposes of comparison, in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union and the signing of the START treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction treaty) the Doomsday Clock was set at 17 minutes to midnight. Now three decades later, after four ex-presidents and the sitting president have exercised their military muscle and catapulted the U.S into a military juggernaut, the hands of the clock stand at 90 seconds. Since Biden took office and started cranking up the war machine, the doomsday clock has lost another 10 seconds going from 100 seconds to 90, the closest to global nuclear catastrophe it has ever been.
That only counts the shooting wars Biden has led the U.S. into. The Biden administration has also waged world-wide economic war. Remember when Joe announced what the media called “punishing sanctions” on Russia? Joe promised to “turn the ruble into rubble. How did they work out? As the death knell to America’s hopes that it had successfully crippled Russia’s economic engine, the International Monetary Fund predicts that Russia will record economic growth of 3.2% this year, more than in any of the world’s advanced economies.
No doubt about it, the Biden foreign policy is a bust, but what about the domestic economy? Can he hang his hat on how his policies and programs have affected the lives and fortunes of the American people (aka voters)? Let’s check out some of the key metrics of how the economy is doing: Gas has risen more than 50% since the beginning of Biden’s presidency. [AAA, April 2024]; home prices are up 47% [Yahoo Finance, May 2024]; mortgage rates have more than doubled, a 21-year high [Newsweek, 9/26/2023]; most often purchased grocery items up 35% [Wall Street Journal]; during the Biden administration, student loan interest rates went from 3.73% to the current 6.53%. As another mark against the administration, surveys indicate that almost half of Americans (46%) don’t have $500 in savings. Feeling hungry? A Big Mac will cost you 27% more than it did four years ago.
Joe’s entire 52-year career in public office is a troubling tale of betrayal of the peoples’ trust to serve the interests of wealthy backers. On two occasions he made haste to absolve his ultra-rich campaign donors of any responsibility for the highest income inequality the U.S. sports among all advanced nations. In 2018 — “I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason why we’re in trouble.” And in 2019 —”Rich people are just as patriotic as poor people.”
On the campaign trail, he promised to deliver jobs, reduce poverty and tackle climate change. What the American public got instead was wars abroad and austerity at home. What he considers the signature acts of his administration — the Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips Act and the Infrastructure Act have been huge moneymakers for one group of Americans: the billionaires. Have the vast majority of Americans benefitted? No. Inflation is still high, particularly in the service sector (rents, insurance, mortgages etc.) which is 80% of the economy. But American corporations made out like bandits receiving $1.65 trillion in direct subsidies and tax cuts.
There’s lots more to be unimpressed by but what it adds up to is a leader who put politics over principle, who never saw a billionaire or a war he didn’t love, who played havoc with the free speech guarantees of the first amendment, became a partner in genocide and faced with a declining empire set at least one-third of the world on fire.
“Joe Biden will go down as one of the great ones, having led the country out of the disastrous term of his predecessor and quietly doing good things for all Americans… accomplishments that put him up there…with LBJ and FDR. Joe, I can’t imagine where we’d be without your selfless service.” [Ken Burns]
Who are you going to believe Ken Burns, George Clooney, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi or your lying eyes?
