LAGOP: Bidenflation

Last week we heard from no less a personage than Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris, who assured us that Joe Biden’s administration had “reduced heating and electricity bills so folks have more money in their pocket.” Now one does not have to be a dyed-in-the-wool conservative to realize that Kamala Harris is an economic illiterate, but let us take a moment to review the true situation.

January’s consumer price index (the usual measure of inflation) rose by 6.4% compared with last year. Now this 6.4% inflation rate actually is down a bit from the worst months of 2022, when the public received horrifying reports of 8-9% increases. Even so, a 6.4% inflation rate is still over three times higher than our inflation rate has been for most of the last forty years!

And if Kamala Harris can plausibly plead total ignorance of all things economic, Joe Biden has no such defense- he has been roaming the halls of government for far longer than most Americans have been on this Earth. When his 2021 assurances that inflation would be “transitory” turned out to be untrue, he falsely blamed the sky-high inflation rate on Donald Trump and then flatly denied to the American people that his multi-trillion dollar woke spending spree had anything to do it. He well knew better, but his progressive political base was more important to him than the economic well-being of his country.

A hard dose of the facts is in order: In just the last year, fuel oil is up 27.7%; natural gas is up 26.7%; electricity is up 11.9%; food is up 11.8%. So how can Biden point to any successes in dealing with inflation? It’s simple, if you don’t mind lying to the American public. Just take credit for reducing inflation in every month that the rate of inflation goes down. For example, when the inflation rate goes from 6.5% in December 2022 to 6.4% in January 2023, tell everyone how great you are at reducing inflation. Just forget to mention the simple fact that (1) you are responsible for most of the inflation in the first place, and (2) the inflation rate is still over three times higher than it should be. Unscrupulous politicians occasionally use this fallacious type of argument, but Biden seems wholly incapable of communicating without resort to it.

Moreover, the real truth is even worse than the simple inflation numbers: Because average hourly earnings are rising more slowly than inflation, real average earnings have fallen by 1.8% since just last year. To put this disaster in proper perspective, real wages have now fallen for twenty-two months in a row, which is just about when Joe Biden passed that first $1.9 trillion stimulus package. As it now stands, 77% of Americans now say that inflation is causing them financial hardship.

And inflation is not going away any time soon. Obama’s former economic adviser Jason Furman tweeted last week that the economy was now overheated because Biden had made little progress in reducing inflation. He went on to tweet that there was little reason to expect a slowdown in inflation going forward. Any first year economics student knows that you can’t pump multi-trillions of dollars into an economy, even one as large as ours, without causing serious inflation.

So while our wages and savings further decline as inflation eats away at the value of our dollars, our own government is forced to continue to raise interest rates to slow down our overheated economy, thus putting that new house, car, washing machine, or vacation out of reach for the average American. We are entering a Joe Biden-caused recession, and we can only pray that it will not be a particularly deep or long-lasting one.

Welcome back to Jimmy Carter’s stagflation of the 1970’s, courtesy of a corrupt and doddering president with a lifetime penchant for lying to the American public! Great job, Joe!

Louis Gurvich, Chairman
Republican Party of Louisiana

GURVICH: Today Is Payback Day, So Get Out and Vote!

At last, after nearly two years of enduring disastrous economic, social, and foreign policies, the Great Day is here! The Biden administration and the ruling Democrats in Congress are about to have their comeuppance and we can begin the process of reclaiming our country from the most partisan, inept and dishonest government in American history.

Elected by an American public which had been assured by a complicit press that he would govern as a healing moderate, Joe Biden immediately turned the country over to the woke progressive wing of the Democrat Party. Predictably, the results have been an epic disaster.

Since his inauguration, the value of your dollars has declined by something over twelve percent. Now think about that- inflation has stolen away over twelve cents of every dollar you own. That’s why food and other necessities like housing and transportation have become so much more expensive. All because the Democrats feel that it is necessary to transform the government into a progressive (read ‘socialist’) society. Our economy will be flooded with the dollars from Biden’s multi-trillion dollar woke spending binge for years to come, and as a result it is going to cost you more to buy and to borrow the money to buy a house or a car.

Gasoline and other fuels merit their own special paragraph. Under President Trump, the United States was rapidly becoming self-sufficient in petrochemicals. The price of gas was under $2.00 per gallon, and we were selling more and more oil and natural gas on world markets. But woke progressives are on an ill-considered crusade against oil and gas, even though they emit far fewer pollutants than the coal and wood they have been replacing. First Joe prohibited oil leases on federal lands, and then he made it difficult to obtain the drilling permits. As a result, our oil production dropped precipitously and prices started going up rapidly. Vladimir Putin took notice and figured his position on the Eurasian continent was bulletproof. The Ukraine War followed within months.

Crime is way up, but then I guess it would be if you believe criminals are victims of society and you happen to be in charge of the government. That is precisely what woke progressives do believe, and that’s why they’ve released hundreds of thousands of dangerous criminal back on to our streets. The increased worries and concerns you have about your friends and family, and for your own personal safely, can be laid at the feet of this administration.

But there is so much more for which we must fault this administration. The attacks on your right to have a say in the education of your children is an insult to all Americans. We must also repair the damage to their education wrought by the prolonged school closures. We must face and reverse the continuing decline in moral standards and the left’s attempt to legitimize late-term abortion and even infanticide. The foreign humiliations and tragedies in Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia must never be repeated, and the decline in American power in the world must be halted, or the outbreak of war in Europe will be but a harbinger of much worse to follow.

Truly, this is such a long list of failures for such a young administration, but that is precisely why today must begin the cultural, political, and economic counter-attack which will define the country in which we live for generations. Now go do your duty and vote if you have not already done so, and say a prayer along the way. Godspeed…

LOUIS GURVICH, Chairman
Republican Party of Louisiana

History in the Making— Republican Legislators Override Governor Edwards' Veto of Congressional Maps

Yesterday, in a historic special session, the Louisiana legislature overrode Governor John Bel Edwards’ veto of its congressional redistricting plan. It thereby reinstated a good plan similar to the one the state had been using since 2011. Although the revived  plan must still pass muster in the courts (where it will likely be upheld), the legislature has successfully completed its redistricting work and come up with as fair and common sense a plan as the Voting Rights Act would allow.

This is a great victory by any measure, and our legislators are to be commended for their work. However, this victory may be even greater than we suppose. Our legislature, which was elected by Louisiana’s largely conservative electorate, has finally come into its own and done the people’s will. After a six-year nightmare under John Bel Edwards’ administration, during which the cost of governing Louisiana has relentlessly increased even as our population has declined and our infrastructure has crumbled, there is at last reason for hope.

To sum up what has happened, our legislature has asserted its independence from a so-called “moderate” Democrat governor presiding over a totally inept administration dominated by woke progressives who detest the people they serve. Hoorah for the victory, and let us hope and pray that the tide has turned and we may expect ever greater wins from our legislators going forward.

And we are very much in need of those legislators who are guided by the fiscal prudence and common sense which a conservative political outlook provides. While the state’s coffers are now filled to overflowing with freshly printed federal COVID funds, this money will soon run out. One time funds carelessly expended on wasteful and ever-expanding programs which never go away will not be available in future years when our debt explodes, which it surely must. No doubt this future “fiscal cliff” will provide the excuse for some aspiring Democrat to call for a major tax increase which Louisiana cannot afford.

Now is the time to make the wise choices to channel future expenditures into roads and other infrastructure projects, sensible social programs with proven results, and debt repayments. Out-of-control departments and programs must be reined in without delay, and progressive experiments in social engineering ended without apology. Underperforming bureaucrats and administrators must be sent packing regardless of their political affiliation.

Only then will government spending once again become controllable, and only then will the public regain trust in its government. But an important milestone in achieving these goals was reached yesterday. Well done!

Louis Gurvich, Chairman
Republican Party of Louisiana

MARDI GRAS — The Perfect Day for Biden's State of the Union Address

Tomorrow, Joe Biden will deliver his 2022 State of the Union address. Tomorrow also happens to be Mardi Gras Day. Of course, this is pure coincidence but it gives the Democrats forced to sit in the House chamber and listen to the President’s speech an excuse to wear a full face mask and thereby conceal their identities, in the best Mardi Gras tradition of secrecy.

Certainly, all but the most progressive morons in their party will wish to hide their full faces from the public’s stern gaze- an ordinary COVID mask simply won’t do the trick, and we have just learned that they will not be required in the House chamber anyway. Fact is, the Democrats’ incredible buffoonery would make for great comical entertainment were it not for the enormous damage which they and their president have inflicted on the country and the world in the first four hundred days of the Biden presidency. 

Every adult American should watch this speech to see how this rhetorically, intellectually, and morally compromised president makes the best of an utterly awful first year of his administration.  Depending on one’s political persuasion, it will make for high drama, tragedy, or comedy, but it will be interesting to watch.

But it will not be bipartisan, of that you can be assured. At this trying time, America sorely needs bipartisanship, but it will not be on offer. This President, elected under false pretenses as a moderate Democrat, has been anything but moderate. In fact, he has governed as something of the court jester of the progressive/socialist wing of the Democrat Party, which is to say that he has become the spokesman and chief enforcer of American Marxism. And the results of this charade have been entirely predictable:

According to the latest Quinnipiac poll, just 37% of Americans approve of Joe Biden, while 56% disapprove. His disapproval rating is an abysmal 61% among independents, and fully 58% of Americans say that the state of our union is worse now than it was only a year ago. (Considering the overwhelming evidence, we must assume that the other 42% have resorted to some very heavy drugs and can no longer think clearly.)

Joe Biden lied about his candidacy quite simply because he would not have been elected if he had told the truth about his real plans for governing the country. That much we can at least understand if we cannot forgive, but he then promptly squandered the recovery bequeathed to him by Donald Trump. Let us not forget that had it not been for the Republicans in Congress and a couple of Senate Democrats who stood in the way of “Build Back Better,” the nation’s inflation rate, already the developed world’s highest, would be trending into the 10-12% range instead of the current 7.9%.

And Americans remember his promises to defeat COVID in a hundred days and fix the supply chain bottleneck in time for Christmas. They know who opened a secured southern border to an epic influx of illegal aliens and drugs. They also know who led the party which attacked the police and egged on those responsible for dozens of deaths and billions of dollars in property damage, while the crime rate increased at record levels.

But the worst damage and the greatest danger has been and will continue to be, for the duration of Joe Biden’s presidency, in the field of foreign relations. We all know about the needless tragedy in Afghanistan, but those less versed in the wiles of foreign policy may not realize how much the Afghan debacle had to do with the current crisis in Ukraine. There will likely be future crises over Taiwan’s independence, Iranian nukes, North Korean misbehavior, etc., all because Putin, Xi Jinping, the Ayatollah and other of the world’s villains have sized up Joe Biden, and they were obviously not impressed. 

Over the remaining thirty-four months of his presidency, all Americans of every political stripe will be called upon to pay the price for Joe Biden and the Democrat Party’s lies, chicanery, and ineptitude.

But tomorrow is a special day which was created to forget our troubles. Happy Mardi Gras, at least until 8PM Central time tomorrow night!

Louis Gurvich, Chairman
Republican Party of Louisiana

LAGOP: Failure to Override Must Have Consequences

For the past month, the Republican Party of Louisiana has promoted the veto override session, fighting with all the tools we have at our disposal. Chairman Louis Gurvich issued the following statement this afternoon:

“Louisiana Republicans are profoundly disappointed and deeply angered by the events that occurred in the Louisiana House of Representatives today. Louisiana Republicans insist that there must be consequences for the Democrats, Independents, and the one Republican who voted to sustain the Governor’s veto of the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.

I am calling on Speaker Clay Schexnayder to immediately replace all Democrat House Committee chairs with Republicans who are members of the Conservative Caucus. If this does not happen, then a broader conversation about how the House of Representatives is run will become necessary.

We would like to point out to the voters that 67 of 68 House Republicans voted for the override of the veto of the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act today. The only Republican who voted against us is Representative Joe Stagni of Kenner, who is being targeted for recall. Additionally, 26 of 27 Senate Republicans successfully voted to override the Governor’s veto of the same bill. Only Senator Ronnie Johns failed to show up and vote.

While we are angry and plan to lead the charge to make sure this sort of thing never happens again, we want to express our deep appreciation to the great majority of Republican legislators who voted right 100% of the time.

Finally, we must address the fact that Senators Louie Bernard, Pat Connick, and Franklin Foil voted to sustain the Governor’s override of the Constitutional Carry bill, while Senator Ronnie Johns failed to show up and vote. We encourage the voters to hold them accountable as well.

Republican voters expect more.”