Tag: Biden administration

…meanwhile…

WEDNESDAY 1/25/23

Tanks to Ukraine – Germany will now deliver a supply of its Leopard 2 tanks (above) to Ukraine to support its effort to push back Russian forces. The NATO country initially had resisted sending its own tanks in favor of Poland delivering its German-made Leopard 2s, but an apparent reversal by the Biden administration on sending American-made M1 Abrams tanks prompted Germany’s decision, The Recount says.

Strategy: The Leopard 2 tanks are considered more crucial to Ukraine’s defense against Russia in that they’re much easier to train on and better-suited for Ukrainian terrain. 

Meanwhile, Zelenskyy Tackles Corruption: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has removed “nearly a dozen” top officials to contain a number of corruption scandals as the West continues to send military and humanitarian aid. The Wall Street Journal notes that corruption under Zelenskyy’s administration is “small compared with the previous Ukrainian governments – some accused of stealing billions of dollars in public funds…” 

U.S. Aid Last Year: The White House approved about $48 billion in aid to Ukraine in 2022, the Council on Foreign Relations says https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts

Republican Resistance: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has said his caucus is not interested in writing a “blank check” to Ukraine, which seems as much a nod to sympathy among MAGA-right Republicans for Russian President Vladimir Putin as it is more traditional GOP fiscal conservatism.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

The New Boss

By Stephen Macaulay

When people get new jobs, and they happen to be at upper management or executive positions, they like to change things to make it more in line with how they do things. For example, I once had a new boss who detested paper clips and demanded that everything be stapled. While that seems like not a big deal, it surely was to those who had spent years accumulating paper clips.

So imagine what happens when you become the President of the United States and have the ability to do things somewhat more substantive than determining when breaks can be taken or expense reports filed or whether transoceanic trips can be flown in Economy Comfort rather than steerage. New bosses have lots of power.

Joe Biden is the new guy. He wants to do things his way. After all, he did win the election. (Guess I might have stuck “Spoiler Alert” at the beginning of this paragraph.) One of his biggest priorities is to reverse the Trump administration’s harsh initiatives that put restrictions on immigration. 

Recently departed President Trump tried to prevent counting non-citizens in the 2020 Census. As a result, the Trump administration has delayed the census count past its Constitutionally mandated due date. While it may seem odd, not counting non-citizens violates Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution. Yeah, that Constitution. The resulting delay of the count past the Census Bureau’s December 31 deadline also means state Electoral College vote numbers and House of Representative districts cannot be apportioned.

Another Biden administration executive order also ends the “Muslim” travel ban. This called for restricted travel and immigration from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Somalia Yemen, Eritrea, Nigeria, Myanmar, Kyrgyzstan, and Tanzania. Not specifically a “Muslim” travel ban, it was one with a wink. Do you think that were there not such a restriction, people from those countries would have been at the Capitol in numbers on January 6?

Biden’s easiest EO puts a hard stop to building The Wall. According to FactCheck.org, as of late December 2020, of the 438 miles of the “border wall system” built under the Trump administration, “365 miles of it. . .is replacement for primary or secondary fencing that was dilapidated or of outdated design. In addition, 40 miles of new primary wall and 33 miles of secondary wall have been built in locations where there were no barriers before.” My math has it at 73 miles. Given the number of times that Trump mentioned The Wall you might imagine there’d be more. There isn’t. There was a lot that was said during the past four years that was Fake News. Much of it from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Spoiler alert: Trump lost Pennsylvania in 2020.

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Other first-day executive orders:

  • 100 Days Masking Challenge. With over 403,952 dead of COVID-19—no, it didn’t “just disappear”—let’s stop making this partisan. Viruses don’t vote. So asking all Americans to wear a mask and for enforcement on federal properties, it is an acknowledgement that it is still a massive problem—a fatal, massive problem.
  • Create the Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense. Remember when Trump was whining about how Obama dealt with the 2014 Ebola epidemic? Well this position was created by Obama, and like many things done by that administration, eliminated by the Trump administration. How did that work out? See above.
  • Rejoin the World Health Organization. Maybe it was snowed by China. And if we’re talking about being snowed: remember the chest thumping after the U.S. China Phase One trade agreement was put into effect? According to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, through November 2020, “China’s year-to-date total imports of cover products from the United States were $86.9 billion, compared with a prorated year-to-date target of $153.8 billion. Over the same period, U.S. exports to China of covered products were $82.3 billion, compared with a year-to-date target of $141.7 billion.” That’s one hell of a dealmaker. As for the WHO specifically: viruses don’t carry passports. They get fought globally. Or they do far more damage than they otherwise would.
  • Extend eviction and foreclosures moratoriums. This is a multiagency lift. Had the pandemic been addressed early on, perhaps this wouldn’t be necessary. It wasn’t. This is.
  • Pause student loan payments until September 30. Again, see previous.
  • Rejoin the Paris Climate Accord. If Ford Motor Company — a major U.S. corporation that sells hundreds of thousands of pickup trucks every year—thinks climate change is real and that the Paris Accord is worthwhile, isn’t it?
  • End the Keystone XL pipeline. Check the price of gas at your local station. The Biden administration also wants to reverse the decisions that turned over what had been national monuments in places like Utah and Maine to development. Seriously: Once they’re developed they’re done.

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A New Hat For America

By Jim McCraw

While it is maddening to know that President-elect Biden couldn’t get a really good start on 2021 between President Trump’s recalcitrance and COVID-19, there will eventually be a Biden administration, and it will be in trouble up to its hips from Day One.

Herewith, a suggestion for Biden/Harris I believe is important, and eminently doable. As Congress fights over both short- and long-term follow-up bills to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES), which ends the day after Christmas, I think it might be time for something as ambitious (though relatively easy, considering the big funding levels already proposed) and quick to do as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), circa 1933. Let’s call the new one the American Reconstruction Corps (ARC).

Lord knows there are plenty of skilled and unskilled people out of work.  And there are plenty of American infrastructure projects, largely ignored by the previous administration, that need doing.

Biden is not FDR, and we do not have a modern Robert Moses, the mid-20th Century “master builder” of New York, Long Island, Rochester and Westchester counties (it’s certainly not Donald J. Trump).

We are not Frank Lloyd Wright, the Ford Motor Company Whiz Kids, nor the first seven astronauts. We are just Americans who recognize a need to get a lot of things done by a mass of people willing to work. There has got to be a way to do this.

With widespread distribution of COVID-19 vaccines likely coming with warmer weather next summer, why couldn’t we dispatch squadrons of out-of-work Americans to do road, tunnel and bridge repairs that have been waiting years for funding and final approvals?  And not just men, which is how the original CCC operated. Skilled and unskilled women need work, too. At, say, $20 per hour.

Why not send platoons of the willing into every one of the national parks to do repairs and cleaning?

While the original CCC troops had uniforms, meals and housing, I humbly suggest self-provided work clothing, bring-your-own meals, work near home, and ARC baseball caps in red, white and blue.

There will be periodic need for FEMA supplies and equipment after summer storms, so why not divert some FEMA funding, vehicles and materiel to help Americans fix the things that are already broken?

Yes, men and women working and sweating in close quarters for eight-hour days may be problematic from a health standpoint, but with masks, distancing and frequent washing and spraying, I think it could work. Let’s get some guys from Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Ford, Google and Tesla to volunteer, put them in a room and see if they can figure this out while Biden and Harris get on with the rest of the recovery.

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