Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Bidenflation: We’re lucky we bought when we did!

As I have previously noted, we bought a house for my sister-in-law in December. Because we were not going to live in the house ourselves, the interest rate, 3.75%, was 1.00% higher than if we had lied about it and said that we would reside there. Technically, it’s rental property for us, though we do not expect to make a profit on it. When we go to our eternal rewards, the ownership will pass to our children and our nephew.

We negotiated the interest rate in November, and closed in early December.

Today, in reading an article, Report: Majority of renters can’t afford to buy in their city, in The Washington Post, I saw referenced one I had missed last week:

Mortgage rates hit 5 percent, ushering in new economic uncertainty

Rates have risen faster than many economists had expected, and they are starting to temper the housing boom

By Kathy Orton and Rachel Siegel | April 14, 2022 | Updated April 14, 2022 at 2:41 p.m. EDT

Mortgage rates swelled above 5 percent for the first time in more than a decade — an unexpectedly rapid ascent that has begun to temper the U.S. housing boom and could usher new uncertainty into an economy dogged by soaring inflation.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, the most popular home loan product, hit the threshold just five weeks after surpassing 4 percent, according to Freddie Mac data released Thursday. The average has not been this high since February 2011.

The run-up comes as the Federal Reserve has launched a major initiative to rein in the highest inflation in 40 years. Fed officials are betting that higher interest rates will slash inflation and recalibrate the job market. But their plan also rests on the assumption that higher rates will cool demand for housing, especially while homes themselves are in such short supply.

There’s more at the original.

From the first article cited:

  • The average home in the U.S. costs seven times the average national household income.
  • Homeownership is unaffordable for the majority of renters in 71 percent of metro areas.
  • In 13 metro areas, 10 of which are in California, at least 90 percent of renters are priced out of owning a home. The three metro areas outside of California are in Cape Cod, Hawaii and Boulder, Colo.
  • In the D.C. metro area, 70 percent of renters can’t afford to buy a home, according to Porch’s analysis. Their calculations found that the average home is priced at $526,296 and that 30 percent of households rent in metro areas. Those renter households have a median income of $56,400, while the median income needed to buy the average house in the area is $64,055.

There’s one obvious flaw here: the paper is comparing income to the “average” home, but may homeowners, including yours truly, first bought what would be considered a ‘starter’ home, which will cost well under the average home price. People buying more house than they could afford, along with the sub-prime lenders encouraged by the government, triggered the crisis in 2007-2008.

The key is to not enable people to buy more house than they can afford.

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Killadelphia Perhaps Commissioner Outlaw ought to worry about her primary job first?

We already knew it was a bloody few days in the City of Brotherly Love, but the city didn’t update its figures on Friday, due, I suppose, to the Good Friday holiday. Now they have, and it’s ugly.

The Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page states that there have been 140 homicides in the city as of 11:59 PM EDT on Easter Sunday, April 17th. That’s 11 more dead bodies since the previous Sunday, and 8 of them occurred since the end of Wednesday, April 13th, 8 murders in 4 days.

So, about what has Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw been worried?

Please join me in welcoming @Phillypolice‘s first Chief Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Officer, Ms. Leslie Marant! Ms. Marant’s position and office have been established to oversee diversity and inclusion efforts at every level of our organization. A lifelong Philadelphian, she …is uniquely qualified to succeed in this position. Having demonstrated tireless dedication and passion to the field of DEI work, she is the former Chief of Staff for the Universal Education Company, as well as the former Chief Council to the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission. She has earned a B.S. in Finance & HR Admin, and a Juris Doctor & Master of Laws, Trial Advocacy from @TempleUniv. We will benefit enormously from her experience as we continue to build and rebuild trust with the communities we serve. Welcome!

The Commissioner’s statement quoted is from three separate tweets. The image of the tweet on the right is a screenshot taken by me at 9:15 PM EDT on Monday; click on the image to take you to the original tweet.

“(D)iversity and inclusion”? It would seem that “diversity and inclusion” efforts have not been exactly successful in the city’s shootings and killings! Perhaps Commissioner Outlaw should worry about her primary job, bringing criminals to justice, first?

According to the city’s Shooting Victims database, there had been 49 people shot from Thursday through Sunday, 33 of them black, 12 listed as Hispanic white, and 4 as non-Hispanic white. That brings April’s total to 133 shooting victims, 104 of them non-Hispanic black, 12 Hispanic white, and 6 non-Hispanic white. No other racial/ethnic groups are listed as shooting victims.

Philadelphia’s population, according to the 2020 census, was only 38.3% non-Hispanic black, yet, thus far in April, they’ve been 78.20% of the shooting victims. Yet the main page of The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website had exactly one story on the shootings and killings this morning, and it was dated on Saturday, April 16th. The publisher, Lisa Hughes, the Executive Editor, Gabriel Escobar, and their minions don’t want to report at all on shootings and killings in minority communities, because that would be raaaaacist!

By this afternoon, the Inquirer’s Editorial Board weighed in:

50 shootings during the weekend warns of a deadly summer in Philly | Editorial

As summer approaches, and with the city once again on pace to record more than 500 homicides this year, officials must act now to stem the possibility of bloodshed later.

by The Editorial Board | Monday, April 18, 2022

When it comes to gun violence in Philadelphia, it’s long been clear that warm weather can have serious consequences.

A 2018 New York Times analysis found that days when the temperature exceeds 50 degrees have nearly 70% more shooting victims in our city than days when the weather is 49 or below. A similar trend, the Times found, plays out in other cities that also experience seasonal weather changes.

It should hardly have come as a surprise, then, that an unexpected stretch of sunny April weather during the holiday weekend also saw the number of incidents of gun violence tick up dramatically in the city. During a 24-hour stretch from Thursday to Friday, the city averaged a shooting an hour, and of the two dozen people who were shot, five were killed. All told, from Thursday to Sunday, the city saw a total of 50 shootings. During that four-day stretch, the high temperature in the city did not dip below 52 degrees.

The weather has been cool in the northeast on Monday, so maybe there won’t be as many shootings and killings, but the forecast is for a warming trend, to finally get back to spring normal temperatures.

The Editorial Board, a self-described “group of journalists who work separately from the newsroom to debate matters of public interest,” but who seem to have a strong commonality of #woke leftist views, continue with typical liberal pablum ideas: opening more swimming pools this summer, the School District offering in-person educational programming for all students over the summer, and a roster of summer programs.

While restoring programs and reopening pools are important steps for cooling tensions, the stakes and the scale of this crisis demand the same kind of bold intervention that we’ve seen from Mayor Jim Kenney on COVID-19. That means finding more ways to fight gun violence, not telling residents and colleagues that you’ve done all you can.

Apparently Commissioner outlaw believes that hiring a Chief Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Officer is the way to go! Yeah, that’ll sure calm down the gang-bangers!

Call me a cynic if you will, but somehow I’m not confident that the city’s wannabe gangsters are going to be all that interested in summer school.

If the city is once again unable to open all of its pools, then avoid hitting poorer neighborhoods with most of the closures. If library hours and programs cannot be fully staffed, find ways to support branches in our most vulnerable communities. If trash collection once again falls behind, prioritize neighborhoods where residents have smaller homes and fewer cars, leaving them without options to store and transport their waste. Hold the Police Department accountable, track and transparently evaluate anti-violence programs, and ensure the implementation of recommendations from the “100 Shooting Review.” Integrate violence prevention into everything the city does, as this board called for at the outset of the year.

Apparently to The Editorial Board, “poorer neighborhoods” is a synonym for black and Hispanic neighborhoods. As we have previously noted, the Board are very, very concerned about the racial disparity in the danger faced by Philadelphians, and blamed it on Philly being one of the most internally segregated cities in the country. Curiously enough, if you read their editorial carefully, you might come to the conclusion that the Board want white residents to feel as endangered as black residents do, sort of a socialist leveling down rather than raising up.

The fact is that there are a lot of poorer white Philadelphians as well, and they aren’t shooting each other at the same rate black city residents have done. However, neither the Editorial Board, nor the Mayor, nor the District Attorney, nor the Police Commissioner can admit that the homicide rate in Philadelphia is a racial problem more than an economic one. There is something in the culture of urban black communities that is leading the young men males of those communities to carry guns and blast away, but it is apparently wholly raaaaacist to point out that statistically obvious fact.

But you cannot address a problem if you are unwilling to acknowledge the problem, and the while liberals of Philadelphia are unwilling to face the problem because it is so very politically incorrect.

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I have no sympathy for this criminal

On Sunday, The Philadelphia Inquirer gave OpEd space to Aaron M. Kinzer, because the editors just love them some criminals:

In prison, a phone was my lifeline. Until I got caught with it.

Congress should overturn the Cell Phone Contraband Act to give incarcerated a a lifeline to the outside world.

by Aaron M Kinzer | Sunday, April 17, 2022

Aaron M Kinzer, from Parents.

Since 2010, when I was incarcerated, I have been at the mercy of the prison phone service industry. I have paid 15 cents to $1 per minute for monitored 15-minute phone calls to hear my mother’s prayers, my spouse’s love, and my children’s laughter. Companies like PayTel and Securis compete for contracts to siphon off money sent from family to people like me.

High prices, monitoring, and restrictions fuel the demand for illegal smartphones. Most incarcerated people don’t use smartphones to sell drugs or order violent attacks. Instead, they connect with loved ones. A more humane justice system would take this into account by providing tablets to inmates or allowing for video visits.

Unfortunately, because of how diffuse our national system of corrections is, this is an issue we’ll have to tackle at the county and state levels. While access to smartphones is still forbidden in jails and prisons across the country, many jurisdictions recognize the value of keeping families connected. New York City and San Francisco no longer require incarcerated people to pay a fee for making phone calls from jail, and other cities and states are considering following suit. Texas has expanded tablet access for sending emails, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons allowed for free calls during the pandemic when visitations were banned.

In prison, a phone is a lifeline, a thin thread holding together fragile family bonds. When I was transferred to a federal minimum-security prison in Virginia, located in the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, I thought I would be able to resist the lifeline thrown to me. But after six months of being restricted to the prison phone, I smuggled an illegal smartphone into prison. I knew that if I got caught, I would be placed in solitary confinement, transferred, have more time added to my sentence, or, even worse, be indicted for possessing contraband.

And caught with it he was. Continue reading →

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Sometimes you just have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] to do things right "Nice guy" policies have led to disaster in our urban areas

I have previously noted a major article in The Philadelphia Inquirer about the city’s open-air drug market near Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, complete with a photo of a man who appears to be shooting up right outside the SEPTA station. The photo shows the street littered with trash, and people just plain not caring.

The theme of the article, dated August 17, 2020, was that the COVID-19 crisis might have caused shortages in everything else, but not in the availability of drugs.

I continued to scan the newspaper for stories about how the Philadelphia Police Department had gotten their dander up about the Inquirer article, and had a massive raid to round up the drug dealers and close the drug trade down there, but it just never seemed to happen. Now there’s this, from Fox 29 News:

Philadelphia officials consider resolution designating Kensington a FEMA site

By Shawnette Wilson | April 13, 2022 | 11:30 PM EDT | Updated April 14, 2022 | 7:28AM EDT

SEPTA station on Kensington Avenue, in the background, with homeless tents on the sidewalk. Photo from Fox29 News. Click to enlarge.

KENSINGTON – Reported as the worst possible section of the United States, in terms of homelessness and drug abuse, city officials are looking for a federal and state government intervention in Kensington.

“When I was a teenager, this neighborhood was fine,” David Adcox stated. He says it’s different for his two teenage children he’s raising in Kensington, where he has lived about 45 years.“You could hang on the corner and play football. You used to be able to block Somerset off and have block parties,” Adcox added.

He says since the late nineties, things have steadily changed for the worse.

“Drugs happened and it’s been downhill since,” Adcox commented.

Some Philadelphia city officials announced last week they are taking drastic steps to address the open drug use and addiction on the streets of Kensington.

At least as of 8:08 AM on Friday morning, there was no story on the Inquirer’s website main page about this. One would think that the city considering turning this problem over to the federal government would make the news.

“What we’ve been doing has not worked. This has been going on for 10, 20, even 30 years,” Philadelphia Councilmember At-Large Allan Domb said and went to say it’s a humanitarian crisis.

“It’s the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse,” Domb added.

Domb, Councilmember Maria Quinones-Sanchez and Councilmember Mark Squilla have announced a resolution requesting that Kensington be declared a FEMA and PEMA site, like areas hit with tornadoes, floods and hurricanes.

It would mean federal and state involvement with resources and financial assistance.

“40 percent might be Philadelphians, but at least 60 percent or more are not. They may have obtained ID’s for Philadelphia, but it’s not right that the city has to take care of this humanitarian crisis when the majority of the people are not from Philadelphia,” Domb explained. “We need to bring people back to the homes where they came from, take care of the population that’s Philadelphia and get them into the right services and help them.”

But, but, but, I thought that Philadelphia was a sanctuary city, welcoming everybody, regardless of immigration status. And Councilman Domb is a Democrat.

Mr Domb has been on the city council since January 4, 2016. Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sánchez has been in office since January 7, 2008, while Councilman Mark Squilla has been there since January 2, 2012. All are Democrats.

Have they not noticed the problem until now?

The Inquirer was all #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading and social justicey on August 17, 2020, when Aubrey Whelan’s article appeared — the firing resignation of Executive Editor Stan Wischnowski two months earlier, and “anti-racist” publisher Elizabeth ‘Lisa’ Hughes was in place the previous February — yet even the newspaper covered the story at the time. Kensington is a heavily Hispanic neighborhood, with the non-Hispanic black population being relatively low, so perhaps that allowed the Inky to cover it?

The solution is not that complicated: send in the police and clear out the druggies, users as well as dealers. When the next group of dealers move in, as they will, send in the police again.

Philadelphia has been run by the Democrats for the last seven decades; the last Republican Mayor left office when Harry Truman was still President. And while the Democrats have not always been the squishes on law enforcement that they have been for a while, Democratic policies have enabled Kensington to become “the worst neighborhood in the United States, as far as homelessness and drug abuse” are concerned.

If you want to clean the place up, you need conservative policies, and conservative policies are not nice ones. To be a conservative, you have to be an [insert slang term for the rectum here] at times, because yielding to sympathy has meant allowing the existing problems to fester and get worse. It is better for the city, it is better for the United States, for [insert plural slang term for the rectum here] to be running the government, at all levels, people who will not allow sympathy and lenient policies to turn everything to [insert slang term for feces here], as has happened in all of our major cities.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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The reason Philly murders are down is that the bad guys are lousy shots * Updated! * They meant to kill more people

The blood was flowing on Philly’s streets early on Thursday!

Shootings across Philly leave 1 dead and 12 injured

An unidentified young man was found shot dead on the 400 Block of Manton Street in South Philadelphia around 2:10 p.m.

by Robert Moran | Thursday, April 15, 2022 | 7:28 PM EDT | Updated: 8:39 PM EDT

Thirteen people were shot — including one fatally — in gun violence across Philadelphia on Thursday, police said.

Around 2:10 p.m. in South Philadelphia, an unidentified young man was found with a gunshot wound to the head outside on the 400 block of Manton Street. He was pronounced dead at the scene by medics. Police reported no arrests.

The 400 block of Manton Street is not a bad neighborhood. Well-kept row houses, some new construction, houses in the $400-$500,000 range, and a South Philadelphia neighborhood that appears to be gentrifying. Continue reading →

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Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye And then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

Alas! I have been severely, severely! taken to task by Robert Stacy McCain for one of my failures!

Mr McCain’s story:

Aspiring Rapper Update: ‘Slowkey Fred’ Busted for Philly Gun Trafficking Ring

by Robert Stacy McCain | Wednesday, April 13, 2022

More federal felony charges than he’s got hit records:

An Atlanta rapper is one of 11 people facing federal charges in connection with an alleged straw-purchasing scheme that trafficked hundreds of guns from Georgia to Philadelphia.

Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced nearly 300 firearms purchased in Georgia from dozens of gun retailers to Fredrick Norman — aka “Slowkey Fred” — and three other suspects, after some were found at crime scenes and in the possession of convicted felons in Philadelphia, according to records and interviews with federal law enforcement.

In an interview with ATF agents in 2020, one of the suspects, Brianna Walker, admitted to buying 50 to 60 guns in order to sell them without a dealer’s license, according to a search warrant affidavit — a violation of federal law. Norman allegedly admitted to buying more than 100, according to federal records.
The federal investigation expanded to include 11 suspects in Georgia and Pennsylvania, all of whom face a conspiracy charge. Kenneth Burgos, 23, and Edwin Burgos, 29 — brothers accused of brokering sales in Pennsylvania — are also charged with dealing firearms without a license, officials said.

In addition to “Slowkey Fred” and the Burgos brothers, the suspects in this interstate gun-trafficking operations also included:

  • Brianna Walker a/k/a “Mars, 23, of Atlanta, GA;
  • Charles O’Bannon a/k/a “Chizzy,” 24, of Villa Rica, GA;
  • Stephen Norman, 23, of Villa Rica, GA;
  • Devin Church a/k/a “Lant,” 24, of Villa Rica, GA;
  • Roger Millington, 25, of Philadelphia, PA;
  • Ernest Payton, 30, of Philadelphia, PA;
  • Roselmy Rodriguez, 22, of Philadelphia, PA; and
  • Brianna Reed, 21, of Shippensburg, PA.

You can read the rest at Mr McCain’s original.

In my defense, not only did I have two family functions yesterday, but The Philadelphia Inquirer, the nation’s third oldest continuously published daily newspaper, while it still has a three-day-old story about Daniel Whiteman, 36, having been arrested for using a 3D printer to manufacture parts for ‘ghost guns’, had nothing on this story.

I have thus far been unable to find a mugshot of Mr Whiteman, though I suspect he has been appropriately surnamed, but it is not much of a surprise to me that the Inquirer would not be all that motivated to publish a story about defendants named Muhammad Ware, Haneef and Jabreel Vaughn, Roselmy Rodriguez, two separate chicks named Brianna, or a “rapper” faux named “Slowbrain Slowkey Fred”. To do that would be raaaaacist!

The Inquirer even had, on its website main page, a blurb, shown at the right, leading to this story:

Subway attack adds to fears that New York City has grown dangerous

The attack will intensify the disquiet among New Yorkers about violence in the nation’s largest city, including an increasing number of shootings and rising crime in the subways.

by Emmanuel Felton and Joanna Slater, Washington Post | Wednesday, April 13, 2022

NEW YORK — When Nick Laforte heard about Tuesday morning’s shooting at the 36th Street subway station, he first thought of his wife and daughter. Each day, they board the train at that very stop, one bound for Manhattan and the other heading further into Brooklyn.

After a spike of fear, Laforte was relieved to learn both women were safe. But the incident left him deeply uneasy. “It feels like things are getting out of control,” said Laforte, a retiree and Brooklyn native: “I love New York, there’s no place like this.” Still, for the first time, he found himself thinking about leaving.

Tuesday’s shooting in Brooklyn was a commuter’s worst nightmare, with panicked riders fleeing a subway car full of smoke and gunfire. According to local hospitals, nearly 30 people were treated for injuries, 10 of them with gunshot wounds.

The attack will intensify the disquiet among New Yorkers about violence in the nation’s largest city, including an increasing number of shootings and rising crime in the subways, the city’s lifeblood.

There’s more at the original, and here’s the link to The Washington Post’s original, in case the Inquirer’s paywall stops you. But it’s sadly humorous that the Inquirer would be telling us how much more dangerous the Big Apple has become: New York City had seen, through April 10th, 101 murders, compared to 116 on the same date in 2021.

Through the same date, Palm Sunday, the City of Brotherly Love had seen 129 homicides, compared to 138 on the same date in 2021. But while New York City has an estimated population of 8,177,025, Philadelphia has an estimated 1,585,480 residents. With 5.16 times Philly’s population, NYC has seen 28 fewer murders.

In 2021, New York saw 488 total homicides, compared to Philly’s 562. In 2021, NYC’s homicide rate was 5.97 per 100,000 population, while Philly’s was 35.46 per 100,000. Philadelphians were facing a homicide rate 5.94 times that of New Yorkers! Of course, as we already know, and as the Inquirer has admitted, in very internally segregated Philadelphia, you aren’t in that much danger if you are a non-Hispanic white or Asian. Through the first ten days of April, there have been 68 shootings in Philly; 57 of the victims were black, 9 were listed as Latino white, and two were non-Hispanic white. New York City’s subway passengers are a far more diverse and integrated population.

Leave it to the Inquirer to highlight the violence in other cities!

Matthew 7:3 And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
4 Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye?
5 Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.

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One picture which says it all

As we noted on Monday, foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia reimposed its indoor masking mandate. Now The Philadelphia Inquirer has reported that while a few universities have done this, no other major city in the country has followed Philadelphia’s lead.

Philly’s return of masks gets both eyerolls and support from residents. Can health officials bridge this divide?

After two years of changing restrictions and messages, some Philadelphians predict the latest rule change won’t go well.

by Tom Avril and Jason Laughlin | Tuesday, April 12, 2022

Under warm blue skies that seemed at odds with the recent rise of COVID-19, shoppers at Roosevelt Mall seemed united on Tuesday in a quest to finish errands quickly and get back outside in the sun.

But as for opinions on the return of Philadelphia’s mask mandate — which takes effect in businesses including those very same stores on Monday — errand-runners were sharply divided.

Harold Phillips, 50, of Germantown, said the restriction made sense, given that one-third of Philadelphians are not fully vaccinated.

“They should’ve never stopped it,” he said of the mask mandate, as he headed into a Snipes shoe store. “I did the research. I got the shots.”

There’s more at the original, but this is the one picture that says it all. Mr Phillips said that the city should never have ended the mask mandate when it did, but there’s the Inquirer’s caption with the photo: Mr Phillips himself “left his mask in his car while shopping at Roosevelt Mall.” It’s apparent that Mr Phillips didn’t take his stated position that the city should never have ended the mask mandate too seriously, or he’d have been wearing a mask, mandate or otherwise.

The mask mandate does not go into effect until next Monday, because the city wanted to give business owners, who had been living with the mandate from July of 2020 through March 1, 2022, time to “adjust” to the new mandate. Apparently the virus will simply take a week off.

Of course, with that beard, he’d never be able to meet the CDC’s facial hair guidelines for a closely fitting mask anyway.

The Inquirer article continues to note another person on the street, one who did not believe that the reinstated mandate was necessary, and that it would be widely ignored.

The pandemic has been a communications nightmare for public health officials. Conditions keep changing along with new variants and interventions like vaccines or treatments. The hope that vaccination would end the pandemic has been tamped down as time has shown vaccinated people can spread the virus asymptomatically.

At least the Inquirer has admitted what we’ve known for months now: fully vaccinated and boostered people can contract the virus anyway, and they can spread it to others even if they are completely asymptomatic. In January, acting Food and Drug Administration head Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee that she expected that, eventually, almost everyone would contract the virus. Celebrity doctor Anthony Fauci said that COVID-19 would infect “just about everybody.”

If everybody’s going to contract the virus anyway, there’s no reason to impose onerous restrictions on individuals, but, hey, it’s Philly, and authoritarians gotta authoritarian!

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Irony is so ironic: Robert Reich uses his freedom of speech and of the press to attack freedom of speech and of the press

We noted on Saturday, April 9th, that Ellen Pao, a tech investor and advocate, the resigned-before-she-could-be-fired CEO of Reddit, and a cofounder and CEO of the diversity and inclusion nonprofit Project Include, and someone who uses her freedom of speech and of the press to maintain her own website, used her freedom of speech and of the press — in that case, The Washington Post’s freedom of the press — to attack other people’s freedom of speech and of the press. That irony seemed to escape her.

Now comes Robert B Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com, using his freedom of speech, and The Guardian’s freedom of the press, to tell us that if you support freedom of speech and of the press, you’re no better than Vladimir Putin! Continue reading →

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Bidenomics! Americans are 2.5% poorer than they were 12 months ago.

The inflation numbers are out, and they’re ugly!

We have previously noted the January, 7.5%, and February, 7.9%, year-over-year inflation rates, and the March figure was released this morning.

8.5%.

From The Wall Street Journal:

    U.S. Inflation Hit Four-Decade High in March

    Consumer-price index rose 8.5% from year earlier, driven by skyrocketing energy and food costs

    by Gwynn Guilford | Tuesday, April 12, 2022 | 8:45 AM EDT

    U.S. inflation rose to a new four-decade peak of 8.5% in March from the same month a year ago, driven by skyrocketing energy and food costs, supply constraints and strong consumer demand.

    The Labor Department on Tuesday said the consumer-price index—which measures what consumers pay for goods and services—in March rose at its fastest annual pace since December 1981, when it was on a recession-induced downswing after the Federal Reserve aggressively tightened monetary policy. That marks the sixth straight month for inflation above 6% and put it above February’s 7.9% annual rate–well above the Federal Reserve’s target.

    The so-called core price index, which excludes the often-volatile categories of food and energy, increased 6.5% in March from a year earlier—up from February’s 6.4% rise, and sharpest 12-month rise since August 1982.

    On a monthly basis, the CPI accelerated at a seasonally adjusted 1.2% last month, from 0.8% in February, and the fastest one-month increase since 2005.

I understand that government bureaucrats don’t like dealing with “often-volatile” data, but I have yet to understand why “the often-volatile categories of food and energy” are excluded from the core CPI; it’s not as though consumers don’t have to pay for food and energy, every single month.

How often do you buy a refrigerator or a washing machine? How often do you buy even small appliances like toasters or kitchen blenders? Not often, I’d guess, but we’ve been to Kroger a few times already this month.

After several paragraphs telling us why prices are increasing so fast, we get to this:

    “There’s an element of sticker shock when people go to fill up their tank or go to the grocery store. Lower- and middle-income households are already having to make choices about what to buy because they’re having to pay so much more for food and energy,” (Richard F. Moody, chief economist at Regions Financial Corp) said.

Which led to this:

    Solid demand for labor has shifted bargaining power toward workers, putting upward pressure on wages, which could feed into broader price gains. Annual wage growth was 6% in March, the fastest pace since records began in 1997, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s wage tracker.

    Still, wages for most are growing too slowly to offset inflation. This could push workers to demand higher wages, creating a feedback loop that puts upward pressure on inflation.

When inflation is at 8.5%, while annual wage growth was 6.0%, consumers have become automatically poorer in real terms, 2.5% poorer. But hey, this is for what 81,268,924 Americans voted!