Kakistocracy: noun, government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power

Kakistocracy: noun, government by the worst persons; a form of government in which the worst persons are in power.

The old saying goes that even a blind squirrel finds a nut occasionally.  So you might think that during a 50-year political career, the odds would dictate that Joe Biden would, once in a blue moon, make a correct decision — just based on the odds.  But you’d be mistaken.  Biden has stumbled and bumbled from one disastrous decision to the next.  Disastrous, that is, for America.  Biden himself has prospered handsomely in spite of his glaring incompetence and corruption. 

Biden’s long Senate career was based on being the credit card companies’ man in Washington.  While crowing endlessly about the working class being “his people,” Biden sponsored bills allowing bank issuers to charge egregious interest rates and to make it harder for working men to escape the credit trap through bankruptcy.

When Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, he turned the confirmation of Clarence Thomas into a political smear campaign that descended into a degenerate three-ring circus. In his first campaign for president, he failed to garner a single percentage point before having to withdraw when confronted with his past lies and blatant plagiarism. He literally stole a speech detailing a British politician’s life story. He ran again in 2008 but again failed to reach even one percent of the vote.

When Barack Obama took him off the primary trash heap to make him vice president, Biden first made a hash out of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, wasting hundreds of billions on boondoggles and giveaways to Democrat cronies. Little of the recovery billions was spent on anything useful to America. Biden went on to manage our relations with China and Ukraine, pocketing untold millions for himself and his family by selling out America’s security interests.

By the time he ran for president again in 2020 he was a spent husk of his former corrupt and incompetent self, delivering asinine performances in the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. When the Democrat establishment propped him up to once again stop Bernie Sanders, Biden was set up for the strangest presidential campaign in modern history. While Donald Trump barnstormed the nation with packed, enthusiastic rallies, Biden cowered in his basement, occasionally venturing out to speak with a few dozen voters sitting in circles drawn on the floor.

For his vice presidential pick, he chose — if you can believe it — an even more buffoonish candidate than himself.

Had it not been for Mark Zuckerberg buying and staffing government election offices in swing states, and the media and Big Tech’s censorship of the Biden family’s corruption, Biden would now be enjoying his dotage in Delaware, creeping on unsuspecting children with yarns of Corn Pop and South African arrests.

Instead, the man with one of the most astonishing records of abject failure in Washington was installed in the White House, and he has remained true to form.  As one of a hundred senators and then as vice president, there was a limit to how much damage he could do.  But as president, the shackles have been removed.

His first agenda item was to throttle our oil and gas sector, offshoring tens of thousands of good paying jobs to Russia and the Middle East — along with our energy independence. He threw open our southern border and encouraged virtually unlimited illegal immigration — during a global pandemic.

He sponsored trillions of dollars in wasteful spending, pushing our national debt to over $31 trillion.  Were it not for two Democrat senators who had not yet taken leave of their senses, it would have been even worse.  As it is, Biden has sparked the largest one-year increase in inflation in 40 years.

Biden’s “defund the police” rhetoric delivered us soaring violent crime in Democrat-run cities, while he sicced federal law enforcement on parents who object too strenuously to their children being indoctrinated with anti-White racism and LGBTQIA+ ideology. 

It can truly be said that as president, Biden’s record of failure remains unblemished.  

But now comes what may be the capstone on Biden’s long history of buffoonery and corruption.  In Ukraine, we have an armed conflict that threatens to plunge the world into an economic depression and raises the specter of nuclear war.  Not only did Biden set the stage for this calamity when, as vice president, he was in charge of Ukraine policy and led Kiev to believe that NATO membership was in Ukraine’s future, but on the eve of the Russian invasion, he refused to admit that it was not.  Then Biden all but admitted to Vladimir Putin — on live TV, no less — that NATO would not defend Ukraine if Russia chose to invade. 

In the aftermath of Russia’s invasion, Biden and his administration have crafted sanctions that seem almost designed to boomerang on America’s and Europe’s fragile post-pandemic economies, while forcing Russia into a deeper alliance with China. 

With the U.S. over $31 trillion in debt, Biden seems totally oblivious to the perilous position of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the consequences should that privileged position end. 

Economists predict that food and gasoline will cost the average U.S. household an additional $3,000 this year, and inflation threatens to push millions of lower-middle income-earners into abject poverty.

And bumbling, corrupt Joe Biden isn’t yet halfway through his first — and please God, last — term.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.

Jim Daws is a recovering talk radio host at jimdaws.com.

CPI inflation February 2022:

The consumer price index for February was expected to rise 7.8% over the past year, according to Dow Jones estimates.
— Read on www.cnbc.com/2022/03/10/cpi-inflation-february-2022-.html

• The consumer price index for February rose 7.9% from a year ago, the highest level since January 1982.
• Excluding food and energy, both of which moved sharply higher during the month, core inflation still rose 6.4%, in line with expectations but the highest since August 1982.
• Gas, groceries and shelter were the biggest contributors to the CPI gain. Auto prices eased.
• Worker paychecks fell further behind, as inflation-adjusted earnings dropped 0.8% in February, contributing to a 2.6% decline over the past year.

Inflation grew worse in February amid the escalating crisis in Ukraine and price pressures that became more entrenched.

The consumer price index, which measures a wide-ranging basket of goods and services, increased 7.9% over the past 12 months, a fresh 40-year high for the closely followed gauge, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The February acceleration was the fastest pace since January1982, back when the U.S. economy confronted the twin threat of higher inflation and reduced economic growth.

On a month-over-month basis, the CPI gain was 0.8%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had expected headline inflation to increase 7.8% for the year and 0.7% for the month.

Food prices rose 1% and food at home jumped 1.4%, both the fastest monthly gains since April 2020, in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Energy also was at the forefront of ballooning prices, up 3.5% for February and accounting for about one-third of the headline gain. Shelter costs, which account for about one-third of the CPI weighting, accelerated another 0.5%, for a 12-month rise of 4.7%, the fastest annual increase since May 1991.

A customer refuels at a Chevron gas station with prices above $4 a gallon in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Monday, March 7, 2022.

David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 6.4%, in line with estimates and the highest since August 1982. On a monthly basis, core CPI was up 0.5, also consistent with Wall Street expectations.

The rise in inflation meant worker paychecks fell further behind despite what otherwise would be considered strong increases.

Real inflation-adjusted average hourly earnings for the month fell 0.8% in February, contributing to a 2.6% decline over the past year, according to the BLS. That came even though headline earnings rose 5.1% from a year ago, but were outweighed by the price surge.

Markets indicated a negative open on Wall Street, with stocks pressured by faltering Russia-Ukraine cease-fire talks. Government bond yields turned higher after the CPI report.

“Inflation is coming in hot but the reality is there are no real surprises in this report,” said Mike Loewengart, managing director of investment strategy for E-Trade. “The market likely already priced the inflation increase in accordingly, and is instead intently focused on Ukraine and the downstream impact from commodities, which are already sending shockwaves through the market.”

The inflation surge is in keeping with price gains over the past year. Inflation has roared higher amid an unprecedented government spending blitz coupled with persistent supply chain disruptions that have been unable to keep up with stimulus-fueled demand, particularly for goods over services.

Policymakers have been expecting inflation to abate as supply chain issues ease. The New York Fed’s supply chain index shows pressure has eased in 2022, though it is still near historically high levels.

Vehicle costs have been a powerful inflationary force but showed signs of easing in February. Used car and truck prices actually declined 0.2%, their first negative showing since September 2021, but are still up 41.2% over the past year. New car prices rose 0.3% for the month and 12.4% over the 12-month period.

A raging crisis in Europe has only fed into the price pressures, as sanctions against Russia have coincided with surging gasoline costs. Prices at the pump are up about 24% over just the past month and 53% in the past year, according to AAA.

Moreover, business are raising costs to keep up with the price of raw goods and increasing pay in a historically tight labor market in which there are about 4.8 million more job openings than there are available workers.

Recent surveys, including one this week from the National Federation of Independent Business, show a record level of smaller companies are raising prices to cope with surging costs.

To try to stem the trend, the Federal Reserve is expected next week to announce the first of a series of interest rate hikes aimed at slowing inflation. It will be the first time the central bank has raised rates in more than three years, and mark a reversal of a zero interest rate policy and unprecedented levels of cash injections for an economy that in 2021 grew at its fastest pace in 37 years.

However, inflation is not a U.S.-centric story.

Global prices are subject to many of the same factors hitting the domestic economy, and central banks are responding in kind. On Thursday, the European Central Bank said it was not moving its benchmark interest rate but would end its own asset purchase program sooner than planned.

In other economic news, jobless claims for the week ended March 5 totaled 227,000, higher than the 216,000 estimate and up 11,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department said. Continuing claims rose slightly to just below 1.5 million, though the four-week moving average remained at its lowest level since 1970.