BIDENOMICS - Report: Inflation Could Cause ‘Uptick in Hunger, Homelessness’

 VIDEO

CNN Report - Food bank demand skyrockets as cash-strapped Americans seek help over inflation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFdh3nlIHEI

Report: Inflation Could Cause ‘Uptick in Hunger, Homelessness’

Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

KATHERINE HAMILTON

8 Aug 20220

2:18

Poll findings suggest “U.S. cities could be facing an uptick in hunger and homelessness in the next coming months…” because of rampant inflation overseen by the Biden administration, Axios reported on Monday.

The outlet spoke with Robert Blendon, the co-director of an NPR, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health survey which found that Americans are struggling to afford housing and “timely medical care for serious illnesses.”

“It’s very striking,” Blendon told Axios. “We’re in an inflationary period here and it’s unusually broadly hitting minority communities even worse than everyone else.”

In a sample of roughly 4,000 adults between May 16 – June 13, 2022, 60 percent of black and Latino households, 70 percent of Native American households, 44 percent of white households, and 36 percent of Asian households say inflation is causing serious financial hardship. The poll also found that 16 percent of black renters, 10 percent of Latino renters, 21 percent of Native American renters, 9 percent of white renters, and 5 percent of Asian renters, “say they have either been evicted or threatened with eviction.” The poll focused heavily on comparing racial/ethnic minority populations to the white population.

Other media outlets have released similar reports about how inflation is impacting hunger and homelessness. In July, the Washington Post noted that “rising housing costs, combined with persistent inflation for basic necessities such as gas and food, have left more Americans newly homeless and millions more fearing they’ll soon lose their homes.” Food banks across the country are also reporting a higher demand than during the coronavirus pandemic.

he survey was conducted before the Department of Labor released data showing that inflation, which was already at a 40-year high, rose to an annual rate of 9.1 percent in June. The real-world implications of rising inflation are expected to drive voters to the polls in November, with voters consistently listing the economy as their top priority.

THERE IS NO GREATER DANGER TO AMERICA THAN AS

 PERPETRATED BY THE DEMOCRAT PARTY!

Democrats Advance Plan to Subsidize Electric Cars Made in Mexico, Canada

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NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images/Mauricio Palos/Bloomberg

JOHN BINDER

8 Aug 20220

2:48

Senate Democrats’ filibuster-proof reconciliation package, dubbed the “Inflation Reduction Act,” is set to help subsidize electric vehicles manufactured in Mexico and Canada.

On Sunday, Senate Democrats passed the Inflation Reduction Act on a party-line vote, with Vice President Kamala Harris splitting the 50-50 tie.

Part of the legislation, estimated to eliminate about 30,000 jobs in the United States, serves as a major win for Mexico’s and Canada’s auto industries as well as the multinational corporations that outsource American auto jobs to each of those countries.

That victory for Mexico’s and Canada’s auto industries is slipped into electric vehicle tax credits for consumers. Rather than including “Buy American” rules that require electric vehicles to be fully produced in the United States to be eligible for the tax credits, the legislation allows the credits to be used on electric vehicles made in Mexico and Canada.

Some Senate Democrats and United States auto companies wanted to loosen those production rules even more — allowing electric vehicles with batteries produced and sourced in China to be eligible for the tax credits. That provision was ultimately left out of the final deal.

The final provision is a win specifically for United States auto companies looking to cut labor costs as they have increasingly outsourced American auto jobs to Mexico thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

After the U.S. entered NAFTA with Mexico and Canada, “Mexico’s light vehicle production more than tripled — from 1.1 million units in 1994 to nearly 3.5 million units in 2016,” as researchers at the Chicago Fed have noted.

Thanks to Mexico’s vastly lower wages, U.S. auto companies have enjoyed paying workers less and cutting benefits down when they outsource American auto jobs. From 2007 to 2014, on average, Mexico’s wages in auto assembly were about one-fifth of those in the United States, and wages in vehicle parts production were about one-eighth of those in the United States.

The Center for Automotive Research has also noted that labor costs for assembly in Mexico are about $600 cheaper than in the U.S. and vehicle parts production is about $1,500 cheaper in Mexico than in the U.S.

Most notoriously, General Motors (GM) closed a number of U.S. auto plants over the last few years and has sent jobs — specifically in electric vehicle production — to Mexico.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here. 

U.S. Department of Energy Gives Revolutionary Battery Technology to China

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JOHN HAYWARD

8 Aug 20220

6:02

An American company called UniEnergy developed revolutionary battery technology that could theoretically allow a house to be powered by solar energy.

The company that made this breakthrough ten years ago is dead and gone because the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) inexplicably gave its tech to China while preventing American companies from manufacturing it.

The astounding saga of UniEnergy and its vanadium redox flow batteries was told by National Public Radio (NPR) last week. The story began with government researchers developing a mixture of fluids that could store almost twice as much energy as existing battery technology, with very little degradation over long periods of time.

This was a crucial attribute for next-generation battery technology since the high cost of replacing degraded batteries is a major hurdle to the widespread adoption of large battery-powered equipment like electric vehicles. High-capacity and durable batteries, in turn, are essential to solar power designs because power must be stored to cover periods when the solar panels are not receiving enough sunlight.

With six years of effort and $15 million in U.S. taxpayer funding, researchers created a high-powered battery using vanadium that could last for up to 30 years. The lead scientist on the project, Gary Yang, secured a license from DOE to manufacture the batteries in 2012 and established UniEnergy Technologies.

Yang said he had trouble lining up American investors for his battery project – but Chinese money came on board thanks to businessman Yanhi Liu and his company, Dalian Rongke Power Co. Ltd.

The next part of the story should be drearily familiar to any student of Chinese technology theft: Rongke Power at first provided money for the battery project, then began handling some of the manufacturing, and soon was doing nearly all of the manufacturing. In 2019, UniEnergy told its engineers they would have to start living and working in China for four months out of each year. UniEnergy was no longer making enough batteries at its U.S. facilities to meet the terms of its DOE license.

NANTONG, CHINA – MAY 30, 2022 – Lithium battery modules are produced on an automated production line at kingfisher New Energy Technology (Nantong) Co., LTD. ‘s workshop in Hai ‘an High-tech Zone, Jiangsu Province, May 30, 2022. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

In 2021, Yang decided to cut American workers completely out of the equation by transferring his license to Netherlands-based Vanadis Power, which had a long-term plan to shift some manufacturing from China to Germany, and then eventually back to the United States. Vanadis executives said the German stage of this plan had to come first due to European Union (EU) manufacturing requirements.

American requirements had vanished completely from the story by this point, but in July 2021, someone from UniEnergy finally got around to telling DOE that the battery developed with American science and taxpayer funding would now belong to a Chinese company and its European partner. 

NPR suspected no one bothered to tell the Biden DOE that Vanadis was not an American company and there was no evidence DOE did any diligence on the matter, even though Vanadis’ own website said its super-batteries would be made in China – and China was making a huge deal about controlling this revolutionary technology, with demonstration projects and additional research funded by the Chinese Communist government.

DOE officials admitted to NPR that they rely on “good faith disclosures” from corporations instead of doing their own research. It took DOE a grand total of ninety minutes to sign off on the transfer of UniEnergy’s license to Vanadis.

The gigantic federal agency remained comatose until another American company, Forever Technology, tirelessly badgered it into noticing that China just walked away with yet another piece of valuable American-made “green” technology.

“How is it that the national lab did not require U.S. manufacturing? Not only is it a violation of the license, it’s a violation to our country,” asked exasperated Forever Energy CFO Joanne Skievaski.

Yang’s company UniEnergy is dead and gone, its employees laid off and its facilities shuttered. Forever Energy started trying to get the vanadium battery technology license over a year ago, while Communist China was merrily cranking out batteries using the technology our federal government helpfully gave it. Dalian Rongke has become the world’s top producer of vanadium redox flow batteries, and even gung-ho Skievaski admitted it would be difficult for any American company to catch up with China’s head start.

According to NPR, the DOE finally woke up from its decade-long regulatory nap and canceled Dalian Rongke’s license after NPR bombarded the agency with questions about it.

The Chinese are, to put it mildly, highly unlikely to stop making the batteries just because the U.S. government finally got around to terminating their license. In fact, China announced a new 800-megawatt battery farm using vanadium technology in May. The co-founder of Vanadis Power, Roelof Platenkamp, was quoted in Western media coverage of the announcement, explaining how the U.S.-taxpayer-funded technology given to China works.

The Register, a technology website, noted last week that while some vanadium redox flow batteries are made in the United States, there are currently no U.S. production sites for the specific technology described in the NPR article.

Incidentally, NPR made a point of mentioning that lead battery project scientist and UniEnergy founder Gary Yang was “born in China but is a U.S. citizen and got his Ph.D. at the University of Connecticut.”

The article does not explicitly accuse Yang of working on Beijing’s behalf all along, but it does pointedly marvel at some of the strange decisions he made along the way, and Skievaski dismissed Yang’s assertion that no American company had the infrastructure to build his batteries as “hogwash.” At one point, the article quotes Yang insisting that “he didn’t send the battery and his engineers abroad to help China.”

Marsha Blackburn: Democrats Want Permanent Pandemic, Inflation, and Control

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Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

HANNAH BLEAU

8 Aug 20220

2:41

Democrats want the dire state of affairs in the country to be permanent — from the pandemic to inflation — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said on Sunday following the Democrat-led Senate passing another $700 billion spending bill.

 “Democrats want a permanent pandemic. Democrats want permanent inflation. Democrats want permanent control,” the Tennessee senator said Sunday evening.

“Senate Democrats voted that COVID restrictions don’t apply to illegal immigrants crossing the border,” she later added. “They want a forever pandemic for you and your family, but not illegal immigrants.”

Blackburn’s comments follow the Senate’s passage of the $700 billion Inflation Reduction Act, which ironically does nothing to reduce inflation, as Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, detailed in a fact sheet.

According to the sheet, which dubs the opening bill [emphasis added] the Inflation Expansion Act of 2022, the measure adds $728 billion in new spending, which includes extended Obamacare subsidies ($248 billion) when removing false 3-year sunsets. It also adds $400,000 billion for the Green New Deal when removing false 2-year sunsets, per the fact sheet. The measure also allots billions to the Internal Revenue Serve to further target middle class Americans.

Ultimately, it adds $114 billion in new debt, according to the fact sheet.

Blackburn expressed disgust toward Democrats for passing the $700 billion bill, which increases taxes on Americans, during a time of 41-year high inflation.

“It is a shame that Senate Democrats have forced through a socialist agenda that will make life more difficult and expensive for Tennesseans,” she added.

Although congressional Democrats bear much of the responsibility for passing Biden’s legislation, congressional Republicans often gave Biden the necessary votes to advance the 46th president’s agenda.

For instance, 13 House Republicans and 19 Senate Republicans gave Democrats the necessary votes to pass the so-called infrastructure bill.

Fourteen Senate Republicans and many House Republicans voted for the CHIPS Act.

Over the weekend, Sen Joe Manchin (D-WV) described the Inflation Reduction Act as “the product of years of bipartisan conversations” and expressed disappointment in Republicans for refusing to jump on board:

Analysis: Latest Version of Senate Democrats’ Reconciliation Bill Raises Taxes on Small Businesses

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Joe Raedle/Getty Images

JORDAN DIXON-HAMILTON

6 Aug 20220

3:10

The latest iteration of the Senate Democrats’ reconciliation bill, known as the “Inflation Reduction Act,” would raise taxes on thousands of small and mid-sized businesses across the country, according to Americans for Tax Reform (ATR).

Senate Democrats changed the language of their new minimum corporate book tax, which would now hit small and midsized businesses well below the $1 billion profit threshold the tax intended to hit.

The new tax would impose a 15 percent minimum tax on the book income of “applicable corporations.” However, the latest change to the book tax would impact any business with private equity in its capital structure.

As John Kartch, vice president of ATR’s communications, said, “Any business that has [private equity] in its capital structure is now considered a subsidiary of that firm and thus subject to 15% book tax.”

As ATR explained:

As written, the provision now appears restructured to define any company with private equity in its capital structure to be considered a subsidiary of that private equity firm for purposes of the tax. This means that these companies would now be swept up in the new 15 percent tax on book income.

This provision would greatly expand the reach of the book minimum tax to apply to small and midsize companies that require capital investment to grow their business.

More than 18,000 businesses held by investment funds and partnerships that employ close to 11.7 million people would be targeted by the new tax increase, according to ATR’s Kartch.

If enacted, this provision would violate President Joe Biden’s campaign pledge to small businesses when he said, “no, taxes on small businesses won’t go up.”

Kartch called on Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D) to “remove herself from the bill” in light of her announcement on Thursday that she would vote in favor of the reconciliation bill.

“In Sinema’s Arizona, this Dem tax hike would target [374] companies employing 229,000 people,” Kartch tweeted.

Arizona Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters, who is running against Sen. Mark Kelly (D), blasted Kelly for supporting the reconciliation bill after the small business tax was added:

Masters said:

So we’ve got this Senator, Mark Kelly, he says he loves small business. But we’ve got inflation, and it’s killing business. We’ve got this inflation because of spending that Mark Kelly voted for. And now he’s voting again for, you guessed it, he’s gonna raise taxes on small businesses. Small businesses will have to pay more, 18,000 businesses across the country, hundreds in Arizona, affecting hundreds of thousands of employees soon.

“Thanks to Mark Kelly. They’re all going to have a bigger tax bill. Mark Kelly’s doing more than anyone, literally anyone in Arizona to drag this country further in the wrong direction. It’s got to stop,” Masters continued.

As ATR explained:

As written, the provision now appears restructured to define any company with private equity in its capital structure to be considered a subsidiary of that private equity firm for purposes of the tax. This means that these companies would now be swept up in the new 15 percent tax on book income.

This provision would greatly expand the reach of the book minimum tax to apply to small and midsize companies that require capital investment to grow their business.

More than 18,000 businesses held by investment funds and partnerships that employ close to 11.7 million people would be targeted by the new tax increase, according to ATR’s Kartch.

If enacted, this provision would violate President Joe Biden’s campaign pledge to small businesses when he said, “no, taxes on small businesses won’t go up.”

Kartch called on Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D) to “remove herself from the bill” in light of her announcement on Thursday that she would vote in favor of the reconciliation bill.

“In Sinema’s Arizona, this Dem tax hike would target [374] companies employing 229,000 people,” Kartch tweeted.

Arizona Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters, who is running against Sen. Mark Kelly (D), blasted Kelly for supporting the reconciliation bill after the small business tax was added:

Masters said:

So we’ve got this Senator, Mark Kelly, he says he loves small business. But we’ve got inflation, and it’s killing business. We’ve got this inflation because of spending that Mark Kelly voted for. And now he’s voting again for, you guessed it, he’s gonna raise taxes on small businesses. Small businesses will have to pay more, 18,000 businesses across the country, hundreds in Arizona, affecting hundreds of thousands of employees soon.

“Thanks to Mark Kelly. They’re all going to have a bigger tax bill. Mark Kelly’s doing more than anyone, literally anyone in Arizona to drag this country further in the wrong direction. It’s got to stop,” Masters continued.