Author: coastcontact

I am a somewhat cranky but mostly optimistic 65 plus who refuses to give up on this maddening world. The purpose of this BLOG is to express my feelings, thoughts.

An Administration of Diversity

We are seeing the destruction of White Christian America as diversity of race, religions and sexual orientation that are being introduced by President Biden.  The change won’t be easy for those White Christian’s.  Their support of Donald Trump is an exemplar of what is likely to come in the coming years.  Richard T. Hughes, a professor emeritus of religion at Pepperdine University in Los Angeles calls the coming change The Dying of Christian America in a Los Angeles Times opinion piece.

Here is a list of some Biden appointments of non-Christian members of his staff.  Lots of of Blacks and Jews but many other races and religions.

Biden’s latest appointment of Dr. Rachel Levine as his assistant secretary of health sends a message and this is it.  I don’t care anything about your zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. I care about your expertise.

Chief of Staff is Ron Klain,  Jewish, attorney, political consultant, and former lobbyist.

Michael S. Regan Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

Gina Raimondo. Secretary of commerce, 75th governor of Rhode Island, Of Italian descent

Lloyd J. Austin III, Black, retired four-star Army general

Miguel Cardona. Secretary of Education,  was Connecticut commissioner of education.

Xavier Becerra, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Born in Sacramento, California, to Mexican parents, Becerra graduated from Stanford University and received his Juris Doctor degree from Stanford Law School. He previously was a member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Downtown Los Angeles in Congress from 1993 to 2017. Attorney General of California since 2017.

Alejandro Mayorkas, , Secretary of Homeland Security, American lawyer and government official. Born in Cuba, he grew up in Los Angeles. Served as U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California.

Marcia L. Fudge, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Black, a lawyer who served more than three decades, beginning with the Cuyahoga County Ohio Prosecutor’s Office.

Deb Haaland, secretary of Interior, a Native American active in tribal management.

Merrick B. Garland, Attorney General, Jewish, serves as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He has served on that court since 1997.

Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, Jewish, has been active in government served in the State Department and in senior positions on the National Security Council staff. He was also a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2001–2002)

Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Transportation, Gay, former U.S. Navy intelligence officer   and mayor of South Bend Indiana.

Janet Yellen, Secretary of Treasury, Jewish, former Chair of the Federal Reserve.

Cecilia Rouse, Economic advisers chair, Black, economist and dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs

Michael S. Regan, Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Black, Was secretary of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality. He is a former air quality specialist in the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Neera Tanden, Director of office of management and budget, parents were Indian migrants to the United States, graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Yale Law School.

Isabel Guzman, Administrator Small Business Administration

Katherine Tai, Trade Representative and is currently an American attorney who serves as the chief trade counsel for the United States House Committee on Ways and Means.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, UN Ambassador, Black,  served as the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs in the United States Department of State’s Bureau of African Affairs from 2013 to 2017.

Reema Dodin. Deputy Director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs, Palestinian Muslim woman.

Our Economically Divided Society

This is obvious. The new Biden administration is inheriting a seriously damaged economy. The decline in payroll employment reflects the recent increase in coronavirus (COVID-19) cases and efforts to contain the pandemic.

The BLS December report said this:
“In December, 15.8 million persons reported that they had been unable to work because their employer closed or lost business due to the pandemic-that is, they did not work at all or worked fewer hours at some point in the last 4 weeks due to the pandemic.”

“This measure is 1.0 million higher than in November. Among those who reported in December that they were unable to work because of pandemic-related closures or lost business, 12.8 percent received at least some pay from their employer for the hours not worked, little changed from November.”

After trending down to 787,000 new jobless claims from a high of over 6 million at the end of March 2020, the new claims jumped to 965,000 last week.

Food Pantry line in NYC

This situation was obviously driven by the continuing and growing impact of COVID-19.

However as the virus continues to spread car sales have been surging.  Home sales have been surging.  The stock market set an all time high this month.

These realities reflect on the fact that we have an enormously divided society between the haves and the have-nots.

For the better educated, who hold white collar jobs, their accumulation of wealth has created  a whole class of people — at least the top 20% or so of earners — who’ve had to worry little about such things as having a job. And as lockdowns gripped the nation, millions of people, especially those at the upper end of America’s socio-economic ladder, were able to redirect money they would have otherwise spent on things like entertainment, dining and travel toward savings or, better yet, investments.  With the rising stock market their wealth has grown significantly.

The continuing pandemic isn’t ending any time soon. According to Biden administration Surgeon General nominee Dr. Vivek Murthy, it may take until late spring to finish vaccinating high-risk populations, if all goes according to plan. If that happens, the general public may be looking at a rough time-frame of the middle summer before widespread vaccine distribution begins.  To me that translates to millions not going back to work until the fall of 2021.

Unless Americans are willing to have a nation of massive homelessness the federal government will have to provide funding for rents, food, and education for our youth.  Joe Biden will have to convince a majority of both houses of congress that this must be job one.

Joe Biden’s First Days in Office as President

This will be the most dramatic change in federal policies since the early days of the FDR administration starting March 4, 1933.  Biden’s new team will face the gravest national challenges of any new administration since those dark days of the Great Recession. 

This is what is being reported.

The day he takes office, Biden is planning to return the United States to the Paris climate accords and repeal the ban on U.S. entry for citizens of some majority-Muslim countries. He will sign an order extending nationwide restrictions on evictions and foreclosures and implement a mask mandate on federal property.

Plans, spelled out in a memo Saturday by Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain to incoming White House advisers, will address what Klain called “four overlapping and compounding crises.”

They are the Covid-19 pandemic that has claimed close to 400,000 U.S. lives, the resulting economic downturn, climate change, and a national reckoning over racial equity in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Ron Klain, Joe Biden Chief of Staff

“In his first 10 days in office, President-elect Biden will take decisive action to address these four crises, prevent other urgent and irreversible harms, and restore America’s irreversible harms, and restore America’s place in the world,” Klain wrote. “President-elect Biden will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward.”

The Tragic Destruction of the American Democracy

Capitol is barricaded out of fear of its citizens

The situation in Washington D.C. today is all Donald Trump’s fault. He has convinced his followers that election results can’t be trusted.

The basis of the American democracy has been elections that identify the winners and the losers. None of the those who have lost an election are happy. The loss means that their ideas were not compatible with the voters wishes.

This isn’t the first time that the losers have challenged the results, but no loser has still denied the results after re-counts have been completed.

Donald Trump believes he did not lose the November 3 election despite the recounts. His ability to convince his supporters that he won the election is what makes the current situation so frightening.

Trump has convinced many of his followers that the election he lost was rigged. Almost half of his supporter refuse to accept the election results according to reliable polling.

With his supporters so furious, we are about to see an inauguration conducted behind barbed wire fencing. The wire is installed on the top of a security fence surrounding the Capitol. Trump followers appear to be ready to more than protest. Reports, if accurate, indicate there could be armed confrontations.

How can we have a democracy when large numbers of people do not trust election results? Joe Biden will have the job of restoring confidence in our elections. If he can’t accomplish that objective you can kiss the American democracy good-bye.

Joe Biden gives Americans his initial Plans Once he is Inaugurated

The president-elect’s pandemic-response package was presented today on cable television. It will include steps to speed production and distribution of vaccines, an additional $1,400 in direct payments to individuals and expanded unemployment benefits.  The LA Times reported on his plans. 

The package is titled the “American Rescue Plan.”  Biden’s proposal is divided into three major areas: $400 billion for provisions to fight the coronavirus with more vaccines and testing, while reopening schools; more than $1 trillion in direct relief to families, including through stimulus payments and increased unemployment insurance benefits; and $440 billion for aid to communities and businesses, including $350 billion in emergency funding to state, local and tribal governments. 

If the GOP blocks the Biden plan for recovery they will be seeing losses in Congress in 2022.