2021s BIG stories
2021 has been a calamitous year for the vast majority of people. Let's review the political year in the United States and beyond.
What a year. Who would have thought, on January 1, 2021 that the coming year could possibly be worse than the one just passed. And yet it seems that it may have possibly succeeded in that aim.
There have been 8 major stories this year, and we’ll cover them all. January 6, the American Rescue Plan, the Afghanistan withdrawal, Build Back Better, the Working Class revolt, inflation, the destruction of journalism and the coronavirus pandemic are the big topics that we need to cover.
January 6:
The first signs that the year may be even worse than 2020 came on January 6, when an angry group of Trump-supporting, far-right individuals entered the Capitol building, in an attempt to overturn the election results from the preceding year.
Now, there have been a lot of people, mostly liberal elites who are delighted with the eventual results of that election, who have claimed that it was the most secure and pristine election possible. This is simply not true. The American electoral system is beyond broken, as we here have not tried to hide.
The electoral college as a system is just broken. A vote in New York is not equal to a vote in Missouri. Or Hawaii. Or Alaska. Or Texas. Or any other state. In a proper system, one vote = one vote irrespective of wherever it was cast. This is not the case under the electoral college.
On top of that, millions of people, especially black and brown people, have been disenfranchised by laws that mean that anyone who possesses a schedule 1 drug are unable to vote. Just possessing a substance so that you can insert it in your own body - an action with a grand total of 0 victims - means that you lose your ability to vote. In some states, you lose that right forever. That shit is dystopian.
Finally, the gerrymandering that affects elections to Congress and local elections. Both parties have redistricted boundaries so that it benefits them by putting as many of the opposition’s voters in one district rather than spreading them as they should be, meaning that the opposition win one or two districts, while they easily romp home in landslide victories in district after district. Both parties do that, but the Republicans are so much more successful at it than their Democratic counterparts are.
What I’m really trying to say here is that the election wasn’t pristine. That’s 3 paragraphs in 1 sentence for you.
However, what these individuals believe isn’t at all accurate. There is no evidence that Biden and the Democratic party fixed the election to such a point that they won, through widespread voter fraud alone. For God’s sake, Biden barely knows his own name half the time, and we’re expected to believe that he can pull off the biggest crime in American history? I don’t think so, buddy.
There are also some question marks over the role of federal agents on the day. A number of individuals who incited the riot and pushed others to enter the Capitol are yet to be indicted. The feds know their identities. They were pushed through the media. They have been well-publicised. And yet they haven’t been indicted. Strange. I would contend that they were federal agents, especially considering what we know about the role of federal agents in the plotted kidnapping of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer and in some ANTIFA rallies. They were involved there, so why is it unreasonable to think they were involved here? Especially when you consider that one of the groups heavily involved in the diet coup attempt were high-ranking members of the Proud Boys who have been federal informants in the past, and one was even texting his handler from inside the capitol on the day.
Frankly, that day was a very dark one in American history, and President Trump, who played a major role in inciting it, ought to be indicted for it. However, it doesn’t warrant the endless fear-mongering from liberal media about the big bad right-wingers involved.
American Rescue Plan:
After that, President Biden was elected and quickly did some of the few good things that he has achieved. On day one, he increased the minimum wage for federal workers to $15, including tipped workers, meaning that a series of low-waged yet crucial workers finally get something bordering on a living wage.
Then, after months after negotiating against himself and his own party, Biden eventually passed the American Rescue Plan in March, which meant that every American adult under a certain income bracket got a $1400 check, and the child tax credit was expanded. Now, this wasn’t quite the $2000 checks on day one that were promised, but it is better than nothing.
The main failing here was the Democrats inability to get a $15 minimum wage through, as 8 Dems voted against it, including Kyrsten Sinema, who attempted to do a little curtsey while doing a ‘thumbs down’ motion, mimicking John McCain’s vote against repealing the ACA in 2017. This was her trying to be cute as she destroyed the ability for low-waged workers to get a raise.
Afghanistan:
The next major story was Afghanistan, and America’s withdrawal from it.
Now, the withdrawal itself was probably the best fucking thing that a US President has done in many a year. He put both middle fingers up to the military industrial complex as he refuted their efforts to get back into the country.
The withdrawal was good because this war was a massive waste of life and money. That is both American and Afghan lives, and mostly American money.
The initial purpose of the war was to capture the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, specifically Osama Bin Laden and the remainder of al-Qaeda. And the war could’ve been done extremely quickly. The Taliban almost immediately offered Bin Laden, who was trained and funded in the 1970s and 80s by the United States government, to the US military, in return for not being utterly destroyed in a war like they have been. Al-Qaeda was also decimated very quickly, with reporting in 2009 showing less than 100 active members in the country, and the signs are that it had been that way for a long way.
There were a number of lies told after this one as to why we were still there, all as ridiculous as the last.
We do not know how many US soldiers died because of Afghanistan, but we do know that in all post-9/11 wars, such as this particular one and Iraq, 7057 soldiers died in war, while over 30000 have committed suicide afterwards. Many more have died because of injuries or illnesses picked up in the war. That is an utter disgrace. This country failed these poor souls because we didn’t want to strike a deal in 2001.
The real reason that we were involved in this war from 2001 is because all the people involved in the governing side of this war either have stock in defense contractors such as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, received campaign donations from them or have served on their boards. These companies have seen stock price increases of over 300%. The people governing their futures have financial gains to be made from giving them contracts to give them weapons that then are used in these wars.
That is not to say that the American people did not pay a financial cost on top of the body count. We are reported to have spent upwards of $6 trillion by the time the loans are paid back on Iraq and Afghanistan, while American infrastructure is crumbling, millions don’t have healthcare and 700,000 are homeless. Fixing those problems would be a better spend of money.
This war turned into a nation-building effort a good few years ago, which, again, is ignoring the clear nation-building that the United States has to do back home. That is not to mention that the death toll of Afghan citizens reached its highest points in 2018 and 2019.
As the withdrawal began, President Biden and intelligence operatives told us that it would take 90 days minimum for the Taliban to take Kabul, meaning that they would have plenty of time to evacuate American soldiers.
This was a lie. And it was a lie from the intelligence agencies. Joe Biden wouldn’t have had a clue personally how long it could have taken for the Taliban to take over, but if you have a series of generals with a ton of medals all tell you it will take 90 days, you tend to believe them.
However, they would have known that the Afghan army would not have put up the slightest fight and the Taliban would take over much quicker, making the evacuation much more rushed. This was a lie they told Biden so that his decision to withdraw looked bad in the media.
Of course, the Taliban then took over remarkably quickly. Now, this is a heinous organization, with views, particularly concerning women’s rights, that belong firmly in the middle ages. However, it is not America’s job to stop them. We are not the world’s police. For God’s sake, the US is in bed with Saudi Arabia, who believe the same things as the Taliban do. In no way is the United States in any position to chastise the Taliban about anything.
The media piled on Biden about this, just as they did to Obama and Trump when they talked about withdrawing from wars, but, unlike them, Biden actually went through with it. This did harm his approval rating, but it was very much worth it, given that he finally ended this horrible war.
Of course, there was then the attack at Kabul airport, that killed 13 US soldiers and many more Afghan civilians, as well as some Taliban operatives. This attack was carried out by ISIS-K, a mutual enemy of both America and the Taliban. Of course, the fact that anyone died in Afghanistan is a disaster, and as a result the media narrative was that it was evidence that we needed to stay. This is just illogical. The thinking was “soldiers die in Afghanistan, so send more soldiers to Afghanistan to stop it happening again.” How about we just don’t have soldiers in Afghanistan? That way, American soldiers won’t die there.
There have been a couple of failings, one of which borders on genocide, from the Biden administration here.
The first was that about 100-200 US citizens were left in Afghanistan, some of whom wanted out. All those who wanted to leave should have been able to get out, and the fact that some weren’t is an utter embarrassment.
Then, Biden, in an attempt to look ‘tough’ to his warmongering detractors, launched a drone strike on an individual who they thought may have been involved in the attack at the airport. They were wrong, and as a result killed 10 innocent civilians, including 6 children under 10. That is a war crime.
Finally, Biden decided to block all international aid and impose destructive sanctions on the people of Afghanistan. The BBC did a pretty good piece below discussing the suffering.
The sanctions and lack of international aid are what is causing this. 23 million Afghans are facing malnutrition. Millions more are starving. Hospitals have no equipment. There is a drought meaning that farms can’t produce much food. And all that Biden can bring himself to do is keep the sanctions. That is downright genocidal. He is going to be responsible for the deaths of millions of Afghans as a result of these sanctions.
Build Back Better:
Build Back Better shows us the utter failure of the Biden administration, and of the progressive caucus. We found here that Joe Manchin is actually the President of the United States, not Joe Biden.
Initially, the Democrats came up with a decent bill, that included a series of popular and necessary provisions, such as 2 years of community college, a medicare expansion to cover dental, vision and hearing for over 65s, expanded child tax credit and a series of climate provisions. These are all definitely necessary, and just about all the provisions polled at over 50%, many at over 60%, and some even over 70%. It was popular because it was necessary.
But then they met a speedbump, and it was not one that they were able to come over. The speedbump was 2 Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, both of whom refused to disobey their corporate masters, and as such opposed numerous parts of the bill.
They took a long time to justify their concerns, although Sinema appeared to be against lower drug prices, a position that defies logic, and Manchin was opposed to raising taxes on the rich, but still wanted it to be deficit-neutral. The only way for any bill like this to be deficit-neutral is for taxes to be raised on the rich. In other words, he was just opposed to the bill.
In an effort to appease these two, Democratic Party leaders took provision after provision out of the bill, in such a way that meant that every provision that was taken out got its own day in the news.
One week, people would read that they weren’t going to get lower drug prices because the Democrats didn’t want to fight for it. Then the next week, people found that free community college was gone. Then came the destruction of vision and hearing being paid for under medicare. The fourth week some climate change provisions were taken out. Then the child tax credit was weakened. Finally, universal pre-K become not at all universal, just cheaper for some people in some states.
This day-by-day takeaways from the bill meant that no-one really knew what was in it, because the Biden administration refused to fight for what was right and popular.
Then, finally, on Fox News last week, Joe Manchin finally announced that he was a no on the bill no matter what, which was the ultimate knife in Joe Biden’s back.
Even though the provisions initially in the Build Back Better plan were popular, because Biden is historically unpopular, it actually became a political win for Manchin and Sinema to be seen opposing them, even if what they were doing would actually harm their constituents.
The truth here is that Joe Biden really wanted a roughly $1.5 trillion bill, enough that it counts as something of a major legislative victory but not enough for it to upset his corporate masters. He thought that Joe Manchin would be an aide in that, but Manchin went further than Biden thought he would.
The biggest failing here was from the house progressive caucus. Initially, they had decided that they wouldn’t vote for the smaller infrastructure package that Joe Manchin loves unless Build Back Better was passed at the same time. However, they then decided that Joe Manchin’s word that he would vote for BBB was enough, so they went ahead, with only 6 exceptions, and voted for the smaller infrastructure package. They surrendered.
Joe Manchin lied to them, and they either didn’t see through it (my cat could probably have seen through it) or they didn’t care. Based on the fact that the leader of house progressives has told us that she has “no regrets” over this debacle, I’d suggest it’s the latter. They are perfectly happy for Joe Manchin to destroy this. They don’t care.
This is one of the biggest disgraces so far of the Biden administration. Bernie Sanders, who was one of the main writers of the initial bill, came up with a decent plan. Then, week by week, it was destroyed and then eventually the final nail was put in Build Back Better’s coffin.
This is Joe Biden’s fault. This is the progressive caucus’ fault. This is the corporate interests’ fault. This was the Democrats fault.
Working Class Revolt:
One of the few positives that have come out of 2021 was the drive from low-waged workers to get good working conditions and better pay.
The number of strikes, marches, union elections and other forms of fighting from workers at Amazon, Kellogg’s, Frito-Lay, Texan miners, Nabisco, John Deere, Netflix, McDonalds, Dollar General and many more.
Let’s focus quickly on Amazon and Kellogg’s, and what workers nationwide have won.
In Bessemer Alabama, workers at an Amazon wanted a union, as they were sick of being treated as no more than robots. Their working conditions include back-breaking shifts, running against the clock. Delivery drivers regularly report having to pee in bottles and shitting in bags, and being fired for being a mere few minutes behind on deliveries. In short, these conditions are awful.
So they fought for a union, and managed to get an election for their warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.
Unfortunately, Amazon did their best to fix it. They intimidated and influenced workers into voting no, leading to many of them feeling as though they had to. The way that voting boxes were set up made it seem as though Amazon were keeping track of who voted which way, with the implied threat that those who voted yes would then be fired.
Just recently, however, a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board recently ordered a new election, because of these problems with the previous one. Hopefully it is fair this time.
Kellogg’s strikes very recently finished, just in the last couple of weeks, after 11 weeks worth of strikes over pay and working conditions.
The main contention was over the so-called ‘two-tiered pay structure’, in which workers hired before 2015 were paid $35 per hour while those hired afterwards paid $22 per hour. This results in a negative and divided work environment in which individuals there for up to 6 years resenting their co-workers for being paid significantly more than they were. Both the older, better-paid workers and the newer, worse-paid workers had a problem with this. Other points of contention that came up during the initial contract negotiations in September concerned health insurance, paid time off, retirement benefits and cost-of-living adjustments.
Bear in mind that, while they couldn’t afford to give these 1400 employees these benefits, the company announced a $307 million profit in the 3rd quarter of 2021. The CEO’s salary is well over $1 million annually. They can afford this. They chose not to do it.
However, they can afford to lose 1400 workers for 11 weeks because they don’t want to give them better benefits.
When it got to the point that Kellogg’s couldn’t go any longer without these workers because they didn’t have any stock of their items left, they attempted to sack these workers and hire new ones who would work for worse conditions. However, reddit users flooded their hiring website, making it crash, so they couldn’t.
On December 21, however, a new deal was struck between the union and Kellogg’s, with many wins and no concessions from the unions.
That is a happy ending, but it doesn’t mean that we should excuse what Kellogg’s did over 3 months.
The good news on the worker front is that, as a result of strikes, resignations and a rethink of what an employee thinks they are worth, companies have been forced to increase wages.
As of the 3rd quarter of 2021, wages had increased by 3% year-over-year, the biggest increase in decades. That is a massive victory for workers, although it may not seem that way after we’ve covered the next subject.
Inflation:
The benefits of these wage increases have been vastly overshadowed by the massive inflation that we have seen across just about all our basic needs. We have covered this in the past, and you will get a far better debrief of the issues faced by everyday Americans there than you will get here. However, we will do our best now.
As we did there, we’ll start with gas. At the time of writing, the year over year increase in gas prices is 66.25%, a massive increase, especially when you compare it to the just 3% increase in wages. People struggle to pay that much, especially when you consider that, even before the pandemic, 80% of working Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. It’s worse now.
Gas prices have increased for a couple of reasons, the main one being that Saudi Arabia is the main producer of fuel that the US relies on, and President Biden hasn’t been as friendly with them as his predecessors have been.
Now, that is a good thing. Mohammed bin Salman has overseen heinous abuses against women’s rights, as well as a genocide in Yemen because their government used to believe the wrong faction of Islam. I view them as no better than the Taliban, because they believe the same things as the Afghan organization and do the same things to their enemies. As such, I do not support calling them enemies, although I draw a line at war.
All that Biden’s done differently to Obama and Trump is he has cut down on a few of the weapons that Saudi Arabia gets from the US, with them only getting weapons for ‘defensive’ purposes now. That hasn’t stopped them from bombing countless civilian residencies, but bin Salman bears a grudge over that. Biden has also refused to meet with the Saudi Crown Prince.
As a result, the Saudi Arabian government have fiddled with the price of oil through OPEC, in an effort to get back at the Biden administration over those actions.
The only real solution here that doesn’t fail either the Yemeni people or the American people is to heavily incentivise affordable electric or hydro-powered vehicles, so that they become more accessible and convenient for your average Joe or Jane.
Housing is the next major area of inflation. To start with rent, a 1 bedroom apartment has seen a 21.3% increase since December 2020, up to an average of $1680 per month. A 2 bedroom apartment has seen a 16.7% increase to $1958 per month. That is a massive amount of money for a working-class earner, just for a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment.
At the end of the 3rd quarter of 2021, house prices have increased by 18.1% year over year. Because property is the number 1 way that wealth is passed from generation to generation, this increase is blocking millions of middle class Americans from passing their wealth to their children and grandchildren like their parents could. That is a sign of how disastrous this could be for your average person.
Food inflation is the other area hitting most people, particularly in the meat area. Beef, pork, bacon and lamb have all seen price increases over 10% year over year. This is in part because of climate change causing draughts which in turn have caused animal feed prices to increase due to a lack of supply, meaning that there aren’t as many cows or lambs or pigs as there have been, resulting in the lack of supply that has caused this increase in price.
The other reason, as informed by nonprofit director and former rancher Bill Bullard, is because of a complete lack of competition in the meatpacking industry, meaning that these corporations have absolutely no reason to keep their prices low. They don’t have any competition (except for people going vegetarian). They have no reason to keep prices low. So they don’t. They don’t even try a little.
The main reason that prices have increased is because of bottlenecks in the supply chain, caused by the covid-19 pandemics and American manufacturing being shipped overseas.
NAFTA (including Trump’s NAFTA 2.0), TPP, the 1979 free trade deal with China and other free trade agreements have resulted in the vast majority of manufacturing being moved to other countries, which has the initial impact of taking away American jobs and the added little bonus of, if any problems in the supply chain arise, US citizens can’t get their goods.
The main bottleneck at the moment is the dozens of ships and thousands of shipping containers stuck in Texas that haven’t been able to be moved across the country because there aren’t enough workers at the port and enough truckies to shift it around.
The obvious solution is to bring back American manufacturing, but that won’t help the corporations who own our politicians, so it is not likely to happen.
Destruction of 1st amendment:
As anyone who reads this regularly will know, one of my favourite things to is to whine about how shitty the mainstream media is. I’ll repeat one more time: they are really bad at their jobs. But that is not what this is about. This is also not about cancel culture and wokeism: that is another tale for another day. This is about two heroes who have been imprisoned for standing up to the US government in one case and to a major American corporation in the other. They are, of course, Julian Assange and Steven Donziger, a journalist and lawyer respectively.
Assange is, of course, the more famous case, and his situation has deteriorated all year, and it wasn’t very good at all to begin with.
As we have discussed previously, Julian Assange is a journalistic hero. There have been a number of major leaks that he has published that detail the war crimes from Western powers, particularly the United States and the United Kingdom in the Middle East.
Possibly the most famous leak that he published is the 2007 US helicopter attack that killed a series of completely innocent Iraqi civilians. They laughed as they shot them. One was heard saying “Hahaha I hit ‘em!” Another responded with “yeah, look at those dead bastards.” Reminder: these ‘dead bastards’ were all innocent civilians, including children. They wished for a wounded man to reach for a weapon even though there wasn’t one in sight just so they could justify killing him as well.
Assange also leaked nearly 500,000 documents concerning the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that contained information about civilian deaths. This was extremely damaging to the military industrial complex.
His most recent well-known leak was the DNC emails in 2016, that showed how Hillary Clinton had fixed the Democratic primary against Bernie Sanders. One of the things that they had done during the campaign was ensure that the Clinton campaign received the debate questions in advance, meaning that she could script her answers in advance. This is a very obvious problem.
It was also found that Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was the chair of the Democratic National Committee at the time, had said over email that Bernie Sanders “isn’t going to be President,” and called him a “scumbag.” They also scheduled some primaries in such a way that benefited Hillary’s white-collar voting force rather than Bernie’s working class voters.
Many lies were told in an effort to connect him to the Russian government because that suits the Democrats’ agenda that it was Russia who cost them the 2016 election. Assange has pledged not to reveal the sources of his links, but he did confirm that it wasn’t the Russian government. US intelligence says it was, but one of those two sides has a record for lying, and it isn’t the Australian journalist in prison in London.
Now, what Assange did in these cases is what every other news agency has done over the years. They received a leak, and they published it. The New York Times does this. So does the Washington Post. So does CNN and MSNBC and Fox News and literally everybody else in media. The difference is that what Assange published was harmful to the military industrial complex and politicians, whereas what these corporations publish generally isn’t.
In 2019, after years in hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Assange was dragged out, and has since spent the last couple of years in Belmerash maximum-security prison in London, in solitary confinement and horrifying conditions. Countless psychologists have described what Assange is going through as mental torture.
He has been fighting for a couple of years now to avoid extradition to the United States, on the grounds that it would not be safe for him in the country. He would probably face execution, torture or both.
Initially, he won this appeal in February. However, the US appealed this decision, and just last month it was announced that the extradition had been allowed by a higher court. Assange is planning to take this to the UK supreme court. This is bleak for the future of proper journalism.
Of course, these were in no sense the only troubles that Assange has faced this year. The UK high chancellor, Dominic Raab, has personally blocked Julian’s marriage to his fiancée, Stella Moris, from getting married. That is just petty behaviour to take away any sense of positivity in Assange’s life.
More importantly, the journalist suffered a stroke in prison, it was announced after the extradition verdict had come in. A healthy 50 year old who hasn’t touched alcohol in years does not normally have a stroke. This was because of the conditions he has been held in.
We also learnt that, in 2017 and 2018, the CIA and British intelligence had concocted multiple plots to assassinate Assange in London. Plans included car collisions, shooting the tires out of a getaway plane that never came, and kidnapping him in the embassy. You can read more details about that here. It is well worth a read.
Assange is a journalistic hero. He should be treated as such, not a criminal at the same levels as mass murderers.
Quickly, let’s discuss the other attack on free speech this year, namely the home imprisonment and general imprisonment of lawyer Steven Donziger, who took on Chevron for their dumping of oil that harmed countless indigenous communities in Ecuador
After Chevron dumped this oil, Donziger and his fellow legal team sued them for US$9.5 billion, to be paid to these indigenous communities. He won, for obvious reasons.
However, Chevron didn’t want to pay. They didn’t want to be held accountable for their actions. So, not only did they refuse to pay up, but they also then sued Donziger, claiming that he bribed the judge and withheld evidence. There is no proof of this.
Donziger refused to give up his laptop and phone to Chevron, because why the fuck should he (and it would also breach attorney-client confidentiality privileges) and as a result was slapped with contempt of court orders. He spent 2 years in home confinement with an ankle bracelet, and then was eventually sentenced to 6 months in prison, more than the vast majority of contempt charges. He was sent to spend his sentence in a prison that only held convicted felons. And Donziger.
The judge involved in this case in the United States both had deep ties to Chevron. Judge Lewis Kaplan found him guilty of bribery and fraud initially in a trial without a jury. Kaplan held significant financial investments in Chevron at the time, and is a former corporate lawyer, where he served corporations similar to Chevron. The conflict of interest here is shocking.
This, again, is a problem for the future of free speech. This is telling lawyers that they will be punished for going after large corporations. This is a warning shot, and it is one that could well hit those who want to fight for the poorest people in the world.
I know that when most people think about a ‘threat to free speech’ at the moment, they focus on cancel culture. That is a problem, in my opinion, and we will at some point do a deep dive into that topic. However, the biggest problems concerning free speech is nothing to do with wokeism or cancel culture. It is these attacks on journalism and holding corporations accountable.
COVID-19 Pandemic:
OK, we’ve made it to the last one. You’ve hung in there.
COVID-19 is, of course, the big story of the last couple of years. Not in a century have we seen a virus have the effects that have decimated the world like this one has. Not since WW2 has there been a global event of this magnitude.
We have seen 2 new variants tear across the world, widespread vaccination but no real success.
At the time of writing, there have been 288 million confirmed coronavirus cases globally, and over 5 million deaths. We can only suspect that both of those numbers would be far bigger if we had more widespread testing. It is also assuming that all governments have been completely honest, which is not something we can expect from any of them.
As always, we will focus more on the United States and the response from the government and corporations there, rather than globally.
President Biden was elected on COVID. There is little to no doubt about that. Trump, in all likelihood, would’ve romped home to victory by a similar margin to his in 2016 had the virus not taken effect. Head to head polling between Trump and
Biden before the pandemic took hold was much better for Trump than it was at the same point in the campaign against Hillary. He would’ve romped home.
But, Trump failed. 400,000 Americans died on his watch. The poor got poorer. Hospitals were overrun. People lost their jobs at an unprecedented level. People wanted a safe pair of hands, and therefore voted in Biden, by the skin of his teeth.
Biden, however, has been an even bigger failure than Trump, not that the media will ever tell you that.
I’ll start with the positives. After the vaccines were sped up through operation warped speed (credit to President Trump for that), Biden has managed to get 73.9% of Americans to take at least one shot of the vaccine. Credit to him for that.
However, I do disagree with one of the major policies that he implemented in an effort to get more people vaccinated, that being the ‘soft’ mandate meaning that employees at businesses with over 100 employees either need to be vaccinated or produce a negative test each week. Put simply, I cannot support controlling what people put in their own bodies. That is my opinion concerning drugs, and it is my opinion concerning medica 90 treatments such as the vaccine. Of course, I encourage people to go get a shot if they haven’t already, but I can’t support coercive policies on that front because of that basic principle. I go through why I disagree with it in significantly more detail here.
He also mandated masks on federal properties on day 1. That was a positive step forward from the ‘let what my be’ approach from the previous administration. I, personally, would temporarily mandate masks in retail, hospitality and on public transport, at least until such a point that thousands of people are not dying on a daily basis.
In 2021, over 400,000 Americans died of covid at an average well over 1100 per day - this is why I consider Biden’s covid record as being an utter failure. At the current point in time, the United States is seeing case records on a daily basis, with over 400,000 cases on at least one occasion. That is a mammoth number. On Christmas Eve, 69,000 Americans were in hospital with covid. . That number is now about 90,000. Incredible.
We are now, of course, seeing the surge of the Omicron variant, which at first glance appears to be a bit milder but significantly more transmissible than previous variants. Remember, also, that if the whole nation is sick for 2 weeks, that is going to be destructive for the nation at large, from both a health and economic perspective. We don’t want that.
What we also do not want is to lock the nation down. Lockdowns have not only been proven not to work from a health perspective over the last 18 months globally, but they also have adverse effects on mental health, personal relationships, education and a number of other fields that impact our individual lives. That is not a sacrifice we should be willing to make again for no real benefit.
If the Biden administration were to do a lockdown, which again is not a good idea and they have signalled that they oppose it, but if they were to do it, it is crucial that America follows in the footsteps of just about every other modern nation and pay a portion of the worker’s salaries so that they can still survive whilst small businesses have a chance to stay open.
The biggest failing of the current outbreak, without a question, is the testing. There is video of people in Harlem waiting in 2 hour lines, in the rain, just to get a test. Think about that. You are sick. You think you might have covid. You go to get a test, as you have been told that you should. You go to a testing station and stand in the rain for hours waiting to get tested. And you can guarantee that if you didn’t already have covid, you have picked it up while waiting in line.
What Biden should’ve done is what the majority of the nations in Europe did and make the rapid antigen tests free and widely accessible. In Europe, people can go to their nearest pharmacy and pick up a test for free. In the United States, costs are upwards of $100 if you don’t have insurance. Even if you do have insurance, they can cost $15 per test. Let’s say you have a family of 5. That’s $75 for 1 test each. If you all test positive, you’ll need to get tested 2 or 3 more times each at least. That means that you overall bill can easily end up in the $200-$300 range even if you have insurance. That is very expensive for your average Joe or Jane. These tests should be free for all, an idea that Jen Psaki, Biden’s press secretary, has openly mocked.
There is no easy way out of this outbreak. The best thing that Joe Biden can do right now is implement section 1881a of the Affordable Care Act and give every American medicare, which he can do in an emergency, which this certainly is. This means that every American can afford to go to their doctor or a hospital without facing a massive bill at the end.
On top of that, he should drastically increase the funding that hospitals receive, including ICU beds. Hospitals nationwide are being overrun. This is a solution not just to the current problem but also to the much wider problem of underfunded health departments that has plagued the nation for decades.
Look, Joe Biden has somehow managed to be an even bigger failure on COVID-19 than his predecessor. That takes some real skill in incompetence. There are some basic measures he could take that can ease the suffering slowly, but I would be exceptionally but happily surprised if he were to actually go through and do them.
OK y’all, that’s it. Those were the big stories of the year.
There will, inevitably, be some stories that you think should have been included in here. Feel free to comment those below. These were just the 8 stories that came to mind that sum up the year.
Our next article will include my predictions for the 2022 year, including what I believe will happen in the midterm elections on November 8 this year. We’ll see how they pan out.