Jim Bohn

Down, down, down. There’s only one direction that Biden’s approval is going and that’s down.

Actually, it could be worse. Only 28 percent of Americans approve of the job that Kamala Harris is doing, 51 percent disapprove.

Among the other findings from USA Today:

• Nearly half of those surveyed, 46%, say Biden has done a worse job as president than they expected, including 16% of those who voted for him. Independents, by 7-1 (44%-6%), say he’s done worse, not better, than they expected.
• Nearly two-thirds of Americans, 64%, say they don’t want Biden to run for a second term in 2024. That includes 28% of Democrats. Opposition to Trump running for another term in 2024 is nearly as high, at 58%. That includes 24% of Republicans.
• 64 percent don’t want Biden to run for a second term. Among Biden voters, 39 percent don’t want him to run again

If the election were held today, Republicans congressional candidates would trounce the Democrats. The generic ballot is +8 Republican.

GO-USA is using its OppScore system to evaluate House and Senate candidates in close races. Watch this site for data on which one of these candidates stands for opportunity and which ones don’t.

Biden says Democrat spending will “cost nothing”. CNBC says otherwise.

CNBC’s Yian Mui reports that the most recent Biden spending plan would increase the deficit by $2.6 trillion over the next ten years. This is hardly paid for.

Democrat fuzzy math concerns both spending and taxes. First, rather than involving $1.8 billion in spending, the plan would cost $4.1 trillion.

Moreover the plan violates Biden’s campaign promise to not tax those making less than $400,000.

GOUSA believes in environmentally-friendly, safe, and economically-sensible solutions to America’s energy needs. Although nuclear power development is stalled in the United States, China is planning a massive expansion of its nuclear power capacity.

According to Bloomberg, China has 46 nuclear reactors under construction or in the planning stages. There are only two reactors under constructions in the United States.

By 2035 China plans to add 150 new reactors with 147 gigawatts of generation capacity.

As a comparison, the combined capacity of America’s 55 existing nuclear plants (93 reactors) is 95 gigawatts. The two reactors under construction will add less than 3 gigawatts of capacity.

America’s failure to develop nuclear power will be a drag on the well-being of the American people and the competitiveness of American industry. Households and industry need access to reliable sources of energy. Nuclear power is the only existing source of reliable baseload power for America’s homes, offices and factories.

Nuclear power development is also a national security issue. China’s building program will make that country the world leader in this vital technology.

Support for environmentally safe energy solutions is one of the subcomponents of the components of GOUSA’s National Opportunity assessment of politicians. To learn more about the GOUSA rating system, visit out 5 Points of Opportunity page here.

Police officers have had a difficult few years.  Woke politicians have disparaged and sought to defund police departments.  Attacks on police officers have skyrocketed. 

GOUSA supports the police, fire and first responders.  Most Americans agree.  On November 2, with few exceptions, voters elected pro-police mayors and supported pro-police ballot referenda.  Here’s a quick roundup:

Minneapolis voters rejected a plan to abolish the police department 56 to 44. 

New York City elected Eric Adams as mayor.  Adams is a former police captain and opponent of defunding the police.  While his win was expected (New York is heavily Democratic), Adams used his victory speech to eviscerate the policies of Bill DeBlasio, his left-wing, defund the police predecessor.    

Buffalo rejected Democratic Socialist India Walton by 20 points in favor of write-in candidate Byron Brown.  Walton wanted to defund the police. Buffalo police endorsed Byron Brown. 

Seattle likely elected a pro-police mayor as Bruce Harrell was ahead by 30 percentage points early this morning.  His opponent wanted to slash the police department budget by 50 percent.

Another Seattle surprise. Republican Ann Davison leads police abolitionist Nicole Thomas-Kennedy in Seattle city attorney race (that’s the headline). This is a stunning rebuke to the defund the police crowd in one of the most left wing cities in the U.S.

The sole exception among major city races is Boston where Michelle Wu, a defund the police advocate, won by 30 points. You have to wonder what’s up with Boston voters. 

Support for the police is one component of the National Opportunity section of the GOUSA rating system.  To see more about our rating system, go here. 

Whatever happened to Build Back Better? It’s really more like Biden’s Baleful Boondoggles or Biden’s Big-time Blunders. The country does not like what it’s getting from the Biden Presidency.

A new poll from NBC news finds that more than two out of three adults think the United States is headed in the wrong direction.

At no point during the Trump Presidency was the wrong track percentage higher than 71.

Only 42 percent approve of the job that Biden is doing and 40 percent approve of his handling of the economy.

The U.S. economy now looks a lot like it did in the carter era: inflation, supply shortages, slow growth and declining real wages.

The problem is that the Biden Administration and the Democrats are making fundamental changes to the economy that Americans don’t want.

Americans still believe in freedom and the free market economy. A majority of Americans want government to do less, not more in the economy.

The Democrats want socialism: a welfare state, political control of industry, favors for corporate monopolies (especially those that are woke). GOUSA rejects that.

Social justice warriors in the modern West are no different that the Bolsheviks of the old Soviet Union says Russian Leader Vladimir Putin.  He should know.

The comparison is apt.  Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club, Putin laid bare the parallels between the old oppression of the Soviet past and the now oppression of the woke progressives in the modern West.

He calls out the erasure of the great works in art and literature: 

“Looking at what is happening in a number of Western countries, we are amazed to see the domestic practices, which we, fortunately, have left, I hope, in the distant past. The fight for equality and against discrimination has turned into aggressive dogmatism bordering on absurdity, when the works of the great authors of the past – such as Shakespeare – are no longer taught at schools or universities, because their ideas are believed to be backward. The classics are declared backward and ignorant of the importance of gender or race. In Hollywood memos are distributed about proper storytelling and how many characters of what colour or gender should be in a movie. This is even worse than the agitprop department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.”

Citing Martin Luther King, Putin call out the obsession among the left in dividing people on racial lines:

” Countering acts of racism is a necessary and noble cause, but the new ‘cancel culture’ has turned it into ‘reverse discrimination’ that is, reverse racism. The obsessive emphasis on race is further dividing people, when the real fighters for civil rights dreamed precisely about erasing differences and refusing to divide people by skin colour.”

Putin also cites the parallels between modern progressive ideologies on sexuality and gender and those of the old Soviet Union:

“Zealots of these new approaches even go so far as to want to abolish these concepts altogether. Anyone who dares mention that men and women actually exist, which is a biological fact, risk being ostracised. “Parent number one” and “parent number two,” “’birthing parent” instead of “mother,” and “human milk” replacing “breastmilk” because it might upset the people who are unsure about their own gender. I repeat, this is nothing new; in the 1920s, the so-called Soviet Kulturtraegers also invented some newspeak believing they were creating a new consciousness and changing values that way. And, as I have already said, they made such a mess it still makes one shudder at times. Not to mention some truly monstrous things when children are taught from an early age that a boy can easily become a girl and vice versa. That is, the teachers actually impose on them a choice we all supposedly have. They do so while shutting the parents out of the process and forcing the child to make decisions that can upend their entire life.”

It has often been said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  Putin’s discussion of the parallels between the old Soviet Union and modern Western progressive ideologies is a good one.  One question remains.  Is it that modern progressives have failed to learn from the old Soviet Union or it the case that they are using the old Soviet Union as a “how to” manual?

In contrast to the progressive left, most Americans want funding for police to increase or stay the same, not decline.  Americans of all racial, age and income groups reject defunding.  Concerns regarding violent crime are on the rise.

A September 2021 poll by the Pew Research Center shows solid support for more funding for the police.  Overall, 47 percent of Americans support a lot or a little increase in funding for police versus only 15 percent that want funding for police reduced.

Only 23 percent of blacks support less funding for police versus 38 percent that want funding increased and 38 percent that want funding to stay the same.  Whites and Hispanics are equally supportive of more funding for police with both groups supporting more funding over less by a three to one margin.

Six in ten Americans view violent crime as a very big problem, up from five in ten in 2019.  No surprise given the surge in murder and mayhem especially in big cities in which funding for the police has been cut. 

Interestingly, the group least supportive of the police are white Democrats (below). 

The results of the Pew Poll show that support for defunding is largely an elite left-wing white phenomena.  The mayhem and misery created by the defund the police movement is on display in large cities like Baltimore, Portland, New York and Chicago—all of which are governed by hard-left progressive mayors affiliated with the Democratic Party.    

GOUSA supports the police and the maintenance of law and order.  Support for the police and rejection of defunding is one of the issues that our rating team considers in assessing politician support for National Opportunity.  But we also recognize that personal safety and freedom from crime also determines the degree to which Americans are able to realize opportunities in the other four areas as well.

To learn more about our rating system go here.  And to make a contribution to support our work go here. 

Good news! The Biden Administration’s play to spy on your bank account is (probably) due to opposition by Republicans and West Virginia Joe Manchin (Opp Score +3.75/5.0).

Details at this link .

Here’s what Senator Manchin had to say:

“I said, ‘Mr. President, I don’t know what happened. This cannot happen. This is screwed up,’” the Democratic senator told listeners “I said, do you understand how messed up that is, to think that Uncle Sam is going to be watching… and what it does for bankers and this and that?”

Messed up indeed.

By big majorities Americans disapprove of Biden’s economic policies. The only conceivable reason the Democrats are pursuing them is to reward politically useful special interests.

Hugh majorities of Americans view the country on the wrong track under the Democrats. According to Real Clear Politics, 61 percent of Americans think the country is on the wrong track versus 33 percent on the right track. That a spread of negative 28 percent. In contrast, for much of the Trump presidency, the spread was less than 20 percent.

Biden’s job approval stands at negative 10 percent overall and on the economy, a negative 11 percent. Only 42 percent approve of Biden’s handling of the economy. 53 percent disapprove. According to Rasmussen, only 62 percent of Democrats approve of Biden’s handling of the economy.

Most ominously, only 43 percent describe Biden as mentally sharp. 56 think he’s not too well.

83 percent of Americans are concerned about inflation with 57 percent being very concerned. They should be. With the Federal Reserve money printing in overdrive, inflation is the logical result. As Milton Friedman put it “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomena”. This fundamental law of economics is no different in the United States in 2021 as it was in the 1970s.

So with Biden and Democrat economic policies polling terribly, why are the Democrats continuing to push for more spending and money creation? The answer is that they are betting that rewarding key special interests will keep them in power in 2022.

To start with, consider the little noticed plan to hand out taxpayer cash to journalists. Yes really. That may keep the mainstream media in the Democrats satchel but it will also destroy the last shreds of credibility of the press. As the Wall Street Journal put it: “A federal subsidy would do more harm than good. Subsidies from Washington conflict with the democratic mission … which requires an independent press. Local papers in the mold of left-leaning National Public Radio stations wouldn’t serve a politically diverse public. Most Americans already mistrust the press, and making journalists more dependent on government will compound the suspicion of bias. ”

The Democrats spending plans are full of racial and gender preferences and special deals for the Democrat’s union supporters; tax breaks for elite private universities; tons of spending on green new deal boondoggles.

All of this special interest spending is sure to further divide American society.

The only possible reason that the Democrats are pursuing these plans is that they view American democracy as so broken that the public at large doesn’t matter, only those with money and political influence do. Let’s hope they aren’t right.

Banking and industry groups are pushing back against the third most Orwellian policy of the Biden Administration (vaccine mandates and reeducation camps being the first two but with the Biden Administration it is hard to keep count).

As noted before, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and the Democrats behind the requirement that banks turn over detailed customer data on all accounts with more than $10,000 (formerly $600) are simply lying to the public when they claim that this is to target billionaires. Rather it is for the construction of a vast surveillance network to target ordinary Americans.

The letter states: “This week the Department of Treasury and congressional supporters finally acknowledged the program was far too expansive but, according to media reports, made only cosmetic changes by increasing the de minimis threshold to $10,000 and excluding wages and government benefits from that calculation. As we have stated in several previous letters, these changes fail to address the reality that any program based on gross annual inflows and outflows will impact Americans from all income levels. Even with the proposed exclusions of certain types of income, a large number of common and totally innocent transactions by individuals and small businesses will be captured by this new regime.”

There is along history of the use of the IRS by the government to harass and intimidate political opponents. Inevitably, this information will be used to target those who oppose the ruling clique.

GO-USA stands for individual freedom and opportunity, not government intimidation and bullying. Americans need to push back against the enlistment of banks as part of the surveillance state. We are glad that at least instance the private sector is doing so.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting evidence that Facebook discriminates against conservative news sites. Their study is based on analysis of Facebook data as well as documents and interviews of Facebook insiders.

Link to the story here (paywall).

The article mentioned an internal Facebook study of the extent to which conservative sites have been suppressed:

“The study, dubbed a “political ideology analysis,” suggested the company had been suppressing the traffic of major far-right publishers, even though that wasn’t its intent, according to the documents. “Very conservative” sites, it found, would benefit the most if the tools were removed, with Breitbart’s traffic increasing an estimated 20%, Washington Times’ 18%, Western Journal’s 16% and Epoch Times’ by 11%, according to the documents.”

Interestingly, it is conservative publishers that generate the highest level of engagement among Facebook users.

“Right-wing sites are consistently among the best-performing publishers on the platform in terms of engagement, according to data from research firm NewsWhip. That is one reason Facebook also is criticized by people on the left, who say Facebook’s algorithms reward far-right content.”

Read the whole thing!

Is this piece by Vanity fair the first crack in the mainstream media wall of silence on the lab leak theory for the origin of COVID: In Major Shift, NIH Admits Funding Risky Virus Research in Wuhan

More and more evidence is coming out that (i) the NIH funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab; (ii) that Dr. Fauci lied about gain-of-function research to Congress; and (iii) the Wuhan lab is the source of COVID-19.

To be fair, despite an almost universal blackout in the U.S. media about the lab leak, foreign journalists are doing excellent work in this area. See for instance the work of Sharrri Markson of Australia’s SkyNews.

Glenn Greenwald, who is located in Brazil, is also one of many other foreign journalists doing excellent work in this area.

UPDATE: Lots more here!

54 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy according to a CNBC poll and 47 percent think there will be a recession next year.

And this is a poll from CNBC a subsidiary of NBC, an unrepentant Biden cheerleader.

The numbers are dismal throughout: “Recession worries come with increasingly negative views about the current and future state of the economy: 46% say the economy will get worse in the year ahead, the most in the 13-year history of the poll and 79% judge the economy as just fair or poor, the most since 2014.”

Only 41 percent approve of Biden’s handling of the presidency overall. 52 percent disapprove.

The numbers are even worse when it comes to the $3.5 trillion the Democrats want to spend on handouts to favored interests and woke programs. 71 percent of Americans disapprove if it increases their taxes (which of course it will).

A massive amount of new “Let’s Go Brandon” videos are coming out.

Here are some from the Let’s Go Brandon Dance Challenge.

Here’s one for Simpsons fans.

You got to love the prank announcements. “Could Brandon Lesko come to the service desk? I’m looking for a Lesko, Brandon.”

Even Hitler says Let’s Go Brandon.

Very funny and FUN!

Democrat Terry McAuliffe walked out of a TV interview with WJLA reporter Nick Minock. Video below. McAuliffe is running against Glenn Youngkin for Virginia Governor.

It’s never good when a politician walks out of an interview. This is especially true for a Democrats as they usually get softball questions from the media.

McAuliffe walked out when the conversation turned to critical race theory.

GOUSA has rated both Youngkin and McAuliffe using our opportunity-based Political Credit Rating System. Youngkin received a strong pro-opportunity score of 4.2/5.0. McAuliffe received a poor score of -1.6/5.0 (anti-opportunity).

Our press release noted the basis for the ratings:

“Youngkin received a high score on his support for protecting our 2nd Amendment gun rights, despite deceptive ads from Democrat-linked organizations attacking him on the issue. McAuliffe scored terribly on the subject with his far-Left, anti-2A gun control agenda. Youngkin also scored highly on all five Points of Opportunity – Personal, Economic, Social, Educational, and National Opportunity – while McAuliffe’s score is underwater on all points except for Social Opportunity (Youngkin bests him 60% to 20% on the topic). With such a clear difference between the candidates, the choice for Virginia voters should be clear.”

UPDATE: The two most recent polls now have Youngkin and McAuliffe tied at 46 percent each.

UPDATE2: Now McAuliffe is claiming that he didn’t walk off despite video evidence to the contrary. The local TV news station states otherwise.

Encouraging news: A recent poll by the Morning Consult finds that only 8 percent of Gen Z has a positive opinion of cancel culture while 55 percent opposes it.

Gen Z is more likely to have a negative view of cancel culture than Millennials. 36 percent of Millennials opposed cancel culture while 19 percent favored it.

While a plurality of both generations oppose cancelation, a lot of work needs to be done. Significant numbers in both generations are either neutral or don’t have an opinion on cancel culture.

Same for critical race theory. While Gen Z and Millennials are split on CRT, a majority of each generation have either no opinion or neutral feelings toward s critical race theory.

Gen X and Boomers are overwhelming opposed to both cancel culture and critical race theory.

At GO-USA we oppose critical race theory, cancel culture and other divisive ideologies.

We are working to develop a young leaders who value individualism and freedom.

We are spreading the message of opportunity and liberty through social media and other means.

And we support those speak out. Like Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones, we believe that silencing others does not disprove the veracity of their claims but instead the pettiness and insecurity of the silencer.

Freedom is contagious. Let’s Go Brandon by Loza Alexander is #1 on the iTunes hip hop chart and #2 overall.

“Let’s Go Brandon” started when NBC reporter tried to cover up for a crowd chanting “F*** Joe Biden” at a NASCAR race.

We say “Let’s Go Brandon!”

Enjoy!

Lots of new information is coming out about how big tech and big media interfered with the 2020 election.  There’s too much to post here so we’ll just give you a sampling.

Mollie Hemingway’s new book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections came out this past week.*  See Mollie discuss her book here. 

Kylee Zempel has a great piece in the Federalist on the investigation into how Zuckerberg corrupted elections in Wisconsin including emails obtained by groups fighting public corruption.  Gives you a great insight into how Zuckerbucks were used to steal the 2020 election.  Big Tech election interference was one of the topics covered at August’s OppCon.

More here on Zuckerberg from the Daily Mail.  Sad, isn’t it, that to get news about the U.S. you have to go to foreign publicans?

Finally, don’t miss Miranda Devine’s Laptop from Hell: Hunter Biden, Big Tech, and the Dirty Secrets the President Tried to Hide which is due out in November.*  My copy is on pre-order.   

As Thomas Jefferson wrote: “a well informed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny”. Keep tyrants at bay. Stay informed.

* Annoy your big tech overlords.  Don’t buy from Amazon.com. 

What do German election results have to do with GOUSA?  A lot really. In September, young Germans voted overwhelmingly for change by rejecting the two establishment parties.  Are young Americans also ready to change politics in the United States?  At GOUSA we hope so.

Unlike the United States, Germany has several major political parties though two, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Socialists (SPD), have run the country since WWII.  In the September national election young Germans rejected both parties.  Instead, the top voter getters among young people were the libertarian Free Democrats (FDP) and the progressive Greens each with 23 percent of the youth vote.  That may not sound like a lot by US standards.  But consider that the CDU and SPD combined gathered just 25 percent of the vote among voters between the ages of 18 and 22.

The concerns that led young people to reject the CDU and SPD sound a lot like the concerns of young people in the United States. 

Young Germans voted for change because they were sick of the government’s COVID restrictions. Reuters reports:   

“Many young voters saw the FDP as a defender of their liberties and freedoms during the pandemic, Schnetzer said, when the government closed schools and universities, restaurants and fitness studios while keeping factories open to safeguard the economy.  School closures amounted to around 30 weeks since March last year compared to just 11 in France, U.N. data shows. The FDP was against blanket closures and wanted to give schools more power to decide if and when to close.”

The other is that the establishment parties were out of touch with issues of interest to young voters including the soaring costs of Germany’s equivalent to the U.S. social security system.  From the Wall Street Journal:

The CDU is like the George W. Bush wing of the Republican Party in the U.S. and the SPD like the old-time labor Democrats.  Both are in sharp decline in the United States especially among young people.  Like young Germans, young Americans are looking for new solutions.    

Will young Americans find a pro-opportunity, pro-freedom message like that of the FDP as appealing as young Germans do? We think so.  We at GOUSA are working hard bring the message of opportunity to young Americans and develop a generation of pro-opportunity leaders.     

The IRS now wants to monitor every check written and deposit made on your bank account.  A new IRS rule would require banks to turn over transaction information on every account with a balance of $600 or more.  This is a terrible invasion of American’s privacy and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is lying about the proposal.

On Tuesday October 12, Yellen told the Senate Banking Committee that the collection of bank account information was to address tax fraud by billionaires.  This claim is ludicrous on its face.  Billionaires don’t have bank accounts with $600 or write small-dollar checks.  Rather, the purpose is to harass and intimidate small business and ordinary American taxpayers.

Big Brother of Orwell’s 1984 has become Big Janet of 2021. 

The real goal is control.

Wyoming Senator Cindy Lummis put it best when she said that monitoring the bank accounts of every American is evidence of the distrust of Treasury Secretary Yellen and the Biden Administration for the American people:  “Do you distrust the American people so much that you need to know when they bought a couch? Or a cow?”

Of course, it is only a matter of time before the Biden Administration uses this information to squelch dissent by their opponents.

One need only recall the harassment of Tea Party groups by the IRS during the Obama Administration. 

Or the use of the IRS by Richard Nixon against his political enemies. 

Or the many other episodes in which the IRS has been used to harass those who oppose the powerful. 

GO-USA believes in the right to personal privacy including financial privacy and opposes the unconstitutional exercise of the powers of the federal government including the use of government to harass political opponents. 

More here!

Even the New York Times reports that Americans think this power grab sucks. Article e here!