The Name and Face of Serious Harm

 

The vicious murder of Laken Hope Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, while she was jogging on the University of Georgia campus was predictable. It was only a matter of time. This will not be the last horrific crime perpetrated by criminals who are here illegally. Since Biden became President, well over 7 million people, perhaps closer to 10 million, have been allowed to cross our southern border illegally and unvetted. We have no idea who they are or where they are. It is reasonable to assume that people who hate us are dwelling among us and plotting an assault on our freedom that will rival 9/11. Why wouldn’t they be?

 

Here are the facts. Jose Antonio Ibarra is a 26-year-old Venezuelan National who crossed our southern border into El Paso illegally in 2022. He was released, unvetted, into the country and made his way to New York where he was arrested in August of 2023 for reckless endangerment of a 5-year-old child. He was released and headed for Georgia. He was arrested for shoplifting and released and, at the time of Laken’s murder, there was an open warrant for his arrest for not showing up for his court date. On February 22, Ibarra savagely murdered Laken Riley as she jogged in an area considered very safe. The arrest affidavit described her cause of death as blunt force trauma and accused Ibarra of “disfiguring her skull.”  The suffering she was subjected to is unthinkable.

 

Additional pertinent facts: In September 2023, the Biden Administration granted temporary legal status, known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS), for 18 months to nearly 500,000 Venezuelans already in the country. Venezuela has one of the highest murder rates in the world and many other crimes committed in that country involve extreme violence.

 

The United States Border Protection website reports the number of Border Patrol Criminal Non-citizen Arrests by year. In Fiscal Year 2020, the last year of Trump’s presidency, there were 2,438. In Fiscal Year 2023 there were 15,267. Though Biden has the gall to blame the border crisis on Republicans in Congress or Donald Trump, there has not been a single new piece of legislation on immigration enacted by Congress since Biden took office. The mass influx of illegal migrants and the sixfold increase in criminal non-citizen arrests are a direct result of Biden’s open invitation to illegal migrants while campaigning for President, multiple executive orders, and refusal to enforce existing law.

 

The heinous nature of Laken Riley’s murder catapults our open border to the forefront of our thinking about Joe Biden’s failure as a president. But there have been many other serious, tangible, and far-reaching harms inflicted on the American people by Joe Biden’s presidency.

 

 

Some Examples:

 

• Government response to COVID-19 became more harmful than the illness itself when it shifted from public safety to political opportunity. Massive government spending, far exceeding any requirements to combat the economic effects of the pandemic, flooded the country with $4.2 trillion in government disbursed “COVID relief aid”. There was inadequate oversight and current estimates are $280 billion stolen through fraud and $123 billion wasted or misspent. There is little dispute that this massive spending plunged us into the inflationary environment that is inflicting real financial hardship on millions. The price of food, fuel, housing, and other essentials serves as a stark reminder every week. The dream of home ownership is out of reach for many until interest rates become manageable.

 

• Many small businesses subjected to arbitrary restrictions were forced to close. They never recovered. Government bureaucrats decided which workers and businesses were “essential.” 

 

• School closures did irreparable harm to children’s learning and well-being.

 

• The medical establishment and corporations allowed themselves to be coopted by the government to coerce American citizens into compliance with unprecedented mandates and infringements on freedom. The cooperation of the medical establishment with politicizing science and willingness of corporate leaders to subject employees to threats on their livelihood have shattered the Americans’ trust in institutions and it will not be easily restored.

 

• Fifteen military families suffered the ultimate sacrifice with the inept withdrawal from Afghanistan and the loss of Navy Seals while intercepting a Houti vessel. Many more military personnel were severely injured when subjected to more than 170 attacks by terrorists in Syria, Iraq, and Jordan with no meaningful response from the Biden administration.

 

• Government censorship of free speech, relentless attempts to regulate us and redistribute our wealth brought us closer to totalitarianism than we have ever been.

 

Joe Biden’s promoters and the dishonest media are working overtime to convince us he is a “decent” man. Those who push this narrative do not know what decency is. Joe Biden is not a decent man. He is a career politician who has lived off the American people for more than fifty years, enriching himself through privilege and connection. He is a masterful liar and accepts no personal responsibility for his failures. He is as emblematic as any one person of what is wrong with our political system. When he was in his prime, his policies were wrong for our country. Now, impaired by dementia, he serves as a useful idiot to the extremists in his party who want to fundamentally change our country. Leaders focus on managing outcomes. His outcomes have been harmful to our country and will continue to be until we defeat him in November. The serious harm Joe Biden is inflicting on the American people now has a name and a face: Laken Hope Riley.