On February 1, 2022, the U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding surpassed $30 trillion. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation created an infographic to memorialize the grim debt milestone.
Many readers of The Beacon will know that the current annual inflation rate, from January 2021 to January 2022, came in at 7.5%, which continues the upward trend we’ve seen for the past year. Prices rose 0.8% in the month of January, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” proclaimed Joe Biden last September, in reference to COVID-19. Biden’s chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, now backs vaccine mandates for children and infants. For those of the generation following World War II, that should bring back memories.
The U.S. national debt grew by $2.11 trillion during President Biden’s first year in office. The U.S. government’s total public debt outstanding has ballooned to $29.87 trillion at Biden’s anniversary mark. Split between the country’s 129,931,000 households, that’s about $229,891 per American household.
On January 11, 2022, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg toured the southern California ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. That the transportation secretary would visit these two ports is no surprise. They have special importance because they process 40% of the goods imported by Americans every year.
Government regulations impose costly burdens on Americans. But because regulations are imposed on businesses, many Americans don’t directly feel their weight.
In National Federation of Independent Businesses v. Department of Labor, a majority of the Supreme Court stayed enforcement of OSHA’s COVID-19 vaccination and testing regulations. The standard issued by OSHA applies to all individuals working for employers with 100 or more employees. It requires that covered workers receive a COVID-19 vaccine or obtain a COVID test each week at their own expense and on their own time.
Social scientists who study elections tend to assume that voters have public policy preferences and that parties and candidates design their platforms to conform with those preferences. In fact, the direction of causation (mostly) goes the other way. Members of the political elite draw up their platforms, and voters adopt the policy preferences of those candidates and parties.
The uprising against the dictatorship in Kazakhstan has been crushed as one would expect—with brutal repression and the intervention of Vladimir Putin, who sent thousands of troops under the umbrella of an alliance of highly unsavory characters he controls called the Collective Security Treaty Organization.
