#(abridged version plz click link)

[shadowfromthestarlight]

The Biden administration put out a press release announcing that the $83 million in federal funds for the McCain Library were being drawn from the American Rescue Plan’s Capital Projects Fund. The full name of the fund is actually the Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund. The Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund consisted of $10 billion that was supposed to “directly support recovery from the COVID-19 public health emergency” in response “to the public health emergency”. Now nearly 1% of that original $10 billion is being used to build a non-presidential library that will somehow help us “recover” from the pandemic. The McCain Library is getting nearly as much CCF cash as the total given to tribal governments. It appears to be one of the largest single beneficiaries of the coronavirus emergency fund. There is something appropriate in one career politician honoring another through a massive misappropriation of funds that were only allocated due to a national emergency. A politician’s library is not a response to a public health emergency. The Biden administration’s justification for the massive misappropriation of funds is the claim that the McCain Library will provide a space for health screenings and job fairs. There were far cheaper ways to provide a space for job fairs than an $83 million senatorial library. Arizona could host ten thousand job fairs for that kind of money and provide actual health resources to the people who really need them. The $83 million in misappropriated coronavirus emergency money had nothing to do with a public health emergency and everything to do with an urgent political emergency. Biden is underwater in the polls and the McCain family have become crucial allies against Republicans. The 2024 presidential candidate didn’t travel to Arizona to promote an $83 million space where someone might occasionally hold a job fair, but to use McCain to attack Republicans. In a speech with McCain family members and former Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who supervised the gubernatorial election that she claimed to have won, in attendance, Biden warned that Republicans represented an urgent threat to democracy. In his ‘democracy’ speech, Biden claimed that, “democracy means rule of the people, not rule of monarchs, not rule of the monied, not rule of the mighty.” If that’s what democracy means, what does it mean when a career politician takes $83 million in public health emergency funding to build an institution honoring another career politician that is backing his unpopular campaign? Biden wasn’t handing out that $83 million and delivering a speech about the importance of democracy to uphold it, but to undermine it. Faced with an unwinnable election, Biden is turning to Arizona as a model for his 2024 election strategy. The plan, there and everywhere, is to stigmatize his political opponents as dangerous extremists, to divide the GOP,  break off influential party interests, and encourage public officials to violate the law in managing the election and counting the votes by insisting that democracy will be destroyed if he loses. This isn’t democracy: it’s an end-run around democracy. The majority of Democrats and Americans don’t want Biden back in office. The polls have been crystal clear about that. But Biden isn’t interested in what the majority of his party and his country think. He’s not betting on democracy, but on a political establishment that bridges party differences. The $83 million in coronavirus recovery funding allocated to the McCain Library shows why Biden, like McCain, feared democracy and chose oligarchy over listening to the people. The real threat to democracy comes from established political interests subverting elections and the multi-trillion budgets they pass and then distribute shows how they subvert America.