Are you better off?
As much as the media and leftists contributors to these pages want us to believe otherwise, we are not better off than we were four years ago.
Oh sure, there are some who are better off. The very wealthy are better off, as they seem to be no matter who is in office. Since they tend to overwhelmingly vote for leftist/socialist politicians, one must wonder what they have in common with the common man or the day-to-day grind they face? Surely we are past thinking the typical billionaire cares about the average American, aren’t we? But I’m not speaking to them, I’m speaking to you!
Does the average American rejoice in a higher stock market? A market fueled by trillions in deficit spending? Both parties are guilty of this, but the average American is probably not feeling it too much, if at all. Does the average American rejoice in the cost of living? Forget vacations or a new car, just the day-to-day cost of living? Some people can absorb $5 gas. I admit I can, but to the average American this is a tax that is taking away thousands of dollars from every American household. Does the average American think the price of groceries is something to rejoice about? That groceries used to cost $60 or $70 are now well north of $100? Does the average American happily look forward to when they get their yearly insurance premium renewals? Assuming your company doesn’t cancel you, we’ve all seen 20% or 30% increases. In the case of auto insurance, it’s because the price of cars has gone up 20% or 30%.
Does the average American rejoice when they get their utility bills? I’m one of those people who keep track of my spending throughout the years. In January of 2020, Edison was $71, today it is $124. Natural gas was $44, today it’s $98. Water was $49, today it’s $90. Trash was $70.00, today it’s $102. What used to cost $234 now costs $414, an increase of 77%. The government says inflation peaked at 9% and is now 3%. This is an outright lie or a manipulation of the numbers that is epic in scale. Anyone with a brain, even a typical leftist, knows the reality of that lie.
Are we better off with millions of illegals invading our borders? Under Donald Trump it wasn’t great, several hundred thousand a year, but now it’s a couple million per year. Leftists, as is their nature, blame Republicans. They saw the writing on the wall so they, along with some useful Republican halfwits, crafted a bill that would do almost nothing to stem the tide. Let us not forget that Joe Biden, ON DAY ONE, issued 94 executive orders on the border and immigration including stopping the border wall, cancelling “remain in Mexico,” and re-implementing catch and release. Anyone reasonably intelligent, even a garden variety leftist, could have predicted the outcome of this fiasco. But of course, they wanted it to happen, which is why they allowed it to happen! They claim we need new laws, that Congress must act, but don’t let them play us for fools. There are ample laws already on the books that could have prevented the invasion into this country of military-age males from over 150 different countries including China! Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut even had the audacity to call illegals here “undocumented Americans.” He said that, really!
In foreign affairs, we are clearly not better off. President Trump had NATO members increasing their spending. But if you thought the success in that area was a good thing, just look at the reaction recently when Trump said we wouldn’t defend our deadbeat “partners” who weren’t even paying the minimum 2% required by the treaty. We are paying to defend Germany and France and others, and unlike President Joe Biden, Trump won’t be played and he won’t allow Germany to play the American taxpayer. We’re in yet another perpetual war after finally getting out of, disastrously I might add, our last forever war. We had the Abraham Accords and Israel and Saudi Arabia were close to a deal to normalize relations. Now we have conflict in the Middle East on a massive scale mostly because the world’s leftists seem to think Israel is the bad guy and not the terrorists who killed, raped and took hostage innocent Israelis. Talk about useful idiots! How anyone could be so stupid to support Hamas is one of the great mysteries of the universe. But we are led by stupid people who think playing footsie with Iran will make them like us. Pretty please like us, Iran, we’ll even pay you to like us!
No, by every metric we are not better off. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I get why people don’t like Trump. He drives me crazy sometimes, too, but I’m sober enough to look at the results of his policies versus Biden’s policies and come to an easy conclusion that his were better. You don’t have to like the messenger or the delivery, but are we better off than four years ago? The answer is a resounding no. Don’t let the media lie to you. Don’t let pundits lie to you. Just ask yourself, is anything I wrote above wrong?
Brian Richards
Stevenson Ranch
