Just yesterday, The Wall Street Journal published a very informative articleby Tom Fairless on taxation in the U.S and around the world—but not once does the author suggest that governments confiscating a greater share of the economy is a problem. See the headline and lede below:
The Era of Big Taxes Is Upon Us
With debt more expensive, rich countries are turning to voters and businesses to pay for growing spending needs[.]
(The statements in italics are direct quotes from the article.)
Rich nations are raising more money from taxpayers than they have in decades to finance a burst in state spending and rising interest rates.
Isn’t that just great? The government is confiscating a greater share of people’s hard-earned money.
In the U.S, tax receipts at all levels of government climbed to nearly 28% of GDP last year, up from 25% in 2019 and the highest level since 1965, aside from a brief period of budget consolidation during the Clinton administration.
You would think that would be enough, but Democrats say people aren’t paying their fair share. Federal revenues totaled $3.3 trillion in FY 2017, before President Trump’s tax rate cuts, and totaled $4.44 trillion in FY 2023—so the federal government saw around a 33% increase in six years. Revenues went up rapidly; they did not cost the government two trillion as Joe Biden and others frequently say.
That tax revenues are rising as a share of GDP means their pace is outpacing economic growth, singling a growing government role in the economy.
I would think the “right-leaning” WSJ would think that a more powerful government would be a problem, but nowhere in the article does it mention that.
The trend towards higher tax receipts is likely to continue as rising borrowing costs collide with state spending needs from military budgets, to welfare for aging populations, to climate change….
You see, the government needs the money. They run up debt, run up spending, run up inflation with the printing and spending and regulations, and so they need the money—$33 trillion in debt is not for the people.
As for climate change, it is a scam for politicians and bureaucrats to claim they can control the climate if we just give them more of our hard-earned money. It is nothing more than a slush fund for politicians, bureaucrats, and green pushers to enrich themselves.
The article says tax receipts in Germany and France are up to 39% and 46% of GDP, respectively, noting this: “In both countries, tax-to-GDP ratios are at the highest levels since records began in 1965.” Has this high level of tax receipts helped the people, or helped make the government more powerful? Are things going well in those European nations or poorly?
The last paragraph in this article is pathetic and dangerous. It advocates for higher taxation burdens on Americans, even though Fairless says that would be “tricky.” Like Biden, they would blame those darn Trump supporters. :
As one of the lowest taxed rich countries in the World, the U.S has more scope than many companies to raise taxes, although that path would be politically tricky. China’s share of tax revenue is lower still at around 21% of GDP.
So people are having trouble paying their bills, buying houses, keeping auto loans and credit cards current, saving for emergencies and retirement, and this journalist assures politicians that there’s room to confiscate more, as long as it’s done craftily.
No amount of our hard-earned money is ever enough for greedy politicians and bureaucrats, and their media accomplices.
Argentina's new president, Javier Milei, and his new justice minister, Patricia Bullrich, have advised Argentina's rioters they can kiss their welfare payments bye-bye if they go out rioting -- starting fires, spraying graffiti, breaking windows, blocking roads, and looting
Bullrich, a former presidential rival of Milei's, and an establishment conservative, has advised rioters, known as piqueteros in that country, that they'll be sending drones in to take names for those in the act of rioting and that will be that.
Piqueteros have been a plague for decades in that country -- when I visited Buenos Aires in 2002, they were a problem even then. I recall that one of my contacts there, either Diana Mondino (who is now Milei's foreign minister), or banker Jorge Bustamante, author of "La República Corporativa," a best-seller about how fascism evolved through Peronism to wreck Argentina, explained that the state actually paid for the piqueteros to do what they do, as if they were a special interest group.
According to Wikipedia (and what I heard on the streets in Buenos Aires), they aren't a popular bunch:
Piquetero organizations have also been fiercely criticized at times by many in Argentina, accusing them of being associated with organized crime and alleging unconstitutionality, in accordance with Article 14 of the Argentine Constitution, which states that citizens must be guaranteed the right to;
"... enter, remain in, travel in and out of Argentine territory."
And, in turn, according to art. 194 of the Penal Code, provides that:
"Whoever, without creating a situation endangering the community, prevent, hinder or delay the normal operation of transport by land, water or air or utilities communications, water supply, electricity or energy substances shall be punished with imprisonment three months to two years"
So they have laws on the books against piqueteros creating problems, and because the piqueteros are also a political pressure group, they've been getting away with it.
It's hideous what's been going on there all these years.
This account, from the National Catholic Reporter, on how the poor of Argentina truly love and vote for Milei, prompting Pope Francis to throw out an olive branch to Milei, also describes well how the society works to pay its protestors as if they were a lifestyle choice. It's long, but pretty good reading, given that it delves into much about how that society is organized and how 'social justice' groups have made life anything but just for the poor who love Milei.
Based on the Wikipedia account, it appears they have the legal wherewithal to yank the checks of rioters and looters and with the government coffers bare, one hopes they carry through -- they will be popular if they do even if the piqueteros rage even more.
Imagine that -- pulling welfare benefits from illegal rioters and looters. It speaks well for Milei that he's tackling this problem in such a "based" way, as Martino puts it. He's cutting $20 billion in government spending from Argentina's budget.
The idea has been proposed in the United States, too, back in 2020, by Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, when antifa and Black Lives Matter mobs were burning down America in the wake of the George Floyd protests. It went nowhere and the rioters got away with it.
One can only hope that with the re-election of President Trump, which looks increasingly likely, welfare benefits will be pulled similarly to those who commit crimes and act as a plague on the community as a matter of normalcy, not some wild new Milei idea as the media will portray it.
Proving that they are a collection of brainless, malevolent, leftist hacks who fake the law and seemingly want to foment a civil war, a majority of (Democrat) judges on the Colorado Supreme Court have accepted the left’s spurious 14th Amendment argument and kicked Donald Trump off the Colorado ballot for 2024. As of now, Colorado voters cannot vote for Donald Trump in either the primaries or the November presidential election. It is to be hoped that the United States Supreme Court will address this matter immediately.
The Trump campaign is definitely appealing the decision:
Steven Cheung is correct The court’s disgraceful decision is unfettered by facts or law. There was no serious substantive hearing on the facts underlying this interpretation of events because there couldn’t have been such a hearing. After all, the Biden government has been hiding all the facts, everything from the presence of FBI agents on the ground on January 6 to the 41,000 hours of footage, only around 200 of which have been released. This allows leftists and their fellow travelers to keep lying about the facts, even though many of their lies have been exposed.
The entire lower court proceeding took less than a month and was based, in significant part, on the January 6 committee report. As you may recall, that was conducted without even a pretense of due process. The evidentiary portion took place in secret, and the hearing was a pure kangaroo trial. In a real trial, everything developed there would be thrown out under federal evidentiary rules, and yet these (ahem) “justices” used it to throw a serious presidential contender off their ballot.
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“Insurrection” is a federal crime, and even Jack Smith lacked the chutzpah to charge Trump with being guilty of an insurrection under 18 U.S.C. § 2383. Neither the trial court nor the Supreme Court have the authority to find Trump guilty of “insurrection” under federal law. That finding was garbage.
The Court’s entire “legal” discussion is just as disgraceful. Typically for leftist decisions, the judges try to make it look legitimate by burying the reader with “authority,” pages and pages of it. However, as best as I can tell—and I freely admit that I’m writing this having only skimmed the 213-page decision—it never mentions that, in 1872, Congress revoked the bar as it applied to the people against whom it was clearly enacted.
Section 3 was ratified three years after the Civil War ended to ban from public office those who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion”:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. (Emphasis added.)
The Fourteenth Amendment was applied specifically to a four-year-long Civil War that resulted in 600,000 deaths. Section 3 was intended to keep that generation out of office. Within four years, the same Congress that ratified Section 3 concluded that the situation had changed sufficiently to remove that bar. The bar was about the Civil War, and the Civil War generation ended it. It’s ludicrous to pretend that, while Confederates who actually waged this war were freed of Section 3’s restraints, President Trump is bound by them.
Trump is not a former “officer of the United States,” as that term is used in the Constitution, meaning Section 3 does not apply. As the Supreme Court explained in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010), an “officer of the United States” is someone appointed by the President to aid him in his duties under Article II, Section 2. The term does not apply to elected officials, and certainly not to the President himself.
This is idiocy on steroids.
Depriving Americans of their right to elect a president—and the People are the ultimate judge and jury—is an attack on America’s core democracy. These subnormal, black-robed jurists, all of whom seemingly rotted their brains on Colorado’s endless supply of potent marijuana, are terrified of the American Vox Populi, and it shows.
Human microbiome research has progressed in leaps and bounds over the past decades, from pivotal studies begun in the 1970s to the launch of the Human Microbiome Project in 2007. Breakthroughs have laid the groundwork for more recent clinical applications, such as fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), and advanced techniques to explore new therapeutic pathways. Yet the "microbiome revolution" is just getting started, according to professorMartin J. Blaser, MD, one of the field's pioneers.
Martin J. Blaser, MD
The ongoing research and clinical trials into the microbiome's link to the major causes of death in the United States hold the promise of interventions that manipulate the microbiome to prevent, slow, or perhaps even cure these conditions, says Blaser, who holds the Henry Rutgers Chair of the Human Microbiome and is director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
In this interview, which has been condensed and edited for clarity, Blaser discusses where we're at now and where he sees the microbiome field evolving in the coming years.
Highlighting the Most Promising Applications
Which recent studies on the link between the human microbiome and disease have you found particularly promising?
There have been a number of studies, including our own, focusing on the gut-kidney axis. The gut microbiome produces, or detoxifies, metabolites that are toxic to the kidney: for example, those involved in the formation of kidney stones and in the worsening of uremia.
Altering the microbiome to reduce the uremic toxins and the nidus for stone formation is a very promising field of research.
What other disease states may be amenable to microbiome-based interventions?
There are diseases that are caused by known genetic mutations. Yet, for nearly all of them, there is great variation in clinical outcomes, which might be classed as genes multiplied by environment interactions.
It seems likely to me that microbiome variation could account for some proportion of those differences for some genetic diseases.
It's now well established that altering the microbiome with FMT is a successful intervention for recurrent Clostridioides difficile infections. What do you see as the next disease states where FMT could prove successful?
If you go to ClinicalTrials.gov, you will find that that there are 471 trials registered using FMT. This is across a broad range of illnesses, including metabolic, immunological, autoimmune, inflammatory, degenerative, and neoplastic diseases.
Which will be the next condition showing marked efficacy is anyone's guess. That is why we must do clinical trials to assess what works and what does not, regardless of specific illness.
The donor's microbiome appears to be vital to engraftment success, with "superdonors" even being identified. What factors do you think primarily influence microbiome engraftment?
There is an emerging science about this question, driven in part by classical ecological theory.
Right now, we are using FMT as if one size fits all. But this probably would not provide optimal treatment for all. Just as we type blood donors and recipients before the blood transfusion, one could easily imagine a parallel kind of procedure.
Are there any diseases where it's just too far-fetched to think altering the microbiome could make a difference?
The link between the microbiome and human health is so pervasive that there are few conditions that are out of the realm of possibility. It really is a frontier.
Not that the microbiome causes everything, but by understanding and manipulating the microbiome, we could at least palliate, or slow down, particular pathologic processes.
For all the major causes of death in the United States — cardiovascular disease, cancer, dementia and neurogenerative diseases, diabetes, and lung, liver, and kidney diseases — there is ongoing investigation of the microbiome. A greater promise would be to prevent or cure these illnesses.
Predicting the Next Stages of the 'Microbiome Revolution'
Do you believe we are at a turning point with the microbiome in terms of being able to manipulate or engineer it?
The microbiome is a scientific frontier that has an impact across the biosphere. It is a broad frontier involving human and veterinary medicine, agriculture, and the environment. Knowledge is increasing incrementally, as expected.
Are we at the point yet where doctors should be incorporating microbiome-related lifestyle changes for people with or at risk for cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's disease, or other chronic conditions?
Although we are still in the early stages of the "microbiome revolution," which I first wrote about in EMBO Reports in 2006 and then again in the Journal of Clinical Investigationin 2014, I think important advances for all of these conditions are coming our way in the next 5-10 years.
How are prebiotics, probiotics, and postbiotics being used to shape the microbiome?
This is a very important and active area in clinical investigation, which needs to be ramped up.
Tens of millions of people are using probiotics and prebiotics every day for vague indications, and which have only infrequently been tested in robust clinical trials. So, there is a disconnect between what's being claimed with the bulk of the probiotics at present and what we'll actually know in the future.
How do you think the microbiome will stack up to other factors influencing health, such as genetics, exercise, and nutrition?
All are important, but unlike genetics, the microbiome is tractable, like diet and exercise.
It is essentially impossible to change one's genome, but that might become more likely before too long. However, we can easily change someone's microbiome through dietary means, for example. Once we know the ground rules, there will be many options. Right now, it is mostly one-offs, but as the scientific basis broadens, much more will be possible.
In the future, do you think we'll be able to look at a person's microbiome and tell what his or her risk of developing disease is, similar to the way we use gene panels now?
Yes, but we will need scientific advances to teach us what are the important biomarkers in general and in particular people. This will be one area of precision medicine.
Lessons From Decades at the Forefront
You've been involved in this research for over 30 years, and the majority has focused on the human microbiome and its role in disease. When did it become apparent to you that this research had unique therapeutic promise?
From the very start, there was always the potential to harness the microbiome to improve human health. In fact, I wrote a perspective in PNAS on that theme in 2010.
The key is to understand the biology of the microbiome, and from the scientific study comes new preventives and new treatments. Right now, there are many "probiotic" products on the market. Probiotics have a great future, but most of what is out there has not been rigorously tested for effectiveness.
Was there a particular series of studies that occurred before the launch of the Human Microbiome Project and brought us to the current era?
The studies in the 1970s-1980s by Carl Woese using 16S rRNA genes to understand phylogeny and evolution opened up the field of DNA sequencing to consider bacterial evolution and issues of ancestry.
A key subject of your research and the focus of your book is antibiotic-resistant bacteria. What did this work teach you about describing the science of antibiotic resistance to the general public?
People don't care very much about antibiotic resistance. They think that affects other people, mostly. In contrast, they care about their own health and their children's health.
The more that the data show that using antibiotics can be harmful to health in some circumstances, the more that use will diminish. We need more transparency about benefits and costs.
Are there any common misconceptions about the microbiome that you hear from the general public, or even clinicians, that you would like to see greater efforts to dispel?
The public and the medical profession are in love with probiotics, buying them by the tens of millions. But as stated before, they are very diverse and mostly untested for efficacy.
The next step is to test specific formulations to see which ones work, and for whom, and which ones don't. That would be a big advance.
New drugs being used for weight loss might bring results that are as temporary as they are dramatic, according to astudypublished this week in theJournal of the American Medical Association.
Much of the weight that people lose while using these drugs comes back when they stop taking it, the study says.
The research examined users of weekly injections of tirzepatide, which is the active ingredient in Eli Lilly and Co.'s Zepbound. This drug was approved by the United States last month as a weight loss drug, Science Alert reported.
"Tirzepatide is part of a new class of drugs called GLP-1 receptor agonists that were developed to treat type 2 diabetes," according to Weill Cornell Medicine. "Besides controlling blood sugar, the drugs also resulted in weight loss, so pharma companies created specific formulations to help patients shed pounds."
In the research, 670 adults lost 20.9% of their weight after 36 weeks. Half were placed on a placebo after 88 weeks and regained almost half the weight they'd lost, finishing at 9.9% below their starting weight.
Those who continued taking Zepbound continued losing weight — ending up at 25.3% lower than where they began.
Participants were mostly women, with an average age of 48 years. Their average weight at the beginning of the study was 236.6 pounds. All participants were told to eat 500 fewer calories each day than they were using up and to exercise for at least 150 minutes a week.
The results "emphasize the need to continue pharmacotherapy to prevent weight regain and ensure the maintenance of weight reduction," according to study authors.
Infections account for nearly half of all deaths not caused by disease relapse among patients with advanced blood cancers after treatment with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy, anew meta-analysisof clinical trials and real-world studies shows.
The study, which analyzed nonrelapse mortality among 7246 patients after treatment with any of the six currently approved CAR T-cell therapies, showed that infections accounted for 48.7% of all nonrelapse deaths, although the pathogen was specified in only one third of cases with infection listed as the cause of death, reported David Cordas dos Santos, MD, at the American Society of Hematology (ASH) annual meeting.
"Our findings highlight the importance of post-CAR-T infections, and the need for comprehensive guidelines to mitigate infection risks," said Cordas dos Santos, a research fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston.
Although CAR T-cell therapy has been "practice-changing" for treating B-cell cancers, these agents also come with a range of toxicities that can be "profound and long-lasting," Cordas dos Santosexplained.
However, how these adverse events contribute to mortality after treatment remains less clear.
In the current analysis, the researchers identified 34 studies with data from clinical trials or real-world clinical practice in which US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)–approved CAR T-cell products were used to treat adults with indolent lymphoma, large B-cell lymphoma, mantle cell lymphoma, or multiple myeloma.
The team found that the cumulative incidence rates of nonrelapse mortality were not reported in 16 of the clinical trials included in the analysis and were missing from 12 of the 18 real-world studies.
Among the six studies that did report nonrelapse mortality, the 1-year cumulative incidence of nonrelapse mortality was 7%.
To compensate for the missing data, Cordas dos Santos and colleagues calculated nonrelapse mortality point estimates by dividing all deaths by the size of each cohort. To test for significant deviations, the team compared the point estimates with the 1-year cumulative incidence of nonrelapse mortality reported in the six real-world studies.
The comparison showed that for most of the studies, the point estimates deviated from the actual reported incidences by less than 1%. The overall point estimate of nonrelapse mortality among all patients was 7.6% at a median follow-up of 13.2 months.
The point estimates were higher among patients with mantle cell lymphoma and multiple myeloma than among those with indolent lymphoma or large B-cell lymphoma.
In addition, the point estimates differed according to the CAR T-cell product, reaching 9.1% with axicabtagene ciloleucel in large B-cell and indolent lymphoma compared with 4.0% with lisocabtagene maraleucel or tisagenlecleucel
Among patients with multiple myeloma, point estimates indicated nearly twice the rate of non-relapse mortality with ciltacabtagene autoleucel compared with idecabtagene vicleucel: 14.1% vs 7.9%.
For patients with mantle cell lymphoma, the point estimate with brexucabtagene autoleucel, the only CAR T-cell therapy approved for this indication, was 9.4%.
Infections accounted for almost 50% of all nonrelapse deaths. When studies specified the pathogen linked to nonrelapse mortality, COVID-19 accounted for more than half of these deaths, fungal infections accounted for 18%, and bacterial pathogens accounted for 20.2%. The remaining deaths were attributed to unspecified viral causes or infection.
In 11.6% of cases, the cause of death was unknown or undocumented, followed by 7.8% of deaths attributed to cardiovascular or respiratory causes. Thromboembolic events, including strokes and ischemic brain injuries, accounted for one third of the deaths attributed to cardiovascular or respiratory causes. Respiratory failure was listed as the cause of death in 20.9% of cases and cardiac arrest in 18.6% of cases in this category.
A total of 35 deaths (6.3%) were attributed to secondary cancers. Myelodysplastic syndromes or acute myeloid leukemias were the most common secondary cancers leading to nonrelapse death followed by carcinomas and, in one case, a sarcoma of unspecified histology.
The investigators also noted differences in the specified causes of nonrelapse mortality between clinical trials and clinical practice. In real-world studies, immune-related adverse events, including cytokine release syndrome, neurotoxicity, and hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis, were cited as the cause of death in 19.3% of cases compared with 7.3% of cases in clinical trials. In clinical trials, deaths from cardiovascular or respiratory causes (18.7%) were nearly three times more common than in real-world studies (6.3%).
Jay Spiegel, MD, who presented a study at ASH 2023 showing that CAR T-cell therapy is generally safe even in high-risk patients, told Medscape Medical News that "we have learned over the years that there is significant risk for opportunistic infection, typically early in the post-CAR process, but there is accumulating data that these risks can be prolonged as well."
In terms of treatment, "our main approaches for prophylaxis are acyclovir (an antiviral to prevent shingles) and Bactrim or a similar medicine to prevent opportunistic infection, particularly Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia," added Spiegel, from the Sylvester Cancer Center at the University of Miami.
Cordas dos Santos commented that although the COVID-19 pandemic may have contributed to infection-related nonrelapse deaths, it's important to note a possible bias in reporting of COVID-19-related deaths as an adverse event.
Still, patients who receive CAR T-cell therapy directed against CD19 are more likely to experience poor immune responses to vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 infections, putting them at increased risk for severe or fatal complications from COVID-19, explained Lee Greenberger, PhD, chief scientific officer for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, who was not involved in the research.
"We strongly recommend that these patients receive their vaccinations prior to the start of CAR T therapy, if possible," Greenberger said. "It's also important, when possible, that they do not receive anti-CD20 antibodies, such as rituximab, for 6-12 months before vaccination, as these treatments can also cause B-cell suppression that may last long after treatment is given."
The study was a collaboration between the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Ludwig Maximilians University Hospital in Munich, Germany, and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. The authors did not report a study funding source. Cordas dos Santos reported no conflicts of interest. Greenberger reported no conflicts of interest. Spiegel reported no relevant conflicts of interest.
This week, President Biden’s approval ratings took another hit, according to a national Monmouth University poll. Sixty-one percent said they disapprove of Biden’s job performance, leaving him with a 34% approval rating. His national polling numbers have lingered under 40%, with continuous new polling showing an all-time low standing with American voters.
After leaving his campaign headquarters Sunday, a reporter asked why he was losing to Trump in the polls. Biden responded with, “You’re reading the wrong polls.” But like most topics, Biden would rather ignore reality. There’s a reason polling reflects such a low national approval rating, with one major factor being Biden’s advanced age (81) four years after he was the oldest person ever elected president in U.S. history. Here are three other reasons many Americans will not support President Biden next year.
Soaring Inflation
“Bidenomics” has made Americans poorer, not richer. Every day, Americans feel painfully high prices at the grocery store, the gas pump, and on their utility bills. Everything is more expensive today than it used to be. To put this in perspective, when fictional character Kevin McCallister in the movie Home Alone made a trip to his local grocery store in 1990, he picked up items such as milk, orange juice, detergent, toilet paper, and more. With his dollar-off coupon, his grocery bill totaled $19.83. Today, that same grocery bill at my local store would total roughly $83.00. That’s a 300% increase.
According to Consumer Price Index data, inflation is now double what it was when President Biden took office. Inflation averages 5.8%, which is double under Biden’s presidency than the four presidents before him.
The Financial Times reported a poll that shows 70% of American voters believe Biden’s policies have harmed the U.S. economy or had no impact, leaving only 14% of voters who believe they’re better off financially than they used to be. For the Biden administration to falsely tout otherwise is delusional.
Senseless Energy Policies
Under Biden, electricity prices have soared up to 24.3%. America has been a world leader in reliable, clean, and affordable energy, all while being environmentally savvy about it.
Recently, at the UN’s Climate Change Conference (COP28 summit), world leaders flew into Dubai on their private jets to lecture the world on their latest comical climate change agenda. They called for eliminating fossil fuels as they burned through fossil fuels (which emit CO2) to get there. It’s fine for them, but not for you or me.
At the conference, Biden’s Climate Envoy, John Kerry, called for the world to eliminate coal production altogether, which accounts for a quarter of electricity in America. Imagine what that would do to our country if we got rid of 36% of our electricity.
Good, reliable energy is what powers our livelihoods. Without electricity to heat our homes in the winter, many would die. This is no small matter, so the Biden administration should think twice before making outlandish calls to do away with our coal production. Not to mention the astronomical impact this would have on prices for consumers when a quarter of Americans already struggle to pay their inflated energy bills.
Open Border
Biden’s border crisis has gotten out of control. On Dec. 5, there were over 12,000 migrant encounters at the southern border, the highest number ever recorded in a single day. We cannot have a thriving country when our borders are open, welcoming all kinds of people, including drug lords and terrorists. This is why it’s imperative to vet those who we allow to come into America.
It’s important to have a tall wall and a wide gate – securing our open border and fighting back against drug and human traffickers while welcoming legal immigrants who love our country.
My heart breaks for the 11-year-old girl who was raped and killed last summer in Pasadena, Texas, because of Biden’s horrific policies. Guatemalan immigrant Juan Carlos Garcia-Rodriguez is believed to have illegally crossed the border earlier this year and has been charged with capital murder. This young girl will never know what it’s like to go to prom, or graduate from high school, or fall in love and have a family of her own. All of that was taken from her.
This is one of the many foolish consequences of open borders, thanks to the Biden administration. How many lives would have been spared if we had responsible border security?
No matter which way you slice it, Biden’s policies have harmed Americans since he’s taken office. If we want a thriving economy, unleashed American energy, and secured borders, Biden is absolutely not the man to vote for come November 2024, and his abysmal polling numbers show it.
Carolyn Phippen is a candidate for Utah’s U.S. Senate. She is a wife and a mother of five boys, former staffer to Sen. Mike Lee, and resides in Draper, Utah.
The entire lower court proceeding took less than a month and was based, in significant part, on the January 6 committee report. As you may recall, that was conducted without even a pretense of due process. The evidentiary portion 