People are falling behind: WSJ Opinion Columnist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng_pppvRnuI
DO YOU REALLY THINK RECESSION IS NOT ALREADY HAPPENING?
A Recession Has Started And So Has the Damage Control
Carney: Forget Recession, This Is the Bidenpression
President Joe Biden’s White House desperately does not want Americans to think we are in a recession even if the U.S. economy contracted for two straight quarters this year.
The administration argued over the weekend that a “technical recession” does not count as a real, honest-to-goodness economic recession.
“You don’t see any of the signs now. A recession is a broad-based contraction that affects many sectors of the economy. We just don’t have that,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Sunday. “But inflation is way too high. And, you know, the Fed is charged with putting in place policies that will bring inflation down. And I expect them to be successful.”
The U.S. economy shrank at an annual rate of 1.6 percent in the first quarter of this year. On Thursday, the government will release its preliminary estimate for second-quarter growth. Many analysts expect the economy contracted again in the second quarter.
The Atlanta Fed’s real-time GDP tracker, GDPNOW, indicates that data released so far show the economy shrinking 1.6 percent again. The median forecast among economists has the economy growing at a 0.5 percent growth rate, but that may be an out-of-date forecast given the recent flow of worse-than-expected data. Bank of America projects the economy shrank at a 1.5 percent rate.
The belief that two straight quarters of economic contraction means that we are in a recession has a long pedigree, although it is more of a rule-of-thumb guideline than an unwavering threshold. The semi-official arbiter of when a recession begins is a private organization called the National Bureau of Economic Research. It defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.”
It’s this definition that the Biden administration is relying on to claim we’re not currently in a recession.
“The technical definition is not two negative quarters,” White House economic adviser Brian Deese said recently. “Technically, the definition is the NBER’s definition.”
So what will the NBER say? Probably nothing for quite a while. Although the NBER called a recession quickly in 2020, it typically is slow to declare that a recession has begun. When it does get around to deciding, the question will be complex. Two quarters is six months, which certainly qualifies as “lasting more than a few months.” The current downturn is spread across the economy, hitting both services and manufacturing, and is visible in real GDP, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.
The tricky part is employment. The economy continues to add hundreds of thousands of jobs each month. There are 11.3 million job openings, around one and half times as many as we ever had before the pandemic. Jobless claims have been rising lately, but the latest figures are around what we would expect in an expanding economy. The unemployment rate is 3.6 percent, a level so low that many economists think it is unsustainable.
Can we have a recession with a robust jobs market? Maybe. But it will be unlike any recession we’ve ever had before.
It’s unlikely that the recession began in the first quarter of this year, even though the economy contracted. Most economic indicators were positive in the January through March period. The economy shrank because businesses had overstocked inventory in the traditional 2021 holiday season, and demand for goods from U.S. consumers was so strong—especially compared with the rest of the advanced economies of the world—that our trade deficit soared. Trade and inventories are particularly volatile, and big shifts are not always indicative of the overall direction of the economy.
That said, the broader economy has lost momentum in the second quarter. It’s not unlikely that the NBER will decide to date the start of the recession with the April through June quarter. It seems quite likely that it will decide—maybe sometime next year—that a recession began sometime this year.
However, in a White House blog post, the Biden administration attempted to rule out the idea that we could be in a recession by pointing to a guideline economists call the Sahm Rule:
A widely cited indicator of recessions (the “Sahm rule” named after economist Claudia Sahm) maintains that a recession is likely underway when the three-month moving average of the unemployment rate rises by at least half a percentage point (50 basis points) relative to its lowest point in the previous 12 months. The fact that the Sahm indicator is 0, far below its 50 basis-point threshold, provides yet another indication that the economic expansion is ongoing.
Sahm is a brilliant economist whose ideas helped America respond to the pandemic in a way that made the U.S. economy much more resilient than many of our peers. The Biden administration, however, is misusing the “Sahm rule” here. Sahm said so herself in a tweet yesterday:
Although the Sahm rule is sometimes referred to as the Sahm Rule Recession Indicator it is better thought of as a real-time signal for when the government should step in to provide direct economic aid to households in the event of rising unemployment. This may be a heuristic for recessions but it is not a bright line rule.
Sahm hits on another important point here. The debate over whether we are in a recession is absurd. Very often when the establishment media or ruling party want the public to stop paying attention to something they decide to direct the conversation toward arguments about the technical definitions of terms or the processes for evaluation. The hope is that everything gets so boring or complicated that everyone will stop paying attention.
That’s not going to work this time because it is painfully obvious that the economy is not doing well—even if the NBER eggheads haven’t declared a recession yet. Consumer sentiment is near record lows. Inflation is at four-decade highs. Wages cannot keep up with rising prices. The Federal Reserve has found itself behind the curve and struggling to play catch up by raising interest rates at a record pace. Business optimism has crashed.
There are plenty of jobs but not a lot of hope or happiness. Whether this is a recession or not is literally an academic question. Maybe we should just call it a Bidenpression.
Boots on the Ground...July 25th...I am tracking 25% inflation...Do not believe Biden's numbers.
20 Depressing Facts About The Housing Crash That Never Seems To End
White House Redefining Recession, Standard Indicator Will Be Ignored for a 'Holistic' View
July 24, 2022 at 1:23pm
With The Washington Post blaring that “Big Tech is bracing for a possible recession,” the Biden White House is redefining the word.
A recession is traditionally defined as two consecutive quarters in which the nation’s Gross Domestic Product shrinks. A new report Thursday will assess the results of the second quarter. Shrinkage took place in the first quarter, and with inflation running at 9.1 percent, there’s not a lot of hope for economic good news.
As noted by Business Insider, economists Bloomberg surveyed believe growth will be a paltry 0.9 percent, but the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDPNow model pegs shrinkage at 1.6 percent.
“The big headwinds for consumers are price inflation and higher interest rates. And inflation could erode the excess savings consumers accumulated through the pandemic, especially if price increases continue to run ahead of wage growth,” Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank said Thursday, according to CNN.
“We’re seeing an increase in bad debt to slightly higher than pre-pandemic levels as well as extended cash collection cycles,” AT&T CEO John Stankey said the same day.
But consumer pain does not make a recession, according to a White House handout,
“What is a recession? While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle. Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data,” the handout said, listing labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production and income data will all be mined.
The White then offered a prediction: “Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year — even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter — indicates a recession.”
Despite the growing mountain of gloomy economic forecasts, the handout said, “Recession probabilities are never zero, but trends in the data through the first half of this year used to determine a recession are not indicating a downturn.”
In fact, it said, “There is a good chance that the strength of the labor market and of consumer balance sheets help the economy transition from the rapid growth of the last year to steadier and more stable growth.”
Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers was not as chipper. In a Sunday interview, he called chances of coming out of the battle against inflation without a scarred economy “very unlikely,” according to Bloomberg.
“There’s a very high likelihood of recession when we’ve been in this kind of situation before,” he said.
“Recession has essentially always followed when inflation has been high and our employment has been low,” he said.
Summers said new policies are needed.
“There’s a lot we can do to contain or control inflation,” he said. “But if we continue with the kind of ostrich policies we had in 2021, there’s going to be much, much more pain later.”
Treasury Secretary Yellen Says Two Straight Quarters of Economic Contraction is Not a Recession
(CNSNews.com) - Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that two straight quarters of economic contraction does not necessarily mean the nation is in a recession.
In the first quarter of this year, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) declined at an annual rate of 1.6 percent.
The rate of growth or decline in real GDP for the second quarter this year will be released by the BEA on Thursday.
"Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd asked Yellen: “If the technical definition is two quarters of contraction, you’re saying that’s not a recession?”
“That’s not the technical definition,” Yellen responded. “There is an organization called the National Bureau of Economic Research that looks at a broad range of data in deciding whether or not there is a recession. And most of the data that they look at right now continues to be strong.
“I would be amazed if they would declare this period to be a recession, even if it happens to have two quarters of negative growth,” Yellen said. “We have a very strong labor market. when you are creating almost 400,000 jobs a month, that is not a recession.”
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), which Yellen cited, is an independent organization of economists who track when the economy is growing and retracting and, thus, set the dates for when growth cycles and recessions begin and end.
According to the NBER, the economy hit its last peak in the fourth quarter of 2019, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and hit its trough in April of 2020.
ICYMI: Treasury Secretary Yellen Says US Economy Not in Recession
July 24, 2022 •
Debunks misperception that it is exclusively based on GDP, points to historically strong labor market and solid consumer spending
Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press with Chuck Todd, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained the state of the economy, including its historic strengths, efforts to bring down inflation, and how to interpret the initial reading of second quarter GDP being announced this week. As she explains, the technical and actual definition of a recession takes into account “a broad range of data” and states “this is not an economy that’s in recession.”
TODD: “If the technical definition is two quarters of contraction, you’re saying that’s not a recession?”
YELLEN: “That’s not the technical definition. There is an organization called the National Bureau of Economic Research that looks at a broad range of data in deciding whether or not there is a recession. And most of the data that they look at right now continues to be strong. I would be amazed if they would declare this period to be a recession, even if it happens to have two quarters of negative growth. We have a very strong labor market. when you are creating almost 400,000 jobs a month, that is not a recession.”
Secretary Yellen also went further in-depth, explaining that some economic slow-down is healthy right now with such a strong labor market, as the Federal Reserve addresses inflation and we transition to steady and sustainable growth, and discussed the actions the Biden Administration has been taking to lower prices for the American people.
YELLEN: “Well, look, the economy is slowing down. Last year it grew very rapidly at about 5.5%, and that succeeded in putting people back to work who had lost their jobs during the pandemic. The labor market is now extremely strong. Even just during the last three months, job gains averaged 375,000. This is not an economy that’s in recession. But we’re in a period of transition in which growth is slowing and that’s necessary and appropriate and we need to be growing at a steady and sustainable pace. So there is a slowdown and businesses can see that and that’s appropriate, given that people now have jobs and we have a strong labor market.
“But you don’t see any of the signs now — a recession is a broad-based contraction that affects many sectors of the economy—we just don’t have that. Consumer spending remains solid. It’s continuing to grow. Output, industrial output has grown in five of the six most recent months. Credit quality remains very strong. household balance sheets are generally in good shape.
“But inflation is way too high. And, you know, the Fed is charged with putting in place policies that will bring inflation down and I expect them to be successful. The Administration, for its part, is supplementing those Fed policies with things we can do. We’ve cut the deficit by a record one-and-a-half trillion dollars this year, releases of gas from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are putting some downward pressure on gas prices. we have seen gas prices just in recent weeks come down by about 50 cents, and there should be more in the pipeline. And hopefully we will pass a bill that will lower prescription drug costs and maintain current levels of health care costs.”
Nat’l Economic Council Head Deese: We’re in ‘Transition’ Where Goal Is ‘Stable and Steady Pathway of Growth’
On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” White House National Economic Council Director Brian Deese stated that the economy is in “a transition from a historically strong and also bumpy economic recovery to a transition where our goal is to get to a more stable and steady pathway of growth.”
Deese stated, “[W]hat we see is a transition, a transition that many anticipated and in fact, many called for. It is consistent with a Fed tightening cycle and it’s a transition from a historically strong and also bumpy economic recovery to a transition where our goal is to get to a more stable and steady pathway of growth. And so, what you see in that transition is that some of the most accelerated and aggressive parts of the recovery are coming down a bit. You see that, for example, in the housing market and you see different dynamics going on. For example, within consumer expenditure, you see a shift from goods to services. And we’re seeing some resilience in places that you wouldn’t necessarily expect. For example, on the labor market side, where, even as you’re seeing some reduction in the overall pace of hiring, you’re still — we’re still operating at historically strong levels. So, really, what we’re seeing is that transition and what we’re keeping a close eye on is both the pace of that transition and what the impact is for typical working families as we navigate through this transition.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
TUCKER COVERS THE INVASION AND THE STAGGERING AND FATAL COST TO WHAT WAS AMERICA
Tucker Carlson: Nothing like this has ever happened
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R6TDCFr9UY
Intolerable conditions fuel class struggle in the United States
Around the world, a global wave of strikes and social protests by the working class is underway, from nationwide strikes by rail workers and dockworkers in Europe to mass protests in Sri Lanka, Albania and other countries against spiraling inflation. Whatever the immediate cause of each particular struggle, all of them are centered on the demand that society’s resources be allocated away from the profit interests of the rich and towards the maintenance of human need.
But nowhere is the contrast between a high level of technological and industrial technique, which makes possible the eradication of want, and the reality of social misery as stark as in the United States. The ruling class in the most powerful capitalist country in the world has cut the wages and living standards of workers for decades. In the course of little more than two years since the start of the pandemic, it has succeeded in reducing the country to the level of complete dysfunction. It is now foisting the cost of this crisis of its own making onto the backs of the working class.
The scenes of grinding poverty and industrial slaughter in The Jungle, Upton Sinclair’s muckraking novel about the Chicago meatpacking industry at the turn of the 20th century, read like a straightforward account of daily life in 21st century America. The book, the publication of which launched a scandal in the early 1900s, has lost its ability to shock.
Deadly industrial accidents are a daily occurrence. Last week, dockworker and Nicaraguan immigrant Uriel “Popeye” Matamoros was crushed to death at the Port of Newark when equipment he was operating fell on top of him. According to co-workers, management kept them on the job, making them work around the site of the accident without even having fully cleaned it up. “It smelled awful,” one worker told the WSWS.
The same day, a worker died at an Amazon warehouse in Carteret, New Jersey during the company’s Prime Day promotion, which places tremendous strain on workers to keep pace with orders. Earlier in the year, Steven Dierkes died at a Caterpillar foundry in Illinois when he fell into a crucible filled with molten metal.
Increasingly frequent and intense heat waves, the product of man-made global warming, also take their toll. Two weeks ago, UPS driver Esteban Chavez died of heat stroke while driving his route in nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) weather. UPS delivery trucks are not air conditioned. Workers at auto parts maker Ventra’s facility in Evart, Michigan are passing out on the line and being hospitalized due to extreme heat. This is taking place while an historic heat wave pummels Europe, killing thousands.
As terrible as this is, it pales in comparison to the human toll of coronavirus, which has killed more than 1 million people in the US. Factories, other large workplaces and schools have long been known to be primary centers of COVID outbreaks, yet the federal and local governments have deliberately kept them open for virtually the entire pandemic in the name of the “economy.”
Moreover, despite self-serving media claims, the pandemic is continuing to rage. At the Evart plant, workers report that an outbreak is underway. However, the true toll of COVID on workers is not known because of the systematic coverup of outbreaks in the plants. Often, workers only find out about cases through their co-workers and word of mouth.
As major corporations desperately improvise to maintain supply chains and production, American workers are subjected to arbitrary and punishing scheduling regimes, with the eight-hour day and 40-hour workweek a distant memory. Autoworkers oscillate, often without warning, between 70- and 80-hour workweeks and extended layoffs. On the West Coast docks, thousands of “casuals”—in reality, day laborers—line up at hiring halls each morning for the distant chance of getting work for the day.
Conditions are even worse in the railroad industry, where 100-hour weeks are not uncommon. Workers are on call 24/7, leaving them with no time for their families or even to schedule a doctor’s appointment. One worker told the WSWS that she has so little downtime she has to take sleeping pills to maximize her rest, and then another set of pills to wake herself up in the morning.
On top of everything else, workers are being squeezed by runaway inflation, which last month exceeded 9 percent for the first time in decades. A rise in nominal wages, which has sent chills down the spine of Wall Street, is in reality nowhere close to enough to keep pace. Inflation-adjusted wages have fallen over the past year by 4 to 5 percent.
Meanwhile, the corporate oligarchy that owns the country is making money on a scale never before seen. Through the bipartisan infusion of trillions of dollars in cash, Washington has seen to it that Wall Street has been “made whole” during the pandemic, while millions face destitution.
Even the railroad industry, which is on the verge of total collapse, has been raking in tens of billions of dollars. This critical segment of the country’s infrastructure is used as little more than a piggy bank for Wall Street hedge funds and billionaires such as Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. In 2019, according to research group Comparisun, it was the most profitable industry in the country, with a whopping 50.93 percent profit margin, more than five times the national average.
It is little wonder, then, that the American working class is seething with discontent. There is a growing sentiment that things can no longer go on as they have been going, that things need to fundamentally change. This finds its most overt expression in the growing militancy of workers and support for strike action. Earlier this month, railroaders voted by 99.5 percent to authorize a national strike.
In an earlier period, before most Americans alive today were even born and when the country was still a rising industrial power, the ruling elite was capable of parting with concessions to workers in a bid to diffuse such discontent. No longer. The Biden administration’s entire domestic policy, in one way or another, is aimed at suppressing the class struggle and worsening social conditions even further.
The Federal Reserve, with Biden’s support, is hiking interest rates to avert a “wage-price spiral”—that is, wage rises keeping pace with inflation. Modeling themselves on similar monetary policies from the late 1970s and the early 1980s, which began the era of deindustrialization, they are prepared to trigger a recession by hiking interest rates to ramp up mass unemployment as a weapon against a restive working class.
The Biden White House is also intervening directly to block strike action and prevent the emergence of a mass movement of the working class. Last Friday, while he was on his way to meet with the autocratic ruler of Saudi Arabia, Biden signed an executive order appointing a Presidential Emergency Board (PEB) in the railroad industry, blocking a strike that workers had nearly unanimously voted to approve. This follows his close and unprecedented involvement in contract talks on the West Coast docks, as well as a similar intervention earlier this year in the US refineries. Biden worked with the United Steelworkers to avert a national refinery strike and impose a contract that the union president boasted was “non-inflationary.”
Biden is pursuing a policy known for decades as corporatism, the drawing together of the state, the corporations and the unions against the working class. The unions, controlled by a bureaucracy tied by a thousand threads to management, have enthusiastically embraced this policy. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union has kept dockworkers on the job without a contract, or even a formal extension, for nearly three weeks. It issued an extraordinary joint statement with port operators last month that it had no intention of striking. The railroad unions, meanwhile, had been openly calling on Biden for months to appoint a PEB, effectively demanding government intervention to illegalize a strike of their own members.
But as Leon Trotsky said, the laws of history are more powerful than the bureaucratic apparatus. The attempt to bureaucratically smother the class struggle will not only fail, it will also discredit everyone involved and encourage the development of a rebellion by the rank-and-file against the entire corporatist conspiracy, including the companies, the unions and the government, and both pro-capitalist parties.
There are many signs that such a movement is beginning to develop. The overwhelming rejection by workers of sellout contracts is increasingly becoming a regular feature of public life. In one recent development, Kroger grocery workers flooded the local union’s Facebook page with oppositional comments following the “passage” of a substandard contract, prompting the UFCW to delete its page entirely.
The critical question, however, is the organization and direction of this movement. The proliferation of rank-and-file committees over the past two years, formed in opposition to the treachery of the union bureaucracy, points the way forward.
A critical initiative has also been taken in the election campaign for president of the United Auto Workers by Will Lehman, a worker at Mack Trucks. Lehman’s campaign, based on the abolition, not the reform, of the labor bureaucracy and the establishment of rank-and-file control, is the most conscious expression of the brewing collision between the workers and the pro-corporate trade union officialdom.
Workers are being confronted with the question of society’s basic organization and structure. Who should control society’s wealth, the capitalist ruling class or the workers?
The past two years have shown that not a single social problem is solvable within the framework of the profit motive. In fact, all modern social problems have their origin in the profit motive. But the fight against capitalist exploitation requires the fight by the working class for the socialist reconstruction of society and the abolition of private ownership of social resources.
The Party of Affluent, Progressive Whites
Back in 2002, Ruy Teixeira and John Judis published a book boldly proclaiming The Emerging Democratic Majority. Demographics were destiny, said the authors. The coloring of America would transform politics in the Democrats’ favor for a long time.
In the 20 years since, no such majority has materialized. Is it stalled or stillborn? Is the Democrat Party, instead, becoming an incredibly shrinking party lorded over by privileged, progressive whites? We won’t pretend to read tealeaves or sift data with such glorious insight as Teixeira and Judis. But we can observe what’s happening now. The Democrats' anticipated emerging majority may be an emerging minority. Even Teixeira has suspicions.
The demographic changes that Teixeira and Judis ballyhooed as pivotal to Democrats aren’t producing the desired results. Seems Latinos have their own minds and want to pursue their own interests, even if that leads to them voting for Republicans. Middle- and working-class Americans of all colors are fleeing Democrats, too. That broader trend is more troubling for the Party of Biden.
If enough Latinos defect from Democrats and stay defected, the extreme “progressivism” -- including D.C.-based election rigging, curtailing gun rights, and court packing -- that Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden have pushed zealously becomes dustbin fodder.
Erosion of Latino support for Democrats started during the Trump presidency. Noted the Wall Street Journal, January 12:
Nationwide, Mr. Trump’s share of the Latino vote grew by 8 percentage points compared with 2016, according to Catalist, a Democratic voter-data firm.
Biden garnered 750,000 fewer Latino votes in 2020 than Hillary Clinton did in 2016, reports WSJ. The Journal offers a why, but we’ll let Teixeira answer.
From Teixeira’s The Liberal Patriot (Substack), July 14:
Recent data indicate that success for the abortion-gun control-January 6th strategy, to the extent it is working (and might work in the future) is attributable to those voters for whom these issues loom large and are less likely to be influenced by current economic problems. Such voters are disproportionately likely to be college-educated whites and it is here that Democrats have been demonstrating unusual strength. [italics added]
Other than echo-chamber dwelling affluent, progressive whites, Latinos and working- and middle-class folk don’t give a hoot about the phony January 6 insurrection. Gun control isn’t a push-button issue, either. Abortion? Plenty of Latinos identify as Catholic or, increasingly, fundamentalist Christian. Abortion is a grave sin to them.
People of faith don’t like to go crosswise God, something that better-heeled, secularist (read atheist) whites, consumed with their virtue-signaling and journeys of self-obsession, dismiss as caveman sensibility. For these heathens, if a baby in the womb is inconvenient, well, kill the child, right up to the moment of birth. That extremism turns off many Latinos.
Mayra Flores, newly elected congresswoman from a heavily Hispanic, historically Democrat district in South Texas, ran on the theme, “God, family, and country.” That and Flores advancing a practical agenda of protecting jobs, helping small businesses, fighting inflation, producing energy here at home, and, yes, securing the border proved a winning formula.
Flores daring to strike a patriotic theme raised the hackles of the insular, smug, college-educated whites who run the New York Times. They branded Flores as a “far-right Latina.” Let’s see how that plays off college campuses and outside Democrat-run cities’ and ‘burbs’ very white upscale precincts.
But the news is actually worse for Democrats. Working-class voters aren’t just a little disaffected with them. Teixeira reports that “Democrats lose among all working-class voters by 11 points, but carry the college-educated by 23 points. This is less a class gap than a yawning chasm.”
Those college educated are decidedly white and financially better off.
Via Teixeira, Axios makes this stunning admission, July 13:
Democrats are becoming the party of upscale voters concerned more about issues like gun control and abortion rights.
Republicans are quietly building a multiracial coalition of working-class voters, with inflation as an accelerant.
The Democrats’ chief dilemma is hiding in plain sight. Most Americans -- pick your color and race -- must wrestle day-to-day with grubby realities like earning livings, keeping jobs, paying bills, paying rents or mortgages, and taking care of kids. They worry about the high costs of gasoline, home heating and cooling, and groceries. They don’t hate cops and know that criminals need to be jailed. They understand that Democrats are hamstringing cops, making their communities less safe. They recoil at lax prosecution by Soros-funded DAs.
They don’t have the luxury of championing radical isms or pushing boutique issues, like transgenderism and proper pronoun usage. They’re revolted by teachers who try to sexually indoctrinate their kids rather than stick to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic, which too many kids are poor at, thanks to low standards and teachers who’d rather social crusade in classrooms.
If the voter trends we’re seeing among minority and working-class people hold, a sea-change in American politics is coming. The trends are too recent to declare a sea-change, but the 2024 presidential election may prove the decider. It may be the earthquake that realigns the parties, with Democrats suffering longer-term.
Electoral debacles in 2022 and 2024 may prove worse for Democrats than Reagan’s 1980 blowout of Jimmy Carter, whose presidency was marked by impotence and serial failures. Reagan’s landslide was the beginning of the end of Democrat hegemony, which dated back to Franklin Roosevelt. 2024 may hand the GOP greater sustained dominance.
What do Latinos and blacks get most often from progressive whites? Pandering, and snits from the likes of Joe Biden when he thinks blacks are uppity.
Remember during the 2020 election when Biden upbraided black podcaster Charlamagne?
After a campaign aide said Biden had to wrap up the conversation, Charlamagne said: ‘Listen, you’ve got to come see us when you come to New York, VP Biden. It’s a long way until November. We’ve got more questions.’
‘You’ve got more questions?’ Biden replied. ‘Well, I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.’ He said Charlamagne and voters should ‘take a look at my record, man!’ [italics added]
Biden’s condescending remark wasn’t a one-off. Biden has a track record that smells a lot like racism. Progressive whites feel entitled to decide who’s black enough and who isn’t. Look at the savaging that Clarence Thomas took for playing a key role in striking down Roe v. Wade. Racism doesn’t apply when progressive whites attack conservative blacks or Latinos. They make the rules, after all.
Jill Biden’s “breakfast taco” comment to a “Latinx” audience was simply more condescension from a white woman who’s enjoyed great privilege in her adult life. Being labeled “Latinx” is generally resented among Latinos. It’s a tag that progressive whites imposed.
The Democrat Party is owned and operated by affluent, progressive whites. Their wealth makes them Oz behind the curtain. Whatever the pretenses about being for equity and diversity -- when was the last time a prominent rich, progressive white stepped down from his or her high-paying job in favor of a “person of color?” -- whatever the window-dressing afforded by leftist black and Latino politicians and activists, the party belongs to wealthy whites in Silicon Valley, Manhattan, Boston, Seattle, and wherever else these whites hole up.
Affluent, progressive whites are social inbreds, unable to relate to the struggles of everyday Americans -- even more so minorities. They’re priming their counterfeit party of color to take a fall of historic proportions. We can’t predict it, but we surely hope for it.
J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith. He also blogs at Flyover.
CA GOV GAVIN NEWSOM WANTS TO BE PRESIDENT. CA'S RICH WANT HIM TO BE PRESIDENT AND SO DO THE ILLEGALS. CA IS A MASSIVE MEX WELFARE STATE ON LEGALS' BACKS.
IF YOU DO NOT THINK GAVIN NEWSOM SHOULD BE PRESIDENT, YOU SHOUD START NOW TO SABOTAGE AND EXPOSE THE DISASTER THAT IS CA.
Why California's Stuck in Covid Emergency, What's the Problem? | Marc Joffe
VIDEO
THE REALITY OF BIDENOMICS
Major West Coast Cities Are Being Overwhelmed By Rats, Drugs, Garbage
And Hordes Of Homeless People
TUCKER COVERS THE INVASION AND THE STAGGERING AND FATAL COST TO WHAT WAS AMERICA
Tucker Carlson: Nothing like this has ever happened
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R6TDCFr9UY
FLEEING MEXIFORNIA
Report: Thousands of Californians Flee to Mexico in Search of More Affordable Living
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/06/joe-biden-folks-im-hardly-worried-about.html
Housing prices and rampant inflation under the leadership of President Joe Biden and Gov. Gavin Newson (D-CA) are driving thousands of Californians to search for a more affordable life in Mexico.
VIDEO OF DEMOCRAT-CONTROLLED SANTUARY CITY:
Lost Angeles: City of Homeless
Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait
For example, a DACA amnesty would cost American taxpayers about $26 billion, more than the border wall, and that does not include the money taxpayers would have to fork up to subsidize the legal immigrant relatives of DACA illegal aliens.
"Fox’s Tucker Carlson noted Thursday that Obrador has previously proposed granting AMNESTY TO MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. “America is now Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling class,” Carlson added."
JOE BIDEN AND THE NAFTA DEMOCRAT PARTY’S VISION OF NO BORDER WITH NARCOMEX AND NO LEGAL NEED APPLY
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/06/will-america-go-to-war-against-narcomex.html
Mexico’s president is reviving calls for a continental superstate that would combine North American employers and South American employees – and sideline tens of millions of middle-class Americans. NEIL MUNRO
THE LA RAZA DRUG CARTELS SET UP CAMP IN CALIFORNIA - WHY DIG TUNNELS UNDER WHAT WAS THE BORDER WHEN DEMOCRAT POLITICIANS WELCOME THE INVADERS WITH OPEN ARMS?
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/06/narcomex-on-joe-bidens-undefended.html
“Joe Biden is great on immigration. I guess depends on your perspective. If you’re a human trafficker, or drug dealer, you’d give him an A-plus, but the American people would give him an F. The crisis at our border was not only entirely predictable, it was predicted. I predicted that if you campaign all year long on open borders, amnesty, and health care for illegals, you’re going to get more migrants at the border. That’s what’s happened since the election.” SEN. TOM COTTON
How Foreign Drug Operations Are Taking Over California’s Desert Towns: Jorge Ventura
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL86snd4dP8&t=1285s
Mexican Cartels Are Growing Marijuana In California’s National Forests
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAnlncWbFMM
Exclusive — Blackburn on Democrat Crime Leniency, Gun Hypocrisy: They Want to ’Steal Firearms from Law-Abiding Citizens, Let Criminals Run Free’
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) told Breitbart News exclusively on Wednesday that hypocrisy in Democrat policies and proposals when it comes to guns and crime demonstrates that the left is not actually interested in stopping crimes committed with guns, but in control and power.
“Two things are certain – the Constitution is non-negotiable and gun control does not work,” Blackburn said. “But since the radical Democrats love talking gun control, let’s talk about it.”
Blackburn cited three leftist-run cities with out-of-control crime: Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.
“Despite having some of the strictest gun laws in the U.S., Chicago ended 2021 with the more homicides than any other city in the country. If Lori Lightfoot had her way, police would be confiscating weapons from law-abiding citizens while criminals are allowed to run free in the name of social justice,” Blackburn said. “In Philadelphia, the District Attorney hinted that it’s racist to prosecute people for illegal gun possession and admitted gun confiscation wouldn’t work. It begs the question of why we are even discussing new laws when we cannot enforce the current ones on the books. In Los Angeles, weak on crime District Attorney George Gascón’s woke social experiment is killing people every day. Two police officers were tragically murdered after Gascon’s policies granted a lenient plea deal to a convicted felon in possession of a firearm.”
Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón. (Damian Dovarganes, File/AP)
This being the case, Blackburn argued, the push for so-called “gun control” from Democrats is not even an intellectually honest effort to stop crimes committed with firearms—but an effort to hurt law-abiding Americans by taking away their firearms and let criminals off the hook so they can continue to commit more crimes.
“The left does not want gun control – they want to abolish the Second Amendment, steal firearms from law abiding citizens and then let criminals run free,” Blackburn said. “Let’s call it what it is.”
This statement from Blackburn comes as Democrats in Congress seek to pass even more gun control in the wake of a red flag law package passed earlier this summer and signed into law by President Joe Biden. Fresh off the passing of that package—with support from several Republicans, most notably Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX)—Democrats doubled their efforts for more gun control, trying to pass a so-called “assault weapons ban” in the House Judiciary Committee.
Surging prices push US workers to the brink
The purchasing power of American workers’ wages suffered another sharp drop last month, as the official inflation rate reached 9.1 percent while pay rises remained suppressed far below that level.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, real wages fell 3.1 percent between June 2021 and June 2022. In the month of June alone, real average weekly earnings declined by 1 percent. More up-to-date figures from the Wall Street Journal put the decline in real wages at 4.4 percent.
The devastating impact of inflation on the working class is demonstrated by the collapse in purchasing power of the federal minimum wage. Frozen at $7.25 an hour since 2009, it stands at its lowest value in 66 years. The 13-year freeze on the minimum wage, enforced by Democratic and Republican administrations alike, is the longest period without a raise since it was established in 1938 during the Roosevelt administration.
By comparison, the real value of the minimum wage in current dollars was $12.12 in 1968.
The surge of inflation is part of a class policy aimed at making workers pay for the criminal and incompetent response of the ruling class to the pandemic, including the vast bailout of the banks and financial institutions to the tune of trillions of dollars. At the same time, while health care and vital public services are being starved for funds the government has lavished vast amounts on the war machine. Military spending under the Democratic Biden administration now stands at record levels.
The result has been that while workers are paying more, consumption is falling. For example, while gas prices have risen 60 percent, the total dollar amount spent on gas has only risen 50 percent, meaning workers are being forced to cut back on travel and commuting.
While the living standards of workers are being devastated, the world’s billionaires have seen a vast increase in their fortunes. The world’s 10 richest billionaires more than doubled their fortunes, from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion. Meanwhile, another 160 million have been forced into poverty, a figure that is sure to increase.
The Biden administration has turned to the unions to help suppress the mounting wave of strikes launched by workers to fight back against the devastating assault on wages. Biden, who calls his administration the most “pro union” in history, sees the labor bureaucracy as a vital instrument for disorganizing and betraying the struggles of workers.
Despite the claims by the US federal Reserve of a “wage price spiral,” pay increases are averaging far less than the rate of inflation. Through March, pay increases for union members increased by 3.5 percent year over year, less than half the official inflation rate. That compares to 4.9 percent for nonunion workers, demonstrating the role of the unions in slashing the living standards of workers.
During that timeframe, the unions betrayed a series of important strikes, including Volvo Trucks, John Deere, Kellogg’s and Nabisco, to name just a few. Wage increases averaged in the 2-4 percent range.
The role of the unions was starkly exposed again by their support last week of the intervention of the Biden administration to block a strike by railroad workers by convening a Presidential Emergency Board. The workers, facing conditions some describe as “hell on earth,” earlier voted by a 99.5 percent margin for strike authorization.
In recent days, the United Auto Workers has blocked struggles at Ventra, an auto parts maker in Evart, Michigan, as well as imposing a sellout deal on low-wage contract workers at GM Subsystems.
Rampaging prices and shortages of fuel, food and other necessities have led to the outbreak of struggles around the world. Mass protests and strikes by workers in Sri Lanka forced the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapakse, who fled the country. In Britain, railroad workers conducted a series of national strikes last month. However, in each case the unions have sought to limit these struggles to protest actions aimed at merely dissipating the anger of workers.
The suppression of wages by the unions has gone hand in hand with the offloading of increased costs onto the shoulders of workers. A report in the New York Times details how over the past decade families have been “bled dry” by the rise in rent, health insurance premiums, drug costs, student loans, and child care. According to the Times, “Family premiums for employer-based health insurance jumped by 47 percent between 2011 and 2021, and deductibles and out-of-pocket costs shot up by almost 70 percent. The average price for brand-name drugs on Medicare Part D rose by 236 percent between 2009 and 2018. Between 1980 and 2018, the average cost of an undergraduate education rose by 169 percent.”
To further undermine the class struggle, the US Federal Reserve is sharply increasing interest rates to drive up unemployment. Another 0.75 to 1 percent increase in the key federal interest rate is expected when the Fed governors meet later this month, following a 0.75 percent rise in June.
While the inflationary crisis was triggered by years of bank bailouts and money printing aimed at enriching the financial oligarchy, the ruling class seeks to resolve the crisis it has produced by throwing millions of workers into unemployment as a means to force workers to accept even lower wages.
Higher interest rates will mean higher mortgage costs as well as higher interest payments on credit cards, student debt and car loans. As a result of the rate increases, the sharpest in more than 30 years, a recession is seen as very likely, with millions of workers facing the loss of jobs, their only lifeline.
To counter the policy of the financial oligarchy, the working class must mount a no less determined struggle to defend its social interests. The fundamental principle should be that the working class is not responsible for the present crisis and must not pay for it.
To wage their struggles, workers need organizations independent of the pro-corporate unions and capitalist political parties. With the assistance of the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Parties, workers have begun building rank-and-file committees to defend their jobs and living standards. A vast expansion of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees is required.
These committees, uniting ever broader sections of workers, union as well as nonunion, along with retirees, youth and other struggling sections of the population, should fight for substantial increase in real wages and the indexing of all wages and benefits to the rise in the cost of living as well as fully funded health care and pensions. Workers must demand an end to endless hours of overtime and unsafe conditions, including protection from COVID-19 and the right to halt production if conditions are unsafe.
To meet these demands requires seizing the ill-gotten wealth of the world’s billionaires and a fundamental reorientation of social priorities. The capitalist war machine must be dismantled and the funds used to meet pressing social needs such as education and health care, and the eradication of hunger, homelessness and the dire threat posed by climate change.
The banks and other major industries, the oil companies, health care conglomerates, airlines, utilities and basic industries must be placed under public ownership, democratically run by the working class for the interests of society as a whole, not private profit.
House Democrats Block Motion to Prohibit Biden from Selling U.S. Oil to China
House Democrats blocked a motion Wednesday that would have prevented President Joe Biden from selling oil drawn from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve to entities controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.
Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) proposed a motion to recommit H.R. 8294, the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. A motion to recommit is a procedural motion that allows a member of the House minority to change a bill before it goes to the House floor for a final vote.
The proposed motion would have prevented U.S. oil from being sold to entities “under the ownership, control, or influence of the Chinese Communist Party” or entities that would get the oil and then turn around and export it to China.
Valadao’s motion comes just weeks after reports revealed that Biden sold nearly one million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a CCP-owned gas company with financial ties to Hunter Biden.
As Breitbart News detailed:
In April, Biden’s Department of Energy announced the nearly one million barrel sale to Unipec, which is the trading arm of Sinopec. Sinopec is wholly owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party.
Unipec reportedly purchases oil across the globe and then apparently sells it through its Sinopec Marketing subsidiary.
…
Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, reportedly has financial ties to the CCP-owned Sinopec. A private equity firm Hunter Biden cofounded reportedly purchased a nearly $2 billion stake in Sinopec Marketing in 2015.
House Democrats unanimously blocked the measure, with 219 votes against Valadao’s motion.
Valadao urged his colleagues on the House floor to support the “common sense” motion because “we need to focus on increasing energy production and not supporting our adversaries while Americans are still suffering from outrageously high fuel prices here at home.”
“These reserves are meant to be used in emergencies only. They are not meant to be used when our leadership has failed us by unnecessarily restricting domestic energy production,” Valadao said.
Valadao also called out the Biden Administration for depleting the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve and helping China.
“It is irresponsible and dangerous for the United States to provide a foreign adversary with fuel that we need to keep here in the United States in case of an emergency,” Valadao said. “It seems the Biden administration is helping to support China’s national security at the expense of our own.”
