Monday, March 18, 2024

This and That---March 18, 2024 Edition

A few random observations, charts and factoids to provide some context on what is going on in the world.


A Threat to Democracy?

The Russian presidential election results are still being counted but with 60% of the vote in it appears that Vladimir Putin has been re-elected to a record fifth term with around 87% of the votes cast.


Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russias-presidential-election-2024-live-candidates-polls-when-results-will-be-2024-03-17/


The D.C. establishment and the Democrats like to talk about Trump being a "threat to democracy."

You are sure to hear this narrative continually between now and November.

However, consider the election total in the District of Columbia in the November, 2020 presidential election.


Source: https://www.politico.com/2020-election/results/washington-dc/


Does this look like the results you would expect to see in an open, free and democratic society?

The results are more skewed than in the authoritarian state of Russia.

Who is a greater threat to democracy?

Donald Trump or the bureaucrats and deep state inhabitants who live in and around Washington, D.C. who regulate and control almost every aspect of our daily lives?


Cash Buyers

Barron's reported last week that 68% of the homes purchased in Manhattan in the fourth quarter, 2023 were bought with cash.

The median list price for homes for sale in Manhattan is currently $1.6 million.


Source: https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Manhattan_NY/overview

 
In the meantime, mortgage payments required for the median price home for average Americans have doubled in the last 3 years.



A graph of average 30-year fixed mortgage rates over the last three years.



No wonder those Wall Street and mainstream media liberals in Manhattan see nothing wrong with Biden.


Inflation

In June, 2021 Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen famously stated that any inflation that might occur would be "transitory". Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell echoed her comments.

Of course, at the same time I wrote a blog post ("Inflation in our Future?"), that questioned the conclusion that the inflation we were starting to see at that time would be transitory. 

A year later inflation spiked to an annual rate of 9.1%, a rate that had not been seen in four decades.

Yellen now admits she regrets making the "transitory inflation" comment.


Source: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/us-treasury-secretary-janet-yellen-walks-back-transitory-inflation-claims-i-regret-saying-it


Joe Biden and the Democrats have recently been claiming that inflation is down and under control.

Yes, it is no longer increasing at 9%, but it is by no means going down. 

The price increases we saw are still with us. It is just that the additional inflation on top of those previous hikes has moderated.

However, prices are not returning to where they were three years ago.

Consider some of these price increases since January, 2021.



In the last four years, inflation has effectively eviscerated almost a quarter of the wealth of Americans.


Source: https://truflation.com/dashboard?feed=aggregated-us


This might suggest that who is in office for the next four years could be an important decision for you and the country.


Will It Ever Be Over?

On March 16, 2020, the "15 days to slow the spread" campaign against Covid-19 was rolled out in Washington, D.C.


Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/16/trumps-coronavirus-guidelines-for-next-15-days-to-slow-pandemic.html


Four years later, only 41% of Democrats believe the pandemic is over according to a recent Gallup survey.

This compares to 79% of Republicans and 63% of Independents.


Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/612230/four-years-say-covid-pandemic.aspx


The survey also asked respondents when they had contracted Covid over the last few years.

Interestingly, 46% stated that they had Covid in 2022 compared to only 25% in 2020 and 34% in 2021.

Of course, the Covid vaccinations were available in 2021 along with boosters in 2022.  There was no vaccine protection in 2020.

When has there ever been a pandemic in history in which infections were higher after the introduction of a vaccine that was supposed to curb the pandemic?

Most troubling is the fact that 46% of Democrats, 46% of Independents and 35% of Republicans believe that their lives will never get back to the "normal" life they had before the Covid pandemic. 

  
Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/612230/four-years-say-covid-pandemic.aspx

What more do you have to see to understand that the Covid response that began almost four years ago was one of the greatest failures of our government institutions and public health "experts" in the history of mankind?


Odds of Getting Away With Murder

It seems that it used to be very hard to get away with murder.

That is no longer the case.

In 1965, the police identified and arrested suspects in 92% of all murders.

Today the number has dropped to barely over 50%.


With the increase in better forensics, surveillance cameras, etc, you would think it would be easier to identify and arrest murder suspects today than in the past.

Balanced against this is the fact that in 1965 the police were much more likely to arrest innocent suspects, especially in minority populations. The fact that police are more cautious in arresting a suspect today is a positive development.

However, it is likely that a lot of murders go unsolved today simply because they occur in communities which do not want to cooperate with the police and/or people are afraid to do so out of a fear of retribution. This is a very negative development.

As a result, more and more people get away with murder.


Friday, March 15, 2024

Fair Share?

President Biden and the Democrats love to say that "the rich" are not paying their fair share of taxes.

They want voters to believe that if the wealthy would just "pay their fair share" of taxes that everything would be well with the federal government budget.

What is a fair share? How is it determined? Who decides what it is?

The Internal Revenue Service recently released taxpayer data for the 2021 tax year.

The data indicates that the top 1% of income earners paid 46% of all income taxes in 2021.

The top 5% paid 66%.

The top 10% paid 76%.

The top 50% paid 98%.

The bottom 50% paid 2%.

Income Tax Distribution By Income Level
IRS Statistics of Income (2021 Returns)

The United States income tax system is designed to be progressive meaning that the rich should pay more of their income than those with lower incomes.

However, how much more?

You can see from the above chart that the Top 1% of income earners had 26% of the total income in the United States but paid 46% of the total bill.

Their share of taxes is 1.77x their share of income? Is that fair?

The share of taxes for the top 10% is 76% compared to a 63% share of income.

Their share of taxes is 1.21x more than their share of income.

On the other hand, the bottom 50% is only paying .22x in taxes compared to their income.

Is that fair? Should the bottom half be getting away by not paying more if the rich are being asked to pay more?

The fact is that the share of income taxes paid by the top 1% earners in the United States has been increasing continually since 1980 when marginal tax rates were first reduced by Ronald Reagan.

In 1980, the top 1% were paying about 19% of all income taxes. In 2021, they paid 46% despite the reduction in the tax rates across the board over the ensuing years.

Lower tax rates have seemingly incentivized more income that has resulted in more tax revenue.


Source: https://nypost.com/2024/02/29/us-news/data-prove-it-the-trump-tax-cuts-soaked-the-rich/


Note that the share of income taxes the top 1% paid surged after the Trump tax cuts despite the fact you often hear Biden and the Democrats claiming that those tax cuts were a giveaway to the rich.

The truth is that the Trump tax cuts disproportionately benefited the middle income taxpayers just as was intended in the legislation.

You simply could not have the dramatic increase in the share of taxes paid by the top 1% shown above if that was not the case.

Source: https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/584190-irs-data-prove-trump-tax-cuts-benefited-middle-working-class-americans-most/

Income data published by the IRS clearly show that on average all income brackets benefited substantially from the Republicans’ tax reform law, with the biggest beneficiaries being working and middle-income filers, not the top 1 percent, as so many Democrats have argued.


Of course, if there is one thing that should be obvious to anyone who is familiar with the workings of our federal government is that no matter what the level of income taxes are it will never be enough.

Witness where the federal government is right now.

It is currently estimated that the federal budget will run a $1.9 billion deficit for the 2024 fiscal year ending in September.

This is despite record high income tax collections.

Income tax collections this year are +6% higher than last year.

It took 222 years for the United States to accumulate $11 trillion in debt.

This debt was used to pay for the Civil War, two World Wars, and the Louisiana Purchase. It was used to build the interstate highway system, the Hoover Dam, the Tennessee Valley Authority and put a man on the moon and countless other projects.

In the last four years alone, the federal government has added $11 trillion to the federal debt.




Do we really have anything that we can point to that can make us feel as if taking on this debt is going to produce long-term benefits to the American people?

The Biden administration would be quick to answer that the "green investments" they are making would be examples where those investments financed by debt will produce future returns.

However, considering this recent example, color me a little skeptical on that score.

Exactly EIGHT electric vehicle charging stations have been built over two years after legislation was passed that was going to put chargers across the width and breadth of the United States.





It should also be noted that last month (February, 2024), 63% of all federal income tax revenues were needed just to pay the interest on the $34.5 trillion federal debt.

If you have to pay the interest on the federal debt first, and it is consuming over half of your income tax revenue,  that does not leave much for anything else.


Source: https://twitter.com/RealEJAntoni/status/1767622355294048486


For the full year, interest on the debt is projected to consume 43% of all individual income taxes.

To put the entire "the rich need to pay more taxes" argument in perspective, even if the income taxes paid by the top 1% were increased by 50%, the federal budget deficit would still be $1.4 trillion for this year.

Make no mistake, a financial reckoning is ahead.

Top 1%? Top 50?  Bottom 50%?

It does not matter where you are.

When the federal spenders have their backs to the wall, everyone will be accused of not paying their fair share.

And that day is getting closer every day.


Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Monica +30, Haiti +15

It has been a long time since I have heard the name Monica Lewinsky.

For those who many not have been around 30 years ago, Lewinsky was the young White House intern who Bill Clinton was carrying on an affair with in and around the Oval Office between 1995 and 1997.

This is Lewinsky in May, 1997. She was 22 years old at the time the affair began. Clinton was 49.



Clinton and Lewinsky in the Oval Office in 1997.




When the story of the affair leaked in 1998, Clinton went before the American public and looked at the camera and made this famous denial.

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie, not a single time; never. These allegations are false."

You can see a video of news coverage of the scandal here including the earnestness in which Clinton denied the affair here.

It was a flat out lie.

Here is a photo of Clinton make that statement with Hillary by his side.


Clinton later was accused of lying to a special prosecutor when asked about the affair when he said this.

"There is not a sexual relationship, an improper sexual relationship or any other kind of improper relationship"

He later argued that he was being truthful because of his use of the present tense. There was nothing going on currently.

Clinton also defended his statement as not being a lie as it depended on "what the meaning of the world is is."

Clinton was later impeached by the House for lying under oath but was acquitted by the Senate.

Monica Lewinsky was in the news last week as she is now fronting a L.A. based apparel brand targeting working women called Reformation.

It appears that Lewinsky has aged very well depute the high profile and notoriety she had to endure in her early years.


Source: https://www.thereformation.com/monica-lewinsky-for-ref.html


Source: https://www.thereformation.com/monica-lewinsky-for-ref.html


Source: https://www.thereformation.com/monica-lewinsky-for-ref.html


What I found interesting in researching this blog post is that Lewinsky is now older (she will be 51 this year) than Clinton was when he was having an affair with her!

Lewinsky has never married and it clearly would not have been easy for her to make a living and a life for herself considering where she was 30 years.

Congratulations on the reformation of her life. 

As to Bill Clinton, I wonder if he has any regrets?

For that matter, I wonder if Bill and Hillary believe they ever did anything wrong in their lives to have regrets about?

Witness what is happening in Haiti.

Recall that the Clintons were deeply involved in rebuilding and fixing Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in that country in 2010.

Haiti and collapsed and descended into absolute chaos with armed gangs controlling much of the country.


 

The Clintons used the Clinton Foundation to raise aid money for Haiti and Bill got himself appointed as Special Envoy to Haiti and assumed the role of determining where all the Clinton Foundation and other international aid got distributed.

Hillary, as Secretary of State, controlled most of the U.S. aid to Haiti.

They ultimately controlled over $13 billion in international donations to assist Haiti.

That is a lot of money especially considering that the entire GDP of Haiti in 2010 was $11.8 billion.

Hillary had stated even before the earthquake occurred in 1999 that as a Secretary of State she was going to use Haiti as a laboratory project to showcase her vision of enlightened development (translated "Progressive policies like increasing the minimum wage and having the government make investment business decisions").

Clinton announced that Haiti would be a laboratory where the United States could road-test new approaches to development, taking advantage of “the power of proximity.”

What we are seeing right now is further evidence of the utter failure of that lab experiment.

Haiti has been a path to chaos and disaster for years and Haitians and other observers are not kind to the Clintons in all of it.

A big question that surrounds all of it is ---"What happened to all the money?"

You can read about it in the following articles if you are interested.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2016/11/what-the-clintons-did-to-haiti


https://canada-haiti.ca/content/how-clintons-robbed-and-destroyed-haiti


Monica Lewinsky got better with age.

Haiti did not.

It appears that Haiti needs its own reformation right now.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Wind At Our Backs

I have been fairly successful in the stock market over the years.

Most of that success was due to buying well diversified mutual funds and holding for the long-term.

History shows that being invested in equities has been the surest way to build wealth in the United States over the years aside from owning your own business.

It has allowed average Americans to participate as part owners in advances in the economy and has also proven to be the best protection against inflation over the long run.

You could not have much more of a graphic example of that than in this chart that tracks returns of various asset classes over the last 100 years.


Source: https://eldarinvest.com/en/historical-stock-returns/


.However, you may notice that this graph is misleading in that it is not drawn to scale.

To give you better perspective, consider this graph that compares REAL returns (after inflation) for the major asset classes.


Source: https://www.investorsfriend.com/asset-performance/
 


Many believe that their house is their best investment and inflation hedge.. However, 100 years of data indicate that stocks have returned about 2% in extra absolute returns than residential real estate has.


Source: https://eldarinvest.com/en/historical-stock-returns/


The stock calculation above also ignores dividend income on the stocks as the house values ignore possible rental income from the asset. Including dividends would increase the advantage to over five percentage points.

Notice that this graph is also not to scale,


Source: https://eldarinvest.com/en/historical-stock-returns/
 

That extra 2% per year compounded over 100 years adds up.

$1,000 invested in stocks 100 years ago would be worth $398, 276.

$1,000 invested in real estate 100 years ago would only be worth $50,505.

If you include an extra 3% in dividends on stocks for those 100 years you would have $6.5 million.

Real estate has performed better compared to stocks over the last 25 years as housing values increased substantially as mortgage rates dropped over the period.

However, stocks still win.

A few factoids that drive that point home. 


$10,000 invested in the S&P 500 would be worth over $1 million today.


It is actually around $1.3 million. $340,000 in real dollars adjusted for inflation.

I am not aware of many $10,000 homes in 1980 that are now worth $1 million.

In addition, if there are any Baby Boomers out there who are not comfortable financially they did not save very much and/or did not invest in the stock market.

The wind was at their backs almost their entire adult lives.


In the last 15 years the S&P 500 has increased over 10-fold.


I know several people who got completely out of the stock market as stocks cratered during that bear market. I implored one of them at length to stay the course telling them they were making a mistake. I have often wondered whether they got back in. Unfortunately, human behavior would suggest otherwise.


The S&P 500 is up 26% in the last 4 months. That is $9 trillion in extra value in just 88 trading days.




Advances in technology stocks have been largely responsible for the large increase in stock market values since 1980, the last 15 years and the last four months.

In particular, names such as Apple, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Facebook (Meta), Microsoft, Tesla and Nvidia.

These seven names are now referred to as the "Magnificent Seven" due to their size and influence on the stock market.

You see that in this chart where these seven stocks alone now have a large market cap than any other country's entire stock market.



The value of the U.S. stock market (59.6% of the total) is larger than the entire rest of the world combined.


Credit: https://www.visualcapitalist.com



In 1989, the U.S. stock market was only 28.9% of the global stock market despite its share of global GDP actually being slightly higher then than it is now.




Why do so many people around the world dislike the United States while at the same time want to come here?

Those charts say a lot.

This chart also does.






The U.S. stock market in 1994 (right at the beginning of internet revolution) was valued at 66% of U.S. GDP. It is now valued at 193% of GDP---nearly 3 times more.

How has all of this been possible?

One reason is that all of those big technology names that have been created and founded in the United States.

Is it just a coincidence that with all of the talent and intelligence in the world that it just so happened that it occurred in the United States?

The other reason is the incredible amount of money that has been created by the Federal Reserve over the last 15 years.

It started with what was called QE (quantitative easing) to deal with the 2009-2010 financial crisis and culminated in the money printing on steroids that resulted from the response to Covid.

Look at this chart of the M1 Money Supply.

This is the total cash in circulation including money in people's wallets, checking and savings accounts.

The money supply of dollars in circulation has increased more than 4-fold since 2020.

Source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/moneysupply.asp

That money had to go somewhere.

It fueled inflation in everyday items and has also affected house and stock prices.

What should we takeaway from all of this?

1. The last 30-40 years have been one of the greatest periods for building wealth in history.

2. That is particularly true for anyone who owned the S&P or the NASDAQ indexes in the U.S. However, those in bonds and real estate have also prospered like few other times in history.

3. The wind has been at our backs but what if the winds turn?

4. Understand that the drivers behind this wealth creation involved a unique combination of  entrepreneurial, political and economic factors in the United States.

5. Those factors are currently all at risk in the current environment in the United States. 

7. Interest rates have risen after falling for almost 40 years. 

8. Stock prices relative to the nation's GDP are 3x what they were in 1994.

9. The current Presidential administration is also openly hostile to success and entrepreneurial freedom. It is more interested in picking winners and losers in the economy and in redistributing the economic pie than in making it larger.

10. Understand that what goes up can come down. The wind can change direction. Protect yourself and your country. Plan and act accordingly knowing where we are.



Friday, March 8, 2024

Approval Ups and Downs

I  recently came across an interesting summary of net approval ratings on Day 1,125 for Presidents going back as far as Harry Truman during their first elected terms.

Day 1,125 for Biden was February 19, 2024.

The net approval rating subtracts those who disapprove from those who approve of the President.

The data is from @FiveThirtyEight.

FiveThirtyEight obviously put the comparison together to show just how precarious the political position of Joe Biden is right now.


Of those with negative ratings at this point in their terms, H.W. Bush lost, Trump lost and Truman did not run. LBJ was essentially even in his approval rating but he dropped out of the 1968 race about a month after this poll was taken.

All of the others with positive ratings at this point in their terms won re-election with the exception of Jimmy Carter.

The Carter number above took me by surprise. I did not remember Jimmy Carter having an approval rating that high that late in his Presidency.

The Jimmy Carter Presidency has many parallels with what we have witnessed with the Biden years.

Carter came into office with high hopes and a positive approval rating with the promise that he was going to bring the country together after the turmoil of Watergate. Sound familiar? Turmoil of Trump and Covid?

Soon after being sworn in his net approval was +75%.

Over the summer of 1977 allegations of improprieties involving his close friend and adviser, Bert Lance, surfaced and damaged Carter's standing with the public until Lance had to resign his position as Director of OMB. Carter also had to deal with fallout surrounding his colorful brother Billy amid allegations he had received $200,000 for Libya for unclear reasons. Sound familiar? Hunter?

Inflation took off during the Carter years that required the Federal Reserve to drastically hike interest rates. Sound familiar? Do I need to say more?

Russia invaded Afghanistan that put us in a proxy war with the Russians as we supplied weapons to the Afghan resistance fighters. Carter sanctioned Russia including not allowing the United States to participate in the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow. Sound familiar? Ukraine?

There was an Islamic Revolution in Iran which ousted the Shah of Iran who was a close ally of the United States. Soon after, the U.S. Embassy was stormed by the Islamists taking 66 U.S. embassy personnel as hostages. A U.S.military operation to rescue the hostages in April, 1980 ended in total disaster with the deaths of 8 U.S. soldiers. The hostages were not released until Reagan was President. Sound familiar? Middle East unrest? Israeli hostages held by Hamas? Disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan?

The reality is that Carter's approval rating was on a steady decline throughout his Presidency much like Biden's has been. 

It just so happened that Carter received a short term boost in response to the taking of the Iranian hostages and the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in the Winter of 1980.

However, that boost in approval was short-lived and Carter went on to lose the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan winning only six states and collecting a mere 49 electoral votes.

You can see the complete picture of Carter's approval rating during his four years below.


Source: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/jimmy-carter-public-approval


Although less pronounced, you see a similar pattern with Biden in the @FiveThirtyEight composite approval average.

Biden started with a net approval of +23.4%

He is now at -18.0%. ( Biden's approval rating is even lower today than on Day 1,125)

That is very close to where Carter's approval rating was on Election Day, 1980.


Source: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/approval/joe-biden/


What are the key takeaways here?

Joe Biden is in serious trouble with the American electorate right now.

If the election was held today he would lose.

However, it is still eight months until Election Day.

A lot can happen in eight months to cause his Presidential approval to go up or down. That is very clear in looking at the Jimmy Carter data.

Many times the approval rating is impacted by external events that no one can predict.

Who knows what lies ahead for both Biden and Trump over the next eight months?

Hunter Biden? The Trump trials?

We have never had a Presidential race shaping up with two candidates that were this old. Health issues?

Both Trump (age 78) and Biden (age 82) would be older when the next Presidential terms begins than the age at which Reagan left office (age 77) as the oldest previous President. When Biden began his term he was already older than Reagan was when he left.

What is going to happen in Ukraine over the next few months?

What about Israel, Hamas and the Middle East?

Will the chaos at the southern border continue?

What will happen with the economy, the stock market and interest rates over the next eight months?

There are a lot of unknowns about these known issues.

Of course, there are additional unknowns lurking right now with new and emerging issues that are not on anyone's radar currently. Unknowns within unknown future issues.

The candidates in November may be set as of right now with Super Tuesday behind us.

How those candidates are going to be perceived by the voters and what the political landscape will look like in November is far from certain.


Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Will Biden Pivot On Illegal Immigration?

The State of the Union address is scheduled for tomorrow night (March 7).

Will we see Joe Biden pivot on illegal immigration?

Will he announce some type of executive order that would reduce the flood of illegals at the border and restrict the number of illegals being released into the country?

I don't know who is calling the shots for Joe but if you look at the polling numbers Biden is in deep, deep trouble on the issue of immigration.

Of course, it is all of his own making.

Biden entered office intent on opening up the border.

In the Democrat debates he stated he wanted all those from other countries that wanted asylum in the United States to surge to the border.


https://twitter.com/hodgetwins/status/1764255675582914734


On Day 1 of the Biden administration the following actions were taken by executive order.

- The Border wall was immediately defunded 
- Emergency Declaration withdrawn
- Deportation of illegal aliens paused  
- Remain In Mexico policy terminated



 



What followed was predictable.

Even someone from Mars could look at this chart of illegals released into the country on their own recognizance and think that the immigration laws must have changed.

Did the law change"

No. Just the guy charged with enforcing the law changed.


On top of this we found out this week that the numbers above do not include 320,000 additional illegal immigrants that the Biden administration flew directly into the United States last year from their home countries without even having to show up at the southern border to claim asylum.

When asked where these illegal immigrants were flown to the Biden administration claimed that could not be revealed because it could create national security "vulnerabilities".


Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13155765/amp/biden-illegal-migrant-flying-program-national-security-vulnerability.html


Through all of this the Biden administration has been claiming the border is secure and there is no problem with illegal immigration.

Biden has been arguing that he cannot do anything without Congressional action.

He seems to have forgotten the executive orders he signed to create this mess.

Biden is also ignoring a law that is already on the books that gives the President all the authority necessary to deal with illegal immigration.




The American people appear to be totally fed up with the mess created by illegal immigration and are not buying any of Biden's excuses.

A Wall Street Journal poll released this past weekend has Trump leading Biden by 5 points (40%-35%). Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is polling at 9%.

Biden was viewed favorably by only 37% of voters. 50% had a very unfavorable view of Biden.

Immigration (Fixing immigration system/U.S.Mexico border/migrants) has become the most important issue for voters in this election right now. It was mentioned by 20% of voters as the most critical  issue in determining who they will vote for. 

The economy was next at 14%.

A year ago only 6% mentioned immigration as the most important issue to them.

The chaos that Biden has created with illegal immigration is a big problem for him if he expects to be re-elected.

Worse for Biden is that immigration is Trump's signature issue.

Trump would have never received the Republican nomination in 2016 and defeated Hillary Clinton but for the bold manner he addressed the immigration issue back then.

To understand the depth of frustration that voters have with illegal immigration I found another recent poll (YouGov) to be particularly interesting.

It found that by a 56%-31% margin voters approve of using the U.S. military to arrest and deport people who are in the U.S. illegally.

That strong-armed measure even gets majority support from Hispanics.

Source: https://twitter.com/IAPolls2022/status/1762913145524294076

In a recent Rasmussen poll of Arizona voters, 67% of Hispanic voters supported deportation of illegal crossers and 66% wanted to temporarily militarize the border.

The New York Times/Siena poll from this past weekend has Biden down 6 points to Trump with Hispanics. Biden's immigration policy is a big reason. Biden won this demographic by 34 points in 2020.

Could there be a bigger disconnect between what Joe Biden is doing and what the voters want?

Biden is flying illegal immigrants into the country in the dark of night and the voters by almost a 2:1 margin favor using the U.S. military to arrest and deport the same people.

I don't see how Biden cannot pivot in some way on illegal immigration and expect to have any chance in November.

However, even if Biden pivots with some modest measure to staunch the flow of illegals into the country, an additional 8+ million are already here due to his policies.

And those policies have consequences as we saw last week with the murder of a University of Georgia nursing student (Laken Riley was her name) at the hands of a suspect who was an illegal immigrant from Venezuela.


Source: https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/ice-confirms-georgia-student-murder-suspect-entered-us-illegally-was-previously-arrested-in-nyc


How many more murders, rapes and other violent crimes will be perpetrated by illegals that Biden let in during the months ahead?

This promises to be a continuing problem for Biden each time it occurs whatever he does short of rounding up the illegals himself and shipping them home.

In the meantime, the news out of Venezuela is that the murder rate in that country just dropped to its lowest level in 22 years.



Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-28/venezuela-s-violent-deaths-fall-to-22-year-low-on-migration


The reason given---migration---many of the bad actors have left the country.

I wonder where they went?

It also recently got a lot more interesting last month when Venezuela stopped accepting any deportation flights from the United States and Mexico.


Source: https://nypost.com/2024/02/23/world-news/venezuela-stops-taking-flights-of-migrants-deported-from-us/


I guess Venezuela does not see those who left to be their best and brightest.

Who knows how many of those who have crossed the border were released from jail and given money on the condition they head to the United States?

Joe Biden has given out a lot of "get out of jail cards" with his open borders policy that is a gift to Venezuela and other countries.to clear out their jails and gang members and send them to the U.S.

Will Joe Biden pivot on immigration?

Looking at the facts you would have to be incompetent, a fool or totally detached from reality to not do something to show you are serious about protecting the borders of the United States.

What is it with Joe Biden?

I am betting on some type of small pivot that is more form than substance that the Democrats can build a narrative around to stop the bleeding in the polls.

However, I am basing that opinion on the facts in front of us.

That can be a bad assumption when Democrat politics are involved.