But, but, but, we’ve been told that plug-in electric vehicles are the wave of the future! From The Wall Street Journal:
Investors Sour on EV Charging Companies
EV charging companies have fallen from lofty valuations as concerns mount about their profitability
by Jennifer Hiller | Boxing Day, December 26, 2023 | 7:00 AM EST
The companies that install and operate electric-vehicle charging networks are in the middle of a building boom, but their share prices are sputtering. Continue reading
Former Democratic presidential nominees Al Gore and John Kerry are surely weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth at the news, but the sensible among us see this as great! From CNN:
The United States is producing more oil than any country in history
By Matt Egan | Updated 5:00 PM EST | Tuesday, December 19, 2023
As the world grapples with the existential crisis of climate change, environmental activists want President Joe Biden to phase out the oil industry, and Republicans argue he’s already doing that. Meanwhile, the surprising reality is the United States is pumping oil at a blistering pace and is on track to produce more oil than any country has in history.
“The existential crisis of climate change”? So many reporters keep using that word; I do not think it means what they think it means. We may have some issues with which to deal with global warming climate change, but we’re not all going to die.
Remember: human beings are the most adaptable creatures on earth, and we live everywhere, from arctic wastelands to steaming jungles to bone dry deserts, and we have done so even prior to our modern, industrialized society.
The United States is set to produce a global record of 13.3 million barrels per day of crude and condensate during the fourth quarter of this year, according to a report published Tuesday by S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Last month, weekly US oil production hit 13.2 million barrels per day, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That’s just above the Donald Trump-era record of 13.1 million set in early 2020 just before the Covid-19 crisis sent output and prices crashing.
Also read: William Teach, “Gore Effect: Maine Forced To Postpone Vote On Forced EVs Due To Power Outage“
The US is exporting roughly the same amounts of crude oil, refined fuels and liquid natural gas as Saudi Arabia and Russia. With the Saudi and Russian collusion, on which we have previously reported, to reduce OPEC’s production to raise prices, American production has helped keep those prices down.
“It’s a reminder that the US is endowed with enormous oil reserves. Our industry should never be underestimated,” said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group.
Record-shattering US production is helping to offset aggressive supply cuts meant to support high prices by OPEC+, mainly Saudi Arabia and Russia. Other non-OPEC oil producers including Canada and Brazil are also pumping more oil than ever before. (Brazil is set to join OPEC+ next year.)
Think about what this means. Russia’s economy is dependent upon oil and natural gas exports, and Vladimir Putin wanted to use western Europe’s dependence upon Russia oil and, especially, natural gas as a weapon against NATO countries which are supporting Ukraine with money and military equipment. Without Russian natural gas, a lot of western Europe countries, much of which are at latitudes higher than our lower 48-state border with Canada, the Europeans would have gotten awfully cold during the past two winters, but American production has prevented Russia from being able to effectively utilize their energy weapon.
The climate activists want us to cease oil production, thinking that that will somehow save the world, and perhaps we can eventually develop energy systems which can truly replace oil for energy production, but, right now, that day has not come. And the United States, with its oil, natural gas, and seriously underused coal reserves, has natural resources which can make Americans in general wealthier. The activists just don’t get it: doing what they want would make Americans poorer.
Then again, if liberals actually understood economics, they wouldn’t be liberals anymore.
With Thanksgiving just a week away, many people have their minds on travel plans, to visit extended family a long way away. Fortunately for us, Thanksgiving travel means a whopping 18 miles, to my sister’s house.
Screen capture by D R Pico, November 16, 2023.
Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel gave us an interesting map of fuel prices across the fruited plain, and it shows just what you’d expect: in states where the government wants a deeper bite into your wallet, it’s going to cost you more to visit the relatives!
Here in the Bluegrass State, the average price as shown by the American Automobile Association is $3.037 per gallon, though the station closest to me has $2.959 per gallon for regular posted. I pay close attention to Pennsylvania, where we used to live, and the average price for regular is currently $3.607 per gallon, 57¢ higher than in Kentucky.
Kentucky is right in the middle when it comes to state taxes on gasoline, 26th in the nation at 30.10¢ per gallon, while Pennsylvania is third, charging 62.20¢ per gallon. As you’d obviously guess, the Pyrite State, California, tops the list, taxing its people.
Interestingly, Illinois, which has the second highest tax rate on fuel, at 66.5¢ per gallon, shares a birder with Missouri, with the second lowest, 17.47¢. Continue reading
A view from our farm; the river is just beyond the trees.
The activists wanting to fight global warming climate change have long said that increased urbanization is part of the solutions they seek:
Huge gains, in terms of reducing harmful gases, can be made by changing how we plan, build, manage and power our cities and towns. Well designed, compact, walkable cities with good public transport greatly reduce our per capita carbon footprint and are key to achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals of which climate action is a key part.
Good public transportation, huh? We have already noted how a well-funded public transportation system, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Agency, SEPTA, has admitted that they have lost control of the train cars as the heavily Democratic city has lost any semblance of control over crime, drug abuse, and homelessness, and SEPTA’s ridership is still below that before the panicdemic. Having the homeless and the junkies using SEPTA trains and train and subway stations for shelter and shooting galleries will cause decent people to avoid the system.
But there’s another problem with promoting increased urbanization:
The Philly area doesn’t have enough homes available for low- and middle-income buyers
In the Philadelphia metro area, households making $50,000 faced the largest shortage of available, affordable homes for sale, according to the National Association of Realtors and Realtors.com.
by Michaelle Bond | Friday, June 9, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT
More than one million homes nationwide were available for sale in late April. But high prices mean that what’s out there doesn’t match what people at various income levels can afford, according to a new report from the nation’s Realtors.
Basically, home listings affordable for middle- and lower-income households are missing. The country needs more homes that households at all income levels can buy to chip away at the problems of low affordability and low housing supply, according to a report that the National Association of Realtors and Realtor.com released Thursday.
“Ongoing high housing costs and the scarcity of available homes continues to present budget challenges for many prospective buyers, and it’s likely keeping some buyers in the rental market or on the sidelines and delaying their purchase until conditions improve,” Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist, said in a statement.
The report breaks down the number of homes missing for each income level by comparing the number of listings available in April to the number that would need to be available to accommodate buyers. Realtors said they hope local and federal governments can use their analysis to ease the twin problems of affordability and housing supply.
According to the story, households with a $50,000 income level can afford homes that cost up to $163,440, but if the Philadelphia market is short 3,440 homes listed for sale at that or lower prices, there’s also the obvious question: what can someone buy at those prices? We previously noted the home at 4931 Hoopes Street, listed for $125,000 in April, but down to $75,000 now.
Kitchen at 1829 North Bucknell Street, via zillow.com
For just $69,750, you can buy this 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom 870 ft² fixer-upper at 1829 North Bucknell Street. That’s North Philadelphia, not exactly a great neighborhood!
Now, why did I pick that listing? In December of 2021, we bought a small, detached house, 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1,344 ft², with a detached one-car garage, in a small town in Kentucky for $70,000. My nephew and I had to remodel the bathroom and redo the plumbing, but, doing the work ourselves, spent less than $2,000. The house is perfectly neat and clean and livable — and is rented out to my sister-in-law — yet was virtually the same price. What we spent in a small town for a decent, if not modern, house, will buy you an absolute dump in North Philly.
716 West Allegheny Avenue, photo via zillow,com.
$70,000 will buy you this boarded-up, barred-in porch, 1,260 ft² rowhome at 716 West Allegheny Avenue, in the Fairhill neighborhood in the Philadelphia Badlands. Sorry, no interior pictures in the listing. The realtor probably figures that interior photos will scare off more prospective buyers.
114 South Cecil Street, photo via zillow.com.
The story stated that a household with a $50,000 income could afford a home of up to $146,440. For $145,000, you can buy this home at 114 South Cecil Street, in West Philly.
And with all of that, the Philadelphia metropolitan area was one of only four major metropolitan areas — the others being Detroit, Houston, and Cleveland — in which buying a home was less expensive than renting.
The global warming climate change activists want more and more people to move into densely-populated urban areas, and to use public transportation, to reduce CO2 emissions, but one thing is very clear: doing so will make people, especially people at the lower end of the economic spectrum, poorer than ever. Housing prices for even modest homes are hugely inflated, and mortgage interest rates have increased significantly.
It’s really quite simple: the activists live in urban areas, and that is the life they see as their baseline good. Those of us who live out in the sticks are just a bunch of unedumacated rubes. But the activists also have money, and have been able to afford living in the cities, and living reasonably well. They have to be economically secure, simply to have the time to be activist. What they seem unable to grasp is that there are a lot of people living paycheck-to-paycheck, people who can’t afford the inflated urban housing costs.
Remember how Joe Biden defeating the evil Donald Trump in 2020 was supposed to make the United States respected again?
Saudi Arabia Seeks Regional Embrace of Assad in Win for Iran
Kingdom keen to assert itself as regional political leader
Syria has been banished from Arab League for atrocities
By Sam Dagher, Fiona MacDonald and Zainab Fattah | April 5, 2023 | 7:44 AM EDT | Updated: April 6, 2023 | 4:41 AM EDT
(Bloomberg) — Saudi Arabia is leading efforts to formally bring Syrian President Bashar al-Assad back into the Arab inner circle as early as next month, in what would be a win for Iran and Russia and in defiance of US warnings after more than a decade of conflict.
For those of you stymied by Bloomberg’s paywall, you can read it for free here.
The kingdom is taking steps that would allow the Arab League grouping of regional states to end a suspension of Syria’s membership in time for a summit in Riyadh in mid-May, according to three people briefed by the Saudis and one person close to the United Arab Emirates government, which backs the plan.
Those efforts are ongoing and could be stretched out or even fall through, or Arab leaders could settle on an interim plan next month, the people said. The US is aware of the push, has warned against it but has realized it can do little to stop it, several of the people said.
Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is eager to cast the kingdom as the Arab world’s uncontested political and economic leader.
Following last month’s surprise restoration of ties with Iran, Riyadh now wants to be at the forefront of initiatives to calm regional conflict zones like Syria and ensure nothing disrupts its ambitious efforts to transform its economy, the Saudi daily Okaz said in an Op-Ed last week.
As we have previously reported, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of the country, really doesn’t like President Biden. Mr Biden directly, to his face, accused the Crown Prince of being responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, after Mr Khashoggi called the prince a liar, in public, in the pages of The Washington Post.
So, what did Saudi Arabia do?
U.S. Officials Had a Secret Oil Deal With the Saudis. Or So They Thought.
After Saudi leaders pushed to slash oil production despite a visit by President Biden, American officials have been left fuming that they were duped.
By Mark Mazzetti, Edward Wong and Adam Entous | Tuesday, October 25, 2022
WASHINGTON — As President Biden was planning a politically risky trip to Saudi Arabia this summer, his top aides thought they had struck a secret deal to boost oil production through the end of the year — an arrangement that could have helped justify breaking a campaign pledge to shun the kingdom and its crown prince.
It didn’t work out that way.
Mr. Biden went through with the trip. But earlier this month, Saudi Arabia and Russia steered a group of oil-producing countries in voting to slash oil production by two million barrels per day, the opposite of the outcome the administration thought it had secured as the Democratic Party struggles to deal with inflation and high gas prices heading into the November elections.
From The Wall Street Journal:
Saudi Arabia Considers Accepting Yuan Instead of Dollars for Chinese Oil Sales
Talks between Riyadh and Beijing have accelerated as the Saudi unhappiness grows with Washington
By Summer Said in Dubai and Stephen Kalin in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia | Updated March 15, 2022 11:48 AM ET
Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would dent the U.S. dollar’s dominance of the global petroleum market and mark another shift by the world’s top crude exporter toward Asia.Chinese President Xi Jinping shakes hands with Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman on arriving at Al Yamamah Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on December 8. Photo: Saudi Press Agency via AP
The talks with China over yuan-priced oil contracts have been off and on for six years but have accelerated this year as the Saudis have grown increasingly unhappy with decades-old U.S. security commitments to defend the kingdom, the people said.
The Saudis are angry over the U.S.’s lack of support for their intervention in the Yemen civil war, and over the Biden administration’s attempt to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program. Saudi officials have said they were shocked by the precipitous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year.
China buys more than 25% of the oil that Saudi Arabia exports. If priced in yuan, those sales would boost the standing of China’s currency. The Saudis are also considering including yuan-denominated futures contracts, known as the petroyuan, in the pricing model of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Aramco.
That was 13 months ago, but maneuvers toward this continue apace. The yuan is not all that liquid right now, but the Chinese are making moves to push internationalization of the yuan to weaken the dollar’s grip on international trade, and as the world’s reserve currency.
The Chinese don’t have to buy in yuan; thanks to America’s seemingly insatiable desire for Chinese products, and the Chinese financing so much of the United States’ debt, they have plenty of dollars. But the inflation of the dollar under President Biden has made our currency worth less, and even if that is something of an international problem, there is significant weakness of the reputation of the dollar.
And now OPEC and its allies, including Russia, agreed on Sunday to widen crude oil production cuts to 3.66 million barrels per day (bpd) or 3.7% of global demand. American inflation has been coming down slowly — though it’s still higher than wages have increased — so Saudi Arabia and Russia, the number three and number two oil producers in the world, have decided to push American inflation higher.
It’s pretty amazing, when you think about it. President Biden insults the ruler of Saudi Arabia, and then wages a proxy war against Russia. China, which has no reason to love the US other than our dollars, makes some noises about Taiwan, and the US then proceeds to warn China about the consequences of trying to retake the island. Shockingly enough, all three start taking actions to hurt the United States and its economy. You don’t have to like Mohammed bin Salman or Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping to realize that they can hurt the United States, and that insulting them really isn’t a great idea, but the dummkopf from Delaware did it anyway.
As we noted on Thursday, Philadelphia uses an unusual system for evictions, not relying on the Sheriff’s office, but a private firm:
Unlike other jurisdictions, Philadelphia courts rely on a private attorney, appointed by Municipal Court’s president judge and known as a landlord-tenant officer, to execute evictions. This attorney deputizes private security contractors to perform on-site lockouts in exchange for the right to collect millions in related eviction fees.
With a woman resisting a lawful eviction getting shot in the head by a deputy landlord-tenant officer on Wednesday morning, there were obvious outcries from the usual suspects:
Pa. lawmakers want to ban hired security from doing evictions after shooting of Philly tenant
A deputy landlord-tenant officer shot a woman while enforcing a court-ordered eviction. Lawmakers are proposing to change how the system operates.
by Ryan W. Briggs , Max Marin, and Jesse Bunch | Thursday, March 30, 2023
State lawmakers from Philadelphia are proposing to ban private firms from enforcing evictions after a security contractor shot a 35-year-old woman during an attempted lockout Wednesday.
The move comes after a shooting that has brought Philadelphia’s unusual eviction system into the spotlight.
While most jurisdictions deploy sworn law enforcement personnel, such as sheriff deputies, to enforce evictions, Philadelphia outsources much of that work to a private, for-profit law firm, known as a Landlord-Tenant Officer. This firm in turn contracts out the work of serving court notices and performing tenant lockouts to armed security guards, known as deputy landlord-tenant officers.
That unique arrangement would be banned under legislation State Sens. Nikil Saval and Sharif Street plan to introduce. A bill the Philadelphia Democrats plan to introduce next month would amend state codes to clarify that courts across Pennsylvania “cannot empower private companies or individuals to perform evictions,” according to a statement.
With “progressive” Helen Gym Flaherty running for Mayor of Philadelphia and letting us know how she feels about the eviction system, I can easily see how the rights of property owners can be abridged by the city government. If evictions are returned to the Sheriff’s office for enforcement, then the problems that the Sheriff’s office already have would hit eviction services. In the past, confiscated weapons have gone unaccounted or missing, and even though the then-new Sheriff, Rochelle Bilal, said that she had instituted a new, reformed system and was cleaning up the mess in November of 2020, we previously noted that Sheriff’s Deputy Samir Ahmad was arrested in October of 2022 for trafficking firearms.
The Sheriff is an independently-elected official in Philadelphia, and even the left-wing Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer has complained that Sheriff Bilal has failed in her attempts to reform the Department and that the whole office should be abolished. What if the next Sheriff campaigns on a pledge to not enforce eviction orders?
The original Fourteenth Amendment, via the National Archives.
The Fourteenth Amendment says, in part:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Our rights to property are confirmed in the Constitution of the United States, but we have a situation in which a lot of Philadelphians think that evictions for not paying your rent are somehow wrong. Philly’s leftist politicians — and Democrats outnumber Republicans about seven-to-one in registrations in the city — are very well able to see that landlords are not exactly the most popular people there.
Even if the Sheriff’s office completely supports court-ordered evictions, the city has had staffing shortages in virtually every department; giving eviction duty to the sheriff’s office means that more deputies would be needed, at a time when they are difficult to hire.
The eviction case was one of dozens at Girard Court Apartments in recent years.
The complex is owned by Odin Properties, which is among Philadelphia’s largest landlords. Owned by developer Philip Balderston and based in Philadelphia, its website advertises a full portfolio that encompasses some “10,000 apartments and 200,000 square feet of commercial space in 14 U.S. States.”
But a 2020 report from progressive advocacy group One PA also identified Odin as among “the highest evictors in Philadelphia,” having brought 470 eviction cases to Municipal Court in 2019.
One would expect that one of Philly’s “largest landlords” would also be among “the highest evictors” in the city; the more units one leases, the more non-paying renters he will have.
Who are “One PA,” which even the Inky called a “progressive advocacy group”? They are perfectly willing to tell you exactly who they are!
Housing is a fundamental human right and must be prioritized over the profits of landlords and developers. City Council must act now to protect Philadelphians and support low-income Black and brown residents to stay in their homes and continue to build thriving communities. They must pass rent control and “pay as you stay” property tax relief to create thriving communities in which their constituents can stay in their homes. Our communities need the Freedom to STAY.
Predatory landlords and developers are hiking rents, evicting tenants, operating unsafe housing, and displacing Black and brown Philadelphians, who often have the fewest resources to fight back due to a history of housing discrimination, racial and economic segregation, and depressed wages. These same communities face dramatic increases in property taxes, jeopardizing what wealth they have managed to build. Many low-income tenants find themselves moving every few years because of unsafe and unhealthy homes, hiked rents, and landlords selling their homes. At the rate of current rent increases, many families are not able to relocate to healthier, more stable conditions. They find themselves evicted, disrespected, and dismissed, time after time, causing homelessness and/or mental or physical illness for many. The system is stacked against low-income renters and homeowners and in favor of wealthy landlords and developers.
Translation: they believe that people have a right to the homes and apartments they rented, even if they don’t pay their rent. That landlords and developers invested their own money into building and buying housing units, that they have their property rights as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, apparently means nothing to them.
Since the start of 2022, office addresses associated with Odin have appeared in at least another 727 different landlord tenant filings in Municipal Court. A typical month in Philadelphia sees between 1,500 and 2,000 eviction filings, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, a figure that does not include illegal evictions.
A spokesperson from the Department of Licenses and Inspections said building inspectors issued several violations to the Girard Court complex during a January inspection that stemmed from complaints about nonfunctional fire alarms. That case is still listed as unresolved.
People seem to have a picture of landlords, or property owners, as Snidely Whiplash, tying Sweet Nell to the railroad tracks. But property owners have a right to their property, regardless of how wealthy or otherwise they are. The majority of rental property owners are actually small entrepreneurs who own five or fewer units. This statistic equates to 10.8 million investors representing 98% of all rental property owners or 80% of all rental properties.
As I mentioned previously, we own one rental unit, though it’s a not-for-profit, rented within the family property. The intention is that, once we go to our eternal rewards, our daughters and my sister-in-law’s son, will inherit the house, and, we hope, a significant appreciation in investment. We aren’t tying anyone to the railroad tracks!
Our Constitution is supposed to protect our rights, including protecting our rights from the tyranny of the majority. But I can see the “progressives” of Philadelphia trying to end the property rights of landlords and property owners in the City of Brotherly Love.
In 1971, Jonathan Edwards released a song called Sunshine, and part of the lyrics are:
Sunshine go away today
I don’t feel much like dancing
Some man’s gone, he’s tried to run my life
Don’t know what he’s askingHe tells me I’d better get in line
Can’t hear what he’s saying
When I grow up, I’m going to make it mine
But these aren’t dues I been payingHow much does it cost, I’ll buy it
The time is all we’ve lost, I’ll try it
But he can’t even run his own life
I’ll be damned if he’ll run mine, Sunshine
Well, there certainly are a whole lot of people who want to run other people’s lives! From The Denver Gazette:
Denver imposes natural gas ban on heating, cooling equipment in commercial buildings, multi-family housing
Scott Weiser | Monday, February 27, 2023
New building codes in Denver will ban natural gas furnaces and water heaters in new commercial and multifamily construction starting in 2024 in a move that officials said demonstrates the city’s commitment to reaching “zero” emissions in two decades but which critics warned would be painful and costly to building owners and tenants.
And by 2027, natural gas will not be permitted for any heating or cooling equipment in new commercial buildings, the city’s building officials said in a news release.
These restrictions do not apply to gas stoves.
Sheer bovine feces: if natural gas will not be permitted for the primary application for natural gas, heating, it makes no economic sense to apply for and install gas lines for the much lower use in gas ranges. Continue reading
No, this isn’t about homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, though Broad + Liberty has counted 39 as of this writing. No, this is about a horrible, awful, doubtlessly racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic tragedy that has gotten major play in the very #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 Philadelphia Inquirer!
As Philly gathers in bars to watch the Super Bowl, another reminder for the LGBTQ community of the lack of lesbian bars
Lesbian sports fans who want to watch the game in community are scrambling to find spaces that are affirming and feel safe.
by Massarah Mikati | Saturday, February 4, 2023
The Toasted Walnut, November 2020, via Google Maps. The homeless guy on his ass in front of the place probably didn’t help business much. Click to enlarge.
Leona Thomas made her way to the middle of the dance floor.Eighties music pulsed through the air, the dance floor full of women moving with it. Large TV screens — or at least, what was considered a big TV screen in 1985 — wrapped around the room, so the fans there could watch the Super Bowl without having to sacrifice dancing.
Thomas was a teen coming out, and the former Gatsby’s in Cherry Hill was one of the first lesbian bars she visited in the process. It was a space that not only welcomed her but wrapped her authentic self with acceptance. A space that normalized being queer. And a space that felt safe — especially to watch the Super Bowl.
Fast-forward 40 years, and the lesbian bar scene has dropped from 200 nationally to fewer than 25 today, according to the Lesbian Bar Project. In Philadelphia, that number has been zero since Toasted Walnut, its last lesbian bar and a popular place to watch the Eagles in their last Super Bowl, closed in 2021. Which leaves the question: Now that the Eagles have made it to the Super Bowl again, where will the lesbian community be able to comfortably cheer on the Birds?
There’s more at the link.
Naturally, I followed the internal link to the story about Toasted Walnut closing, and discovered what I expected from a story in a homosexual-supporting city like Philly: it wasn’t somehow hounded out of business, but, the closing in the spring of 2021 seems to have been one due to economic and business reasons. While the story didn’t mention it specifically, it included another link which said:
The Toasted Walnut, a lesbian bar in Philadelphia’s Gayborhood that was refuge to queer women for the past five years, will close for good, according to Billy Penn. Run by the former manager of Sisters — another lesbian bar that closed in Philly in 2013 — the Toasted Walnut was a staple for the lesbian community at its home on 13th and Walnut. The bar had been hibernating since November, but with additional financial pressure, it will no longer be able to reopen.
Toasted Walnut’s owner Denise Cohen tells Billy Penn that the pandemic made it especially challenging to keep the lights on, but that her own personal health problems have made it impossible. Cohen began going blind in her left eye in 2019 as a result of diabetes, then was diagnosed with uterine cancer at the end of 2020. Meanwhile, Cohen says her landlords wouldn’t meet at the negotiating table regarding the rent at the bar, which Cohen says costs $11,000 a month. With the additional costs for her healthcare, it would have been too much of a hardship to keep open. Cohen’s community has organized a GoFundMe to help pay for her healthcare.
Translation: in a city in which the Democratic leadership kept COVID-19 restrictions both stricter and longer-lasting than most, the Toasted Walnut was an economic casualty just like hundreds of others. But, as you might have guessed, that wasn’t really the reason the original article cited:
There are myriad reasons why lesbian bars have dwindled over the years, many rooted in gender disparities and economic barriers that women and nonbinary people face.
So, according to the author, Massarah Mikati, who “cover(s) what makes Philadelphia great: our communities of color,” it’s not that the Walnut drew too few customers, who spent enough money, to succeed economically, but that “gender disparities” and “economic barriers” shut the place down. Miss Mikati didn’t even mention that a huge number of bars, restaurants and other businesses which depended on a sufficient volume of in traffic failed during the panicdemic — no, that’s not a typographical error; panic is exactly how I see the restrictions imposed — failed.
The Walnut was located at 1316 Walnut Street, which is Philly’s Center City neighborhood, a block and a half from the Walnut-Locust Street SEPTA subway station, and there are two SEPTA bus stops within a block. There’s plenty of public transportation, and the area is about as safe as any in Philly. But the Lesbian Bar Project stated that “in the 1980s, there were roughly 200 Lesbian Bars in the United States. Today, there are fewer than 25.” Could it possibly be that a lesbian bar just isn’t a particularly strong business model?
The real thrust of Miss Mikati’s article was a lament that there aren’t “spaces” in which there are few, if any, men present, “spaces” in which non-heterosexual women can really feel “safe.” Were it more about economics, I’d probably not have written about it, but the author’s entire piece is a subtle lament, trying to convey the feeling that lesbians, in a very homosexual-supportive city, are somehow being deprived of something they deserve, when it’s really just simple economics.
IF another lesbian bar springs up in Philly, I really won’t care. It will face the same problems as any bar or restaurant, the problem of making money.
References
| ↑1 | From Wikipedia:
I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid. |
|---|
It was September of 2016, and the Obama Administration was having none of the bad economic news. The economy was doing great, we were told, unemployment was way down as the economy recovered from the 2008-9 recession, and everything was peaches but the cream. Trouble is, the American people just didn’t quite believe it:
Problem: Most Americans don’t believe the unemployment rate is 5%
by Heather Long | September 6, 2016 | 3:18 PM EDT
Americans think the economy is in far worse shape than it is. The U.S. unemployment rate is only 4.9%, but 57% of Americans believe it’s a lot higher than that, according to a new survey by the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
The general public has “extremely little factual knowledge” about the job market and labor force, Rutgers found.
It’s another example of how experts on Wall Street and in Washington see the economy differently than the regular Joe. Many of the nation’s top economic experts say that America is “near full employment.” The unemployment rate has actually been at or below 5% for almost a year — millions of people have found jobs in what is the best period of hiring since the late 1990s.
But regular people appear to have their doubts about how healthy America’s employment picture is. Nearly a third of those survey by Rutgers believe unemployment is actually at 9%, or higher.
Republican candidate Donald Trump has tapped into this confusion. He has repeatedly called the official unemployment rate a “joke” and a even “hoax.”
As it happened, the U-6 unemployment rate — “Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.” — was in the nine percent range, 9.6% to be more precise, and if few people actually look at the various unemployment categories, the public can sort of feel them in their bones.
Well, the supposed good news is that the current ‘official’ unemployment rate has dropped to a multi-year low of 3.5% as the non-farm economy added 223,000 jobs in December. But, with the labor force participation rate still lower than before the disruptions caused by government reaction to the panicdemic — no, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly the spelling I believe it should have — the unemployment number is being held artificially low. The civilian labor force stood at 164,966,000 in December, just 262,000 higher than it was in December of 2019, the last pre-virus year, but the workforce-eligible population, those aged 16 and over, not in the military nor incarcerated, is 4,633,000 higher than in December of 2019, 264,814,000 vs 260,181,000.
When I say that the public feel it in their bones, I look at other indicators, and this story stood out for me:
Macy’s warns holiday-quarter sales will come in light, citing squeeze on shoppers’ wallets
by Melissa Repko | Friday, January 6 2023 | 4:33 PM EST | Updated Friday, January 6 2023 | 7:43 PM EST
Macy’s on Friday warned its holiday-quarter sales will come in on the lighter side, saying consumers’ budgets are under pressure and that it anticipates that squeeze to continue into this year.
The department store operator said net sales are now expected to be at the low- to midpoint of its previously expected range of $8.16 billion to $8.4 billion. It expects adjusted diluted earnings per share to be in the previously issued range of $1.47 to $1.67.
For the year-ago period, Macy’s reported revenue of $8.67 billion and adjusted earnings per share of $2.45.
Shares of the company fell about 4% in aftermarket trading Friday.
Macy’s is the latest retailer to provide clues about the consumer, as investors await holiday results and look for signs of whether demand is holding up as inflation remains high
There’s more at the original, and no, it isn’t behind a paywall.
So, Macy’s, a very-sensitive-to-Christmas retailer, is going to see an absolute drop in holiday revenue, yet the inflation rate in November — the December inflation figures are not out yet — was 7.1%. Macy’s has seen a total holiday revenue decline of roughly 5%, at a time when prices have increased 7.1%. And this was during the first real Christmas season in which people weren’t under mask mandates and the general malaise of the panicdemic.
There are real, solid reasons for this. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that average hourly earnings were 4.6% higher in December over December of 2021. That would be great . . . if the inflation rate hadn’t been much higher. The average American was poorer, in real terms, this Christmas than he was last Christmas. The Biden Administration doesn’t want people to know that, but the public can see it, can feel it, in their wallets and in their bones. And that’s why Macy’s saw a drop of revenue.
There’s more: we might not be in a recession now, but economists believe there will be one before 2023 is over:
Big banks are predicting that an economic downturn is fast approaching.
More than two-thirds of the economists at 23 large financial institutions that do business directly with the Federal Reserve are betting the U.S. will have a recession in 2023. Two others are predicting a recession in 2024.
The firms, known as primary dealers, are a collection of trading firms and investment banks that include companies such as Barclays PLC, Bank of America Corp., TD Securities and UBS Group AG. They cite a number of red flags: Americans are spending down their pandemic savings. The housing market is in decline, and banks are tightening their lending standards.
“We expect a downturn in global GDP growth in 2023, led by recessions in both the U.S. and the eurozone,” economists at BNP Paribas SA wrote in the bank’s 2023 outlook, titled “Steering Into Recession.”
The main culprit is the Federal Reserve, economists said, which has been raising rates for months to try to slow the economy and curb inflation. Though inflation has eased recently, it is still much higher than the Fed’s desired target.
The Fed raised rates seven times in 2022, pushing its benchmark from a range of 0% to 0.25% to the current 4.25% to 4.50%, a 15-year high. Officials signaled in December that they plan to keep raising rates to between 5% and 5.5% in 2023.
There’s more at the original, but it all boils down to one thing: if you’re wealthy, you’ll see some economic losses, but you’ll still be able to live. If you are living paycheck-to-paycheck, you’re in for some real pain.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.
