MAGA?

Make America Great Again?

   Let’s think about that much-shouted slogan, using hard facts that anybody can easily verify.

   The stock market is at an all-time high. That would not be so if investors were horrified at the current state of economic affairs, as the Right would have us believe. Wall Street realizes the economy is healthy and strong. In fact, under the Biden/Harris administration, the economy grew a robust 3% between April and June of 2024 alone and remains prosperous.

   America leads the world in oil and natural gas production, an industry that supports more than ten million jobs.

   Between January 2021 and June 2024, 13.4 million jobs were added to our economy, 7.9 million of those to U.S.-born workers. (From the Bureau of Labor Statistics.) More Americans are working than ever before, and jobless claims are at an historic low. The Biden/Harris administration has saved factories along with their local economies.

   Semiconductors power the modern world. They’re essential in cellphones, new cars, and medical tech, for just a few examples. Thanks to the Biden/Harris Investing in America Agenda and the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, semiconductor manufacturing has come back to America, along with $30 billion in new private investments and still more thousands of well-paying jobs. (From the Commerce Department.)

   Inflation has been a global problem for some time, yet the Biden/Harris administration has brought it down to under 3% for us. We’ve all seen gas prices falling recently.

   Despite what the Right is Trumpeting, violent crime is at a 50-year low across our nation.

   This is only a partial list of Biden/Harris accomplishments. The point is, to any real patriots, to any real believers in the promise of our American democracy, to anybody working hard to realize their own version of the Dream, to anybody paying attention to the facts, America is Already Great.

   Meanwhile, Donald Trump, a convicted felon who owes more than half a billion dollars in tax-evasion penalties and jury-trial defamation settlements, is spending much of his campaign time on grifting, touting everything from $60 Bibles (“The Bible is my favorite book,” he said. “I have many.”), to a Bitcoin scheme, to golden sneakers, to $99 digital trading cards featuring himself in various glamorized poses, to golden $100,000 wristwatches. (Only $500 for an economy silver version for the masses.) Is the MAGA leader trying to Make Trump Rich Again? At his followers’ expense? Are you joining the MTRA movement?

   Yes, we obviously need to curb gun violence. The Biden/Harris administration wants to ban assault rifles, which have no legitimate use in self-defense (a shotgun is a much better weapon for that) or game hunting. But the Right refuses, and their hand-picked wing of the Supreme Court legitimizing the bump stock, which turns an AR-15 into a supremely lethal machine gun, is certainly not helping.

   Yes, our border policies obviously need attention. That’s why the Biden/Harris administration put together a bipartisan border reform and strengthening act that would have given the Right most of what they said they wanted. And what happened? Trump urged his congressional cronies to reject it and they dutifully did. Why? Simply so Trump could use the issue as a cudgel against the Left in his campaign.

   Those Haitian Immigrants, by the way, are in Ohio and elsewhere legally under the TPS (Temporary Protected Status) program, which allows sanctuary for people fleeing dire circumstances from severely degraded or lethal regimes like Haiti, which has been devastated by catastrophic weather. The people of Springfield have embraced them as decent, hard-working people who have benefited their community. Claims from Trump and Vance of them eating pets and otherwise destroying Springfield life have been thoroughly debunked, yet Trumpers have terrorized the community with bomb threats that have disrupted Springfield life, locked down schools, and overloaded law enforcement.

   As I’ve said, the only people who had original claim to the entire Western Hemisphere were Mayans, Aztecs, or other native tribes. Every single other person in the whole Western Hemisphere is either an immigrant or descended from immigrants. Ironically, the wives of both Trump and Vance are from recent immigrant families.

   Einstein was an immigrant, as have been thousands upon thousands of famous, productive, contributing, valued members of our nation. That’s what the Statue of Liberty is all about. Look up the inscription on it. Should we tear down that statue? (Immigrants should, of course be vetted before the granting of citizenship.)

   In fact, you might say immigrants were the first to begin making America the greatest nation on the planet.

Phil