Liberty & Prosperity Blog

Joe Biden is away from the White House this week despite the urgent COVID matters that need his attention. The thing that's missing from this administration on COVID, apart from a coherent plan, is a sense of urgency in addressing the problems new variants have presented. In this post , I wrote about the Strategic National Stockpile. The SNS is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, aka HHS. People are just noticing that Xavier Becerra, the HHS Secretary, has been MIA since his confirmation hearings. That's understandable since he was the California Attorney General after being a bomb-throwing back-bench congressman in DC. But I digress. Joe Biden got into office by promising to "shut down the virus" instead of shutting down the country. In the end, though, Mr. Biden wasn't even able to get enough COVID tests ordered. Last week, Joe Biden attempted to shift the problem away from his administration and onto the governors when he said that there isn...

Joe Biden isn't aware that he's a failure, especially economically. As this article cites, this was the year voters lost faith in Biden. When Mr. Biden took office, inflation was 1.3%. Today, it's 6.8% and rising. In his tweets , Biden claims credit for President Trump's economic policies. Instead of insisting on giving credit where it's due, Biden takes credit for what's happened: The economy I inherited nearly a year ago wasn’t just in crisis — it wasn’t working for working people. We passed the American Rescue Plan and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to help change that. We’re rebuilding our economy from the bottom up and middle out — not the top down. — President Biden (@POTUS) December 29, 2021 That's an outright lie. Inflation was 1.3%, wages for blue collar workers were increasing twice as fast as white collar wages, unemployment for minority communities were the lowest in our nation's history and millions of people were lifted out of poverty....

The good news for Adam Schiff is that today is Devin Nunes' last day as ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, aka HPSCI. The bad news for Mr. Schiff is that Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy picked Mike Turner to replace Mr. Nunes as ranking member. When the GOP retakes the majority in January, 2023, Turner will then become chairman of HPSCI. The first time I noticed Mike Turner was during his cross-examination of Gordon Sondland, then the US Ambassador to the EU, during the first faux Trump impeachment. This is that cross-examination: At a time when Foggy Bottom is being its corrupt worst, we need someone who isn't afraid of taking on the Swamp. This is proof that Rep. Turner is smart enough, tough enough and willing to keep digging until he gets the truth. Turner said in a statement, "The House Intelligence Committee's work is critical to our national security and as the Ranking Member I am committed to supporting the men and women in ...

On Wednesday, I wrote this post to talk about the Strategic National Stockpile, aka SNS. The SNS "is part of the federal medical response infrastructure and can supplement medical countermeasures needed by states, tribal nations, territories and the largest metropolitan areas during public health emergencies." I learned that the SNS "team works every day to prepare and respond to emergencies, support state and local preparedness activities, and ensure availability of critical medical assets to protect the health of Americans." In short, the Biden administration didn't replenish the SNS in a timely fashion. That means that they failed miserably. They didn't "prepare and respond to emergencies, support state and local preparedness activities, and ensure availability of critical medical assets to protect the health of Americans." That's their mission. If they did nothing else in life, they had an affirmative responsibility to stockpile "medi...

Earlier this week, Joe Biden said that there wasn't a federal solution to COVID. Apparently, that's a CYA line that Mr. Biden doesn't really believe. It's apparent because the federal government is playing a role in COVID response with sending out much-needed supplies: The Biden administration has boosted federal support to more than 30 states over the last two weeks by providing ventilators, ambulances and protective equipment in the fight against the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus. The Strategic National Stockpile is something I didn't know about before this week. It's something worth knowing, especially during a pandemic. According to this website , "The Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) is part of the federal medical response infrastructure and can supplement medical countermeasures needed by states, tribal nations, territories and the largest metropolitan areas during public health emergencies. The supplies, medicines, and devic...

Yesterday, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid died at the age of 82 . He'd battled pancreatic cancer since 2018. Reid was best known for the lies he told against GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. In those lies from 2012, Reid said that Mitt Romney hadn't paid taxes in 10 years : "So the word is out that he has not paid any taxes for ten years," Reid said on the Senate floor in August 2012. "Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t." After he retired from the Senate, Reid was interviewed by Dana Bash. Ms. Bash asked if he regretted telling those whoppers. He replied "Well, they can call it whatever they wantd. Romney didn’t win, did he?" Here's that interview: Harry Reid was one of the most dishonest, hyperpartisan Democrats in Senate history. The world is a better place without him in it. The Senate is a better institution without him in it. That being said, I'm thankful for Sen. Reid deploying the nuclear option to...

It's impossible to read this bill without getting mightily upset. In Subtitle E--Testing, SEC. 2401, it says "In General.--In addition to amounts otherwise available, there is appropriated to the Secretary of Health and Human Services (in this subtitle referred to as the "Secretary") for fiscal year 2021, out of any money in the Treasury not otherwise appropriated, $47,800,000,000, to remain available until expended, to carry out activities to detect, diagnose, trace, and monitor SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 infections and related strategies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19." In short, Sec. 2401 instructs the administration to put together a plan "to detect, diagnose, trace, and monitor SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 infections and related strategies to mitigate the spread of COVID-19." To execute the creation of that plan, Congress appropriated "$47,800,000,000." (That's $47.8B.) In light of this information, the first question that must be asked...