Right Wing Granny

News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Right Wing Granny

The Real Cost Of Living

Washington always finds a way to lie with statistics when it comes to the economy. Limiting the items included in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is one way to convince Americans that inflation isn’t as bad as it seems and also a way to limit the Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) of various federal disbursements. However, those fake numbers don’t help Americans deal with the rising cost of food and gasoline.

On Sunday, PJ Media posted an article about the rising cost of living in America.

The article reports:

Perhaps the most misleading government statistic of all is the Consumer Price Index. The CPI is an incredibly important statistic because so many government programs that benefit American citizens are tied to that number.

It’s usually cited as the inflation rate, but it’s not really. The CPI is the rate of increase in a subjective “market basket” of goods and services. The things that concern you and me the most as far as price increases have very little to do with the CPI. The CPI doesn’t track food or gas prices at the pump, so the CPI that we see every month doesn’t tell us anything useful.

Right now, the CPI stands at 3.1%. That’s down from a high of 9.1% in June 2022. But even that doesn’t tell us the whole inflation story because along with skyrocketing food and gas prices, real wages failed to keep pace with the price increases.

According to The New York Sun:

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released jobs numbers this morning that show non-farm wages increased 4.1 percent in the past year, which is above the inflation rate of 3.1 percent. The problem is that inflation-adjusted real hourly wages — those of the average blue-collar or middle-class person — are down 4.7 percent today from when Mr. Biden took office. That’s a weekly earnings decline in real wages to $381 in November 2023 from $399 in January 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“The reason Biden polls so badly is that there’s a decline in wages and an increase in prices,” a former economic adviser to President Trump, Larry Kudlow, tells the Sun. He calls this the “affordability crisis.”

Americans feel it when they walk into the grocery store. Food prices increased nearly 6 percent in 2023, according to the Department of Agriculture. In 2022, at-home food prices — what one buys in a grocery store — increased more than 11 percent. No matter one’s income, it’s hard not to notice the rising cost of food at the grocery store and at restaurants — even fast food.

Are voters going to believe what they are told or what they see?

When You Have Someone In The White House Who Does Not Understand Basic Economics…

On Wednesday, The Gateway Pundit posted an article about one of President Biden’s recent speeches. The President is most interesting when he is not reading his notes.

The article reports:

President Biden acknowledged Monday that prices are still “too high” and argued that companies should lower them after an 18% jump in consumer costs since he took office.

“We know that prices are still too high for too many things — that times are still too tough for too many families,” the 81-year-old said near the White House.

“We’ve made progress, but we have more work to do,” Biden added. “Let me be clear to any corporation has not brought their prices back down, even as inflation has come down, even supply chains have been rebuilt: It’s time to stop the price gouging and give the American consumer a break.”

The prices of some goods, such as food products, are expected to decline in the coming months, but periods of general deflation are rare in US history.

Biden previously used his bully pulpit to try to pressure oil companies to take action to lower gas prices last year.

The only one price gouging is the federal government–they call it taxing. The cause of our current inflation is government spending, but that is the one cause that Washington consistently refusing to examine.

We need a businessman in the White House and many more in Congress.

Gaslighting?

After a while you wonder if people are going to believe what the mainstream media tells them or what they see with their own eyes. Some of the recent claims made by the Biden administration simply do not agree with the reality Americans are dealing with.

On Monday, The U.K. Daily Mail reported:

President Joe Biden on Monday touted his administration’s success in bringing down the price of gas, groceries and airline tickets during the past year but received little thanks for his efforts.

Republicans ridiculed his claims.

‘FACT: Since Biden took office, airfare is up 21%, Thanksgiving dinner was up 25%, and gas prices are $0.86/gallon higher,’ the Republican National Committee said on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

It illustrates the difficulty Biden faces as he tries to sell what his administration believes is an economic good news story ahead of next year’s general election. 

Inflation may have slowed and some prices may have dropped since last year, but most prices are still higher than they were before the pandemic.  

The article concludes:

And when it comes to public perceptions, most consumers don’t see a good news story in inflation settling down when they are still paying much higher prices than they did before the pandemic.

‘No matter how the White House spins it, Joe Biden’s out-of-control spending & mismanagement of our nation’s finances have increases prices by more than 17%,’ said Republican Rep. Ben Cline on X.

‘The cost of “Bidenomics” just keeps adding up for working families.’

Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin said: ‘Last year, Joe Biden’s broken policy agenda generated the highest inflation in 40 years. Americans have faced 33 straight months of rising prices, with food costs increasing every month since Biden took office. 

‘Americans aren’t buying the spin.’

The Republican National Committee also took issue with Biden saying gas prices had come down.

‘FACT CHECK: Under Joe Biden, gas prices have been above $3 per gallon for over 900 days in a row,’ it posted.

I think I would welcome a mean tweet about now.

Sometimes You Just Have To Wonder

On Friday, Breitbart reported the following:

On Thursday, CNN hosts Poppy Harlow and Boris Sanchez blamed climate change for the recent surge in gas prices with the former saying that the surge in prices is a reason “to get it in check when it comes to climate change.”

On “CNN This Morning,” CNN Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans stated, “There [are] a couple of things happening here: They’re still well below last year. Last year, at this time, we were hitting record highs, right? $4.30, last year, at this time, today, they’re $3.71. They’ve been jumping overnight. Some of these jumps have been pretty big. One of the reasons is the incessant heat means these refineries have to — are going offline for maintenance, they can’t run full throttle when it’s 115 with the heat index, just like people can’t work full throttle outside or on factory floors when it’s so, so hot. So, that’s one of the reasons. The other reason is, Russia backed out of this grain deal. And so, you had a rise in all kinds of commodity prices, corn, wheat, barley, all these prices have been going up. And sometimes, you tend to see commodities move together. But mostly, this heat thing has some of these refineries either slowing down or offline for maintenance. And that means they’re not processing as much gasoline.”

We have summer every year. During the summer it gets hot. I remember back in the 80’s when they had to close the Phoenix airport because it was too hot and there wasn’t enough lift in the air for the planes to take off. I also know that they have found plant fossils in Greenland, a place where no one can currently plant anything. Can we assume that Greenland at some point was subject to global warming? If we are so warm now, why can’t we grow crops in Greenland in the places that are now iced over? I would also like to remind everyone that weather is cyclical and tends to average out. No one is currently mentioning that we had an unusually cold June this year. Don’t the temperatures generally average out?

The Daily Malarkey

I receive and email every day from The Daily Malarkey. It is basically a write-up of some of the foolishness that is currently going on in the media and the so-called leadership of our country.

Here is an excerpt from today’s email:

Media Doing Opposite Of Supposed Mission

FOX headline: “MSNBC, WaPo, ABC figures warn voters against gas prices influencing their vote in November; Some media pundits worried that gas prices, inflation will dominate midterm concerns”“After downplaying concerns about the economy in the last year, some media outlets are now panicking that high gas prices and inflation will tank Democrats in the midterm elections, with some pundits even scolding voters for making it a priority.“Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell told readers that it was a ‘wild fantasy’ to believe the GOP could lower gas prices, as she warned voters to ‘think carefully about what they’ll get if they cast their ballot based on gas prices,’ in a Sunday opinion piece.”“Quoting colleague E.J. Dionne, she cautioned that if Republicans win in November that could lead to ‘far more radical and sinister forces’ trying to ‘undermine democracy.’“On MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe,’ branding guru Donny Deutsch fretted that pocketbook issues would win out with voters this year and in 2024 as more important to them than America’s democracy being ‘in peril.’“MSNBC host Joy Reid and political analyst Matthew Dowd characterized a red wave as a ‘threat’ the media needed to warn voters against on Monday.“‘We have to tell the voters what the threat is just like we do, Joy, we tell them about inflation, and we tell them about job growth, and we tell them about a hurricane, and we tell them about tornadoes, and we tell them about wildfire, we have to treat this assault just like we have to tell them about the assault on democracy,’ Dowd said.“Fellow MSNBC host Tiffany Cross took the same approach on her show Saturday, complaining that inflation was more of a concern for voters than the Jan. 6 committee hearings.“‘Come this November, will voters be more concerned with saving money than saving democracy?’ the ‘Cross Connection’ host asked.“Cross griped that inflation and ‘high prices’ dominated media coverage, which led Americans to be less interested in the ‘compelling testimonies and evidence’ in the Jan. 6 committee hearings.”“‘The View’ host Joy Behar absolved Biden of any responsibility for the energy crisis and said Republicans just wanted to make Biden ‘look bad.’”

An honest media would be a wonderful thing. Should we reward the Biden administration for doing a really bad job of running the country by electing people who will endorse their policies?

Creating More Inflation

On Friday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about one plan proposed by the White House to help Americans cope with the high cost of gasoline. After all, there is an election in November. Aside from the fact that this plan would further fuel inflation by putting more dollars into the economy, it does nothing to help the truckers who transport everything and have no choice but to pass on their increased costs to the consumer resulting in rising prices on nearly everything.

The article includes the following chart:

On Friday, The Washington Post reported the following:

Gas prices have been one of the most visible signs of inflation. The White House has taken a number of actions to try to address the problem, such as committing to a historic release of the nation’s oil reserves and, on Wednesday, sending a letter to the nation’s refineries calling for more production and criticizing their profits. President Biden has also tried to increase production internationally, prodding the world’s oil producers and coordinating the release from national reserves with U.S. allies.

But those measures appear not to have helped substantially. The average gas price nationally rose above $5 a gallon for the first time this weekend, a roughly 11 percent increase from just last month, according to AAA, although some industry analysts say it could fall back to $4.55 in the weeks ahead. Polling suggests widespread frustration with rising prices, increasing the likelihood that voters punish Democrats this fall and give Republicans control of at least one house of Congress next year.

We desperately need an honest election in November.

It’s Not A Pretty Picture

Just the News posted an article on Sunday that sums up the Biden administration in five numbers.

These are the numbers:

1. 8.6 percent

2. $5.01 per gallon

3. 234,088 illegal border crossings

4. 39% approval

5. 83% dissatisfied

Obviously, this is not a pretty picture. The 8.6 number represents the government figure on inflation. There is little question that government policies on spending and energy have fueled the rapid spike in inflation. According to Fox Business, on Jan. 20, 2021, the average price for a gallon of gas nationwide was approximately $2.39. Today it generally $5.00 or more. That impacts everyone. It has the same impact as a massive tax increase.

The number of illegal border crossing also impacts everyone because of the drug traffic and human trafficking associated with those illegal crossings.

The article notes:

The figure reached about 2.4 million illegal border crossings from April of last year to this past April, the last month for which there’s publicly available data and the month with the highest number of migrant encounters during the Biden administration at 234,088.

The 39 percent approval rating is not a surprise, but I would love to know who those 39 percent are.

The article notes:

A new poll from Quinnipiac last week found that approval of Biden’s job performance plummeted to 33%. More striking, however, the data shows just 22% of Americans ages 18-34, 24% of Hispanic voters, and 49% of black voters said they approve of Biden’s job performance. Each of those demographics is a critical voting bloc for the Democratic Party.

And finally, the article notes that 83 percent of Americans are dissatisfied with “the way things are going in the United States at this time.” Only 16% of Americans said they were satisfied.

The article concludes:

In this political environment, Democratic pollsters and strategists are growing increasingly pessimistic, seeing major Republican gains as all but inevitable.

To make matters worse for Biden and Democrats in Congress, “election outcomes are more-or-less baked in” by the end of the second quarter of an election year, according to RealClearPolitics Senior Elections Analyst Sean Trende.

Of course, things can always change, but the numbers don’t look good for Biden.

More importantly, behind those numbers are real people who are hurting. And each of them has a vote in November.

These numbers only matter if there is an honest election in November.

This Might Be Good News For Republicans

On Wednesday, The Western Journal posted an article about voter turnout in the recent primary elections.

The article reports:

McDaniel (Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel) told Fox News on Wednesday that she believes it bodes well for the general election in November, but she cautioned GOP supporters not to become complacent.

She pointed first to Tuesday’s elections in Pennsylvania.

“The thing that we’re taking away from last night is, first of all, Republicans outpaced Democrat turnout by 100,000 votes. That’s the first time we’ve ever beaten the Democrats in 10 years in this type of primary situation,” McDaniel said.

Republican voters cast over 1.3 million ballots to Democrats’ slightly less than 1.2 million.

That would be very good news for the Republicans in the mid-term elections assuming that the mid-terms would be an honest election.

The article concludes:

“We know that inflation is hurting average Americans. We know that gas prices are hurting people. We know that there is a baby formula shortage that this administration is not addressing,” McDaniel added.

“It seems that every time a crisis comes up, they’re ill-prepared, and that’s why we’re seeing voters look at Republicans and say, ‘Maybe we need to switch leadership in Washington and put Republicans in charge of the Senate and the House in the midterm elections,’” she said.

The GOP leader is cautious about predicting a red wave in the fall, pointing out that Republicans only need a net gain of five seats in the House to take back that chamber and just one to retake the Senate.

“I don’t want anyone to get complacent,” McDaniel said. “We all need to work hard for every single victory.”

We need a conservative takeover of Congress (whichever party those conservatives belong to) to put an end to the destructive policies of the Biden administration. It’s time to become energy independent again. It’s time to control spending, and it’s time to remove (again) the regulations that make it nearly impossible for businesses to operate easily in America.

The New York Post Analysis

On Wednesday, The New York Post posted a list of the top 10 ways President Biden deluded himself during his State of the Union address.

Here is the list:

1. FEIGNING to stand up for Ukraine when he publicly told Vladimir Putin last month that a “minor incursion” was tolerable, and when his son Hunter treated Ukraine like a private piggybank during Biden’s vice-presidency.

2. CALLING for unity to a room full of Republicans while falsely claiming that the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cut only helped “the top 1%.”

3. POSING amusingly as an America First nationalist — complete with Trumpian “USA! USA!” chants from his colleagues on the floor. All power to Biden if he follows through on his promised “revitalization of American manufacturing,” but he will be going against his own record.

4. Securing our border: This takes some chutzpah when Biden deliberately dismantled Trump’s hard-won border protections and is still in court fighting the remain-in-Mexico policy.

5. BEATING the opioid epidemic: The “opioid crisis” he anointed as a bipartisan cause was turbocharged when he flung open the southern border to record quantities of fentanyl, a drug which is now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 18 to 45.

6. GASLIGHTING us on the pandemic: “Let’s stop looking at COVID as a partisan dividing line,” said the president who has done nothing but manipulate COVID fear for political purposes, and changed tune only after opinion polls on his handling of the pandemic headed south.

7. BLUNTING gas prices: He’s pulling our leg. Biden boasted about tapping into 30 million barrels of our emergency oil reserves — less than two days’ supply — while not mentioning a word about unleashing our plentiful untapped oil and gas supplies.

8. CHAMPIONING police “The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to FUND the police,” Biden thundered.

9. VALORIZING the military Biden paid tribute to soldiers said to have contracted cancer from “burn pits” — an as-yet unproven claim on which he dwells in hope of a combat-related cause of his own son’s death from brain cancer.

10. MYSTIFYING the world Biden went off script after saying “God bless our troops” at the end of his speech. “Go get him!” he ad-libbed.

It would be wonderful if President Biden actually closed the southern border and acted to lower fuel prices for Americans by using our own resources. However, I think the chances of that are slim to none.

 

Some Presidential Candidates Don’t Understand Economics

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today about a recent tweet by Elizabeth Warren.

This is the tweet:

The article includes the following quote from an article posted at The Heartland Institute website on September 19, 2018:

A 2015 Harvard Business School/Boston Consulting Group study estimates fracking supported 2.7 million jobs in 2014, with the potential to grow to 3.8 million jobs by 2030. Similarly, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) prepared a report for the American Petroleum Institute that estimates the oil and natural gas industries supported 10.3 million jobs in 2015, an increase of about 500,00 compared to 2011.  The RAND Corporation projects the industries will support an additional 1.9 million jobs by 2035.  By the same year, a 2012 IHS Markit study estimates fracking will have created 3.5 million jobs. 

A 2016 Chamber of Commerce study projects that if the fracking revolution of the previous decade had not occurred, 4.3 million jobs would not have been created, the U.S. economy would be $500 billion smaller and residential natural gas prices would be 28 percent higher. 

There is also the matter of national security. America now has the freedom to choose its friends without worrying whether or not our oil supply will be cut off. Some of us remember the 1970’s gas lines and high price of gasoline.

The world economy (that includes America) is currently based on fossil fuels. Countries who can supply reasonable priced energy attract manufacturing and businesses which create jobs. The end the production of fossil fuel and fracking in America is to reduce America to the status of a third-world (or lower) country.

Wrong Again

Remember when the talking heads on television told us that because of the tariffs President Trump had placed on China, the cost of imports would go up. Well, they misread the tea leaves again.

The Gateway Pundit posted the following from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Prices for U.S. imports declined 0.3 percent in May, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today, following an increase of 0.1 percent the previous month. Lower fuel and nonfuel prices contributed to the May decline in import prices. U.S. export prices fell 0.2 percent in May, after advancing 0.1 percent in April, 0.8 percent in March, and 0.6 percent in February.

Imports

U.S. Import prices fell 0.3 percent in May, the first monthly decline since a 1.4-percent drop in December. Import prices advanced 1.8 percent from December to April before the downturn in May. The price index for overall imports decreased 1.5 percent over the past 12 months, matching the drop in January. These were the largest over-the-year declines since the index fell 2.2 percent in August 2016.

Fuel Imports: Import fuel prices declined 1.0 percent in May, after rising 25.4 percent over the previous 4 months. Lower prices for both petroleum and natural gas contributed to the May decline. Petroleum prices fell 0.9 percent in May, after a 4.7-percent advance in April. The May decrease was the first monthly decline since a 15.3-percent drop in December. Natural gas prices fell 6.8 percent in May following a 51.1-percent decline the previous month. Overall fuel prices decreased 1.1 percent over the past year. The decline was driven by a 1.9-percent drop in petroleum prices which more than offset a 2.5-percent rise in natural gas prices.

The Gateway Pundit article concludes:

The lower costs on fuel allowed the overall import costs to go down for the month.  This is in the face of tariffs the Trump Administration put on China as a result of inaction from the Chinese in coming together on a trade agreement with the US.

Despite what all the liberal naysayers said about increasing tariffs costing Americans millions, the costs of imports are actually down.

Overall the US economy is in very solid shape –

The experts seem to be having a very difficult time getting things right under the Trump administration.