Category Archives: Economics

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Democrats talk a good game, but when they have had the power, their policies have not worked! 3½ years of President Biden have produced record homelessness

Philadelphia’s last Republican Mayor, Bernard Samuel, left office on January 7, 1952, when Harry Truman was still President of the United States, and George VI was still King of England. In the 21½ years since January 3, 2003, Republicans have been Governors of Pennsylvania for just four years, with Tom Corbett leaving office on January 20, 2015. And since January 20, 2009, a Republican has held the White House for only four years. So, if homelessness is rising in the City of Brotherly Love, it isn’t exactly the GOP’s fault.

Homelessness in Philadelphia increases for third consecutive year

The number of homeless Philadelphians exceeded 5,000 for the first time since 2020.

by Layla A. Jones | Monday, September 23, 2024 | 3:09 PM EDT

The number of homeless Philadelphians increased for the third consecutive year, according to the annual point-in-time homelessness count conducted by the Office of Homeless Services.

The count was conducted in January and includes unsheltered people and those living in emergency shelters, safe haven and transitional housing. In 2024, the total number of homeless people reached 5,191, up from 4,725 the previous year — a 10% increase.

Mandated by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, the annual point-in-time count is a snapshot of homelessness on one day in January.

Philadelphia’s count calls on volunteers, armed with clipboards, socks, and gloves, to spread across the city interviewing and cataloging people who are homeless.

How is it, if Democratic Party policies work, that homelessness is increasing in Philly? The Keystone State has had Democrats as Governors, and the city is a one-party, Democratic town. Mr Biden won Pennsylvania by 80,555 votes in 2020, 3,458,229 (50.01%) to 3,377674 (48.84%), but only because he carried Philadelphia 603,790 (81.44%) to 132,740 (17.90%), a margin of 471,050 votes. That’s how Democratic Philadelphia is![1]Without Philly, President Trump would have carried the Keystone State 3,244,935 (52.56%) to 2,854,439 (46.23%). Whatever the Democrats wanted to do in Philadelphia, they had the votes and the officeholders to do.

High – but declining – poverty, the opioid epidemic and a lack of affordable housing are to blame for the rising numbers of unsheltered people, according to a summary of the city’s winter count.

“Poverty remains a factor, irrespective of poverty trends/trajectories,” said Sherylle Linton Jones, spokesperson for the Office of Homeless Services.

More than 20% of homeless people had either been evicted or displaced for another reason in the preceding 90 days, showing how impactful an issue affordable housing is in Philadelphia.

If poverty is declining, why would homelessness increase?

The drug crisis is certainly a factor, as former Mayor Jim Kenney concentrated on hugely important things, like an additional tax on Big Gulps from Seven/Eleven, but, other than that, had pretty much checked out of doing his job, and the Kensington section of the city had become not just a local laughing stock, but a nationally and even internationally known drug wasteland.

Let’s tell the truth here: Democrats talk a good game, but when they have power, their policies have not worked!

Philadelphia’s rising homelessness comes after the office overspent its budget by almost $15 million, pressured by a mandate to keep people sheltered.

The Democrats tell you that they are going to do something, but even with having overspent their budgets, they don’t get the job done!

Philadelphia’s numbers are in lockstep with a nationwide trend of rising homelessness. In 2023, homelessness grew 12% to the highest level ever recorded. More than an estimated 650,000 people are homeless in the United States, the largest number since the country started tracking the annual point-in-time survey in 2007. The rising homelessness crisis led the conservative-leaning Supreme Court to rule that municipalities could ban sleeping in public places, effectively outlawing unsheltered homelessness.

It hasn’t been just Philly. Under President Joe Biden, and the Administration’s oh-so-sympathetic attitude, homelessness nationwide has still soared to record levels. Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff has been telling us that she’s going to solve the problem by building 3,000,000 new, ‘affordable’ homes, but whatever her ideas to do that are, she never presented it or persuaded President Biden to do it. Once again, the Democrats are talking a big game, but they’ll fail miserably.

Mrs Emhoff is, as the Democrats always say they are, big on labor unions, but if her ‘plan’ includes pushing union labor on building those three million new homes, then she will have automatically made them more expensive, and less ‘affordable.’

Millions of people will vote Democratic this November, but those people will be voting for promises that cannot and will not be kept.

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↑1 Without Philly, President Trump would have carried the Keystone State 3,244,935 (52.56%) to 2,854,439 (46.23%).
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Passenger rail in France

I see a lot of stuff on Twitter — I absolutely refuse to call it 𝕏 — from advocates of a high-speed passenger rail service in the United States. My position is simple: if one of the private railroad companies wishes to build that high-speed passenger railroad, I absolutely support their right to spend their own money to do so. But the federal and state governments should stay out of it.

A lady — or so I judge her to be by her Twitter bio pic — styling herself “Hunter” from the United Kingdom posted the tweet to the left concerning a proposal for high speed rail (HSR) service in the United States, and I thought that I should document my experiences with HSR in France.

It was Saturday, September 7th, when we took the train from Toulouse to Ville de Nice. The travel time is 7 hours and 31 minutes on average, more than twice as long as flying. Driving distance is 560.6 kilometers, or 348.3 miles.

How fast does the train run? At the points in which the rail line ran parallel with the highway, I could see that the train was moving faster than the cars on the road, and French highways have speed limits of 110 KPH (68.35 MPH) or 130 KPH (80.78 MPH), but I cannot say for certain what the speed limits were on the roads I saw. Doing the math, covering 560 kilometers in 7½ hours gives an average speed of 74.67 KPH, no faster than driving. In driving, you have your vehicle door-to-door, and are not left station-to-station.

The reason is obvious: like “Hunter’s” map above, the train between Toulouse and Ville de Nice had several stops along the route. I didn’t actually count them, but it seemed to have been around eight stops.

We took a HSR train from Firenze (Florence) to Venezia (Venice) in July of 2016. Unlike the train in France, which had older cars, the one in Italy was new, and had a speed indicator in the passenger cars. The highest I remember seeing was 225 KPH (139.81 MPH), which is a pretty good clip, but that train as well had stops along the route.

The HSR advocates are nice enough people, but let’s tell the truth here: they are all urbanites, with the concerns and cultures of densely populated urban areas. That the United States is physically different from Europe doesn’t seem to make much of an impact on their thinking, but we have vast, vast areas of land with very few people in it. Population densities west of the Mississippi River drop off dramatically until you get to the left coast, and even east of our great river, densities are not that high until you get close to the east coast. Here in the Bluegrass State, our third largest city, Bowling Green, has a population far below 100,000, estimated to be 76,212 in 2023. Eastern Kentucky, in the Appalachian Mountains, is populated by small farms and tiny towns. The high speed rail systems the advocate want, the systems they liked in Europe, are mostly inappropriate for a country which is as spread out as the United States.

 

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Youts Have A Big Vote Decision: A Good Economy Or Climate (scam) Action

For a change, ‘climate change’ isn’t coming in last or almost last on a poll

Economic issues, climate change, gun violence and abortion are top of mind for young voters

Forty-one million members of Gen Z can vote in this year’s election, and money is on their minds.

Economic issues — including inflation, cost of living and jobs that pay a living wage — are top of mind for young people when it comes to the 2024 Presidential Election, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University.

“Young people have the potential to have a huge impact,” said CIRCLE Spokesperson Alberto Medina.

Yeah, but, they so often go missing from the voting booth

The percentage of youth, ages 18-34 year olds, who selected each issue as one of their top three priorities, according to CIRCLE’s poll —

  • Cost of living/inflation — 53%
  • Jobs that pay a living wage — 28%
  • Gun violence prevention — 26%
  • Addressing climate change — 26%
  • Expanding access to abortion — 19%
  • Fighting racism — 13%
  • Securing the border — 13%
  • Public education — 13%
  • Student loan debt — 12%
  • Reducing the national debt — 11%

Ella Douglas, an 18-year-old freshman at Ohio State University, said the economy is her top issue. “I care about where our money is going,” she said.

Well, if that’s what she and 53% care about as their top issue, why would they vote for Kamala, who’s presided over much more expensive housing, food, energy, and so much more? Inflation that has outpaced wages? Do they really care enough about ‘climate change’ to destroy their own economic well-being?

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Happy BidenHarrisflation Labor Day Weekend!

Joe Biden’s intern is happy to post this

Wait, how is Brandon supposed to build 3 million homes by the end of January? They can’t even get 9 EV charging stations built. And no high speed internet hookups completed. As for inflation, he and Kamala helped cook it, and

No ‘Joy’ on Labor Day: Inflation Sends Cost of Cookouts Soaring

Americans are feeling less “joy” when firing up their grills and getting their marinades ready this Labor Day weekend, realizing that some of the classic barbecue staples are costing them a lot more.

It all begins with firing up the grill, which will cost more than it did three and a half years ago. According to data from the Bureau of Labor statistics, the price of propane, kerosene, and firewood has risen 16 percent from January 2021 to July 2024.

Staples of the basic all-American cookout are up too, meaning hamburgers and hotdogs are going to cost you. According to Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, the price of ground beef has risen 26 percent since January 2021, when former President Donald Trump left the White House.

Similarly, hotdogs are 25 percent higher than they were in January 2021. The price of chicken has also jumped since Biden and Harris came on the scene. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, not seasonally adjusted, shows the price of fresh and frozen chicken parts 23 percent higher now than when Trump left office in January 2021. Matters are worse if Americans are looking to roast a whole chicken for their long weekend, as a fresh whole chicken is up 27 percent since January 2021.

And if friends and family are forgoing low carb trends and want to pair their barbecue delicacy with a roll, it is going to cost even more. Fresh biscuits, rolls, and muffins in the U.S. have risen 28 percent since Biden and Harris took office.

Side dishes, spices, lettuce, salad dressing, and beer are all up. So, people can vote for a guy they hate who does well on the economy, understands how it works, and wants you to have better costs without the government controlling everything, or, the lady who supercharged the issues as the economy was re-opening.

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Surgeon General Super Excited To Make Things Worse For Stressed Parents

What could parents be stressed about? Kids? School? Or, maybe the poor economy and kids’ declined learning from the COVID lock-downs

Parents can’t function they’re so stressed, surgeon general warns

American parents need a bailout.

Suffering from stress, money woes and loneliness more than their childless peers, nearly half of parents can barely function, according to a new report from Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.

I thought the economy was great. Didn’t Kamala say that Bidenomics during the Biden-Harris administration was working?

Murthy says government aid, in the form of child tax credits, universal preschool, early childhood education programs, paid family and medical leave, paid sick time and investments in social infrastructure, can help. That’s in line with Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ campaign pitch, but GOP contender Donald Trump is also considering how to get more cash in parents’ pockets — an issue his running mate JD Vance has championed.

“The stress and the loneliness that parents are dealing with at a disproportionate level has real implications,” Murthy told POLITICO. “We’ve got to provide more financial support.”

Chronic and excessive stress caused in part by the bills they have to pay exacerbates parents’ mental health conditions, including depression and anxiety, and can hurt children’s development.

Four in 10 parents say they’re so stressed they can’t function most days, according to Murthy’s report, with two-thirds citing financial hardship.

Where does the money come from? And what will all this addition federal spending do for inflation? Why is it the government’s job to fund all the parents? Perhaps the government should get out of the way and reverse course so that conditions will be ripe for people to be able to afford to have the kids. Perhaps government should reduce spending, and focus on their core duties and responsibilities.

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Harris Goes After Trump On Economy And Inflation Or Something

It’s not often that a politics article gives me a good laugh. I’m not sure how Politico writer Adam Cancryn could write this. He must be a Believer

Harris goes after Trump on economy and inflation in new ad

Vice President Kamala Harris is trying to make up ground with voters who still give former President Donald Trump an edge on the economy, airing a new ad this week that attempts to go on offense on inflation.

The ad, titled “Everyday” and first shared with POLITICO, features clips of Harris’ speech earlier this month in North Carolina, where she unveiled a series of proposals aimed at making housing more affordable, targeting corporations over price gouging and expanding a tax credit for families.

“Prices are still too high,” Harris said. “I will be laser-focused on creating opportunities for the middle class that advance their economic security, stability and dignity.”

The spot, which will start running on Tuesday, is part of a $150 million ad blitz targeted at battleground states surrounding last week’s Democratic convention, and the second in the last few days to focus on cutting costs and taxes. An earlier 30-second ad made only broad references to bolstering the middle class; this newest, one-minute one outlines Harris’ main focus areas, while also attacking Trump by name as siding with “billionaires and large corporations.”

Shame Adam failed to mention

Where was her laser focus the past 3 1/2 years? Also at Politico

Hill Dems try to tamp down backlash to Harris’ grocery price gouging pitch

Under pressure to defend Kamala Harris’ grocery price gouging plan, some Democratic lawmakers are delivering a quiet message to anxious allies: Don’t worry about the details. It’s never going to pass Congress.

The Harris campaign’s proposal, unveiled as part of her first big economic policy speech, has become a focal point for her presidential rival, Donald Trump, and fellow Republicans, who claim she’s pushing “communist price controls.” It has also alarmed food industry officials and even some left-of-center economists, who’ve warned such policies can hurt more than they help.

A lot of Democrats, particularly those who are not wacko leftists, and have to deal with tough re-election campaigns, know that this policy, which Harris is still pushing (I heard the commercial here in Raleigh yesterday or today), is really bad for them, and they do not want to hitch their wagon to something being called a communist policy.

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Once again, the left want to restrict our choices It's all for our own good, right?

I have said it many times before: today’s left are pro-choice on exactly one thing, prenatal infanticide. In everything else, they want the government to take control of your lives. William Teach noted that the Biden Administration are trying to shut down existing coal-fired electricity generation plants through emissions regulations which would force them out of business. The Democrats tried to force every American to take an experimental and long-term untested ‘vaccine’ against COVID-19, punishing those who refused with loss of their jobs. They have put in regulations designed to ban the sales of new gasoline-or-diesel-powered trucks and automobiles by 2035, even as the Administration threaten to shut down the coal-fired generation plants, even though 16.2% of our electricity is produced from burning coal. I’m not quite sure how the math works out in trying to push plug-in electric vehicles and concomitantly reducing our electric generating capacity.

Not only do they want to force people into plug-in electric vehicles, the government also wants to regulate the choices we have in those vehicles:

As cars and trucks get bigger and taller, lawmakers look to protect pedestrians

by Joel Rose | Friday, August 23, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

RUCKERSVILLE, Va. — In a cavernous white room full of bright lights, video cameras and microphones, a driverless cart hurtles at 37 miles per hour into the side of a large SUV.

Researchers at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have crash-tested thousands of cars and trucks like this one over the past three decades at their facility in central Virginia.

But a few years ago, they noticed that those vehicles were getting bigger and heavier. So they decided to make the cart that crashes into them larger, too.

“It was meant to represent a small pickup or a midsize SUV, and those vehicles have gotten heavier and heavier over time,” says Becky Mueller, a senior research engineer at IIHS. “So it’s 500 kilograms more weight because that’s what the vehicle fleet now reflects.”

Americans’ cars and trucks are getting bigger and taller, while roadway fatalities have also climbed sharply over the past decade.

Why have cars and trucks gotten bigger and taller? Because those are the vehicles that the car-buying public have chosen to buy. American automobile manufacturers have moved to produce the vehicles that their customers want to buy. Article continues below the fold, because it contains an embedded video. Continue reading →

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Karma comes to Taylor Lorenz!

Our regular readers, both of them, will remember Taylor Lorenz, a columnist at The Washington Post covering technology and online culture. Miss Lorenz most significant claim to fame was her investigation and doxing of Chaya Raichik, the owner of the Twitter site Libs of TikTok. The left hated LoTT, because Miss Raichik’s schtick was to find the idiocy that the left were posting to TikTok — and there was a lot of it — and expose it far more widely, to the ridicule of the libs. At the time, Miss Raichik was working as a real estate agent, and the exposure was designed to cost Miss Raichik her job.

In the end, it simply made Miss Raichik more popular and wealthy, but it also made Miss Lorenz more of a public figure as well, invited to some of the hoitiest and toitiest of Hollywood soirees.

Of course, despite her insistence that everybody wear face masks to prevent the spread of COVID-19 — though she subsequently deleted it, she informed readers that she was at least somewhat immunocompromised — as late as August of 2023, she didn’t wear one herself.

Well, in a true sauce for the goose moment, it seems that Miss Lorenz has been outed for something. From NPR, not exactly an evil reich-wing site:

‘Washington Post’ reviews star columnist Taylor Lorenz’s ‘war criminal’ jab at Biden

by David Folkenflik | Thursday, August 15, 2024 | 7:55 PM EDT

Senior editors at the Washington Post are reviewing a prominent tech columnist’s private story on social media, which appears to label President Biden a “war criminal” in a photo.

The Post’s Taylor Lorenz attended a White House event for digital influencers on Wednesday. In the photo she shared with a circle of friends on Instagram, Biden appears over her shoulder; the damning caption rests just below him, accompanied by a text frowny face.

After the New York Post’s Jon Levine — a frequent critic of hers — revealed the Instagram photo caption yesterday in a tweet, Lorenz wrote back at him: “You people will fall for any dumbass edit someone makes.”

I am thoroughly amused.

A fact-check appended to Levine’s tweet cited her apparent denial. (The contextual note to the tweet says, “Taylor Lorenz says this is a digital manipulation which has added a false caption.”) Lorenz told her editors that someone else had added the caption to the photo.

NPR has obtained a screengrab of Lorenz’s actual post, which contained that caption. It was not shared with her wider Instagram audience of 143,000 followers.

Four people with direct knowledge of the private Instagram story confirmed its authenticity to NPR. They spoke to NPR on condition they not be identified due to the professional sensitivity of the situation for Lorenz.

“Our executive editor and senior editors take alleged violations of our standards seriously,” a spokesperson for the newspaper told NPR. “We’re aware of the alleged post and are looking into it.” Lorenz declined to comment.

The Post has already been cutting staff, due to the newspaper losing a lot of money. If Miss Lorenz loses her job over this — something which is certainly not guaranteed — would it not be a delicious bit of karma for trying to cost Miss Raichik her real estate position?

Lorenz has since told associates that a close friend took her posted picture and superimposed the caption upon it, as a joke, and that she shared it with the group on the private Instagram posting.

If that is true, then yes, Miss Lorenz has admitted posting it on Instagram. Perhaps she thought it was a joke, but as a social media savvy reporter, she should have realized just what a stink this would cause, as well as understanding that once something goes out into the internet, it can be seen by the wrong people, and used against her. Using utter stupidity as an excuse isn’t a good look.

Perhaps Miss Lorenz is now learning about sauce for the goose!

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Ivy League research associate wants clerks at Wawa to pay for her commute

Talia Borofsky, from her Twitter profile.

Cry me a river! Talia Borofsky is “a postdoctoral research associate in Princeton’s High Meadows Environmental institute, where she researches the evolution and ecology of cooperative hunting.” Dr Borofsky lives in foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia but commutes to work at Princeton University, and she greatly saddened by the fact that cashiers at WalMart and hamburger flippers at McDonald’s won’t be paying as much for her daily commute!

Amtrak’s sudden fare increases bite the hand that feeds it

Amtrak recently raised multi-ride fares along the Northeast Corridor without adequate prior warning to its ridership. The drastic increase is a slap in the face to taxpayers, writes Talia Borofsky.

by Talia Borofsky | Thursday, August 15, 2024 | 12:00 PM EDT

In July Amtrak raised multi-ride fares along the Northeast Corridor by anywhere from 32% to 70% without directly notifying its ridership in advance.

Amtrak, a federally funded and federally majority-owned company, is meant to serve the public. The drastic fare increase is a slap in the face to taxpayers after the infrastructure bill dedicated a total of $22 billion in direct grants to the company.

You might think from Dr Borofsky’s first two paragraphs that her complaint is that she wasn’t notified far enough and directly enough in advance, but that’s not it. What upsets her is that she’s having to pay more for a direct service she receives.

Investopedia notes:

Amtrak receives considerable subsidies from both state and federal governments but it’s managed as a for-profit company. This isn’t unusual. No country in the world operates a passenger rail system without public support.

But Amtrak’s “for-profit” status is sadly ironic. The train company has never been profitable since its founding nearly fifty years ago. It’s only thanks to its subsidies that the company has survived.

In other words, Dr Borofsky’s daily commute has never been entirely paid for by her fares. It has always been subsidized by taxpayer dollars, many of which are taken from people who earn less money than she does. But hey, if you’re a daycare worker in Philly, or a laborer for a roofing company in Lexington, shouldn’t you be glad to know that some of the money you pay in taxes goes to pay for “a postdoctoral research associate” at an Ivy League university, who earned her doctorate at Stanford, the hoitiest and the toitiest of the colleges west of the Mississippi, to research “the evolution and ecology of cooperative hunting”?

As a postdoc at Princeton University, I commute from Philly to Princeton using Amtrak. This commute used to make financial sense; rents in Philadelphia are almost half the price of those in Princeton, and Princeton provided a helpful although limited commute subsidy.

However, the commute became unaffordable for me and likely many others on July 1; the 10-trip (one-way) ticket package between Princeton and Philly shot up from $230 to $390, and the monthly pass increased from $576 to $975. These sudden increases have impacted many postdocs and graduate students at Princeton, whose budgets were already strained by the previous fares.

There’s such a whiff of elitism from Dr Borofsky’s OpEd. As a “postdoctoral research associate” at an Ivy League university, she is paid much more than most Philadelphians. According to Glass Door:

The estimated total pay range for a Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University is $57K–$67K per year, which includes base salary and additional pay. The average Postdoctoral Fellow base salary at Princeton University is $62K per year.

The minimum of $57,000 is slightly higher than the median household income of $56,517 for Philadelphians overall. But Dr Borofsky apparently believes that the baggers at Giant Food Mart or the clerk at Wawa brewing her large coffee for the train ride — yeah, I’m guessing about that last, but everyone in Philly should drink Wawa coffee! — should have to contribute a bit more to pay for her train ride.

Dr Borofsky continued to tell readers about Amtrak’s poor service, and that the suddenness of the fare increase was “exploitative.” I have no qualms with her point that the increase was sudden, nor that Amtrak’s service isn’t the greatest.

But it’s her concluding one-sentence paragraph that gets me:

Train travel should be viable for all, not just the wealthy.

No, train travel should be available to those who pay for the service. Why should I, a retiree, be required to pony up some of my tax dollars so that Dr Borofsky doesn’t have to pay for the service she receives? Why should the janitors at Princeton be required to help fund her commute?

The subtitle of her article states, “The drastic increase is a slap in the face to taxpayers,” but no; the drastic increase is a boon to the taxpayers, the ones who are already subsidizing her train ride. The good research associate should pay for the services she receives herself.