RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/southwest-airlines-executive-face-lawmakers-after-holiday-chaos/story?id=97002900

Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson faced lawmakers Thursday in a highly-anticipated Senate Commerce Committee hearing to answer for the airline’s historic holiday meltdown.

“Let me be clear: we messed up,” Watterson testified. “In hindsight, we did not have enough winter operational resilience.”

The largest domestic airline in the U.S., Southwest canceled more than 16,000 flights over an 11-day period at the end of December due to a combination of severe winter weather, staffing shortages and technology issues, the company said. Thousands were left stranded in airports across the country instead of at home for the holidays.

Lawmakers want the company to explain the massive disruption at Thursday’s Senate hearing, titled “Strengthening Airline Operations and Consumer Protections.”

“The American people have a lot of questions about the Southwest debacle in December that left passengers stranded or unable to be with loved ones over the holidays,” said Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation on Wednesday. “We’re going to ask for answers to those questions. I’m interested in hearing the pilot’s testimony that this debacle could have been avoided if Southwest had made investments sooner.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-vs-florida-comparative-statistics-budget-medicaid-population-taxes-752ee7b6?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Comparative governance is a useful course of study, not least because bad governance is so costly to people and prosperity. We often write about the migration from the Northeast to Florida and other states, but sometimes the contrast is best illuminated with some data.

Take a look at the nearby chart comparing some key indicators of governance in a pair of states that not long ago were about the same size—New York and Florida. As recently as 2013 the two states had similar populations, but so many people have moved to the Sunshine State that it’s now roughly 2.6 million people larger.

A Tale of Two States
Yet, believe it or not, Florida’s state budget as measured in the latest proposals from the two governors, is only half the size of New York’s. This is in part a reflection of their tax burden, which in Florida is much smaller. If Florida politicians want to spend more, the state’s economy has to grow more. New York’s politicians can raise income taxes, as they do with great frequency.

Florida has no state income tax, while New York’s top tax rate is 10.9%. In New York City, the top rate is 14.8%, while in Miami it’s zero. Any guess why Ken Griffin moved his Citadel hedge fund to Miami instead of New York when he was looking for an alternative to Chicago? Florida has a 6% sales tax, higher than New York’s, but New York City’s combined state and city sales tax is 8.875%.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-deficit-congressional-budget-office-spending-fiscal-year-11675979171?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden boasted during his State of the Union address about cutting the deficit by a record $1.7 trillion. His putative conversion into a born-again deficit cutter is belied by this week’s Congressional Budget Office federal budget report for January, which shows the deficit has doubled in the first four months of this fiscal year.

CBO reports that the budget deficit from October through January swelled to $522 billion from $259 billion in the same period last year after adjusting for a timing shift in payments. Receipts are tracking $43 billion lower than last year, mostly owing to reduced individual income taxes, while spending is running $220 billion higher.

The Federal Reserve’s remittances to the Treasury from earnings on its portfolio of securities have decreased to less than $1 billion from $37 billion. For most of the last decade, the Fed was a profit center for Treasury owing to the interest paid on its accumulation of Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities. But now the Fed is paying higher interest on bank reserves. Meantime, net interest payments on U.S. debt increased by $58 billion in the first four months of the year.

Entitlement spending has grown by $76 billion owing to inflation adjustments and the Administration’s public-health emergency declaration, which has prevented states from returning to their pre-pandemic Medicaid policies. The Administration plans to end the emergency in May, but many people removed from Medicaid will be eligible for expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-delusion-of-rent-control/

George Santayana’s admonition that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” was apparently lost on progressive Democrats in Congress, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D–N.Y.), who appealed to President Biden to address what they recklessly described as “corporate price gouging in the real estate sector.” In a January 9 letter to the White House, 50 members of Congress urged the administration to use various agencies to impose a nationwide program of rent control, since, as the letter asserted, “the rent is too high and millions of people across this country are struggling to stay stably housed as a result.”

What the letter writers have conveniently forgotten, of course, is that the rental housing market is still reeling from the rent and eviction moratorium questionably implemented by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in the midst of the Covid pandemic in the form of the CARES Act Section 4024(b). As a result of that moratorium, property owners—who themselves had to continue paying mortgages, property taxes, utilities and other operating expenses—found themselves with tenants who could decide whether or not they could afford their present rent, resulting in months of losses to property owners as tenants simply refused to pay rent—whether or not they could afford to. So the “corporate price gouging” cited in the Congressional letter may simply reflect the real estate industry’s effort to begin to recoup the significant losses experienced during the moratorium.

Rent control is not a rent moratorium, but it does reward tenants and punish rental property owners by a process euphemistically defined as “rent stabilization,” but which is actually a government attempt to control what rent a private property owner can receive from a tenant, with the assumption that private landlords can, and should, provide affordable housing to needy renters by absorbing losses forced on them in what should be an unencumbered marketplace.

https://amgreatness.com/2023/02/08/the-mess-of-an-address/

After listening to the State of the Union address, Americans know why the latest Reuters poll has Joe Biden at 41 percent approval. 

Vice President Kamala Harris polls even lower—despite the obsequious efforts of the most biased media in history that has, in effect, merged with the Democratic Party. 

The nation was reminded again why only 37 percent of Biden’s own party want him to run again. 

Only a quarter of Americans believe the country is headed in the right direction under his leadership.

Given all that, what could a president possibly tell a nation when he entered office inheriting a 1.4 percent inflation rate only to spike it to 7 percent? How did Americans’ 30-year mortgages of 2.7 percent soar to 6.5 percent in less than two years?  

How does a president explain that eggs climbed to $7 a dozen, or a thin steak hit $15 a pound, or a sheet of plywood reached $95?

How does a president explain to Americans that gas averaged $2.39 a gallon when he took office and, even after draining the strategic petroleum reserve, it is still  $3.50 a gallon—and recently spiked at $5 a gallon in many states. 

Can Joe Biden explain why once affordable, or even cheap natural gas more than tripled in price in less than a year? 

What can a president say when in his first two years, over 5 million foreign nationals poured into the United States—all illegally across a nonexistent border? 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/02/competence_is_dead_and_diversity_killed_it.html

Have affirmative action hiring practices caused overall competence to plummet? The record appears to show exactly that.

For no good reasons whatsoever, competence was allowed to die on the vine in order to give the less competent a leg up. Not equality but superiority rules the hiring, firing, and education of Americans. Worse, many of those who were affirmatively hired do not do as good a job as those whose excellence was obvious. You can see it in customer service, which for many businesses is abysmally incompetent. There is a resentful casualness in those who are hired to serve others that would not have been acceptable even two decades ago. The competence level one deals with on a daily basis is on life support.

While there are pockets of the competent in places like Florida and some Southern states, much of America is being run by children with no sense of responsibility or pride in accomplishment. That is because there is little real accomplishment in their lives; children get passed through the public education system having to learn little of value. Instead, they are taught perverse sexual practices and aberrant lifestyles. They are taught how to be activists but are not taught to be competent breadwinners.

It is harder and harder to find good computer techs to service the average home computer user. Instead, salespeople are sent out to do the most basic installations, utterly lacking the sophistication to handle a complex computer problem that may come up. Training in many fields is rudimentary. Surgeons and physicians are being put through university because of their skin color, not necessarily their competence. Ditto pilots. Do you want to fly or get operated on by these hires? I’ll pass.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2023/02/08/did-you-catch-bidens-shocking-admission-during-his-sotu-address-n1668972

“President” Biden went off-script several times during his State of the Union address last night, prompting some of the strongest reactions from the politically mixed attendees. But one moment was particularly shocking because it was an incredible admission.

The moment of candor occurred as Biden worked through his prepared remarks on the evil oil industry. According to the official transcript, he was supposed to bash the fossil fuel producers like so: “You may have noticed that Big Oil just reported record profits. Last year, they made $200 billion in the midst of a global energy crisis. It’s outrageous. They invested too little of that profit to increase domestic production and keep gas prices down. Instead, they used those record profits to buy back their own stock, rewarding their CEOs and shareholders.” This was the equivalent of red meat for the vegan Earth-first crowd.

But then, Biden began ad libbing. “We’re still going to need oil and gas for a while,” he allowed, and, “We’re going to need domestic oil for at least another decade.” This elicited boos from Earthist Democrats and cheers and even laughter from reality-based Republicans.

During these off-the-cuff remarks, Biden’s admission came in the form of an anecdote, recounted here by Fox News:

The president then told an anecdote in which an oil executive asked him why his company should invest in fossil fuel projects in light of the negative business atmosphere for oil and gas projects. Biden said he responded that oil and gas would be needed for years to come.

“They said, ‘well, we’re afraid you’re going to shut down all the oil wells and all the oil refineries. So, why should we invest in them?’ I said, ‘we’re going to need oil for at least another decade and beyond,’” Biden added.

Did you get that? Biden admitted that the oil industry — which remains crucial to our entire way of life, no matter what the Earthist fantasizers say — will not invest in domestic production because they don’t trust him.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/469898/half-say-worse-off-highest-2009.aspx

Reflecting on their personal financial situations, 35% of Americans say they are better off now than they were a year ago, while 50% are worse off. Since Gallup first asked this question in 1976, it has been rare for half or more of Americans to say they are worse off. The only other times this occurred was during the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009.

On the other hand, today’s “better off” percentage is not unusually low, having descended to 35% or lower during other challenging economic times. This includes the late 1970s and early 1980s, the early 1990s, and from 2008 through 2012. In those periods, a higher percentage than today’s 14% volunteered that their finances were “the same” as last year.

The latest results are based on a Jan. 2-22 Gallup poll. They follow a year of persistent high inflation, with the highest inflation rates since 1982. Stock market values declined and interest rates rose in 2022, but, on average, personal wages increased substantially.

In both 2021 and 2022, Americans were evenly divided between saying they were better off versus worse off, including a 41% to 41% split in last year’s survey.

By contrast, before the pandemic in January 2020, Americans were almost three times as likely to say they were better off (59%) as worse off (20%). The 59% reading is one of the highest in Gallup’s trends, along with a 58% reading in 1999.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/3849146-bidens-state-of-the-union-everything-is-awesome/

Let’s get one item out of the way: State of the Union addresses are among the most overhyped events of any presidency. Thousands of words, many designed for easy applause lines from one side of the chamber. Ample sound and fury signifying nothing. 

Think about it for a moment: Outside of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) sophomorically tearing up President Trump’s 2020 State of the Union address, what memorable line or moment has ever stood out in these speeches? They are little more than a laundry list of policy positions marinated in self-congratulation.

Tuesday night’s address by President Biden was no different. The commander in chief engaged in happy talk that would have one believe that:

— inflation were 1.4 percent (the number Biden inherited) instead of 6.5 percent as it currently stands.

— violent crime weren’t climbing in most cities across the country. (It is.)

—the border were closed and secure. (More than 5 million illegal migrants have entered the country since Biden took office, including more than 100 on the terror watch list.) 

—fentanyl overdoses were minimal. (They’re the leading killer of adults between the ages of 18-49 due to lax border policy that allows the lethal drug, produced in China, to be shipped to Mexico and brought into the country relatively easily.)

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-state-of-the-union-address-america-polling-economy-covid-11675809441?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden devoted most of his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to celebrating what he says is a long list of legislative and economic achievements—spending on social programs and public works, subsidies for computer chips, even more subsidies for green energy, and a strong labor market. But if he’s done so much for America, why does most of America not seem to appreciate it?

That’s the contradiction stalking his Presidency as he enters his third year and plots a likely re-election campaign. The disconnect is clear enough in the polls. His job approval rating average has climbed to 44.2% in the RealClearPolitics average, which should be better with all of that supposed good news. Gallup has it at 41%. Mr. Biden’s RCP average job approval on the economy is 38%.

The latest Washington Post/ABC poll is even worse for the President. Some 41% of Americans say they’re worse off financially than when Mr. Biden became President, while only 16% say they’re better off. Most people—62%—say Mr. Biden has accomplished either not very much or little or nothing. That includes 22% of Democrats.

And here’s the really bad news for Mr. Biden. Some 58% of Democrats say they’d prefer a different party nominee for President in 2024, and he even loses a head to head matchup with former President Trump 48%-44%.

***

Polls are only snapshots in time, and few voters are focused on the 2024 choices. Mr. Biden could rise if the economy ducks a recession, inflation subsides, and Ukraine pushes Russia out of most or all of its territory.