Muristek
COURTESY PHOTOPresident Joe Biden
The approaching of the season of the bombardment of the campaign promises brings with it the question. Should we base our votes on campaign promises or performances?
Consider the campaign promises by presidential candidate Joseph Biden Jr., which he repeated on his Inauguration Day of Jan. 21, 2021, of “I will shut down the virus, not the economy. We’re mounting an aggressive, coordinated, equitable and professional response to get the virus under control as soon as possible.”
Have these happened?
On a lighter note, his use of the four modifiers of “aggressive, coordinated, equitable and professional” reminds me of the words of Mark Twain’s “I didn’t have the time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one.” On a serious note: How has he applied these modifiers to the virus and the economy?
The virus. Has he “shut down the virus?” On an anecdotal basis, President Biden just announced he has a “rebound” case of the virus just after testing negative from his previous case. The broader picture is that on his inauguration there had been 400,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19. Today, despite having the Trump vaccines, there are 1.02 million deaths attributed to COVID.
Let’s see how President Biden has applied each of his four modifiers toward his goal of “shutting down the virus.
Has he been “aggressive,” which is “ready or likely to attack?” “Yes” as the Obama-Biden team aggressively approved Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy Diseases investing $826,000, from 2014-2019, in the Wuhan Institute for Virology to fund the “change-of-function” so bat virus could be used to “attack” humans.
The only two possible reasons to fund this “change-of-function,” were:
— “To develop an antidote.” The “Fauci story” of “to develop an antidote” does not pass the smell test because there is no need for an antidote to something that does not exist. And notice there now is the “sound of silence” regarding any efforts to develop such an antidote.
— To “aggressively” use it as a weapon, which is what happened.
Sadly the answer is “no” for the outcome of “aggressively” “shutting down the virus.” That didn’t happen.
For the virus, has our president “coordinated,” which is “negotiate with others in order to work together effectively?”
The answer is “No” for coordination with red states, such as Florida. And the answer is “no” because of his shutting down, rather than “coordinating,” with the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control and Verification investigation of whether Dr. Fauci led NIAID in working with the Chinese government in developing the virus.
For the virus, has our president been equitable,” which is “fair and impartial?”
“No,” for when he took control of the remedies of the virus and issued racial guidelines for their availability, or when he penalized Americans for not being vaccinated while permitting more than 7,000 a day unvaccinated, unvetted strangers to walk into the U.S. and be distributed around the country.
For the virus, has our president been “professional,” which is “engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation?”
“No.” Courts have held that his administration has violated the Constitution by refusing to honor religious grounds for members of the military to refuse the vaccines.
The economy. Candidate and President Biden said he would “not shut down the economy.” How has he applied his four modifiers to not shut down the economy?
For the economy, has our president been “aggressive?”
“Yes.” He was aggressive when he shut the economy down by signing executive orders to reverse the Trump policies that had produced a flourishing economy with inflation only being 1.4%. Today’s inflation of 9.1% raises the question: Are you better off today than under the previous president? Admittedly achieving these results so quickly required “aggressive” actions.
For the economy, has our president been “coordinating?” With respect to oil and gas, the answer is “no” with Republicans and Canadians, and “yes” with Russia and China.
For the economy, has our president been “equitable?” “No,” The inflation of over 9% will disproportionally hurt those who do not own assets that will grow with the inflation.
For the economy, has our president been “professional?”
“Yes” on causing inflation.
Indeed, the decline of 0.9% in Gross Domestic Product in the second quarter of 2022, after a decline in the first quarter, meets the accepted definition of a “recession” of “economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in the GDP in two successive quarters.”
President Biden’s performance of reversing his campaign promises by “shutting down the economy, not the virus,” is not entirely his fault as, to quote Shakespeare’s Cassius, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the stars but in ourselves” for voting based on campaign promises instead of prior performances.
The performance of the candidates was a choice between one whose 40-plus years in government was, well, to be kind, “nondescript,” with his major successes being his involvement with his son Hunter’s businesses, versus a candidate who “aggressively, coordinated, equitably, and professionally” during a presidency where the U.S became energy independent (for the first time), along with a full Strategic Petroleum Reserve and inflation of only 1.4%, after spending 40-plus years building and running multiple successful businesses while employing his sons, rather than vice versa.
As we approach another election,k the message of Anthony Weldon in “The Court and Character of King James” of “Fool me once shame on you; fool me twice shame on me” resonates as does the lawyers’ quip “oral promises are not worth the paper they are written on.”
Brent E. Zepke is an attorney, arbitrator and author who lives in Santa Barbara. His website is OneheartTwoLivescom.wordpress.com. Formerly, he taught law and business at six universities and numerous professional conferences. He is the author of six books: “One Heart-Two Lives,” “Legal Guide to Human Resources,” “Business Statistics,” “Labor Law,” “Products and the Consumer” and “Law for Non-Lawyers.”
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