Are you better off today than you were 2 years ago?
Lead Summary

By
Rory Ryan-hcpress@cinci.rr.com
Dear Vice President Biden (as Barack Obama likes to call you),
Granted, it’s been less than two years since you reportedly won the 2020 presidential election, but I’d like to ask just two small favors.
Just two:
1. If it’s not too much to ask, please stop. Stop signing executive orders and stop signing legislation that is hurting hard-working, middle-income Americans.
2. Undo your previous damage from January 2021 to the present. Revoke those Day One executive orders and throw away the ink pens (or the No. 2 pencils with an eraser on top).
Your tax-and-spend agenda is so bad that even former Democrat presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are blushing at your first-term brazenness. Keep this up – and unlike Slick Willie and Barry – you will not have a second term.
The liberal media (the vast majority of the media) are at long last recognizing that what you are doing is having a harmful impact on the very Americans you purport to support. (Yes, that rhymes.)
For Exhibit A, let’s look at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (https://www.eia.gov/). According to this government agency, two years ago this month – April 2020 – the average price for a gallon of gasoline in the state of Ohio was – drum roll, please – not $4 a gallon, not $3 a gallon and not $2 a gallon.
No, Joe. It was $1.44 a gallon just two years ago this month. That’s from the U.S. government, so it must be true. The EIA also reports that the average price of a gallon of gas in Ohio never reached $3 during the Trump administration. That cannot be said of either the Obama or Biden administrations.
In fact, I know it’s true because the cost of fuel greatly impacts my business and my employees, especially those who are independent contractors driving across Highland and surrounding counties each and every week.
Mr. Vice, er, President (sorry, maybe Obama was just joking last week), we are both old enough to remember the 1980 presidential campaign when Ronald Reagan posed the question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
As voters go to the polls this November, they need to ask themselves: “Are you better off now than you were two years ago?”
Two years ago, we could shop at Community Market or Kroger and not see $20 steaks – unless they were generous cuts of filet mignon. Ground beef was $1 less per pound just three years ago than it is today.
It’s the same across the board for almost all staple items. These inflationary prices hurt the lower-income workers far more than the higher-income workers or in your case, the multimillionaires. (Hope those checks for “The Big Guy” are still coming in.)
Your party has had a long history of duping your so-called base – the hard-working, middle-income Americans – into believing that you are for “the working man.”
It’s painfully obvious that that’s not true. Your agenda has failed the working class. By championing the so-called green new deal, open borders and lax enforcement of law and order, you are aiding and abetting a dangerous path for this nation.
Please stop. Is that too much to ask?
Whether you hate him or hate him, President Donald Trump’s policies benefited those same hard-working Americans. Trump’s tax policies (with help from the venerable House Freedom Caucus) and his stances on global issues were in the United States’ best interests.
Can the November midterm elections get here soon enough?
* * *
• As a postscript to this letter to the POTUS, I'll answer a recent inquiry from an alert reader, who asked if I could find one thing nice to say about Biden. After some research, I have.
Last spring during a ceremony at the White House, Biden presented the Medal of Honor to retired Col. Ralph Puckett Jr., 95, of Tifton, Ga.
As documented at https://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/puckett/, "Puckett graduated from West Point in 1949 and was commissioned infantry. Assigned to occupation duty in Okinawa, he volunteered, instead, for the newly-conceived Eighth Army Ranger Company that was being formed shortly after the Korean Conflict began in 1950.
"Selected as the Ranger Company’s commander, 1st Lt. Puckett had five weeks to devise a training regimen and forge his non-infantry soldiers into disciplined Rangers before being committed to combat operations. While attached to Task Force Dolvin and leading the advance of the 25th Infantry Division on Nov. 25, 1950, Puckett and his Rangers attacked and secured Hill 205, near the Chongch’on River and only 60 miles from the border of China. Though outnumbered 10 to 1, the twice wounded Puckett and his Rangers defeated five successive Chinese human wave counterattacks over four hours that night and into the early morning hours of Nov. 26. Finally, on the sixth assault, with supporting artillery fires unavailable, the Ranger company was overrun in close-quarters, hand-to-hand combat. Having suffered additional debilitating wounds, Puckett was left unable to move. Despite his multiple orders to abandon him, fellow Rangers fought their way to his side and evacuated him to safety. For his actions during the Battle of Hill 205, Puckett received the Distinguished Service Cross, which was upgraded to the Medal of Honor and awarded in a White House ceremony more than 70 years later on May 21, 2021."
For that action, I commend President Biden.
Rory Ryan is publisher and owner of The Highland County Press, Highland County’s only locally owned and operated newspaper.
Granted, it’s been less than two years since you reportedly won the 2020 presidential election, but I’d like to ask just two small favors.
Just two:
1. If it’s not too much to ask, please stop. Stop signing executive orders and stop signing legislation that is hurting hard-working, middle-income Americans.
2. Undo your previous damage from January 2021 to the present. Revoke those Day One executive orders and throw away the ink pens (or the No. 2 pencils with an eraser on top).
Your tax-and-spend agenda is so bad that even former Democrat presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are blushing at your first-term brazenness. Keep this up – and unlike Slick Willie and Barry – you will not have a second term.
The liberal media (the vast majority of the media) are at long last recognizing that what you are doing is having a harmful impact on the very Americans you purport to support. (Yes, that rhymes.)
For Exhibit A, let’s look at the U.S. Energy Information Administration (https://www.eia.gov/). According to this government agency, two years ago this month – April 2020 – the average price for a gallon of gasoline in the state of Ohio was – drum roll, please – not $4 a gallon, not $3 a gallon and not $2 a gallon.
No, Joe. It was $1.44 a gallon just two years ago this month. That’s from the U.S. government, so it must be true. The EIA also reports that the average price of a gallon of gas in Ohio never reached $3 during the Trump administration. That cannot be said of either the Obama or Biden administrations.
In fact, I know it’s true because the cost of fuel greatly impacts my business and my employees, especially those who are independent contractors driving across Highland and surrounding counties each and every week.
Mr. Vice, er, President (sorry, maybe Obama was just joking last week), we are both old enough to remember the 1980 presidential campaign when Ronald Reagan posed the question: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
As voters go to the polls this November, they need to ask themselves: “Are you better off now than you were two years ago?”
Two years ago, we could shop at Community Market or Kroger and not see $20 steaks – unless they were generous cuts of filet mignon. Ground beef was $1 less per pound just three years ago than it is today.
It’s the same across the board for almost all staple items. These inflationary prices hurt the lower-income workers far more than the higher-income workers or in your case, the multimillionaires. (Hope those checks for “The Big Guy” are still coming in.)
Your party has had a long history of duping your so-called base – the hard-working, middle-income Americans – into believing that you are for “the working man.”
It’s painfully obvious that that’s not true. Your agenda has failed the working class. By championing the so-called green new deal, open borders and lax enforcement of law and order, you are aiding and abetting a dangerous path for this nation.
Please stop. Is that too much to ask?
Whether you hate him or hate him, President Donald Trump’s policies benefited those same hard-working Americans. Trump’s tax policies (with help from the venerable House Freedom Caucus) and his stances on global issues were in the United States’ best interests.
Can the November midterm elections get here soon enough?
* * *
• As a postscript to this letter to the POTUS, I'll answer a recent inquiry from an alert reader, who asked if I could find one thing nice to say about Biden. After some research, I have.
Last spring during a ceremony at the White House, Biden presented the Medal of Honor to retired Col. Ralph Puckett Jr., 95, of Tifton, Ga.
As documented at https://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/puckett/, "Puckett graduated from West Point in 1949 and was commissioned infantry. Assigned to occupation duty in Okinawa, he volunteered, instead, for the newly-conceived Eighth Army Ranger Company that was being formed shortly after the Korean Conflict began in 1950.
"Selected as the Ranger Company’s commander, 1st Lt. Puckett had five weeks to devise a training regimen and forge his non-infantry soldiers into disciplined Rangers before being committed to combat operations. While attached to Task Force Dolvin and leading the advance of the 25th Infantry Division on Nov. 25, 1950, Puckett and his Rangers attacked and secured Hill 205, near the Chongch’on River and only 60 miles from the border of China. Though outnumbered 10 to 1, the twice wounded Puckett and his Rangers defeated five successive Chinese human wave counterattacks over four hours that night and into the early morning hours of Nov. 26. Finally, on the sixth assault, with supporting artillery fires unavailable, the Ranger company was overrun in close-quarters, hand-to-hand combat. Having suffered additional debilitating wounds, Puckett was left unable to move. Despite his multiple orders to abandon him, fellow Rangers fought their way to his side and evacuated him to safety. For his actions during the Battle of Hill 205, Puckett received the Distinguished Service Cross, which was upgraded to the Medal of Honor and awarded in a White House ceremony more than 70 years later on May 21, 2021."
For that action, I commend President Biden.
Rory Ryan is publisher and owner of The Highland County Press, Highland County’s only locally owned and operated newspaper.