Don's Tuesday Column

          THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News   11/09/2021

Incompetence, ignorance or intention?

Pick any serious problem facing America: inflation, gas prices, Wuhan flu without end, racial controversy, historically high crime, etc. Only the naïve, the ideologically blind and/or the willful propagandists can fail to see the role of government in propagating such problems.

You don’t need refined, “on one hand…on the other hand,” tall weeds dissertations, to see how the ruling classes—politicians, bureaucrats and regulatory agencies; judges and the Department of Justice; media corporations, their news readers and regurgitators of progressive groupthink—are behind it all. The question is whether they collectively are incompetent, ignorant and over their heads, thinking top-down, central authority can solve problems; or are they intentionally designing and implementing the problems and crises?

Or (my money’s on this) are the ruling classes now possessed of such uniformity of thought and consolidation of power that they can reasonably expect to have their actions, mistakes, explanations and solutions accepted with little pushback or resistance. At least resistance that matters and must be acceded to.

Give another reason for Dept. of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s hysterical, cackling, dismissive laughter, followed by “Baghdad Bob” level prevarication, reality-denial and blame-shifting when asked by a Bloomberg reporter—citing $2.89 a gallon gas in Sturgis, MI—if she had a plan to increase “oil production in America.” The laughter started upon hearing that exact phrase. Granholm: “That is hilarious.”

President Trump’s America produced more energy than we used, for the first time in decades—an undeniable fact. Biden takes office, cancels pipelines, energy production on federal lands, financing of coal production, even for export—and then goes begging to OPEC, Russia et al to increase their exports to make up for it. 

His “clown car” cabinet then takes a fleet of jets, tools around in an 85-vehicle “caravan,” and brags about his counterproductive efforts that are setting America up for blackouts and skyrocketing energy prices. Stickers pasted on gas pumps: Joe Biden pointing to the prices, saying “I did that.” Granholm: “That is hilarious.”

Our oh-so-smart ruling classes are clueless about how “supply and demand” works: Gas wholesalers and retailers charge not just what the gas costs them, but also must anticipate what it will cost to replace that gas as prices rise due to scarcity and economic demands. Same principle turns “$1” stores into “$1.25” stores.

“Incompetence” explains the embarrassing dismissal by Biden—as “garbage”—of the Wall Street Journal report on ACLU litigation to provide $450,000 to illegal aliens separated from their children, upon lawlessly crossing our borders.

It’s an “intentional” process of “sue and settle,” going on for decades, whereby leftist environmental or (now) illegal immigrant advocacy groups initiate “friendly” lawsuits. An agency being sued has no legal authority to do what the advocacy group demands.

The agency, mind you, is quite eager to “settle” the lawsuit and implement whatever policy or compensation ordered by judges. They put up little legal resistance to a “friendly” judge who’s only too happy to let unelected officials do the bidding of the leftist plaintiffs.

It’s all so routine as to not inform Biden, who rejected the preposterous idea: that taxpayers would provide an exorbitant sum for the purpose of enriching people whose first act was to break our border laws. Don’t lawbreakers, even suspects, get separated from their children when charged?

We then have the spectacle of Biden’s mouthpieces explaining that he didn’t know what his DOJ did; Biden then issued a snarling answer, in angry high dudgeon, that…Trump started it. Biden’s best gravelly, teeth-clenched, spittle-issuing, hateful diatribe ignored that it happened under…Obama. See “Biden incorrectly claims Obama administration didn't separate families” by Zack Budryk, thehill.com, 09/12/19.

“Biden and the Democrats Have Failed America” by A.J. Kaufman, points to the U.S.-Mexico border, inflation, energy, crime, race relations, COVID-19, and Afghanistan and abroad—as examples of policy failure on every level. Polling by NBC News, confirming the NRCC’s battleground poll, found voters saying Republicans “Would do a better job” than Democrats on all of those issues, by 18% to 27%.

We are witnessing “The Intentional Destabilization of America” (Philip Carl Salzman, pjmedia.com, 11/04): “The attacks on America are not accidental, nor are they the result of ignorance and stupidity. No, the attacks are intentional and strategic. The goal is the transformation of America, which would be made possible by the destruction of America’s core institutions. This intention has been stated explicitly by President Biden, who said in August 2021 that his ‘Build Back Better’ bill would ‘transform America.’”

Democrats suffered election losses in offices, school boards and “Defund the Police” measures; likewise, over racialist “anti-racist,” racial “equity,” aka Critical Race Theory, aka “white is not alright” school curriculum. It’s not a myth; fearless teachers are exposing the material. 

Despicable, hypocritical denials that CRT is taught in schools issue forth; meanwhile, the same liars insist racist, white supremacy “dog whistles,” come out of the mouths of minority conservatives like a black, Jamaican-born winning Republican woman, Winsome Sears (VA Lt. Gov.).

By enabling such liars, the “Gaslighting media only dig Democrats deeper” (NYPost.com editorial, 11/03). Ted Lieu (D-CA) openly admitted Democrats “do, in part, rely on all of you (the news media)” to “convey the truth and actual facts…” Translation: please propagandize for the “transformational” B.B.B. bill.

The NY Post piece cites instructional material from Buffalo, NY, to Springfield, MO, to San Diego, CA that is nothing short of reverse racism and hateful, anti-white bigotry.

The options are “Either the President Is a Congenital Liar or He Is Not Running Things,” (John Schroeder, 11/05). Let’s go Brandon.